Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  * * *

  I must’ve fallen asleep, because Lance woke me up trying to undress me in the dark. I was lying on top of the covers and felt the spiral notebook under my right shoulder. I was cold and Lance was shivering, having already undressed.

  “What happened, Will? How come you’re not in bed?” he said, kind of whispering, though we were at the other end of the house from everybody. When I finally came awake, a surge of anger jolted me. “Just writing, Lance. Where were you, anyway? How come you and Uncle Sean went out? You could’ve waited for me!” Images were going through my mind and I tried to shake them off.

  “Huh?” Lance said, as I sat up. I was glaring at him, but luckily he couldn’t see me in the dark. I tried to calm down.

  “You and Uncle Sean,” I said, whispering, myself. “How come you didn’t wait for me? Where did you go?”

  When I was undressed, we both hurried under the covers and automatically wrapped our arms around each other.

  “We didn’t know how long you were going to be, Will, and it seemed like a good time for him and me to get to know each other, better.”

  “And did you?”

  “What d’you mean, Angel?”

  I could hear the innocence in his voice, and I knew without having to go any further that I was being stupid. “You know, really get acquainted. I’ve told you so much about him, and him about you. Did you hit it off?”

  Lance laughed softly. “Don’t even think what you’re thinking. We drove up to Lordsburg and ate in that old restaurant. You know, Kranberry’s?”

  “Umhmmm.”

  “It was his idea. I guess he wanted to know if I was good enough for you, because he sure grilled the hell out of me. What was I planning to do when I graduated? Did I love you? Did I think I could stay committed to you?”

  “He asked all those kinds of questions?”

  “Yeah, Angel. He did. He doesn’t want to ever see you get hurt. He said you were too good of a man, that you deserved the best.”

  I began to feel guilty ever worrying a single instant about Lance and Uncle Sean, and I was again glad he couldn’t see my face, because I’m sure it was red as a beet.

  “Did he tell you about himself?”

  Lance laughed again, a little more loudly. “Oh, yeah, after he told me how you were always trying to get him to kiss you and get into bed naked with him. He said you scared him to death when he was here back when you were fourteen.”

  Tears leaked out onto my face and I wiped them away. Uncle Sean had tried to tell me how dangerous my love for him was, and he had remembered these past years.

  Lance rolled over on top of me, and I could feel that he was stiff. He began kissing my face, and I kissed back. Then he propped himself up on my chest, kind of pushing himself between my legs with his little buddy, which wasn’t so little at the moment.

  “But I feel so sorry for him, Angel.”

  “He told you more about Theodore Seabrook?”

  “Yes, and about his last boyfriend, only a lot more than he told us the other day. He says he doesn’t belong anywhere. He doesn’t like how flighty and over-sexed most men are. He says he just wants to find one man to love and who loves him.”

  I didn’t say anything, because I knew that’s what Uncle Sean wanted. Like Lance, I felt sorry for him. Lance didn’t say anything for a minute, either. And then we made love, as desperately and as wildly as we always did. In a way, it was sad, because I was thinking of Uncle Sean down the hall in May’s room, lying there alone, and I think it was on Lance’s mind, too, because we were both crying.

  * * *

  The next day, I got up still feeling guilty about the unfair thoughts that had been running through my head, and I swore I’d never lose trust in Lance or Uncle Sean again. I also kept sighing with relief that I hadn’t made any accusations, because for all the trouble Lance and I had gone through this past few months at school, we’d never had a real fight.

  So at breakfast, I was thinking just how little time there was to be with Uncle Sean. It was the 29th day of December, and he was leaving on New Year’s Day. I couldn’t just let that precious time slip by. Only I didn’t have any idea what we should do, and when Lance suggested that Uncle Sean meet Dick and Casey, I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

  When school’s out for the holidays, most kids old enough to work on the ranches and farms put in hard days. After the harvest is done, the rest of the winter is spent clearing the land of the cotton, grain, and corn stalks. Come January, it’s time to break-plow the land. So Lance, Uncle Sean, and I drove over to Cotton City to find Casey. I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to drive out to his farm, since he’d said his family didn’t want him to be seen with me. So I was going to call him from the Cotton City Market, but who should I run into but Rick Zumwalt. He was coming out of the market and I was right by the door in the phone booth.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, faggot?”

  He put it just like that. I didn’t expect him to be friendly, now that he and Rita had broken up. But his attack kind of took me by surprise, anyway. I had the phone to my ear and someone on the other end picked up, just as Rick spoke.

  Before I thought, I asked for Casey, and Rick heard me. He grabbed the phone out of my hand, glaring at me. “You leave my kid brother alone,” he said, brandishing the phone in a fist, like a club.

  A second later, Uncle Sean came up behind Rick and put him in a choke hold. I didn’t even know he’d seen what was happening.

  Rick elbowed backwards, but Uncle Sean was too quick, and pulled Rick off balance, so he couldn’t gain leverage, and held him like that, Rick flailing, but tough as steel. I’d forgotten that Uncle Sean was strong and had probably learned some of his moves in the army. Still, he was straining against Rick’s heavier weight.

  “Let him go, Uncle Sean,” I said, refusing to back down. Rick had dropped the phone when Uncle Sean got him. It was dangling in the booth. I listened on the receiver, but the line was dead.

  Uncle Sean was ready for Rick when he dropped him, stepping back as Rick fell to the ground then sprang to his feet in the next instant, turning and swinging his fists. That’s when I tackled Rick from behind, forcing him to the ground.

  “There’s three of us, Rick,” I said. Lance was standing by the car a few feet away, looking angry. “Why don’t you just cool your heels?”

  Rick bucked me off and took a swing, catching me on the chin. It felt like I’d been hit with a baseball bat, and just as Uncle Sean was jumping into the middle of Rick, a pickup skidded to a halt and Casey jumped out and smashed into Rick, knocking him to the ground a second time. This time he stayed down, looking up at the three of us.

  “I get it now,” he said, nodding and spitting off to the side. “You…” he jabbed a finger at me, “and you…” he said, jabbing the air again at Uncle Sean, “and you, little brother. You’re all fucking faggots. And you better watch your backs.”

  “What do you call yourself, Rick?” I asked, feeling like my jaw was dislocated, because it hurt to just open my mouth. “You beat up my sister and your brother. You gonna turn into a wife beater like your father?”

  Rick just lowered his head as he got up deliberately and slowly from the ground, reminding me of the stance a bull out in the pasture sometimes takes, about to charge. Only I think the fight had been knocked out of him.

  “You’ve done gone too far now, Barnett. You just insulted my family, and I’m going to let all my brothers and my father know it.” Then he looked at Casey. “And if you’re loyal to family, you better get the fuck away from them, right now. I’ll tend to you later.”

  I shouldn’t have let my anger get to me. I should have kept my mouth shut about Rick beating up Casey, and I should’ve never said anything about his father being a wife beater. I was shaking when Rick walked away, dusting himself off. The hunch of his back, the way he swaggered and got into his pickup, then looking back at the four of us—I knew there would be trouble, so I turn
ed to Casey.

  “Hey, man, listen. Rick started this. We just stopped in town to call you.”

  Casey was ashen-faced, glancing back over his shoulder at the sound of Rick’s pickup peeling out of the grocery store lot. Then he looked at me. “What was that remark about my father? You just stepped into a pile of it, Will. Rick ain’t gonna forget, and he will tell Dad.”

  I tried to apologize, but Casey had already turned and stomped off, just like his brother, and I didn’t know if he was angry with me or Rick.

  So, we nixed the idea of trying to find Dick. Casey was out, and none of us felt like doing anything. So we all got back into Uncle Sean’s car. We were silent as we sat there, Lance between me and Uncle Sean.

  “What was that all about?” Uncle Sean finally said. “One minute you’re on the phone, and the next this goon comes out of the store and acts like he’s going to brain you.”

  My jaw still hurt, and Lance had kissed it several times, his violet eyes going a darker shade at his concern. “Tell him,” Lance said.

  So, as we were leaving Cotton City, I told Uncle Sean about how Rick was the one who started everybody talking about me and Lance, and how Lance was attacked after the football game, and how Rick had beat up Casey and later, Rita, when she broke up with him.

  “Then it’s a good thing you’re selling out and moving on,” Uncle Sean said. “Sounds like there’s always going to be bad blood between your families. Besides, Will, this isn’t any place to live, even if everybody got along.”

  We were already past Animus and had turned east toward Hachita. At his remark, I looked out the window at the rolling hills, the rocky sides of the little Hatchet Mountain coming up in the distance, the barren landscape, catching the gleam of the newly built smelter that would one day spill its smoke into the sky. It was a further scar on the land, just as the ore mining had been earlier in the century that left deep gashes in the sides of the mountains, and turn-of-the-century garbage from the miners strewn wherever they had lived.

  Still, a lump formed in my throat to know that we would all be moving away, leaving behind a small trace of our own lives from the farm that Daddy had started, and knowing that his ashes were an inseparable part of the earth he had tilled.

  * * *

  So we didn’t get to introduce Uncle Sean to Dick Lamb or Casey Zumwalt. Instead, Uncle Sean invited Mama and the girls to go along and we all loaded into his ’57 Chevy, which still ran like a race horse, and we headed into Deming and took in a movie. We ate at a steak house between Deming and Common, called the Angus Iron, and talked about the future. It was too bad that May wasn’t with us, so I told them all what she and Kelsey were planning to do with the ranch, once Kelsey inherited it, telling them about all the neat buildings at the headquarters.

  Mama’s eyes grew bright with tears as I was telling them that. Maybe part of it was happiness for May, knowing that she would probably make a go of it on the ranch, since she was good with her hands, but part of what brightened Mama’s eyes was probably also her realization that May was like me. Why else would she be settling in with a woman?

  Rita wouldn’t graduate from Animas High, but she said she was glad. Anywhere would be better. Trinket wanted to move to a real city, not because she was dazzled with the thought of all the people, but she already knew she needed to get good grades in a good high school so she could get into a good university. I heard Uncle Sean’s influence there and smiled at my little sister. If she did become a vet, I could just see her handling large dogs that probably outweighed her.

  It would have been a good end to what had started out as a lousy day, with the fight with Rick Zumwalt, but as soon as we walked into the door at home, the phone was ringing and ringing and didn’t stop until Mama answered it. It was close to midnight, and a call that late at night couldn’t be good.

  While Mama was on the phone, the look on her face getting worse and worse, I made coffee, and Rita and Trinket cleaned up a few dirty dishes. All of us stayed busy, waiting for Mama to get off the phone. I knew she was talking to Margie Collins. Margie was as good as the ten o’clock news. How she found out things, I’ll never know, unless in her boredom with her life, she stayed on the phone day and night.

  It was late and Mama sent Trinket off to bed. She had gone pale and had reached for her pack of cigarettes about halfway through the conversation with Margie. When she got off the phone a few minutes later, she had smoked three cigarettes to the filter. She had Rita stay with us, though, so I figured it had something to do with Rick. I kept regretting the remark I had made to him that morning in the parking lot of the Cotton City Market; and I kept thinking something must have gone horribly wrong. I was afraid Casey had been beat up again.

  By the time Mama came to the table, Uncle Sean, Lance, Rita, and I were sitting silently, with our coffee untouched in the mugs, all our eyes on her.

  She lit another cigarette, her eyes looking kind of wild, and my heart was thudding. I couldn’t imagine what it was. Mama’s hands were shaking. “That kid you’re friends with, Will…Casey?”

  I nodded, suddenly feeling very afraid. “What, Mama?”

  “He just killed his brother Rick and his father.”

  Rita’s intake of breath was so loud, I could almost feel my own being sucked out of me. I glanced at Rita and saw the pain in her face, the tears almost immediately pooling then sliding down her cheeks. Lance and I exchanged glances, both of us looking stunned, I guess. At least Lance’s face reflected how I felt. Uncle Sean looked troubled, since we’d told him how Casey had been treated in that family. He was the only one still calm enough to ask Mama what had happened.

  All I could think was it was my fault, and my words about Rick being a wife beater like his father came pounding back in my ears as if I had just spoken them.

  Mama related the news that some sort of family argument broke out there at the Zumwalts, “and they said that Casey came out of nowhere all of a sudden with his deer rifle and shot his father, first, and then turned it on Rick. Casey’s in jail in Lordsburg,” Mama said, mashing out the cigarette in the ashtray. She folded her hands together, as if she didn’t know what to do with them, and finally grew silent.

  In fact, all of us were. There wasn’t anything to do, but I felt like there ought to be.

  “Well, what did Margie say, Mama?” I asked. “Didn’t she have any idea what happened—or what they were fighting about?”

  Mama shook her head. “I don’t know, Will. She didn’t know, though she knows as well as I do what a mean bastard Mr. Zumwalt is. He’s always been hard on his boys and cruel to his wife.”

  * * *

  I was too stunned to sleep, and so was Lance. We lay there for at least an hour, silent, holding each other, every once in a while commenting on Casey and the way he’d been beaten. “I know how he felt,” Lance said. “I was this close a hundred times to killing my stepfather, and if I’d had a gun I probably would have.”

  “But if I just hadn’t said that to Rick, about his father being a wife beater, don’t—”

  “It’s not your fault, Angel,” Lance said, putting his hand over my mouth in the dark, as if shutting me up would change things. It was true, though. I did say too much, and had gotten Casey in trouble. Somebody like Rick wasn’t going to let it go, and now he was dead, no telling what kind of beating they’d given Casey before he shot them. I could imagine that it was even worse than the beating he’d been given before.

  I must’ve fallen asleep, because when dawn came creeping gray and the wind rattled the window, I opened my eyes, at first wondering why I felt so sad, until it all came rushing back. Casey was in jail for killing Rick and his father.

  Casey was in big trouble, and it was my fault. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  Except that when Lance and I met Uncle Sean in the kitchen and we toyed with our eggs and bacon, he suggested that we drive up to Lordsburg to see if we could get in to talk to Casey.

  It was a cold morning
, and the wind was high, blowing sand across the highway from the west like snow, forming snaking patterns that broke up as we drove through. The sky was a light brown where the dust had risen like clouds. The mountains to the west were invisible behind the wall of dust. The wind buffeted the car as we drove. Inside all of us were quiet, lost in our own thoughts. Mine were on Casey, and it’s odd that all I could see was me knocking him down during football practice, and his face a mass of bruises from the beating Rick had given him, as if I had given him the bruises, just like I had gotten him in trouble with Rick.

  Lance and I held hands there in Uncle Sean’s car, and Uncle Sean kept his right arm across the seat back as he drove, laying a hand on my shoulder and squeezing it sometimes, just like in the old days when he and I were working the farm; only now, I didn’t feel turned on at his touch like I used to, just felt that he was doing his best to comfort me.

  When we got out at the Hidalgo County Jail, the wind had shifted and came out of the north, cold as ice and full of grit. I was crying and could barely see as we went up the stone steps and entered the brick façade building, our footsteps echoing off the tile floor. Then Uncle Sean took over at the desk, asking if we could see Casey.

  “Your business?” the cop behind the desk asked, his voice as cold as the wind. He looked up at the three of us.

  “We’re friends,” I said, drying my eyes, and feeling my nose was runny, which I wiped on the sleeve of my jacket. “He and I play football together.”

  “Don’t matter,” the cop said. “You gotta be family or his court-appointed attorney.”