The parking lot was a battleground. A fist fight was drawing a crowd and some girl was screaming and crying because her boyfriend was getting beat up, sounding to Joel more like cries of pleasure; a bunch of wiry girls were having a cat fight of some sort, crying and shrieking. A pickup and a Cadillac had wrecked in the bumper-car madhouse and both drivers were fighting it out with their doors open and the engines snarling, locked together at the bumpers. Joel and Tom stumbled through it all. It was just another Friday night, but Tom clung to his neck. Two guys falling all over each other in the parking lot was not an unusual sight, except Tom wouldn’t quit trying to kiss him.
When they got to the pickup, Joel fumbled for the keys in his pocket. Tom was leaning against the hood of the pickup, bleary-eyed and holding onto Joel’s shoulder, grinning and making funny faces. “Wha’s a matter? Wha’happened?”
“Man, we coulda been beat up in there!” Joel said, as he opened the door on his side and shoved Tom in far enough to squeeze in beside him. He got the pickup turned around and headed down the gravel road. Tom was in no condition to be taken home, for sure, so instead of turning left at the gate, Joel turned right and drove through the edge of the old air base and pulled up against the dark shadow of a building that was sagging and abandoned. When he killed the engine, the clatter of crickets rose up from the tumble-weeds growing wildly against the walls. In the dark, in the steamy heat, Joel’s embarrassment faded, and he just laughed when Tom took his hand off the steering wheel and pulled his arm around him. Joel pulled him close. “Why are you acting so.? Don’t you know what we just did?” But it was no use trying to explain what had happened. Tom didn’t seem to care.
He felt Tom’s hand on his thigh in the dark, moving slowly toward his crotch again and, this time, he let the feelings build. He spread his legs just a little, jerkily, against Tom. Tom moved closer and started doing something to his ear, making it wet and warm. “I love you,” Tom breathed. Then he cried out, his voice edged with frustration. “Pleeese! Do-oo it!”
“What?” Joel said, feeling nervous. His legs began to shake. “What?”
Tom moved against him and sat up with his face close to Joel’s. In the darkness, Joel couldn’t make out his features. His clean-shaven skin reflected light from somewhere, but it was so faint, his skin had a ghost-like sheen, an indistinct glow. “This!” Tom whispered. He kissed Joel then, a real kiss, warm and deep. And Joel kissed back hard, amazed that they were mouth to mouth; Tom’s lips were full and warm against his, and he recalled how stiff and dead it had felt to kiss girls. They kissed until it felt familiar, and the only sounds were their excited breathing and the soft sucking of their lips. Tom’s clean, sweet smell drove Joel crazy.
They pulled at each other’s clothes and Tom ran his hands under Joel’s shirt and down into the back of his Levi’s. Joel pulled at Tom’s belt, unbuttoned his pants, and slid his own hands down into the warmth of Tom’s crotch, fumbling gently with the underwear he had exposed. With the tips of his fingers, he felt the elastic against the soft skin of Tom’s abdomen, then the pubic hairs. It was hard to get at him with Tom crushed up against his chest. Joel lay down in the seat and pulled Tom onto him, slid both hands back into Tom’s shorts, and pushed them off his unbelievably smooth butt. Tom helped Joel shed his own clothing and, in a few quick strokes, they were naked and lay crushed against each other. The heat of Tom’s naked skin against him, the throbbing of the hard, slick flesh pressing against his own made Joel cry out. He tried to move away, realizing even then that it would get messy but, at the same time, Tom began gasping and shaking, and Joel let go, as well. In their frenzy, Tom bit down on Joel’s lip, and he tasted blood. In a few seconds, their stomachs had become slick.
Afterwards, lying together, smeared and sticky like kids at a birthday party, Joel tried to kiss Tom again, but he drew away. His strange quiet was more disturbing to Joel than the dance, or their sex. Tom shook his head wordlessly when Joel tried to talk to him and fought him off irritably when he tried to clean them up. He pushed roughly away and clawed into his clothes. Joel dressed as quickly as he could, thinking insanely that they would go someplace for hamburgers and he would find out what the matter was. He kept stealing glances in the dark at Tom against the other door. But when he tried to speak, the words wouldn’t come out.
As they pulled into town in the late night, oddly light and beginning to grow cold, he cut west and drove straight to Tom’s house behind the church. When he pulled up in the driveway, Joel managed to say, “Goodnight, Tom.” But he slipped out of the pickup, shut the door, and walked away without a word.
* * *
He hugged himself tightly now to stop the shakes. Yeah…you were supposed to feel ashamed. But in the soft familiar light of his room, Joel realized he didn’t. In the crazy play of feelings crawling over him, he knew nothing would ever feel as wonderful.
He tossed his underwear onto the rug and pulled his Levi’s over his aching, mindless erection.
He brushed his teeth, rinsed his hair with cold water from the sink and, as he walked through the house to the kitchen pulling on his shirt, he tried to dispel the feelings of dread. He would wait; when he saw Tom at the church where he worked on Saturdays, Tom would know what to say. He would be able to explain how things had happened; why, after all this time, they had stepped over that invisible line between friendship and. He laughed without humor at a thought so alien, he stopped in mid-stride. There was a name for what they had done, but Tom would explain it, so fuck it.
CHAPTER 2
The house was quiet except for his father, Douglas Reece, in the kitchen, rattling around at the sink. He figured his mother was already in her garden, taking advantage of the last coolness of the morning. Douglas didn’t look at him when he walked in. “Up already, Son?”
Joel yawned.
Douglas poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him, smiling very slightly—with one of his jokes, no doubt.
Joel braced himself for it, knowing that particular smile. “What time is it?”
“’Bout eight.”
“Oh.”
“Yep, it is. But I didn’t expect you up ‘fore noon.” He chuckled. “Here. Drink up. You’ve got a few hours before the tailwater reaches the other end. I got the irrigation early, today.”
Joel took his cup of coffee to the breakfast table by the window. He yawned again.
“Got in kinda late, huh?”
Joel squinted at him. “Around five, I guess. I fell asleep in the pickup.”
“Figured that. Coffee’s good for a hangover if you got one.”
Joel shook his head.
Douglas looked out the window toward the fields for a moment, then looked back at Joel, again, his expression serious. “You left a damn mess in the pickup. Smelled like a brewery this morning. I threw your beer cans out for you.”
Joel caught his father’s eyes and looked quickly away, wondering what other kind of mess he’d left. “Sorry, Dad.”
“Just clean up your messes, Joel,” he said, then grinned across the table. “Yes, ma’am, looks to me like you slept real hard. Found me a perfectly good pair of undershorts on the floor board, too. Been needin’ me a grease rag if you can spare ‘em.”
Joel felt his face go crimson, knowing that the underwear was Tom’s. He ducked his head and laughed. His father had made his point and had had his fun and, after he’d let Joel suffer under his gaze for a minute, he slapped his knees. “Well,” he said, and pushed himself out of the chair and strode to the door leading into the garage.
Joel followed at a safe distance, feeling like an asshole, but in the driveway, Douglas laid out the work as if nothing had happened. He patted him on the shoulder. “Build up those borders, Joel. Don’t let the irrigation water break down at the end or it’ll cause a washout. That patch slicks water through quick. Check the hoses and set up more tarps on down the ditch. Meantime, I’ll set up the cultivator.”
Joel ran to the pickup, glad to get away.
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br /> The air was already hot at the south end of the field where he parked. In the dry desert air, he could hear the irrigation pumps on neighboring farms, their old engines droning like low-flying crop dusters. Nearby on the Hotchkiss farm he could hear their old “Poppin’ Johnnie” tractor running up and down the field. To the east across the green patches of cotton and pecan orchards, the rocky Florida mountains towered above the valley, still hazy blue in the early sunlight. From the north, he heard the highway traffic moving through town, and nearby, all the ordinary sounds of the desert morning.
He went to work immediately, mechanically, shutting out all thought of the night before, and soon he was lost in the work. When sweat soaked his shirt, he peeled it off and tossed it into the shade near the pickup. He stopped long enough to drink from the canvas water bag that always hung from the tailgate of the pickup, letting the tepid water roll down his throat and neck. For several hours he worked tirelessly. As usual, the work made him happy. He liked feeling strong. He liked the musty smell of the earth as he dug, straining his muscles against the earth’s weight, forming a border of dirt at the end of the plant beds almost knee-high and stretching over a hundred yards.
He liked the clean sweat to roll down his back. When a short breeze came up, he unbuttoned his Levi’s to allow the air to dry the crack of his butt where the sweat ran in rivulets. He stretched occasionally to flex his abdominal muscles. When he stopped working, he was satisfied that the border at the end of the furrows would hold the irrigation water. It would collect at this end by mid-afternoon. Already, the silver strands of the water in the furrows between the beds of tender cotton plants were beginning to lengthen across the field.
The sun was almost above him, near eleven o’clock. He tossed his shirt into the pickup and slid into the seat, wincing when his back touched the hot vinyl. Dust boiled behind him as he drove around the field toward the other end; the powdery brown fog settled into the creases of his neck, mixing with the sweat.
At the north end of the field, the water flowed smoothly through the irrigation hoses lined up row by row in the ditch. He jumped across it and knelt down to drink and wash in the cold water. He splashed himself until the water ran off in streams, then went back to work feeling cool as the air dried his skin. After setting tarps to dam the water farther down the ditch, he tossed more siphon hoses along the ditch bank for the next patch of irrigation. This set would be started in the late afternoon and would run all night.
He found his father still working on the cultivator. Joel dusted his pants and scraped his boots on the tractor wheel. Douglas found a loose nut and tightened it. “There!” He looked up, squinting at the sun. “You done already?”
“Yeah.”
“Tarps ‘er set?”
“Every ninety rows, like you said. And I did the borders for the next three sets.”
Douglas stood up and slapped him on the shoulder. “Guess you have your chores to do this evening, but there’s not much else. I need some diesel fuel for the tractor, if you don’t mind goin’ to town.” He brought out his wallet, fingered a few bills, and gave Joel a ten. “Put in maybe twenty gallons. Truckstop’s got it for sixteen-nine. Gotta girlfriend you wanna see?”
“Naw. Just Tom.” Joel felt a tingle of excitement remembering and felt his face turn pink. He looked away, pocketing the bill quickly, and waited for his father to show him how well the cultivator would work.
* * *
The blacktop stretched in front of him, heat-spiked with the noon sun. Hot air blew into the window, dry as a blast furnace, but his forehead still ran with sweat and his eyes watered in the heat. He passed cotton fields, corn fields, cotton gins, and trailer parks, and everything was on fire in the blinding light; it formed heat waves on the highway like puddles of mercury. As he pulled into town, the heat seemed to grow worse, rising off the concrete and the whitewashed buildings. He passed the old air base and remembered crossing the railroad tracks right here at this intersection last night with Tom in the pickup, ominously silent.
In the broad, clear daylight with the relentless desert beyond, all was stark and naked. Everything was familiar and ordinary, but strange, too, like something he experienced once on a trip to Arizona to visit his aunt and uncle. They lived in a trailer park by the edge of the highway to Phoenix, in the middle of nowhere.
Joel remembered the boy he had met there, a few years older than he was. One evening they met by chance in the community bathhouse at the trailer park. They had played shuffle board earlier that day after the adults had gone indoors. Joel had liked the guy immediately, so when they met in the shower, they had begun talking and horsing around. The guy, Mark, was friendly but began trying to treat Joel like a girl, telling Joel he sure was pretty. At first, Joel felt funny, then let Mark play with his genitals. His first orgasm was a surprise, especially since the guy had it in his mouth. Joel was frightened and excited then. And just like now, the next morning he felt strange. He hugged his aunt and uncle, when he was getting ready to leave, the whole time feeling like he would explode wanting to talk about what had happened between him and Mark, but realizing he couldn’t. When they drove past the bath house on the way out of the trailer park, he felt a wash of anxiety that was strangely mixed with a kind of pleasure. I’m different now was all he’d been able to think.
Saturday shoppers milled slowly about on the sidewalks. The heat hugged everything like syrup. Some guys were shirtless, and he wondered now if other guys really did it too, if the jokes about queers were true; but it made him feel uneasy.
Tom would be able to sort things out. He would be getting off work soon and they could talk about it. He remembered how quiet Tom had been afterwards, and that bothered him. But considering that Tom had started things, he was sure Tom was only shocked, or maybe a little embarrassed by what they had done. To Joel, it had been a little like the guilt rush he used to get after jacking off.
The truckstop was busy; semis huffed off the highway, belching black smoke as they idled around the fuel pumps. Drivers camped out in the cafe. Joel leaned against the wall, waiting until one of the trucks left, then he moved the pickup to a pump, climbed in the back of the pickup, and started filling the oil drum with diesel. He was careful to put exactly the amount his father wanted, because the rest of the money was his. And he wanted to treat Tom to lunch. Exhaust stung his nose. Heat rose off the hoods of the big semis, and he felt the gaseous fumes seeping into the pores of his skin and making him feel gritty.
In the men’s room at the truckstop, above the urinal, someone had scrawled in a quick, firm hand with a lead pencil: “I’ll suck any cock as long as it’s fat, hard, and juicy.” Below that was the message, “Call Lucy!” He snickered grimly to himself, struck by the idea that only a man could have written that in here. He’d seen this message in other public toilets around town, all the work of “Lucy;” but he’d never felt more than mild curiosity about it. Today, he felt a begrudging kinship with him. Again, the idea struck him that he was supposed to feel ashamed, but that wasn’t quite it; the novelty of it was interesting, secretly pleasurable, not really disgusting or anything. Unless all other guys like that Lucy are weirdoes, he thought. That would make it pretty unbearable.
At Tom’s church, Joel parked under a shade tree. He hurried inside and tucked his shirttail in on impulse, and like a man who has just removed a hat, he smoothed down his hair, thinking of Tom. In the vestibule, his boots sounded solid on the tile. A vacuum cleaner roared inside the chapel, which meant Tom was almost done. Good. He would tell him he’d wait in the pickup. He smiled as he pushed open the heavy polished doors and walked down the center aisle, sinking into the thick carpet. Tom was running the vacuum behind the pulpit with his head down, and Joel waited for him to look up.
When he did, Joel caught his breath. Tom’s eyes were swollen and red. He looked awful. He jerked his head and frowned.
Joel leaped over the wooden railing in front of the pulpit. “You been in a fight?”
&n
bsp; Tom glared at him over the lectern and yelled, “Wait!” He jerked the electric cord from the wall, keeping his face down as he coiled it. He shoved the vacuum into the room behind the pulpit. Joel followed and stood in the doorway.
“Hey! What’s the matter?”
Tom shoved the vacuum violently into some boxes and fell recklessly into them. Joel thought he was having a fit or something. But then Tom stopped and turned around. “You should know, Joel!” he said. His face was a blur of anger and shock. “What are you doing here anyway? Aren’t you the least bit ashamed?”
Joel looked around at the empty chapel and shrugged at Tom blankly. “C’mon man, don’t I always come on Saturdays?”
“Never mind,” Tom said, disgusted. “I knew you’d come. You always do, don’t you, Joel? Always. You’re as dependable as a dog.” Tom stopped then and frowned, started to say something, then clacked his tongue. He looked around as though he were trying to find something to do. He pushed Joel and ran out into the church.
Joel followed, embarrassed and angry. “Hold on, damn it!”
“Okay, Joel. As soon as I lock up. Then we’ll talk.”
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