After coming back from Nam nothing was ever the same. My world wasn't. Neil's wasn't. There were a few constants that we could count on as we tried to fit back into our world, although those things had subtly changed, too. There was no way either of us could view anything like we had before Nam. After all the carnage and death I had seen, I was having a difficult time not being cynical about life in general. All I cared about was Neil, Tom and Uncle John. The rest of the world could go to hell. Especially Johnson and his administration. God, I hoped he would burn in hell, the damned callous warmonger.

I had contacted Gina soon after our return. She had wasted no time after we left in finding a guy and getting married. No, that was not a nice way to put it. She met and fell in love with a rancher on the other side of Hillsboro. I had met him; he'd been in a couple of the same classes that Gina and I had taken.

Seems he'd been biding his time waiting for me to move on so he could have a chance to get to know her. She's happy, and their second kid was on the way. Their young one looks just like his handsome dad, but with his Mom's soulful brown eyes. I love Gina, but she had found what she wanted in life. I just let her be. She didn't need me back her life.

John had refused to run for office again and retired to his ranch. Tom turned our ranch over to me and moved out to Sheriff John's. The ranch itself had changed little, but it wasn't the same without Tom.

My love for Neil was more fierce, more passionate, more all consuming than ever. I had thought that I had lost him in Nam. And now he was afraid I wouldn't want him anymore with the terrible scars his war experience had left him with. In the years since our return to civilian life I have learned to love even those hideous scars. They are part of what now makes up the whole of my man.

It took Neil a while to really accept the fact that I still loved him at all. I was being patient with him, waiting for him to realize that the horrid scars on his face and body made no difference to the way I felt about him. Days, weeks, months passed with him continually waiting for the day I'd wake up and walk out on him, leaving him alone with his self pity and ugly scares. I continually reassured him it would never happen.

Neil's leg was just getting to the point that the doctors would soon let him ride a horse again. He had insisted that he could and would do all the chores around the barn and house in the meantime. He was doing great in his everyday life. It was only our love life that really suffered from his insecurities.

My patience ended abruptly one night about fourteen months after our return. Carmen's grand daughter had married a young cowboy by the name of Rodriguez while we were in Nam. He'd been working on a ranch down by the Mexican Border and could only get home on occasional weekends. He'd volunteered to help a couple of times on his weekends here on the ranch when we were having a round up. I was very impressed with his abilities and one morning I hired him as our foreman. I hadn't consulted Neil before doing this. It was a spur on the moment decision, but it crushed his tender ego.

It took a lot of talking to get him boosted back up, along with promising over and over to always include him in any decisions. That night when I crawled into bed Neil turned on his side toward me and took my cock in his hand. I knew as soon as he opened his mouth that I hadn't really succeeded in getting through to him.

"Are you up to letting your pity fuck get this up his ass tonight?" he asked.

I sat up and knocked his hand away.

"Why do you insist on demeaning yourself like that?"

He looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Why not? That's what I am. Just a pity fuck. You should be out there having an affair with some big strapping cowboy like Rodriguez, not some little ugly worthless cripple like me."

I am not a violent man. I guess he'd finally pushed me to the limits, I back handed him across his face.

"Don't ever put down the man I love again. I'm telling you that I don't give a damn about how scarred your body is. I love you. To me you are the most handsome cowboy in the world.

"Stop being a sniveling ass and start being the man I love. You've got some major scars, but the only one that's crippling you, Neil, is the one in your head and you're the only one that can get rid of. You've got some scars on you body, so what? Deal with them and stop trying to push me away. I ain't goin'." I yelled in his face.

The print of my hand on his cheek was as inflamed as the scar just above it that went up into his scalp. I was feeling guilty, but still a little incensed. We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Tears coursed down his face. He sat up and scooted over to me and buried his face in my chest.

"Oh God," I cried. "What did I do?" I pulled his tense body against me. "I love you, Neil. Please forgive me."

Wrapping his arms around my neck, he whispered, "Thank you, Bill. I won't feel sorry for myself again nor try to push you away. I love you, Bill, more than life itself. I've no more doubt that you love me."

I was stunned. First, that the man I love could drive me to violence against him, and second, that it was that bit of violence that pushed Neil over the hump to recovery. I held him back at arms length so I could look at him. We stared into each other's eyes communicating our love for each other, yes I could see my old Neil in there.

I pulled him close, hugging his precious being to my chest, apologizing again for having slapped him. He clung to me.

"No. No, that's what I needed. I am grateful that you knocked that shit out of my head. I knew that I was being a sniveling ass, but I couldn't stop the self pity."

Well, it wasn't him that got filled that night. And it was the first time in more than three years that he topped me. I think that might have done as much good in building up his self image, if not more, than the slap I'd given him earlier. God, I love it when my little randy rooster takes charge. He's just so beautiful with his black hair hanging around his face. His blue eyes sparking with his lust. The cute way he bites the tip of his tongue with the effort he is putting forth to make me climax with out touching myself. And his beatific smile when he's successful. Yeah, I Love My Little Cowboy.

The next morning, it was like a new man had stepped out onto the back porch. He was still using his cane. He stopped on the top step and raised it up to eye level, looked at it and then tossed it onto the porch swing. Grinning at me as he strode across the yard with a slight limp.

"Let's ride," he yelled. Moments later he was saddling up his horse along with me and our new foreman. My Neil was back.

We'd taken a year to get back to being easy with the world we'd left to join the army. That fall we both started back to school. It was damned sure not the same. Oh, the kids around us were, but we weren't. Our perception of life was different. Time was more precious. Our time together was priceless. We went our different ways through the day to our various classes. But the moment they were over, we were together again.

The kids seemed so much younger. They looked at us as a couple of old guys. Even though we were no where near thirty, they didn't trust us. They knew that we had been to Nam and they were curious, but distrustful, about our views.

We watched in shock and horror as a soldier by the name of Kerry, who had apparently shot himself, was awarded four purple hearts and then lied before congress, calling our American Soldiers in Saigon murderers. We both agreed that he should have been tried for treason along with that Hollywood actress Jane Fonda. To protest war is one thing, but to do the things they did against our fighting men were wrong.

We were asked to be part of a forum on the war. I agreed, but with the stipulation that all protesting be put aside during that time and that it be open to the town as well as all the student body. Neil refused. He simply couldn't get up on a stage in front of a large group of people.

I did a lot of soul searching during the days before the forum. Neil and I discussed ideas at length. I discovered a lot of the ideas I had held infallible had changed. I was no longer the staunch right winger I'd been before. By no means was I a bleeding liberal, either. I guess that I had found a balance somewhere in between.

The student body seemed to be sharply divided in those last months of the war. I feel that I managed to get a lot of kids to thinking after the forum. At that young age most of them were running on emotions rather than rationally thinking out the pros and cons.

It was amusing to see it happening. Both sides came with clear-cut biased ideas. And both sides expected me to be on their side. As the questions flowed I could see that many of them were beginning to think about their beliefs, not just feel them. It was the same with the town at-large, too. The professors and the teaching staff of the college community were all liberals and most of the regular town folk were conservatives. When the evening was over I felt that they all were rethinking their beliefs. I felt fulfilled. I'd done something worthwhile.

We both got our degrees. But life didn't go the way we thought it would. The money that we'd both come into (paid for, but basically unearned) seemed to demand that we live differently. Neal had a lot of property up north that demanded his personal attention after his grandfather died. I was not about to let him to go it on his own. I drove him to Albuquerque three times in six months. We decided to learn to fly and we bought a Cessna two engine plane. After a year of flying back and forth we decided to buy a Lear jet, and hired ourselves a pilot.

We'd had put in a landing strip when we bought the Cessna and had to extend it a good bit to accommodate the jet. And since we used it only a few times a month we decided to base it in El Paso, being it was a good bit closer than Albuquerque. To help pay for it, we made it available for rent as long as it was available to us when we needed it. Our pilot was happier flying more, too.

Neil's grandfather died three and a half years after the court battle with him. Neal had him buried between his two wives. The old man'd had a large head stone carved extolling his virtues. Neal refused to let it be placed on the grave. The stone carver watched with an open mouth as Neal took a sledge hammer and destroyed it. He had a small marble marker with just his name and the dates of his birth and death placed on it.

I stood beside him at the foot of the old man's grave when the stone was planted. I heard Neil mutter, "That's your final comeuppance, Granddaddy." I put my arm around his shoulder and he shook it off, saying, "I'm not feeling very lovable at the moment."

I felt like walking away, but I considered what he was feeling and just dropped my arm and continued to stand beside him. We were grown, mature men, but the little boy that resides inside of every man has to make himself felt once in awhile. I knew his little boy was feeling the loss of his only relative, even though he was an unloved one. 'Well we still had our uncles,' I thought. 'They aren't related by blood, but they are a whole lot closer to us than most people's blood relatives are to them.'

We stood there a while. The men that had placed the stone had long gone. Finally, he turned and embraced me. I wrapped my arms around him. "Feeling better, Babe?" I asked.

"As long as you're with me I'll always feel better, Bill." We strolled hand in hand over to the limo which took us back to the airport where we climbed into the plane and were whisked back to the ranch.

We spent a lot of time with John and Tom. They lived about forty-seven miles from us. I know that to town and city folks that's a long ways, but to us ranch folk it was just a jaunt down the road.

The rambling adobe that John and Tom built was up it in the hills overlooking the basin towards Lordsburg far to the south and east. They put in a swimming pool out front. They said they were getting too old to climb up the side of a cow tank. Tom was only in his late forties and John was nearly sixty. "Too old, my ass." I told them.

As the years passed we spent more and more time up there. We had turned the ranch over to Rod to run and had it in our wills that it would be his one day, along with a good sum of money.

Rod and Carmen were a real boon to us with their brood of kids. They called us uncle just as we had with John and Tom. Of course, we always showered them with little gifts upon our return from trips which always got us extra hugs and kisses. The two youngest boys were named after Neil and myself. It was hard not to play favorites with our namesakes. They were such cute little tykes.

As the years passed we watched them grow into men. We made sure they all went to college. The oldest boy Rod, Jr. became a lawyer and resides in Santa Fe. He is very active in state politics. I would not be surprised to see him as governor one day.

Jose, his younger brother majored in business and has taken over the care and control of Neil's properties. The first thing Jose did was to get Neil to deed the old family adobe to the state. Because of its historical value it is now a museum.

The land grant with Rod and Jose's assistance has been parceled and most of it sold off. Most of the proceeds put into investments with the profits going to various charities around the state.

Little Bill and Nilo (pronounced Neelo) both majored in animal husbandry and land management. They both worked side by side with their dad.

In October of 1997 Uncle John died in his sleep. We buried him on top of the hill behind the house. Tom was getting on in age and insisted that he would not move. He wanted to die in the same bed as his lover. The only solution to that was for Neil and I to move in with him.

Rod ran all three ranches with the two boys. They were actually grown men. We went ahead and deeded the ranches to them. Rod and Carmen moved into the ranch house and Little Bill and Nilo stayed where they had been born and raised in Neil's old house.

Although they have never discussed it with us or anyone that I know of, I believe those two boys had become lovers. They certainly have never shown any interest in girls or any one else for that matter. But it's like Neil said, "It's nobody's business but their own."

Tom left us early last winter. He'd continued to get out and ride the range everyday like he'd always done. One afternoon he didn't come back. When we found him he was resting against a big boulder on top of the hill, next to John's grave, looking like he was enjoying the evening sunset. He'd gone to join John.

I guess that's the end of my story, at least for now. I'll add something to it if something note worthy happens. Neil and I are happy. We've traveled a bit. Took in Europe last year, Australia and New Zealand the year before. We both agree with Dorothy. There's no place like home.