by Peg Kerr
The man turned his attention back to his strings. He plucked out another, slower measure, took a deep breath, and opened his mouth to sing.
His tenor voice was light and flexible, mellifluous with a rich burr, like sunlight caressing honeyed oak. Under the spell of that voice, Elias forgot everything: hunger and the rancid stink rising from the subway and the dull knife edge of despairing fear. Instead, he closed his eyes again and listened with all thought suspended as the musician sang with simple longing for home. A hush fell when the song had ended, and Elias sat perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, until a sense of his own weakness crept back over him like an icy vapor, making tears brim over in the corners of his eyes.
The musician cleared his throat, as if to break the spell, and then the guitar introduced another melody, light and teasing. His voice changed, too. It sounded sly, full of laughter and mischief. If the beggin‘ be as good a trade
as I have heard them say,
it’s time that I was out of here
and jogging doon the brae.
Tae the beggin‘ I will go, will go
a beggin‘ I will go.
I’ll get me to the tailor man
they call him Arnie Gray
I’ll gat him mak‘ a cloak tae me
tae help me night and day.
Tae the beggin‘ I will go, will go
a beggin‘ I will go.
And all the time I am away
I’ll let my hair grow long.
I will not pare my nails at all
for the beggars wear them long.
Tae the beggin‘ I will go, will go
a beggin‘ I will go.
And all the suitors of the town
I’ll lead a merry chase
and coins of gold they’ll throw tae me
all for my pretty face.
Tae the beggin‘ I will...
“Stop it!” Elias suddenly found himself on his feet, rigid and trembling with fury. “Stop it,” he cried again, as the guitar faltered to a stop and the musician looked over at him in surprise. “What the hell do you know about it?” Elias said, his voice ragged. “You don’t know the first thing about what it’s like, you stupid asshole, you—” He choked himself off in horror.
A variety of expressions played over the musician’s features: consternation, perplexity, and rueful chagrin. “Oh, Jesus ... the music wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Elias felt his face flaming up in blinding embarrassment. He swayed, looked around wildly, mumbling something— he hardly knew what—that came out incoherently, and suddenly his knees buckled. He found himself squatting, his hands flailing in front of himself. I’m going to faint, he thought with a sudden numb, surprised clarity. There was a sudden movement and he felt the other man’s arm firmly across his upper chest, keeping him from pitching forward. “Here, now. Easy. Uh ... can I get you to sit back on the bench? I can’t hold you up and hold my guitar, too.”
After a confused moment or two, Elias found himself back on the bench, leaning forward with his head between his legs. He felt something pressing against a thigh to one side; that must be the guitar placed on the bench beside him. He could feel a pair of hands fixed firmly on his shoulders, holding him in place on his seat. Slowly, the pounding giddiness in his head receded. He made a slight shifting movement, and the hands immediately released him.
“You want to sit back up?”
Elias nodded, and the musician helped push him up.
Elias found himself eye to eye with the other man, who knelt on the ground before him. Self-consciously, Elias straightened up as best he could; he wished his damned hands would stop shaking. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m crazy. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t even know why I did that.” He stole an embarrassed glance, but saw only friendly concern in the other man’s face.
“You having a bad trip, or something?” the man said.
Elias gave a half laugh. “I don’t do drugs.”
The man hesitated, and then spoke again. “How long has it been since you ate, kid?”
Elias’s gaze dropped. “I don’t know.” He looked at his hands and tried to think back—there’d been that banana he’d found that had fallen out of a crate behind the Korean corner grocery. “Sometime yesterday morning, I think.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his fists. What am I going to do? Dear god in heaven, what am I going to do? The musician’s knees disappeared from his field of vision, and the guitar was removed from the bench. He heard some steps, the scrape of the instrument case, and then felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up in surprise.
The musician stood in front of him again, holding his guitar case. “C’mon, kid,” he said, jerking his chin toward East Fourteenth Street. “I’ll buy you a hamburger.”
“Ah, no,” Elias said faintly, even as his mouth flooded with saliva at the thought. “I couldn’t.”
“ Course you can. You’re too whipped to argue with me. I’m hungry, anyway. There’s a place on Second Avenue I’m thinking of, a little past Tenth. Think you can make it that far? They have great fries, too—but don’t try the soup.”
They walked slowly, with the musician unobtrusively offering Elias a steadying hand on his elbow when he swayed. Eventually they found the place the musician wanted, an underground restaurant called the Grotto, and sat down at a wobbly, scarred table set in a little backwater eddy by the kitchen. Clove cigarette smoke coiled low in the air, and the odor of hamburgers, pasta sauce, and frying onions made Elias’s head swim.
The man got up to speak with the waitress for a moment and came back with a large glass of orange juice. “Here, drink up. This should stop the shakes.” Elias took a sip, and then gasped and downed the rest. It really did work: he had barely put the tumbler down when he realized his tremors had eased. The tension flowed from his muscles like water, and he cautiously lifted one shoulder and then the other to stretch them.
“That’s better, then,” the man said mildly as Elias pushed the glass forward. “My name is Sean. Sean Donnelly.”
“I’m Elias Latham.”
Sean raised an eyebrow. “Elias? That’s an unusual name. Can’t say I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s a Puritan name,” Elias said, offering, without thinking, his standard explanation. As soon as he said it, he felt like an idiot. Some Puritan I’ve been today— out on the street trying to turn tricks. He suddenly felt glad he’d closed his denim jacket over the muscle shirt.
“Really.”
“Yeah,” Elias said, and forced himself to smile. “It’s an old family name.”
“Old New England stock, I take it.”
“Mm-hmm. My family came over early—some on the Mayflower, the whole bit. There’s even a story about someone way back on the family tree who ended up condemned to death for witchcraft.”
A bored-looking waitress slithered her way through the crowd and appeared, wraithlike, at their table. “Decided what you want yet, guys?”
Belatedly, Elias reached for one of the plastic-covered menus propped up between the napkin dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers. “Uh, I haven’t even had a chance to look yet.”
“I’ll take the hamburger platter with Swiss and mushrooms,” Sean said. “You got Guinness on tap, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine, I’ll have that. Thanks.” Sean folded his menu back up and tucked it back next to the salt and pepper. “You?”
“I’ll have the hamburger platter, too, with cheddar, please. And a Coke to drink.”
The waitress nodded, rattling her earrings violently, slashed an underline on her pad, and slipped it back into her front pocket.
Elias smiled tentatively at Sean. “Thanks.”
Sean smiled back encouragingly. The effect was dazzling. Elias groped around for something else to say. “I ... really liked your music,” he managed finally as the waitress came back and set their drinks in front of them.
Now th
e smile tugged at the corner of Sean’s mouth.
“That so? Well, my friend, you have a strange way of showing it.” He took a sip of Guinness.
“Oh,” Elias said, stricken, remembering. “That is—I’m sorry I interrupted. You didn’t even have a chance to collect much money, did you? I... I...” He trailed off helplessly. Sean waved a careless hand. “Forget it. It’s not the money. I just busk for fun these days, anyway.”
He picked up his water glass, took a sip, and rattled the ice cubes. “So—you’re a runaway, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh.” He looked down at his Coke. “I got kicked out.”
“Huh. And it didn’t have to do with drugs? Wait a minute,” Sean added quickly, “you don’t have to tell me, not if you don’t want to. There aren’t any strings attached to that hamburger.”
Elias couldn’t help but smile. He looked up again and studied Sean’s face and decided, cautiously, that it seemed open, and willing to listen. He liked it. And Sean meant it, too, Elias realized: he really didn’t have to say anything. Having a choice of whether to tell or not made it clear: he wanted to tell somebody the truth, and to choose to tell it of his own free will. The unspoken words had been weighing inside him for too long. He took a deep breath. “I was home for summer from school—”
“So you’re in college?” Sean cocked his head, studying Elias with a quizzical expression. “I wouldn’t have thought you were that old.”
“No. Boarding school—prep school. I’d just graduated. I’m going to college next—” He caught himself. “That is, I was.”
“A boarding prep school,” Sean repeated with a neutral expression, but Elias understood what he meant and grimaced.
“Yeah, that’s it. My family is the real East Coast Brahmin type, I guess.” He hesitated. “The whole thing started about this girl.”
“What, did you get her pregnant?”
Despite himself, Elias almost laughed. “No. That would have been forgivable, I think. Our fathers went to school together, and I’ve known her for years. As soon as I got home from school in May, my father started bugging me about her, and he kept it up all summer. You know, when was I going to go over to see her; didn’t I want to take her to this clambake on Saturday.”
“My god. You’re not kidding about East Coast Brahmin types. What did they have in mind, some kind of arranged marriage?”
“No, nothing like that. But.. . well, yeah, I guess my parents always sort of hoped we’d end up together.”
“So what happened when you dared refuse the hand of the fair Muffy?”
Elias did laugh this time. “Her name is Emma. And I like her; she’s really nice. It’s just that I’ve always thought of her more like a sister. I don’t have one, you see.” He glanced at Sean nervously.
“More than that, I’ve just always known—I finally told my father it wasn’t going to happen. Ever.”
Comprehension began to dawn on Sean’s face. “They kicked you out because you’re gay?”
Elias sat silently, afraid.
A platter of hamburger and fries suddenly materialized in front of each of them, like a gift. The burgers were still sizzling, and melting cheese bubbled down the edges of the buns. Elias blinked; he hadn’t even seen the waitress approaching.
“Eat,” Sean said. Solemnly, he handed Elias a bottle of ketchup. Elias hesitated. It’s okay, Sean’s eyes told him. I’m not going to beat you up or walk away. I’m not even going to send the hamburger back. It’s okay.
Slowly, Elias reached out and accepted the bottle.
For the next few minutes they both concentrated on their food. Elias chewed each bite carefully, afraid everything would come back up if he bolted the meal. The hamburger tasted greasy and salty and the fries burned his tongue. If he ever died and went to heaven, he decided, he’d want his first meal to taste exactly like this.
“It wasn’t just the talk about Emma,” Elias said finally, breaking the silence. He reached for his Coke and took a sip. “I think Father wondered then, but it wasn’t until a few days later—someone sent him a letter. Anonymously. I think it was somebody from my school.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well,” Elias said slowly, “there was another guy there I kind of liked. One night we were sort of messing around, just kind of wrestling, you know.” He bit his lip, flashed another nervous look at his listener. “We ended up doing some things that we didn’t quite expect we would... nothing too involved, exactly. Kind of... fondling. I mean, I didn’t... We didn’t... uh ...”
“I got the picture,” Sean interrupted, but without making it sound like an interruption. He didn’t crack the slightest hint of a smile, for which Elias felt immensely grateful.
“Well. He panicked, blamed me for everything, and then clammed up totally. Wouldn’t say another word to me for the rest of the term. So I figured it might have been because of what happened with him. Maybe he sent the letter because he freaked out, or he told somebody else.”
“What’d the letter say?”
“Father wouldn’t show it to me. But from what he said, I think it said it was sent because the writer felt it was his duty to inform him that his son was a pervert. A fudge-packing, candy-ass-fucking faggot.”
“God. What a toadlike thing for somebody to do.”
“Maybe I could have passed the whole thing off as a sick practical joke, if... if...”
“If you hadn’t just talked with him about the girl?”
“Yeah.” Elias stared at the grease left on his plate, slowly drew a french fry through a puddle of ketchup. “It’s not like it was true—like I’d ever really even done anything! But I just knew there was something different about me, that I was different. I’ve known since I was five or six, I guess. And when Father came out of his library and demanded that I tell him, I just blurted it out.”
Sean said nothing.
“My father’s an elder in our church. And my mother—it about killed them both. They started yelling at me. I’ve never heard either of them yell before, ever! They said—” He broke off. Sean gave him a moment. “They said what?” he finally prompted gently.
“I’ve got two nephews.” Elias could hear his own voice getting ragged. “My brother’s kids. I’d always baby-sit them in the summer. One of them is five, and the other is seven. I love them, you know?
I suppose it’s because I always figured I’d never have any kids of my own.” He paused, took a breath, but his voice cracked again anyway. “My father said, he said he wanted to know—not even if but how many times I’d ... with Josh and Kevin—” Helplessly, he looked up at the ceiling, but the tears spilled over anyway. “They’ve known me my entire life, but as soon as they found out, it’s like I wasn’t their son anymore. In their eyes, I’d turned into some kind of monster. How could they, how could they think I’d ever do anything like that?”
Something nudged his hand. He looked down and accepted the paper napkin Sean handed him.
“Thanks,” he said in a muffled voice, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose.
“So they threw you out.”
Elias nodded. “With the clothes on my back.”
“Couldn’t you go to your brother?”
“No. He’s in med school and my parents are helping with tuition. He was there, visiting that weekend. Father told him if he ever had anything to do with me, he’d get cut off, too. He’s just like my father, anyway. I’m sure he’d never leave me alone with his kids again.”
Sean made a soft sound under his breath.
“I came to the city a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know what else to do. I had a little money at first, but somebody in the first flop I stayed at stole it while I slept.” He gave an embarrassed shrug. “I guess I need to get more streetwise.”
“That depends,” Sean said slowly, “on whether you really want to stay on the streets. God knows they can be a real wilderness. Wouldn’t you rather get off?”
Elias slowly doodled in his pool of ketchup with another french fry. “I guess ... ever since my parents kicked me out, I’ve kind of been in shock. It’s like I haven’t been thinking clearly. But yeah, I want to get off. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, though.” He sighed and then tried to smile. “Anyway ... thanks a lot for the hamburger.” He started to stand.
“Wait.” Sean laid his hand over Elias’s. “Sit down.”
Elias slowly sat down again. Sean studied him thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “You said you’re a high school graduate, right?”