Yearbook 2005--n/c

"Really?" Maggie asked, relieved at Kenneth's reaction.

"I do not believe this!" Beth said.

"Hey, I don't care what color he is," Kenneth said magnanimously. "As long as he makes you happy, that's all I care about."

xxxx

"Okay, put the left blinker on, check for oncoming traffic, check the rearview mirror, some ass hole might be trying to pass you and we're here!" Richard said as Bernie pulled up to Manny's restaurant.

"Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Richard asked as he took the keys out of the ignition.

"Whew!" Bernie let out her breath, and then smiled at Richard. "How'd I do?"

"Did good, did real good," Richard said. "Come on, I'm hungry."

"And then we're going to..." Bernie asked.

"Yeah," Richard agreed and she smiled nervously.

"You got them condoms, right?" Bernie asked.

"Uh huh," Richard said.

They saw Jack sitting at a table with a young lady they did not recognize; obviously she did not go to St. Thomas Aquinas, but ignored them. Bobbi greeted Bernie cheerfully and greeted Richard with a nod.

xxxx

"I cannot believe it," Beth finally screamed out loud. "She's fucking a black man! My sister, the straight laced one, the good sister, my sister is fucking a black man!"

"Hey, like she said, she didn't mean to, they just fell in love," Kenneth said.

"That was supposed to be ME!" Beth screamed, not listening to Kenneth.

"Wait, do what?" Kenneth said, surprised.

"Me! I'm supposed to be the wild one; I ain't never got to fuck no black dick, but little Miss Goody two shoes? She's fucking one! It's just not fair!" Beth screamed, and then stomped down the hall to their bedroom.

Kenneth sat rooted in his chair. He did not move, even after hearing the bedroom door slam shut.

xxxx

"Please, Richard, don't," Bernie groaned when Richard put the head of his latex covered cock against her anus. "You know that hurts."

"No?" Richard teased, rubbing the head up and down her splayed pussy lips, brushing against her clitoris in the process.

"Baby, please, put it in me," she begged.

"But suppose I WANT to do it in your butt?" Richard whispered, poised at the entrance of her pussy.

She tried to hunch upward, tried to grip his cock with her pussy. He laughed at pulled away from her.

"Please, baby, please?" she begged.

He laughed and sank his cock into her pussy to the hilt. He loved the way she begged, love the way she looked at him with her large hazel eyes, almost worshipping him.

"Ah, God!" she cried out in orgasm.

"Now, can I stick it in your...?" he asked after her fourth orgasm.

As if he already anticipated the answer, he was forcing her knees toward her freckled breast.

"Go ahead," she groaned and he abruptly jammed his slimy cock into her rectum.

She opened her mouth in a silent scream and he pounded her mercilessly.

"Well, sure," Richard happily agreed when Aunt Maggie asked him to help Bernie baby-sit the following evening.

xxxx

Kenneth tried to put on a good showing for Royal and Maggie, but it was difficult. He and Beth were still fighting. The fighting was silent in front of company, but they were still fighting.

"Hey, um, look now, I do appreciate y'all inviting me on over and all, but it sure does to be like it's some kind of a big deal," Royal said to Kenneth as Kenneth adjusted the flame on the grill.

"My man, it ain't you, it's that bitch I'm married to," Kenneth assured the man. "You? You cool. Her? She's a massive pain in the ass."

"Some women can be that way," Royal agreed.

"Not that Maggie," Kenneth said. "Rare, medium, well, burn it, how you like it?"

"Medium, you know, where you can tell that it's cooked, but not ruin."

"That's the way it's supposed to be; Beth says it's still raw, but she don't know good meat from hamburger," Kenneth said.

"Not when blood's still running out of it," Beth snapped. "That's not cooked."

David sat on the couch and sneered at his brothers and sisters and Richard as they danced to the songs on the radio.

Secretly, he wanted to join in; Philip and Phyllis, Tammy, Bea, and Patty were all having fun and laughing, Richard and Bernie were dancing and smiling happily at each other.

"Practicing," Richard had explained. "Homecoming's coming up."

"Yeah, David, you should go," Bernie encouraged. "Get a date and come with us."

"I tried," David sullenly said. "I asked that stuck up bitch Kaitlin; she said 'no.'"

"Kaitlin Monroe?" Richard asked. "Dude, she's what, a Senior? You're like, what, a Sophomore?"

"You should ask that girl, what's her name, the one in your French class?" Bernie encouraged.

"Shut up," David said, blushing hotly at the mention of the overweight girl in his French class that liked him.

That night, in their bath, Phyllis told Bernie, "I like that new Richard you got; not that mean old Richard used to come here."

"Silly," Bernie laughed and kissed her on the tip of her nose. "It's the same Richard!"

"Nuh uh!" Phyllis argued. "The other Richard was mean and he was mad all the time!"

"You're right," Bernie agreed. "that other Richard wasn't this Richard. I forgot."

xxxx

"Kenneth, I um, I been thinking," Beth said as she brushed out her long brown hair.

"Oh oh, we're in trouble now," Kenneth said sarcastically.

"I uh, how would you feel, would it be all right if I um, you know, if I got a black lover?" Beth asked.

"Hey, Beth, you know what?" Kenneth asked.

"Huh?" Beth asked, turning to look at him.

"Fuck you, you want a black lover, you can fuck have one, you can have a hundred for all I fucking care, but you know what, bitch? You don't live here no fucking more," Kenneth said, marching into their walk-in closet.

"I was just fucking asking!" Beth yelled.

"You were not," Kenneth said through clenched teeth. "You were testing the waters, seeing if I'm pussy enough to let you just run off and fuck around. Well bitch, you want it? You got it; here let me help you."

"Kenneth, cut it out; you're being an ass hole," Beth snapped angrily.

"No, Beth, no, I'm finally doing what I should have done two fucking years ago," Kenneth said, flinging her dresses into a suitcase.

"And what's that?" she challenged.

"My son, my only child, his mother kills herself, he needs a place to stay, and you start with the fucking whining and bitching; should have thrown your ass out right then and there," Kenneth said.

One suitcase filled; he tossed it out of the closet and began on another one.

"I am just fucking sick and tired of this shit!" he screamed. "I have busted my ass, over and over, trying to fucking make you happy, but there ain't a God damned thing anyone can ever do make you fucking happy!"

"Fuck you, ass hole," Beth screamed back. "Fine! You want me out of here, I'm gone! And you can kiss my ass you think I'm ever coming back!"

Xxxx

"Where's Beth?" Richard finally asked.

"Beats the shit out of me," Kenneth shrugged.

He swiveled in his seat and looked at his son.

"Son, I owe you an apology; Beth's been making my life a living hell and I guess I just didn't realize she was doing the same fucking thing to you," Kenneth admitted. "You know? Bust your ass, you try and try and try to make her fucking happy and it never does; she's just a miserable bitch, never be happy.

"So, um, where'd she go?" Richard asked.

"I don't know," Kenneth admitted.

He sipped his beer.

"Best thing? I don't care either," Kenneth said and raised his bottle in a salute.

Ch 7

"I uh, hey Bernie, I been thinking a lot and uh, I signed up for the Marines," Richard said.

"You what?" Bernie asked, horrified.

"Bernie, damn it, I just, we just graduated from high school; ain't got no money for college, don't even think I want to go to college, just know I ain't going to get nowhere sitting around here and..." Richard said in a rush of words.

"But baby, they'll send you, won't you wind up in Iraq?" Bernie sobbed out.

"Probably," Richard agreed. "But after you do your tour of duty, they train you, you know? I'd like, learn something, get a job and..."

"Baby, please, please don't go," Bernie begged, sobbing in earnest. "Baby? I'd die if anything happened to you."

Xxxx

Lawrence Dumensnil, a fellow graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas, was in boot camp with him. They'd never been friends in school; Lawrence was a loner that didn't talk to anyone, and Richard wasn't very sociable either. But in boot camp, they became close friends.

"Here's the two faggots from Louisiana," a corporal sneered.

Lawrence blanched but Richard paid the insult no attention.

"You hear me?" the corporal bellowed in Richard's face.

"Heard, acknowledged, discarded as useless information," Richard bellowed back, silencing the would be bully.

Xxxx

A couple of shrill screams went up when he was named and the Colonel smiled in amusement as Richard blushed.

"Good to be loved, ain't it, Marine?" "He asked.

"Sir yes sir!" Richard acknowledged, giving a smart salute.

"That is one fucking ugly bitch," the corporal sneered as Richard proudly gave Bernie the tour of the base. Kenneth and Aunt Maggie following closely behind the two teenagers.

Xxxx

The military plane was not built with comfort in mind, but Richard, Lawrence, and the sixty two other Marines would have not noticed. Conversations were low, stilted, and short as the plane neared their destination.

"All right, men, listen up!" the C.O. screamed to be heard over the drone of the engines. "We will be arriving at ten hundred hours, we will be landing in a secured location, then we will be convoying to the Green Zone. We will be arriving at the Green Zone at fourteen hundred hours, we will be assigned our quarters, then we will be eating at seventeen hundred hours are there any questions? No? Good to go."

"Good to go," the sixty four men chimed in unison.

Xxxx

The letters arrive, like clockwork, one a week. Bernie read and reread each letter, dabbing at her tears, then sighing and hugging the letter as if she was hugging Richard.

They were brief letters, mainly telling her of the endless hours of boredom, telling her of how much he missed her, and counting down the days until he would be rotated out to either Stateside duty, or to an overseas base.

Her letters to him arrived like clockwork as well. She told him of the day to day grind of her classes at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; she was studying to be a nurse. She told him of the antics of Philip and Phyllis, Tammy, Patrick, Bea, and David. The next paragraph, she poured her heart out to him, told him how much she loved him, how she prayed every morning and every night for his safe return.

David thought it would be funny to grab one of Richard's letters and read it aloud at the dinner table. Maggie displayed a rare bit of discipline and took the car keys away from him for a month.

"And if you keep arguing, it will be two months," she said tightly.

Royal knew he wasn't the boy's father, knew he couldn't replace the boy's father, but tried to have a man to man talk with David.

"See, my man," Royal said quietly. "To you and me, that stuff's funny, it's silly, and it don't mean nothing. But to them girls, that's the sun and the moon, that's their whole world. To Bernie, holding on to them letters, they the whole world, you know? She's in love with that boy and those letters all she's got, you know?"

xxxx

"Uh huh, what we got here?" Corporal Adams sneered as he jerked a photograph out of Lawrence Dumensnil's hand.

"Hey, give that back!" Lawrence cried out, but the sneering man held the photograph just out of Lawrence's reach.

Suddenly Corporal Adams crumpled to the ground, his arrogant sneer frozen on his face. Richard stepped over his form and picked up the photograph and handed it back to Lawrence.

"Mother fucker," Richard said, blinking at the photograph.

Lawrence blushed hotly.

"Man, that thing real?" Richard asked.

"Yes," Lawrence whispered.

"What it look like when it's happy?" Richard asked, wide eyed.

"Beautiful," Lawrence admitted.

The photograph was of Lawrence's boyfriend, E.J. Jefferies, standing, smiling, posing nude. His flaccid cock dangled nearly five inches, made all the more prominent as he thrust his hips forward for the photographer.

Corporal Adams came to, groaning.

"We got enough mother fuckers out there want to kill us," Richard bellowed in the no longer arrogant man's face. "We need them in here too?"

"Fall in!" the C.O. screamed and they did just that, standing rigidly.

They grabbed their gear and ran to the light armored vehicle that would ferry them as they stood guard for a convoy delivering medical supplies to the hospitals.

The medical convoys were supposed to be 'off limits' to attacks, but the insurgents did not adhere to any rules of civilized warfare.

Xxxx

Then one day, his letter didn't come. The next day, Bernie accused David of taking the letter. By the fourth day, David saw that it really was the whole world to his big sister.

"I didn't take it," he quietly told her. "But I'm praying it comes real quick."

"Maybe it just got lost," Maggie offered. "You know how the mail is."

The next week showed no letter and Bernie numbly went through her days. Royal used a few of his contacts as a former Army man, but was met with a stonewall; no information would be forthcoming about Richard Allan Boudreaux.

"Hell, I ain't heard nothing either," Kenneth said grimly. "I even called the fucking Pentagon; nothing."

xxxx

"Looking good," Lawrence said as they could see the hospital looming ahead.

"Uh huh," Richard said, nerves on full alert.

The streets were completely empty. Normally, at this time of day, they would be teeming with life, civilians and allied police walking, merchants hawking their wares, stern faced clerics glaring hatefully at them. But there was no sign of life at all.

A flash cut his thoughts and the vehicle reared up for a long moment, then the sound of the explosion hit him. The wreckage of the vehicle collapsed back onto the street.

Richard grabbed Lawrence's shirt with his right hand, pulling his friend from the twisted remains.

A deadly barrage of gunfire greeted him and he returned it with his M-16 rifle. He spotted the movement from the second floor of the building right in front of him and let Lawrence fall to the street. He grabbed a hand grenade from his belt and hurled it into the open window.

The assailant reappeared; live grenade in his hand and Richard raked the man's chest with his rifle. The muffled roar of Richard's grenade was followed by screams. Another figure appeared in the window and was greeted with another deadly barrage from Richard.

"Lawrence, can you hear me?" Richard screamed at the moaning boy.

"Lawrence, can you walk?" Richard begged.

More gunfire and Richard returned his attention to the house.

"Fuck this," he spat and grabbed a rocket launcher from the rear of his damaged light armored vehicle.

He stood in front of Lawrence's still groaning form and fired at the house.

The hospital was to his left, still visible. He grabbed Lawrence and pulled the boy alongside him as he ran toward the hospital.

Another house burst into deadly activity and he again had to engage in a vicious battle, a lone soldier against several.

Lawrence was a dead weight as Richard again tried to reach the hospital. Finally, another light armored vehicle drove up and covered Richard's efforts, engaging the house in an exchange of deadly gunfire.

Richard, bleeding from several gunshot wounds, reached the cinderblock entrance to the hospital, entered the front door, just as a rocket struck the wall above his head. The entire wall collapsed on him and Lawrence.

Xxxx

Lawrence Dumensnil stood in front of the Melancon house. He couldn't help but smile; the ruckus was clearly audible, even as he stood outside. Richard had told him 'that's how you could tell you had the right house; all them kids screaming and yelling and shit.'

He knocked smartly on the front door; he'd tried ringing the bell but obviously it could not be heard over all the bedlam inside.

"Yes?" Maggie smiled at the handsome young man, still in his fatigues.

"I'm um, I'm Lawrence Dumensnil, ma'am," Lawrence said. "Ma'am, is Bernie Melancon here?"

"Yes, just got back from class, come on in," Maggie said, ushering the nervous youth in.

He sat down on the couch but stood up again when the short red head walked into the living room.

"Yes?" Bernie asked, hand clutching the crucifix she wore around her neck.

Richard had given her that crucifix, given it to her when he left for Basics. It was her anchor; she held it tightly whenever she was afraid, or anxious.

"Hey, I um, I don't know if you remember me?" Lawrence said. "We um, we went to St. Thomas..."

Lawrence?" Bernie asked, fear welling up even more.

Richard had mentioned that he and Lawrence had gone to Boot Camp together, had done Basics together, and had been stationed together.

"Ma'am, um, Richard? He saved my life," Lawrence said, and began to sob openly. "We were attacked on patrol, and he pulled me out of the vehicle, then carried me to the hospital and then..."

"And what happened to Richard?" Bernie whispered, throat tight with fear.

"I don't know," Lawrence admitted. "I came to; I was already in Germany, I asked them and they wouldn't tell me anything."

"Ma'am!" Lawrence called out for Maggie. "Ma'am, please help me!"

Bernie had fainted and lay on the floor of the living room.

Xxxx

They told him again were he was but it didn't make a bit of sense to him. They told him again who he was, but they might as well have told him he was Batman.

"And how are we today?" the nurse said in her usual chipper way.

"Um, fine, I guess," Richard said.

The nurse had specialized in severe head trauma for several years. She was used to the disorientation, the confusion, the erratic behavior. Above all, she maintained a professional demeanor, never getting too close to her patients, but never being too aloof or distant either.

"And can you tell me your name today?" she asked, but even in his befuddled state, Richard could tell she didn't expect him to know the answer.

"Where's Bernie?" Richard asked. "

"Who?" the nurse asked.

"Bernie. I know that; There's a girl, I know there's a girl; her name is Bernie," Richard continued.

"That's an unusual name for a girl," the nurse commented.

So far, this was the longest conversation they'd had since he'd regained consciousness.

"It's short for something, I think," Richard admitted, face twisted in confusion.

"Um, Bernadette?" the nurse asked.

Richard's eyes opened wide.

"That's it!" he said happily. "Bernadette!"

"She your sister? Your girlfriend?" The nurse asked.

"She's my," Richard thought hard. "I think she's my girlfriend; she loves me. I know that. I know that for sure. She loves me."

""Is she pretty?" the nurse asked, wishing the doctor would hurry up and come in; the patient seemed to be coming out of his mental fog.

"No," Richard said, shaking his head.

"Well, looks aren't everything," the nurse said.

"No, she's not pretty," Richard said again. "She's fucking beautiful."

xxxx

He stood in front of the house, smiling. The bedlam could be heard from the driveway.

"Oh, my God!" Maggie screamed and hugged the uniformed man.

"Shh, Bernie here?" Richard asked.

"She's in the kitchen," Maggie laughed and cried, hugging her nephew tightly.

Bernie listened as Phyllis recited the poem she was supposed to be learning for school. The pot of soup simmered and the eggs for the tuna salad were cooling down in their pot.

"Hey, smells good; think there's enough for me?" she heard his voice ask from behind her.