by Tanya Chris
She was our ticket out of this mess. Wikipedia told us she would recant in the end, but not until the tide had already turned and a lot of people had died. If we could swing her to our side earlier, we might be able to buy a few lives. So I stopped in to see her every day, worrying at her conscience, offering her promises of protection that she probably knew I couldn’t keep.
The conditions at the jail worsened. There were too many bodies in there now and still only the one jailor. Corwin certainly wasn’t going to turn over additional funds to feed all those witches he’d collected, so it was up to women like Martha and Mrs. Cheever to cook for them. I became a throwback version of Meals on Wheels—Daffy and I making daily deliveries of their donations.
Sarah Good’s baby was born and didn’t die. The Parris household took her in. They’d pulled their daughter from the panel of accusers and sent her off to live with relatives, where we got word she’d recovered from her mysterious illness. Mr. Parris had repented of his part in starting the whole charade and tried more than once to get Tituba released to his custody, but Tituba was Corwin’s star witness. There was no way he’d let her go.
Betty Parris’s removal didn’t slow down the speed of accusations. If one accuser developed a conscience, two others jumped in to fill the gap. The lower classes had the option of being either accusers or accused, and everyone was fighting to keep on the right side of the fence. Our only hope was the middle class, but they were hard to pin down. If they felt safe enough from Corwin’s fickle finger of fate, they felt uninvolved enough to look the other way, certain it would all come out right without their help.
Mr. Cheever was a fine example of that attitude. In the beginning he’d made those unkept promises to intervene here or there, but the harder we fought, the angrier he became that we were fighting at all. We should trust God, the Elders, him—anything except our own determined action. Witches deserved what witches got, and people who agitated on behalf of witches deserved no better. No longer did our nightly Bible readings continue in mind-numbingly chronological order. Now we were treated to passages hand-picked for their pro-authoritarianism. Though shalt not resist.
We resisted anyway.
It felt like we were making progress, and it felt like we weren’t doing nearly enough, like ever-higher tides washed away the barriers we erected faster than we could erect them. For the first time in my life, I was a part of something bigger, something more important than my own needs, but we were running out of time. Trials were being scheduled and we still hadn’t identified any clear way to stop people from being convicted.
Giles and Martha became my friends. The Cheevers became my family. And I loved Ezekiel like I’d never imagined was possible. At night, we got naked beneath our nightclothes and twined our bodies around each other—hands straining, hips thrusting, lips clinging. But there were days when homesickness slammed into me like an eighteen-wheeler, mowed me down, and left me limp.
There were people here who’d come to love me, but there was no one here like me. It wasn’t that I preferred Black people to white people—I was half-and-half when it came down to it—but I’d been raised among Black people and down-home would always be home. My friends’ slang-rife banter, my father’s steady support, my grandmother’s cooking—these were things Salem would never have. I even missed my grandmother’s church, crazily enough—the joy, the certainty, the warmth. Puritan faith was strong, but cold, and so very, very quiet.
One afternoon when I didn’t have scribing duties and Ezekiel was off doing the kind of campaigning that went over better without a Black dude at his elbow, I found myself particularly adrift. I watched Mrs. Cheever bustle around downstairs while Isabel swept and dusted upstairs and I felt useless and sorry for myself.
Isabel would probably freak if I tried to take the broom from her and Abraham was asleep, but when I saw Mrs. Cheever move towards the stove, I realized there was something I could do: I could cook. Admittedly, I’d been more lazy than not when it came to cooking for myself, but my grandmother hadn’t let me grow up without learning how to make the basics.
“Would you let me take over your kitchen for a night?” I asked Mrs. Cheever, halting her mid-bustle.
“What, cook? Have you that skill as well?”
“My grandmother taught me a few things. If you’ll let me look through your pantry, I think I can pull together a meal.”
She swept her arm towards the lean-to where most of the stores were kept with a smile that reminded me of Tom’s. “I invite you to it, for there is little you’ve not shown yourself capable of, Mr. Johnson.”
Having found the Cheever pantry stocked with everything I’d need for a batch of my grandmother’s fried chicken with a side of greens and a skillet of cornbread, I announced to the assembled Cheevers that I’d be cooking dinner.
“And Tom is going to help. You too, Ezekiel. The ladies are having a night off.”
Mrs. Cheever protested, looking more frightened than pleased at the idea of not being involved at all, but I insisted and Ezekiel threw his weight behind mine. We got her and Isabel seated by the fire and parked Abigail at the table. Mr. Cheever raised his eyes briefly from his paper, but he didn’t comment on finding his wife in the chair next to him instead of up at the stove where I would swear she spent the majority of every day. I didn’t try to rope him in on my gender swap agenda. Not objecting was the best I could hope for out of him.
We put Tom up on a stool and covered his pinafore with an apron, but Ezekiel and I chose to brave the inevitable grease splatters in our doublets. Mrs. Cheever had churned up a fresh batch of butter that morning, which meant I had buttermilk genuine enough to win even my grandmother’s approval. I was helping Tom stir it into the flour when Abigail’s face peeked over my elbow.
“You’re supposed to be having the night off, princess. Go on and sit yourself down.”
“But I’d rather.” Her plaintive expression convinced me. Cooking with Luther was a hit. Three helpers was one too many, though, so I regretfully banished Ezekiel from the stove. He got the table set while the kids and I coated chicken pieces in seasonings, then he went over to Isabel and held out his arms for the baby.
I’d been talking to Ezekiel about gender roles and how they would change. What interested him most was the way men in the twenty-first century were allowed to be more than authority figures to their children. My father had been my primary caregiver. Yes, my grandmother had always been a strong presence in my life, but it was my father who’d put me to bed at night and gotten me back out of it in the morning, who’d dressed me and bathed me and kissed my boo-boos. My father was what parenting meant to me.
Ezekiel looked good with a baby in his arms—awkward, but good. My heart ached to think he might never have the chance to be the father mine had been.
I returned my attention to the mess the kids were making just in time to keep the entire bowl of buttermilk batter from going over. Not the best idea to be ogling Ezekiel so openly anyway. I’d let him know how hot the nurturing thing made me later.
We managed to fry chicken without burning the whole place down—a real threat, considering everything was made of wood—and then I put Abigail back on her butt and Ezekiel and Tom and I dished everyone up. The doubt on Mr. Cheever’s face turned to appreciation after a few bites. The rest of the Cheevers had been prepared to like whatever I made, but I could tell their enthusiasm was genuine by the way they did more eating than talking until we’d emptied every platter and sponged up every crumb.
“We should make this a weekly thing,” I suggested. “I can teach Ezekiel to cook and Mrs. Cheever can have a break.”
“Why ought Ezekiel learn to cook?” Mr. Cheever asked. He might as well have asked why Mrs. Cheever should get a break. I was sure he’d never thought of such a thing. He worked long days, framed by riding back and forth to his school, but I doubted he appreciated that Mrs. Cheever was on her feet all day and still on them while he sat with his paper in the evening.
&
nbsp; “Ezekiel might not always have Mrs. Cheever to cook for him,” I suggested.
“He shall have a wife when the time come for it.”
I didn’t even know if I hoped that Ezekiel would or wouldn’t have a wife someday. In the seventeenth century, that was his only option if he wanted to be a husband and a father, but what kind of life would there be for me without him?
“We cannot know where God will lead us,” Ezekiel said from his spot across from me. His foot nudged against mine beneath the table.
“It do seem as though you are steered in new directions since Mr. Johnson has joined us,” Mr. Cheever said, “but I do not know for certain as it is God who steers you.”
The smiles Ezekiel and I had been exchanging cut off with equal abruptness. I could never forget that my continued residence at the Cheevers’ was at Mr. Cheever’s indulgence, and Ezekiel knew it as well as I did. Mr. Cheever was a benevolent ruler most of the time, but he sat alone at the top of our household hierarchy. Ezekiel and Abigail and Tom—even Isabel and Mrs. Cheever—couldn’t keep me here if he said go.
“I know,” Ezekiel said quietly.
“What do you know?”
“I know that it be God who steers me.”
“You’ve heard His call?” Mrs. Cheever asked eagerly.
I held my breath. It would be no small thing for Ezekiel to announce himself as one of the Elite, to declare himself chosen, but he didn’t go that far.
“God do speak to me,” he said.
Mr. Cheever harrumphed. “Be very sure it is God who speaks,” he said, “and not some other power.”
Ezekiel stood, stone-faced, and began clearing the table with jerky movements. I followed his lead, hiding my smile. He was so getting lucky tonight.
~~~
“There’s something else we could try,” I told him when we were nestled safe and alone in the haven of our bed. “It might startle you, but it’s good.”
“Everything you do to me is good.”
“And this is that much better.” I hadn’t sprung oral sex on him yet. We’d been sticking to handjobs and frottage—activities not so different from whatever self-love he’d permitted himself before I came along. But Ezekiel deserved a reward, and I had just the thing. “This is normal, OK?”
“In 2017?”
I could tell him anything was normal in 2017—how would he know otherwise?—but blowjobs were definitely normal, mandatory almost. Probably seventy-five percent of my sex life was blowjobs. Well, seventy-five percent of my sex life was masturbation, but if I discounted jerking off, seventy-five percent of the rest of it was blowjobs.
I already had his nightshirt rucked up around his waist. I shifted down the bed and situated myself between his thighs. The bed had a footboard, so it was awkward as fuck, but it was also wonderful to have my face right up next to his cock for the first time, taking it in in all its lean beauty. My mouth salivated at the thought of what was about to happen.
My focus must have been obvious because Ezekiel shifted restlessly against the sheet and said, “You’ve a lot of interest in a certain part of me.”
“Ah, love. You have no idea how much interest I have in this part of you. Now, if you don’t like this, you can say stop, but try to lie back and trust me.”
I started by cupping his balls—nothing new there—then added some hand action along his shaft. I waited until he’d relaxed before I ran my tongue along his length in a wet stripe. He didn’t react to that, probably assuming the rough wetness was no more than my hand coated in spit. Without a regular dosing of spit to lessen the friction, we’d both be walking around with our dicks covered in rug burns, the way we went at it.
I took a few more licks, then swallowed his cock as far down my throat as I could get it in a single gulp. That, he reacted to. He inhaled sharply on a gasp and levered himself onto his elbows. His eyes were wide with stunned surprise, but he didn’t say stop. I moved my mouth over him again, continuing my assault on his sanity until he dropped back onto the bed. A soft whimper escaped him and he grabbed for my pillow and used it muffle his rising moans.
Naked, loud, alone, not subject to Mr. Cheever’s whims—would we ever find a way to get there? Was there a path forward in this time that didn’t involve Ezekiel marrying a woman and my being his backroom assignation?
I wouldn’t marry a woman. That, no. And I wouldn’t be something on the side to him either. But I wanted him, wanted this, wanted it forever.
I shook off my fretting about the future and concentrated on the man in my mouth. Didn’t matter how many pillows he piled over his face, I could hear him. I remembered my first blowjob, the warm heat and mind-blowing suction, the sight of a man’s mouth taking me in.
“You should watch,” I told him.
His red face emerged from beneath the white of our bed linen, a shy, harried smile gracing it. I almost laughed. He was just so beautiful.
I put his cock back in my mouth and tipped my eyes up to meet his. Yeah, I remembered the emotions I saw flashing across his face: wonder, excitement, gratitude, and a fraying consciousness as I brought him closer and closer to this new pinnacle of ecstasy.
“I shall—”
“I want you to,” I told him.
He groaned, probably too loudly, and his eyes rolled back as he let himself go. The flavor of come filled my mouth, warm and salty and all man. His hips jerked beneath me, his whole body a tense line caught in the throes of this thing I’d done to him.
When he sank limply into the bedclothes, I took a few last licks, cleaning him up and relishing the aftermath of our moment, how soft he was now, how happy. Then I hauled myself back up to the top of the bed and let him roll into me.
“I must confess it,” he said into my neck.
I looked down to find him adorably flustered. “Confess what? Come on, out with it.”
He tilted his face up and whispered into my ear as though anyone other than the two of us could hear him. “I’d thought of that afore.”
“What, blowjobs?”
“I didn’t know it had a name, but I’d thought on it. I like to kiss you here—” he pressed a kiss to my lips “—and here—” below my jaw “—and here—” a brush to my pecs, just below my nipple. “I think as I would like to kiss you there as well.”
“Then go on and get to it.” It wasn’t like I wasn’t totally hard and waiting for him.
He scooted down a little and I hauled my nightshirt up to encourage him, baring myself to an inspection he’d never made before. Ezekiel might never catch up to me in sexual boldness, but today he took some steps forward. He eyed my cock for several long moments, then stuck his tongue out and gave it a single, stabby sort of lick.
“Dude,” I said.
Ezekiel giggled out that beautiful, happy laugh of his, the one that was reserved just for me, then took a deep breath and pounced on my cock.
“Oh, fuck.”
The funny thing was that Ezekiel hated it when I took the Lord’s name in vain but “fuck” and “shit” didn’t bother him. Much like “dude,” they were words he didn’t know. Only my tone conveyed context, and the context of that particular exclamation was, “That’s so fucking good, I can’t even.” Pleasure transcended vocabulary.
As with everything he did, Ezekiel approached giving a blowjob with enthusiasm and determination. He wasn’t a good cocksucker, not yet, but he wasn’t a tentative or reluctant one either, and willingness was half the battle. I had a mouth on my cock and his eyes peeping up at me and I was in Puritan heaven. I doubted there was any dude within fifty miles of Salem as lucky as I was right at that moment.
“I’m going to come now, love.” I wanted him to swallow me down, but couldn’t make that decision for him—he’d already taken a boundary-stretching step today—but Ezekiel wasn’t one to leave a job unfinished. He choked me down a little further as I blasted my pleasure down his throat, lost in the sheer physical sensation of a soul-wracking orgasm.
I came back to my sens
es to find him grinning between spluttery coughs.
“Did you like it?” I asked as I dragged him up the bed into my arms. “Can we do it again?”
Ezekiel nodded sleepily into my armpit.
Well, that was an enjoyable development. Not to mention how much more convenient it was going to be to drink down each other’s ejaculations instead of coating ourselves in them. There were no such things as tissues in 1692 and our laundry was handled by Isabel or Mrs. Cheever. We’d taken to using my boxer briefs as a cum rag since they were far too ripe to wear anymore and Snoop Dog had been left in Rebecca Nurse’s hayloft, but swallowing would be a lot more sanitary. And, yeah, enjoyable.
As I stroked Ezekiel’s back, the silence deep and sweet between us, my thoughts drifted back to that exchange with his father after dinner. We were happy now, but where could we go from here?
He let me do things to him at night, but I could tell they weighed heavily on him by day. Not the gay part—he’d gotten over that, I was pretty sure. My talk of othering, of dividing, of God being used to condemn had done away with whatever lingering reservations he’d had about man-on-man loving—but the impermanence of our commitment, the fact that our union hadn’t been consecrated by God.
“Zeke?”
“Mm?”
“Do you think you’ll marry a woman someday?”
“But how could I? I could not give to another what I have not left to give.”
Oh, shit. Had I ruined him in his mind?
“What if we’d never done any of this?” I asked. “Would you have … Did you ever have those thoughts about a woman, that you might want to …?”
He could be bi, after all. It was possible he’d have been perfectly happy married to a woman if I hadn’t come along and blown him. It. If I hadn’t come along and blown it.
“Always had I assumed I would be married,” he said, “for it is our way and what God commands, I do believe—that we should bond together in His holy sight. But what I think you ask me … no. Never did I look forward to my marriage bed.”