by V. L. Locey
“Thanks,” she grunted, hoisting her end of the tarp up and into the rear of Officer Old Guy’s ride.
“What the hell? They shot and left them? Why would anyone do that?” I asked the four wildlife officers gathered around the two green vehicles. They all seemed far too angry and disgusted to give me a concise reply, and maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe some people were just flaming assholes.
“I’m going to take a moment to talk to the witness here,” Davy said, jerking his chin at me. “Then I’ll meet you at HQ and we can transport them to the state lab so they can run further forensics.”
The other three wardens gave me dank looks. I grinned affably, rubbing my shoulder until they drove off. Davy climbed into the driver’s seat of his SUV, pulled off his hat, and jammed his fingers into his hair. I stood beside him, amazed to see that he still had the same mannerisms as he’d had when he was a kid.
“Remember when your sister found us making out in the tent?” I asked. His already somber face grew even more distressed. “You paced around for days doing that to your hair until we confronted her about it.”
“She never did tell my parents,” he said, his words rushing out of him.
“Nope, she never did. You did that. I still haven’t told mine. I envy you that courage.” I rolled my arm as he willfully lowered his hands from his head.
“Well, in all fairness you staying in the closet makes sense. Fuck, what a day.” He looked up from the steering wheel to me. “You’re going to need to come to the northcentral office and answer some questions in a professional capacity. As a witness. If you’d like you can remain anonymous on the paperwork.”
“Fuck that. I’m not scared of some assholes who have more ammo than brains,” I announced, still working my stiff arm. “I’ll follow you if you want.”
“Thanks, your cooperation is really appreciated. I’m sorry for the whole handcuffing thing but you’re a major pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, I know. People been telling me that for years. So, about my two roots and dinner. I was thinking steaks over at the Grilling Bear around six?”
“Kye, as flattering as your attention is, I’m not sure I can do this.” His pretty eyes were just so damn sad I wanted to gather him close and comfort him. “You’re too damn dogged. I need time to think, to readjust to you being here and talking about staying. I just…” He blew out a long breath and placed his green cap back on his sweaty head. “I just need you to back off and let me work through the anger. Can you do that?”
“I honestly don’t know.” I reached up to scratch at one of forty-five bug bites on the back of my neck. “I’m not known for my patience. I see something I want, I go after it. Pucks, careers, first loves that I stupidly left behind, corn dogs…”
He grunted wearily. “Well, for my sake, can you dial back your exuberance just a bit? It’s like dealing with that pink battery rabbit on crack. You just keep coming and coming and coming, and I’m not wired properly to handle that kind of relentless attack.”
I dug at my neck until it burned. “Okay, sorry. I know you’re more the slow courtship kind of man. Took us years to even hold pinkies. Which was one of the best days of my life.”
“God, you still remember that?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“Of course, I’d been chipping away at you for months, trying to woo you. I love wooing you, and kissing you, and doing other things with you. For the record, my lasting power and stamina has increased tremendously since the last time we camped out by the pond. Just a little FYI for you while you work through stuff.”
“That’s good to know. So, you’re up to what, three minutes until you blow a nut now?” Ah, there it was, a tiny spark of his dry humor. Good. I disliked seeing Davy sad.
“Ouch. Can I kiss you?”
“No, you can’t. I shouldn’t have kissed you or cuffed you. You get under my skin like no other person on the planet, you always did. You always had me teetering back and forth between wanting to slap you or fuck you.”
“I’d be up for a little of both now, you know, as long as the slapping was playful sexy slapping.” I winked. He rolled his eyes. I was wearing him down, I could see it. “How about we meet down by the pond behind Dunny’s in a week? I have to fly to New York for an endorsement meeting and photoshoot. You can tell me if my roots are enough to get me dinner or not.”
“It’s not the roots, Kye, it’s the reasons for the roots. Why are you doing all of this?”
“I don’t understand…”
He sat back in his seat, resignation creeping back into his features. “Are you back home to try to rekindle a romance that you fucked up? Are you here for Dunny? Why are you here? Why now when you had twenty years to come back? Why are you here?” I fumbled around looking for a reason, a solid one. One that wasn’t related to Davy, although he was a large part of my desire to come back to Spruce Lake. Dunny was as well. “See, you don’t even know why you’re here. If it’s for me or for Dunny, then that’s not really a good reason to uproot your life in Pittsburgh.”
“You’re telling me that wanting to take care of my aged grandfather is a poor reason to come back?” He was kind of pissing me off.
“No, of course not, that’s what family should do. I just think you’re here for me and for Dunny, and you’re talking about moving here for reasons that have nothing to do with what you want.”
“I want you!”
“Why? Why now? What the hell is driving you to abandon what you had, and by all accounts it was damn good, to come back here? What is it you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know!”
My shout bounced off the swampy water and thick trees below us.
“Well, maybe you should work harder on figuring out why you’re doing what you’re doing and less on trying to seduce me.” He yanked on the door. It slapped me in the ass. Three times, before I stepped out of the way and let him close it. “Follow me. I’ll have Penny take your information.” He peeled out, his back tires kicking up a small cloud of dust and tiny bits of gravel.
“Well fuck,” I mumbled as his SUV disappeared from view. Now I wasn’t at all excited about the studio or the summer league or dinner with Davy. Now I was just super confused and covered with bloody welts. Oh, and my sneakers were wet too. A trifecta of shitty stuff piled onto the really shitty stuff Davy had just buried me under.
Not even Dave Matthews could lift my funk. Maybe that week in New York was just what I needed to get my head on straight. Ah, man. Straight. I’d not called Arn yet to fill him in on my little announcement the other night. Maybe I’d beat the slow leak of news out of this turnip town and be able to let him down gently when I arrived in the Big Apple day after tomorrow.
Nope, I’d not been able to beat the news out of my little turnip town. Arn was waiting for me at LaGuardia, his brows so tangled they looked like a wiry black caterpillar convulsing right there on his brow.
“Hey, how they hanging?” I asked, clapping him on the shoulder while handing him my carry-on which he took then deepened his glower. Now his eyebrows were about to obscure his eyes totally.
“You know, I love my job. Most of the time. Not sure what it is about me that draws all the LGBT players to my office, must be my stunning attire or my neatly cut hair.” He stood ramrod stiff, feet planted, total disregard for the hundreds of passengers moving around us.
“Oh, yeah, about that gay thing…”
“About that gay thing he says,” Arn snapped, shoving his sunglasses on his wide nose and stalking around me, my carry-on bag slapping his skinny ass as he booked it toward baggage claim.
“Arn, look, it was a secret thing.” I jogged up beside him, dancing around tiny women with tinier babies and old folks with rolling suitcases.
“Oh, it was a secret? I didn’t know that. Guess that’s how secrets work, huh?” He stalked along with his eyes locked straight ahead. “Don’t know what the hell it is with my clients and all the rainbow sprinkles and surprises that get dumped on m
y head.”
“Look, Arn, it wasn’t like I planned—sorry, pardon me, sir—planned to come out that way. There’s this guy—”
“Well, sure there is! It’s always some guy. Wait, let me guess.” He hit the brakes in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts and whirled around to look up at me. Arn was a kind of slim guy and I was, well, I was beefy. “He’s some pretty young thing in a skirt?”
“Uhm no.” A crowd of Japanese tourists rushed past.
“No? Well, he’s a pretty yoga instructor? No? How about some pretty older guy who owns a motherfucking garden shop?”
“He’s a game warden. Sexy as shit, my age. I’m really confused about the skirt…”
He waved a hand with two thick gold rings in my face. “Don’t be that way. Guys can wear skirts. It’s fluid. But what guys should not do is come out at some Podunk fireworks/beer festival and forget to drop a note to their agent. Just as an FYI kind of thing. You dated fucking Marlena Banks.”
“Yeah, well, she was nice and didn’t like dick so it was a match made in heaven.”
His hand dropped to his side and his face fell. “Are you telling me that Marlena Banks is a lesbian?”
“Not my secret to tell,” I hurried to say but the cat was already out of the bag. “Don’t repeat that, okay? She’d track me down and neuter me with a fingernail file.”
“My whole life is a lie.” Arn deflated there in front of me.
“You want a donut? I could use one. Some coffee maybe? We can talk about…stuff.”
“No, no donuts or coffee. We’re due to meet Pete Peterson at Thursday at One in an hour.” He took off again, his stride twice as fast as mine although my legs were twice as long.
“Wait what? It’s Wednesday. I’m so confused.”
“Thursday at One is a new restaurant over on 6th Avenue,” he informed me then hustled down to baggage claim, most conversation put on hold until we were in possession of my suitcase and in his car. “You do realize that you’re going to have to make an announcement that’s been vetted by someone in my office, namely me, to the major news sites?”
“Why? I mean, I’m retired. Not like I’m actively playing. Lots of players come out after they’re done in the game and don’t need a big presser.” I stared out at the traffic of Manhattan. It was quite a bit like Pittsburgh in the morning, only with heaps of New York attitude.
“Because it is a big thing still.” I huffed. He inched the red Mercedes up an inch, called someone a dickhead, and then glanced at me. “Last time I ever drive to come pick up someone. Should have known better but I wanted to show her off. Nice isn’t she?” He rubbed the dashboard as if it were a woman’s bare thigh. I nodded without real emotion. “See here, this is what my ten percent gets me. A new Mercedes and a motherfucking ulcer because my clients all like to hide the fact that they like dick.”
“Not our fault the world is rife with homophobia and sports is drowning in toxic masculinity. Trust me, living in the closet sucks!”
His head dropped to the steering wheel. “I know. I know. I do.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I’m sorry. I know how discrimination feels, trust me. I just wasn’t prepared for the little Google alert that rang my chime as I was sitting there waiting for you at the airport.”
“Okay, yeah, I’m an asshole for not telling you. I thought about it, even made a mental note, but then things started happening, and I just forgot. If it helps you’re in the top five of people I wanted to tell about this. My parents, who still don’t know, are next on the list.”
“You haven’t told your parents yet?” His disbelief was comical. Sort of. Not really.
“No, I just…I’ll call them after this meeting with the sparkly water shit people.”
“Kye, I swear on my blessed mother’s sweet face, if you call Peterson Farms Sparkling Cider ‘sparkly water shit’ in front of Pete Peterson, I will throw you down an elevator shaft.” He looked deadly serious.
“Pete Peterson. What is he, a comic book character?”
“Just mind your damn tongue.”
“That’s what he said.”
“I need a motherfucking drink.”
Arn got his drink. A whiskey on the rocks when we were seated in Thursday at One. I’ve never really been a big fan of swank. I’ve always been a jeans and T-shirt, burp when you have to burp, fart when your mother isn’t in the room kind of guy. Basic I guess you could call it. I stuck out like a sore dick in this restaurant. Arn hadn’t informed me to pack fancy clothes. Not that I cared what I’d thrown into the bag at the what the fuck am I doing up o’clock because I was too grumpy and tired and miserable about Davy. He hadn’t even taken my information about the poaching incident. He’d passed me off to Penny like an unwanted cold germ. This week was going to suck. I was bumbling around mentally, trying to get things sorted, but it was like chasing a slip of paper inside a tornado. Things I thought I knew I didn’t. My reasons for being here. My plans for the rest of my life. The cost of a loaf of bread. Poof! All ripped free from my hands and whirling around me daring me to try to figure things out.
“This is one of the hottest new eateries in Manhattan,” Arn said as I sipped my artisan beer. I’d wanted a good old Iron City, a brand I’d grown to love while living in the Burgh but had been informed this establishment only carried artisan beer. Snobby little prig in his olive vest and skinny jeans. “Landon Reece opened it just last year, and it has become the hot spot for young, trendy Manhattanites.”
“Of which we are not,” I commented, my eyes roaming around the place. Lots of dark cherry wood, windows that looked out at 6th Avenue, shelves with top shelf booze, menus on green chalkboards, and servers in green vests with white name tags.
“Speak for yourself. I’m damn young and trendy.”
I snorted into my beer. This place was just too New York for me. Filled with yuppies or hipsters or whatever faddish name was being applied to twenty-somethings this week. Back in Pittsburgh there had been a small corner bar a block from the barn. Owned by Pat O’Leary, a half-black and half-Irish beast of a man. We always congregated there when we had free time. The beer was cold, the food filling, and the sports talk loud and rowdy. Probably no one in this place had ever smelled the inside of a hockey player’s locker or had his tooth knocked out by a puck even if the joint was owned by Landon Reece, the star goalie of the New York Metros. Hell of a nice guy, outstanding goalie, but a total Manhattan athlete. Lives in a penthouse overlooking the city, drives a blue convertible Maserati, is so handsome it takes you aback and is discreet about his sexuality. I guess if I had to pick a word to describe Landon it would be restrained. Even on the ice he’s cool and composed, rarely loses his temper, and has this incredible focus. Fucker shut me down enough times over his past five years as the Metros starting goalie.
“…two or three hundred thousand per thirty second slot. I’m sure we can ratchet that up to fifty thousand and you haven’t heard a damn word I just said.”
“Untrue. You think we can get fifty thousand for each thirty second slot.”
Arn was unimpressed. “Look, I know you’re out of sorts and all that, but I need Kye McLeod here. This is going to net you some big, big money to tuck away for retirement. But they want the Kye everyone knows, the down-home joking, smiling guy. Can you bring him out for a couple of hours here?”
I lowered my glass. “I’m not being me? Who the hell am I being then?”
“You’re down. I can see it. And I get it, coming out and all that, but we’ve got to nail down this contract today before they can pull out which they may do if they find out you’re gay,” he said, leaning over the table with the olive tablecloth and skinny vase with one white carnation in it. Not even a damn ketchup bottle. What kind of monsters don’t have ketchup bottles on the table? What would I cover my fries in? “Shit, he’s here. Smiles, Kye.”
Wait. Pull out because I’m gay? Really? I got to my feet at the same time Arn did, smiled at the grinning man of about sixty who was pumping my hand
madly, and then greeted him as professionally as possible.
“Pete, great to meet you. Love the sparkling cider. I’m gay,” I said while continuing to work his hand like a water pump. Arn made a sound like a cat with a hairball lodged in its throat. Pete’s grin wavered a bit, but he didn’t jerk his hand away or throw holy water at me to cleanse the taint.
“So’s my granddaughter. Shall we sit and order?” Pete replied, slapping me on the arm then dropping down into the chair between my agent and myself.
Arn shot me a glower that I waved off. The next two hours were highly enjoyable and incredibly profitable. Pete had offered me six slots for thirty seconds, TV and print ads, at forty thousand per slot. Arn got him up to sixty thousand per slot with a special Pride month advertisement where I’d be front and center, open and proud, and slinging sparkling cider in rainbow cans. Corporate America sure did like to sell things to gays in June. I wondered if I should be taking part in it to be honest. I talked Arn out of rainbow flags or capes for the Pride spots and insisted on it just being me on the ice, talking about love and equality then announcing that Peterson Farms will donate fifty cents from every can sold of Peterson Farms sparkling hard cider to the LGBTQ non-profit of my choice. I would donate fifty grand to a yet to be named organization as well. Pete nearly wept in joy. Arn was sipping whiskey. His eyes were round as our dessert plates, but he was saying nothing against the plan.
“Can you be at our main office tomorrow at nine to sign the contracts?” Pete asked. I nodded. “Excellent! We’ll get the contracts filled out to your specifications and have everything signed so we can start shooting. Any way you can do the first spot while you’re here in New York?”
“I uhm…” I looked at Arn who nodded just once. “Sure. We can do that.”