First Down

by Paula Mabbel

  “That he is, but I think sometimes he’s too soft for his own good,” John Paul said with a thoughtful look in his eyes, before he turned to his brother and ruffled his hair.

  “Well, someone has to have a heart in the family,” Greg said with more bitterness to his voice than Tommy had expected to hear.

  Tommy looked at the brothers curiously. He could sense some tension in their relationship, but he didn’t know either of them well enough to start guessing as to its cause. “Well, his good heart may have saved my life,” Tommy said with a warm smile and then he returned to his breakfast.

  “I don’t suppose you know the other traveler who came into town last night?” John Paul asked Tommy when he’d finished his own breakfast.

  “I don’t think there were any other strangers besides me in town last night,” Tommy said as he pushed his own empty plate away from him.

  “Oh, I know for a fact there was,” John Paul said with a twinkle of what looked like hatred in his eyes. “I was talking to the bartender this morning and he reckons that the guy is a Nancy.”

  Tommy looked at Greg for a brief moment and then turned his attention back to the table in front of him. He knew John Paul was talking about him and, from the look of hatred in his eyes, Tommy could tell that the news wasn’t going to go down well when he found out.

  “You know, brother, even if this traveler is a Nancy that doesn’t mean that he’s done anything wrong. I mean there was no trouble. He left when he was asked to. I don’t see the problem,” Greg said, as he tried to talk down the hate in his brother’s eyes. It wasn’t working.

  “No harm?” John Paul asked in surprise. “Don’t you know what those queer folk are like? He’ll be spreading his disease on to everyone in town if we let him stay,” he finished with a matter-of-fact tone that held no room for compromise.

  “I don’t think it works like that, brother,” Greg said with his head shaking softly and a sad look in his eyes.

  “You don’t know anything about it, Greg,” John Paul dismissed him. “So anyway, if you do see another traveler around town, will you let me know? I want him out of here, as soon as possible.” John Paul said as he turned his attentions back to Tommy.

  “Well,” Tommy said quietly and then shifted in his seat. “I guess I should probably tell you that I’m the Nancy you’ve been looking for,” he said with a slight rise and fall to his shoulders.

  “No, I’m being serious,” John Paul said as he rolled his eyes.

  “As am I,” Tommy said as he met his eyes across the table and held them firmly.

  *******

  Tommy could feel the atmosphere change as John Paul realized that he’d been harboring the very man he wanted run out of town. Tommy could see the realization slowly fall over his face, as his cheeks started to burn red and a thick purple vein appeared in the middle of his forehead. He wondered what was going to happen next. He considered leaving before anything could happen, but he felt as though he owed it to Greg to stay. He didn’t want Greg to suffer under the hands of his brother just because he’d been good-hearted enough to let him rest for the night.

  “Did you know about this, brother?” John Paul turned around to Greg with accusations pouring out of his eyes and oozing from his words.

  “I didn’t,” Greg said with a small shake of his head. “Not that it would have mattered to me anyway, Tommy seems like a good fellow. I see not how his sexual preference is any of our business.”

  “You always were soft in that head of yours,” John Paul said with a look of disbelief in his eyes. He turned his attention back to Tommy, who was still sitting at the table, although his relaxed posture had vanished completely. “Do you think that this is funny?” John Paul asked. “Do you think that you are funny coming into the sheriff’s home with your sickness? What will people say when they find out?”

  “I’m sorry that I’ve caused you so much discomfort,” Tommy said in an earnest voice. “I can leave now if you wish me to,” he added, because the last thing he wanted was a fight.

  “You’ll offer no such thing,” John Paul said with fury flashing in his eyes. “You will do as I tell you and nothing more. I’m the sheriff around here and I make the rules.”

  “What would you like me to do?” Tommy asked him with serious eyes.

  “I want you to be gone from this town by sunrise tomorrow morning. I’m a reasonable man and I understand you might need supplies for your journey. If I find you are still here when the sun rises tomorrow however, then I will have no option other than to duel you. Do you understand?” John Paul said with an edge of warning in his voice that told Tommy that a duel would be a bad idea with such an irrational man.

  “I understand completely,” Tommy said with a small nod of his head.

  “Then get out of my house,” John Paul said with a dismissive hand gesture.

  Tommy didn’t need to be asked twice. He’d wanted to leave from the moment John Paul had referred to him as a Nancy, but he had manners and they had prevented him from leaving without an invitation to do so. He walked quickly to the door and opened it without looking back at the two brothers, who had their eyes fixed on him.

  He walked back towards the town and only stopped when he was sure that he was out of the brothers’ sight. He could feel his hands trembling with suppressed anger, and he tried to calm himself down. He was more than used to those sorts of reactions from the folk that he ran into on his travels, but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

  He was a believer in love. He didn’t believe that love should have boundaries, and he certainly didn’t believe that a man loving another man was a sickness, but he had grown to accept that what he believed wasn’t the general opinion and, in these kinds of towns, it was the general opinion that mattered more.

  He waited for his hands to steady themselves and then headed down the dusty road that led back into town. He could feel a whirlpool of thoughts rushing about in his mind over what had just been said about him, but he tried to ignore it. He knew that no good could come from getting upset over what other people thought of him.

  He roughly forced his mind into silence and then selectively brought out thoughts that he actually wanted to deal with. He had come to the town with a purpose, and he couldn’t forget about that just because he had been offended. He thought back what the bartender had told him the night before. His brother’s murderer was only a few days ahead of him, and that was the only thing that was important to him.

  ********

  All the shops in town were already open when Tommy finally made it back to the main street of the town. He stopped outside the saloon and looked down the long street as he tried to come up with some kind of plan. He had run out of nearly everything on his travels, and he really did need to stock up if he hoped to survive the harsh outback that he would be riding off into.

  He walked down the street and stopped outside of a small shop that was stacked high with tinned foods. The pricing didn’t look overly expensive and from Tommy’s brief glance down the street he was sure that it was the only food shop on the strip. He walked up the small wooden stairs that led to the door and listened to the bell chiming as he pushed it open.

  The shop smelt musty, as though it still had all of the winter’s rain stored within its walls. Tommy found himself taking many small breaths, trying to avoid the nasty smell. He picked up a few tins from the shelves without really looking at them and put them on the checkout desk. He watched as the woman behind the desk looked at him with pointed eyes.

  She could have been pretty. She had small, delicate features and skin that was much paler than the sunshine allowed for those parts, but the scowl that she was wearing ruined it for her. It seemed to twist her tiny features and distort them until all that was left on her face was a bitter look of discontentment.

  “I’m going to need you to put all of this back onto the shelves,” she said as her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  “I think you misunderstand,” Tommy said with a gentl
e shake of his head and warm smile. “I intend to buy all of these items.”

  “I haven’t misunderstood anything,” the woman said, and her scowl sharpened. “We don’t serve your kind in here.” She gestured for him to leave.

  “I’m sorry?” Tommy half asked in surprise. “What do you mean you don’t serve my kind in here?”

  “We’ve all had our orders off of the sheriff,” she explained, although Tommy could tell that she was doing so resentfully. “You’re not to be served in any of the shops on the strip.”

  “I see,” Tommy said, as he tried to hold him temper from flaring out of control. “Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t know if you just sold me some of this food,” he said as he tried to reason with the cold woman who stood in front of him.

  “I don’t care whether he would find out or not. I don’t want your kind in here. Now get out of my shop,” she said with a sharp tone that cut through the thick atmosphere and stench of musty, damp wood.

  “Well, thank you for your time, then,” Tommy said as he walked out of the shop, leaving all of the tins on the checkout desk for the woman to put away.

  He walked back down the creaking wooden steps and watched as plumes of red dust rose up around his feet and covered his leather boots. He sighed to himself as he realized that his supplies were not going to be replenished. He couldn’t quite believe that the sheriff had told the people of the town not to serve him. He’d suggested that he was a reasonable man, but his actions told a totally different story.

  Tommy slowly walked back to the post where he had left his horse. He had ridden into the town the night before with the hopes of finding shelter and supplies, but he was leaving the town defeated and almost broken. He knew that if he left the town with no supplies his survival would not be guaranteed when he set off into the outback. He wondered whether there was anybody in the entire town who would be willing to help him.

  He reached his horse and gave it a gentle pat before he noticed that somebody was feeding the horse some hay. “Excuse me, what are are you doing?” Tommy said quickly, as panic shot through his body. The reception he’d received in the town made his brain instantly jump to the idea that somebody was trying to poison his horse.

  “He looked hungry. I hope you don’t mind,” Greg said as he stepped away from the horse and into Tommy’s eyesight.

  Tommy didn’t say anything for a moment. He was too shocked at the change in Greg’s face to find any words. The handsome guy he’d left in the kitchen that morning had disappeared under a great deal of swelling and black bruises that were covering his left eye and most of his jawline.

  “What happened to you?” Tommy asked, forcing his arm to stay by his side. The image of Greg was causing his hands to feel the need to reach out, to gently stroke away the pain and to find whoever had done this to him so that he could give them the same treatment.

  “You know what happened,” Greg said, avoiding Tommy’s eyes.

  “Was this your brother?” Tommy asked, but he couldn’t believe it to be true, even though his gut was telling him that it was.

  “It was,” Greg said quietly. “He believes I knew about you before I brought you home last night, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters,” Tommy said with a frown playing across his face.

  “Believe me, my brother isn’t a person you want to fight,” Greg said with a look of concern in his eyes.

  “Perhaps he isn’t the kind of man that you’d fight, but trust me, I’m a lot stronger than I look,” Tommy said. He realized that leaving the town wasn’t an option anymore. Greg had been kind enough to offer him shelter and to Tommy that meant a debt was owed.

  “Look, I know you probably want to set off soon, but my brother is out all day on a planned raid, so if you want to come back to mine for a few hours before you set off, then you’re welcome,” Greg said with a forced casualness to his voice.

  Tommy looked at him for a moment with curious eyes. There was something in Greg’s voice that was pulling at Tommy’s mind, but he couldn’t work out what it was. “Are you sure that you want to invite the Nancy back into your house?” he asked with a look of disbelief on his face.

  “That was my brother’s term, not mine,” Greg said quickly and sharply. “Look, I know my brother has forced the town into shunning you and you’re going to need supplies. Come back to my place, clean yourself up and I’ll sort you some things out, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tommy said, because he could tell that Greg wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  *******

  Tommy walked back into the house that he’d been so quick to leave earlier that day and noticed how the atmosphere no longer felt heavy. Greg gestured for him to sit down at the table and he did so without saying anything.

  “Can I ask you something?” Greg said, as he put a pan full of water over the fire to heat up.

  “Sure, ask away,” Tommy said as he watched Greg.

  “How did you know that you were gay? I mean, like when did you realize?” Greg asked with eyes filled with curiosity.

  Tommy didn’t say anything for a moment. He could hear the small truths in Greg’s voice that revealed far more than his words did. “I think it was the first time that I slept with a woman,” Tommy answered him honestly. “I’d heard so much from my older brother about what it would be like, but it just wasn’t. I found the whole thing underwhelming, and at first I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought that perhaps I hadn’t done it right or that I had missed something, but then a group of travelers came to town one night and with them was this guy,” Tommy said. He let his mind drift back to the memory that he was sharing.

  “What happened with the guy?” Greg asked when he realized that Tommy had become so preoccupied with his thoughts that the story had long since left his mind.

  “Oh, right,” Tommy said, as he brought his attention back into the room. “Well, he was staying at a house close to mine and I heard him walking home one night in a drunken stupor. I went out to help him and, I don’t know, it all just happened, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Neither of us spoke about it before it happened and neither of us thought to after because it had been the right thing to do in that moment and we’d done it.”

  “What happened to him?” Greg asked as he passed over a steaming cup of hot water and lemon to Tommy and then took a seat at the table. His eyes were busy examining Tommy’s face, as though the story he had just told had somehow changed the way that he looked to him.

  “He left,” Tommy said with a small shrug.

  “Did you see him again?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Did you love him?” Greg asked as he leaned across the table, eager for the answer.

  “In some ways I did, but in the most important ways I didn’t,” Tommy said lightly.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Greg said with a deep look of confusion.

  “I loved him in the sense that he showed me who I really was. He gave me a chance to explore a side of me that I didn’t even know was there and because of him, I found what would make me happy in life, but I didn’t love him romantically. He was a great guy and he was mighty good looking, but I didn’t know him well enough or long enough to fall in love with him,” Tommy explained.

  “So, you don’t believe at love at first sight then?” Greg asked him when he’d finished explaining.

  “I don’t disbelieve it. I’ve just never experienced it,” Tommy answered.

  “You know, I am truly sorry for how my brother behaved towards you,” Greg said with a look of shame on his face.

  Tommy watched as Greg winced in pain at the simple movement on his facial features. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said with serious eyes that he forced Greg to look into. “If anything, it is me who should be sorry. After all you wouldn’t be covered in bruises if I hadn’t been here.”

  Greg shook his head with a look of shock on his face. “These bruises aren’t
because of you. They are because I disagreed with my brother,” Greg said quickly.

  “You disagreed with your brother over me, though, and that makes it my fault,” Tommy said calmly and with eyes full of apology.

  “I disagree with my brother over many things,” Greg insisted. “Since he took over as sheriff this whole town has gone downhill. This used to be a nice place to live, you know? People used to talk to each other in the street. We were peaceful and happy, until my brother started taking charge. Now the town seems hell-bent on closing itself off. We’re suspicious of strangers and hateful of people who are different. My brother is currently raiding a small Indian camp a few miles away from here. They’ve done us no harm. They’ve brought us no sadness, and yet my brother has seen fit to destroy them because they don’t live in the same way as us. It’s wrong and it seems like I’m the only person in this town who can see it.” Greg could feel his head shaking as he spoke.

  “Is there nothing you can do?” Tommy asked Greg. “I mean, he is your brother. Surely you could talk some sense into him?”

  Greg gestured up to his bruised and still-swollen face. “That’s what I get when I try to tell him that what he’s doing is wrong,” he said quietly.

  Tommy thought over all that Greg had said to him. He had planned on leaving before the following sunrise, but he knew that he couldn’t do that anymore. Greg had stuck up for him and offered him a place of rest when no one else was willing. He couldn’t just leave him in the hands of his intolerant and potentially dangerous brother.

  “Then it’s about time somebody else did something to stop him,” Tommy said with a voice that sounded much more resolved than it actually was.

  “I hope somebody does,” Greg said, but the miserable look in his eyes told Tommy that he didn’t believe it would be anytime soon.

  “Do you know of any place I might be able to spend the night without being turned away?” Tommy asked Greg when he looked out of the window and saw the sun was already starting to set.

  “You intend to stay until morning?” Greg asked him with big, shocked eyes.