“What’re you going to do, Mr. Trujillo? Kill all of us and steal the grain? You think you won’t get your thieving ass thrown in jail? Then what good is your fifteen hundred gonna do? Maybe you thought you could scare me into paying you?”
He blinked and waved angrily at his crew, and that’s when I knew he hadn’t counted on me calling his bluff. They lowered their shotguns.
Dick and Casey stood as still as statues, like in that game, frozen in the same position they had landed in when they were tagged.
I took my eyes off Trujillo and turned to Lance. His face was ashen, and fear flooded his eyes. “Lance. You, Casey, and Dick go on, now. Drive the trailers to the barn. Me and Mr. Trujillo have to settle up.”
Lance looked doubtful, but I tried a smile. “It’s all right!”
When Lance got in the pickup and started it up, I stepped out of the way, walking straight at Mr. Trujillo, forcing him to step back. I was taller and bigger than he was. Still, he moved back reluctantly. Casey loped to the tractor with Dick on his heels, and when Casey started up the tractor and followed Lance in the pickup, I was alone in the field with Mr. Trujillo and his crew. “I’ll negotiate with you Mr. Trujillo, but I sure as hell won’t be robbed.”
“Hey! Hey! Just a little test, boy!” he said, in completely unaccented English.
I thought better of telling him I didn’t appreciate his test. My stomach was in knots, and I believe if I hadn’t stood up to him, he really did think he could take what he wanted. And I knew why. Like everyone else, he had heard about me and Lance and thought he was dealing with a cream-puff.
“Since diesel has doubled in the last couple of years,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “you tell me what you think is a fair price, Mr. Trujillo, and I’ll pay it.”
* * *
My stomach was still in knots when I finally got home. Lance had unhooked the trailer from the pickup and came roaring back to the field about fifteen minutes after he left. I knew he was scared, just like me. But we road home in silence, and as soon as he pulled to a stop, I went into the house and asked Mama to write a check out to Mr. Trujillo for eight hundred dollars.
“My! That’s an awful lot, Will. Your father felt robbed with a lot less than that.”
“I know, Mama. This’ll be the last time we deal with him.”
* * *
All of my playfulness with Casey and Dick was gone by the time we started unloading the grain off the trailers. They were still looking frightened and angry when I told them what had happened.
“Near made me shit my goddam pants!” Dick said. “And you say he was just testing you?”
“He thought he could take advantage,” I growled. “Did you hear the insult he made on me and Lance?”
“Called me Will’s wifey boy,” Lance said, softly.
“Oh,” Casey said. “I guess he heard it from someone.”
I felt like reminding Casey that someone would most likely be his damned brother, Rick, but decided against it.
We were all sweating like pigs as we worked. Today, it was a lot harder to keep up the grueling pace, so we spent a lot of time sitting around on the bags of grain in the cool of the barn. After awhile, we had all calmed down. I didn’t like it when Casey started calling me ‘tough’ man and Dick chiming in with his own praise. I was probably more scared than I had ever been in my life. It was only when I realized that Trujillo wasn’t about to use the shotguns that I knew he was bluffing and trying to steal from me, hoping I was as scared as I was.
“Just don’t let this go any further, guys. Okay?”
“But why, Will?” Casey said. “Guys at school will think you’re really tough, now. I guarantee they’ll never give another thought to…you know…”
“I know,” I said. “I just don’t want it to get around. It might get back to Trujillo. He’s mad enough as it is. I think he really thought he was going to walk away with all that money.”
He and Dick were sitting side-by-side on a stack of grain, and even though I never did think Dick was all that good looking, I smiled inwardly thinking it would be neat if they were boyfriends. All around us, the odor of the grain was rich and sweet. We were sweating and our faces were streaked with grit and dirt. We were all shirtless, and our chests glistened with sweat. It was hard to believe it was November.
Lance and I were sitting even closer together on our own stack of grain bags. In fact, he was running his hand up and down my back. I enjoyed his brash act, just out of sight of Dick and Casey.
* * *
It’s now Sunday afternoon. Dick and Casey left a while ago, and Lance is taking a nap. I wish I was in there with him, but I needed to write down everything that happened. I think I know, now, what gave Daddy his ulcers, why he sometimes flew off the handle and ended up slugging people, like the time he socked Old Man Hill in the face when his cattle got in our corn crop. I even understand why he was suspicious of ‘book learning’ and only considered a man a real man if he had a strong back and hard hands. In this part of the country, at least, I’m beginning to learn that there’s always someone waiting to take advantage of you, to pounce like a cat on a mouse, if you show the slightest sign of weakness. It’s probably that same thing that makes people out here hate boys they think are not real men, which is what they really mean by ‘queer’ and ‘faggot.’ The part about two men having sex probably doesn’t really matter to them when they bother to think about it. What Coach Grey said about farm boys and their animals comes back to me now and then, and kind of makes me cringe at the thought.
Anyway, Mr. Trujillo must have been thinking I wasn’t enough of a man to hold my own against him with the stunt he pulled, having his hired hands brandish those shotguns. Maybe he thought I’d run off scared and crying and let him rob me and my family blind. But I’ve had the farm long enough, now, to know how to protect it.
So Daddy. The more I learn things working your farm, the more I understand and admire you. The more I miss you, too!
But I’ve got to say this: I’m not going to let this farm eat me alive like it did Daddy. I kind of want to see what the rest of the country’s like. I think when Christmas rolls around this year, I’m going to buy me and Lance a set of wedding bands. Even if we don’t wear them while we’re at school and just carry them around in our pockets, we’ll know what it means.
Eight
Trouble for Casey
It’s odd how the same bad things happen to different people. I’m up here in the loft of the barn. It’s Monday afternoon, mid November. Lance is off on an art field trip with Mr. Drummond and a few others from his art class. They’re going up to Santa Fe to visit the art museums and to sketch northern New Mexico landscapes. They’re also going to visit with that old lady painter Georgia O’keeffe on that ranch of hers near Abiquiu. She’s supposed to be famous. I don’t know about that, but Lance sure was excited to go. Sleeping without him already feels empty, though.
But that’s not what I meant to put down. I’m up in the barn, because I’ve just packed up some of my old writing, along with Uncle Sean’s dog tags and that letter he wrote me a long time ago. I’ve sealed everything up real safe with duct tape and have stored it in the rafters. This loft is kind of a special place. It seems right that all that writing I did up here, all that learning, be stored here. Maybe one day I’ll retrieve it and re-read it. But not now. So much else is going on, I need to sort through it, write it down, so I can maybe grasp what it means—like what happened to Casey Zumwalt.
The Monday after Casey and Dick helped me and Lance load the grain in the barn, Casey didn’t come to school. When he did show up the next day, I saw he had been beat to a pulp—just like Lance had been when I first met him. Casey’s face was bruised and his lips and eyes were swollen. It was like seeing Lance all over again, and my heart just climbed up in my throat and choked me when I saw him. Only he wouldn’t talk about it and avoided everybody. He was going to suit up for practice as usual, and that’s when everybody saw that s
omeone had made hamburger out of his back, too, like he’d been whipped. Coach took one look and told him he wasn’t about to get suited up. “You’re in no condition to practice, Zumwalt.” Then he took Casey into the locker room where he treated sprained ankles and tended bruises and smeared some powerful smelling cream on his back. That day during practice, Coach barked at us, and I could tell he was concerned about Casey.
Dick Lamb was as much at a loss as I was, so on Wednesday of that week, we decided we had to find out what happened to Casey. Only he was still evasive.
“It ain’t none of you guys’ damn business,” he said, lowering his eyes, when I’d asked Casey who had beat him up. We were behind the high school, because Casey had avoided us in the cafeteria. I’d reluctantly told Lance I had to find out about Casey, but Lance understood. He was sympathetic to him, as well, but he looked apprehensive, himself, about something. “I have something to tell you,” he said, as I was leaving to go find Casey. “But it can wait till later.”
Anyway, Dick was fuming when Casey said it wasn’t our business. “Geez, Casey, we’re your friends! Will and I can handle whoever did this. It won’t happen again, once we get through with them.”
But Casey wasn’t having it. Dick tried to argue with him, but Casey’s swollen, red eyes pooled with tears and he turned away from us, even shaking off the hand Dick tried to lay on his shoulder, and hoofed it back into the school building.
So I was stumped and tried to quit thinking about it. Besides, that evening after practice, which Casey still didn’t suit up for, I had to find out what was bothering Lance. It turned out it wasn’t what he wanted to tell me that was bothering him, but his fear of telling me. So when we got into the pickup and were heading out of the parking lot, Lance still looked fearful and was quiet, rather than laughing and sitting close to me once we were out of sight of the school.
“You know you can tell me anything, Lance. You’re scaring me, you know? Why are you afraid?”
This late in November, the sun was almost down as we headed east out of Animas. I glanced into Lance’s beautiful face and met his shadowed eyes. I bet they were almost brown, though, because of his mood.
I put my arm around his shoulders and tried to draw him close, only he resisted for a moment; then he kind of allowed me to pull him to me.
“You won’t be mad, Angel?”
“I promise. Now, please, spill it.”
He told me about the trip that Mr. Drummond wanted to take his best students on to northern New Mexico, to paint and meet that famous artist. He said it in a rush, as if saying it fast, it wouldn’t be as bad. “So what d’you think? I won’t go if it bothers you,” he said, finally, and so nervous I could feel his heart beating as if it were my own.
I squeezed him to me. “I think it’s really great, Lance. Why were you afraid to tell me?”
I felt him shrug. “Don’t know. I just thought…”
“What?”
“That you wouldn’t like it.”
“But you’re a great artist! And if you say this old lady is so world famous, and she’s nice enough to show you guys around, why shouldn’t you go?”
Lance sat up and scooted the rest of the way against my body and, just as we were passing the road that went off toward Playas, where lights were already shining against the jagged silhouette of the close mountain behind it, he slobbered on my cheek and ran his tongue in my ear, which always caused me to shiver with the chills. “My stepfather always made fun of my art and tore up the things he saw I was most proud of.”
“But you don’t think I’m like him, do you?” I was a little hurt. “C’mon, baby. Please don’t even put me in the same thought with him. Okay?”
“You meant it, though? You really don’t mind?” His voice already had an edge of excitement, now that he knew I wasn’t going to be upset.
“As long as you paint me nude against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains or something.”
He snorted a short laugh and snuggled against me.
A little while later we passed through Hachita then turned south, and it struck me. “It’ll be the first time we haven’t slept together since we met. You say you leave this coming Sunday and won’t be back until—”
“Wednesday.”
“Then we better get home and make up for all those days and nights.”
* * *
It was the same thing on Thursday. Casey wouldn’t talk. He looked afraid to even be seen with us, and that made me wonder what it could be. Something had spooked him, and it was breaking my heart, now that he and Dick had come over to my side about the queer business and were two of my best supporters.
We had a game on Friday night, but Casey didn’t show up and, afterwards, Dick got me aside and said he was getting worried. “I ain’t ever seen Casey so shook, Will. You sure you don’t know at least something?”
I didn’t, and I said so. “Let’s just give him a little time. Maybe Monday.”
So when Monday rolled around, we tried to talk to Casey. The air that morning was noticeably cooler than it had been and Casey was wearing a hooded wind breaker, pulled tight around his face. It was bright, though, and in the sunlight of that early morning before classes started, the bruises looked worse, even though I was sure they were less painful. I was relieved when he agreed to tell us what happened.
“Only let me talk to Will, first,” he said to Dick.
Dick looked hurt. “What d’you mean, Casey? I thought you and me was best friends!”
Casey looked pitiful when tears kind of glistened in his eyes and he shrugged. “I will tell you, Dick. Just let me talk to Will about it first.”
Dick still didn’t like it, but I could tell he was as much hurt for his friend as he was for himself.
As I mentioned before, Casey was kind of the runt of his family and, in a way, that also reminded me of Lance. Some big lug of a bully must’ve found him easy to pick on, maybe, and I kind of felt ashamed of the way I had knocked him around during practice that one time.
So, anyway, Casey and I headed off campus to the other side of the football stadium. I sat down, leaning up against the chain-link fence. Only Casey couldn’t lean back against it because his back must’ve still been too tender, so he just sat on the grass and hugged his knees and rested his chin on them. That also reminded me of the first time I’d laid eyes on Lance, and I recalled how I had put my arm around him and how he had just leaned into me. But I didn’t think Casey would take it the right way, so I just waited for him to start talking.
When his brother Rick had told his family about me and Lance sharing a bedroom, Casey said he was surprised how upset and hateful his entire family got, his father saying I ought to be horsewhipped. “But it was Rick who got the most upset,” he said, “and he told me I needed to find out for sure if you and Lance were, like, really queers.”
Since I never had brothers, I didn’t know about things that could go on among them, things that they might do to each other. In Casey’s family, though, Casey admitted that his older brothers had always picked on him, called him a baby and a sissy if he couldn’t do what they did. “They put me on a steer when I was just five or six,” he said, “and when it threw me off and I broke my arm and cried about it, they teased me for weeks.”
“So you just toughed your way through? Even when you were afraid or got hurt doing things?”
“Pretty much. They used to throw me off the barn and one of my other big brothers would catch me. They’d do it until I didn’t scream or cry.”
Geez, I thought to myself, glancing at him, his wrecked face, his wiry build. No wonder he was as tough as he was.
“But why was Rick so upset about me and Lance? What in the world makes your family so concerned if I might be queer? It sounds like you eat rocks for breakfast, because cereal is too soft.”
Casey laughed at that. Then he looked me square in the eyes. His were still a little puffy and still ringed with black bruises. “They did other things to me, Will.”
/> I didn’t have to ask, because I already suspected what he meant—except I wanted Casey to tell me it wasn’t that. “What do you mean?” I asked him. “What sort of things?”
He began to cry, burying his face into his knees. Then all of a sudden, he just stopped, though his chest was still heaving. He looked up at me. I was sitting on his right.
“Exactly what you’re thinking.”
“Geez, Casey, they raped you?”
“Kind’a. Until they got to be older and one-by-one they discovered girls.”
I was relieved that they had stopped. “So they’re kind of ashamed of themselves,” I said. “And now that Rick thinks me and Lance are honest to goodness queers?”
“Rick’s worried I’ll tell somebody about him and my brothers.”
It was almost like a light had gone on, a thought so clear I could see it. “So it was Rick who beat you up, because he saw you over at my house, and he was afraid you had told me about him.” It wasn’t a question.
But Casey shook his head. “He beat me up because I stood up for you when he was going on about you and Lance and how you might infect me with your sickness. I told him you were nothing like he was making you out to be.”
“And he whipped you like that on the back? Surely—”
“My father did that, Will. He saw Rick beating on me and pulled us apart, but Rick told him that I was hanging out with you and Lance. I admitted I had spent the night over there, and Rick just pounced and accused me of being queer, too. When I tried to tell Dad it wasn’t like Rick said, he wouldn’t listen. I’m not supposed to be seen with you, anymore, or I’ll get it again.”
So that was why Casey had been avoiding me and Dick. It was my turn to feel afraid. Not for myself, or even Lance, but for Casey.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t then.” I was thinking of Casey’s brother, Stephen, who was a senior like me. Casey was a junior. “What if Stephen sees you? Won’t he tell Rick or your father?”
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