The Growing Season

by Diana Copland

  “Cal has dinner ready.”

  “Good, I’m starving.”

  “Hey, Devon.” Danny paused. “I saw Angus drive by a few minutes ago.”

  Irritation flashed across Devon’s face. “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure. It was a Mercedes, same make and model. There aren’t that many here in ‘bag ’em and tag ’em’ country.”

  Devon grunted. “True. Well, unfortunately, it’s a public street. He can drive by whenever he wants to. Now, if he stops—”

  “That’s the thing. The car was idling at the end of the driveway. The driver saw me and took off like a bat out of hell, but...” He shrugged. “It might have been nothing.”

  “If it was Angus, it wasn’t nothing.” Devon exhaled roughly. “I’m honestly surprised he’s been quiet this long. Is this the first time you’ve seen him?”

  “I think I’ve seen the car before. But I haven’t really been paying that close attention.”

  “I don’t think we can afford to get complacent. You keep an eye out, and I will, too. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot we can do. It’s only harassment if he actually does something.”

  “Do you think we ought to tell Cal?”

  Devon pursed his lips, then shook his head. “Let’s let them enjoy the honeymoon for a while. They waited long enough for it.”

  A smile tugged at Danny’s lips. “I caught them making out in the dining room when I came in.”

  “I bet Cal went every color of red known to man.”

  “I went back out and made noise like I was just coming in. They don’t know I saw them.”

  Devon arched a dark brow.

  Danny shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, shrugging. “I didn’t want to embarrass them, you know?”

  Devon nudged Danny with his shoulder. “You occasionally have hidden depths, don’t you, Danny boy?”

  Danny scowled. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Sure you don’t.” Devon headed toward the door. “It was a nice thing to do, brat.”

  Danny fell into step behind him. “I can be nice,” he grumbled.

  “Bet it hurt, though, huh?”

  “Fuck off, Devon.”

  “Ah, now there’s the Danny we know and love,” Devon said over his shoulder. “Surly and foul-mouthed.”

  Danny scowled. “You’re such an asshole.”

  Devon shot him a wry grin, and then continued down the stairs.

  “You can be nice.”

  The soft voice touched his ears, and Danny shuddered and hurried his pace. As he passed Devon and jumped down onto the landing, he recognized the futility of trying to run from a ghost that probably existed only in his own head.

  * * *

  Danny was already on a ladder the next morning when a gray extended-cab pickup pulled to a stop in the driveway. He hadn’t managed more than about two hours of uninterrupted sleep the night before, and was feeling strung out and edgy. Furtively, he watched Sam Ignatius climb out from behind the wheel and two other guys exit through the other doors. He heard their easy banter as they congregated behind the vehicle, and tried to ignore them as he continued to methodically trim the dead wood away from the old climber. Footsteps approached on the gravel and he felt heat climb his face. His tendency to blush when he was nervous infuriated him, and for the first time in a long time he actually felt his age.

  “Morning.”

  Danny cut one last brittle branch, dropped it over the edge of the porch and looked down, wincing against the bright sunlight. Sam was standing at the bottom of the ladder, and the sun burnished his hair to white gold. His shoulders looked broad and strong, and Danny tried very hard not to notice. The guy was attractive—so what? He’d been around good-looking guys before.

  “Morning.” The silence between them lengthened, the only sound a squirrel making a ruckus in a nearby tree. It wasn’t long before the stalemate grew uncomfortable.

  “Any idea where you’d like us to start?” Sam broke it, looking more amused than exasperated.

  Danny fought the urge to shrug. “I thought you were the expert.” It was a cheap shot, but he couldn’t resist.

  Sam’s dark eyes narrowed. “And I thought you were the owner who knew this yard like the back of his hand.” Danny’s temper flared and he knew it must show, because Sam propped his hands on his hips with a grimace. “Look. You want these guys to know you’re the boss, you need to come down, introduce yourself and tell them what to do. I’m just one of the crew, remember? Or do you plan to break my balls for the duration?”

  As much as it galled him, Danny realized Sam was right. He shoved his clippers into his back pocket and climbed down the ladder, then strode purposefully toward the men who waited for him. He could tell from their expressions, ranging from faintly surprised to mildly amused, that his age and his looks were once again working against him. Irritated, he yanked off his gloves, then planted his feet and lifted his chin.

  “I’m Dan Redmond, one-third owner of this property and in charge of the restoration of the yard and gardens. First up, I’d like the raised vegetable beds by the kitchen door cleared.” He gestured with his gloves. “All of them. The topsoil is right there.” He nodded toward a huge pile of the rich black soil that the garden center had delivered and dumped to one side of the driveway. “Once you’ve weeded them, mix it with compost from the bin behind the shed and then top them. Then I want the ground behind cleared all the way to that small shed. There are tools inside, and the trailer just beyond is for the green waste. We pay twelve dollars an hour, flat rate. Any questions?”

  The men exchanged an enigmatic look but shook their heads.

  “Okay. Let’s get to it.” Sam pulled a pair of gloves out of his back pocket. The other men started to walk away, and Sam backed up as he followed them. “Should I salute?”

  Danny was sure he was being ridiculed and anger flared. It fizzled when he realized Sam was teasing. He’d never been teased much; it would take him a while to get used to it.

  “Only if you feel it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Sam responded with a snappy salute, then jogged to catch up with the others. Danny went back up the ladder, congratulating himself for not watching Sam’s ass as he trotted away.

  Chapter Five

  Sam Ignatius’s crew was well trained and efficient. By Friday, the raised beds were cleared, the corn rows cleaned, and the pumpkin patch had two dozen small mounds neatly spaced at four-foot intervals. There was still the almost nightly threat of hard freeze, so instead of planting the crew moved on to the perennial beds. It was slow work due to the overgrowth of weeds, and they consulted with Danny often.

  The crew seemed to share an easy camaraderie. They laughed together the way men did who knew each other well, and Sam was right in the thick of it. On the other hand, Danny was on the outside of the straight-boy fraternity, just like he’d always been. The men eyed him with dispassion but he wasn’t stupid. He could sense they saw him as a kid playing at big man in the garden. He was used to it.

  He worked separate from them as much as he could. Around noon, Sam approached and asked for direction, and he snapped out instructions for salvaging what was left of Audrey’s Rocky Mountain Iris. Danny started to stalk back to where he’d been weeding when he felt Sam fall into step beside him. He looked up with a scowl. “What?”

  “That.” Sam’s eyes were flinty.

  “That what?”

  “The guys don’t dislike you. But if you keep it up, they’re going to.”

  Stung, Danny turned away. “What makes you think I care if they like me or not?”

  “Well, if you don’t, you should.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re good, and they’re doing me a favor being here. They can make a hell of a lot more money driving over the mountains, and both have been asked to. Are you unhappy with what they’ve done so far?”

  “No,” Danny answered gruffly. “Not at all. In fact...”

  “In fact?”
Sam prodded.

  Danny shrugged. “They’re good.”

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, would it kill you to let them know you think they’re doing a good job? They don’t mind helping out, but if you keep being an asshole—”

  “Hey!”

  “—then they’re going to wonder why they’re working for half of what they usually make, when they could be in Seattle, where it’s wet but a hell of a lot warmer. And I won’t blame them if they want to leave.”

  Danny saw the irritation in Sam’s dark eyes. They stared at one another and finally, grudgingly, Danny nodded.

  He spent the next few days making a conscious effort to curb his instinct to keep his distance and worked directly with the crew. It only took him a few minutes to realize Leroy, an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a ready smile, was funny. The first time he said something that made Danny laugh, he clutched his heart dramatically.

  “Oh, my God. Boss Boy has a sense of humor.”

  Danny’s innate self-consciousness reared its head. “Boss Boy?”

  “Well, son—” Leroy was grinning, “—seeing as I have shoes at home older than you, calling you Boss Man just makes me feel like a decrepit old fart.”

  “You are a decrepit old fart.” The other man, named Jose, laughed.

  “And after your two-burrito lunches, you smell like a baboon’s ass,” Leroy shot back, “but we don’t tell you because we know you’re sensitive.”

  Jose pitched a dirt clod at Leroy’s head. He batted it away and looked askance at Danny. “Just messing with you.”

  Danny felt his cheeks heat even as a grin tugged at his lips. “It’s cool.”

  Leroy grinned and Danny glanced reflexively at Sam, only to intercept a slight smile. The offhand gesture made him feel better about himself than anything had in a long time.

  Bright and early the following Monday Danny was unloading bags of vegetable fertilizer from the bed of Will’s truck when Sam’s extended cab pulled into the driveway. When the men exited, Sam and Leroy were laughing, and Jose’s face was the color of a ripe tomato.

  “Well, you know, Marisol said ask an expert.” Jose’s whine invited more laughter.

  “Jose, don’t you own a computer? Trust me, looking it up online would have been less embarrassing for you.” Sam had tears of mirth in his eyes.

  “He doesn’t know how to turn it on.”

  “Fuck you, Leroy.” He leaned against the truck, scowling. “I didn’t know how to spell it.”

  Danny thought Leroy might hurt himself, he was laughing so hard.

  “Care to let me in on the joke?” He eyed them with a bemused grin.

  “Sure.” Sam thrust his hands into his back pockets. Jose groaned and covered his face with his hands. “Marisol, wife of our good friend Jose there, startled him last night during...how shall I put this?”

  “A blow job.” Leroy interjected bluntly. Jose smacked his arm.

  “By inserting her finger...” Sam made a gesture, and Danny’s brows shot up.

  “She tried to stick it up his ass.” Leroy was having entirely too much fun at Jose’s expense. Jose groaned. “Which made his erection go—” Leroy demonstrated, curling his index finger toward his palm.

  “I’m going to kill you, Leroy. I swear to God, I am.” Jose dropped his hands and looked at Danny, eyes beseeching. “I was just shocked, man. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Um—” What the hell was he supposed to say in answer to that?

  “I mean, I didn’t know what she was doing. I don’t even know what a prostrate is!”

  “Well, first of all—” Sam clapped Jose on the shoulder, “—it’s a prostate, not a prostrate.”

  “Whatever.” Jose rolled his eyes.

  “There’s a significant difference, my friend. And if she’d found it before you, well, lost interest—” Sam’s eyes sparkled, “—you wouldn’t be asking me about it, but you’d have come to work this morning with a big smile on your face.”

  Even with his embarrassment, Jose looked intrigued. “Seriously?”

  “Trust me. Now, carry these bags over to the beds along the porch for Dan, all right?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Jose hefted one of the fifty-pound bags as if it was nothing.

  Sam released a good-natured laugh. “The things they want to know.”

  Danny was bemused. “How did you become the local expert on the prostate?”

  Sam’s grin was sardonic. “Marisol’s been reading Cosmo. Apparently, the article in question advised that if her guy had questions about her new technique, he should ask a gay man.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t exactly tell Jose she was wrong, now, could I?”

  He pulled his gloves on as he walked away. Danny stared after him, thunderstruck. Sam was gay? Sam Ignatius was gay.

  Danny closed his eyes. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t.

  But it did.

  Chapter Six

  Cal was sitting at the dining room table that evening, a notebook open in front of him. Danny walked through on his way upstairs and paused behind him, his attention caught by a bright, rainbow-striped pamphlet at Cal’s elbow.

  “‘Another thing gays and straights have in common,’” he read the bold print across the front aloud. “‘Transphobia’? Seriously?”

  Cal turned and looked up at him, his elbow hooked over the back of his chair. “You don’t think so?”

  Danny opened his mouth, then frowned. “I guess I never really thought about it. Is someone in group giving Glenna a hard time?”

  Cal ran a group session with about twelve gay or questioning kids. The local center in town had done it for a while, but they didn’t have the space or the budget to continue. Cal had heard about their issues and offered to head up the group at Neverwood, and Maureen, who ran the center, had happily agreed. It was something Audrey had done before she’d gotten too ill, and Cal felt a compulsion to continue her work as much as he could.

  Danny figured the only one the pamphlet applied to would be Glenna, a slender teenager with androgynous features and style of dress.

  Cal’s expressive eyes grew cautious. “This isn’t aimed at anyone in particular.”

  “You’ve got another guy wearing pale blue eye shadow and strawberry lip gloss?”

  “You don’t think comments like that might be considered intolerant?”

  “Oh, come on,” Danny protested. “I like Glenna.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with liking Glenna, Danny. It’s about trying to understand how tough her life is. Can you imagine what it must be like, to live every day feeling as if you were born in the wrong body?”

  Danny started to retaliate with a smart-assed remark, but stopped himself. He pulled out the chair next to Cal and sat. “So that’s what it’s like? He—she,” he corrected when Cal arched one of his brows, “she feels like she’s trapped, or something?”

  “Glenna is a she. And that’s exactly what it’s like.”

  “Man, that’s fucked up.”

  “Can you imagine anything else encouraging you to have that kind of surgery?”

  Danny instinctively crossed his legs. “No. I happen to like my cock. I’m gay, but I never wanted to be a girl.”

  “She isn’t gay,” Cal said. “She’s a girl in the wrong body, or at least she thinks she is. She’ll have to undergo at least a year of counseling and hormone therapy before there would be any surgical correction. And she’s only fifteen—they won’t do anything until she’s eighteen. Her mom and dad are fighting her every step of the way.”

  Danny felt a sudden sweeping compassion for the thin, shy teenager. “I didn’t know.”

  “I know.” Cal picked up the pamphlet and handed it to him. “Here. Read it. Then you can help me out the next time one of the group slips and uses the term ‘tranny.’”

  Danny had done it himself, but he knew Cal wasn’t scolding. He took the offered flyer, and noticed that under it was another with Pacific Northwest Ballet and the silhouette of a balle
t dancer emblazoned across the front.

  Danny smiled. “I’m guessing that one’s for Tag.”

  Cal nodded. “His mom asked me to see what I could find out. He was offered a scholarship for their summer program.”

  Danny stood, the brochure in his hand. “You take leading this group pretty seriously.”

  Cal shrugged one shoulder, a faint wash of pink spreading over his high cheekbones. “It’s the way Mom did it, isn’t it?”

  Danny studied Cal with new interest. “Yeah, it is.”

  That night in bed, he read the pamphlet, cover to cover. The next day he knelt in the long flower bed along the fence, yanking out deeply seeded thistle. It hadn’t started to bloom yet, but the nasty little spines had sprouted and stuck to his gloves. Danny heard laughter sweep across the grounds, and turned in time to watch Glenna come out of the house carrying a bunch of tablets, soft hair lifting in the breeze. After reading the information Cal had given him and beginning to understand the seriousness of what she was going through, Danny had decided to befriend the shy girl. He smiled at her, and she sent him a tentative wave.

  Tag Sommersby was following her, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets, his shoulders hunched up around his ears. His soft blond hair shone in the sunlight, and he was wearing black skinny jeans that made him look as if he couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. He looked like he needed a good meal.

  The boy made his way to the other kids where they sat on the dry lawn. Closed-off and defensive, Tag was everything Danny recognized in himself. His full name was Taggert Reston Sommersby, and his old man owned half the acreage in the surrounding community and several businesses along Main Street. Danny gave Sommersby credit for restoring the turn of the century storefronts rather than tearing them down, but apparently Mr. Oh-so-very-busy City Councilman didn’t have much time for his son. And Tag wasn’t your normal skateboarding, videogame-playing fifteen-year-old boy. His mom drove him into Spokane five days a week so he could take ballet class and perform with a local student company. Apparently he was talented; he’d been offered scholarships from companies in Seattle, Pittsburgh and New York. But being a ballet dancer in a town like Elk Ridge, he might as well have worn a sign saying Queer. His mom had homeschooled him because he’d been bullied since junior high. At ballet, he was surrounded by girls, so group was really his only social activity where he interacted with boys his own age free of the fear of bullying. Danny had sat in on group a couple of times with Tag, and something about the boy pulled at him. He rarely participated, but Danny could see the quick intelligence in his eyes. He also saw the way he looked at Cal with quiet longing. Cal knew Tag had a crush on him, and was careful with his feelings, but there wasn’t much he could do other than be kind.