Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  Lance

  The Journals of Will Barnett

  Ronald L. Donaghe

  A Two Brothers Press e-Book

  All Rights Reserved © 2009 by Ronald L. Donaghe

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Two Brothers Press

  For information address: 603 W. Las Cruces Avenue, Las Cruces, NM 88005

  www.twobrotherspress.biz

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and incidents described are strictly the creation of the author, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or real incidents of similar nature is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 0-9823503-1-7

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9823503-1-7

  Dedication

  Reflect upon the truth, herein, despite the claim that this is a purely fictitious work. There are those youth in every school, large or small, in urban areas or in rural places, who suffer the stigma of being different, who love in the shadows, yet present themselves differently in the light—or suffer the consequences. It is not that they love less or less genuinely, only differently. They should not be hurt as a consequence.

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Found Out

  One: I Meet Will Barnett – November 2001

  Two: Lance and Me – And How People Found Out

  Three: At the Pep Rally

  Four: The Storm and Its Aftermath

  Five: Something About Casey

  Part Two: Changes

  Six: The Harvest

  Seven: Attempted Thievery

  Eight: Trouble for Casey

  Nine: Lance Returns, and the End Begins

  Ten: Dick and Casey—Finally

  Eleven: Dirty Talk

  Twelve: Transitions

  Thirteen: Things Lost

  Part Three: Coming to an End

  Fourteen: What it Meant to Graduate

  Fifteen: The Separation

  Sixteen: At the Edge

  Seventeen: I Have to Stop Here

  Part One

  Found Out

  One

  I Meet Will Barnett – November 2001

  Will Barnett suggested in his e mail that we meet in Kranberry’s restaurant in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Oddly enough, that is where I first read his journal about his Uncle Sean Martin, much of it written in a Big Chief Tablet around 1969.

  I had a good idea how Will Barnett would look, since he had described both himself and his Uncle Sean as having blond hair and blue eyes, and himself as being big for his age at fourteen. He was now forty-six, so I had no idea what the intervening years had done to him—until I saw the rather striking man who stood just inside the doorway of the restaurant, looking around. I knew it was him. Although a cap covered most of his hair, in the slanting sunlight of that late November afternoon making its way into the building, I saw blond strands. I wasn’t prepared, however, for what had to be his six-foot-three (or four) inches, nor his well-muscled appearance. The light just seemed to gather around him, and almost everyone in the restaurant turned to look. Even though he was wearing the typical southwestern costume of boots, Wranglers, long-sleeved western cut shirt of solid green, and cap with the bill turned to the front, he somehow looked as though he belonged in a classier place. In comparison, the rest of us in the restaurant, in our own casual clothing, looked as if we belonged here—like truckers looking for a quick chicken-fried steak, or farmers and ranchers in for a cup of coffee. I am only seven years older than Will, but there’s nothing about me that takes even a month off my fifty-three years. Nor am I hard-bodied. My muscles don’t stay toned when I live behind a desk and have only my yard work.

  I waved as he looked around the restaurant before moving out of the light of the all-glass door. He saw me and nodded. As he strode toward me, I got up and stuck out my hand.

  He presented me with a toothy smile and gripped my hand in an iron fist. “So, you’re the guy who stole my work.”

  I grinned back, but didn’t drop my eyes. “No. I’m the guy who rescued it from the rats.”

  He laughed and I was relieved. I noticed that he was carrying a copy of the book. “You want me to autograph that?” I asked, as I sat back down and nodded at an empty chair.

  He pulled the chair away from the table and sat down, removing the cap and tossing it and the book onto the table next to a set-up of napkin-wrapped utensils. “Hell yeah, I want it autographed.” Then he frowned through his grin. “And next time, I want my name in print on the cover and not just chicken scratched on it. You did say, didn’t you, that you were sure my readers would like to hear from me, again?”

  I have to confess, I didn’t know until that moment how he really felt about my publishing his journals from so long ago, without getting his permission. We had e mailed back and forth a couple of times, once he had discovered that his story had been published; but he wouldn’t tell me what he thought, only that he liked the way the book turned out and that it was embarrassing to know other people were reading his story. I was glad he spoke of a “next time.” It felt odd, however, to be meeting him in the flesh. As I had edited his writing and smoothed out some of the words from his journals, he had taken on the dimensions of one of my characters, rather than a real person.

  It didn’t take long for a waitress to interrupt our conversation. She was wearing a pink skirt and white blouse and looking rather stunned as she took in the sight of Will Barnett. She had already brought me coffee and iced water, and I had told her I wouldn’t order until the other party got here. Now, I became invisible as she hovered next to him, smiling and giving him all the attention she would give George Strait or Garth Brooks, if they had just happened by. I felt the same way she did, in fact—struck by his beauty and what I call masculine grace. Something, anyway, that must come from a lifetime of being stared at and, no doubt, pursued as the good-looking man he was. Rather than being conceited about his looks, however, he met people with an easy-going grace.

  He treated the waitress kindly and ordered a salad and steak. “But hold that dressing, darlin’, let the steak bleed a little, and I’ll have a glass of your house red.”

  Then she turned reluctantly away from him, pen poised above the order pad. “And what’ll you have?”

  “Relleno plate—dry. Rice and beans,” I said.

  When she was gone, a thousand questions presented themselves to me as I watched him settle down.

  Will spoke first: “Your e mail said you have a husband?” I noticed that he didn’t lower his voice, apparently not caring who might hear, and I liked that. The intervening years hadn’t diminished what I had discovered was his self-confidence. I think it began early, like the time he had stared down Dick Lamb in the locker room at the high school in Animas when Dick asked Will if he was a faggot for his uncle. How Will handled it with humor, without admission—or denial—seems to have set the tone for the levelheaded way he treats the issue now. He doesn’t lower his voice. He doesn’t appear to worry who might overhear.

  “Yes. I told you about Cliff, didn’t I?” I said. “We’ve been together for almost ten years. You didn’t mention anyone in your e mail,” I reminded him. “I was wondering if you and Lance might still be together. That would be remarkable.”

  He grinned at me, then, his eyes twinkling. “I deliberately didn’t tell you. If you’re going to present my story, I want to keep it chronological. No sense in jumping too far ahead. You think?”

  All I could say, just then, was “you’ve been thinking about this for a while, haven’t you?”

  “Ever since I happened onto my book.”

  “Is that wh
y you wouldn’t tell me what you thought about your story being published?”

  He nodded. “I’ll tell you it was hard, reading that first part. Made me out to be a horny little devil, didn’t it?”

  I just laughed. “You weren’t unique in that,” I said. “What fourteen year-old boy isn’t?”

  He smiled back. “I guess you’re right, though it was strange having my kid-self exposed like that.”

  “Can you at least tell me a little about your uncle?”

  This time he laughed. “Look. I brought a whole passel of notebooks with me. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in there, give me a call, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  Whatever the years had wrought on his life, Will Barnett had come this far with a sense of humor and that air of self-confidence and masculine grace. Realizing I wasn’t going to get any details that afternoon about his “story,” I tried a simpler question.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen Hachita? After reading about your uncle’s dog tags and how you cherished them, I have to admit I’m curious as to why you left them in the barn.”

  There was something in his face, just then, that made my heart pound, something that looked like intense sadness. As he would have said of his Uncle Sean, when Will smiled, his beauty shone through like the sun behind a rain cloud. “I never intended to leave any of that stuff there. But the way things went down, we were all a little rushed in the end. I haven’t been back here since 1974. You do have them, don’t you? Uncle Sean’s tags?”

  I’d left my briefcase on the floor. It was my turn to smile at him. “I brought everything I found in the barn,” I said, picking up the briefcase. I opened it on the empty chair next to me and pulled out the Big Chief Tablet, the letter from Sean, and the spiral notebook and set them on the table. Then I picked up the tags, watching his face as I did so. Tears shone in his eyes, and when I placed them in his outstretched hand, without hesitation, he put the chain around his neck and slipped them under his shirt.

  “And do I get my other property back?” he asked, nodding at the tablet and spiral notebook.

  “Of course you do. I’m just glad they weren’t destroyed.”

  He pulled the Big Chief toward him on the table, then picked it up and flipped through the pages with a thumb and forefinger, bringing it to his nose and taking a breath. Again, there were tears in his eyes. Then he picked up his Uncle Sean’s letter, folded it gently and placed it in his shirt pocket. “This sure brings back memories, as if it were just yesterday. Sean is going to be surprised.”

  At that last statement, I realized two things. His uncle was still alive (though I had no reason to believe otherwise, since he was only a year older than me), and Will hadn’t called him “Uncle,” which implied a familiarity of equals, rather than an older family member. But I didn’t call him on that; I didn’t want him to know he’d slipped up and unintentionally given me information.

  When our order came, we tended to eat in silence as two strangers might, even though I felt as if I knew him as intimately as I knew any of my characters from my novels. But there was no denying that he was real as I watched him cut into his rare steak and eat it with relish. His hands were young looking and I doubted he’d spent his adulthood as a common laborer. The skin was too smooth and not as tanned as it might be if he had worked outdoors a great deal.

  His southwestern clothing was a clue that he had not become a denizen of say, San Francisco, or some other cosmopolitan city—unless of course he was merely dressing the part for our meeting to fit in. People here almost uniformly wear denim and boots and caps, and in many cases, even if they’re “dressing up” it means they’ll change into a new pair of Wranglers or Levi’s. His clothing was new, but his cap wasn’t, though it wasn’t sweat stained.

  As we ate, the light outdoors began to fade into gold and the lights inside the restaurant seemed to grow brighter.

  We both declined the dessert the waitress offered. But we stayed on to talk and become more acquainted. He switched from wine to coffee as we sat there and, after he had read passages from his long-time-ago writing, he collected them on his side of the table and slid the book toward me.

  “I’d be pleased if you’d autograph this, now,” he said.

  “Anything in particular you’d like me to inscribe?” I asked, as I pulled a pen from my shirt pocket.

  He grinned at me over the cup he held to his lips. I saw that he was wearing a wedding band, and I figured he had fulfilled one of his dreams.

  He caught me glancing at it. “Yeah. Make it to Will Barnett and his husband.”

  “And what is your husband’s name?” I asked, hoping he might slip up again.

  He laughed and winked. “I call him ‘honey,’ but I better not catch you calling him that.”

  Not once had he consciously lowered his voice. Even though the restaurant was relatively empty and the nearest customers were two tables away, he had the kind of voice that carried. I glanced left and right and did note that some people had turned their heads in our direction.

  “‘Husband’ it is, then,” I said, and wrote that and something else on the dedication page, signed my name, and handed it back.

  He read the inscription and smiled at me for a moment, catching my eyes with his own. If anything, they were a deeper, purer blue than the way he described his Uncle Sean’s, and I thought of the brilliant hazel green of my partner Cliff’s eyes. I’ve always been a sucker for men with beautiful eyes, and his were no different. For forty-six, his face was still smooth, and like me, I felt that his husband was probably a lucky man. Nothing in Will’s demeanor hinted that he had changed from the deeply caring person he had been as a teen, and I was itching to get my hands on the rest of his story.

  We chit-chatted for a little while, then parted, agreeing to stay in touch by e mail. I was a little surprised that, when we walked outdoors and went to his vehicle, it was a Dodge pickup truck, and I wondered if I might have been wrong that he hadn’t been a man who worked outdoors after all. Further, if he had driven from a city someplace, it would almost necessarily have been nearby, say El Paso, Phoenix, or Albuquerque; otherwise, I figured he’d be driving a rental car. But I didn’t want to ask. He wouldn’t have told me, anyway.

  He had packed his journals into two Xerox printer-paper boxes, neatly labeled with the sequence of years. As he loaded them into the cab of my own pickup, I said, “At least I know you never quit writing.”

  We shook hands. “Sometimes, keeping a journal has been about the only thing that has kept me sane.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. And with that, we said good-bye. I had a two-hour drive ahead of me to get back to Las Cruces. I thought about staying in the parking lot to see which direction he headed, but changed my mind. He had said my questions would be answered in his journals. Now it was up to me to do the work to bring another portion of his story to life.

  Just as I did in Will Barnett’s first set of journals, which I entitled Uncle Sean, I will attempt to divide his writing into parts and chapters in a way that makes sense to me. When it feels appropriate, I will also give names to those parts, so that readers get a sense of the flow and significant events in “The Continuing Journals of Will Barnett.”

  Two

  Lance and Me – And How People Found Out

  It’s just now dawn and tender light has begun to enter our bedroom without the glare, here on the northwest side of the house. I’m propped up against the headboard with my pillow tucked beneath the small of my back. I’ve shoved the sheet off and have this spiral notebook resting on my thighs. It’s a new one and these are the first words I’ve written. Lance is still asleep on his stomach, close to me. With the sheet just covering his butt, I can see the way the light glows softly on his back and shoulders, the way it caresses his cheek and causes his hair to glow against the pillow. His long lashes and lips are still in the shadow of the crook of his arm, face turned toward me.

  In a little
while I have to wake him, as it’s a school day, and we have to drive close to fifty miles to school, there in Animas. But for now I want to get caught up writing down stuff that’s happened in the last few weeks, now that school’s going on. It’s almost October and things are going pretty well—except for two things that have happened lately.

  One was with my sister Rita’s boyfriend, Rick Zumwalt, which led to the other thing that happened yesterday, which was a Sunday. I haven’t told anybody about this second thing—not Mama, not Lance, not even May. I don’t want to say anything to Mama, because Margie Collins and Mama are close friends, and Mrs. Collins has really been good to the girls. I haven’t told May, my older sister, because she’s the kind that gets mad quick, and does something about it, and I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. It would probably only make things worse, anyway. I haven’t even told Lance, yet, but he needs to know that people are onto us being boyfriends—or at least there’s talk about it. Right now it’s only talk and not proof, but Mrs. Collins was testing me when she pulled what she did, and now she’s probably mad or at least red-faced.

  I’m a little red-faced, too, even thinking about it. It’s exactly the kind of thing Uncle Sean never would do with me, even though I thought I was ready for it. He was too honorable and told me it would be wrong for an adult to make love to a kid. And though I’m not really a kid anymore, since I turned eighteen, already, I’m still in high school. He wouldn’t do it with me, also, because he’s my uncle. So, it’s even worse to me that Mrs. Collins came onto me like she did, because she’s Mama’s age. She may not be a relative, but she’s old enough to be my mother.