Chapter 2

Bucky was sitting in the back of his father’s Chevy Blazer as they pulled into the driveway of the hotel for the annual Army Recruiting conference. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be back home, he didn’t understand why he had to come to another one of these stupid conferences with his parents. He was 14 years old, he was old enough to stay by himself. He decided to say it again one more time to get it on the record, “I don’t know why I have to be here, how come I couldn’t have stayed home?”

Sighing his mother turns around from the front seat and looks at him and says “Look, we have been through this enough, and this is the last time I am going to say it, you’re still too young to stay at home for an entire weekend by yourself.”

“But Nan lives right around the corner. She could come over if I ever needed her.”

“And she just had a friggin’ baby not 10 days ago, I wouldn’t be here myself if it wasn’t so important to your father. Do you really think that your sister would be able to look after you, her husband, and a new baby? All at the same time? What would you eat for Christ’s sake? Damn, don’t you ever think?”

Sighing Bucky just sat back in his seat and looked out the window at the hotel they were going to be spending the weekend at. It was called Fox Run and was someplace in New Hampshire. All he knew is that he had spent 4 hours in the car and was going to have to spend a weekend sharing a room with his parents. And then his father spoke up.

“And what were you going to do at home with a broken arm anyways? It’s not like you can play video games or anything? You were probably just going to sit around feeling sorry for yourself. This way you can come here, meet some kids your age, have some fun, and maybe even screw around a little bit.”

Aghast his mother says “DAVID!!”

His father chuckles and says “What, I was 14 once.” To which his mother just scoffs.

“Yeah, and be tortured by not being able to go into the pool” Bucky groused. “And it’s my finger, not my arm.”

Chuckling his father replies “Sorry, my mistake, but it doesn’t really matter when the cast is up to your elbow.”

“Whatever”

About 45 minutes later they are checked into their room and Bucky is quite surprised to find out it is a mini-suite in that there is a 1/2 wall separating the 2 sleeping areas. While it is not quite separate rooms, it is better than sleeping in beds that are side by side. His father announces that Bucky only has a few moments to get settled as they are meeting one of his counterparts, who have a couple of kids Bucky’s age, in about 10 minutes and that they are all going out to eat. Bucky quickly tosses his bag on his bed, opens the bag to grab a quick change of clothes, and changes into something other than ‘easy travel clothes’, and then announces that he is ready to go.

Meeting his parents at the door with a minute or so to spare they all walk to the elevators and go up a floor and down a few doors where his father knocks and is greeted with “Who the fuck is that?”

My father responds with “Davis, it’s Buchanan, and I’m coming in you Mother Fucker.” Bucky looks at his mother to see how she reacts to his father speaking like this, but she is displaying no emotion on her face. Bucky had never heard his father talk like this outside of deer camp and never in front of his mother, why would he be doing it now? Who is this guy?

Walking into the room Bucky sees the room is about 1/2 full with people and in the middle of the room is someone who just demands attention. Bucky’s father walks right up to him and shakes his hand saying “How the Hell you doin’ Davis? Where’s your wife and my kids?”

The man, who to Bucky seems to be huge, seems to tower over his father who is 6’2” tall. But then again Bucky thinks, ‘what do I know, I’m only 5’ tall and at 14 I can only hope that I still have a growth spurt left in me.’

His father turns and introduces the man to his mother and him. “Sweetie, this is Sgt. Kenneth Davis. Davis, this is my wife Judy and my son James.”

Up close the man seems even taller and more imposing, Bucky is surprised that his head isn’t touching the ceiling and he says the first thing that comes to his mind “Damn, your tall”

Laughing Davis says “No shit Sherlock, bet you didn’t think they could pile shit up this high did you? Well, they can. Wait until you meet my son and daughter, then you’ll really shit a brick. Hold on.” And with that, he turns and says “Shithead, Dumbass, get over here.”

Two kids stand up from where a line of coolers was lined up against the wall, the boy was nearly his father’s height and the girl seemed just a bit shorter, but again, at his height, almost everyone seemed tall. The major difference between the two was that the son’s body had filled out mostly and he was relatively good-looking, but she was tall and quite gangly looking, sort of like someone had taken her and stretched her and then never fed her. As they got closer Bucky also noticed that her hair was dark blond, almost brown, which was just past shoulder length and was frizzy as all hell, and lastly, her pale pimply face was mostly hidden behind thick huge glasses. You could tell that with work, she could be pretty, but he had to wonder if she would ever be beautiful.

When they arrived, Davis said “Kids, this is James, Sgt. Buchanan’s son. James, these are my kids, Bill aka Shithead who’s 17, and Jackie aka Dumbass who’s 13. Why don’t you kids get him a drink and then stay the fuck out of the way until dinner, got it, unless you would rather not eat with us? If that’s what you want I can give you some money and you can fend for yourself.”

Bill looked at his sister and me for a moment and then said “Well, actually, I think that John Townsend came with his parents and if he did we were going to meet up with the Simpson twins in the game room. You okay with that?”

With a grin on his face, his father said “Yeah kid, that fine. Just remember to wrap your pecker. And you Sweetie? You wanna go see if Megan and Brad have shown up yet? Maybe introduce them to Bucky?”

“Can I dad? I would rather not be around all you smoking farting pricks if you don’t mind.” Jackie said with a smile.

“Nah baby, go ahead, just make sure no one goes for home plate without buying you dinner first.”

With an embarrassed tilt to her face, Jackie said “DAD!!! Come on...”

Shooing both kids out the door after handing each a wad of bills, the two started towards the door. Jackie looked back at me and said “You coming?”

Bucky looked at his parents who just nodded and his father said “Go.” Bucky already had about $20 in his pockets that his mother had given him earlier that day ‘just in case’ he wanted to visit the game room. The last thing he heard was his father’s voice as he crossed the threshold yelling at him “And stay out of the fucking pool!!!”

Once out in the hallway the three teens separate as Bill goes one way, and then Bucky and Jackie go the other. Bucky finds it odd to be looking up at a girl who’s younger than him and the situation makes him smile. Jackie catches the smile on his face and instantly asks “What’s so funny?”

Trying to take the easy way out, Bucky simply said “Life, life is funny.”

Tilting her head in that weird way she had, she said “How so?”

As they continued to walk down the hall, Bucky explained “Oh, I was just thinking about how odd it is that I am looking up at a girl who’s younger than me. I am used to doing it with boys and girls older than me, just not ones younger. It’s a new experience for me. My mom keeps telling me ‘don’t worry Bucky you’ll get your growth spurt soon’. But I am starting to wonder if I ever will. Being 14 and only 5’ sucks. Especially when your father is 6’2 and your brother is 6’4.”

“Well trust me, getting your spurt early is no picnic either. People treat you like a freak. I’m a 5’11 13-year-old. I’m taller than most of my teachers for fucks sake. I may have gotten my growth spurt, but I didn’t get no freaking boobs, ass, anything. I’m a literal walking stick. My mom took me bathing suit shopping for this weekend, and I was HORRIFIED seeing myself in the mirror. You can see and count my ribs and what boobs I had before I grew are GONE. I look disgusting. You won’t be seeing me NEAR the pool this weekend, fuck that shit.”

“Guess that makes two of us. You heard my dad as we were walking out.”

“Yeah, I noticed the cast, what happened?”

“Fucked it up playing indoor soccer, and it was the day before basketball tryouts. And the coach pretty much guaranteed me a spot on the freshman team. Hopefully next year.”

“Yeah, they expected me to play basketball, of course, but with my new height, it’s like I have 3 left feet. I am so uncoordinated I can barely run, let alone dribble or move right. Hopefully, with practice, I can get better. I have some friends that play volleyball and I have been playing with them and getting quite good so I might play that instead. Whatever. Here we are, I hope you and Megan like each other, she’s my best friend and my salvation during these weekends.”

Jackie knocks on the door and it is quickly opened by a cute little pixie of a thing. She’s a few inches shorter than Bucky, so maybe 4’8 and their age. She has short dirty-blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail with a few wisps of hair hanging loose to lightly frame her face. Bucky has heard his mother describe girls like her as having a ‘heart-shaped’ face, as in as her face is wider at the top and narrows as it gets closer to the chin. She must know this which is probably why she has her bangs framing her face like that. What really draws your eyes to her face though is her cute button nose, how it has a slight curl at the bottom and was sitting atop a perfect set of bow-shaped lips. It was easy to imagine what it would be like kissing a mouth like that. But most amazingly of all was her almost pale white, close to pure alabaster skin, which was her most striking feature. Almost as if she never got any sun.

While Bucky had been observing Jackie’s friend, the two girls had been talking a mile a minute, like all teenage girls do. Bucky had once heard a comedian joke about ‘the secret to women’, the comedian spent about 25-30 minutes saying that the key was great sex. In Bucky’s simple observation of teenage girls, and really any of his mom’s friends, forget great sex, following and understanding the conversations of girls (or women) when they talked ‘like that’ was ‘secret to women’.