by J. M. Snyder
I’m not the only angry one—Dan rips off his briefs, soiled with his juices, and tosses them to the floor. Naked, he climbs out of the bed and heads for the suitcase. Pops it open, fishes through our clothes for another pair of briefs, pulls them on roughly to cover his smooth ass. “I’m going to hurt him,” he swears, stepping into his jeans. I’m still kneeling on the bed, surprised at the sudden change in Dan’s mood. When he looks over his shoulder at me, I see him as others must, closed and forbearing, a soldier to the core. “Get dressed,” he tells me.
I don’t question him, just start snapping up my boxers before sliding off the edge of the bed to grab my pants from the floor. “Dan,” I begin, fumbling with my shirt. His hands brush across my chest to pull the shirt down over my head. “Dan, babe, wait.”
He doesn’t look at me, just tugs on his own shirt, tucks it into his jeans, buckles his belt. When I catch his arm, he tries to shrug me off, but I don’t let go. “I’m sick of his shit,” he mutters. I can feel his muscles bunched beneath my hand. “I know he’s your brother but I’m going to hurt him, Michael. I promise you.”
I rub at his arm, trying to work the muscle loose, but he hates being interrupted during sex. During love—it’s not just sex to him. When we make love, he wants to hold as much of my body against his as possible, he wants the foreplay, the licking, the kisses, the quiet sweet talk after it’s all over. The few times that we’ve made it quick, just to have a piece of each other before one of us had to rush out the door, he was grumpy and irritable for the rest of the day, until I could get him alone in bed that night and kiss him, hug him, cuddle with him to make it right. I have a feeling he’s going to be like that until we get together again tonight.
Fortunately for Ray, he’s not waiting on the other side of our door. He’s not in the kitchen at all—a few kids are, one or two adults who are probably my cousins but I don’t recognize them, I don’t know their names. They’re crowded around the kitchen table and barely glance at us as we step out among them. I feel as if they all know I just had sex, but no one says anything about it, they’re too busy shouting to each other, who ordered mushrooms? Who got the one with no mayo? Where are the hot peppers? Turning to Dan, who keeps one hand on my waist like he’s afraid of losing me in the midst of all these people, I laugh and ask, “Didn’t you always say you wanted a large family?”
He gives me a wan smile—he looks afraid. I don’t blame him. Pushing my way to the table, I snag a large cheesesteak wrapped in white deli paper. “This mine?” I call out, asking no one in particular.
Penny is on the other side of the table, trying to divvy up the sandwiches. “Take it,” she tells me. As I back away, she points at the sink. “Drinks are in there, Mike. We’re all outside.”
Actually, it looks to me like we’re all crammed in here. “Drinks,” I tell Dan, who’s already heading over in that direction. He pulls two canned sodas from the ice in the sink and follows me through the screen door out back. A low bench runs the length of the deck, a new addition since last I’ve been here, but there’s no room to sit. Kids run everywhere, dripping soda and sandwiches and calling to each other. A few women huddle together around two or three strollers, cooing over babies and passing the children back and forth like boys trading baseball cards. I see my dad over by the shed, hoagie in one hand, surrounded by men his own age, my uncles and the men my aunts have married. They have a game of horseshoes set up out there, though most of the guys seem to be eating more than playing at this point. In the middle of the yard, my mom sits at a picnic table with Aunt Sarah and Aunt Billy, and around them other relatives sit at patio tables, huddling four or five people beneath one umbrella. I see people I vaguely remember—Doug and Ginger and Ruth, Judith’s sons, Aunt Bobbie, a few cousins I recognize from my childhood. Kenny and Jerry and Autumn and Marie, Caitlin followed by a gaggle of little girls, Uncle Tommy with Ray in a viselike neck grip as they wrestle to the cheers of some of the boys—my head swims to take them all in. There are easily thirty adults, maybe more, and twice that number of kids. This isn’t a funeral, it’s a damn circus.
Dan leads the way down the deck steps to a recently vacated table, and I sink into the wicker chair gratefully. “Jesus,” I mutter, unwrapping the hoagie. Dan scoots his chair close to mine and takes half of the sandwich I offer him. “I didn’t know there were this many of us. Where are they all staying?”
“All over the place.” I turn as Aunt Bobbie maneuvers her broad hips around my chair. “Mind if I join you boys?”
“No, ma’am,” Dan replies.
Before Bobbie can answer, he stands to pull a chair out for her, then slides back into the seat next to mine only after she’s seated. Two points, I think. He’s already won her heart, I can see that when she smiles warmly at him. “Michael,” she says, unwrapping her own sandwich, “keep this one, you hear me?”
I laugh and nudge Dan with my elbow. “Yeah,” I say, teasing. “I think I will. I’ve grown used to him.”
Embarrassed, Dan ducks his head and bites into his sandwich. “Keep talking,” he mumbles. “I’ll get you back, just you wait.”
My Aunt Bobbie laughs. “That sounds like a promise to me.”
Trying to ease away from the impending subject of my love life, I ask my aunt, “So everyone’s staying at the house?” When she nods, I look around and ask the inevitable, “Where?”
“Whole downstairs is refinished,” she tells us. “You have to check it out. Evie put in a pool table and Jacuzzi down there, you’ll love it.” With a wink, she adds, “See if you two can slip into that spa alone sometime. Damn, last time Sander and I were here, you couldn’t get us out of that thing.”
“Sander’s her husband,” I tell Dan, to clarify things. He nods dutifully.
“A good man, too,” Aunt Bobbie says. “He’s overseas on business or he’d be here himself. Asked me if I wanted him to come anyway, when I called him with the news of Evie’s passing, but I told him no sense in it. It’s the thought that counts.”
A little girl no more than four or five runs up to our table, a late-blooming mum in one hand that she’s plucked from Evie’s garden. “For you,” she says, holding the flower out to me. Before I can take it, she’s climbing up into my lap, and she taps my sandwich with the petals. “Mine?”
I have to laugh. “Who’s this?” I ask. I tear off the end of my cheesesteak and hand it to the girl.
“Crystal!” My cousin Theresa runs over to our table, another little girl in her arms. She’s…right now, I don’t remember how she’s related to me, to be honest. One of Aunt Sarah’s children’s children, John’s I think. She’s my age—we grew up together. Now she takes Crystal’s arm and deftly removes the child from my lap. “That’s Uncle Mike’s sandwich,” she admonishes. Crystal doesn’t care, just sticks the end of the hoagie into her mouth and stares up at us with wide eyes. When it’s obvious the girl isn’t giving it up, Theresa shakes her arm and asks, “Well? What do you say?”
Around a mouthful of food comes the muffled, “Thank you.”
“Mike,” Theresa sighs. “I’m sorry—” Then she sees Dan, and a smile breaks across her tired face. “This must be the boyfriend everyone’s talking about. He is cute. Theresa,” she says, introducing herself, and nodding at her children, “Crystal and Sam. And you are?”
“Dan,” I tell her. She shakes my lover’s offered hand and giggles like a schoolgirl when he gives her his gentleman’s smile. “Who told you we were together?”
Rolling her eyes, Theresa asks, “Who didn’t? A family like this, news travels fast. Everyone knows, Mike. It’s cool, really. We always sort of…I don’t know, I don’t want to say we knew because we didn’t but it’s not a surprise, you know what I mean?” As I search for an answer to that, Theresa shakes Crystal’s arm to get the child’s attention. “Tell Uncle Mike bye, baby,” she says.
Instead, the girl says, “I gave him a flower.” She’s still sucking on the sandwich as her mother leads her away.
Dan shifts beneath the table, his leg bumping mine. “Ray’s a special case,” I say carefully.
“Ray ain’t all there,” Aunt Bobbie says in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that leaves no room for argument. “Never has been. Don’t you go telling him I said that, though, you hear? If I were your mom, I might’ve stopped there and given up all hope.”
My lover snickers into his hoagie.
Chapter 16: By the Creek
When we’re finished eating, I ask Dan if he wants to take a walk. It’s grown dark out, but there are citronella candles lit at the tables and a large spotlight shines down over the backyard like the one my parents have glaring behind their house. There’s a feeling of suspended animation in all that bright light with the night tucked into the trees and around the corners of the house, and kids running around the edges where dusk begins.
Too many people still for my tastes, and every last one of them seems to recognize me. What did Theresa say? Everybody knows. And so far my mom and Aunt Sarah are the only ones upset by Dan. Everyone else, even the smallest children, seem cool with it. My dad called out to us, asked if we wanted in on a game of horseshoes—he didn’t ask Ray, and I suspect that he wouldn’t have asked me, either, if Dan wasn’t with me. My lover declined, of course, with his usual graciousness that already has half my cousins swooning after him. It’s the way he excuses himself when we stand, the way he takes charge and cleans up after me, the way he touches my back as we walk to the trash cans Penny has set up along the garden shed. Most of the girls giggle when he looks at them, and the few who find the courage to approach us just stare or sigh. “You’re so lucky,” my Aunt Lennie says, cornering us near the shed. She’s in her thirties and doesn’t bother to keep her voice down, which makes Dan duck his head and look away. I take his hand, hold it against my thigh in some small measurement of comfort as she winks at us. “I had me a soldier boy once. Let me tell you—”
Fortunately, a handful of kids push between us, laughing as they fight to reach the trash cans first. “I’ll talk to you later, Lennie,” I say, letting the kids widen the gap between us and my aunt. Before she can reply, Dan pulls me into the darkness behind the shed, leafless branches scratching out at us as we pass. “I’m sorry,” I murmur as I lead him through low tangles of ivy that cling to our feet. “At least they all like you. That’s a good thing, right?”
In the muted light that finds its way back to where we are, I can see the amused gleam in his eye. With a slight tug of his hand, I stumble into the span of his arm. It comes up around my back to drape over my shoulders and keep me close. “If you say so,” he whispers, kissing the hair above my ear. His breath is warm in the cool autumn night. Out here where the light doesn’t quite reach, I wrap an arm around his waist, hug him close for a quick kiss that tastes like cheesesteak and Coke. “You said you wanted to go for a walk?”
With a laugh, I slip out of his embrace and catch his hands in both of mine. “This way,” I tell him, leading him further into the darkness, away from the house.
I find the worn path easily enough, despite the fact that I haven’t been here in years—other children have kept it open, a short run that leads to Sugar Creek. I can hear it in the night, gurgling away over rocks and roots, liquid memories of all the times I ever visited Aunt Evie. I knew about the path before I was old enough to navigate it myself—it’s always been here, for as long as I can remember, and I know it was here when my mom was a little girl, too. It’s a part of the forest, as much as the sarsaparilla trees and poison oak and tent caterpillars in the spring. A broad path cut through the trees, leading right to the edge of the creek. Even it the darkness, it’s easy to find my way—no roots grow up through the dirt here, and the earth is packed hard from generations of wear. I imagine Evie as a young, bubbly girl, racing down this same strip of land with her sisters in tow, the seven of them dressed in the cumbersome bathing suits women wore back in the 1940’s.
Dan lets me lead the way. He walks surefooted behind me, trusting me completely. I know where I’m going—I grew up in these woods, by this creek. These are the trees where I built forts with Stephen Robichaud and Ray, staging mock battles and camping out under the stars. These are the waters where my cousins and I would come to swim, trying to dunk each other beneath the surface of the creek or snagging hold of someone’s shorts and ripping them away, tossing them on shore while the girls laughed at our antics. I remember catching the brunt of that joke one year—Ray tore my shorts off under the water, held them high like some sort of prize before throwing them away. Away—the fool didn’t even toss them to the shore, to make me climb out naked to retrieve them. No, Ray had to let them go downstream, and I watched helplessly as they drifted away. Everyone laughed as the shorts billowed full of water, rising over rocks and stumps, but once they were out of sight, the giggles dried up one by one. “Um,” Ray started, then he laughed nervously and wiped the water from his face with one hand. He must’ve been about eleven or twelve that year. “Oh shit.”
“Go get them,” I told him. The water was cold on my nude flesh, a pleasing sensation, but I wasn’t getting out until I had my shorts back. I wasn’t about to walk to the house naked.
Only they were gone—the boys climbed out of the creek and combed both shores while I swam near the old log that still serves as a bridge across the creek. The bark was rough against my bare shoulders when I leaned back on it. “Go get me another pair,” I told Ray. He looked scared—I didn’t blame him. I was already planning to tell Mom what had happened. I wanted to make sure I was there for the punishment.
But I didn’t get to see it. Ray ran back to the house but it was Stephen who brought me a new pair of shorts. “Where’s Ray?” I asked. I looked around to make sure we were alone before climbing out of the creek. The last thing I needed was one of my girl cousins to see me in the nude. I’d never have lived it down.
Stephen held the shorts open as I stepped into them. “Your mom caught us going in,” he explained. In a high voice, he mimicked her. “Get out of this house! Soaking wet, what the hell has gotten into you boys?” I laughed, tugging the shorts on completely to hide my nakedness. Stephen pushed his glasses up on his nose and grinned. “Ray goes Mike lost his shorts and we all sort of laughed, you know? And she wants to know how. I dunno, Ray says. And she gave him this look—” He glared at me the way my mom must have glared at Ray, and I had to laugh, I knew that look all too well. “And then she dragged him inside. I could hear him bawling but I didn’t see him. Your mom told me to bring you the shorts.”
When I tell Dan that story, he laughs and says, “I think I’ve seen that look myself.” Kneeling at the edge of the creek, he picks at the stones by his feet, then sits down, crossing his legs, and tells me, “Come here.”
I sink into his lap, his arms around me to ward off the chill. When he kisses my neck, I bury my face in the soft bristles of hair on top of his head. “I love this place,” I sigh. His hands fist in my shirt and I kiss his forehead, the bridge of his nose. “So much has happened here. So much of me is still in this landscape. You just don’t know.”
“Tell me th
en,” he whispers. His words are mere breath that tickles beneath the collar of my shirt to coil around my body, warming me. “I love it, too, because it’s made you who you are, Michael, and I love that person. So tell me how he came to be the man I’m holding now.”
With a soft laugh, I say, “My cousins are jealous.” He grins—I can feel the shape his lips make against my skin. “They are! I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he assures me. I know he isn’t, but the quiet sound of the creek trickling over the rocks behind me, the gentle soughing of the breeze through the trees, it makes me playful. Dan spreads his hands open on my back and I lean against them, their strength exciting me. “You just tell those girls I’m not interested,” he says.
“You’re not?” I ask, feigning surprise.
He sighs into the hollow of my throat. “You’re all I need. Talk to me.”
I tell him about the creek, keeping my voice low so it doesn’t drift far. He kisses my throat as I speak, his lips on my Adam’s apple, his tongue along my collarbone. He finds a spot just below my ear that he likes and he pulls me closer, sucks at my neck, his tongue warm and soft, his lips gentle. It’s hard to concentrate with his mouth on me, but he wants me to talk, so I tell him about the time a terrible storm came through and the creek swelled past its banks—you could see it from the house, tumbling through the trees, a rush of dirty water filled with toys and broken branches and shrubbery. When the waters finally receded, we were out there in galoshes, trooping through mud to clean up the debris.