And even though I thought my heart was going to pop out of my chest, I said, “Who the fuck are you?”
I mean, I thought he was a cop. Or a detective, someone they hired to come find me.
He said, “A very old friend of your dad, that's who, you little shit.”
I stared at him, and at first I didn't know what to say, then finally, “How did you find me?”
It turns out that Jordy Weaver is a bigger idiot than I ever thought. Last night he was all upset—all upset about me, probably—and that idiot called home. He probably was bawling to his parents that he wanted to come home or something. What a wuss. And then Mr. Weaver called my house and talked to my dad and apparently told him where Jordy was living. Dad then asked this guy to come up here and check on me. He went to Jordy's, and then that fucking turd sent him right over here, thank you very much, Mr. Jordy Fairy Weaver.
Yes, thought Rawlins. He should have already done it, but first thing tomorrow morning he'd find Jordy and get a formal statement from him.
So this guy asks if I'm alright, and I say yes. He said my dad is all worried about me. Well, that was a crock of shit, I knew that right away My mom maybe, but not Dad, not after he beat the crap out of me. You know, so I'm looking at this guy, thinking what is he really here for?
And so I say, “Dad said he never wanted to see me again, and I don't ever want to see him either.”
“You know what, Andy, maybe you'll understand some day.”
“Understand what?”
“Things, that's all.”
“Well, if she wants to know, you can tell my mom I'm fine. Now I gotta get back to work.”
And then this guy, he goes and pulls a hundred dollar bill from his wallet. Like no way. No way am I going to go to bed with him. Fuck! What a disgusting fig.
“I don't want your money,” I tell him.
“Please, your dad is a special friend of mine. We've known each other since we were kids. He just asked me to drive by where you were living, he didn't want me to stop, but then I saw you out here, and—”
“I've never seen you before. If you're my dad's friend, then why haven't I ever seen you? You've never been at our farm, have you? And I've never seen you in town. So who the fuck are you?”
This bald guy, he looks down at the ground, and then he says, “He's going to shoot me for doing this, but there's something you have to know.”
The way he said it really scared me, and I asked, “What's… what's that?”
“Do you promise you won't tell him I told you?”
“Sure,” I answered even though I knew I was lying.
“You swear?”
“Yeah, I swear. Now tell me! What is it?”
And then he tells me. He just blurts it out. It just takes one little sentence, that's all, and then everything's ruined.
“You're a fucking liar!” I yell at him.
“I'm sure it's kind of a shock, I—”
“You're wrong!”
“No, Andy, I'm not. I wouldn't lie about something like that.”
“No!”
I threw my rake at him and then ran inside. He tried to come after me, but I pulled the front door shut and locked it. He was banging on the door, yelling at me to let him in, but I didn't. I never wanted to see that jerk again. I mean, I couldn't believe it. There had to be a mistake. It had to be a lie. I started crying and I ran right to my apartment. I like threw myself on my bed. What was I supposed to do? Believe him? But…
I mean, I had to know. I had to know for sure. So what did I do? I called Dad. I called him on his cell phone. He was out on the tractor, tilling the south field, and he picked up right away.
“Is it true, Dad?” I yelled into the receiver.
“Andy? Andy, is that you?”
“This guy, he just came here, and he said… said something bad about you,” I began, breaking my promise. “Is it true? Do you know him and is he telling the truth?”
At first there was nothing, like I hit him in the stomach or something. And then he started screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Are you crazy? Of course it's not true! And… and if you ever say anything like that again, God damn it, I'll kill you with my very own hands!”
”Oh, my God… it is true, isn't it?”
“You little—”
And then I hung up. I just sort of dropped the phone. For the first time in my life everything made sense. I saw how all of us fit together, Mom and Dad, me, my sisters. Now I knew why he hit me so hard in the barn, why he went so crazy. Everything made sense, yet nothing did.
I still can't believe it. In fact, I can't even write it down. I mean, if anyone ever found this diary and read it, then they'd know what my dad's been doing. And then… then Dad really would come after me and kill me. For sure.
God, I'm so afraid…
Afraid? Afraid of what?
On the one hand, thought Rawlins, nothing made sense. On the other, everything did. Now he knew why Andrew had been so desperate, why he had been so needy and clingy. Now he understood why Andrew had so wanted to fall into Rawlins's arms. His father had threatened his life, and Andrew had wanted love. He'd wanted comfort, he'd wanted solace. Desperately confused, Andrew had needed all of that. The only mistake he'd made, however, was that he'd tangled it all up with sex, which was so often the case with kids, gay or straight, male or female, for they too often lacked any other way to say: I need comfort. But then why should they? Hell, most adults didn't know how to say those three simple words either.
It was as horrible as it was pathetic. If only he'd known, Rawlins told himself. If only Andrew had come right out and said something. If only he'd told Rawlins what his father was involved in then maybe he could have helped.
So, mused Rawlins, holding the diary in his lap and now staring at the blank white wall across the room. Late morning of the day Andrew was murdered, a bald man had come to see him and dropped a major-league bomb. And then Andrew had called his father, and the father had in no uncertain ways threatened his very own son. So had either one of these men come to Andrew's apartment later in the day, blindfolded him, and cut his throat? Had the bald man returned, furious that he'd broken his promise and talked to his father? Or had Andrew's own father come up, knowing that there was but one way to keep silent the truth, whatever it was?
Oh, God, thought Rawlins. Could the world really be that horrible that a father would harm his son?
24
As he sat outside the coffee shop, the night air chilly and damp, Jordy Weaver couldn't help but feel as if somebody's eyes were tracking his every move. He wanted to be out here, away from all of them, those gay people inside the cafe who were talking and gabbing and laughing as if they didn't have a care in the world, but who was that in the car across the street? Who was that guy and why did it seem he was just waiting? But waiting for what? Some hustler and a midnight blow job? A chance encounter with another desperate soul? Or could he, Jordy wondered as he sipped his coffee, be waiting especially for me?
The Octopus Cafe, just on the edge of downtown Minneapolis, had once been a car wash known by almost the same name. In fact, the very namesake creature still sat on a pole high above Jordy, only now its multiple arms didn't hold sponges and buckets but coffee cups, lots of them. It was a popular place among queer people, not too far from the gay bars, of which the Twin Cities had a particularly odd dearth, and only a few blocks from Loring Park, known for its after-hours cruising. Tonight, as the bars began to empty, the cafe was getting more and more packed with men waiting for this evening's sidewalk sale. After all, who wanted to be out this late and end up in bed with naught?
Look at them all, thought Jordy, peering in through the large glass garage door from which freshly scrubbed cars had once exited. Look at all those men sitting in there gabbing away about this and that, none of it important. Do I want to be like them, those scuzzy homos? Do I want to end up like that, smoking and drinking and doing drugs and fucking everything
in sight… and getting killed? Right, now Jordy knew it for sure. If you were gay you either got AIDS or you got your throat slit. Oh, shit, why couldn't he just be normal? Maybe he could change, get rid of this thing inside him. He'd heard about such religious organizations that took you in and made you straight. Maybe he should give it a try.
In the distance he saw the sky pulse spasmodically with lightning, then soon thereafter heard the deep grumbling of thunder. Oh, God, he couldn't believe this. All he'd ever wanted was Andrew, but now he was gone forever. First Andrew had moved away from him, taking that job and getting his very own apartment, then he started seeing that cop, and now… now…
No, Andrew was never coming back. Never. He was dead, dead, dead. Jordy wondered if there was going to be a funeral back in their hometown or if his parents were going to keep the shame of their lives all secret and everything. If there was a funeral, Jordy wondered if he'd be invited, but then realized that, no, of course he wouldn't be. Andrew's parents probably wanted to see him in the grave too. They probably even blamed him, Jordy Weaver, for what happened to their son, and maybe, just maybe, they were right. At least it hadn't been him who had started it all. Nope, it had been Andrew He'd been the one to first bring up sex. The first one to pounce.
Tears filled his eyes yet again, and he bent over his coffee, which was getting colder by the second. He bowed his head and his long silky light brown hair fell forward, covering his face. Who would've ever imagined that something like this would happen to one of them? He remembered the first time they'd done it, Andrew and he. It had been something like two years ago when Andrew had come for a sleep-over. They'd just started goofing around—“I'm kind of horny, how about you?” Andrew had asked. One thing sort of led to another, and then they realized what they really had in common. They'd done it another six or seven times—in the attic above Jordy's parents’ garage, in the hayloft in Andrew's barn, once in a car—before they got caught and the shit really hit the fan. After that it had been Jordy's idea for the two of them to run away, to come all the way up here. Jordy had thought he was so cool, so smart, coming up with that plan, but it proved to be the stupidest thing. Shit, fuck, piss. This was all his fault. Andrew would never have gotten himself killed if they hadn't come up here to The Cities.
“You okay?” said a deep voice.
Jordy looked up and saw some guy with a rough, bearded face staring down at him. Oh, God, was that him, the guy who'd been watching him from across the street? No, he didn't think so, but whoever he was, this guy was a major creep too. He wore a black leather vest and tight black leather pants, the crotch of which looked like it had been stuffed with a week's worth of socks. Fuck, what a pig. Why were these older guys always hitting on him? Was it because his face was so boyish, because his tall body was so reedlike?
“You're going to catch cold sitting out here, kid. Come on inside and I'll buy you another cup of coffee.”
Well… well, maybe, thought Jordy. Maybe the guy was just being nice. Maybe he really wanted to help. He wasn't that bad, actually. His voice was gentle enough, the eyes likewise sweet. And it was going to rain. But then Jordy remembered exactly what happened to Andrew, and he shook his head and looked away. No fucking way.
“No thanks.”
“You sure? It's fixing to rain. You're gonna get soaked out here, you know.”
“I said no, so just leave me alone, alright?”
With that the guy turned toward the door, saying, “Hey, listen, you little shit, I was only trying to be nice.”
Under his breath, Jordy muttered, “Yeah, right.”
Jordy raised his cup, downed the last bit of now completely cold coffee, then turned and looked down the dark empty street. That car was still parked there, but what about the guy? Was he still behind the wheel? At first Jordy couldn't tell, but then a dark shadow moved inside the vehicle. Yes, he was sitting there. And he was looking right this way.
Jordy just had to get the fuck out of here. Not just this place, not simply this stupid coffee shop, but The Cities. He wished he could do it all over again, these past few months. He wished he'd never left home, and the next moment he was on his feet, pinning his old wool coat shut with one hand. He didn't have a car. He didn't have a bike. And he didn't even have enough money to spend on a bus, which at this hour would be a long wait, anyway. It was going to take, he knew, at least forty minutes for him to walk, which meant it would be after one in the morning by the time he got back to that shithole of an apartment he shared with all those kids. He wondered how many would be sacked out there tonight, four or five, or ten or twelve. At least no one had better be in his bed, that was for fucking sure.
Heading south on LaSalle Avenue, he saw the sky again throb with lightning, and he wondered if he would in fact make it home before the storm hit. Picking up his pace, his straight, long hair bounced with each of his strides. He was a beanpole of a kid, slightly over six feet tall with a frame that desperately needed another thirty or so pounds. Or at least that was what Andrew always said. Andrew, who promised to take Jordy to the gym and help him work out, pump some iron. Right, Andrew, who had promised so many things, namely that they'd always be together.
“We'll get those arms all beefed up, you'll see,” Andrew had once said, lying naked in bed next to him and squeezing Jordy's twiggy arms. “We'll go work out every day, and you'll see, you'll get some muscle.”
Yeah, sure. And someday we'll actually cross the Minnesota border, which neither of them had ever done. Forget the Dakotas, forget Iowa. Chicago, that was Andrew's big dream.
“I hear they have some rocking dance places down there.”
“Yeah, sure they do. I've heard all about ’em. They're supposed to be incredible, but how the hell would we get in? Anyone who takes one look at me knows I'm underage.”
“I don't know, we'll get some fake IDs or something.”
A stream of cars whooshed past Jordy, and tears came again to his eyes. He was such a sissy, he knew, but he couldn't help himself, couldn't stop crying. Beautiful Andrew. His beautiful Andrew. Dead, his throat slit. He bit his lip, tried to force the image out of his mind. Why? Why the fuck why?
Suddenly he sensed a car slowing. He glanced back, saw a brown Ford Explorer come to a crawl by his side, and then everything inside him went tense. Was this the guy he'd seen parked down the street from the cafe? The next moment the passenger window slowly descended with a deep electric hum. Jordy looked in, saw a heavy man with gray hair behind the wheel. He was wearing a white shirt and a fancy suit. And he was rubbing his crotch nice and slow.
“It's awfully late,” he said, his voice all deep and lusty. “You need a lift, kid? I'll take you wherever you want to go. You want to get in?”
“No,” snapped Jordy as he kept walking.
“How about fifty bucks? You need that? I bet you do, don't you? How about fifty, will that do?”
With glaring eyes, Jordy looked into the truck, saw the guy reach into his suit coat and pull out his wallet. In the light from a nearby lamppost he also saw the glint of gold on his left ring finger.
“Fuck you, you old fart!” shouted Jordy, who then honkered up a good wad and spit it through the window onto the guy's fat thigh. “Why don't you go home to the suburbs and fuck your stupid wife, huh? Why the fuck are you out here looking for cock?”
The guy stomped on the gas, and the vehicle flew away, but not before Jordy was able to kick the side door. And as the stranger hightailed it, Jordy wondered just who he was, really some married suburban creep or an undercover cop hoping for a bust. The cops were doing that, they were, going after kids. He'd heard all about it. Just last week the whole DQ had been buzzing because some kid had gotten scooped up by the cops for hustling. Well, Jordy had never done it, sold himself, and he never would. All he wanted was…
Shit, but Andrew was gone.
From somewhere back along the street he heard a car door slam, and Jordy turned, scanned the parked cars, the empty sidewalk. It was a lit
tle late and this neighborhood wasn't the best, that was for sure. He heard footsteps but couldn't see anyone. Looking at the tall redbrick apartment buildings that were packed in right up to the sidewalk, he saw maybe three or four lights on.
Clenching his arms around his chest, he hurried on, crossing onto a bridge that led over the freeway. The wind was stronger here, the chill more biting, and he looked over the edge, saw the anonymous cars hurling along at insane speeds. It crossed his mind that the guy in the Ford Explorer might circle around and come after him—this time no longer offering money—and so he glanced over his shoulder. He saw headlights barreling down on him, but they were from a small car, he could see that right away. There was something else, though. Or rather someone else—just a half-block back a figure was hurrying along the sidewalk as well. Some guy, that was all he could really tell. Where the hell, wondered Jordy, had he come from?
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