by Martin Moran
“What’s up with you?” His question drifted across the dusty barnyard, faded into the trees.
I shifted another horseshoe to my right hand, leaned forward, and swung it back and forth, enjoying the lethal heft of metal. I squinted, took a step, and let it fly. It arched high and way short, and landed with one flat thud. I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was holding his camera. The good one, the large lens. It had a fancy strap, a colorful, psychedelic weave that draped over his shoulder. He lifted the camera to his eye and pointed it my way.
“Don’t.”
He held it steady against his face.
“Don’t!”
He hesitated, then let it drop and held it next to his hip. Long silence.
“Why didn’t you come to see me last night?” I imagined my remaining horseshoe sticking out of his head, the way it would bleed, knock him cold. “Do you want to talk?”
It was a good toss—nearly a ringer, it smacked, ricocheted off the post, and skidded to a stop. I stuck my hands in my jean pockets and wondered which way to walk—the path to the lake or the one to the bunkhouse. Then I heard the kriiick of the shutter.
“I said don’t, damnit.” It was out of me like a shot, not the way I wanted. I sounded shrill and childish and I hated the way my will seemed to leak with the words. Keep silent, I thought, best to say not one damn thing. I stuck the heel of my boot into the dirt as if slamming on a brake.
“Oh, come on. A souvenir of Wyoming.”
“Just don’t.”
I wanted to bolt, but not enough for my feet to obey. My heel dug deeper, carving a crater toward China.
“Let’s talk. Let’s go into the barn.”
I shook my head. No way. No talking.
He hit the latch from beneath with the heel of his palm and the large door swung open. The cooler air from within, the faint smell of hay, brushed past my face. It seemed as though the barn had been waiting, holding its breath. He moved aside to let me pass.
“Watch your feet.”
A board, easy to trip on, framed the bottom of the doorway. I stepped over it and into the dim light. The ground inside was less packed, soft in the soles of my boots. My eyes were drawn to the ceiling, which sloped steeply up beyond a high, wooden beam hanging like the transom of an old chapel. The sun spilled in from somewhere above the hayloft and cast its amber light in one rectangular chunk across the wooden wall to my right. The building was startlingly quiet, not an animal in sight, though the fodder and waste of them were mixed in the dirt, whiffs of their living in the air.
From behind me came the squeak of hinges. Bob was yanking at the door. The back of his T-shirt was streaked with dirt and with yellow stains at the pit of each arm. His Levis were snug at his buttocks; I could see clearly the shape of his wallet, the white, rectangular fade of it stenciled on his left pocket. My feet moved backwards as if to find the spot to take a stand. The time had come, I thought, to find the right words to say what’s wrong. To make an end.
The sight of light and trees from the barnyard narrowed to a sliver, then to nothing as the door slammed. The rattle of its closing sent an instant charge through me and my knees began to shake. I had to bend them to steady my stance. It was fear, it seemed, as much as desire that caused my dick to stiffen. Hunger and danger—fused. I folded a fist into each front pocket to hide the swelling. He grabbed the inside latch of the door and spun it until it snapped into its cradle. He set his camera on the ground with great care, the bright strap of it flopping in the dirt, then he stood with his back against the door. Dueling distance.
“What is it?” he asked. I studied the scratches and stains on the pointy toes of my boots. “Why didn’t you come to see me last night?”
I glanced toward the locked door. Maybe Robin had added things up, was looking for us.
There were three fences, small pigpens, I guessed, or goat stalls, jutting from the wall to my right. I stepped over to the first one and sat against it, my hands still stuffed in my pockets. Bob moved into the room and stood near the large center beam.
He patted the wooden pillar. “This was built to last.” He looked up toward the loft. “What’s wrong?” I stared at a pair of reins and a bridle dangling from hooks on the wall behind him. “Why didn’t you come?”
I let my chin fall to my chest. “I didn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to.”
A fly dove recklessly at my face. I swatted it away.
“Why?”
“Because.” My voice, barely a breath, was swallowed into the dirt. I searched for the fury that had grown and lodged itself like a tight ball in my chest, but it was gone, or melted, somehow, to nothing but sorrow. Useless for a fight.
“What is it?”
There was a rusty pail near my feet. I gave it a little kick and it fell with a clatter to its side. The bottom of it was caked with mud. “I have to end it,” I said.
“What?”
“Everything.” My throat clamped shut, my eyes filled up. Fucking tears, I fought them with all my might. I had a stand to take, there were things burning inside, things to say—about being older, the boots not fitting, Robin seeing us, Karen hating me—but, of all the words, only two fell out of my mouth. “I jumped.”
He took a step toward me and I couldn’t stop the flood of tears.
“That’s OK,” he whispered.
“No. No it isn’t.”
“The Green is a serious river . . .” He moved another step toward me.
“Don’t . . . just don’t.” He stopped. “No one else would do what I did.”
“Don’t worry about anyone else. You’re a great—”
“She even said it!” I looked at the dirt, wiping my face on the baggy sleeves of my large button-down shirt—a hand-me-down from Dad. “She said I have no balls.” He was quiet for a time and with a new and sudden worry I whispered, “God . . . don’t tell her I told.”
“Well, come on. We know that’s just not true. Don’t we?”
I looked up at him then, at the stupid grin on his face, at his pink hand slapping at the fly circling his brow. I stared right at him until his smile disappeared, until his hand came to rest.
“It’s turning out all wrong,“ I said, my voice clamped in a growl.
“What is?”
“I am!”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“But look at me . . . at us. We are . . .”
“We’re not that, I’ve told you! You’re not that.”
“How do you know?’
“I know. You’ll see. You’ll grow up and you’ll meet a girl.”
A girl . . . a girl . . . for an instant the image—long blond hair, breasts under a white sweater—flashed through my head and I grabbed onto it as to a lifeline. God how I wanted to believe him: me with a girl, me a normal boy kissing inside a barn, with Lisa or Tammy or Paula. It was three seconds of comfort to trust that he might see what I couldn’t yet about my own body, about the way the world unfolds.
He stepped a little closer, his arms outstretched, his palms open. “We love each other. That’s entirely different.”
“Different from what?”
“From the way homosexuals are.” A jolt of sickness at hearing the word aloud. A word not said but looked up in dictionaries of disease. “You and I are different.” His head was tilted to the left, his face somber with facts of life. I looked at his glasses, held together at the nose by a hunk of gray tape, I looked at him and thought, he must know. He must have seen one, or some, of them. Seen what they are—these awful people without love. “We help each other, that’s all,” he said, reaching toward me, displaying the chalky calluses at the base of each finger. “We’re two good people, helping each other. There’s nothing bad in that. Homosexuals are people without love.” He stepped closer and my knees began to shake again and my groin to pulse. He took off his glasses and hooked them into the V-neck of his undershirt. He bent down carefull
y as he got close to me and reached for the bucket near my feet. I took in the smell of horses and hay and of him, aware of how much I liked it all. The animal odors. The animal life. He took a step back, flipped the bucket bottom up, hitched his pants and sat on it like a rancher on a milking stool.
“Come here.”
I didn’t move. I remained, hands in pockets, leaning on my little fence, making believe I might stay put, stay blameless. He opened his arms wide and held them there, as motionless as the statue of a saint, and I knew I couldn’t bear the being separate. “Marty, come here.” His voice traveled down my throat like heat from a furnace and my legs moved toward the warmth, toward the body right in front of me.
“It’s all right,” he said, reaching for my belt.
As his hands worked my buckle, I thought I might melt for gratitude, for the relief of being touched. Thank God, at least this existed on earth. At least I’d found it. The consolation of flesh. He unsnapped my buttons one by one, then peeled away the cotton to get to me. He paid no attention to pleasuring himself. This time it was all for me, a gift, like sealing with a kiss the end of our quarrel. My pants fell to my ankles and I gazed at the burnt, bald crown of his head moving, at the wisps of brown hair spiraling clockwise. I gazed, utterly amazed at the way warm and wet could answer, for the moment, every aching worry, every troubling question. He took hold of my hips and I gripped his shoulders, closed my eyes. I knew I didn’t really like him, that there was barely a trace of love here, and I knew what that made me and I tried not to care. And as I moved my hips back and forth I looked around the filthy, beautiful barn, and heard myself whispering, Yes, oh yes.
We left the barn and walked down to the lake to join the other boys and Karen. Some were fishing, some swimming. I sat down on a log, my body heavy with failing. I’d failed, again, to stop it. He asked if he could take my picture. Yeah, OK, what the hell. I still have it, me sitting on that log. In it I’m holding—I don’t remember why—a rumpled piece of paper towel. My face is drawn, circles under my eyes, my hair a thick long mop, my lips parted in a faint effort at a smile, the clunky braces on my front teeth peeking through. My father’s old shirt, white and baggy, barely tucked into my recently buttoned Levis.
Everyone else went up to dinner. I remained on that log, I remember, for a long time. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to listen to the birds, to watch the light change and soften over the lake. I remember observing how the changing breezes and the many bugs skating along the water caused little wakes of light, dappled patterns, to constantly shift. I watched the fish poke through the surface to eat what they could. The tall pines swayed, growing darker against the darkening sky. Movement, incessant song and movement, the world going on, and I remember thinking, so clearly, as I watched the gloaming, how I was not, could not be, a part of this. The natural world. I sat on that log at the side of the pond, wanting to ask the bugs, the birds, the beautiful trees: How did this happen? It was the first time, the first place, it occurred to me that I must leave here. Leave the world. God made all that is, I thought, and it is beautiful, but I cannot be a part of it. He could not have intended this. This mistake. I didn’t think of it as suicide so much as the idea of ending being. That something, someone, so unnatural as I, could not remain among that which lives. This feeling, like sex, seemed to come from my body. A certain dreadful sense that the only solution to the error that has been made is to erase it. The feeling then moved from my body to a kind of rational argument: If something is bad, you must get rid of it. End it. Simple. I am bad so I must go. And I knew then that this was the only answer, the only choice. That I needed the strength to end what wasn’t good. This one thing I had to have the balls to do.
The idea was born that day and would not leave me for years and years to come.
That night Bob came to my bunk after everyone was asleep. He jostled me and asked that I come to the room where he slept. Like a trained zombie, I pulled back the covers and followed him out.
I didn’t exactly know if they slept in the same bed or what they were to each other but there she was. “Come on,” he said, “crawl in.”
She didn’t seem to react at all. She lay on her side in the dim light, her back to us, maybe sleeping. I slid into his side of the double bed, then he got in and nudged me over so that I was in the middle. He didn’t say anything, but the movement of his hands, the way he gently turned my body toward hers told me what was happening. I understood suddenly that this was his offering. My reward.
The air, the silence, is electric. What has Bob said to her? I wonder if they’ve discussed it, made a bargain about what to do with the kid. Did he tell her I was hurt by what she said? Did he ask her to make up, be nice? Bob reaches around with one hand and guides me toward Karen. I’m excited, my mind racing, thinking: This is it, the thing that men do. The natural thing. The thing I’ve been waiting for. I’m erect, a sign that I’m made the right way. It’s surreal, the way she’s not really there. A lump of flesh, or like a rock, really, with an opening into which Bob slides me—small plug into a cold socket. Has he made a compact with her? It wasn’t two days ago that she insulted me, told me I wasn’t a man. I slide into her thinking, oh my God; I’m in a woman. That part of a woman. It, she, feels rough, sandpapery. It does not feel warm or good and I understand in some way that this holds no pleasure for her but I don’t care. All I’m thinking is how I’ll be able to say from now on that I’ve done it. What boys do. It goes fast. I come, thrilled at my accomplishment. My sense of power is followed instantly by intense embarrassment. Awkwardness.
When it’s over I crawl back over Bob to the edge of the bed.
“You see?” he whispers. Then he turns and makes love to his girlfriend.
An hour later I tiptoe back to the dorm and take my place among the sleeping campers. I look at Robin’s shaggy, handsome head. The thought of waking him runs through my mind. Just for a second, so I could tell him what’s happened. Not to worry, I can do it. No question. But I don’t dare wake him, dare spill this new secret, and I crawl into my bunk. I stare above at the series of thick beams—shaved logs—running the length of the room, and above them at the sloped, slatted ceiling. I wonder if the roof might fall in, crush me. I wonder why it is that I feel so terribly, terribly sad.
We are in Wyoming for three more days. The last night we’re there, very late, he sneaks in to get me and takes me to bed with the both of them again. Once more he offers her to me or me to her. No words, just nudges and hand signals. She “accepts” or, rather, holds still and receives me. Coldly, as far as I can tell, but what do I know? It goes quickly, nonetheless, because I’m hungry to prove it for a second time. Prove that I’m capable. Then everything goes a step further. With more nudges and maneuvering Bob makes it known that he wants me behind him, to be inside him while he moves inside her. I oblige. It all strikes me as weirdly inventive, that such a configuration could exist. This is something, I think, he’s been angling for all along. Attention from all sides, mastermind in the middle. How did he become this being, this thing—like a daddy longlegs weaving a big, sticky web? And how did we get here, tangled in it, like hungry prey, groping in the dark for food, for escape?
In the daylight nothing is said. Karen and I can scarcely look at each other.
15
SUMMER OVER AND back in the halls of Christ the King, my body vibrates. My bones are infused with a push that tells me I must fashion a dazzling public self. Be the best and busiest eighth grader ever. The push has always been there but now it’s a kind of panic, an incessant, living prayer: God, do not let shame fall upon my head. For if it were to come, if the truth of things surfaced, I would die of it. And I had no doubt that shame could kill a body.
Even now I can see, nearly feel, my small body scurrying down the halls, running for classes and extracurricular meetings. It’s a physical, an almost athletic feeling that I must jump higher, spell better, talk smoother, smile more broadly than anyone else. It’s as if my life depends on t
his. On performing. It lives there in my knotted stomach, this imperative. Dazzle or you’re doomed.
I run for class president and win. I know then that my picture will be placed—along with secretary and treasurer—at the very center of our graduating class photo. This is what I want, to be encased in the bright aura of achievement. Student Council. Boy Scouts. Great Books. Run. Run. The faster, the better. The quicker I move, the less any truth can be pinned down. By me or anyone else. The shinier my halo, the more I can blind them. If the arrows come (and there are awful moments when I feel sure they will, that trouble will surface), I’ll have armor so golden, so thick, that nothing will stick. Not to the straight-A superspeller likes of me. Nothing will pierce. Not the good boy.
There are many moments I enjoy. I’m good at chatting with adults and I’m generally popular with my classmates. I love the attention I get from doing well, but I know that my quick body is a blight here in the holy halls of civilized life. My fellow citizens just don’t know it yet. Every waking moment comes with the task of earning the right and making up for the wrong of being here. I knew I’d revoked my own membership, but every action I’d take would be a way of proving, of saying: I still belong.
It would be the odd moment cycling home or daydreaming in class that it might come to me. Like a whip-crack of dread. The thought of a news clipping, a rumor, a summons. The thought that somewhere there might be an authority investigating him. He’d be found out. And then, so would I.
Once in a while I’d get a letter from him, urging me to keep up my studies, to kick butt in the spelling bee, asking how I was and when I wanted to come visit and work on his new house. Sometimes he called.