by JD Ruskin
“Now then,” Aunt Kate continued, “I think we should set aside one week next summer that’s only for gay teens and their families.”
“Hmmm,” Uncle Karl said.
“That’s a great idea,” Sarah said.
“Just make sure you put up condom dispensers by the swim pond, because they’ll all be having sex every night,” Jesse said.
Sarah and Aunt Kate shrieked his name in unison. Uncle Karl frowned.
“What?” Jesse said. “I don’t care if they’re straight or gay, the one thing all teenage boys want to do is—”
“That’s enough, Jesse,” Sarah scolded.
“Why don’t you two just get married right now and get it over with?” I asked. “You already sound like an old married couple.”
“That is not what I had in mind,” Aunt Kate said to Jesse.
“You don’t want Sarah and me to get married?” he asked.
“That’s not what I meant either,” my aunt sputtered.
Sarah blushed. Jesse started laughing, and Uncle Karl joined in. My aunt was reacting just the way Jesse wanted her to, the way only he could make her. I began to laugh too, and it felt… good.
“Why do you want to do this, Kate?” my uncle asked at last.
“There are awful stories out there about the bullying of gay children,” she replied. “Look what happened to Josh.”
“Hey, I’m not a child.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jesse said. “You couldn’t defend yourself very well from what I heard.”
“It was four on one, and the first guy I punched fell at my feet and I tripped over him.” I sat up straight ready to take on my brother.
“That’s how you’re going to tell it,” Jesse said, his dimples deepening as he grinned.
“I am.” The look on his face made me start laughing again.
“Anyway,” my aunt interrupted. She sounded irritated, but it was an act. “I think it would be great to bring kids from all over the country together here to ride, fish, tour the park, and talk with each other. Maybe we bring in some special counselor for that week. Summer camps for gay children are all over the Internet.”
“What week would we pick and how would we get the word out?” Uncle Karl asked.
“We could look at the week this summer that had the fewest repeat families and choose that one,” she answered. “We don’t want to disrupt too many of our regulars.”
“I could help with finding the counselor,” Sarah said.
“I suppose we’d just advertise on different Internet sites, or in a special magazine,” Jesse said.
“And if we weren’t full up that week, well, it wouldn’t hurt us for just one week, Karl,” Aunt Kate said.
“You do realize some of your friends and neighbors are going to react badly to this?” Velma Baker’s face sprang to my mind.
“Bring it,” Jesse said fiercely.
“What about the hands?”
“We’d be honest with the full-timers and the summer help too, and if they didn’t like it, they could find work elsewhere. Simple,” Jesse replied.
Sarah smiled broadly at me.
“Besides those concerns,” Uncle Karl said, “how do you feel about the idea, Josh?”
“I like it.”
“Then we’ll do it,” he said, looking around the room. “We need to get the publicity and the full season calendar out in the next two weeks to meet our Thanksgiving deadline, though,” he added.
“Not a problem, dear,” my aunt replied. “I’ve been working on that already.”
“I’ll bet you have,” he said, smiling at her.
He hit the sound button on the remote again.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Sarah went back to her apartment to get ready for school, and Jesse talked me into coming over to his house. We sat in front of the TV for a while watching the football game, but not really watching it either.
“Josh? Would you move in with me while we….”
“Yeah.” My reply was immediate, my gut reaction. Neither of us wanted to wait alone. “I’ll move my clothes later.”
“Great! Let’s go into Livingston and get groceries then.”
“You just want a cook.”
“That’s not all.”
“I know.”
We returned with enough groceries for an army. We should have made a list. I made pizza for dinner, and we sat around and watched the night game.
“I’ll get your old bed ready for you,” Jesse offered.
“I’m good on the couch. I’ve got it all warmed up.”
He nodded and disappeared. A few minutes later, he returned with a pillow and blankets.
“You going to tuck me in too?”
He smiled sheepishly. “If you want. Lift your head.”
He put the pillow under my head and draped the blankets around me.
“The hands and I will take care of the horses by the big barn tomorrow. You concentrate on Hurricane and stuff over here, okay?”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You need to take it easy. You look like you’re not getting any sleep.”
He was worried about me, on top of his own worries for Dane.
“Jesse, you don’t have to make anything up to me. We’re back to being like always on my end.”
“I know, but maybe I want to… be extra nice to you.”
“Hey, I won’t argue with that.”
“Night, little brother.”
“Night, Jesse.”
I ENDED up staying at Jesse’s for the next couple weeks, and they seemed like they dragged on longer than the whole rest of my life had lasted. Jesse and I went our separate ways sometimes, and sometimes I joined him to help out with the cattle. Sarah stopped by each afternoon, and we all ate dinner with Aunt Kate and Uncle Karl. Sometimes she spent the night at Jesse’s too, and I stayed on the couch and put a pillow over my head. But they were careful to be real quiet. I never heard anything.
The nights were the worst. When Jesse and I were alone, we passed the time watching news reports on Afghanistan or sports programs, or staring at the phone.
Finally one night, the thing rang.
Jesse jumped out of his chair to answer it, and I hit the mute on the TV. Suddenly, there was nothing in the room but Jesse and the telephone. I barely breathed as I listened to him talk.
“Dane, buddy, it’s good to hear from you.”
Jesse shot me an excited look, and then he didn’t talk for a bit. Clearly Dane was talking about something important. I started pacing the room.
“Oh, yeah, I understand,” he said at last. “Hey, man, you’re not going to believe—Josh is here. You want to talk to him?”
I took a couple quick steps toward Jesse, then realized he was frowning. Another silence that stretched too long followed.
“I understand.”
Jesse looked at me but kept the phone plastered to his ear.
Then his lips started moving, though no sound came out. “Say something to him,” he mouthed.
I gulped. Jesse held the phone away from his ear.
“Tell him…,” I began.
Jesse waved his hand to get my attention. “Louder,” he whispered.
My fists clenched. I cleared my throat and started again, louder this time, picturing Dane’s face in front of me. “Tell Dane that we all want the ranch to be his home always, no matter what… Tell him I’m waiting for him—if he wants. Ask him, ask him if that’s worth the coming home.”
Jesse nodded at me and started talking into the phone again. “Yeah, bro. Got it. Do the job and get back here….”
“Dane!” I shouted. “Stay alert, Dane!”
And then I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t bear to hear another thing without hearing Dane’s voice too. I bolted out the door, and it banged shut behind me. I didn’t remember pushing it hard, but I must have.
On the front porch, I wasn’t sure what to do. I had no place to go really. I leaned against the railing and stared up at the stars, clutch
ing my arms to my sides against the cold.
After a while, I heard Jesse open the door. When I turned around, he was holding it open.
“Come on back in, Josh.”
“Why wouldn’t he talk to me? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Is he on his way home?”
“No. They’re launching the mission within twenty-four hours. He wanted us to know.”
“You to know. He wanted you to know. Why wouldn’t he talk to me?”
Jesse rubbed his forehead like he was trying to scrape paint off it.
“He wanted to let you know too. But he needs to keep his mind on the job. Josh, Dane is leading the team, and he can only think about the job right now. That’s why he didn’t want to talk to you. The only reason. You understand me?”
I stared at him like he was talking in a foreign language.
“I mean it, Josh. He heard you. You said just the right things. He was glad to hear you.”
“You don’t know that. He didn’t say that.”
“I know it’s true. It’s what I’d want to hear if I was in his place.”
He opened the door wider. “Will you come in now? It’s freezing out here.”
Jesse wouldn’t move until I did, so I made myself go inside. He shut the door behind me.
Back in the living room, he pointed me toward the sofa, and I sat down. He walked over to lean against the stone wall behind the wood stove. I couldn’t tell if he really needed to lean against it to support himself after the phone call or if he was simply warming up.
“When will it be over, Jesse?”
“He couldn’t say things straight out, you understand? But this is a crazy-tough mission. It could take hours. It could take days. They have to get in position and then wait for things to fall into place.”
“And if things don’t?”
“Then they force them. At some point, you just gotta make a move. And that’s all up to the leader, to Dane, to decide. But he’s part of a great team of guys. I know one of them. He was with us in the Rangers. He was really, really good at a lot of things.”
“What are their chances?”
He looked at me like he wished I hadn’t asked. He stepped away from the wall and bent over, rubbing both palms on his jeans for a bit before he looked at me and answered. “They’re not the best. But Dane is, and so are the guys with him. And they all want to come home. Especially Dane. You made sure he’s feeling that way. You just keep remembering that, you understand?” Jesse’s last remark came out louder and fiercer than the rest, like a kind of command of his own.
I nodded, staring at him, trying to read between the lines. Despite his reassurances, I was pretty certain that if I imagined the worst possible things, I was closest to the truth.
He walked into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open and close. He returned with two bottles of beer. He handed me one and raised his.
“To Dane and the mission.”
“To Dane and the mission.” I tapped his bottle and downed half of mine.
Jesse sat down on the couch next to me, and we looked at the stove awhile. Every now and then we’d hear a hiss or crackle. Eventually, he got up to add more wood, and I finally remembered to turn the TV sound back on.
THE PHONE didn’t ring the next day or the next night, or the night after that. I went through the motions and did what I had to during the day. I even went to bed at night, but I never slept. I kept remembering that first time with Dane, when I discovered all his scars.
The second night, even though I tried not to, I pictured him getting new ones. I couldn’t stop myself, hard as I tried. It was like a real-life horror movie taking place before my eyes, full of violent, bloody red images of Dane being stabbed, shot, blown up, tortured. I got up and started pacing around the house.
When it was clear I’d woken Jesse, I went outside and walked around the house till my fingers froze. I came back in finally, and wrapped myself in Dane’s jacket. I’d brought it to my brother’s house along with my clothes. It still smelled like him, and it was the only thing that helped. I didn’t sleep, but at least I could sit still when I wrapped myself in it.
“Come back, Dane. Please come back.” I chanted it like a prayer until the sun came up.
THE FOURTH afternoon, Jesse came looking for me while I was exercising Hurricane. The horse was the only thing keeping me together. I spent most of every day with him.
“How you holding up?”
“Not. How about you?”
“Not good, but better than you. Sarah thinks the three of us should go out to dinner.”
“But what if someone calls?”
“Whoever it is will leave a message. They’ve got my cell. Dane promised me that we’d be contacted by the company, whatever….”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and I didn’t want him to. “Where you want to go?”
“You pick,” he said.
“Cunningham’s.”
Jesse looked at me in surprise.
“Why not? So many things could go wrong that it’s sure to keep my mind off Dane.”
“Works for me,” he said. “And don’t worry, Josh. I’ve got your back.”
“I know.”
“I’ll buy.”
“You bet you will.”
Sarah agreed to meet us at the bar, and we took off. Jesse pulled into the parking lot, turned off the truck, and opened his door. But I hesitated. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay, Josh. I’m backing you. And if some dumb fucker wants to fight, we’ll fight and we’ll win.”
I nodded. “I appreciate that. Let’s not let it go that far, though.”
“Okay.”
We walked in, and I scanned the room only long enough to locate Sarah, who was holding down a table for six. I headed straight for it without looking anywhere else. Jesse followed behind me.
“Awful big table,” I said to her. “You expecting company?”
“You just never know,” she said, a big smile on her face. It seemed like she was hiding something, but I couldn’t figure what.
“Okay,” I said at last. I sat down beside her.
“How are you doing?”
I shrugged.
“So, two PBRs and a Coors?” Jesse asked.
“I’ll just have an iced tea,” Sarah said.
“Coming up.” He headed for the bar.
“What do you suppose Billy Cunningham is going to say to him?”
“If he’s smart, he’ll say, ‘Coming right up,’” Sarah replied. “I don’t think he wants to lose the Brooks business forever. And from what I hear, several regulars have stayed away since you got thrown out.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m not. They don’t like the idea of patronizing a place that discriminates—unless it’s against stupidity and meanness.”
I thought back to what Carson Mason had said in the grocery store, and it was like I felt the tiniest spark of warmth strike that numb spot inside me.
Jesse returned with the drinks and set them down, but he didn’t sit down.
“Looks like I need to go back to the bar,” he said, glancing over my shoulder.
I turned around to find my aunt and uncle behind me. I smiled then, for the first time since Dane’s phone call.
“Mind if we join you?” Aunt Kate asked.
“Not at all,” Sarah said, trying to sound like she was surprised. I knew she’d organized it. I should have known when I spotted the size of the table.
“I’ll have what Sarah’s having,” Aunt Kate said, slipping in beside me. She leaned over and kissed my cheek.
“And I’ll have a beer.” Uncle Karl sat down, and Jesse turned to head back to the bar.
But Billy Cunningham was coming toward our table. I stiffened. Jesse took a step back toward us, and Uncle Karl stood up. Aunt Kate and Sarah drew closer to me like mother birds shielding a chick.
Billy saw it too, and a
nervousness settled on his face. He stopped a few feet away from the table and cleared his throat.
“Good evening, everybody,” he said, nodding at Jesse, Uncle Karl, and me. “I’m really pleased to have you back, especially you, Josh.”
I nodded. My aunt and uncle relaxed.
“Good to see you,” my uncle said amiably.
Billy eased a bit at that. “The special is a shredded beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy,” he said. “And your drinks are on the house.”
“That’s really nice of you, Billy,” Aunt Kate said sweetly.
“More than hamburgers tonight, then?” Jesse asked.
Billy smiled at last. “Yeah, I got a new cook. Probably not as good as you, Josh,” he looked at me expectantly.
He was really trying, I could tell. I nodded. “I’m glad for you, Billy. I’m sure things are going easier because of it.”
“They are,” he said. He swallowed and fiddled with the towel that was draped over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Josh. No excuses. There aren’t any. I’m just real sorry.”
“Thanks, Billy. I appreciate that.” I stood up and shook his hand, and he gripped mine even as the rest of him really relaxed. I nodded at him again and saw the gratitude in his eyes, and I realized in that instant how really good you can feel when you forgive someone.
Everything else moved along like normal. Uncle Karl repeated his and Aunt Kate’s drink order, and we all asked for the special.
“Coming up,” Billy said and headed back to the bar. Jesse and Uncle Karl sat down.
“He’s not a bad boy,” Aunt Kate said to me after he’d left.
I hadn’t thought of Billy Cunningham or myself as a boy in a lot of years, but I knew what she was trying to say. “Hanson took us both by surprise, I think.”
“I’m proud of you, Josh.”
“Why, Uncle Karl?”
“You didn’t have to be so agreeable. Anybody would have understood if you hadn’t accepted his apology.”
“I had to meet him halfway.”
“You went more than half. That’s why I’m proud.”
We made small talk after that, and I focused on not looking around the bar. Jesse was doing enough of that for both of us.
Once, I caught him doing it, and he smiled at me. “Just keeping my word, Josh.”