Authors: William Alton
The prayers end and Harold slices the roast and forks over three huge pieces onto my plate. He piles on mashed potatoes and corn and salad.
“Italian or Thousand Island?” he asks.
“Thousand Island.”
No one's served me like this since I was a boy. At home, the platters rotate around the table, starting and ending with Grandpa. Harold serves no one else. John John and his mother help themselves. No one talks. Eating requires all the attention in the room.
Under the table, Harold pushes his foot against mine. I move away and he follows. I don't know what this means,
but I ignore it the best I can. He's not even looking at me. He forks food into his mouth and his foot finds mine.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Harold asks.
John John frowns and glares across the table.
“No,” I say.
“Are you shy?” he asks.
“A little.”
“Girls love strong men,” he says.
“Harold,” John John says.
I don't know what's going on. There's something between these two. I watch them and there is a solid anger stuck there, boiling and staining the dinner hour dark.
“I'm just helping the boy,” Harold says.
“I know what you're doing,” John John says.
“Leave it be,” Harold says.
“He's my friend,” John John says.
“I know.”
John John shakes his head and puts his fork down. He leaves the table and goes out through the kitchen. I watch him and worry. This is not how it's supposed to be.
“Don't let him worry you,” Harold says. “He's just a bit jealous.”
I finish my plate and look around and no one says anything. Silence is a current through the nerves in my back. My shoulders hunch.
“Do you want to see my room?” Harold asks.
We walk to the little space Harold lives in beyond the kitchen. Windows let in the wet air, but it's still warm here. The bed is a mess of sheets and a thin blanket. Beer cans and ashtrays sit on the dressers, the nightstands, the window sills.
“You want a beer?” he asks.
He brings me a beer from the little refrigerator in the corner and we sit on the bed. He brings a magazine from the closet. Naked people stretch and fondle each other. Harold flips through the pages and I pretend that it doesn't matter.
“I could jerk off right here,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Have you ever jerked off with someone?” he asks.
“No.”
“I could show you,” he says.
His dick is larger than you'd think, long and thick and slightly purple. He strokes it and the skin stretches. I watch him like I'd watch a wild dog.
“You can do it too,” he says.
I find that the sight of him half naked makes me hard. Slowly, unsure of what this is about, I pull my dick free and before I know it Harold and I are stroking each other. We come together and lie on the bed with our eyes closed.
“This is just us,” Harold says. “I could go to jail.”
“No one'll know.”
“Just let me know when you want to do it again,” he says.
“Okay.”
“You should probably go now,” he says.
I lie there for a moment, but then I tuck myself away and go into the kitchen.
“Did you have fun?” John John's mom asks.
“I'm not sure,” I say.
“I imagine.”
T
HEY PLAY
J
OURNEY
and Quarterflash. They play Motley Crüe and Ozzy. I sit at the table with Mina and we eat cheese, drink juice. We watch everyone dancing around us.
Photographers flash in the corner. Laughter and conversation rise upward and clutter the concrete rafters. I want to go home. Dances are not my thing. I feel isolated here, even with people crowding all around me.
“Is this what you do at dances?” Mina asks.
“I'm not too good at these things.”
“Come on,” she says and pulls me out to the floor.
I jerk and bounce, but I have the rhythm of a bobblehead doll.
A slow song plays. Mina presses herself against me.
“You're a strange boy,” she says.
Her tits press against me. I feel myself stir. This is not good. I pull away. I sit and Mina puts her hand on my face.
“Do you not want to?” she asks.
I want to, but I don't want to push it. Mina laughs.
“You Americans,” she says. “So shy.”
We go to the bathroom. A boy stands at the sink smoking a bowl of weed. The thick smell hangs like a ghost clinging to the glass of the mirrors.
Mina takes me to a stall. She takes me in her mouth. I jerk and sweat and when it's over I hang my head. Mina laughs.
“Can we dance now?” she asks.
Maybe now I can move with a little rhythm. Maybe now I can feel the music in my spine. There's nothing I can't do now.
“L
ET ME TELL
you about pain,” Mom says. “You know nothing about pain.”
Blisters mar her swollen feet, white and pus filled, red around the edges where her shoes rub.
“I'm on my feet all night bringing food to truckers and their whores,” she says. “I never get to sit down.”
She soaks her feet in water warm as fresh blood. Cigarette smoke rises from her lips and covers her face.
“I make shit,” she says. “Truckers don't tip if you don't fuck them.”
I wonder if she's fucking a trucker on the side. She could be. I don't want to think too much about it.
“The cooks,” she says. “They're always yelling and throwing things. There's no call for that.”
I smoke a cigarette and watch her sitting on the couch, the television mumbling in the corner. She leans her head back. Today's her day off. Later she'll go down to the bar and drink a few whiskeys. She'll flirt with the drunks there, but that's all she does. She never brings them home. I don't know if she goes places with them, if she's fucking
men I don't know. I do know that she's tired all of the time and losing weight. I know that I can't tell her things anymore. She worries and frets and makes herself sick. I keep my secrets and she keeps hers. Silence stands between us, a layer of cotton around something brittle and breakable.
M
OM TAKES THE
night off so she can drive Mina and me to the dance. She dresses up in a skirt and blouse. Nothing too fancy, but Mom never wears a skirt.
Mina lives with the Moons and the Moons live in a big house on the edge of town, right by the golf course. The Moons have money. He's a lawyer and she sells real estate.
“You have the corsage?” Mom asks.
“I have it.”
“Don't crush the petals.”
Her nerves are starting to grate on me.
“I'll sit in the bar while you two eat,” Mom says.
“Okay.”
We get to the Moons and I sit in the car for a minute. My belly tells me to run. I have the corsage, but I'm afraid of pinning it to Mina's dress. I could prick her or slip and grope a boob. I need steady hands and my hands are anything but steady.
“You going in?” Mom asks.
“I'm going.”
The door is thick and wood and glass and I can see people moving around on the other side. Mrs. Moon answers when I use the bell. She opens the door and smiles and says my name.
“Welcome,” she says.
In the living room, Mina stands with Renee. Renee is the Moons' daughter. Both of them wear long dresses and have done their hair and makeup. I don't fit here. This isn't right, but there's no running away. Renee's date stands near the fireplace, looking like he's tired of waiting. Mrs. Moon takes photos of the four of us and photos of me pinning the corsage to Mina's dress. My hands work fine. I neither prick nor grope.
“You ready?” Mina asks.
“Not really.”
She smiles and takes my hand.
Mom drives us to the restaurant. She says nothing the whole way. Silence and sweat make the trip a misery.
“You eating with us?” Mina asks my mom.
“Not tonight, hon.”
“Okay.”
Mina glows. We sit. We eat. No one stares. We're not the only ones here in suits and dresses.
“I want a glass of wine,” Mina says.
“We're too young.”
“Fucking Americans.”
T
HE CHICKEN HOUSE
sits in the pasture, a low, clapboard shack with ten, fifteen hens roosting in the boxes along the walls. This is where John John shows me the Playboys he steals from the stash in the garage.
Chicken shit and feathers float in the dusty air. Light plays through the cracked walls. We sit in the back, looking at the magazines. I've never seen a naked woman before. Who would've thought women could have so much hair?
“Don't touch me,” he says.
I wasn't touching him, but he says it anyway.
“You ever beat off?” he asks.
“No.”
It's a lie. I beat off every day, in the shower, in bed. I can't help it. Something possesses me and I beat off. Guilt and shame make me hide the evidence. Embarrassment makes me lie.
“You ever get head?” I ask.
“I've had head,” he says. “It's almost as good as sex.”
I keep quiet, pretending to know what he's talking about.
“You can't tell anyone about these,” he says, shaking the magazine.
Who would I tell?
“Do you think I could steal one?” I ask.
“What do you need it for?”
“A little while,” I say. “Just a little while.”
“S
HE SUCKED MY
dick,” Richie says. “Right there at the party.”
We're standing in the Pit smoking cigarettes and a little pot.
“You were in the bathroom,” Ed says.
“Who cares?” Richie says. “We were still at the party.”
I don't go to parties. Mom thinks I'm too young. I hang out after school though, smoking, getting high, talking about sex.
“The point is,” Richie says, “that she's a skank.”
“Yet you fucked her,” Ed says.
“I didn't fuck her. She gave me head.”
I've never had sex. Not with anyone else. I've never even come close. Girls don't seem to think of me that way.
“You should give her a call,” Richie says to me. “She'll take your cherry.”
“Maybe you're gay,” Ed says.
“A faggot,” Richie says.
“I'm not gay,” I say. “I like girls too.”
B
EKAH KEEPS HORSES
in the pasture. A barn stands lonely and broken in the center. The horses stare at me as if I've done something wrong. Dogs trot at my heels.
She lies in the hay. Dust dances in the light flowing through the spaces between the boards. She shows me her tits. Her nipples are small and pointed and I have no idea what to do with them.
“You can touch them if you want,” she says.
Flesh gives and her breath is hard under my fingertips.
“This your first time?” she asks.
“No.”
But it is. It's my very first time.
“Come here,” she says.
She kisses me. Her tongue is rough and startling. Outside a horse calls. Outside trees grow into the sky.
“I have my period,” she says. “But we can play.”
I don't know what that means, but the thought is nice.
O
WLS SING TO
me in the early, early morning. I sit in the window of my room and watch the lights from the cars on the road bringing the trees out of the darkness. I watch Mom come home from the truck stop just before dawn, the red fire of her cigarette staring through the windshield of her car. I meet her in the kitchen, where she makes coffee and sits for a while before bed.
“No sleep?” she asks.
“No sleep.”
A scar runs from the flare of her nose to the corner of her mouth, thin and white against the sallow skin. Arthritis swells the knuckles of her hands. Her knees pop and grind when she walks.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“I could eat.”
She makes eggs and toast, hash browns and bacon. We eat together and outside the sun rises slowly over the mountains.
“What're you doing today?” she asks.
I want to talk about kisses and tits, but shame and fear make my voice too heavy to share.
“Stay out of trouble,” she says.
I nod and she goes to bed. I shower and jerk off in the hot water. I wash away the evidence and dress. I walk to the bus stop and stand, waiting, hoping, wondering if today I will fall in love.
T
HE PARK IS
perfect. Grass grows green and thick and soft. Oaks and elms, chestnuts and maples lean into each other like lovers, their leaves caressing the sky like hands rubbing knots out of sore shoulders. Hummingbirds fight over the sweet daffodils growing in the corner. Zephyr and I sit on the swings smoking cigarettes, drinking a couple of beers, waiting for something to do, for something to happen.
“Am I the only queer in town?” Zephyr asks.
“Not the only one.”
“It seems like I'm the only one.”
“There are others.”
Mexican boys kick a soccer ball around. A woman in blue sweats practices her serve in the tennis courts, the ball smashing into the fence over and over.
“It's not safe,” I say.
“What're they going to do?” he asks. “Kick my ass.”
“It could happen.”
“I've been in fights before.”
Zephyr carries a knife clipped to his belt. Right now it's folded and safe, the handle black plastic, the clip shining aluminum. I imagine the blade flipping open, weaving like a snake's fang in the air. I imagine it punching through flesh, blood rolling out over Zephyr's hand.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“I could eat.”
“I'll buy lunch.”
We walk to Scottie's. Someone somewhere is burning something. Smoke rises and the smell of wood turning to ash carries through town. A semi-truck belches and roars on the street hauling logs from the mountains to the mill. The mill is out by the lake. Scottie's is busy. Too many people fill the booths and tables. Zephyr gets a couple of burgers and some fries and we sit on the curb. No one seems to see us. No one cares that I want to kiss him. No one knows that I am in love.