by Sarah Black
Graham’s eyes filled with tears, and Tommy lowered his head and took Graham’s cock into his mouth.
Tommy knew how to touch him, how to ratchet up the pleasure until Graham had to shove a fist into his mouth to keep from screaming out loud. One hand rolling his balls between hard fingers, the other stroking the base of his cock, and Tommy’s lips and tongue working the head, teeth scraping gently down the shaft. Graham could feel the tide of it roll over him, down his spine, inside his thighs, up through his balls and into his belly, into some secret place. A wave of helpless yearning and love caught at him like a riptide, the taste of cold salt water filling his mouth. When Graham started coming Tommy swallowed him, held Graham between his teeth until he stopped moaning, and was still.
Graham realized he had two fistfuls of Tommy’s hair. “Sorry, Tommy.” He eased his fingers out of Tommy’s brown curls, gave his scalp a little rub. Tommy nuzzled between his legs, soft kisses and sweet words, murmuring against his skin. Graham wondered if he could remember this forever, Tommy’s face buried between his legs, loving him.
Tommy wasn’t done. He moved up, took Graham’s mouth, and the musty taste of his come was smeared on their lips. Tommy was hard again, his cock nudging between Graham’s legs. He lifted Graham’s hips high, plunged into him again, no condom this time, and fucked him hard, murmuring against his mouth, in rhythm with his thrusts, “More, more, more. Callahan, I want more.”
The phone rang early, about five, and Graham picked it up. “Graham, this is Greg Leinert, over at the fire station. Listen, there’s trouble, an emergency, or I wouldn’t have called you. I’m looking for Sheriff Lathrop. We tried his pager, but no one answered. I called your brother, Graham, to see if he knew where Tommy was, and he said to try you. Is Tommy there?”
Graham rolled over and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, it’s the fire station. They say it’s an emergency.”
Tommy sat up and grabbed the phone. “Lathrop.” He listened for a moment, then turned and looked at Graham. “I’ll be there.” He handed the phone to Graham, who stared at it in shock. Oh, shit. What had he just done? Why did he say Tommy was here? He could have taken a message, said…
“Callahan, wake up. Get some pants on. I need you with me.” Tommy was shoving his shirt down into the waistband of his jeans. “The Moose is on fire.”
Graham could smell the smoke as soon as he stepped outside, but Tommy grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt and slowed him down. “Breathe, Callahan. You’re hyperventilating.”
Graham looked back at him and took a deep breath. “Tommy, I’m sorry. I screwed up back there. I know what cops are like. I’m sorry, Tommy. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Tommy stopped on the sidewalk, spun Graham around until they were facing each other. “Why would you think I give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of me, Callahan? I think you’re talking about you, not me. That’s fine, if that’s the life you want to lead. Just stop using me as your goddamn excuse.”
He pushed past, left Graham standing on the sidewalk, staring after him in shock. His mind had gone blank. What the…
The second fire truck blew past, sirens loud enough to wake up the town, and Graham sprinted to catch up with Tommy. The street-side wall of the restaurant was in flames, sparks spraying bright orange into the air and skittering across the roof. The fire fighters had the sidewalk roped off, and were spraying water through high-pressure hoses against the wall and the roof.
Graham couldn’t tell how badly damaged the building was. The fire was small, and would be out shortly, he guessed, and then they would have a shit-load of water and smoke damage to deal with.
He walked around by the back kitchen door, thinking he would put some coffee on, but the whole area was roped off. Did they even have power? Probably not. Tommy was examining the door to the storeroom with another man. He looked at Graham over his shoulder, waved for him to join them.
“Callahan, this is Mike Hughes. He’s the arson investigator.” Graham shook his hand.
“I’ve had some good meals at the Moose. I sure hate to see this sort of thing. Listen, Mr. Callahan, was the storeroom door like this, the last time you saw it?”
The door had been busted open, looked like with a crow bar or tire iron, something like that. Graham shook his head.
“Callahan, you know where Bear was keeping the stain for the new siding?”
Graham’s eyes lifted to the store room door. “I think he locked it up in there.”
“Looks like somebody used some rags and an open can of stain to start the fire.”
Graham felt a clutch of fear in his belly. “Tommy, where’s Bear? He and Baxter were supposed to close up last night. He’s not inside…”
Mike Hughes was running, shouting into his radio, and a couple of fire fighters came around the corner with a ram. They ran it into the kitchen door a couple of times until it popped open, banging back against the wall, then they were inside, flashlights bouncing off the walls and into the corners.
Tommy grabbed him by the sweatshirt again when he would have run into the building after them. “Easy, tiger. They’ll find him if he’s inside. You don’t have safety gear. What’s Baxter’s number?”
Tommy had his cell in his other hand. Graham grabbed it and started dialing.
“Yeah. Hello?” Baxter’s voice was sleepy.
“Baxter, wake up. Is Bear with you?”
“No. He went back to Eddie’s. Me and Max, we had a fight and I think Bear wanted to give us some space…”
“Baxter. Somebody set the Moose on fire. Call your mom. Tell her I’m here, and I’ll call her in a couple of hours, let her know how bad things are.”
Graham hung up on the strangling sounds coming over the phone and dialed Eddie’s number.
“Callahan.”
“Callahan here, too. Is Bear with you?” Graham heard an all clear shout from the fire fighters.
“Yeah, he’s here, snoring like a pig. Smells like he’s been French kissing a bottle of Red Roses.”
Tommy took the phone out of Graham’s hand, started telling Eddie what happened. He hung up just as Baxter came flying up the street. Hunter Brockman was with him. Baxter’s cheeks were bright pink, and Hunter had the swollen mouth and tousled hair of a porn star just climbing out of bed, all sweaty and smelling like semen. Tommy stiffened next to Graham, and Baxter peeled off to look at the damage.
Graham walked over to meet him. “Where’s Max?”
“He went back to Truth or Consequences. Said he would stay with his sister until things settle down.”
Tommy stared at Hunter until the other man looked up and met his eye. “You have something to say to me, lawman?”
“Yeah, I do. I think it’s time you packed up your kind of trouble and moved on. You looking for young boys to suck your dick and worship you? You’ll have better luck somewhere else. We think for ourselves around here, even Baxter. And what we think is you are having a real good time enjoying our trouble. It’s none of your fucking business what happens in Lincoln County.”
Hunter was running his thumb over his lower lip, back and forth, and he stared into Tommy’s face and smiled. Graham could see he had a love bite on his neck. Hunter didn’t say anything, just ambled off to watch the fire fighters loading up their gear, but Graham thought he looked like a man with a weapon in his hand. Tommy was staring at the horizon, his eyes narrowed. The dawn was just beginning to break in the distance.
Graham looked at Baxter, who was close to tears again. “What are you doing? Baxter, what in God’s name has gotten into you?”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Tommy had his hands on his hips, staring at them both. “Callahan, don’t you realize that all of this, not the bullshit from Baxter’s toy dick, but all the real stuff has been directed at the Moose? What do you think that means?” Tommy shoved his cell phone into the pocket of his jeans and stalked off.
Two hours later, and a grim, silent group stood in the dining room and stared at the wa
terlogged, sooty mess. Merry moved her wheelchair in a circle, taking it all in, trying to stay calm. Ray was with her, and he kept a hand on her shoulder as she looked around.
Zeigler looked around as well, shaking his head, his face pink with pleasure. “I told you, Graham. Does anyone listen to me? Didn’t I tell you trouble was coming?”
Eddie had come over, and Bear was with him. Bear looked like he’d slept on Smokey’s grave again, his face stricken. “Graham, I swear to God, I locked up all the stain, everything, the tools… I don’t know…” He looked around the room, his face drawn and gray.
Eddie clamped a big hand down on his shoulder. “Nobody thinks you did anything wrong, Bear.”
Hunter was perched on the edge of the table, swinging his foot. He was wearing beaded moccasins again. “It’s funny, though.”
Tommy stared at him. “What’s funny?”
“The last time, when somebody lynched a scarecrow out front, Bear was missing in action then, too.”
“What?” Bear rubbed a hand down hard over his face. “What lynching? What are you talking about?”
“And once again his memory is a blank. How convenient.”
“The storage room door was opened with a tire iron, dickhead.” Tommy was looming over him, and Hunter just smiled up at him, looking as beautiful as Lucifer.
“Tommy, is that what you were asking me about? That night, did I see anything?” Bear’s voice was shaky, and Eddie pulled a chair up and pushed him down into it.
“This is a strange business all around,” Hunter mused. “Gay-bashing in a town full of gay men. A gay sheriff. A gay chef, and all of you in the closet.” He looked around the room. “I’m beginning to think the whole town’s gay.”
Baxter looked at him in surprise, and Hunter leaned over and kissed him, pushed his tongue inside Baxter’s mouth. Merry stared at them, her face flushing red. Ray stood up. “Now, wait just a goddamn minute here.”
Hunter took his time kissing Baxter, and by the time he pulled away, Baxter’s face was scarlet. Graham felt his stomach twist into a ball of ice.
“Baxter, you’ve got to get out of this town. You need to have the freedom to open yourself to the world, open yourself to life, and be honest about who you are.” Hunter stroked one long finger down Baxter’s cheek, but Graham didn’t think Hunter was talking to Baxter. “Otherwise, you will find yourself in love, hopelessly in love, and still be sleeping alone when you’re thirty. And forty and fifty and sixty.”
Hunter turned and stared at Tommy, his eyes empty and black. And Tommy punched him in the face, knocked him across the room into a puddle of cold, sooty water.
* * * * *
There was a letter to the editor the next day: Does Lincoln County Need a Gay Sheriff? But it didn’t matter, because by then the mayor had rousted the city council out of bed, and they put Tommy on administrative leave pending an investigation. Assault charges had been filed. Tommy had told Zeigler to go fuck himself, and half the deputies were threatening to go out on strike. That’s the only information Graham had, courtesy of Baxter, who heard it from his mother. He hadn’t seen Tommy since Ray had dragged him out of the Moose.
Graham got on the phone to Eddie, who had some harsh words for him. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Graham? He’s still shaky. We all are. I mean, you don’t just come home and get on with your life unchanged, bro. Why don’t you talk to him for a change? Why don’t you listen so he can talk to you? You two have got the most fucked up…”
“Eddie, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought our problem here was somebody spray painting the word ‘fagot’ across the back wall of the Moose. What does any of this have to do with the war?” He felt that low-level panic in his chest, like he used to get watching CNN in the middle of the night. “I don’t know what has gotten into Tommy. Or Bear or Baxter or you. You’re shacked up with some woman from Roswell? The whole county is acting crazy. Tommy’s mad at me, but do you think two years ago he would have told the fire station he was having a sleepover at my house? I’m not trying to deny him. I’m trying to protect him, Eddie. He’s a cop. You know what they’re like. You think he can come out and work in Lincoln County?”
“Graham, didn’t you see the scars on his shoulder? Six inches in the other direction, that shrapnel would have been through his throat. That causes a man to rethink his priorities. You with me, bro? Cops understand that.”
“Yeah,” Graham said. “Not like anyone bothered to tell me when he got hurt.”
“Shut up, Graham, and just listen. You waited for him to come home and make the first move, like he always did before, since you were kids. You didn’t go find him, when he holed up at his place in Carrizozo with his head buried under a pillow. Graham, he needs you. You care about your reputation and his, about keeping things quiet, and he doesn’t give a shit about any of that. Don’t you get it? He didn’t write to you. He didn’t come find you. And you let him get away with it, like he was getting to be too much trouble. And now he’s off in the woods at the hunting shack with a rifle and a bottle of bourbon and the fucking war still boiling in his head and he’s sitting up there thinking he fucked things up with you, and that’s all he cares about. That is all he has ever cared about. And you’re just gonna let him…?”
Graham dropped the phone and ran.
Two hours on muddy, bumpy gravel roads up into the mountains to Tommy’s hunting shack, and Eddie’s words pounded inside Graham’s head like a sledgehammer. What if it was true? What if it was all too true, and he had sat nursing his pain and worry, kept his grievance wrapped around him and never reached out to help his best friend. Would it have been so hard, to just go find him and wrap him up and take him home? If Tommy had come home hurt, like Merry had from the last war, no power on earth could have kept him from finding Tommy and taking him home and taking care of him forever. Graham tapped the steering wheel with one anxious finger and drove his old Jeep around a tree fallen in the road. Maybe Tommy had come home hurt, hurt where you couldn’t see it. Maybe they all had. Graham hadn’t expected…any of this. He had been worried about their legs.
But didn’t Tommy realize that you couldn’t be openly gay and be the sheriff of Lincoln County? Not when the mayor and the city council were full of obnoxious pricks like Zeigler. They would make his life a living hell. And what about the men, Cedric and Fred and Aimee and the rest of the deputies? Would he get the respect he needed to do the job? Graham knew Tommy wanted that job. He loved that work, always had. And he loved this place, their hometown. Graham was only trying to keep them both safe, keep them both at home. He was trying to walk the middle path, keep things in balance. Change came slow to Lincoln County. But maybe he was wrong about that. Change was blowing into town lodged like shrapnel in the hearts of their vets.
Graham pushed open the door to Tommy’s cabin. He was gone, but not by long. The wood stove was still warm, and his sleeping bag was open on the bunk. A half-empty bottle of Red Roses Bourbon was sitting on the floor next to the bunk, on top of a pile of letters. Graham didn’t think Tommy was suicidal. He was out hunting deer, because nobody in Lincoln County cooked venison like Graham. That at least would never change.
Graham threw a couple of pieces of wood into the stove and sat back on Tommy’s bunk. He picked up the letters and started reading.
I wish you were with me, Callahan. No, I guess I mean I wish I were there, with you. You’d be curled up asleep between those blue flannel sheets you love so much, and I’d slide right in with you…
Graham read for an hour, and one letter he folded and tucked carefully into the pocket of his jeans.
Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t rather have my best friend back, since we can’t seem to be best friends and lovers. Why is that, Callahan? I miss you. But I’ve been missing you for ten years. Are we really gonna have to choose one or the other? Will we have to leave home to be together? If I could have you, if we could really be together, I’d give up anything. I’d leave home in a min
ute. I’d give up my work. Who cares? It’s just work. But you’re everything to me.
Graham set the bourbon back down on the letters, curled up in Tommy’s sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep. He’d never find him in the woods. He would just have to wait, and hope he came home safely. Graham knew how to wait for Tommy to come home.
Tommy came into the cabin a little before dark, unloaded his rifle and set it in the corner. Graham watched him, and Tommy came over to the bunk and knelt down and kissed him. His mouth tasted salty and cold, and he brought the smell of falling yellow leaves and crisp October air into the cabin with him. “Hey, Callahan.” Tommy stayed on his knees, his eyes moving over Graham’s face. He reached up, traced Graham’s forehead with his fingers. “How’s your head?”
“It’s fine. Get up, Tommy. I don’t want you on your knees, not for me.”
“I think it’s too late for that.” He hesitated, leaned in for another kiss, his mouth warming up now, sweeter, as if the kisses had removed the tiny salty traces of his tears. Then he stood up, gathered up all the letters and threw them into the wood stove to burn. “I guess you kept the ones you wanted?”
Graham stretched and sat up. “Yeah, I did. Did you shoot me a deer?”
“Nothing today. How about a can of beans for supper?”
“I don’t think so. You want to cook?”
“Not really,” Tommy admitted.
“I don’t either,” Graham said. “I brought a cooler.” He gestured with his chin.
“Oh, thank God.” Tommy opened up the cooler and dug out a plastic container of elk stew, and another of mashed potatoes with elk gravy. He opened the lid and stuck a finger into the stew, sucked the gravy off. Graham just sighed and got off the bed. “Give it to me. I’ll heat it up.”
While he was working over the wood stove with Tommy’s single yellow enamel pot, Tommy sat down on the bunk, pulled his boots off and peeled out of his damp flannel shirt and jeans. He pulled a clean sweatshirt and sweatpants on, and a dry pair of socks. He rubbed his chin, then shrugged. “I’m not up to shaving tonight, Callahan.”