by Sarah Black
When Graham went back inside, Bear was sitting at a table in the dining room in his new chef’s gear, head flat on the tabletop. Baxter was trying to dry his hair with a cup towel. He had washed it in the bathroom sink.
“Bear, it’s October already. It’s too cold to be camping out and walking around with wet hair. Max, get me another dry towel. Where are you staying? You want to crash on my couch?”
“I called Eddie, but no one was home,” Graham said.
Bear raised his head. “He went up to Roswell. I think he had a date or something. I wasn’t camping out, Baxter. I got drunk on Red Roses Bourbon and fell asleep on Smokey’s grave, for crying out loud. I can’t…Jesus, I’m just having a hard time. My head’s full of noise, I keep hearing…” His face was pink with humiliation.
Baxter nodded. “Then you’re coming home with me. You need to sleep a couple of hours, warm up.”
“It’s okay,” Bear protested. “I’m ready to work. I’m supposed to start this morning.”
Graham nodded at Baxter. “Baxter, you put him to bed and keep an eye on him. I need both of you back here by noon ready to work.”
Max leaned over and spoke quietly in Baxter’s ear, and then they both looked up at Graham. He raised his eyebrows. “What? Don’t get any harebrained ideas.”
“Okay, I’ll just…” Max pointed at the door and left in a hurry, and Baxter walked Bear outside.
The quiet was nice, after everyone had left. Graham cleaned up the kitchen and started writing down ideas for supper, checking supplies, and making a grocery list. This was his favorite part of the day, alone in the kitchen dreaming up menus and recipes. He wanted to try some old-fashioned western dishes, like beans with thick chunks of venison sausage and cornbread made in the iron skillet. The ranch boys would always eat beans. It was part of their heritage as cowboys, and he had about twenty pounds of smoky, spicy venison sausage from a ranch out in Texas. Maybe he’d cook a few pieces, see what kind of beans would go well with the flavors. They could fry some onions and green chilies with a touch of cayenne for some spicy cornbread, make a second batch of spoonbread, cornbread with cream style corn that was so moist and delicious it was just aching to have a big ladleful of beans or chili poured over the top.
Graham sliced some of the venison sausage into a frying pan and put it on the fire. It was heavy on the sage and black pepper. He forked a piece out of the skillet, blew on it until it was cool, and took a bite. Strong flavors, spicy but very little game. Some mild beans, maybe navy beans. He’d tasted some beans from the farmer’s market in Albuquerque once. They were called mortgage lifters, big fat white heirloom beans with the most wonderful buttery flavor. Those would be perfect, but he’d only seen them that one time. He should have saved some seeds.
Tommy came in the back door to the kitchen, wandered over to the stove and looked in the skillet with interest. Graham speared him a couple of pieces of sausage and handed him the fork. Tommy shoved the whole thing in his mouth. “Mmmm, that’s good.”
He looked good too, brown curls tangled over his forehead and chin dark with whiskers. Graham turned away. It was daylight now, and they were out in the world. He pulled some biscuits out of the oven. Graham knew Tommy wouldn’t eat in front of the troops.
Tommy leaned back against the counter watching him, then he reached up and ran a thumb across his bottom lip, stuck it in his mouth and sucked off the juice. “Good sausage, Callahan. I could bend you over that table and fuck you blind, boy.”
Graham dropped the biscuits, shock and a flash of erotic heat nearly putting him on his knees. “What in God’s name has gotten into you?”
Tommy shrugged. “I don’t know. All I’ve wanted to do since I’ve been home is fuck or beat the shit out of somebody.”
Graham was furious all of a sudden, his belly hollow and shaky. “All you wanted to do was fuck somebody, and it took you two months to make it thirty miles up the road? Did you fuck somebody besides me, Tommy? Who was it?”
Tommy shook his head. “Don’t say fuck, Graham. It doesn’t sound right. I’ve never been with anyone but you.” Tommy reached for his face, ran his fingers down Graham’s cheek. “And I bet you can’t say the same thing.”
Graham’s eyes filled with tears. “You think white beans with that sausage? Something mild like that?”
Tommy stared at him. “Jesus H. Christ, Callahan. Do they even make beans that aren’t pintos? Don’t be a fool. Keep an eye on the boys today, okay?”
Hunter Brockman came walking into the Moose a few minutes later, and Graham realized what Max’s errand had been. He didn’t look like a vampire this morning, Graham thought. Dressed in faded jeans and moccasins and a black turtleneck, he looked like a pirate, his black hair tied back with a piece of silver Navajo jewelry. Like a pirate, and good enough to eat.
“Graham Callahan.” He held out his hand, and Graham took it. “I think I owe you an apology. I’m sorry about last night. I kissed you in public. I wasn’t trying to cause you trouble or make a political statement.”
When Graham let go of his hand he leaned back against the counter and tucked his hands into the pocket of his Levi’s, the same place Tommy had been leaning a few minutes before.
“No problem,” Graham said. “But you aren’t averse to making a political statement now and again, are you?”
“No, I’m not. I know your old mentor, Josh Gallenkamp, from The Dirty Duck. He said to tell you ‘hi’ if I saw you. You worked there a couple of years after cooking school, right?”
“Yeah.” Graham grinned at him. “I haven’t talked to Josh in a while. He still eating chicken livers fried in bacon for breakfast?
Hunter grinned back. “Yeah, dirty rice, baby. You can take the Cajun out of the bayou…” The grin faded from his face. “He told me you were out, Graham, but I’m not sure he didn’t have it wrong. I wanted to talk to you because I don’t want to make things awkward for you. People around here don’t know you’re gay, do they.” It was a statement, not a question. “And I don’t think you want them to.” His face hardened. “Max told me what happened here last night. I’ve seen this before, Graham. The town will get polarized. People will start choosing up sides. Maybe if we can get people talking, start a constructive dialogue, no one will get hurt. Maybe.”
Graham looked at him. He wasn’t from here, and Graham felt a little helpless trying to explain. How could he explain this place? “Hunter, around here, we still live the cowboy way.”
Hunter lifted his eyebrows and smiled in surprise, faint derision on his face. Graham shook his head. “I don’t mean Hollywood cowboys. I mean the real thing. Like, what you do is more important than what you say. Out here, a man’s worth is measured by his work and his loyalty. Some things are never spoken of out loud, Hunter, but your friends will kill for you. Or die for you. That’s why so many of these boys are soldiers. That’s their code, too. Cowboys, they’re real lonesome and real romantic, all at once, and they like being that way. I think this place, the way things are here, it’s stronger than who you’re sleeping with.” Graham shrugged, helpless. He didn’t have the words to explain. It was just something he knew in his heart from growing up on the High Lonesome, from loving Tommy Lathrop his whole life.
“Real lonesome and real romantic. You’re living a sad cowboy song, Graham. You in love with that long drink of water sitting with you last night? The sheriff of Lincoln County. Wow. That sounds familiar, somehow. I don’t know…”
“The Lincoln County Wars. Back in the Wild West. The sheriff and his gang fought it out with the handsome and progressive newcomer and his gang over rights to control the money. It was long and bloody and everybody lost in the end.”
Hunter’s beautiful face was sad. “You know that’s what we’re heading for again, Graham. And if people in this town can’t find a way to accept everyone and live in peace, then you’re gonna have another Lincoln County War on your hands. And just like last time, everybody’s gonna lose.”
* *
* * *
Baxter and Bear showed up around noon, both looking shaky and pale, but they went on to work without much talking. Graham had made a pot of homemade chicken noodle, and he made Bear stop ripping off the siding long enough to come inside and eat some. He had been listening to him for an hour, banging with the hammer, ripping off the shingles, then stopping to barf quietly behind a tree. Graham wasn’t sure how good an advertisement it was for a restaurant to have someone throwing up out front, or to have Baxter drifting around like a ghost, white-faced and bursting into tears. Graham just wanted to fold them both up in his arms and hold them close. Sometimes people just needed a little extra care.
Tommy called late afternoon. “Eddie just called. He’s shacked up with some pretty single mother over in Roswell. Said Bear can stay at his place until he comes back.”
“What if I ask Bear to stay with Baxter and Max? Keep an eye on them?”
Tommy hesitated. “Who you got keeping an eye on who?”
Graham laughed. “Come to supper if you want. Come home with me, Tommy.”
Tommy hesitated again. “I don’t know if I can, Graham. I’m getting behind at the office. I thought I’d stay late and get caught up.”
“Yeah, okay.” He felt like a fool, the way the day turned suddenly gray and his stomach dropped down to his toes. Tommy had gotten screwed plenty last night. He didn’t need anymore for a while. “You know where I am, Tommy. When you want me.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice. How long had it been there? He knew Tommy could hear it, too. These mood swings felt psychotic, and familiar, too. He used to feel this way about Tommy all the time, either over the moon, or sunk in the depths of despair, miserable and bitter. Was he getting something, some disorder? Manic depression, or obsessive-compulsive something? Whatever it was, Tommy seemed to be getting it, too.
Tommy’s voice was rough. “I always want you, Callahan. If you let that candy-dick Hunter Brockman get within ten feet of you, I’ll tear his fucking head off and use it for a bowling ball.” The phone slammed down in Graham’s ear. He held the receiver away from his head and stared at it. What in God’s name was wrong with everybody?
Things went to hell in a handbasket. Over the next few days, several suspiciously well-written letters to the editor appeared in the Lincoln County Sentinel, advocating tolerance and the benefits of diversity, and suggesting the citizens of Lincoln County open up a dialogue with their gay neighbors. That was met with hoots of laughter, and everyone might have calmed down, but then a play was offered to the high school drama club with two gay main characters. The principal nixed the idea, saying she knew a good play when she saw one, and that play was a piece of propaganda crap. Feelings were hurt and there was a lot of high talk down at the Moose.
The library put up a gay and lesbian fiction display, which was very well received, featuring Josh Lanyon’s mystery series. Several twelve-year-old boys checked out more books than their previous lifetime totals, hoping to find some dirty stuff. All the copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and most copies of Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller, were checked out as well. Willa announced herself satisfied that some parity had been reached.
But then someone wrote a letter to the paper suggesting students at the high school should be allowed to form a gay, lesbian, and transgendered club, and posted a petition recommending the same on the bulletin board at the grocery store. Not many people in Lincoln County were sure what being transgendered meant, but they knew they didn’t want a bunch of them having a club at the high school. The rodeo club had gone co-ed the year before, and that was about as progressive as they were prepared to be.
When the wrestling coach said, loudly, in the cafeteria at lunchtime, that they already had a French Club where those boys could hang out, the French teacher threw a carton of chocolate milk at his head, and the French Club and the wrestling team mixed it up on the linoleum floor. Privately everyone was astounded that those boys in the French Club knew how to fight.
The emergency meeting of the school board was held in the high school auditorium, and public comment was welcomed. The place was packed. Hunter spoke, a few charming and well-chosen words about tolerance, the love of brother for brother that made small towns the backbone of America. A few cowboys snickered, but no one was buying it from this city slicker. Half the women in the audience stared at him with lust burning in their hearts. Graham wasn’t sure how many of the men had lust burning in their hearts, but he was sure quite a few were probably carrying firearms and watching their sons real close.
Baxter said a brief few words about how a gay club would have helped him not feel so alone in high school, and this was received a little better, because Baxter was one of them – screwed up as he obviously was – and he could cook like a dream. Baxter got a lot of leeway in Lincoln County. Hunter, elegant and gorgeous in Armani jacket and faded Levi’s, was an outsider.
After that brief volley from the tolerance side, things got progressively worse as person after person went up to the mike and either read a passage from Scripture recommending devilish punishments and hell-fires for the fornicating sinners, or requesting that the sheriff boot any gay heathen asses out of Lincoln County before someone took matters into their own hands. Graham felt dazed, then numb as it went on and on and on. Surely they weren’t talking about him? They weren’t talking about Tommy like this? These were their neighbors. Their friends. These were people he used to baby-sit for, people he bought his trucks from, people who came into the restaurant and ate his good food. His old Scout leader was particularly virulent, and Graham felt a headache start over his right eye, stronger and stronger until he was afraid he might throw up.
Zeigler took the mike last, and, apparently forgetting that he didn’t have control over both the school board budget and the city council budget, threatened to cut funding for any organization promoting those goddamn queer books or clubs.
Willa rose from her seat, levitated by fury, her tiny mass of gray curls topping a face as wrinkled as an apple left out in the New Mexico sun. “Are you trying to censor me?” The audience grew deathly still, and her finger pointed accusingly at Zeigler’s heart. “Are you going to burn down the library, you fascist pig, to keep an idea from escaping?”
The audience exploded in an uproar of angry voices. The school board president tapped the mike a couple of times to try and get everyone’s attention, shouted, stood up. Tommy finally walked to the front of the room and put his arm around Willa. “There has never been, and there never will be, censorship at the Lincoln County Library. That is going too goddamn far.”
Zeigler turned around and spat on the floor, and Graham wondered if Tommy had just wrecked his career, and why it seemed like he had done it on purpose.
In the parking lot, Mina Waters stopped him. She owned the florist shop and wedding boutique, and booked the Moose for wedding parties every month or so. She put her hand on his arm, nails long and useless with a French manicure in rose pink. “Graham, I’m wondering. You do require your staff to get periodic HIV testing, don’t you?”
He stared into her clear blue, guileless eyes. “Who? You mean all of us, Mina?”
“Oh, no, Graham.” She lowered her voice. “Just them.”
Tommy stepped up behind him and stared at Mina until she walked away. Graham turned around and looked at him. He couldn’t say anything. His belly felt hollow, and the migraine was spiking down through his right eye. They were standing in the middle of a crowd. Half the town was there. Tommy looked at him. “Go home and take some Excedrin, Graham. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Graham drove home, showered and shaved, and climbed between his sheets. The softness of the flannel sheets, the quiet of his house at night, and Tommy was coming. He felt the headache start to ease off, then disappear before he heard Tommy’s truck pull up outside.
They didn’t speak. Tommy pulled his clothes off with hands that were shaking a bit, climbed into Graham’s arms with his cock already rock-hard. He didn’t say an
ything, just rolled Graham over onto his stomach, reached into the bedside table where Graham kept the condoms and lube and a picture of the two of them in football uniforms, their arms around each other, homecoming game, senior year.
Tommy pulled Graham’s hips up until he was on his knees, reached between his legs and held his balls in one warm hand. Then Tommy pulled back, pulled him open and entered him, fingers digging deep into Graham’s hips as he held on.
Tommy was rocking hard and deep, his body shaking, and he leaned up over Graham’s back, took a bite of his shoulder like a stallion. “I love you, Callahan. I’ve loved you my whole life.” Graham could feel him coming then, fast enough to tear them both to pieces, but Tommy just held on, pumping into him, his breath coming in harsh rhythmic jerks. When Tommy was still, he slumped against Graham’s back, still buried deep inside his body. Graham could feel Tommy’s sweaty neck against his shoulder, smell a tiny hint of his new aftershave. “Did I hurt you?”
Graham shook his head. “You never hurt me, Tommy. Why don’t you tell me what you need?”
Tommy eased off him, went into the bathroom and flushed the condom, came back out with a warm, wet washcloth. “What I need? I need you. I need you to let me…be with you.”
Tommy held the washcloth against his ass, wiped him clean. Graham rolled over, his cock tight against his belly. He didn’t know what Tommy was talking about, and he didn’t care. “Okay, Tommy. I’m here.”
Tommy tossed the washcloth in the direction of the bathroom and climbed back on the bed between Graham’s legs. “What I need? I need you. My best friend.”