My legs were beginning to shake. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me, Coach.”
He sighed. “I’m saying you’re young, and whatever you’re feeling, whatever it is you’re experimenting with, it’s just a phase lots of boys go though.” Then he leaned back, looking pleased with himself. “You’ve just gone through a traumatic time in your life with the death of your father. I’d say in a few years when you look back on all this, you’ll realize the truth of what I’m telling you.”
I didn’t know what to say. My ears burned realizing Coach thought I was having sex with Lance, but he was brushing it off, saying what I felt for him was just some counterfeit thing. I got up then, mumbled “thanks,” and was about to open the door and leave, but Coach stood up from the desk and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Look, Will. I shouldn’t be having this conversation with you. The truth is, I don’t think homosexuality is healthy. But boys are curious, and farm boys take opportunities with livestock you probably already know about. But it’s just a phase they go through when they’re curious about sex.”
I got a sick feeling down in my chest at what he was implying. Though I had heard things, and it was kind of a joke among my friends about sheep, it made me so angry that he was even thinking to compare what Lance and I had with some horny kid experimenting with a milk cow or something.
“Well, I’m not experimenting, Coach!” I said it with as much calm as I could, but my voice quivered. All I wanted to do was slug him.
He nodded. “All right. Have it your way, Will. Just don’t be surprised when people are disgusted by such as this. Or if you end up getting hurt.”
My face stung with embarrassment and I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks, but my anger had subsided a little. Coach wasn’t trying to be hateful, even though he’d insulted me. When the bell rang for the start of the next class, I took the opportunity to leave his office quickly.
In a way, Coach was just like Casey and the others. He couldn’t believe I could really be gay, even if he thought I was having sex with another boy. So again, I realized it was kind of easy to lie to people like him, a boy like me, an athlete, because he didn’t know the first thing about being queer. This was the way out of the mess I’d put Lance in. Just let them think I wasn’t queer because I wasn’t a sissy.
It was so easy, it made me laugh, and when I met Lance shortly after that, I felt like kissing him right there in the hall. If someone freaked, I’d just tell them I was curious and it wasn’t something I’d be doing the rest of my life. Then I laughed again and threw my arm around Lance and walked down the hall like that until I realized he was embarrassed.
It might still take time for things to die down, but with Dick and Casey off our backs, I figured the bad part was over. I just needed to watch out for Lance.
Part Two
Changes
Six
The Harvest
It turned out I was right. I think the rumors died down, because people just didn’t see how I could be queer—especially because of how ‘upset’ I was that day I attacked Dick Lamb in the hallway. Also, since Lance was my friend, I guess they didn’t figure he could be queer, either. I let them believe their cock-eyed notions that queers were guys who really wanted to be girls and all that kind of bull. So, at school, things went on as usual. We heard occasional remarks about us being queer. But the neat thing was, now, Dick or Casey, or some other guy on the football team, would defend us and tell the other person to shut up, or go “f” themselves. So it was only during football games that the rumors resurfaced, when guys from the other teams would shoot off their mouths in the line, and we’d all hit back harder. Our team began to stomp the competition, as we usually did. I didn’t like living a lie, but I didn’t want Lance to suffer any more. He soon began to brighten back up and to enjoy school again.
So in private, we made love more than ever. I enjoyed taking him inside me as much as the other way around, and I think it was one of those things that made him feel even better about himself. When we were working in the field—by now, mainly cleaning up the weeds going to seed and piling up the masses of Russian Thistle (tumbleweeds) and burning them—Lance taught me another kind of love making, what he called “sixty-nine.” It drove me crazy, because we could be out in the open, alone, and we’d be making out when we were taking a break, and things would get heavy. Then we’d get naked and lay out our clothes right there under the wide blue sky and go face-to-crotch. It was like tasting some delicious meal, the way we gobbled each other’s little buddies. Then we’d turn when we both finished and smash our lips together.
Then came the weekend when Mr. Trujillo came to the farm to thresh the grain. I hired Casey and Dick to help us sack it up, showing them the twine and the “needles” we used to tie up the sacks, how the grain would collect in the hopper, how to attach the sack, then how to open the hopper until the sack was full.
It was a beautiful fall day, just after the beginning of November. I’d been kind of worried we would have to delay the harvest because, a few days before, storm clouds had gathered in the west, black and menacing underlit by the sun from the east. But the clouds just burned out, and when Trujillo’s trucks pulled into the farm from the north just after sunup, it was all business. Casey and Dick tried to pitch in unchaining the tractor from the trailers, but Trujillo seemed annoyed and told them to stand back. He had brought a crew of three other men, besides himself. Men I didn’t recognize, only they weren’t too friendly and didn’t speak English very well. So the four of us, me and Lance and Casey and Dick, stood off to the side on the edge of the field until the combine was connected to the tractor.
Mama and Trinket came out to watch. May was off with her friend Kelsey that weekend, and she had seemed happy to be out of there for awhile. I didn’t know where they were planning to go, except they packed food in a cooler and tossed hiking boots and sleeping bags into the back of Kelsey’s pickup. Rita didn’t bother to come out of the house, so I figured she had got in late the night before.
A slight breeze came up from the north, bringing a refreshing coolness to the day. It wouldn’t last, though; later, it would be hot and we’d be sweating and itching from the chaff finding its way down our shirt collars. The only one I was really worried wouldn’t be able to keep up with the work was Lance, not because he wasn’t strong enough, but because he hadn’t spent his life on a farm. So far, he hadn’t spent a sixteen-hour day doing back-cracking labor. We would work at a killer pace to finish in one day. Casey knew the routine, and Dick was strong enough to lug the full grain sacks from beneath the hopper and begin stacking them on the platform where Casey and Lance were to sew them shut. When we had a good stack of bagged grain, Dick tossed the sacks to me across the gap between the combine and the trailer and I stacked them on the far end. We had plenty of muscle power, so the work went swiftly. By the time we broke for lunch around one o’clock, one trailer was full.
I watched Lance working. He turned out to be the best at sewing up the sacks with the thick twine. The first few that Casey had done were too full of gaps and some of the golden-orange grain spilled out onto the ground when Dick tossed the sacks to me on the trailer.
Trujillo drove the pickup and went for supplies at the head of the field when they were running low. He brought us water in a plastic, gallon jug, which we passed around about once every half hour. The jug soon became streaked with sweat and dirt, and Casey was the only one who wiped off the mouth when it was passed to him. The water was like not tasting anything at all, as hot as we were, but it washed the grit down our throats.
After lunch we worked well into the afternoon, and when the sun slipped behind the Peloncillo Mountains in the west, we flipped on the flood lights on the tractor, the combine, and the pickup and kept working. Not once had Lance complained. The three Mexicans working for Trujillo talked only among themselves. At first they had talked and laughed as they worked, but as the day had dragged on, they just passed grunt
s back and forth.
Something about working alongside Dick and Casey, all of us sweating like pigs, feeling the same aches in our shoulders, our eyes all lined with rings of sweat and dirt, sometimes knocking our shoulders together—all this brought the four of us closer together. Sometimes, Lance and Casey (the two smallest guys) relieved me or Dick in moving the bags of grain. And when Lance slipped backward, almost falling between the combine and the trailer, Casey caught him in his arms and struggled to keep from falling himself. The way they had to entwine their arms to get back into place, the closeness of their tired and sweaty bodies, each helping the other, gave me an image of how maybe Lance and I looked together, and it was a neat image. But when I imagined Casey and Lance crossing that line and kissing, as Lance and I always did, I was disturbed. I didn’t ever want to see that.
We finally came to the last row and everybody cheered at the same time. Just another half-hour and we’d be done. I had no idea what time it was, nor had I kept count of the bags of grain we’d harvested, but I thought Daddy would be proud to see that year’s harvest of grain sitting on our two flat-bed trailers under the flood lights, rows and rows of bags, seven bags high. But it was also a first for us on the Barnett farm, because in years past, we’d just let the grain be threshed into a sided trailer owned by Mr. Hill. He’d pay Daddy an agreed-upon amount and just truck the grain to his silos.
The four of us saw Trujillo and his crew off that night. He said he’d be back the next day to get his equipment and to settle up. I was too tired to think about it, though, so I just shook his hand and thanked him for the work.
Mama had supper waiting for us, even though it was near ten o’clock by the time we had all showered, our filthy clothes shaken out and put in the washer, and all of us dressed again.
I’d never had friends sleep over, because Daddy always said he couldn’t see putting Mama to all the trouble and switching beds and such. But Casey and Dick needed to sleep over tonight, because tomorrow, as soon as the sun came up, we had to pull the trailers with the grain out of the field and load it into the barn.
Rick dropped Rita off and came into the house for just a minute to say hello to Mama. He looked surprised when he saw his younger brother and Dick at the dinner table.
“They helped me harvest the grain,” I said, explaining their presence. “And they’re working for me tomorrow.”
Rick did his lopsided grin thing, but there was a nasty glint in his eyes when he glanced at Casey, which made Casey drop his eyes for a second. I wondered what that was all about, but I didn’t think I really wanted to know. I figured Rick might have been disappointed that Casey and I were now friendly with each other.
I was relieved when he pecked Rita on the cheek and left.
Since May was on her camp-out with Kelsey, I thought I’d have a little fun with Casey and Dick. I could’ve made up the couch for one of them to sleep on, but I didn’t. So after we’d done the dishes and seen Mama off to bed, I led Dick and Casey into May’s room and showed them the double bed. I could see a kind of stricken look on Dick’s tired face, but Casey raised his eyebrows as he looked at the bed, then at Dick. Whatever that look was, it was gone in an instant as he glanced at me and lowered his eyes.
“You boys don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I teased, pulling back the covers and getting an extra pillow out of May’s closet, up where Uncle Sean used to keep that box of his with the books and Theodore Seabrook’s dog tags.
Both Dick and Casey glared at me, and I just grinned. “Don’t be so nervous, girls. It’s just for one night.”
* * *
Despite all our aches and pains and being dog tired, Lance and I got naked and made slow, lazy love, falling asleep with our faces and breath sharing the same pillow.
Seven
Attempted Thievery
“You boys sleep all right?” Mama asked as Casey and Dick made it into the kitchen and sat down at the table.
I noticed Dick’s face go red at Mama’s question. When I looked over at Casey, he was trying to wipe a grin off his face. Our eyes met, and there were questions in his. Lance was sitting to my right, and I heard him say “hmmm” under his breath. I think we were thinking the same thing. I doubted if I could get anything out of Dick, but I figured Casey was open to a discussion, as long as I didn’t freak him out by coming on too direct.
I remembered the day I had cornered him outside school, asking him about what had happened in the girls’ locker room after the game, and he had tried to get me to tell him if it was true about Lance and me. He had looked disappointed when I denied it. Now it made sense. Even though he had been one of our persecutors, there was something under the surface, just like there was with Dick that told me things.
I figured if a guy was too conscious or curious about who was queer and who wasn’t, it was because he thought about it a lot. Maybe, if Lance and I were going to be friends with Dick and Casey, we’d all be able to talk things out. I really had no idea if they had done more than just fall into bed and sleep like the dead. I know that Lance and I fell asleep in the middle of love making the night before.
Still…I watched them sitting side by side, eating their eggs and pancakes, making appreciative noises at Mama. Trinket came in when we were all about to finish and said hello as if there was nothing unusual about Casey and Dick being there. Then Rita came in, poured herself a cup of coffee and mumbled hi and asked me if we’d finished the harvest. Our eyes met, too, and again, there was something in them, but not the smirky annoyance Rick had shown the night before. Only Rita didn’t look too happy this morning. I hoped she and Rick hadn’t had a fight about something. But I didn’t have time to dig, especially with Dick and Casey here. I made a note to talk to Rita later on.
Just about an hour after sunup, when the four of us were hooking one of the trailers up to the pickup and the other one to a tractor, Trujillo and his crew came barreling down the road, turning into the farm and heading down the field road toward us. A couple of minutes later, they pulled up in a cloud of dust. Trujillo was in his Dodge pickup, and the crew pulled up in a semi-tractor rig they would load the equipment on.
The crew didn’t waste any time starting up the motor on the tractor-combine and letting down the lift to drive it onto the trailer. But Trujillo just stood by his pickup for a minute puffing on a cigarette, looking around at the now barren stalks of grain and off into the clear blue of the morning. After a while he sauntered up to where I was about to get into the cab of the pickup.
Mr. Trujillo was about as old as Daddy, somewhere in his fifties. I knew he never had any sons, and I think he only had a daughter who was off somewhere, about as old as my oldest sister Julianne.
“Mornin’ Mr. Trujillo,” I said, when he came up to me, squinting at me and my friends. “Thanks again for helping with the harvest. Daddy always depended on you, and I can see why.”
He just grunted, cocking his hat back on his head. “Your father. He always paid me in cash, eh? This hundred-mile round trip to harvest your forty acres of grain is a pain in the ass. Es expensive, no?”
“I guess so, Mr. Trujillo. You said you’d have to charge a little more this year, on account of the diesel prices.”
“Leetle bit, eh?” he said, making a small space between thumb and forefinger. “I figure with diesel, wear on the equipment, pay for the crew, time to drive out here for your little forty acres, I’ll settle for fifteen hundred. Cash.”
I felt like I’d been slugged in the stomach. “Daddy never paid you more than six hundred, Mr. Trujillo. Ain’t that pretty good pay for a day’s work?” I was about to panic, because if I sold the whole lot of grain tomorrow, it’d only bring about two thousand to twenty-five hundred.
“Look, see,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. I felt like shaking it off. “Ef not for me, your grain, it just lay here and ruin, eh? Now what good es dat?” He took his hand off my shoulder and brought both of his hands palm up.
I noticed his Mexican acce
nt had got a little more thick, his voice a little more gruff.
“I might as well have just let it rot in the field, Mr. Trujillo. Fifteen hundred is plain robbery and you know it.”
That’s when Lance must have seen the stricken and angry look on my face. He and Casey and Dick had been standing off by one of the trailers, ready to start rolling the trailer to the barn, but he said something to Casey and came over to me and Mr. Trujillo.
Trujillo glanced his way, then turned to his crew and said something in Spanish. Then he looked right at me. “Jur leetle wifey boy here. I suggest he go on now.”
“It’s all right,” I said to Lance. “You guys go on and take that first trailer to the barn.”
But Lance didn’t move. He’d heard enough to know I was having trouble. And he sure heard the insult Trujillo had just made to my face about him.
I shook my head. It was like a dream, and everything began to slow down. I saw Casey and Dick exchange looks and begin moving slowly toward me, as if they were trudging through molasses. I saw the puffs of dust explode from under their boots.
Then, as if it was magnified in the still air, I heard the unmistakable Ka-chink, ka-chink of the shotguns two of Trujillo’s crew suddenly had in their hands as they pumped shells into the chambers, leveling them in slow motion on Casey and Dick. They saw them at the same time, coming to an exaggerated stop, first one foot, then the other, their faces grimacing in fright and confusion.
“No trouble, eh?” Trujillo was saying to me, as I came back to reality. I was so angry I could feel my legs beginning to shake. Trujillo had planned on this robbery. And that’s exactly what it was, pure and simple. His eyes told me he knew it, as we faced off.
Lance Page 7