by Pat Henshaw
He sighed and gave me a hug. “Well, I don’t think you have to worry. I don’t think anyone else knows. We were in the shadows in the back of the lot. There was only Bud’s and our two trucks. I didn’t see anyone.”
He rubbed his hand one more time over my chest, then patted me and leaned in for a kiss.
“We better get going, though. I’m not letting you double—or triple—think this. We’re telling them right now. Today,” he said.
I groaned as I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Those aches and pains I made light of before? Damn. I was going to be sore all week. If I had anything to say about it, I’d be back for more tonight.
We showered together in his oversized bathroom, which meant we took a little longer than I usually did alone. It was nearly noon when I called Ben and asked if he and Connor would meet me at the old house.
“Sure. No problem. I’ll give Con a call, and we’ll be there when you show up.” He sounded tired. I felt a little guilty having put so much extra work on him lately when I was trying to get myself together. Now that Jeff and I were together, I could go back to being the head Behr.
“Con’s not with you? Where is he?”
I heard Ben pause and could feel him thinking.
“Not for me to say. He has to tell you.”
“He’s okay, though? Right?”
“Oh yeah, he’s okay. Well, as okay as Con gets these days. He’s slammed with work.” He let out a sigh. “Stop worrying. We’re big boys now. You don’t have to run interference for us anymore.”
Dammit, I was worried. What had I missed?
“See ya when ya get there,” Ben said and hung up.
In the truck on the way to Bud and Lorraine’s to get a quick something to eat, I asked Jeff if he’d noticed anything going on with Connor. When he didn’t answer, I looked over to see a funny, almost embarrassed expression on his face.
“You know something. What is it?”
He shook his head. “Not my story to tell,” he said softly. “You’ll have to ask him.”
Now I was really getting worried. What in the hell else was going on with Connor?
BOTH OF them were at the old house when I arrived. Jeff had gotten in his truck after our meal and refused to come with me to talk to my brothers.
“All of you need to clear the air and get on the same page,” he said. “I’m behind you a hundred percent, but you need to have this discussion without anyone from the outside.”
I understood and agreed. Now that I knew I was more than the head of Behr Construction, it was time to find out who my brothers were too.
I stood on the porch and really looked at it. It was raised, with a woodpile underneath. When we were growing up, there was a potbellied stove providing most of the heat during the winter. Which meant we had to chop wood to stay warm, which in turn meant getting up early in the mornings or staying up late at night to do more physical labor on top of the work we did during the day.
As I stood there, I realized I’d never really looked at the house where I’d spent over twenty years of my life. I’d been too busy coming and going to enjoy the walls around me. I could draw its floorplan with my eyes shut, but I couldn’t say what color the living room was or even if there’d been pictures on those walls.
Had I looked at but not seen my brothers too? What did I really know about them—about them today and not in the past? Was I kidding myself to think we were close?
Obviously, if Connor had something important he wasn’t telling me, we weren’t close at all. Considering not only Ben, but Jeff, knew about it made me mad at myself. For a guy who wasn’t into navel-gazing, I sure seemed to be doing too much of it lately.
I still had to make my announcement to my brothers and my comments at the community meeting, but after I did those two things, I would stop looking inward and start looking outward at the people who mattered the most.
“So why’re you standing on the porch looking like an idiot?” Ben asked.
I jumped. He’d snuck up on me. Or had he? Was it just another case of getting my nose out of my belly lint and back into the real world?
“What’s going on with…,” I started to ask, but Connor was standing behind Ben in the doorway.
Unlike Ben, who looked rumpled like he’d come from a work site, Connor shone. He had a happy smile on his face, his eyes bright and cheerful. He appeared better than I ever remembered seeing him.
“Let’s not discuss this on the porch, guys,” he said, stepping around Ben. He pulled me through the doorway. As we sat down in the living room—where I saw the walls were a light beige and the pictures in the frames were of us as kids—he added, “You called this meeting, Abe. What’s on your mind?”
I was having trouble catching up. Between really looking at the living room and Connor’s appearance, I blanked for a moment. Then it all came back to me in a rush.
I cleared my throat. Took a deep breath. Looked both of them in the eyes.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m gay, and Jeff and I are together.” Silence descended. I didn’t know what else to say. “Just wanted you to know.”
The silence grew as grins broke out on my brothers’ faces.
“Okay,” Ben drawled. “Anything else?”
“I don’t get it,” Connor said almost on top of Ben’s question. “Why’d you think you had to tell us? It’s not like it’s a surprise.”
“What? Wait. Not a surprise?”
Ben and Connor shared a look, then stared at me, shaking their heads.
“But I just figured it out a few days ago,” I sputtered. “How could you know before this?”
Again they eyed each other.
“What do you mean you didn’t know?” Connor asked, while Ben burst out laughing. Connor shot him the evil eye. “Shut up!” he said to Ben.
“How’d you and Ben know?” I demanded. “I didn’t know because I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know?” Connor repeated. “What did you think?”
I shrugged. “I thought I was asexual,” I mumbled when he just stared at me and Ben didn’t stop laughing. I shrugged again.
“How could you think you were asexual after Scott? You had a major crush on him. We figured you and him were getting together all the time before he fell and had to go into rehab and moved away.” Connor was leaning forward as if reminding me of something important I’d forgotten.
I hadn’t forgotten Scotty, the special hire who’d fallen off the roof. I hadn’t realized anyone else had noticed that I took an interest in him.
“No. No, he and I never….” I faded off. “I never had time to even go out to eat with him, much less anything more serious. I’ve just never had the time…. Anyway, now you know.”
They were staring at me with something suspiciously like pity in their eyes.
“It’s not like I missed out or anything,” I reassured them. “We didn’t miss any meals or anything.”
They eyed each other, seeming to come to a consensus.
“We’re sorry we didn’t help more,” Ben mumbled. “We could have stepped up.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry too. It wasn’t just your responsibility,” Connor added.
“You kidding?” I was appalled. “Of course it was my responsibility! I’m the oldest. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. At least both of you got a childhood, got to be teenage screw-ups. It all worked out. It just took me a little longer to figure out who I was, that’s all.”
“But it’s not fair,” Connor said. His face was stern as if our roles had suddenly reversed.
“Con, life’s not fair. Most of the time, the unfair parts even out and disappear, leaving only the good. Now, what’s going on with you? You look like you’re enjoying being a baker’s apprentice.” I beamed at him. “I’m enjoying the things you’re leaving for me every day.”
He smiled and blushed. Whatever was going on was something good and not something to worry about.
“I have a boyfri
end,” he said softly. “I didn’t know how you’d take it. Jeff said to just tell you, but I didn’t know.”
Again, there was my momentary struggle to catch up. Boyfriend? Boyfriend. Then my mind floated for a second. Jeff was my boyfriend, right? It sounded like fourth-grade nonsense. It sounded like those stupid smiley hearts girls were drawing on everything back in elementary. The memory of them made me itch.
“Okay. What’s his name? I hope he’s a baker too.”
Both of them grinned at me. We were sharing a joke, and it felt good. So much better than pounding on each other.
Connor was blushing, which I realized with a start made him even more attractive than he already was. When had my brother gotten to be a handsome stud? I glanced at Ben, who was grinning like a loon. He too was a hunk. What’d happened to the Behr brothers, the three bears of Stone Acres? Where had those unkempt ruffians gone? And who were these two good-looking guys who were taking their places?
It took me a minute, but I mentally patted myself on the back. I hadn’t done a half-bad job of raising them after all.
“He’s a friend of Gary’s,” Connor told me quietly. “One of the guys he brought on to the job when he was stealing stuff. Only Pat’s one of the good guys. He wasn’t stealing anything. He’s studying to become one of Sheriff Campbell’s deputies.”
“He likes pastries too?” I asked.
Connor smiled and nodded.
“So you met him about a week ago,” I mused.
Connor looked at me, his mouth hanging open.
“How’d you know?” Ben asked, surprise on his face too.
“My bag of goodies from Connor every night got a lot lighter. I was wondering what was going on. Wondered who was getting my share,” I added with a grin.
We sat and chatted, almost as if we were catching up after a long absence. In a way we were. We’d grown apart and were now coming back together again, stronger than ever.
We ended up going to dinner, our little family of five, counting Jeff and Pat. It was as close to family as we’d had in a long, long time.
13
I WAS prepared to speak at the town council meeting on Wednesday night. My brothers and Jeff said I didn’t have to, but I felt as the head of one of the biggest non-casino employers in the county, I had to have my say.
The flyers had gone up right after the spray-painting at the Winters’ and a few other projects around the county. All of them were Behr Construction sites, but nobody was clear as to whether the misspelled, spray-painted words—all of them “fagit” in blood red—were aimed at Behr personnel or at the gays who’d recently settled in our area. Some of the sites were for Fredi’s clients.
Everywhere we went people were talking about the crime wave that had hit our small community. First the coffee shop in the mall had been trashed. Then there was the burning of the cabin in the mountains. And now this.
Sure, all of the other crimes had been solved and the culprits put behind bars, but this new rash of hate was splitting us.
It was past time everyone met and aired their fears and disagreements. It was time for me, as head of Behr, to speak up.
Ben and Jeff were afraid there’d be backlash directed at Behr afterward. There were still people in the family who were angry and resentful, even though Gary was actually trying to mend the rift he’d caused.
What it came down to was the story of the old versus the new. For all mankind’s touted brainpower, I’ve always been amazed at how rigid people’s thinking is. We seem to latch onto an idea, whether true or false. The Behrs are an inbred clan of idiots, for example. It doesn’t matter what’s said or done to disprove it, such as the fact that the Behr clan prospered during the recession. The message remained the same: You might want to call the Behrs to do a job, but you know they’re not too bright.
It was time for a showdown.
The meeting was held in the high school auditorium, the largest public gathering place in the county. Sheriff Lloyd Campbell had dispersed his deputies around the seating area, and Lloyd himself stood at the front of the stage facing out toward the audience.
Behrs and Behr relatives made up about a quarter of those in the seats, the young kids notably absent. Lorraine, Bud, and Larry had stopped by where my brothers and I sat with Jeff, Pat, and Gary, and had said hello. In front of us were Jimmy, Guy, Fredi, Max, and Felicity. Everyone was tensely waiting for Bernard Phillips, head of the town council, to call the meeting to order.
Tension roamed the room as people eyed the rest of the audience, looking, I suppose, for friends and foes alike. Lloyd and his deputies were armed, something we didn’t usually see when they were out and about around town. Their grim searchlight eyes, roving back and forth as people sat and settled, unnerved me. What did they know? What did they think was going to happen?
Bernie called for order, and we rose to repeat the Pledge of Allegiance. Only my little segment of the audience seemed to enunciate and nearly shout the last part, “with liberty and justice for all.” It was a reminder of what we were all about as Americans.
The five members of the council sat like toads on a fence, watching the audience.
Bernie gaveled the meeting to order and quickly dispensed with the reading of the minutes and committee reports, getting to the heart of why we were here.
“We have a long line of folks who want to speak tonight, so I suggest we just begin.” He consulted the paper in front of him. “Abe Behr, you seem to be first on my list of speakers.”
Huh. News to me.
I stood and walked to the front of the room, where a microphone and lectern had been set up on the left side so it faced both the council and the audience. I’d spoken before the council many times in the past, usually for an ordinance change or a rezoning request. I knew the drill.
This time I had no notes, no pieces of paper I was juggling as I stood before everyone.
“Mr. Chairman and councilmen. I have an announcement to make before I give my statement.” I turned toward the audience. “You’ve heard the rumors that Behr Construction has let go a number of workers and is hiring. I just wanted you to know it’s true.”
There was a rustling in the audience and some whispering began.
“Before you get too excited, let me make my statement. It’s short. It won’t take long.”
I straightened and looked at the council members and then scanned the audience.
“I just want everyone to know I’m gay, and Behr is a hate-free employer.”
Now the audience’s whispers were churning louder, and it looked like Bernie was about to gavel everyone to silence.
“That’s all I’ve got to say.”
I TUNED out of the rest of the meeting. The sweat was pouring down my back, and my heart rate needed time to even out.
I’d done it! I couldn’t have made the company’s position or my position any clearer. In a way, I was proud to take a stand. For years I’d run Behr like my grandfather instructed me. Even though I’d added new innovations as they came along, the core of the business was just the same as when he’d been in charge.
Now I’d forged out on my own, making a statement that wouldn’t even have occurred to my granddad. I sat back and let satisfaction roll over me.
When we got outside, I was surrounded by my brothers, Gary, and other family members, as well as friends. Lorraine, Bud, and Larry came up to say how they were behind me, and Larry gave me a little elbow to the ribs.
“Nice going, man,” he said. “This makes it easier to tell them about me.”
He was gone with his parents before I put together what he meant. His words made me smile as I saw Mr. and Mrs. Winter and a cute young guy walk up.
Stu Winter stuck out his hand, and I clasped it in mine.
“Well done, son,” he said, squeezing my hand and giving it a little shake. “You make me proud.”
The tall, handsome kid standing next to him sighed a long “Dad,” then turned to me.
“Hi, I’m Mic
hael.” His handshake was a clone of his father’s. “The pool house is great.”
Mrs. W slid in front of her son and gave me a hug. I’d once backed away from her because I didn’t know what to say. From now on, I’d be backing away because her hugs made me feel mothered and sentimental. Behrs, at least this bear, doesn’t do sentimental.
“You were wonderful,” she gushed, pushing herself a few inches away from me. She absently swiped at my hair, which was getting a little longer. “Now Stu and I have some other jobs for you boys to do around the house. We’re thinking of remodeling.”
Stu blinked in surprise. Evidently, she was using the royal “we.”
“Have you talked to Fredi Zimmer about it?” I managed to ask.
“No. Do you think we should?” She looked puzzled. “I thought he only designed buildings.”
I saw Fredi standing with Max on the periphery of our little cluster.
“Hey, Fredi!” I yelled, making Mrs. W step a little farther back from me. “Mrs. Winter would like to talk to you.”
As Fredi minced up, I kind of shoved Mrs. W his way and looked around to find Jeff or Ben or Connor, somebody to help me escape.
What I found was Sheriff Campbell looking up at me.
“Abe, you want to come to the office with me for a few minutes? We got the kids responsible for the spray-painting.” His expressionless face told me I wasn’t going to like this.
“Sure. I’ll meet you there.”
Even though I hadn’t spotted him while I was looking around, Jeff was on my tail as I walked to my truck.
“What’s up?”
I shrugged. “Lloyd wants me to come down to the station. Wanna come?”
“Of course.”
Lloyd put us in a stark room with a table, four chairs, and a wall with a mirror. It looked like it was typecast from every cop show on TV. As we sat there waiting, I wondered if our construction sites appeared as cliché as this room did. Probably. Which in its own way was a little sad. Were we all just filling our days with the unglamorous details left out of movies and TV shows?