by Hank Early
Not to mention that doing the right thing was a far cry from what I’d done in that phone call with Chip.
All of that made me feel pretty miserable, so I just kept drinking. I was pretty drunk and close to calling it a day when I heard the knock on the door. Who knows how it would have all turned out without that knock? Maybe Mary and I would still be together.
No, that’s bullshit. Nothing conspired against me. Except maybe some deep part of myself that was afraid of the future, afraid that deep down inside me I wasn’t worthy of anything, especially not happiness.
When I heard the knock, I glanced at the clock over the oven. Nine thirty. Not late exactly, but late enough for me to wonder who it could be. Not Ronnie, that was for sure. I would have heard his truck coming from miles away. Rufus? Maybe, but he tended to burst in rather than knock.
I rose from the table on unsteady legs. The knocking came again. “Coming,” I said, and then realized I might want to grab my gun just in case.
Goose was growling low as I went to my bedroom for my .45. The knocking continued.
I tucked the pistol in my waistband and went to the window. Daphne was standing outside my door in a bathrobe.
I felt … how can I describe this? Something like a tingle of anticipation, almost pleasure, but also pain. I felt as if I were stranded alone, on a precipice, waiting for the slightest breeze to knock me over and into the longest fall of my life, a fall that would only end when I hit bottom.
The bottom.
Once I’d believed I’d been there, but that was before I learned the truth of human misery. There is no actual bottom; there is only the falling. The landing never comes, which might seem like a blessing, but it most definitely was not.
Don’t open the door. The voice was loud and strong and clear. My own voice, the voice of experience and reason. I ignored it. I almost always ignored it.
Maybe if Mary hadn’t been gone, if I hadn’t just lied to Chip Thompkins, I wouldn’t have opened the door. But I still had a chance, right? I was just opening a door. I’d done nothing wrong.
Yet.
Daphne stood there in nothing but a bathrobe that barely covered her ass. She was grinning as the smoke from her cigarette drifted up toward my face.
“I need another favor,” she said.
I just stared at her legs. There was so much of them, so little of her bathrobe.
“I need to borrow your shower. Would you mind?”
Tell her no.
“Wouldn’t mind at all.”
She beamed at me as she came in, not bothering to put out her cigarette. I didn’t care. “Thank you so much. I promise to be quick.”
“Uh, do you need a towel or something?”
“A towel would be perfect.”
“Just a sec.” I left her standing in the kitchen and went to my bedroom, thinking how this was a bad idea. Just all the way around. A bad, bad idea.
Only if you make it bad, Earl.
That was true. Finally, the voice of reason. I’d go outside. Simple enough. I’d go outside while she showered and avoid all temptation.
I grabbed the cleanest towel I could find, taking a minute to sniff it in a few places just to be sure. It smelled all right.
When I returned to the kitchen, she was standing beside the table, her back to me, giving me a glimpse of upper thigh that was enough to make my legs go weak.
“Here you go,” I said, my voice deeper than normal, like a croak, really. Shit, I was acting like a damned teenager.
She jumped, and her bathrobe fell open. And when it fell open, it fell off. Completely off. So fast it was as if her body had repelled it.
One hand went to her breasts and the other to her crotch. Neither hand did a very good job of covering anything. And she didn’t seem particularly embarrassed about it in any case.
I turned away. Hell, it took me long enough.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll just wait outside.”
The trouble with waiting outside was I had to go past her to get to the door. A quick glance told me she hadn’t even picked the damn robe up yet, much less put it on.
“This is awkward,” I said. “I’ve got a girlfriend.” I kept my eyes on my refrigerator. A photo of Mary and me we’d taken in downtown Riley this spring stared back at me.
“You keep saying that, but I can’t help but wonder what kind of girlfriend would leave her man alone so much.”
“Listen,” I said. “I think this was a bad i—”
I stopped. Her breath was on my shoulder, the heat of her right next to me. I turned slightly, and her mouth was on mine. I smelled the nicotine and the cinnamon and something fruity. Her lips brushed mine. My tongue found hers, and she sucked at it while hers swam free in my mouth, and her body pressed firm and urgently against me.
Later, I’d tell myself I was overwhelmed, surprised, not fully aware of the situation, but I knew that was bullshit. The truth was much uglier: I’d been fully cognizant. Fully aware. I’d just decided to enjoy it. I’d decided to not think about anything and let the moment be the moment. It was to be a moment that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
* * *
When it ended, I felt like something had crawled inside me and clamped down on my heart. It hurt with every beat. At any moment, I felt like it would stop beating forever. Daphne lay next to me, panting.
“That was good,” she said.
I nodded, not feeling anything now but the fist around my heart, the slow thudding of my lifeblood being squeezed into a future that was beginning to feel a lot like oblivion.
23
What followed after leaving the church was a series of events so dismal and damning, Rufus lost all faith in anything other than himself. It started only a few months after he left. He’d been living on the east side of the county, in a little town called Millerville, where he worked on the farm of a man named Paul Bushman. Bushman liked Rufus’s work ethic, the way he was quiet and kept to himself, the way he didn’t seem to make friends with the others, always keeping his distance. Now it seemed a strange thing for a man to like about another one, but time had made Rufus reconsider if Bushman really liked anything about him at all or if instead he saw an opportunity in Rufus’s diffidence. Whatever the reason, he asked Rufus to stay after work for dinner one evening. Rufus halfway wondered if he was being set up with some girl and worried about being underdressed, with only his work clothes on as he sat down at the dinner table.
When an older man showed up and Mrs. Bushman served them and quickly exited the room, Rufus understood there was something different happening.
“Rufus Gribble,” Bushman said, “meet Randy Harden.”
Harden was a tall, lean man with broad shoulders and a mustache that made him seem like he’d come from a different time and place, perhaps 1850s California or 1920s Alabama. He sat erect at the table, as if he’d had some military training. Rufus could not guess his age, not with any accuracy, anyway.
Harden didn’t waste any time. He shoveled his food down, making no small talk, something Rufus would soon learn the man disdained. Rufus had disdained small talk too, and it caused him to take an immediate liking to the man.
When he finished eating, Harden pushed his plate away and leaned back. “Tell Rachel that was an excellent meal,” he said.
“Well, tell her yourself, Randy. She’ll be back in with coffee.”
He held up his hand. “I’ll have to pass on that. No coffee for me after four. It’s something new I’m trying. Coffee—a cup or two—in the morning is good for a man. Too much is not. It’s like whiskey or anything else. Moderation. You’re the one that walked out of the Holy Flame, ain’t you?”
It took Rufus a moment to realize Harden was speaking to him. It was something he’d get used to over the next year or so—the man’s random shifting from subject to subject, from one person to another.
“Yes, sir.”
“I always tho
ught RJ Marcus was a fraud, myself. I like a man who can see straight. Clear. That’s in short supply these days. You agree?”
Rufus told him he supposed he did.
“Well, Bush tells me you’re a good worker, and I was already impressed by what you done. I want you to come work for me.” He put both palms flat on the table and looked at Rufus. The door from the kitchen swung open, and Mrs. Bushman stood there with three cups of coffee on a tray. Harden raised a hand. “Not now.”
Mrs. Bushman nodded and slipped back into the kitchen, letting the door close behind her.
He was staring at Rufus intently, waiting. Rufus wasn’t sure he’d ever met a man like this, and even though he found himself put off by the man’s intense gaze and abrupt manner, he was also curious about the man’s confidence. What kind of man dismissed RJ Marcus like that?
A hundred times over the next year, Rufus wished he hadn’t wilted under the man’s gaze. A hundred times he wished he’d told him he’d think about it or at least asked a few questions. Hell, he didn’t even know what kind of work Harden needed done. But none of that seemed to matter in the moment. The truth was, everything that had come after his moment of redemption in the church had felt like a letdown. He was lost, looking for something to cling to. For his entire life, the preacher had been the source of all rules, structure, and knowledge in his life. Often he still heard the preacher’s booming voice echoing in the back of his mind: If the Bible doesn’t say it, I don’t believe it! Rufus had gotten over that hurdle; he’d decided the preacher’s interpretation of the Bible wasn’t true, but he’d yet to find anything to replace it. He was looking for a philosophy to live by, not just one to reject.
“Okay,” he said.
Harden grinned, a crooked thing, filled with broken light. “You living in the bunkhouse?”
Rufus nodded. He’d been staying a half mile away on Bushman’s property with some of the other field hands.
“Pack your bags tonight. I’ll be by at first light. First day of school starts tomorrow. Afterwards, you’ll be staying with the Duncans.”
“The Duncans?”
“That’s right. My sister’s family. Three daughters. Maybe you’ll find a wife.”
Harden stood, and he and Bushman shook hands.
“Excuse me, what am I to do? I mean what kind of work?”
“You’re an educator now, boy.”
An educator. He liked the sound of that. On the walk through the woods to the bunkhouse that evening, beneath a moon so large and bright and a sky so clear, Rufus wondered what he would teach. Courage, he thought. I’ll teach them how to be brave.
In the end, though, he didn’t teach anything, and he was the only one who learned.
* * *
Harden picked him up early the next morning like he’d promised. The sun wasn’t even up when Rufus heard the banging on the bunkhouse door. Rufus rose, zombielike, and pulled on his blue jeans and boots. He walked to the door, and Harden was standing there awash in the headlights of an old pickup truck.
“You overslept,” Harden said. “Not a good start. These boys we’re going to be working with need role models. They need to see a young man who has his shit together.” He put his hand on Rufus’s shoulder and guided him to the truck. A door opened and a man climbed out, holding the front seat up so Rufus could climb into the back.
“This here is Steve Deloach,” Harden said. “He’s second in charge behind me. He’s what they call ‘old school.’ Grinds his coffee fresh every morning and still rolls his own cigarettes. Treats the kids like kids and expects them to treat him like an adult. You would do well to follow his lead.”
Deloach—who had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth now—nodded at Rufus. “You don’t remember me?”
“Why should I?”
“I remember you. I went to the Holy Flame before me and my wife split up. Loved that church. Brother RJ is the kind of preacher the world needs more of.”
Rufus wondered at that moment if this was a mistake. Did he want to get involved with a man who believed RJ Marcus was a good preacher? But then Harden patted him on the back and said, “It’s one of the few things me and Steve disagree on. I already told you I thought Marcus was so full of himself he was about to pop.”
Rufus slid into the back. A girl not much younger than him was seated on the far side. She appeared sleepy but nodded at Rufus. “And that’s Harry,” Harden said, opening the driver’s side door and climbing in.
“Harry?” Rufus said.
“Harriet Duncan,” the young woman said. She reached for Rufus’s hand. “Ignore Uncle Randy. He likes to make jokes.”
Harden pulled the truck out through the trees and onto the little logging road that led to Highway 52. “Harry there used to sneak into my brother-in-law’s closet and get into his dress clothes and cologne when she was a girl and play like she was a man. I come over one time and saw her dressed up like a firefighter. Now what kind of young lady wants to be a firefighter?”
Harriet shook her head and turned her face hard to the window. Rufus saw her sad countenance reflected in the dark glass.
Deloach laughed. “She’s got to learn to appreciate men is all. Could learn a thing or two from her twin sister, Savanna. That’s the one you’ll be interested in, Rufus.”
“Her daddy’s a little worried Harry here might be one of those lesbians. Asked me and Steve to work with her a little bit. I’ve been studying up on how to deal with these kinds of situations,” Harden said. He seemed pleased with himself, as if he had agreed to donate to an exceedingly worthwhile charity.
Rufus had no idea how to respond. He’d grown up in a community that felt the same way about gay people, but he’d never—to his knowledge—actually met one before, and now that he was sitting in the back seat with Harriet, he wasn’t sure how he felt. Before, gay people had seemed slightly unreal, more of an idea than a reality. Now that he was actually sharing the back seat with someone who might be gay, he felt conflicted.
“What about your daddy, Rufus? He still around?”
“No,” Rufus said, but wouldn’t Deloach know this already?
“Right. I remember now. He didn’t take kindly to Bible teaching. Left you and your mama hard up. I always thought only a snake could do such a thing to his family.”
“Let him be,” Harden said.
“What?” Deloach shot back, his voice high-pitched and whiny.
“Just let him settle in before you start riding him, all right? His daddy probably left that church because the preacher thought he had the inside track to Christ Jesus himself.”
Deloach was silent then, and they drove through the dark morning. In the east, Rufus saw first light. It scoured the sky in a rust-colored halo, spreading up and out with a slow resolution Rufus found himself envying. It would simply be what it was, when it was. No need to rush, no need to worry, no need for anything except the pure heat it generated.
“You planning on being a teacher?” Harriet said.
“Excuse me?” Rufus felt jolted out of a dream. The thoughts he’d had seemed silly, hard to even put into context suddenly.
“I figured you might want to be a teacher because of working with kids. Last fellow we had was like that.”
“Oh Lord,” Harden said. “Not Bryan again.”
Harriet closed her eyes and sank into the dark corner of the truck.
“Me and Randy think Harriet had a thing for Bryan.”
“Bryan?” Rufus said.
“He was the man who worked before you. Good man. But we think Harriet there had a crush on him.”
“I didn’t,” she said.
“Well, I reckon that’s true, Steve. Considering she only likes other girls.”
Rufus looked at Harriet again. If you believed Brother RJ, the “gays” were perverted abominations, bent on turning good Christians to the devil. Harriet seemed normal. Nice, even. Maybe they were just giving her a hard time, anyway. Maybe it was all a joke.
“I wish I
had my teaching degree,” Harriet said. “I’d be gone in a heartbeat.”
“A teaching degree is the last thing you need,” Harden said. “Hanging around all those women. Hell, you need to spend some time around men, get an appreciation for what they can do for you. You need to stick with us until you start seeing the world a little straighter, okay?”
Deloach giggled a little and turned in his seat. “You don’t like dicks do you, Rufus?”
“No, sir.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about assholes?”
Rufus shook his head.
“One more question. Now, I know you was brought up right in RJ’s church, but I gotta ask anyway. What do you think about a woman or a man who would lay with his own kind?”
Rufus felt his face go red. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t think anything. He more felt it. It was fear, maybe pity. It was a feeling of despair because the whole thing made him sort of sick to his stomach, not so much just the physical thing, but the hate that seemed to come with it, the sense that such a man—or woman—would be forever doomed to walk outside the circle of fellowship Rufus himself so badly craved. But he didn’t feel like he could say all of this to Deloach, at least not in a way that would make sense. Instead, he said, “I’m not sure what I think.”
“Oh shit,” Deloach said. “Not another one.”
Harden slowed the truck. “I’ll make it simple, okay, Rufus?”
“Okay?”
“Would you want your son to be gay?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you want anyone to be gay?”
“No, sir.”
“And would you associate with someone who is gay?”
Rufus glanced over at Harriet, her eyes open wide now. They were staring at him, expectant. Maybe sad. Maybe a little hopeful.
He swallowed.
“Hey, Rufus?”
“Yeah.”
“Answer the question.”
“No, sir, I wouldn’t want to associate with someone who’s gay.”
As soon as he said it, he dropped his head and didn’t look over at Harriet for the rest of the trip.