Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  “They also say that absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I said, realizing even as the words were out of my mouth, that they were hollow—a cliché. “I’m scared, too, Rita, but Lance needs this.”

  “He needs you!” she said. “And you need him. This is crazy.”

  I knew it was, too, and I went to bed that night with Lance feeling depressed. This would be the last time we spent in our bed. He pointed this out, then we reached for each other and made love, and cried holding each other, and fell asleep.

  When we got up at four the next morning to leave, everybody got up to see us off. Trinket was crying and kept hugging Lance. Mama was crying, too. She always cried, but this time it was different. It was more than just saying good-bye. Lance had come into her life, she had learned to love him like a son, and now he was leaving. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She was wearing her old blue terrycloth robe and looking older than I’d ever seen her. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, so I figured she had lain awake all night.

  She hugged Lance and kissed him on the cheek. “You got the money in a safe place, honey? You let Will pay for gas and motels and food. You hang onto what I gave you. Get a bank account as soon as you can. Eat at the school if it’s cheaper. And if you need anything, you just call. You have Sean’s number? He’ll know our new telephone number and our address. Write often!”

  Lance was nodding and fighting back tears, which made me fight back my own.

  And then we were off into the predawn darkness. By the time I got back here, Mama and the girls were supposed to have everything packed into a U-haul truck, and we’d all leave together for our trip to Austin. So this first trek of my trip with Lance was just one of driving solid for over a week, and I didn’t know how I was going to handle it all. I wasn’t afraid of the driving so much as what it would mean. I’d say good-bye to Lance in San Francisco and, no sooner than I arrived back home, it wouldn’t be home anymore. By then, Mama, Trinket, Rita, and I would drive in a caravan to Texas.

  Lance and I were silent, as the first twenty miles from the farm to Hachita passed beneath us. It was still dark when we headed up the highway, north to Lordsburg, and it was still dark, but kind of gray in the east, when we got onto Interstate 10. Lance turned around and looked for a long moment, as we left the string of lights of Lordsburg behind.

  Then we made small talk, and Lance curled up against me. Neither of us talked about the separation from each other, but it was on my mind, with the constant hum of the tires on the smooth pavement, reeling out the miles beneath us, as if I might reach the end of the line and suddenly stop and tell him: This is crazy, Lance. We’re heading in the wrong direction! But I didn’t—couldn’t—because he didn’t say anything about it, so I figured that he thought it was best, too.

  We stopped for gas and breakfast at a truckstop outside Tucson, Arizona. The sun was well up by then, but we were at a higher altitude, and it was a cold January morning, though bright and sunny. The clouds were just in my heart.

  When Lance went off in search of a restroom, I watched him go, feeling tears sting my eyes. I had come to know his body, every inch, every curve, every mole and, yet, this morning he could have been a stranger I was admiring from a distance. He was wearing the lavender, rolled-neck sweater, Levi’s, boots, and his cowboy hat, though his sandy brown hair was long enough to curl over the neck of the sweater. I glanced around the truckstop café watching some of the truckers watching Lance saunter across the room, then disappear down a short hallway. Above the entrance was a sign that said: RESTROOMS • SHOWERS.

  So I wrote notes in my notebook, mainly things I remembered Rita saying to me, as well as how everyone reacted to our leaving, then glanced around the room. There was only one tired-looking waitress making the rounds. Some of the truckers tried to make small talk with her or flirt, but she didn’t look to be in the mood and could hardly make her hard face reflect a smile. Lance returned to our table with a thin smile of his own, and a moment later the waitress came up to us.

  She was smiling broadly, however, and leaned in close to the table. “Now aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes.”

  I didn’t know what she meant. “You’re tired?”

  “Been on my feet since midnight.” She smiled again. “Where you headed?”

  “We’re—”

  “I’m heading out to Frisco to art school,” Lance said, cutting me off.

  “Now ain’t that sweet!” the waitress cooed. “But what’s your wife think about that?”

  Lance looked confused, but I realized the waitress had seen his wedding band. Then she noticed mine, which I didn’t think to hide, and when our eyes met, something passed across her face, a look of confusion, then a realization of sorts, and her smile snapped shut.

  Her face hardened. “What’ll it be?”

  We ordered eggs and bacon and coffee.

  “What was that all about?” Lance asked, when the waitress was out of earshot.

  I touched my ring and nodded toward his, and understanding crossed his face.

  “Oh!” He grinned. My heart throbbed at his beauty, and the depression lifted a little, so that when our breakfast arrived, I had a good appetite.

  I tanked up on coffee while I studied the map and showed him the route I wanted to take. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to cut northwest from Phoenix, up highway 93 to Kingman, spend the night there.”

  * * *

  If anything, the country was more harsh than it was around Hachita, except for patches of green as we passed farms with what must’ve been winter wheat or barley. Lance was soon bored with the sameness of the landscape.

  “Geez, Will, is the entire southwest just brown desert and rocky looking mountains?”

  “I can’t say,” I said, kind of laughing at his dismay. “I’ve only been as far as Phoenix. At least we’re crossing the Sonoran desert, now, instead of the Chihuahuan, like we have at home.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Some. They’ve got saguaro cactus and we’ve got yuccas and mesquite.”

  And so our conversation went as the miles passed—safe and trivial, avoiding the painful facts of why we were traveling toward San Francisco.

  We had a late lunch on the south side of Phoenix. I was still jittery after driving through the outskirts of the city, my knuckles sore from gripping the wheel when we hit the heavy traffic. It was noticeably warmer, too, and we’d actually passed orange groves on the way. Both of us were amazed, though we were soon back in the desert as we came into the sprawl of Phoenix.

  We stopped at another truckstop for gas and lunch. With each stop, I felt a little more depressed, realizing that three days was going to pass quickly, and I thought about telling him I didn’t want him to do this.

  Still, he said nothing, and we didn’t talk about it.

  “I love you, Will!” Lance said, suddenly, when we were back on the road, trying to find the turn off for Highway 93. “You won’t forget that, will you?”

  I looked over at him, and he was crying, if anything making him look more beautiful than ever, and I remembered that even the dark bruises and the gashes on his face from his stepfather’s beatings couldn’t hide his looks. “Of course I won’t forget it. I hope you won’t forget me, once you get settled there in Frisco. Uncle Sean says there’s more gay men there than anywhere else in the whole country, and they’re all out for sex.”

  Lance frowned. “Well, I’m not! I’ve had my fill of letting men paw me on the streets. Who needs that? If it weren’t for this stupid art school, I wouldn’t be going to Frisco at all. I’d be going with you and the rest of the family!”

  I almost stopped the pickup right then, because it sounded like Lance was having strong doubts.

  “But I guess I’ll never amount to anything unless I do it. That’s supposed to be one of the best schools in the country.”

  So I let my foot settle onto the gas pedal and took the exit off Interstate 10 to Highway 93 when it came up.

&nbs
p; Kingman was a lot farther than I realized and it was dark as pitch when we were coming into town. We’d passed several dusty looking Arizona towns and I was tired. My gas pedal leg was stiff, and I was thinking how good it would be to find a motel. Traffic was not quite as heavy on this highway as it had been on the interstate, but semi-trucks still bore down on us from behind and roared past, sometimes startling me out of the daze I’d been in. Lance slept off and on, always against me, and I kept my arm around him, trying to absorb the feel of his body into mine, hoping I could bring back the feeling when he wasn’t there. Then he was awake again, and instead of looking around, he pulled his hat off and laid it on the dash, then laid his head on my lap and began to nibble at my Levi’s. I was instantly aroused, and I ran my fingers through his hair.

  My crotch was getting warm from his breath, as he began to wrestle the buttons of my fly open with his teeth.

  I was getting stiff, feeling his breath heat moisten my underwear. He was doing the whole thing with his mouth. My little buddy strained upward, and his mouth found it and he began sucking on me through my shorts.

  “Don’t waste it,” I said, feeling myself getting close to spilling my milk.

  “Ummm,” was all he said.

  * * *

  It was cold enough, now that it was midnight, that our breath showed in the air as we got out of the pickup and went into the first decent looking motel we came to. It was something from another era, rather than one of the new, clean-looking Motel 6’s. But the price for a single room seemed reasonable to me. Even though I had plenty of money, I was still trying to conserve, because I had no idea what we would run into once we got into San Francisco.

  The lobby was dimly lit, and a rather greasy-haired old lady sagged behind the check-in counter, flipping through a magazine. She barely acknowledged us as we walked up and I asked for a room.

  “One of your singles, please,” I said.

  She looked up at me, as if she just realized I was there. “It only has one bed.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  But she shook her head, looking me right in the eye. “No, sir, young man. I ain’t a gonna rent you a single room with one bed. Not two men.”

  I was so surprised I looked right back at her. Lance was standing behind me, and I could almost feel his presence, and I saw myself as he and I must look to the old woman—a couple of young guys, traveling together. “Why can’t you?” I asked, still stunned. “I don’t understand.”

  By now the old woman seemed fully alert, and the look on her face reminded me of the waitress at the truckstop, frowning at me with such distaste, I wondered if we smelled bad. “Because this establishment doesn’t condone sodomy. That’s why.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, feeling a knot of understanding and dread form in my guts.

  On the wall behind the desk, I saw keys in little cubicles for the many empty rooms, the clutter of the paperwork on the counter below the boxes, and a calendar on another wall from some oil company. A clock above the calendar said it was two minutes after twelve.

  “Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman,” the old lady said. “Read your Bible. Now why don’t you two just git before I call the cops?”

  My legs had begun to shake. Never in my wildest imagination did I think we’d run into such trouble at a motel. I was too tired and too surprised with the old woman to even think to argue. I was also angry, but she looked serious and the last thing Lance and I needed was a run-in with cops.

  * * *

  So we found another motel on the other side of Kingman and this time Lance stayed in the pickup until I checked in. We carried everything into the motel room and ate across the highway at another truckstop. This time our waitress didn’t even notice our rings, but I had been given a lot to think about from that first day of travel. I downed a mug of strong, bitter coffee, and Lance did the same.

  What happened at the first motel reminded me of the way it slowly dawned on me about being gay when I was a kid, and then discovering that people, including my parents, had known about this thing long before I did. Worst of all, people always had their minds made up about homosexuality and it didn’t matter where you went, people hated it. I’d seen that in Rick Zumwalt, and even in Dick and Casey at one time. And if you get right down to it, it was the very thought of homosexuality that had caused Casey’s father to beat him up, and which ended up getting him killed.

  Still, when the old lady had threatened to call the cops on us if we didn’t leave, it left me breathless. There she was running a motel with a whole slew of empty rooms, and she wasn’t willing to take our twenty-four dollars.

  So Lance and I talked about how we should handle things, considering that people noticed our rings, or assumed we were exactly what we were when we attempted to check into a motel together. Lance surprised me, because he wasn’t surprised at all, though maybe a little angry.

  “Angel,” he said, when the waitress was out of earshot, “I should have warned you about some hotels. In New Orleans, some of ‘em even put up signs. No prostitutes, male or female.”

  “You’re kidding!” I was flabbergasted, but he just laughed.

  “N’awleans is the kind of place where prostitution is common. You just learn to rent rooms for an hour or two and which places will let you. Besides, how many straight guys would ever share a bed?”

  Talk about being a Beverly Hillbilly, my jaw dropped at what he was telling me, just as it had with the old bag at the motel. “But it makes me mad,” I said. “It ain’t nobody’s business. Do you think we should take off our rings? I don’t want to.”

  He told me he didn’t want to either. “It would be like it wasn’t permanent, and for me it is, Will. Even if we’re going to be apart for two years, I’m not gonna take my ring off. You’re the best thing ever happened to me.”

  I felt the same way and told him. As we finished our meal and went back to the motel, I felt the time slipping away, again.

  When we got up the next morning and were on the road, I was smothered with thoughts of how quickly our time together was melting away. And with each town we passed through, with each stop for gas, I became more sad.

  We traveled west and a little south to Needles, and I was disappointed as we entered California. I’d never been there, but I’d always heard what a beautiful state it was. If anything it was dreary and dry and brown. Even if this was in the middle of winter, I figured California would look different. From Needles, we continued west on Interstate 40, with the semi-trucks and cars getting quicker and faster, making me nervous. Out of the rearview mirror, I could see the tarpaulin fluttering in the wind and I laughed at just how much more like a hillbilly we looked than most of the cars on the road.

  Lance sat close to me wearing his cowboy hat and kept his hand on my thigh. We were so far from home we didn’t really care what people must’ve thought as they passed us, some of them craning their necks to get a look at us, because it was obvious we were both guys, sitting close. But nobody did anything, because it seemed everybody was in a big hurry, passing us like we were standing still. We ate at another truckstop in Barstow, and we traveled on as night came again, and I drove until we came to Bakersfield, where we spent the second night.

  We did our routine where Lance stayed in the pickup and I went in and rented a room with a double bed. On this second night, I was more depressed than ever, feeling a constant lump in my stomach, and Lance seemed to be drooping a little, too. We ate at a Denny’s in silence, looking at each other sadly, knowing our time was growing short. He looked so beautiful to me, as always, still wearing the sissy-colored lavender sweater with the rolled neck, and in the bright lights of the restaurant, his violet eyes were almost like gems.

  “You’re going to have to fight off women and men,” I said, a moment after sighing quietly to myself at his beauty.

  “Me?” he said, smiling, his pink lips looking so luscious I wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. “You’re the one, Angel. You’ll ha
ve a whole bunch of boys creaming in their pants in every class you take.”

  And so our conversation went, with little substance, and a lot of silly talk. Many times, I wanted to ask him to forget his schooling, and we’d turn around right there and head home. But I figured he should be the one to change his mind. I’m sure he would have done whatever I asked, so I kept my mouth shut. Back in the motel, we undressed and without even talking about it, we got into the shower together. We’d only bathed together once, and that was the first night we’d ever slept with each other. So it was special for us to both want to be together as much as we could.

  We soaped each other up and clung together as the hot water steamed up the glass enclosure of the shower. We smashed our lips together, each trying to devour the other. Then we dried each other off and with our little buddies standing out from our bodies, drinking in the warm air of the room, we fell onto the bed without turning back the covers or turning off the lights and made love every which way, and did it again. The whole time the lump was there in my stomach, full of dread.

  We got up early the next morning, eating in the same Denny’s before the sun came up. We had each changed into clean clothes, rearranged our suitcases, and were heading north up Highway 99 by the time the sun came up. My jaw dropped at all the farmland I saw around Bakersfield, miles and miles of it in every direction. It made even Cotton City farms look like little gardens in comparison, and I wondered why Daddy had tried to scratch out a living on the only farm in Hachita, surrounded by the desert. But here was a place I wouldn’t have minded growing up. I might have even wanted to stay in farming. Even though it was winter, I could tell they raised a lot of crops. I was also awed by the farm equipment I saw pulled up against the barns, tractors that looked like giants and the wide multi-rowed sweeps they pulled behind them. Looking out on all this, I felt a little lighter, in a way, though the lump was still there.