Hal chuckled softly. “I haven’t won the election yet. If I lose, I might go back to the Hamptons. It’d be hard to stay here after everybody rejected me.”
Gabe listened and pushed the canoe out into the water before climbing in. Most of the people he knew thought Hal was only in Minnesota for political advantage. They didn’t believe that he had any personal commitment to the district. Gabe heard the words a little differently. Maybe Hal wasn’t that into politics either and saw everything connected with it as merely a job.
They both began to paddle across the lake. The other canoe now sat empty on the opposite shore. Levi, Elle, and Trent lounged on the dock waiting.
Gabe tried to measure his words. He didn’t want to sound desperate, and he didn’t want to sound like he was a hopeless gay man pushing a straight one, but he had to say something.
“Will I ever get to see you again once we get back? I mean, if I don’t get hired for another security gig.”
The words didn’t come out quite right. As Gabe ran them back in his head, he thought they reeked of desperation. He turned his head to peer over his shoulder at Hal.
The question didn’t bother Hal. “Sure. Of course. I’ll have more rallies, and we’ll need security. We can have coffee together. Just send me a text. I’ll make sure that Trent works it into the schedule.”
Facing away from Hal, Gabe didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing the dopey smile on his face. He liked the relaxed tone of Hal’s voice.
If he ever dated again, Gabe wanted a man who was laidback and not wound as tight as Brandon. He wanted the awesome guy who enjoyed lying by his side on a flannel blanket along the shore of a crystal clear lake for hours. They could absorb the atmosphere together and not worry about work or the outside world at all.
When they were only about ten yards from the opposite shore, Gabe stopped his train of thought. He’d let himself drift down a path of getting together with Hal as a couple when he didn’t have any evidence to indicate that was possible.
Stop it—now!
“Hey, you slowpokes! We’ve been waiting for hours!”
Trent’s reedy voice carried well across the water.
When the canoe scraped the shallow lake bottom by the shore, Hal spoke up. “That’s not true. We could see you from across the lake.”
“What were you doing over there? Sweet talking each other?”
Gabe climbed out of the canoe and sloshed into the water. He watched as Hal shrugged.
“The talk wasn’t unpleasant. Sweet? I guess so.”
Gabe glanced at Elle. She intently watched the exchange.
“What on earth do the two of you have in common?” asked Trent. “Other than the crash.”
“Poetry.”
Gabe crossed his arms over his chest and stepped up close to Elle. He was content to stay out of the conversation and watch the reaction of one of his best friends.
“Poems? What? I never knew that you liked them. All I see you reading is the entertainment news on your laptop. You tell me about celebrity babies and movie bombs.”
“Gabe loves poetry as I do. He can recite Emily Dickinson. So can I. It’s kind of special. I loved it. We had a great afternoon together.”
Elle turned to face Gabe with a raised eyebrow. She didn’t say a word, but her comment was apparent in her expression.
Gabe looked back at her with a self-satisfied smirk.
Gabe had energy to burn the evening after the canoe trip. He’d heard Hal talk about him in glowing words. He couldn’t think of any reason to describe someone like that if you didn’t have more on your mind than being casual acquaintances. Befriending Hal was likely. Something more had a fighting chance.
Hal kissed him, or Gabe kissed Hal. No matter how you described it, Gabe knew that it was mutual. Hal didn’t turn away, and he didn’t complain when it was over.
Gabe cooked a full dinner for himself at his apartment, cleaned up afterward, vacuumed the rugs, and damp-mopped the rest of the floors. He was busy dusting shelves when his cellphone rang.
“Gabe, is this you?”
“Uh…yeah. Who’s calling?”
“Hal. Did you forget me so soon?” Gabe heard a nervous laugh. Hal sounded either upset or overly excited. He hoped it was the latter.
“No, but this is the first time I’ve talked to you on the phone. People always sound different.”
Hal’s voice was so urgent in tone that he nearly stumbled over his words. “I’ve got to talk to you about something. Is it okay right now? I don’t want to interrupt…”
Gabe put the phone on speaker and carried it to the sofa. “No, this is fine. I was just doing a little cleaning around my place. What’s up? You sound agitated.”
“Heh, maybe a little.”
Gabe sat on the sofa and stretched his legs. He waited for the next comment.
“It’s about earlier today,” said Hal.
“You were great in the canoe. Maybe I didn’t say that directly. For a beginner, you really had the rhythm…”
Hal interrupted. “Not about that. It’s not the canoe. Please…listen.”
In the soft, calming voice he used while helping accident victims, Gabe said, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“It’s about the kiss.”
“Oh, well, you were…”
Hal interrupted again. “No, it didn’t mean anything. I don’t know what happened. You understand that, right?”
Gabe didn’t understand. It wasn’t what he understood at all. A few moments of silence passed between them.
Hal started to talk again, and he sounded even more desperate. “I’m a straight guy, Gabe. I date women. I’ve had horrible luck with them, but that’s who I date. Right? That’s me. You’re a great guy, but—no.”
In his gut, Gabe didn’t want to hear what Hal was saying. Gabe knew that he liked him. No, there was something special about Hal that was even more profound—except now he was saying it wasn’t true.
“Gabe? Are you there?”
Hal sounded so worried and upset that Gabe’s highly-practiced comforting expertise took over and shoved his disappointment deep down inside. “Yeah, I get it. I didn’t think it was anything. I guess I just forgot myself for a second there. I kiss guys.”
“Yeah, it’s okay. It was alright. I’m not mad.”
The rock sitting in his gut told Gabe it wasn’t alright, but he had to pretend that it was. “I’m glad you aren’t upset. I hope we can go out canoeing in the woods again.”
“Not…right now. I’ve got to focus on the campaign. I talked to Trent. He thinks the race might be closer than the polls say. There are still months to go before the August primary, but then not much time before November. So that means now…”
Gabe tuned out the political strategy talk. He didn’t care about Hal, the candidate. He cared about the Hal lying out on the rock along Lone Cedar Lake. That’s the one he wanted to kiss. A single tear leaked out of the corner of his eye while Hal yammered on like a political robot.
“Hey, Hal, I don’t want to stop you, but I do need to go. Is that okay? I wish you the best in your campaign, and thanks for the call. I wouldn’t want you to be worried.”
For the first time in the call, Gabe heard the sound of relief in Hal’s voice. “Oh, man, thank you. Yeah, I have to go, too. You do understand. Right? I want it to be okay.”
“I got the message. You came through loud and clear.”
12
Hal
The next several weeks flew by. It wasn’t because they were exciting. For Hal, the reason was that he couldn’t remember much of anything distinctive from one week to the next. The events all began to blur into one.
Each week followed the same pattern as the week before. Hal spoke at rallies on the weekend, begged for campaign cash from big-money people at lunches on weekdays, and spent most of his evenings in his apartment or hotel rooms playing video games, sometimes alone and sometimes with Trent.
Occasionally, Trent would sl
am the lid of his laptop and shout, “Hot damn!”
Startled and hoping for something exciting and new, Hal asked, “What? Did the Yankees win again?”
“No, the latest poll is out. You’re up by ten points. The favorables are breaking your way. The more people get to know you, the more they like you. Hal, we’ve almost got this in the bag. Keep up the great work.”
Hal shrugged it off. His heart wasn’t in the campaign. Surrogates from his political party came to Minnesota to help generate support, and when they talked about the job in Washington, he thought it sounded insanely tedious and nerve-wracking. To Hal, it would be a lethal combination—spending weeks on edge over issues he didn’t care to think about in the first place.
Acting as such a pawn in the power moves of others didn’t make Hal feel proud of himself. Unfortunately, he couldn’t envision a successful escape route. His father, Hal Brentwood, Sr., chose politics as the next field to conquer. For Hal, it was much like an aging king looking to capture the next country over before he expired. Hal was like the distracted prince who had no choice but to follow the monarch’s lead.
The first thing that Hal did at every rally was to look over the crowd to scan for Gabe. Unfortunately, he never appeared. Sometimes, Hal had a gnawing feeling that he’d angered or upset Gabe when he talked about the kiss. He didn’t mean to, but he’d panicked. Hal still wanted to count Gabe as a friend. In a few of his thoughts, when he was candid with himself, he wondered whether there was more.
Hal remembered his mother’s response when he mentioned that his boarding school friend Eric came out. He told Eric’s story about the support offered by his parents. Hal’s mother stabbed an artichoke heart with her fork and said, “Better them than us.”
At school, Hal knew that he was attracted to other boys. He even made out with one after they’d downed three beers against school regulations. The experience wasn’t a bad one. He knew that he was horny the whole time, but plenty of Hal’s boarding school friends experimented with guys on occasion. He was joining the crowd. For most of them, it was an act of desperation. They focused on girls instead of their male friends when they had the opportunity.
There was a lengthy parade of girls and then young women who wanted to be with Hal when he got home. He didn’t know whether they were attracted to his money or his increasingly slim, well-dressed good looks. What mattered was they blocked out any thoughts about boys like the moon eclipsing the sun.
When he was on a date with a girl, Hal didn’t have to think about the guys in their sharp clothes teasing each other with graphic talk about sex. Eric once told him a detailed story about sucking cock that made Hal rock hard, but it wasn’t too hard to forget all of that when he went home and reveled in the attention of women.
It was like that with Gabe. Hal was excited that day on the rock, and he knew that he’d never forget it. He would have done anything Gabe asked at the moment if it weren’t for the trio on the opposite side of the lake. The threat of exposure dampened any plans for more intimacy.
When Hal finally returned home to his spartan apartment in Ely, Gabe’s lips were a world away. He only needed to deny his emotions in a phone call and shove it to the back corners of his mind. He closed the door of the closet, turned the lock, and it was gone—forgotten.
But it wasn’t. He couldn’t stop scanning the crowds.
The look on Gabe’s face, his wavy hair combed back off his forehead, and the single vein bulging along his bicep. It all came flooding back every time Trent announced a new rally.
Hal usually won the video games. It was easy to release frustrations with Trent by shooting his manager on the screen countless times. One evening, after Hal won the best two out of three, Trent checked his cellphone and pumped a fist into the air.
“We’re going to Arrowhead Falls! Maybe we can say hi to Levi and our other canoe travelers. This rally is a big one, Hal. All the operatives told me they’d drum us out of the little town. It’s a hotbed of tree huggers, but we’ve got a foot in the door. You’ll slay them. Let’s have a high five.”
Hal declined the hand slap. Instead, he scratched his head. “How’d you wrangle that?”
“The owner of the Forest Edge Resort is making an old horse meadow available for an outdoor rally. They registered the land in the name of one of his cousins, and he wants us to stay mum about any connections to the resort.”
“Why’s he worried about that?”
“Where’s your head, Hal? The Forest Edge serves environmental crazies from all over the country. If they knew he supported Hal Brentwood, defender of mining and forestry interests, all hell might break loose. He’d have picketers and lunatics chaining themselves to his front porch.”
“I don’t think I understand the strategy. If we don’t have supporters there, why hold the rally in their town?”
Trent headed for the kitchen to retrieve two beers. “Just stay there on the sofa. We need to have a conversation. Let me explain this to you.”
Hal listened to the light fizz when Trent popped the bottle caps. He handed Hal one longneck and settled onto the opposite end of the couch.
“Have you ever heard that the best offense is a good defense?”
“Of course,” said Hal. “That’s how I beat your ass in the video games. The only place it’s not true is in baseball. The Yankees always bring the offense. That’s why…”
Trent interrupted. He never wanted to discuss the finer points of baseball. “Well, in politics, that’s all wrong. If you’re playing defense, you’re losing.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to respond to the attacks about my high school graduation party at my grandparents’ cottage in the Hamptons? I had a strong rebuttal, but you shut me up.”
Trent swallowed a mouthful of beer and pointed at Hal. “Precisely.”
“And this has to do with Arrowhead Falls—how?”
“We’re playing offense, and we’re heading into enemy territory with guns blazing. I want you to be ready with your best speech yet. We might even toss in something a little controversial to throw them off their game. That useless wimp, Dick McNally, won’t know what hit him.”
“You sound very confident about this.”
Hal watched as Trent raised one eyebrow and tapped a fingertip on the neck of his beer bottle. It was the signal that he was calculating not only how to win but how to crush the opposition. “I don’t need confidence. A smashing win by Hal Brentwood is a sure thing. Two weeks from now in Arrowhead Falls. We’ll put it away. Mark the date. We’re storming the beach. It’s our Normandy.”
Summer was in full swing by the time Hal’s campaign reached Arrowhead Falls. Behind the scenes, Trent arranged to reimburse travel costs for a healthy crowd of supporters. Some came from as far away as the Chicago suburbs and Wyoming.
Within three days, the campaign erected a stage to rise above the crowd, mowed the meadow grass short, and moved in three mobile trailers for Hal, Trent, and the operations staff. It was the most elaborate production yet for Hal’s campaign, and a few national reporters mingled with the crowd searching out stories for network news.
When Hal peeked out from behind the curtain of the stage a few minutes before the scheduled time for his speech, his jaw dropped. Gabe was in the crowd. He wore a blue plaid flannel shirt instead of a uniform. Work wasn’t the reason for his appearance. Elle stood at his side, and Brandon man joined them, too. It was Levi’s first appearance at one of Hal’s rallies, and Brandon had his arm wrapped tight around his boyfriend. He looked like he was protecting Levi from all possible threats.
“You’re going to knock ‘em dead,” exclaimed Trent as he walked up from behind. “I’ve added a few crowd-pleasing red meat lines in the margins of your speech. If it looks like people are getting restless, add one of those in, and the excitement will build.”
“You know that I don’t like public speaking. Consider yourself lucky if I make it through the speech as written. Improv isn’t my thing.”
&nb
sp; Trent clapped Hal on the shoulder. “Aw, buddy. You’re great, and they love you out there. Give the people what they want. Isn’t that the point of this election? You’re going to bring them jobs, money, a home, and retirement in Florida when they’re ready. What more could they want from you in Washington?”
Myron Hemsworth, a retired political legend from neighboring Wisconsin, took the stage first as a warmup act. The crowd greeted him with polite applause. He tagged his introduction of Hal with, “Northeastern Minnesota’s best hope for a prosperous tomorrow!”
As Hal walked out to the podium, about half the crowd greeted him with thunderous applause. Some held up signs of support reading “Hal for Our Homes!” Balancing the enthusiasm was the silence and small sea of frowns on the faces of the rest of the crowd. Many of them sneered. A few, including Brandon, even turned their backs on Hal. Fortunately, Gabe smiled and joined the cheering.
The speech prepared for Hal included all of his standard stump content. He read it over three times backstage. Unfortunately, after seeing so many angry faces, he found it more difficult than usual to speak.
Hal stumbled over a few words when he talked about the benefits of the mines. He had to underline the name of a former Northwoods Minnesota senator with his finger to remember it.
Approximately halfway through the speech, Hal took Trent’s advice. He read a line scribbled in the margin and shouted, “Natural resources are our future!”
Half of the crowd roared. The rest maintained a stony silence.
A few seconds later, Hal read a second line, “A well-paying job for everyone who wants one!”
Hal took a deep breath. He’d kept his people engaged, and he had less than half of the speech to go. There was light at the end of the public-speaking tunnel. He knew that he could make it through and leave the stage soon. If he acted quickly afterward, he might even find Gabe and—Hal didn’t know what he’d do when he was once again face-to-face with Gabe.
Crash: Northwoods, Book 2 Page 9