Cowboy Up

by Shane Allison

  Both Berrys wore big silver belt buckles that changed from show to show, commercial to commercial. Tonight Luke’s was a shiny miniature in the shape of the Republic of Texas, rearing its bullhorn geography tantalizingly above his tight crotch. Billy’s was an old-style sheriff’s badge. Even preoccupied with the dead bull, Felipe’s eyes were drawn to these two.

  And so were the crowd’s! The arena roared as the Berry Brothers took the stage, women and men swooning, grabbing their own belt buckles as the Berrys’ flashed in the spotlights. On the way to the loading dock, where they’d dump the dead bull for pickup, the whole arena shook as the crowd stamped its feet.

  The next night was Felipe’s night off, but he always checked the boards in the mornings to see if any supply shifts were opening up. In this town, somebody was always calling out sick or disappearing and the work at the Expo didn’t stop. He saw that there was a gopher slot open during his normal hours, and logged in to claim it. Gophering would have him trucking from the offstage holds to the booths, and to the costumers and the prop closets. He’d get to see all the acts up close and be like a fly on the wall while he was working, and as long as he looked busy he could go anywhere.

  He wanted to make sure a supervisor from his normal shift saw him, because it looked good, so partway through his gopher shift he headed to the holds where men were loading bulls out. He delivered a couple of fake messages to one of the stage managers, and then sauntered down the narrow hallway outside the dressing room. Felipe hoped to catch a glimpse of the Berrys, but when he walked past, their dressing room door was closed. He kept walking, looping back around through a long, bright hallway under the stands. He stopped halfway down, and ducked through the steel lattice underneath that section of bleachers. High above, the shifting of the audience on the metal benches was squeaky thunder. Felipe stepped farther in, and then leaned against one of the steel struts and lit a cigarette. Smoking on duty, even a supply shift, was a risk, but this hallway was perfect for getting away with something, and Felipe knew it.

  He stood there, breathing deeply and thinking, and suddenly he heard a man’s voice in the hallway. Felipe put out his cigarette and then ducked.

  “What do you mean you were just talking to him? I saw you!”

  “But it wasn’t—”

  “Your pants were undone! And it was all over his chin!”

  “Seriously, dude, it really wasn’t what it looked like.”

  The voices had moved down the hallway to where Felipe had ducked under the bleachers. As they moved into his view, he saw that it was the Berry Brothers.

  Luke was moving away from Billy, and Billy was trying to grab his arm. “I’m sorry, Jed,” Billy said.

  “Sorry? I thought nothing was going on.” Felipe cocked his head, confused. Jed?

  Billy looked sheepish. He leaned in to kiss Luke, but Luke pushed him away. “Fuck, no, fuck off, Adam. You’re fired!”

  “You can’t fire me because I fucked a stagehand, Jed. You’re not in charge.”

  “No, but management can, and they will when I tell them. That’s definitely not in your goddamn contract, Adam, and it’s not fit for the Berry image.” Luke and Jed shook his head in disgust and then strode down the hall. Billy and Adam turned and walked the other way, back toward their dressing room.

  Felipe was ashamed at how naive he’d been. Of course Luke and Billy Berry were characters; they’d been in this Expo show for years, and these two should have been older if they’d been the actual Berry Brothers. Had there ever been real Berry Brothers, he wondered?

  Felipe crawled out from under the bleachers, cautiously moving around the steel struts and into the hallway. He set off back toward the dressing rooms, so he could check the page screen and get his shift back on track. Behind him, a voice said, “Hey! I thought I heard someone!” Felipe turned to see that it was Luke Berry.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. “Um, Mr. Berry, I was taking a short break, I didn’t mean—”

  “To overhear that? Fuck. Did you think we were really brothers? Fuck!” He leaned in and looked at his nametag. “Felipe, hi, I’m Jed. I play Luke Berry and you just saw some bullshit. Sorry about that.”

  “I’m sorry about being here for something so…personal.”

  Jed waved his hand. “Adam’s dick should have been personal, too.”

  “You, um, love him?” said Felipe.

  Jed sighed. “No. Yes. We had a good thing, this job, this life. And if someone else had walked in on him, nothing. We’d be fired. As it is, they’re looking to recast Luke and Billy so they look more relatable, more handsome, more Mexican. More like you, actually.”

  Felipe smiled. Jed kept talking. “Are you in the performer’s guild, Felipe?”

  Felipe shook his head. “Stagehand. Gopher tonight, on a supply shift.”

  “But you want to perform? That’s why you came to Vegas DF?”

  Felipe nodded. Jed put one hand on his flashing silver belt buckle and reached the other hand out to Felipe. “Then come with me.”

  Jed took Felipe home with him that night. He lived in a sumptuous suite in the Romanesque Towers, a section of the Expo complex known for its high living. Most of it was tourist rooms, but the tops of every massive tower were beehives of luxury residences. The Berrys had a floor and elevator stop all their own, and it opened onto an infinite lap pool with transparent sides and a large water feature that flowed down into the living room area, a pit with a river-rock fireplace and ultramodern linear furniture upholstered in glossy cowhide. Jed’s room—Luke’s room, he had admonished Felipe when they were in the apartment—had a mechanical bull, a rawhide bar, and a canopy bed that fell away to a wall of tinted windows that showed the strip from above, the neon pulsing.

  Luke Berry pushed Felipe Sandoval onto his bed. There was a rough denim quilt atop a firm mattress, and the posts looked rough but were smooth to the touch. A leather canopy blocked out part of the skyline view from the bed.

  He pulled apart Felipe’s shirt, the pearl buttons snapping open with quiet clicks. He ran his hands over Felipe’s hard pecs. Felipe’s shoulders strained and bulged as Luke touched him all over, running the back of his hand down the silky trail below Felipe’s belly button. Then Luke pressed his hand up against Felipe’s cock, feeling its uncurling bulk beneath his jeans. Felipe sat up, to help Luke pull off his own shirt. Then Luke undid his big belt buckle and Felipe immediately reached for his zipper and the button of his jeans. He undid them, but Luke picked him up under the shoulders and moved him closer to the window, setting him down on an armchair. Felipe tried to sit up, and Luke pushed his chest back down and then planted himself on the floor in front of him. He yanked down Felipe’s jeans and white briefs, tangling them around his boots, and started kissing and licking Felipe’s foreskin.

  He kissed his belly and continued running his fingers over Felipe’s chest. He pinched his nipples and Felipe groaned. Then he tangled his fingertips in Felipe’s thick bush and sucked his dickhead into his mouth. Luke’s mouth was soft and wet and his tongue whipped around Felipe’s cockhead while his fingers squeezed his heavy nuts.

  Felipe murmured in pleasure as Luke spit on his cock and started sucking all the way down until his nose touched Felipe’s bush. Again and again he swallowed him until Luke almost gagged, then he started working Felipe’s cock with his hand and lips, pumping it into his moist, sucking mouth-hole. He kept at it while Felipe moaned and twitched. A sheen of sweat glistened on Luke’s bicep and chest from his perfect rhythmic jerking of Felipe into his mouth. Felipe’s legs started to tense, and he pushed Luke off his dick.

  “Seriously, shit, I’m gonna come if you don’t stop.”

  Luke leaned back on his haunches, smiling like a devil, and still cupping Felipe’s balls. He leaned back and tugged off his shiny boots. “I don’t mind if you do,” said Luke, but Felipe was already falling to the floor next to him and reaching to pull down his pants. His dick was massive, just as you’d think Luke Berry’s would be, wit
h a fat round head and a nest of blond bush around the thick bottom. “Nice,” said Felipe, leaning in to smell Luke’s soft skin. He felt the heat radiating from Luke’s cock to his cheek.

  Felipe pushed Luke to his feet, and Luke’s smile got even bigger. After he licked the head all over, Felipe drooled thin spit all over it and then sucked it farther down his throat. It filled his mouth and he felt it squeezing his tonsils, stretching open his throat. Felipe grabbed Luke’s hard muscle-butt and pulled it even closer. Breathing through his nose, he let the big meat slide back out of his mouth and then sucked down again and again. Luke reached down and put his hand on Felipe’s neck, lightly tapping the bulge his cock made buried in his throat. Luke planted his feet and bucked back and forth. Felipe kept his hands on Luke’s meaty, round ass.

  Luke pulled Felipe to his feet and led him back to the bed where they’d started. Felipe pushed him down, grinding their chests together.

  “You can fuck me if you want,” Luke whispered, his lips touching Felipe’s ear. He rolled over and spread his legs. Then he reached and rummaged in his nightstand, and handed Felipe a tube of nano barrier lube. Felipe smeared it on his cock and then squirted more on his fingers to rub on Luke’s crack and hole. He went slowly and softly at first, and Luke moaned.

  Felipe climbed on top of him and reached down to guide his dickhead into Luke’s hole. He found it with his thumb, and gently smacked his dick against the hole. Felipe’s cock was rigid and huge, and Luke’s ass gobbled him hungrily. Felipe started sinking into Luke softly, slowly, and then started pumping faster. He was a blur as he put his pushups to better use than wrangling a bull. But like Luke was reading his mind, he started bucking his hips. “Come on, cowboy. Fuck me,” he said, opening himself for Felipe’s whole meat. Felipe thrust faster and faster, but then slowed down so he wouldn’t come so fast.

  “Come on my chest, buddy,” Luke said, and rolled over. Felipe straddled Luke’s belly, stroking himself faster and faster as Luke’s big dick smacked against his lower back. Luke was jerking himself with his arm wrapped tightly around Felipe’s hip. They ground their bodies together and both came shuddering and shaking, shooting huge ropey loads all over each other. Felipe lay down, put his lips to Luke’s, and kissed him deeply.

  They lay there a long time.

  Finally, Luke said, “Adam will be fired tomorrow. I can get you seen by the casting director, not even in the regular audition. Can you ride?”

  Felipe sat up. “I’ve been practicing. I can ride and shoot and lasso. And I bet I can pick up the tricks, the jumps and stuff.”

  Eventually they took a shower, and they came again locked together on the bench alongside one wall of Luke’s large cube shower that also looked out on the skyline. The next day, Felipe was hired to be Billy Berry, half of the most famous cowboy duo at the Expo.

  He learned the tricks fast, and became especially adept at shooting an apple off the heads of clowns that dodged around fake patches of prickly pear and tall saguaros, and quickly mastered the jump and tumble over the mechanized tumbleweeds. Felipe only went back to his old room once. The managers had told him not to say good-bye to his old crew. He was supposed to consider himself Billy Berry now, as long as his contract was valid.

  And whatever happened to Adam, the other Billy Berry? Or any of the other Billy Berrys who had ridden into the sunset? Felipe preferred not to know. Eventually they did recast Luke, and Felipe said a teary good-bye to Jed, and did his best to be welcoming to new Luke, a handsome Chicano who had worked in Mexican soaps. Because you never know how much time you have at the Expo.

  A STRAY FOR KEEPS

  J. D. Walker

  See you next month, Tim,” Fred Jenkins said as he handed over the receipt for my purchases. He was the owner of the only supply store for forty miles.

  “‘Bye now,” I replied as I walked out the door.

  The sun was low in the sky, spreading pretty colors all over as twilight slowly took hold of the heavens. It was something I loved, almost as much as the mountains around me.

  I ambled along, admiring the view above me when suddenly I tripped over something on the pavement, which nearly made me drop the feed bags on my shoulders. I could almost hear the voice of my dearly departed mother saying, “Boy, your head’s always in the clouds.” God, I missed her.

  When I got my balance back, I turned around to see what had caused me to stumble. A pair of long, lean, and dusty jeans-clad legs were in the middle of the pavement. The legs belonged to a very shabby-looking man who sat on the ground, leaning against the dirty wall near the boarded-up store to his left.

  His dusty black cowboy hat was pulled down low over his face, but I could make out a strong, firm jawline with several days’ worth of beard growth on it. A ragged old backpack was on the ground beside him. Concerned, I walked toward him and put my bags down nearby.

  “Hey, cowboy.” A weak groan was the response. Alarm bells went off in my head.

  Pushing my brown hat up on my forehead, I stooped next to the man and reached a hand out to touch him, but he jerked away, a small cry of pain escaping him.

  “Whoa, there. Didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, backing off a little bit.

  The man slowly pushed his own hat up, wincing as he did so. Tired brown eyes looked up at me and my heart stopped. The man before me was even prettier than the sunset on the horizon. And that was saying something.

  He was bruised something awful, though. I dragged my eyes away from his defeated gaze and black eye turning purple, to inspect the arms at his sides. Black and blue, all over, it seemed. His hands looked like he’d been in a fight, and scrapes covered what I could see of his knuckles. Guess he gave as good as he got, whatever the tussle had been about, if that was the reason for his present condition. Good for him, but, Jesus.

  “What happened, man?”

  The stranger removed his hat, and I saw a full head of dark- brown hair, the strands sweaty and a mess. I made a snap decision.

  “Scratch that. I don’t care. You need to get cleaned up, and a place to rest for a while, I’m thinking.” I looked him dead in the eye.

  “You ever kill anybody?”

  Startled, the man slowly shook his head.

  “Steal anything?”

  In the fading light, I saw a blush steal up his cheeks. He slowly nodded.

  “Was it because you were desperate?”

  Nod.

  “Got any family?”

  Shake.

  “Were you roughed up here in town?”

  Shake.

  “On the way here?”

  Nod.

  “Mind being around gay cowboys?” I thought I’d make it clear right off the bat what he’d be getting into, if he came with me.

  Shake. The blush came back again in full force. All righty then.

  “Okay. I own a ranch some miles down the road. Nothing fancy, just a few horses and cows, and a sizable garden for fresh vegetables. Not really in it for the money, since I already have a job as a consultant online. I just love the land, and the scenery. Got a couple guys working for me who live there, too. Got a big enough house for ten people. It’s a safe place, and we don’t mind company. We’re real friendly and laid back. You interested?”

  The tired stranger gave me a look that said, This is too good to be true. After a minute or two, though, he nodded. I stood up and stepped back to give him room to get up off the ground. It was painful to watch him move, because he was obviously hurting. I wanted to leave his pride intact, so I let him do it on his own.

  Finally, after bracing himself against the wall, the man stood, the old backpack in one hand and his hat in the other. We were the same height, which had me thinking all kinds of wicked things that he wasn’t in any shape to handle, even if he was interested. He put his hat back on and waited for my next move.

  I picked up the bags of feed and led the way to Lodi, my faithful pickup truck. I put the sacks in the back and unlocked the doors so my soon-to-be guest could get
in. Once we were buckled up, I started the truck and headed out onto the road for the long trip back home.

  “You got a name?” I asked, five minutes later. I was curious as to what he would sound like. He cleared his throat.

  “Daniel Tiberius Crane.” Oh now, that voice was something else, pulling at me down low in my belly. Though hesitant and scratchy, the timber was soothing to my ear.

  “That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Timothy Montagne, at your service. Call me Tim.” He gave me a slight nod, and that’s all we said for the rest of the trip.

  By the time I pulled up at the ranch, it was nightfall. The lights were bright on the front porch.

  “Hey, Tim.” Out the window, I saw Jet—all five feet ten inches of him—walk to the back of the truck to get the sacks of feed. I got out and closed the door behind me.

  “Jet.” I walked up to him and wrapped an arm around his trim waistline, kissing him lightly on the mouth. He turned it into a mini make-out session that curled my toes. Damn, he was good at that.

  When I could catch my breath, I cleared my throat and said, “We have a guest for a while. This is Daniel.” The man in question had slowly gotten out on his side of the truck, and now swayed slightly, dead on his feet. That he barely responded to the intimate exchange between Jet and me was telling, except for his slightly raised eyebrows.