by Sarah Black
“It’s okay with me. Merry, she said she wanted to talk to the boys first.”
“Yeah, she’s got them all about ready to throw themselves into the fires of hell if she asked them to. Man, every boot on the ground loves a medevac chopper pilot. And Merry, she’s something special, man. It’s as easy to see as her missing legs what she would do for those boys.”
After Eddie left, Tommy took a couple of steps back away from the grill. “Watch it. Don’t splatter barbeque sauce all over me. I’m working.”
“You’re working? When are you gonna get off work and have supper? ’Cause I thought you said you were coming for supper.”
“It might look to you like I’m just walking around doing nothing, but anyone with half a brain would see that I am trying to keep you and idiot-boy and the Moose safe.” Tommy was talking very slowly, through clenched teeth. “I’m trying to keep a lid on this, Graham.”
Graham stabbed the ribs. “Why didn’t you write to me?”
Tommy stopped walking away and turned around. “Eddie just told you. I did write to you.”
“Jesus, Tommy.”
“I seem… ” he hesitated. “I seem to have gotten out of the habit of talking to you. I’ve learned how to keep my own counsel. You have too, Graham. Because men who are nearly thirty, it don’t look right if they’re always together, talking and telling each other their secrets. And you don’t want the whole county looking at us, passing judgment, and making smart-assed comments. You’re sensitive about what other people think.”
Graham was silent then, listening to the sounds of the fire spitting. Tommy didn’t feel like he could talk to him anymore, not even when he was in trouble, or off at war. Because they both cared too much how things looked. “I missed you, Tommy. More than I was expecting to. I can’t seem to stop worrying, even though I know you’re back. I keep getting up in the middle of the night and turning CNN on the TV.”
“You think it would have helped anything if I’d written to you and told you I was scared? That people were dying? People were dying and I was responsible. That I thought I was going to end up blown to pieces? I didn’t want to put it into words, Graham. I didn’t want those pictures in your head. Because you’re a worrier, and you couldn’t have done anything to help.”
“You were scared, Tommy?” He moved closer. “I would have helped you if I could have. If I had known what to do.”
“I know that.”
“Why don’t you stop working now. Come on inside and have some supper.”
“Will you sit down and eat with me?”
Graham looked up in surprise. “Yeah, Tommy. I will.”
Tommy looked over the buffet and loaded up a big plate of salad. Graham did the same, put some strips of grilled cabrito and some sprinkles of blue cheese on the top. Tommy held out his plate of salad for the same treatment. They sat down at a table in the corner, ignoring the curious looks thrown their way.
“This looks good, Graham. I’m hungry for salad these days.” The salad was pretty, dark green romaine and leaf lettuce, fat little cherry tomatoes, purple onions, yellow bell peppers. Graham sprinkled a little Caesar dressing over the top and passed the bottle to Tommy.
“I talked to Willa this afternoon. She said either spelling was probably right, but the more common spelling had two g’s. She looked up the meaning in the OED – a bundle of twigs or sticks used for firewood. The practice of burning heretics alive. A person temporarily hired to fill up the muster roll. A term of abuse or contempt toward women. And a slang expression referring to homosexual men, chiefly US English usage.”
Tommy raised his eyebrows and gazed toward the far wall of the restaurant. “That burning heretics alive – now that one worries me just a bit.” He looked back down at Graham, and his eyes were sad. “I hate to think things are gonna get ugly in our county, Graham. This kind of thing, it makes people start choosing up sides.”
Graham and Tommy stood up a few minutes later when a young woman came into the restaurant in a rush, a baby boy clinging to her neck. Graham kissed her cheek. “Jesse! I was wondering if we’d see you. The guys missed you the other night.”
“I couldn’t get off work. My boss is a slave-driver. Oops! Just kidding.” She grinned up at Tommy. Jesse was one of the 911 emergency operators, and she worked for the Department of Public Safety.
Graham walked with her across the restaurant. The rest of the platoon was at the table in the corner. “How have things been since you’ve been home?”
“Horrible.” Her smile didn’t move. “Andy’s been mad at me since we got back, and I don’t know why, and I don’t think he does, either. He acts like I was off on a pleasure cruise, and he told me if I didn’t quit the Guard he was going to divorce me. And the baby won’t let go of me, and screams like he’s being dipped in boiling oil when I take him to day care.”
Graham stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Oh, Jesse. I’m so sorry.”
Unshed tears glinted in her eyes, and she blinked them back. “I wasn’t expecting this. I just kept thinking the whole time we were deployed, ‘If I can just get home in one piece to my family, everything will be okay.’ But it’s not okay, Graham. I’m gonna have to tell the Major that I’m resigning, and I…” She stopped, put her smile firmly back in place.
Zeigler was talking, trying to convince the guys to come over to the VFW for the regular Tuesday night meeting. Eddie stood up when Jesse walked up with the baby. “Here’s our radioman! I thought I was gonna have to hunt you down. The baby sure has grown. He’s looking fine.”
Zeigler gave a start. “Damn, that’s right! I forgot you had a girl in your unit. Honey, I didn’t realize you had a baby! How old was he when you had to go to Iraq?”
Jesse’s smile hadn’t moved. “Seven months.”
Zeigler was shaking his head. “Now, that’s just not right! We shouldn’t be taking mommas away from their babies like that. You ain’t never gonna get that time back, honey.”
Jesse looked stricken, her pretty smile frozen in place. Eddie stood up, frowning, and Sam, the beanpole from down in Deming, stood from the back of the table, gestured for Jesse to take his seat, a coveted chair next to Merry. He moved around the table, stood between Zeigler and the rest of the unit and the feeling went dangerous just that fast. No one spoke, then Merry started shaking her head and laughing, and said, “I do not fucking believe that. Sam, you come on over here and finish telling me about your ranch.”
Eddie nodded at Sam and sat down again, and Sam pulled an empty chair up to the table, sat on Jesse’s other side. The baby never moved, clinging to her neck like he would never move again, solemn brown eyes fixed on his mother’s face. Jesse kept one hand on his back, stroking up and down.
Graham went back to Tommy, sat down and looked across the table and felt like his heart was going to break. Tommy looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Settle down, Callahan.” He moved one of his knees under the table, pressed Graham’s leg with his.
Merry rolled over a few minutes later. “Graham, how would you feel about letting Bear do the work on the siding?”
He nodded. “That’s fine with me.”
“You got any other work for him? I think we need to keep him busy.”
“I can find something, Merry, but we aren’t a big operation around here.”
“Merry, did you check with Ray?” Tommy picked up his iced tea and took a sip. “He said something about being short. Bear has never done ranch work. He grew up in the city, but he might do well. He’s a hard worker, and he don’t talk much.”
“Sounds like a young cowboy in the making. We’ll see how it goes the next week or two. After the big Vet’s Day chili cook-off, we’ll see about him moving out to the ranch. Graham, you pay him ten an hour, let him crash on Eddie’s couch.”
Graham heard a commotion by the buffet table, saw Tommy’s eyes narrow. He turned around to see Baxter dragging a man across the dining room by his elbow. Every eye in the room was on them. He was dazzling,
a young vampire with pearl-white skin and silky black hair that hit his shoulders in curls, dressed in a loose, flowing white shirt and black jeans. His lashes were so long that Graham had to wonder if they were real. He should have been carrying a sign that said, “I am a gorgeous gay man.”
Baxter was jabbering away, his voice pitched high with excitement. “I can’t believe you got here so fast! Oh, here he is, here he is. I’ve been dying to introduce you. Graham, this is Hunter Brockman. He’s a journalist with Up and Out magazine. Hunter, this is Graham Callahan, mentor, friend in times of trouble, chef extraordinaire.”
The man leaned over, offering an elegant long hand. “I’ve been hearing witchy things about you for years, Graham Callahan. Glad to finally meet you in the flesh.” And he kissed Graham on the mouth, one heavy lid dropping in a wink over laughing black eyes.
Baxter hadn’t shut up. “Hunter has experience in these things, Mom. Gay-bashing, I mean. I explained to him my concerns over our tolerance problem, and he agreed to come down and cover events for Up and Out, and to offer his advice!”
Oh, God, could things possibly get any worse? Graham looked at Tommy and shook his head helplessly. Baxter put a hand to his cheek. He had been staring at Hunter as if there was a halo hanging in the air above his head. “I don’t know where my manners have gone. Hunter, this is my mother, Meredith Robb. And this is the Sheriff of Lincoln County, Tommy Lathrop.”
Tommy stood to shake Hunter’s hand, and the crackle of antagonism between them was instantaneous and obvious to everyone sitting there. Tommy was a head taller and twice as broad, which was why he had stood up, Graham realized. His eyes were narrowed in that squint men from New Mexico acquired from being out in the sun. Hunter stepped toward him and shook his hand, put the other hand on Tommy’s shoulder, in a gesture that would have made most men take a step back, but Tommy didn’t move, and they stared at each other for a long moment.
Then Hunter dropped Tommy’s hand and turned to Baxter. “What interesting men in Lincoln County! Who would have guessed. We better let these two get on with their dinner, Baxter. And I’ve had a long drive.”
“Max is here, Hunter. He’s gonna show you to the hotel.”
“Is it really called the Smokey the Bear Hunting Lodge? My, my, what a treat.” Hunter lifted his hands in a helpless sort of gesture. “I’m looking forward to that, Baxter.”
Baxter looked at him for the first time as if his halo had slipped. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s very nice. Not Albuquerque standards, Hunter, but nice and clean. It was great that Up and Out…” Their voices trailed away as Baxter walked him out of the dining room.
Merry was shaking her head. “My son has the brains of a peanut.”
Tommy stabbed a piece of cabrito and gestured with it in the direction of the door. “Jesus H. Christ. That is going to be the final fucking straw. Did you just sit there and let that pretty boy kiss you in public?”
Merry backed her chair up. “I’m out of here, y’all gonna start talking personal.”
Graham watched her go, then he turned back to Tommy. “I remember the last time I kissed someone in public. It was Tina McCarthy in the tenth grade, and you had that same look on your face you do right now when you sat across the lunch table and watched it.” He grinned at the color rising in Tommy’s face, speared a cherry tomato with his fork, and popped it into his mouth.
Graham walked home through the streets of Capitan with Tommy, and in some ways it felt like they were seventeen again, walking home together after ball practice. Tommy walked along with his hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like Wyatt Earp strolling through the streets of Tombstone. Graham was talking and Tommy was listening, not about anything important. He was just walking through the streets of his hometown on a windy autumn night with his best friend. His best friend, home from the war mostly okay, his brother and all his men, home and mostly okay. And his gratitude for this night welled up in his chest and filled his heart to near bursting.
Tommy looked down and smiled at him, slung an arm around his shoulder and pulled Graham into his chest. “Settle down.” They stood together for a moment, then Tommy reached down and kissed him, kissed him slow and deep, his arms pulling Graham closer and closer into his chest. Tommy was claiming him, putting his mark on him in public, on their streets. Graham couldn’t believe it. What in the world was he thinking?
Tommy raised his head and smiled down into Graham’s face, brushed the hair back from his forehead. “I think we got trouble coming, Callahan. You keep your head down. I don’t want you hurt.”
Graham put his hand flat on Tommy’s chest, over his heart. “Let’s not think about it tonight, Tommy.”
Tommy studied his face, then nodded. “I guess we can take tonight off. Did you like it, when Baxter’s Tootsie-Pop kissed you?” Tommy’s voice dropped a little lower. “Did he have a soft mouth?”
“Yeah, Tommy. He did. Soft and sweet as a peach. I think he was wearing lip gloss.” Tommy laughed. “I guess you taught me to like a harder man.”
Tommy’s pager went off a little before six the next morning, and Graham only heard his side of the phone conversation. “Yeah. Well, I’m not at home, that’s why. Where? Jesus H. Christ. Take it down, cover it up with a sheet of something. I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and sat on the side of the bed, ran his hands back through his hair. He turned to look at Graham over his shoulder. “Call Baxter. Make sure he and Max are okay, but don’t tell him why.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Somebody lynched a scarecrow from the lamppost outside the Moose. A scarecrow with a mop of bright orange hair.”
Tommy was into his jeans and boots and out the door faster than any man Graham had ever seen, not that he had a great deal of comparison. He got a fast kiss and a neat little stroke to his cock while he was pulling his sweatshirt over his head, then Tommy was gone. Graham pulled the sweatshirt back off and stepped into the shower. It was going to be a long and difficult day. He might as well start it in clean clothes. And it would look better if he and Tommy didn’t show up together.
The shower and shave didn’t delay him much, nor did the phone call to Baxter. Baxter’s sleepy voice, and Max next to him asking who it was. He told Baxter to sleep in and he’d see him at noon, then he hung up and headed down to the Moose.
Graham hadn’t realized that Tommy had assigned a deputy to patrol the Moose last night, a deputy who was getting his ass chewed for seeing nothing. They had cut the scarecrow down, leaving the rope dangling from the light pole in an unmistakable noose. The body was lying under a sheet on the sidewalk. Graham looked over the crowd of deputies loitering around, then he went inside and started a pot of coffee and preheated the oven. Biscuits were pretty quick. He opened the refrigerator. Two dozen eggs and a package of bacon. Graham closed the door and started cooking.
Fifteen minutes later, and the biscuits were nearly ready. Graham stuck his head out the back door. “Food in five minutes,” he announced. He brought the coffeepot out and started refilling cups. The deputies all turned when they heard a shout, then a groan, and one of their number, a young female deputy named Aimee, emerged from Smokey the Bear Park next door with Bear, looking like he’d slept under a bush, mud matting his hair. He was pale and sick-looking, and Aimee stepped nimbly out of the way when he leaned over and barfed near her feet. Bourbon and beer. That’s when Graham realized Bear was handcuffed behind his back. He started toward him, but Tommy was ahead of him.
“Get the cuffs off,” he said, and Aimee snapped to attention and stepped behind Bear to unfasten the steel handcuffs.
Bear looked up at him with bleary eyes, then he straightened, his face miserable. “Captain Lathrop. Sir, I’m sorry. I don’t…”
Aimee stepped up next to Tommy and spoke quietly in his ear, one hand still holding Bear around his upper arm.
Tommy looked over his shoulder. “Callahan. Call this soldier’s CO, and let him sit down inside for a bit.”
; Graham nodded and came forward, put his arm around Bear and led him inside.
“Oh, man, I fucked up bad, Graham.”
Graham walked him into the bathroom. “Get cleaned up in the sink, Bear. I’m gonna bring you some cup towels so you can dry off.” Graham left him there, brought him a pile of dishtowels and a clean pair of chef’s scrubs – purple, with happy, frolicking moose all over them.
Bear groaned when he saw them. “Oh, God. This is what I fucking deserve.”
Graham laughed. “How about some Alka-Seltzer?”
“Thanks, man.”
Graham went back outside. The man he was looking for, Deputy Cedric Nez, always carried Alka-Seltzer in his uniform pocket because he made three runs on the buffet table every night he came into the Moose. “Cedric, you got any Alka-Seltzer?”
“Sure.” Cedric was Navajo, had grown up on the Alamo reservation near Magdalena. He handed over a package. “Graham, don’t let the biscuits burn.”
“You want butter and jelly on yours?”
“Yeah, I do. Thanks.”
Graham went back inside, fixed Bear the Alka Seltzer, pulled the golden biscuits out of the oven, and put on another pot of coffee. He managed to pass out buttered biscuits to everyone outside before Baxter showed up, his hair flying in alarm and Max in tow.
“I knew it,” he said, stopping in his tracks at the sight of half the deputies of Lincoln County standing around with biscuit crumbs down their uniform shirts. He looked up and studied the rope hanging from the light pole. “Tommy, what happened? Nobody got hurt, did they?”
Tommy shook his head, gestured for Baxter and Max to follow him. He spoke quietly to them for a few minutes. Graham watched Baxter look over his shoulder at the scarecrow body under the sheet. Finally Baxter nodded and he and Max walked into the restaurant, their arms wrapped around each other’s waists for comfort.
Graham looked at Tommy. Tommy was watching his deputies, eyes narrowed. They were all looking at Max and Baxter, and Tommy was watching their faces. All Graham saw was concern and biscuit crumbs. These guys, they might not have been the most tolerant in the world, and diversity might have meant it was okay to choose Justins or Ariats or Tony Lamas if you had the money, but they did not appreciate scarecrows hanging from light poles or anyone messing with the Mad Moose. Graham shook his head. It wasn’t one of them.