Drowning of Stephan Jones (2 page)

Even before reaching her destination, Carla was busy telling herself how much steadier and calmer she felt. And as she fished her lipstick and compact from her purse, it became necessary to wipe her perspiring palms against both sleeves of her navy duffle coat. It came as a surprise that her hands were so hot and sticky, because this particular late-December day was about as cold as it ever got in this town.

Carla cooled and calmed herself down with her very own whispered words of encouragement: “Probably a hundred—probably even more than a hundred—people pass through these doors daily, especially now, only three days till Christmas, so why in the world would anybody think twice about one more person—namely me—doing the same exact thing?”

As she brought the tube of Crimson Nights to her lips a man speaking mere inches from her ear softly whispered, “Somebody’s going to be impressed.” Carla was startled. The words as well as the warm sound of the cultured accent and well-modulated voice suggested that he had come from someplace a long way from this place, and both gave her more courage.

Carla had never really lived any place else or even been very far from her Ozark Mountain home. Even so, there just seemed to be something within her that always made her yearn for experiences she had never had as well as places, far-far-away places, where she had never been. Although she mightily resisted looking up, she felt as though she just had to put a face on that wondrous voice. She looked up.

Without slowing his step, the man flashed a slightly sideways conspiratorial smile. And as he and his equally good-looking male companion entered the store, Carla stood statue-still. Despite the cold, she somehow felt warmed as well as encouraged. Actually she felt as though the stranger was at this precise moment a friend. As she slid the lipstick across her heart-shaped lips, she wondered if friendships had to endure for a certain period of time before they could actually qualify as friendships?

Carla breathed the mountain air deeply before throwing her chin up, squaring her shoulders, crossing all of her fingers, and entering the well-lit hardware store. Once inside, she looked neither to the left nor to the right but headed purposefully for the Christmas light display. At first the only Mr. Harris she sighted was Andy’s father, the proprietor. Mr. Lawrence Harris
had a reputation in town of knowing practically everything there was to know about hardware, and there weren’t many do-it-yourselfers who hadn’t at one time or other profited from his constructive advice. Harris’s Handy Hardware Store’s housewares catalog went out several times a year all over this state, and in Oklahoma and Tennessee, too.

Plenty of mail-order money flowed into the pockets of Mr. Harris. It also flowed
out
of those very same pockets; you could just tell by the way that both the father and the son dressed that their clothes were bought through the catalogs of stores that purported to have come into this world to cater only to sportsmen and gentlemen.

What always struck Carla about Mr. Harris was the way he seemed to take such commanding control of his cash register. It reminded her of the way a combat pilot might take charge of his cockpit. At this moment, however, Mr. Harris was lazing against the counter of his television department as he watched one of the several turned-on sets that brought the six o’clock news from Little Rock.

Although Carla kept her head down, pretending to stare transfixed at the festive display of Christmas ornaments and lights, her searching eyes were still able to catch an occasional discreet, passing glimpse of Andy, who was deeply engrossed in demonstrating a microwave oven. It was clear, at least to Carla, that this lady customer was unaccustomed to hearing such strong and persuasive salesmanship flowing so smoothly from a mere lad of seventeen. Andy was wearing a baby-blue sweater that looked positively washed-out faded when compared to the truer blue of his eyes. Carla was convinced that with those extraordinary eyes there wasn’t anything he couldn’t sell.

When Carla rhapsodized about those eyes to her best friend Debby, she could almost make her believe that Andrew Anthony Harris’s blues were truly one of the really wondrous
wonders of the Western world.

Carla couldn’t tell for certain, but she would have bet a buck that her hero was wearing matching socks. He had a reputation to uphold of being a sharp dresser.

Although Carla absolutely, positively knew for a fact that Andy couldn’t tell she was observing him, she was terrified that somehow he might just up and guess that she was, so she purposely refocused her eyes on the man with black hair who had whispered encouragement to her. A wool scarf of bright scarlet tossed across the stranger’s neck gave him a casually elegant air, and for some reason she felt it also gave him a decidedly brave look.

Brave? Carla came pretty close to laughing aloud. She recognized the laughter part as definitely her mother’s influence. Sometimes she wondered if Judith, who had taught her to question everything, had perhaps taught her a little too well. But then again, on second thought, maybe just maybe she was right the first time, because it really was true that no man in Rachetville would ever be brave enough to be caught dead wearing a scarf, leastways not a flaming red one!

If an out-of-towner were to drive through downtown and glance around at what the menfolk were wearing, then he’d quickly come to the conclusion that folks don’t give one god damn about what they throw on their bodies. But boy oh boy, would he ever be wrong! And if that same stranger got the impression that there’s not a dress code in all of Rachetville, well then, he’d sure enough be wrong again. ’Cause the rule, the never-to-be-broken rule, was and always would be: Clothes have to be rough and tough to show the world who the wearer was and always would be even more rough and tough.

The red-scarfed stranger was as far removed from the Rachetville dress code as you could get. And if that wasn’t enough then there was still another thing that fascinated her, the vertical line that ever-so-decisively bisected his forehead
like an exclamation point. It was clear to Carla that his energies were now focused on convincing his blond-haired companion of something terribly important about one of those small appliances.

Chapter 2

I
T WAS A CINCH
to see that the two obviously intense men over at the small-appliance counter were disagreeing with each other and actually beginning to lose patience with one another. “Money be damned!” her dark-haired “friend” burst out, loud enough to be heard clearly even at this distance. His startled companion, whose light-as-beaten-eggwhite skin was stretched tight enough over his high cheekbones to make any Apache wince with envy, gave his friend little patty-pat-pat signs, trying to calm him down.

And he did calm down, too, but not before that overheard phrase had piqued the interest of the unseen matron who’d been listening to Andy from the next aisle over. Her beautifully coiffed salt-and-pepper-colored head began to visibly turn so she could better overhear the man who spoke with so passionate a voice. “Why, dammit,
why
is it so hard for you to understand? I hate not being able to buy you beautiful things, fast cars, or go on trips to romantic places. Well, by God, I can at least buy you the best damn ice-cream maker in this town. And that’s little enough to do for you... my love!”

At this point, the listening lady seemed to have forgotten all about her handsome salesman, for on her lips was just the barest trace of a smile. It was as though she had become wistful, almost girlish, as she was flooded with memories of a time past when she was young ... and in love.

However, her reveries were shaken and then shattered as two men appeared with the ice-cream maker. Holding the chosen appliance aloft, Frank Montgomery, the man who had mere minutes ago encouraged Carla, inquired, “Sorry to intrude, but would you know if you have another just like this one? Only still in the box?”

Andy dropped obediently to his knees to search on the lowest
shelf for the sought-after appliance, while the woman’s eyes protruded as she stared unblinkingly at the two men. First she shook her head one way and then she shook her head the other way. In the same kind of a way you might shake away a nasty little mosquito ... or maybe an even nastier little truth!

Slowly it dawned on her that there was no other possible explanation except
that
explanation. And no other truth except
that
truth! The same, exact truth that was right now banging up her senses. Sucking in great quantities of air, she seemed to grow boxier and more bosomy. As quickly and as deadly as a cobra, hissing reptilelike at the startled men, she spat out a lone, venomous word: “
Sodomites!
”

Instantly, silence fell throughout the store. Not a normal silence, but more like an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it silence. There didn’t seem to be a single eye that wasn’t now staring at the men who stood publicly condemned.

The deep olive of her “friend’s” complexion seemed to turn two shades darker, while the other, light-haired man’s already pale skin became completely chalky. It was clear to Carla that the pale man was going to bolt. And that’s probably what would have happened, too, if her friend hadn’t reached out his hand and placed a sustaining but gentle touch on his forearm. Frank wordlessly told Stephan that there was not all that much to be afraid of. At least not more than they were capable of facing together.

Like a man who has had more experience with emotional self-defense than he ever wanted, Frank Montgomery sighed wearily. “Know something, madam?” He spoke clearly, allowing his quizzical voice to ring out strong and proud. “You remind me of something my mother once taught me. A long time ago, she sat me down and said, ‘Frankie, I know you’ll forget a lot of what I tell you, but I sure hope that you’ll always remember this: Only a real honest-to-goodness
pervert
,’ ”—he twisted the last word so hard that it seemed to come out of his
mouth harshly deformed—“ ‘would get jollies worrying about other people, and exactly what it is they do or
don’t
do behind closed doors!’ ”

The woman’s eyes widened still further and her lipstick-bright mouth hung slack. She looked exactly the way a woman would look who, without warning or cause, had been slapped violently across her face. She panted audibly for air while the moments dragged on endlessly, as though time had in some way become stuck in a long-forgotten time warp. Then the moment passed. Still breathing hard, she abruptly turned to almost hurl her hefty body toward the door.

Before exiting, she twirled on sensible heels to give the men a final piece of her mind. “If you for one minute think that our God-fearing Christian legislators are going to pass
your
gay rights ...” she boomed out. All background noises ceased and Carla and all the other startled customers and clerks continued to stare. “Well, let me tell you this: You’ve got another thing a-coming! Just because you faggots are ranting and raving and carrying on about your rights outside our statehouse—who do you think you are? If God wanted you to have rights, then why would he have gone and invented AIDS!?” Then, without waiting even a millisecond for any possible response, she flung herself out the door.

The store was so still and the people in it so shocked silent that the scene looked like a photograph. The moment was interrupted by Frank Montgomery’s cool and calm voice. “Oh, you’ve located one!” he said, sounding very pleased as he noticed a physically and emotionally stalled Andy holding a box with a full-color picture of the wanted appliance on the outside of the carton. “Would you be a good fellow and gift-wrap it, please?”

Andy stammered and nodded his head at least two or three times more than what was actually necessary. But after placing the boxed item on the counter next to his father’s beloved cash
register, the boy kind of backed himself away, leaving the two strangers to face his father. At first, Carla was puzzled; she couldn’t exactly make sense of it. With all those eyes, all those angry eyes, fixed on them, why did both of the men seem so deliberate in their motions, as though they had all the time in the world? Wouldn’t you think that they’d stare down at the floor while practically racing out just as fast as their feet could carry them?

But the more she observed, the more the answer became apparent: They wouldn’t want—couldn’t accept—for the onlookers to think that they could be so easily scared away like a pair of dumb animals in the night.

With his arms folded defiantly across his drum barrel of a chest, Lawrence Harris glared down at the boxed appliance as though his own ice-cream machine had been transformed before his eyes into a toxic dump site. Pretending not to notice the merchant’s fixed face of fury, Frank pointed to a festive roll of green-and-red Santa Claus wrapping paper beneath the counter. Slipping some bills from his wallet, he asked pleasantly, “Would you please wrap it with the Christmas paper? It’s a gift.”

Lawrence Harris made change, then picked up the unwrapped cardboard box, tore off a short piece of gift paper, and placed the items on the counter into Frank’s less-than-willing hands. “You’ve got what you came for,” he said, his words emerging heavily encrusted with contempt. “Now get the hell out of here!”

Even from this distance Carla noticed that the strong jaw lines of both Frank and Stephan had become set, harder and more prominent. “I see you eagerly took my money. I
will
take my purchase and I
will
leave,” Frank said evenly. “But before I do I’d like to ask you something.”

“Ask away, fruit fly!”

Frank looked him straight in the eye and made a series of small nods of the head. “Who was it that taught you to hate? Who was it that so carefully and so painstakingly taught you to hate?”

Lawrence Harris’s face burst flame-red. “Why YOU—YOU!—” Even as he began sputtering, Frank turned smartly on his heels and he and Stephan strode energetically—but without any noticeable haste—out the door. The enraged proprietor watched the door open and close behind them. When some of the red began to fade from his face, he declared arrogantly, “Somebody with a little guts would do the whole world a favor if they’d blow both of those fags’ brains to smithereens!”