River Town Box Set

by Grant C. Holland

  Instead, Brody sat at the table again and said, “You know how I feel about Lewis. You can do better. I honestly believe that. I know the crowd’s not so big here in town, but maybe you should look up in Rochester or the Twin Cities.” Brody sighed as he had to bite his lip to stop himself from saying, “Or even across the table from you.”

  2

  Dak

  Dak wanted to change the topic even though he brought it up in the first place. He was still smarting from the night before. All hints of mushiness aside, what he would have liked most was a hug from his best friend, Brody. He loved the long arms when they wrapped around his body. Instead, Brody rambled on about other potential dates from towns an hour away from Coldbrook Bend.

  “So who was that guy kissing other guys in your family photos, Brody? Have you got a gay uncle you didn’t know about? I can’t believe Mrs. Sexton would hold out on you. Maybe it was just a joke.”

  Dak stared at Brody seated on the opposite side of the table. There was something about the way he moved his mouth and shaped his lips. It was so expressive. That’s how he got the lead roles in plays in high school. Mr. Granger, the drama coach, said Brody’s face could tell an entire story by itself. He didn’t need costumes or props.

  Brody said, “It’s not a joke. I didn’t show you, but there’s at least three other photos of them in there, and in one they just have their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders pressing their cheeks together while they smile for the camera like any happy couple.”

  Dak knew that his belly was full, and he didn’t need any more to eat, but the cookies were there. They were calling his name. They made him think about happy days as a kid when his parents were both still around. He stuffed another cookie into his mouth and smiled when the sweet filling dissolved on his tongue. Brody was silent, rubbing his chin. After he swallowed the cookie, Dak said, “I still think she wouldn’t hide anything. There must be an explanation.”

  “I know who the one guy is. It’s my great-uncle, Clyde. Can I tell you something, Dak?”

  “Sure, of course. You know you can tell me anything.” Dak wiped at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Brody sounded like a man in pain when he grunted out, “For ten days I’ve been talking about what an incredible woman my mom was. That’s true, but she wasn’t a saint. She wasn’t perfect. She screwed shit up.” Brody’s face started to flush, and a tear welled up in the corner of his right eye. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be struck by lightning for saying it, but I had to say something. She could have lied about this. Dak. She could have lied.” Brody laid his head down on the table, and his shoulders started to shake.

  “Aw damn, Brody, don’t do that. Guys aren’t supposed to…I mean, don’t do that. I don’t handle it very well. I never know what to do.” Dak stood up and skirted the table to place a hand on Brody’s shoulder. He awkwardly patted the back of Brody’s head with his other hand. “I know she wasn’t perfect. Nobody is, but she made me chocolate chip cookies. Only the best people bake cookies for me.”

  Brody couldn’t stop himself from chuckling softly. He looked up and said, “She did bake great cookies.”

  “Hey, do you remember that first summer after my parents moved us to town? You were upstairs in that bedroom of yours working on building some little city or something in the middle of the floor, and I came running all the way to your house after those thugs caught hold of me.”

  “Are you sure I was like that?” asked Brody.

  “Oh yeah. Sometimes getting you out of the house in the sunshine was like trying to drag a guy out of a life raft. You’re still a little pale these days. You could use a little more sun.”

  Brody ignored the comment about his complexion. “So what happened when you got to my house?”

  “It was a Sunday, so your mom was home. As soon as I got close, I could smell those cookies. I knocked on the door, and she let me in. She cleaned up the stain on my lip from the bloody nose those guys gave me, and then I got to eat cookies and drink milk. Pretty soon I’d calmed down, and then you appeared.”

  Brody tilted his head to the right. “I’m not sure I remember it all the same way.”

  “You were a good guy, too. You started coming up with all sorts of ways to build machines to trap the goons and dump them in the river with concrete boots on their feet. You stood up for me, too.”

  Brody chuckled softly. “I do remember that part.”

  “Yep, your mom was a good woman. Our town’s gonna miss her, too. Who’s running the library now?”

  “They put her assistant in charge on a temporary basis. I suspect they’ll do a job search for somebody soon.”

  Dak continued his comments. He was enjoying reliving the past, and he didn’t want to leave the hazy warm sensations too soon. His apartment was empty and located in a rougher part of town. It was the only place he could find in Coldbrook Bend that would rent for just the two weeks he had off from the tow boat.

  Dak stood up to retrieve the milk jug from the fridge and pour another glass. He asked, “You want some?”

  Brody shook his head. “You might wanna check the date on that. It was here when Mom had her stroke. That’s been awhile.”

  “I’m not sick so far, and I didn’t smell anything funny.” Dak poured himself another glass and sat down. “And you were always building stuff as a kid. I’m sorry I smashed your truck, but I bet you could build an even better one now out of toothpicks and dryer lint.”

  “It’s what got me my job.”

  “What?” asked Dak wiping milk from his upper lip.

  “The manager job at Home Pro. Of course, it helped to do the grunt work for a year, but I know what every part and piece is. Do you need a spud wrench? I got it. Do you need a cat’s paw? I can point you in the direction of those, too.”

  “Nah, I’ll leave the kitty body parts to you,” laughed Dak. “If you wanna know what any part is on a towboat or a barge, I can tell you. Building a house? I’m clueless. A guy who’s only onshore for two weeks at a time doesn’t have much need for a house. He doesn’t learn much about other tools either.”

  “With a house, you could have some place to come home to,” said Brody.

  Dak shrugged. “You leave it vacant for a month, and the yard gets long, and the dust piles an inch high. The toilets stop flushing right, and the tap water turns brown. At least that’s what my friend Oscar on the boat says.”

  “He’s one that you…” Brody stopped himself. “Damn, none of my business.”

  Dak threw his head back and laughed out loud. “You wanna know whether he sucked my dick. Feeling a little nosy that way?”

  “You brought it up,” said Brody.

  “I was just reading the winds, and yeah, so I’m not keeping secrets like your great-uncle, He did suck me off. I went back and had him do it again, too. He’s fun. His lips are thick, and he knows what to do with his tongue. He doesn’t have much of a gag reflex. He’s better than asshole Leo. There’s a hot mouth attached to a lousy man.”

  Dak loved the look on his friend’s face. Brody’s mouth dropped open for a moment, then he blushed, and he shifted in his seat. Dak wanted to climb across the table and whip it out for his buddy. It might break the tension, or it might scuttle the friendship. He couldn’t risk the latter.

  Dak smiled when Brody made another quick change in the conversation. “And those guys from Durgin at the football game. Damn, they put you through hell, too. I brought you home and cleaned you up from that.”

  “Phobic bitches,” growled Dak. “They picked on Ernie in the band. I just issued a little correction. I was their river rat from hell.”

  “And got a few bruises and a cracked rib in the process.”

  Dak remembered how Brody fussed over him like a mother hen. They were both juniors in high school, and Brody’s mom was out of town overnight for a work event. He remembered how Brody peeled off his shirt and felt around gently to try and figure out if Dak had to go the emergency
room or not. Dak was rock hard from the attention, and he secretly wanted it to turn into so much more, but Brody was a shy fish then. He wasn’t biting.

  “The next morning you woke up moaning and groaning. I had to take you to the ER,” said Brody.

  “Yeah, having the ribs wrapped was annoying, but it was worth it to put some hurt on those assholes.” Dak drained the last of his milk and asked, “So who do you think was your uncle’s lover?”

  Brody shrugged. “Who knows. I bet that photo is at least thirty years old.”

  Dak leaned across the old Formica table and asked, “You aren’t the least bit curious? That’s not like you. I remember back in the fourth or fifth grade you told me you always wished you could find a real-life mystery to solve just like in the books you read.”

  Brody sighed. “Yeah, I am a little curious, but I don’t think I’m half as curious about who the lover was as I am about why my mom hid the truth from me. I mean, I went to his funeral.”

  “Your great-uncle’s funeral? When was that?”

  “I guess I was about ten. So that would be the late 90s, right?”

  Dak laughed. “You’re getting old just like me. You can’t even add and subtract numbers now. Yep, that would be around 1997 or so.”

  “My mom said he’d been sick for awhile, but that’s all I remember. The casket was closed, so I didn’t have to look at a dead body. I was happy about that.”

  Dak smirked. “You were the little haunted house princess. It’s pretty easy to spook you.”

  Brody made another hairpin turn in the conversation when he asked, “So you’re gonna make up with Lewis?”

  “Don’t know on that one,” said Dak. “I really would like to see if we fight for it all whether that would lead to happily ever after. The only problem is I’m not sure Lewis is the one I want the happily ever after with. He’s a little, I don’t know, ick. He’s so fru-fru in bed.”

  Brody laughed. “And what’s all this happily ever after stuff? I never knew you were a romantic. You’re not the guy that would scatter rose petals on the floor. Are you Dak? Have you started reading those romance books like you can pick up at that ratty used bookstore downtown? Is that where you get them?”

  Dak leaned further across the table and whispered, “Gay ones. Have you ever seen a romance with gay boys at that store downtown? It’s the 21st century now. I get ‘em online.”

  “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned porn?”

  “Well, yeah, that, too,” said Dak. “It’s a long time on the boat, though. A whole month. Believe it or not, you get a little tired of the porn eventually.”

  Brody tried to appear shocked and failed miserably. He said, “No, porn boring?” and then broke down laughing. “I just never thought you were a big reader.”

  “There’s a lot you might not know about me. As I said, this is private in here.” Dak pounded at his chest again. “Someday a good man is gonna find out what’s inside. It looks like I’ve got a hell of a lot of frogs to kiss before then.”

  The tone of Brody’s voice dropped down a register. He said, “Maybe you just need to slow down and not cling to the first body that walks into the room. Take a look around and try to see what you might have missed.” Brody laced his fingers together and stared across the table.

  Dak shrugged. Brody had a point. Dak was starting to lose count of his boyfriends and crazy crushes. He was always sure the newest one was going to lead to picket fences, a dog, and maybe even a snot-nosed kid, and then a week or a month later, Dak was running back to Brody’s apartment with his humbled tail tucked between his legs. “Maybe you’ve got a point. First, I’ll see if there’s any reason to wring anything more out of Lewis, or if it just amounts to beating a dead horse.”

  “From your attitude, I think I know the answer to that. I haven’t had a real boyfriend for over a year, but it doesn’t sound like you’re any closer to happily ever after than me.”

  3

  Brody

  Brody woke up in the middle of the night with his lower legs tangled in the sheets. He decided to spend the night at his Mom’s house, and his old bed, besides being bowed and uncomfortable to lie on, was a few inches too short for his long, slim frame. He started to stand up to find his way to the bathroom downstairs and nearly tumbled headlong into the floor. His big bare feet slapped loud on the hardwood floor while he struggled to right himself.

  “Fuck!” The only good mattress in the house was his mom’s, but he wasn’t ready to sleep on it yet. He scratched at his bare chest while momentarily staring down at the gloom of the empty house before descending the staircase to the first floor.

  The doorway to the bathroom was narrow, and Brody nearly tripped over the toilet that jutted out into the entry path. He fumbled for the light switch inside the door before remembering it was outside the room like in many old houses. Reaching his long arm around the frame, Brody found the switch and squinted when harsh, bright light from two light fixtures filled the room. The bathroom had a fluorescent light over the lavatory and an overhead light with a bulb two times as high in wattage as necessary.

  “Dimmer switch,” muttered Brody as he flipped the toilet seat up. It was something to remember in the morning when he arrived for work at Home Pro. Brody glanced around the bathroom at the butterflies that filled so much of the space. He could almost imagine they were real. His mother was a lover of butterflies, and they took flight across the shower curtain, hand towels, and toothbrush holder.

  By the time he thoroughly washed his hands, Brody’s mind raced back down the path of thoughts his great-uncle, Clyde, and the photo of him laying a kiss on a man that must have been his lover. They couldn’t be otherwise. They wore similar haircuts, and the clothing was matched carefully to avoid clashing in colors or patterns, but why was it a secret within the family? Brody was in the closet outside of his immediate family until his 24th birthday. He understood the need of hiding from the public in the past, but his mother knew about Great-Uncle Clyde. She had the photo.

  As he climbed back up the staircase to the second floor of the old house, Brody understood why recently constructed homes had at least one bathroom on each floor. It was dark, and the steps were steep. There were so many ways to slip, fall, and end up screaming for help at 3:00 a.m. when no one around would hear. He remembered how he tore up and down the staircase as a teenager. He took the steps two at a time going up and leaped from the fifth step clear to the floor going down. Nearing age 30, he suspected either act could result in a broken neck in the middle of the night.

  Crossing the threshold into his old bedroom, Brody saw the shadows of tree branches spreading across the bed. The moonlight shone through the leafy trees outside leaving a dark abstract pattern across the wadded up pile of linen sheets. Brody remembered lying in bed as a child after staying up late watching a horror movie. He stared out the window at the branches convincing himself that the scratching noises against glass were the fingernails of a monster trying desperately to get inside.

  He shook his head and laughed. “It’s a good thing I know better now.”

  Brody switched on the lamp on the nightstand and smiled as the bedroom was bathed in a much warmer glow than the bathroom. After he first found the photo of Clyde and an anonymous lover, Brody made a half-hearted effort to search through more of the photos before shoving the box back in the attic. Up at 3:00 a.m. and convinced he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he decided to conduct a more thorough search.

  Brody remembered the sight of Dak and his muscular frame squatting down to duck walk into the dark, unfinished space of the attic. He was impressively handsome even in the most awkward of positions.

  Brody tugged the half-sized door open and did his best to fold his even taller frame over double before entering the storage area. He reached up to pull the single chain attached to a light bulb and spotted the cardboard box marked “Photos” in the light cast by the amber-colored beam.

  He tugged the box toward the doorway and coughed as
he disturbed an ancient film of dust that settled over every surface in the attic. He growled when his head backed into a network of spider webs, and the stickiness descended over the tops of his ears and his shoulders. “Damn!” Brody reached up with one hand, behind with the other, and did his best to rake the sticky threads from his hair and his bare back with his fingertips.

  The cardboard box was old. He found the box stashed in a pile in a corner in the basement. Brody couldn’t recall when his mother last needed a supply of boxes, but he grabbed the first he saw to pack up the photos he found on a shelf in her bedroom closet.

  As he lifted the box out of the attic, the bottom sagged. Brody slid one forearm underneath to prevent the entire contents from scattering out on the floor. He set it gently on the bed and hurriedly retrieved the two boxes of loose photos. Brody leafed through the photo albums multiple times and, unless, for some reason, his mom revised the albums in the months before her death, he knew they were the same as always. He couldn’t recall when she last pulled the shoeboxes out. She always said they contained “extras” that were unimportant. He remembered her laughing when she said, “They’re the ugly blackmail photos I keep just in case.”

  Almost subconsciously, Brody began dividing the pictures into separate piles on the bed. One stack was his parents before they split up nearly twenty years ago. The second was group photos of three or more members of the family. Brody had his own pile. He saw himself smiling after winning a blue ribbon at a school science fair in fifth grade. The last stack were photos of extended family members. The bulk of those were his grandparents on his mom’s side.

  Grandma Miller once won a beauty pageant and then competed for the title of Miss Minnesota. She never let anyone in the family forget it, and, recently, at her 80th birthday celebration, she was still elegant, poised, and well-dressed. The photos of the grandparents included countless adoring gazes from Grandpa Miller. He was genuinely in love with the woman he married during a daring elopement in the mid-1960s.