Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (15 page)

“Ariadne.”

“It’s a good one. Ask Craw.” Aiden backed up then, and Jeremy took a step out of the alcove and turned, grabbing his hand.

“I will. Think he’ll bitch?”

“Of course he’ll bitch. He’s Craw.”

Jeremy tightened the fingers of his weak hand, and Aiden squeezed gently back. “That’s how we know it’s home,” he said.

“Think it’s hard?”

“Spinning? Naw. Spinning’s easy. The
wheel’s
hard.”

The two of them ventured out into a slushy, gray February day.

“You think that’s real funny, don’t you? Just ’cause machinery likes you.”

“Does not.”

“Does too—thinks you walk on water and I’m Satan’s toilet paper—always has.”

And so on, they talked together into the parking lot, where they grabbed the beat-up car Craw had started keeping in the city for quick visits just like this one.

It wasn’t until Jeremy fell asleep in the plane home that Aiden realized that of all the dumb things, Jeremy’s quiet patterning of sentences with Ariadne was the least of his worries. He and Jeremy had spoken their own code almost since the beginning. It hadn’t gone away. It probably never would.

J
EREMY
LOOKED
suspiciously at the pile of money he’d counted out of the little jar, and then over at Craw.

“That’s forty dollars,” he said, surprised.

“That was a real nice hat,” Craw told him. “That yarn was one of Aiden’s best. And you turned it out right quick.”

“But… but….” Jeremy waved his circular needles in front of him, another one of Aiden’s best colors in progress around them.

“But what?” Craw was starting to growl, and Jeremy had never liked calling attention to himself.

“It’s a lot,” he said, and then thought of the little workup Ben and Aiden had done, trying to estimate what Ariadne would need. He deflated abruptly. “And not enough.”

Craw didn’t just grunt—he made sounds like barnyard animals going to bed at night. The more frustrated and/or inarticulate he felt, the bigger the animal. This particular grunt sounded like a constipated cow.

Jeremy glared at him because that didn’t help at
all
. “You got anything you want to share with the class?” he asked, irritated.

Craw’s next grunt sounded like a hungry alpaca. That wasn’t bad. They sort of hummed when they were making noise. It actually sounded soothing.

“So…,” Jeremy started. God, Jeremy was grateful to this man, and he’d been a more than satisfactory big brother/father figure over the last three years, but Jeremy was going to shove a knitting needle in his ear if he didn’t say something that made sense. He’d been knitting an item a day for the past two weeks, and Ariadne’s fund was big enough to help with transportation through one surgery and to maybe ameliorate the cost of not working for the time off she was going to have to take for that first visit to the doctor’s, but… well….

“It’s a start,” Craw said, sighing heavily. “It’s… I mean, it’s more than they had.”

“I shouldn’t have signed that lease-to-own paper,” he mourned. “Man, of all the times to clean out my floor safe—”

“Ariadne would make all sorts of damned sacrifices for you to have a house,” Craw growled. “For you to have a reason to call this place home. Just stop thinking about the floor safe. This is a start. Let’s find a way to finish.”

Jeremy made a row of plain stitches deftly, thinking the worst thing about this item a day thing was that he was
bored
of plain knitting. You didn’t build yourself up in this craft for speed alone. “It sure would be nice to make something complicated,” he muttered.

This time Craw’s grunt sounded like a
horny
cow, and Jeremy was sufficiently startled.

“Make that noise again, I dare you!” he said, knowing his eyes were huge. They were sitting alone in the shop while Craw counted the raffle fund, a week after the visit to the hospital. Jeremy’s arm was in a sling and he was knitting with one hand mobile and the other anchored, just able to hold his needle, and he was proceeding on a basic hat at a good clip. Craw had come in on Jeremy’s request: he made sure someone was there
every
time he counted up the raffle money. There would never
be any doubt, as far as he was concerned, as to where that money was going.

Craw raised a russet eyebrow, and underneath his shaving-is-for-the-weak beard, he might have popped a dimple. “You afraid every bull for miles is going to crash the farm looking for some of this prime ass?” he asked, slapping his flank for good measure.

Jeremy cocked his head to the side, unamused and still irritated. “Jesus, Craw, even the fucking cows would know you don’t bottom.”

Craw left out a guffaw, but Jeremy rode right over him. “I just need to know if we can help her, that’s all.”

Craw made another noise and raised both eyebrows this time.

“Goddamm—”

“No! Look, it’s my turn to have an idea now. Do you think I want to let it out before it’s ready to be heard?”

“Okay, fine. I’m going to sit here and knit this piss-boring hat, and you let me know when my opinion might actually matter, okay?”

“My little brainstorm is going to take a lot of work on your part, Jeremy—do you think you could let me figure out how you can be two places at once?”

Jeremy widened his eyes. “Well, if you tell me where I’ll have to be, maybe I can help!”

Craw’s next grunt sounded like a rabbit getting rogered by an impatient flatmate, so Jeremy figured they were just about ready to go. “See, the thing is,” Craw said slowly, “you’re doing plenty of work, but not enough people are buying tickets.”

“Well, Granby’s a small town.”

“That’s right—and a lot of people can knit at least serviceably.”

“Colorado has some longass fucking winters,” Jeremy said with conviction, and Craw shrugged in acknowledgment. It was indisputable and irrevocable, like not being able to drive Highway 34 until June.

“Exactly. But like you said, you’re a better knitter. In fact, you’re a master craftsman—”

“Really?” Jeremy breathed, and Craw glared at him like he’d said something insane.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jeremy, you’re the best knitter of all of us, but part of that could be that Aiden’s been knitting not much more besides fucking mittens for the last three years. Anyway, now that
that’s
over with, have you made the baby a gift?”

Jeremy nodded. “Of course. One of those little nightgown things. I did the body and the skirt, Aiden did the hat and the wee baby socks, and we took turns working on the blanket.”

Craw stared at him. “Do you two even knit in the same gauge?”

Jeremy shrugged. “You can’t tell where he lets off and I start. It was real nice working on that together—it was like magic knitting fairies came by at night and made it go faster.”

Craw’s bushy eyebrows were almost at his low hairline, and his warm brown eyes were fully exposed. “If you
ever
say
anything
about fairies knitting for two gay men again, I will fire you,
then
I’ll knit you a noose, do you hear me?”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “I’m not set on believing you, Craw. What exactly do you want us to do?”

“Well, the thing is, if you and Aiden and the”—his face twisted in distaste under the furry red beard—“magic knitting fairies could create something else, something big, I think we could do something big with that. Have a
big
raffle, a benefit party, where lots of stuff is given away. We could get people to donate food, people to donate drink and prizes—and one of Aiden’s designs knit by you is going to be the… I don’t know. Big cherry on the benefit sundae. ’Cause I think we could probably raise a couple of thousand dollars doing something like that.
But—
”

“But we need someone to do all that work,” Jeremy said, understanding him now.

Craw nodded. “Someone who can talk a mile a minute until people want to just fork over the venue or their cash or their goods and services because he told ’em so.”

Jeremy stared at him with an open mouth, and for a minute, he wanted to howl “
NO
!”
until the store windows broke.

“I put that life behind me,” he said instead.

Craw shook his head. “You don’t get it, Jeremy. You’re not going to be cheating anybody. You’re going to be selling them a real thing. You’re going to be selling them a chance to do some good. And we’re going to throw Granby a big party to see if we can’t do just that.”

Jeremy gaped at him and then closed his mouth. “Boy,” he croaked through a dry throat. “I gotta talk to Aiden first.”

Craw nodded like he knew just what Aiden would say.

“H
ELL
NO
,”
Aiden snapped when Jeremy broached it that night at dinner.

Jeremy stared at him, feeling for the wound in his chest. “I wouldn’t cheat nobody,” he said earnestly.

It was Aiden’s turn to recoil.

“I never thought you would,” he said, like it was completely out of the realm of possibility.

“Well, you should,” Jeremy said, suddenly fearful for him. “Aiden, there are all sorts of bad people in the world, and I was one of them. Five years ago—”

“You were in jail for trying to go straight with the wrong mark,” Aiden said, because Jeremy had told him that story.

“Okay, then, six years ago—”

“You were a kid, and your father was calling the shots.”

“I was twenty-four!”

“You’d been fleecing marks since you were in
diapers
,
Jeremy. The fact that you decided to go straight? That wasn’t a miracle—that was just who you would have been if your father hadn’t been an asshole.”

Jeremy gaped at him over the mashed potatoes he’d just been enjoying. “My daddy—”

Aiden shook his head, his lower jaw thrust out like a Boston terrier’s. “You’re not going to cheat anyone, Jer—you’ve proved you’re honest. But now you’re too trusting—and too willing to work yourself into the ground. You need to rest.” Aiden’s voice cracked a little. “Doctor’s orders.”

Jeremy shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. “Just because you browbeat the doctor—”

“I did
not
!” Aiden protested, and even though Jeremy could tell he believed that, well, Jeremy wasn’t so sure.

“I’m fine—”

“You’re too thin, you’re too tired, and you need to take your meds more often.”

“Yeah, but that stuff’ll just take time,” Jeremy protested. “I don’t need to be fresh paint and screen doors in order to function decent, right?”

Aiden made an unhappy grumble. “Sounds like you’ve already decided.”

Jeremy stopped short. “Well, I
had
decided against it,” he said, surprised.

To his irritation, Aiden started cackling like a drunk witch. “So ’cause I tell you not to, that makes you say yes?”

Jeremy kicked at his shin under the table, but since they were both wearing slippers, all he really did was stub his toe. “No. I’m not saying yes.”

“Why not?” Aiden demanded before taking another bite of dinner. Aiden had cooked today—he tended to think in very broad lines: protein, green, starch. Today it was chicken, broccoli, and buns. Jeremy liked that simplicity. He always tried to fuck up potato and cheese casserole by going overboard. The last time he’d made hamburger mac and cheese, he’d added chili powder to it. Aiden had called it “atomic mac and cheese” and had eaten it enthusiastically, but, well, it hadn’t been a good friend to Jeremy’s pain meds. Jeremy was starting to fiercely look forward to the days Aiden cooked.

“Well, because who wants to give an old con man access to all that money?” Jeremy asked.

“You’re not that person anymore.” And oh! He just dismissed it so easily.

“You say that, you know, but the whole rest of the town, what are
they
going to think when they find out?”

Aiden rolled his eyes and tore off a bite of roll with his teeth. “Oh, like they haven’t found that out already. What do you think the whole town was gossiping about when you were in the hospital?”

Jeremy gaped at him.

“You are full of shit,” he said after a moment of trying to see if his lips could go together again.

“Hell I am,” Aiden said through another mouthful of roll. “My mom came and told me the whole story after you’d been in for a month. She was in the store, someone was reading from the paper, and bam! Secret out! Wanna know what happened?”

“People with torches and pitchforks tried to storm Craw’s farm and burn the place down?” Jeremy asked, only partly kidding.

“No, dumbass—everyone got all excited, didn’t shut up about it in the store, and then Craw barged in, said he’d known it all along. Said he’d never met anyone more deserving of a second chance. Said you’d taken every opportunity of turning yourself around and run with it. Right in the middle of a crowded store, before a blizzard. So everyone went home, stayed home for three days, thought about it, and by the time they were all ready to get out and talk to other people, you’d become their friend again. They remembered they’d known you for three years and that you were a good person—”

“Which does
not
mean they want me tending their money!”

“Well, maybe that’s
exactly
why you should do this,” Aiden said adamantly.

Jeremy was so surprised he dropped his fork and scattered his broccoli all over the table. “What in the hell happened to ‘Poor Jeremy, he’s too weak to walk across the fucking store’?”

“Well, I’d rather have you too weak to walk across the fucking store than too afraid to deal with our neighbors ’cause of the person you aren’t anymore.”

Jeremy started to clean up the broccoli with a napkin and tried to put his world in order again. “Dammit, Aiden, I haven’t even had dinner with your mother yet!”

Aiden’s smile was a sublime mix of triumph and excitement. “Hot damn, I know exactly where we’re going to start. We’re going to get you some help—”

“I was thinking Stanley—”

“That is a
great
idea. Stanley can help. You can do a sister event in Boulder and—”