Uncle Sean

by Ronald L Donaghe

  And Uncle Sean killed the engine. Then he turned in the seat and touched my shoulder, squeezing it. “But why? Do you have any idea what you’re telling me?”

  My eyes burned with tears. I’ve never been so afraid, and I was beginning to shake, but I had to tell him the truth. I held onto his hand on my shoulder. “I do, Uncle Sean. Ever since you been here, all I can think about is you. You’re beautiful! You got lips like a girl’s and I just wondered what it would feel like to kiss you. When you gave me that ‘shotgun’ I thought we was gonna kiss. And you make me feel all sweet inside.”

  Then Uncle Sean’s eyes got tears in them. “But I haven’t done anything, have I,” he said, sounding really funny, “to make you think—?”

  “No! No, Uncle Sean, you been real nice and polite. I don’t know why, but I know all I want is for you and me to be boyfriends, like—”

  I stopped real quick, because I was about to tell him something and it would make him mad.

  “Don’t you think,” he said, real gentle, “that you’re too young to be thinking about things like this?”

  I took a real deep breath, and tried to get my shaking under control. “I don’t know what you call it, Uncle Sean. I never dreamed about feelings like those that’s been running through me. I hurt so bad, I just had to see what it would feel like.”

  Then he smiled, but he was still sad. “If it’s nothing I did, then what made you think I would want that? What if, last night, when I found you in my bed, and you kissed me, what if I had beaten you up?”

  I didn’t like that, never even thought about it, but I said, “why would you do that?”

  “Because, Will, that’s what any guy would do to another one that did that.”

  But I knew Uncle Sean was lying to me, now, and that made me stop shaking.

  “That ain’t so,” I said. “Because I know things about you, Uncle Sean! I know you had a boyfriend, and his name was Theodore Seabrook, and I know he got killed in Vietnam. It’s him in that picture you have on your dresser, and you and him were boyfriends, and that’s why you was in that hospital down there in San Antonio.” By this time, I was wound up, and I had to get it all off my chest, and this whole time, Uncle Sean was looking at me and the questions in his eyes only grew bigger, and now he was breathing really heavy and his breath sounded ragged, but at least he hadn’t stopped touching my shoulder.

  So I went on. “I found things in your room, Uncle Sean. I know it was wrong of me to snoop, really bad wrong, just like it was for Daddy to go in there. But nobody would tell me why you were so hurt! You was in that hospital with wounds, all right, but maybe not from being shot, though nobody would say so. But I could just feel it, and I had to find out. I saw them dog tags, too, in the bottom of the box, and I saw that picture of T.S. signed to ‘my man,’ Uncle Sean. It was to you. You and him loved each other, so there are boys that won’t hit me if I kiss ’em. They’d kiss me back.”

  Then Uncle Sean said real low, like he was so mad he couldn’t talk, “You had no right to go through my things, Will. That was wrong, and it makes me doubt that I can trust you.”

  “No! Please Uncle Sean, you can. I didn’t mean to be bad. I only did it once, honest. And you were so sad. But I did one other thing that was bad,” I said. And I told him what I saw that one night I looked in the window at him. I left out the part about having a wet dream, though.

  By now Uncle Sean was looking like something I’d never seen anyone look like, kind of pasty faced, either so mad or so sad, it was nearly like he was sick to his stomach, even his lips were white, and I was sorry I’d made him look like that. It hurt so bad, I took a chance and scooted closer to him and tried to hug him, but he put his elbow up and kept me away.

  “Don’t touch me, Will,” he said, real quiet like. “Give me a minute.”

  So we sat there, with the noon sun baking the pickup with a hot breeze coming through the windows. We both got real quiet, and you could hear the crickets or grasshoppers start up in the gramma grass, like loud clacking all around us, and I could hear his breathing slow, and slow, and my heart pounding, because I had hurt him so bad, to make him look so pasty and washed out.

  Finally, he took a deep breath, himself. Then he nodded at me. “All right. I don’t know how you figured it out from so few things in my room, but you’re right,” he said. “And now you have to understand that you could turn your daddy and Arlene against me. Your daddy would blow my brains out, Will, if he knew what you know. That day he found that picture of me and Ted, he was already suspicious. All it would take”—

  “No!” I said, trying to keep from even thinking about Daddy taking down his shotgun from above the bed. “He wouldn’t. You’re kin! Mama and Daddy love you!”

  But Uncle Sean shook his head. “You’re wrong, Will. It’s just the way things are. There for a short few weeks, I thought that Ted and I could find that rare kind of happiness that so few gay men find. You’re right. We loved each other so much it hurt to be apart for even an instant, and that war tore everybody apart. But it just happened that it was also what brought him and me together. He wasn’t killed the way you think, though.”

  “You mean,” I said, “he wasn’t shot in a battle?”

  Then Uncle Sean laughed, but it hurt to hear the bitter way it sounded. “On no! He was murdered by one of our own. It’s called ‘friendly fire,’ but it wasn’t an accident.”

  Uncle Sean was using words that confused me, like ‘gay’ men and ‘friendly fire,’ and I remembered that Daddy said ‘faggots’ but I tried to hang onto what he was saying, the whole time watching his beautiful face go back to normal—instead of pasty white and angry, back to pretty and sad and hurt.

  He told me about the way our own American boys took care of other American boys they didn’t like, how lieutenants and captains got killed all the time by their own men.

  “Nobody gets prosecuted,” he said. “It’s just called friendly fire, because the commanders who run this war don’t want to let it out that our boys are miserable and dying uselessly—and killing each other. We’re not going to win,” he said, looking out the window, as if he were looking out across the desert, back, back to Vietnam, so far away, I couldn’t even imagine.

  Then he got back to talking about his boyfriend, telling me how Ted was shot one night in their camp as he came out of the latrine, right in front of him, and how he grabbed those dog tags, even though he wasn’t supposed to. “I needed something of him, Will, something real that would bring him back when I touched it. So I stole those tags.”

  I was crying again, and so was Uncle Sean.

  Then he said real quiet, “you’re the first person I’ve ever been able to tell that to, did you know that?”

  I started to answer, but he smiled at me. “Please, Will, you can never tell anyone about this. It may not seem like it to you, but to most people, but especially other men, being gay is something so horrible people won’t even talk about it. Do you understand?”

  I shook my head, because I didn’t. “All I wanted, Uncle Sean, honest, was just to see what it would feel like to kiss you! And I just wanted to know why you are so hurt! That’s all. Honest. But I won’t tell nobody.”

  By this time, Uncle Sean was pretty much really calmed down, and he smiled like his old self. “Then I thank you, Will. Just remember, though, it’s important to never let on to anybody that you’ve got thoughts about me like you say.”

  And then he started up the pickup, and by this time, I didn’t care, I moved over next to him and he put his arm around my shoulder, and it was not something that gave me a boner, not us being boyfriends or anything like that, but like when you hug somebody at a funeral, cause that’s how I felt, like I was with him to be sorry for his buddy T.S. being murdered.

  ***

  But I still want to kiss Uncle Sean. I just can’t get that out of my head.

  Five

  ———————▼———————

  For a few days, I felt ba
d. Real bad, cause of how I’d slept in Uncle Sean’s bed and it made him mad. And then how we kind of had a big fight and he looked all white and his lips were almost white and he cried so much. I laid awake those few nights crying, myself, but I couldn’t help feeling like I loved him so much it hurt.

  But it was sweet, too, that feeling. The hard part, though, was in the day, when Daddy and Mama started looking at me funny and, at breakfast, Uncle Sean was real quiet, as usual, but I saw Daddy looking at him all suspicious like.

  Then Mama got me off in the living room and she said, “There’s something wrong with you, Will. Did Sean do something to you?”

  “No!” I said, but a little too fast. “Uncle Sean’s always been polite and nice to me, even though I’m a kid, Mama.”

  But she grabbed my chin in her hand, and looked at my face, right in my eyes. She had her cigarette in the other hand and took a drag, then looked back in my eyes. “You’re not getting enough sleep, and I see you’ve been crying.”

  I didn’t say nothing cause she hit the bull’s eye, though how she knew I been crying is hard to figure. But she’s my mama and I’m pretty sure she’s got eyes in the back of her head and can hear better than the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.”

  So as much as I could, I tried to steer clear of both Mama and Daddy and spend as much time with Uncle Sean as I could. The neat thing was, I think he was a little happier, now that we had our talk. Now, when we’re out in the field, or working on something in the barn, and we both know Daddy or the girls ain’t around, he tells me things. But he always says I can’t tell nobody.

  And now, I’m even jittery about writing in this tablet so much. I been doing it almost every day, so whenever I finish, I put it back in the sack it come in and tuck it up under the rafters, here in the loft. It’s a good thing we don’t use this loft no more, though there’s moldy hay, still even a few bales. But Daddy says it costs more’n it’s worth to run milk cows like we used to when I was a kid.

  There’s also something else I been doing up here in the loft, and that’s having wet dreams. I get to thinking about Uncle Sean and writing it down, and since I learned how to have them, I just lay back and let it happen, cause I know the other boys on the bus do, too, and I don’t believe that stuff they say about hair in my palms, neither. Only it’s kind of sad, me doing this, cause I feel let down afterwards. Least I don’t get my underpants sticky at night when I’m asleep.

  ***

  I’ve got to write this! Yesterday was Saturday and way before dark, maybe five or so, I was heading up to the loft, early. I got all my chores done, which ain’t really much, since we shut the water off in the fields and the corn’s too tall to chop weeds in. So I was climbing up the ladder, and in comes Uncle Sean and he calls me down. I never told him I go up there near every day, and he don’t seem to wonder. So, anyway, he comes into the barn and he’s already had a bath and is wearing a real shirt again, and my throat gets all choked up, cause I don’t like him to go off without me. But he says “you need a bath, because you and me are going over to Deming to the movies!”

  I ain’t been to the movies since “Swiss Family Robinson” a few years ago, and just the thought made me happy. “Are the girls already bathed?” I asked, cause I thought we was all going, though Daddy ain’t much on movies is why we don’t go so much.

  But Uncle Sean shakes his head. “It’s gonna just be you and me, Will.” And I feel sorry for the girls, thinking about doing something neat like go to the movies, and he says “you don’t look too thrilled. I thought you’d want to do it. Just you and me.”

  When that sinks in I laugh and think why not? Cause they went to Julie Collins’ birthday party and didn’t seem too broke up that I didn’t get invited, and before I know it, I’m hugging Uncle Sean like a little kid.

  “Then you better hurry. I thought maybe we’d get hamburgers once we got there.”

  So in about twenty minutes I’m so clean I squeak, and I pull out one of my school shirts and put it on, one of my favorites if you want to know. I like the way I look in it, and I slick back my hair like Uncle Sean, and I put on my best Levi’s and saddle-soap my best boots.

  Trinket’s crying cause she knows I’m going to the movies and she ain’t, but Rita and May say they don’t want to go, though I know they’re kind of mad, and they tell Trinket, “come on and we’ll play dolls with you, and you can be the Mama.”

  Just as we were leaving, Daddy hands me five dollars and says “your uncle said he was gonna pay your way, but I think you ought to be able to pay for the show yourself.” So I take the money and stick it in my pocket, and it kind of hits me, like it was a few years ago with my older sisters when their boyfriends come and picked them up. Uncle Sean and me are going on a date! Of course, I ain’t gonna tell him that. And I’m thinking I’m gonna call it a date, sure enough!

  But that ain’t the best part. All this was just so I could write about how things happened, and how it felt. Because last night, when we went to the movies, I got a little proof that other guys like to have boyfriends. Course I also understood a little of what Uncle Sean said to me a few days ago,

  how other guys would bust your head open, cause they don’t like it.

  This is how it happened.

  It didn’t take us no time to get to Deming in Uncle Sean’s ’57 Chevy, cause he keeps it tuned. It was still real light out when we headed north up 146 toward Interstate 10, and then it was about twenty minutes to go the thirty miles into Deming. We had the windows down and I was sitting kind of in the middle of the seat, but not close enough that Uncle Sean would get mad and tell me to scoot back over. But I was close enough that I could put my arm over the seat and drop my hand down on his shoulder. This time, I did have a boner, cause I was so happy that we were doing something fun together, instead of working in the fields.

  And he might’ve been a little skittish for me to do that, but he let me. We talked a lot and he told me he knew about this show we was going to see, called “Midnight Cowboy,” and I asked him if he’d seen it and he said no, but when he was in Lordsburg that night he heard some of the people at the bar talking about it, cause they’d seen it and walked out in the middle of it cause they said it was a little too queer for them.

  I got this funny feeling in my stomach at that word, cause kids call each other queer, though I never knew what they really meant, but I had a kind of uneasy feeling it was kind of like I feel about Uncle Sean. But since he hadn’t seen it and I hadn’t we both just had to wait.

  We pulled into Deming just as the sun was setting behind us, and it was one of them clear skies you get out here in the desert, where the blue hangs on in the west for a long time after the sun goes down. But tonight there was a full moon coming up over them Florida mountains, and my heart was beating fast, cause it was me and Uncle Sean, and in the dusky light as we drove into town, he sure enough looked about as pretty as he’d ever looked, and I had to concentrate real hard on not having a wet dream.

  Deming is a big city compared to Animas where I will be going to high school this fall, and it’s probably five times as big as Lordsburg, which is why Mama comes over here to shop for school clothes in the fall. So all the lights were coming on when we headed down the main drag, and we drove right past the Rio Grande theater, where the sign sure enough said “Midnight Cowboy,” and we went on through town, and cars were buzzing all over the place, and we ate at the A&W on the east end of town. Just me and Uncle Sean.

  Kids with cars and pickups buzzed around the A&W, too, honking and parking and getting out and walking up to each other’s cars. The thing is, Deming draws people from that little town of Common east of here, and probably Columbus and Lordsburg and Animas, least for kids that’s got money and cars and such. But lots of high schoolers. We play most of them schools in basketball in season, but of course I didn’t recognize nobody.

  But Uncle Sean, he looks better to me than any of the other guys I see running around and strutting around like they
’re movie actors. We kept our windows down and Uncle Sean was having a good time, too. Ever once in awhile, playing with me like he’s been doing since we had our big talk, he pointed out some girls, and says don’t I like them better’n him, and I say no. Then he pointed out a couple of guys, and says are they pretty? And I look and sure enough, they are, but I just have to look at him and say no.

  We ate hamburgers and fries and milk shakes, but when I tried to give him my five dollars, he says save it. It’s on him. That made me smile, because even if he weren’t gonna call this our date, him paying made it like that to me.

  Later, we drove back through town and parked in the lot east of the Rio Grande Theater, and this is where I got a little proof. This yellow pickup pulled up and parked next to us and these two guys got out. One of ’em is taller than the other, and he’s real pretty with dark eyes and dark hair and real clean looking features. Even Uncle Sean looked in their direction. But this other one, the shorter one is really pretty, like Uncle Sean. He’s got the most shiny blond hair I’ve ever seen, almost like gold, and he looked over at me and smiled, even said “howdy.” Then him and the other guy walked off and stood in line, and I’m not making this up, or seeing things that ain’t there, the pretty blond threw his arm over the other one’s shoulder and even when a car went by and called out “faggots!” it didn’t even make the blond guy flinch, except to kind of draw the other one closer.

  Then they walked up to two other guys in the line, like they knew them, and as we walked up, I heard the blond one call the other one “babe!”

  Uncle Sean and I looked at each other, and I saw he was thinking what I was and heard what I did, cause he smiled real big at me and lightly touched my shoulder.

  Anyway, we made it into the theater and got seats right behind the four guys who were friends, and I know they’re friends, cause they’re sitting together and talking before the movie starts. It was weird, one thing: one of the four guys is really a sissy boy, and pretty like a girl would be and he’s with this nice looking man who looked quite a bit older, and while they were talking the sissy guy kind of screeches and I can hear guys behind us say “fuckin faggot” real low like. That made my ears burn, because I knew that word, too, and it’s like “queer” and I think it’s supposed to mean the same thing, which I didn’t know until right then. And then I thought about what my sister May said about Daddy telling Uncle Sean him and his friend in the picture looked like faggots, and I understood right then why Uncle Sean is so afraid that Mama and Daddy would get mad if Uncle Sean was to do something to me.