Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (11 page)

Ben held out his hands and smiled gently. “No worries. All I’m doing today is inventory, and that’s pretty easy. You can run the register, right?”

Jeremy nodded. They used a simple old-fashioned till, and even a kid could use it. “Yeah—we all run the shop.”

“Yeah, well, nice for you. You got hurt and the day we came back and opened shop, we had forty little old ladies and a few hot young ones in here wanting to buy yarn and gossip. I damn near went running out of here screaming with my hair on fire.”

Jeremy grinned. He’d worked here on those days. In the summer, Granby, Grand, Boulder, and Fort Collins put on a yarn crawl where the few artisan shops that carried yarn offered discounts for people who went to each shop, with a raffle at the end for folks who’d taken their “crawl maps” to enough stores. Man, they were busy those times—seriously scary shit!

“What stopped you?”

Ben shuddered. “Craw was outside swearing at the machinery.”

Jeremy could look properly horrified. Ye gods and little fishes, that man did know how to swear. “That’s fuckin’ scary, that’s what
that
is,” he said sincerely.

“Oh yeah.” Ben’s eyes were as big as infinity pools. “People kept telling me he was a scary asshole, but I’m telling you, Jeremy, I didn’t see any of that really until you were hurt. He was really fuckin’ worried.”

Jeremy looked down, feeling sweat travel from his neck to his ears. He wondered—did it stop at his scars? Would anybody notice? Would the scars eventually disappear? “Well, you know. I know the machines. I’m sure he’da hated to teach anyone else how that worked.”

Ben grunted. “You know, when I lived in the city, gay men used to talk about their feelings and I used to think that was really fuckin’ dumb. I
miss
that right now.”

Jeremy scowled. “If you wanted a guy who’d talk about his feelings, maybe you shoulda picked someone besides Craw, you think?”

The look on Ben’s face was taken aback, like he couldn’t think about life without Craw and he was shocked and disturbed to find that someone could even mention a thing like that.

“Yeah, okay. You’re right. I’ll just write a second master’s thesis interpreting the silences of rural gay men in blue-collar jobs. I could probably make a zillion fucking bucks.”

Jeremy managed a real smile. “That there sounds like a con to me. Now, you gonna show me how to fill out the inventory sheet, or do you want to see how bad Craw and Aiden can terrorize old whatsisname out there some more?”

“Oh
God
forbid!” Ben muttered. “Jeremy, if they have to spend another day with that man, they will cut him up in pieces, boil him down, and use him as chicken mash.”

Jeremy made a face. “Now that’ll probably spoil the eggs, and
that’d
be a shame. Thanks for letting us keep your stock, by the way—I really do love all the bunnies and the chickens and the whatyacallems—”

“Chinchillas?”

“Yeah, those—”

“They were a gift,” Ben said softly. “The big Angoras were from Stanley, I already had the chickens, and the old rabbits were from Craw. But the chinchillas were from me.” Ben grinned pertly. “So there you go. Try to get out of talking about
that
,
con man!”

Oh, blessed, blessed Ben, who could make a joke and smile with those flirty, dark-fringed eyes and make everything not quite so serious.

“Well, thank you. I think they’re pregnant already. The Angora rabbits too. Apparently they’re the gift that keeps on giving, so, you know. Break out the hammer and the nails, ’cause I think with a couple of cashmere goats, this mill’s going luxury fiber all the way.”

And wonder of wonders, Craw’s man laughed like Jeremy had told a real joke and everything, and Jeremy felt like he had his feet back under him. Damn, but it had been a long time since he’d gotten somebody to smile, and given that telling a good story and getting to talking used to be his
livelihood
, he sort of felt vindicated getting a real laugh as well.

“Well, you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t let them reproduce quite so damned much, or at least start getting together another set of hutches,” Ben conceded, but he was still smiling, his teeth white behind his stubble. “Come here—let me show you how to do this.”

The lesson proved simple but effective, and Ben went out the door in a few minutes to go make Craw stop beating on something with a crescent wrench. Jeremy didn’t even want to
know
what shape the mill equipment would be in before he finally got okayed for that part of the store. Granted, it was more often that the men got mangled as opposed to the machine, but still. He and Aiden knew how to gentle those antique piles of iron and malice, and Craw really did not.

Before Ben went, he set the satellite radio on “hobbit music” as he called it, and Jeremy had to admit that some of it was pretty catchy.

But it was the yarn that caught his attention more.

Aiden had been right. Ariadne had a knack for the prettying up of things. Right now all the twists were scattered on the shelves, lying every which way and not sorted by color at all. Jeremy figured that while he was marking down inventory, he could set things to rights, and the thought made him sort of proud. Miss Ari had a real nice sense of color and style, and she’d made that little store a showplace. Jeremy understood that Stanley did the same thing for
his
store, but Miss Ariadne, well, she did by instinct what Stanley did by training. Jeremy was absolutely convinced that nobody would make the store quite as pretty as Miss Ari.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try. He did the inventory like Ben needed, and when he was counting things, he set them out pretty. Maybe it was all those years on the grift, learning what people of quality liked to look at, but it wasn’t until the end, when he was looking around at a store that seemed to have a little bit more sparkle, that he realized that he’d just sort of gone to town.

He’d done simple things, child’s color block things, to make the merchandise look better. The hand form, for instance, that they used to block mittens and gloves on—well, they didn’t have any mittens or gloves to block on it, so Jeremy gave the delicate fingers a bouquet of embroidery floss wrapped up with a silver scarf. The hat form, which, once again, had no hat, he decorated with one of the vendor products that they used as examples for something knitted up—a shawl made of thick cotton velour yarn. He’d taken advantage of that (which was easy, because really, all of them at the mill
hated
those sorts of novelty yarns) and set the shawl pins in and around and all over the shawl so they could be modeled in their natural habitat, and nobody at Craw’s mill had to look at that shameful novelty yarn that someone had tried to make them sell.

And when he was done with that, he sat down heavily on Ben’s accountant’s chair and tried to keep his eyes open.

When Ben and Aiden came in to bring him lunch, he was nodding off over the inventory sheet, his finger hovering on the 9 key as he entered an infinite number of size-three six-inch double-pointed needles.

“
Jeremy
!” Aiden snapped, and he threw his head back and jerked his fingers off the keyboard.

“Oh fuck,” he trembled in that way people have when their adrenaline and their sleep cycle are all intertwined. “Ben, the accounts, I’m fuckin’ sorry!”

“No worries,” Ben murmured, easing the keyboard out from under his arm. “You wrote all this down on the paper sheet?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said through a yawn. “Did. Sorry. Was trying to enter it for you but—
ow
!” He straightened up, and his shoulder, sore from hunching over without any support, gave a vicious twang.

“Ow what?” Craw muttered, coming in and stomping the snow off his feet.

“Ow, Jeremy just overdid it and is going home to sleep after lunch,” Aiden said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Jeremy closed and opened his eyes, feeling suddenly tearful. Dammit—flat on his back for two months, and this was all he could manage?

“You did good,” Ben said quietly, setting the laptop down with a cleared inventory screen. “You have it all down on hard copy—it’ll take me half an hour. And the store looks great.”

Jeremy looked up at the store and smiled a little. “The store part was fun,” he said, swallowing hard against the pain.

Aiden grunted and pulled the hated little vial out of his pocket. “Here, Jer. It’s been a while since breakfast.” In his other hand, he had a plate of sandwiches, which he set down on the small sales counter Ariadne usually hunkered behind. The brown bottle of pain meds followed. “Have a sandwich, and I’ll go get some milk. You can take those when I get back.”

Aiden turned around and strode out of the store, leaving a little bit more breathable air when the door shut.

“My God that kid is big,” Jeremy muttered to no one in particular, and Craw grunted.

“Aiden bossing you around some?”

Jeremy shook his head, feeling the total weariness assault him again. “No,” he yawned. “I just can’t imagine how he stopped in the middle of growin’ that big and noticed me.”

“Mm-hm.” Craw looked around. “Eat a bite of your sandwich, Jeremy. Ben’s right, the store looks good. Tomorrow it’ll be open, and you can mind the counters in the morning.”

“What’ll I do in the afternoon?” he asked, yawning again.

“Go home and sleep, dumbass. And then wake up and move around and feed your own animals. Jesus, do I have to tally your fucking operations, or can you just take it easy for a goddamned week or six.”

Jeremy squinted at him and rolled his eyes. “No need to swear at me, Craw. I was just asking!”

“Well, you want to ask something, ask yourself why you didn’t give us a fucking call next time. Jesus fucking Christ. One lousy fucking phone call and you could have been half as fucked-up as you are now.”

Ben socked him in the arm, and Jeremy gaped.

“You were nicer to me in the hospital,” he said while Craw scowled and rubbed his arm.

“You weren’t feeling good enough to yell at then,” Craw growled. “You feel good enough to decorate the fuckin’ store, it is time to set out your plate for a ration of shit.”

Aiden ploughed in, ringing the bell and stomping snow all over the store.

“Let him eat sandwiches,” Ben said mildly over the clatter of his arrival. “They’re probably better for the soul.”

Behind Aiden came a middle-aged guy with a fringe of hair around a shiny bald dome of a head. He had little round glasses, corduroy pants, and what looked to be an ugly acrylic sweater on under a bright-yellow nylon jacket.

“Why’d you bring the sandwiches here?” the guy whined. “Jesus, Aiden, why do we have to walk across the damned farm to get some damned food?”

Aiden and Craw turned to the guy and barked, “Because Jeremy eats first!” so loud that he took two steps back into the door.

“All right, all right, I hear you. Saint Jeremy eats first, I get it!”

Jeremy yawned and chewed through another bite of the peanut butter and jelly. “I don’t know who
he’s
talking about,” he said, trying hard to keep awake enough to eat, “but I sure do miss peanut butter and jelly.”

“Here, Jer,” Aiden said, nudging a horse pill at him with a glass of milk. “Take your pill, we’ll get you out to the car, and you don’t have to worry about this nozzle until tomorrow.”

“That’s it?” the guy demanded. “He works a half day and he goes home? I thought he was the best worker you’d ever had!”

“Aiden’s the best worker Craw ever had,” Jeremy said after gulping down the pill. “I’m just a panhandler earning my keep.” He couldn’t finish the milk, and he stood, weaving a little, feeling wrecked and peevish. “I’ll take you up on the offer of home now, boy.”

“Sure, Jer,” Aiden said quietly. “C’mere.”

Aiden wrapped an arm around him, careful of his sore side, and Jeremy let himself be guided out of the little store. Not even the slap of the wind and the frigid air of early afternoon in January could wake him up. He fell asleep in the truck on the way down the hill and wasn’t awake enough to object when Aiden steered him back inside.

After Aiden took off Jeremy’s boots and shucked off his jeans and his coat, he woke up a little, but Aiden walked him upstairs and into bed.

“Not the couch?” Jeremy mumbled, and Aiden trilled a little, like the bunnies.

“It’s going to be dark in about two hours, Jer. If you wake up more than to go to the bathroom, I’m going to be surprised.”

“Augh!” Jeremy groaned. “I’m useless. Fucking useless.”

“Shut up,” Aiden told him, sitting at the side of the bed and tucking the covers up to his chin. “You had a busy day yesterday and a pretty damned big one today. I was stupid for taking you in.”

“Not stupid,” Jeremy told him. “You just wanted what I wanted. Normal.”

Aiden bent over and nuzzled Jeremy’s cheek with his nose. “Normal. That’s exactly what I want. But you know something?”

“No.” Jeremy just closed his eyes and savored Aiden’s heat and smell. He didn’t know anything—but having Aiden there to pet him sure was an improvement over the hospital.

“Normal isn’t having you decorate the store, but you did a damned good job at it. You’re going to be sitting at that register for probably four or five months, because Ariadne’s going to be out for a while and part-time when she gets back. And you may have never thought of yourself as that person, but you know? You’re going to do okay. So think about that. All you wanted to be for the last three years was honest. Well, you know you’re honest. You know you’re loved. Let’s see what else you can do with that.”

Jeremy’s eyes drifted closed, and he managed a nod. “Sleep,” he mumbled. “I’ll sleep on it.”

He hardly felt Aiden’s kiss before he left.

J
EREMY
WOKE
up around dinnertime. Aiden brought him some casserole after he was done with the animals, and then set him up with a television on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Jeremy ate, trying dizzily to focus, and then gave up both occupations. He just sat there, staring blindly at the television while Aiden cleaned up. Finally, Aiden undressed and slid into bed next to him. That helped. Some of the blankness faded when Jeremy lay with his head on Aiden’s shoulder, and Aiden stroked his hair.