Westpoint Tales
by Kiwi
John and Bob's Tale - Pt 5
The two boys lay side by side on Bob's narrow bed. Close together, but still not touching. Bob took the earpiece out and looked up at the ceiling.
"Well. That's not a bad song, I guess, but I don't get it. I might be thick or something - what was it about?"
There was no reply, he turned his head and looked at John, and his cheeks were wet and shining. Was he crying? What for?
"John? John, what's the matter?"
"I should go now."
John went to get up off the bed, but Bob stopped him by throwing an arm and a leg across and holding him down.
"Oh no, you should not. Don't go, John, please. Tell me what's wrong. Whatever it is, we can fix it."
"I wish we could fix it, Bob. But we can't. Nobody can fix it."
Bob just kept on holding him tight. John lay there, rigid, unmoving, until Bob kissed him on the cheek and whispered. "We can fix anything. I love you, John Williamson."
John hugged him fiercely, then he burst into tears. Bob held him tight and quiet until the great body-wracking sobs subsided.
"I'm sorry, Bob Lyons. I'm really sorry. I do love you, I love you very much. You don't need a monster like me wrecking your life."
"What are you talking about, John? You're not a monster, you're a boy. You are a really beautiful person and I'm so glad that you've come into my life. I've been waiting for you all my life."
John sat up, wiped his eyes and blew his nose. "It's like the song said, somewhere, dreams that you dare to dream really can come true. Could you be my dream come true? Bob Lyons? Could you really?"
Bob grinned and he sat up too. He came at him from below, and he kissed him on the lips. "This is not a dream, John. This is us, here and now. I want you. I want to love you and I want you to love me, any which way you can."
A huge relieved smile spread across the blond boy's face. "Bob. Oh, Bob Lyons, I love you so much."
He stayed until after midnight. Extremely late for a school night, but the hours just seemed to flash past. They did nothing more than kiss and cuddle, but they did a lot of that. Each boy was delighting in the other, and they both found it hard to believe that the other one was enjoying this too. Both of them were in love for the first time.
It wasn't strictly true what Bob had told him - that he'd been waiting all his life. He'd never thought about loving a boy. He'd always assumed that one day he'd find the right girl like he was supposed to. Like everyone else did. But, this with John just seemed so right, so natural. Maybe he'd been waiting for him and just hadn't realized it.
Anyway, he loved this boy, he had no doubts about that, and it was so great that John loved him back. Life should always be this good.
Over the next couple of weeks, life was great. Bob and John spent every possible moment together. The others of the four B's were a bit put out, but Bob didn't care. He was busy and he only wanted to be with John.
They took turns at calling for each other in the mornings even though they lived on opposite sides of the school. They walked to and from school together. Most days they went to John's house at lunchtime and to Bob's after school.
In late afternoons and early evenings they wandered the streets of Westpoint and in the weekends they went further afield to the nearby bush walks, beaches and bays. One Friday night they slept together at John's house in the same bed. That was not a success with Paul sleeping in the same room.
Paul was polite enough but Bob felt that he didn't like him. John said that Paul was just jealous as he'd never had to share his company before. Em was okay, she was great actually. Bob couldn't see why John kept saying that his sister was a bitch, she was really nice. Mary really was a sweetheart, Bob really liked her.
On the Saturday night John slept at Bob's house and, yes, they did have sex, sort of. They didn't have intercourse, they weren't ready for that, and they didn't suck each other off - they'd never heard of that. But they did masturbate each other and they 'fronted' - rubbed their naked bodies together until they came. That was great. That was fantastic. They did that again, often, over the next weeks.
Life was great, then it all went to custard - John died.
It was the worst day of Bob's life; it was the last day of John's life. Though they didn't know that, of course, when they woke up together on that Sunday morning.
They'd had another fantastic night together in Bob's narrow bed. They couldn't do what they liked best in John's room with Paul sleeping in the next bed. Paul was out a lot. He was very involved now with Bill's sister, Cissie Carver. John was pretty sure that they were having sex, but Paul wasn't saying. He always came home to sleep anyway.
Sunday mornings, Bob's parents always went off to the early church service, so that was good. Bob and John were able to have a bath together. They had some breakfast, then they went out for a walk.
The day was overcast and gray but it wasn't going to rain, it didn't feel cold enough for that. They walked out to the cemetery and found the grave of John's grandfather - James Hargreaves Williamson, once Mayor of Westpoint and a Member of Parliament.
James Hargreaves was the grandfather of the triplets and also the father of Martha Carver's bastard twins, Sarah and Dennis Carver. Sarah was the mother of Bob's neighbor, Mrs.Peters, who would eventually be the great-grandmother of Barney Todd.
Dennis was the no-account father of Bill and Cissie Carver, which meant that Paul's current girlfriend was actually his distant cousin, though they didn't know that. A second daughter of Dennis' - Anna - married Graeme Jenkins and was the grandmother of Kevin Jenkins who was always known as 'Jinks'.
Paul and Cissie never married, but they did have a baby, Harvey Carver, who was the father of the twins, Jakie and Jeremy, and the great-grandfather of Billy Matthews.
Paul eventually left Westpoint and he married Dianne Harrison. Their great-grandson, Jon Williamson, came back to Westpoint 100 years later, totally unaware of his family history.
Emily Williamson later married Bruce Adams. Their grand-daughter, Kathleen Adams, married Bob Reynolds, son of Brian. Their grandsons were the twins - Jonathan and Justin.
Years after that fateful morning, Bob was to marry Mary Williamson and their great-grandsons were the "twins", Billy and Bobby Lyons.
The point of all this is that James Hargreaves Williamson was the progenitor of many sets of twins and of a sizeable slice of Westpoint's future population. This was all to come to light when one of Jonathan Reynolds' four twins began tracing the family tree and discovered some fascinating links.
But all that was in years to come. Nobody knows their future. Bob and John certainly didn't. If they did they would never have got out of bed that morning.
They left the cemetery and crossed the narrow wooden bridge back into town. Brigham Street started there and went straight up to the main street, but they didn't go that way. They turned off to the right and started back via Williamson Road.
Williamson Road, after a couple of house sections on the left, was merely a roughly-formed dirt track snaking along the edge of the small Williamson River. The river lay to the right; to the left were the small, scrubby, paddocks of the Adams family farm - Westpoint's major town milk suppliers.
The farm house, Bruce Adams' family home, was right at the edge of the town where Williamson Road met Derby Street, close to Pattinson Park Racecourse, which Bruce's granddad had sold to the town years ago.
They stopped and talked to Bruce and Em for a few minutes. They were trying to play croquet out on the wide front lawn, but they didn't have a clue what they were doing.
Bruce actually hated their front lawn - hated all the work it took to keep it looking good. At the back of the house the grass was kept under control by a couple of sheep, but at the front, on the 'town' side, his mother insisted on having the big lawn mowed and manicured.
It was a lot of work and just for show. It did make a good place to play croquet, if only they knew how to.
Bob and John soon left them to their giggling game and walked on up Derby Street towards the North Beach. Bob had known Bruce for years but he'd never seen him so soppy over a girl before. He could understand that though, she was his blond angel's sister after all.
The town ended abruptly just a few yards along Derby Street, past the racecourse. The road carried on out to the beach, but they changed their minds and crossed over and up on to the railway embankment, then walked back towards the river and the wharves. One was walking on each of the railway lines, supporting each other with their clasped hands.
They were heading up the tracks to check out the progress of the works in the new fisherman's lagoon, it was only a couple of hundred yards away, but they never reached there.
Just past the end of Peel Street the track was blocked by a long rake of railway wagons - black Q class coal hopper wagons, parked up out of the way on the quiet siding for the weekend. They continued along walking on the rough ballast on the sides of the track alongside the wagons, one on each side.
As they crunched along their conversation was intermittently interrupted by the bodies of the coal wagons. At first they greeted and farewelled each other as they looked across the gaps between the wagons. ("Hello again, Goodbye then.") But they soon got sick of that game.
There was a small, sideless, bridge. The line of wagons continued on past it. It wasn't a very big bridge - one wagon covered its whole length - and it wasn't very high - about fifteen feet.
The bridge had once crossed a small creek as it passed under the railway track, but that had been reclaimed and filled in years ago. What was left of the creek bed there now was just big round and dry stones. The culvert had been left there as a stormwater drain through the railway embankment.
"Oh, oh. Bob Lyons, what do we do now?"
"Easy, John-Boy. Just turn side-on, face the wagon, hold on to it, and walk on the ends of the sleepers. It's only a few steps."
"Okay. If you say so. I love you Bob Lyons."
"You what? Okay, I love you too."
Bob easily shuffled along, holding on to protrusions on the side of the wagon, and crossed the small bridge. Part-way across he thought he heard a strange sound, sort of a sigh followed by a 'splat,' but he thought nothing of it until he was safely on the ground on the other side.
He stood beside the gap between the wagon bodies and waited, but there was no sign of John.
"Come on, Slow Poke, hurry up. John? John are you all right? What's keeping you John Boy?"
He scrambled up on the couplings between the wagons and crossed over to John's side. There was no sign of him.
"John? Come on, this is not funny. Where are you kid?"
Then he knew. Even before he looked, he knew. He shuffled back along and looked down into the dry creek bed below.
John was lying on his back on the rocks on the bottom, staring straight up at the sky above. His arms and legs were splayed out and slightly bent, like a broken starfish.
"You fell off. You great Twit!"
There was no answer, the boy below didn't move.
"John? Speak to me. Are you all right?"
Then he saw the red stain, like a fungus on the rocks, spreading out from behind his friend's head.
"John? John! Ohmygod! John no!!"
Bob leapt down to the side of the steeply sloping bank and scrambled and slid down to the bottom. He ignored the brambles that caught at his clothes and skin. He crawled over and knelt, weeping by his friend's side, looking down at his open, sightless eyes.
Even before he, shakingly, felt for a non-existent pulse, he had no doubt at all. John was dead. Bob had never seen a dead body before, but he was looking at one now.
What to do? He was alone. He'd never been so alone in his life. He knew that you shouldn't move a dead body, there'd be police and everything, but he didn't care. This was John, his best friend, his lover, his beautiful, incredible, laughing, loving, blond angel of a boy, and he was dead! Dead in a simple, stupid, little accident. He'd fallen off the bridge and died without making a sound.
He scooped up John's lifeless body and sat hugging him tightly while he cried. He sobbed and wailed loudly and the tears poured down on John's beautiful, dead, face.
"John! John, no! No, no, no, John!!"
A couple of girls walking up the street nearby heard the noise and came over to see what was wrong. They saw the tears, the blood and the body and one ran to the neighbors to get help.
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