Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  I got up quickly and stood by him. “Uncle Sean, this is Lance,” I said, putting my arm across his shoulders and grinning, despite how Mama might be taking it. Though I figured she would do all right.

  Uncle Sean got up and he and Lance shook hands, both of them smiling at the other, though Lance looked kind of shy. I was proud of him and was glad I could show him off to Uncle Sean. I’d described Lance a million different ways to Uncle Sean over the phone, as I had described Uncle Sean to Lance, and here they were meeting for the first time.

  I loved them both so much, I was about to cry with joy. And I was able to settle something in my mind, just then, something I hadn’t really asked myself, consciously. I knew the answer to that unasked question, however, as soon as it came to my mind.

  Even though Uncle Sean was more beautiful than ever and all those old feelings for him came rushing back the moment I saw him at the table, the answer is I would choose Lance. I didn’t think I should share this little conclusion with Uncle Sean or Lance, however.

  My mind was filling with so many thoughts about Uncle Sean—why he chose to go to Texas, what happened to his last boyfriend, what would Lance and I do, now that we didn’t have a place to head to if we chose to go to California—too many thoughts to concentrate on. So when the girls started drifting into the kitchen one-by-one and showing the same joy I felt at seeing Uncle Sean, all of us were carried away into the moment of greeting, of asking questions all at once, laughing, eating, and generally celebrating.

  And then, just as he had done so many years ago, as well, Uncle Sean said he had to get some sleep, because he had driven all night and wondered where he could crash for awhile. So Lance and I took him into our bedroom and quickly changed the sheets and got him settled in.

  But he sat on the bed, acting like he wasn’t ready for us to leave, so I shut the door. I’d forgotten about the painting that Lance had done for me up in northern New Mexico. I had made a frame for it and, as I shut the door, Uncle Sean saw it.

  “Nice,” he said. “Who did it?”

  I told him Lance had.

  “You said he was an artist, Will, but you never indicated just how good he is. I know men back in San Francisco who would kill for something like that.” Then he got up and came up to Lance, putting a hand on his shoulder, still looking at the painting from close up. “You could sell something like that, Lance, for quite a bit of cash.”

  Lance was pleased, but embarrassed, though he seemed to like the attention Uncle Sean was paying him. He glanced at me, smiling.

  I looked at both of them standing close together and my heart thumped. If I took myself out of the picture and it was just the two of them, I could imagine them falling in love. They looked really good together. I projected myself into a scene where they did fall for each other, and were telling me that they were sorry, but…

  “…why I’m here,” Uncle Sean said.

  He had apparently said something more, and I just caught the tail end.

  “Why? I thought you just stopped by since it was on your way.”

  He returned to the bed, and pulled off his shoes, leaving Lance and me standing by the painting.

  “I’m bushed, Will. I am on my way to Austin, but I was hoping, if you and Arlene don’t mind, that I could stay until the first of the year. I need you, again, I’m afraid.”

  “Need me, Uncle Sean?”

  He passed his hand over his eyes, then looked up at us, and I could see pain in his face. “To talk the way you and I used to,” he said, pulling off his shirt, then slipping out of his pants. He slid between the sheets.

  In a moment, he shut his eyes, turned into a fetal position, and seemed to lose consciousness.

  Lance pulled the sheet and blanket up around his shoulders and, without a word, we slipped quietly out of the room.

  Thirteen

  Things Lost

  It broke my heart to see Uncle Sean so unhappy. Not that he wore it on his sleeve or anything. He wasn’t like that. Whenever we talked on the telephone all those years after he left here and he was going to school, I asked him about his boyfriends. At first it was this one guy, who Uncle Sean said wasn’t nearly as pretty as his Theodore Seabrook, who got murdered by “friendly fire” in Vietnam, and which sent Uncle Sean out of the service and into that hospital in San Antonio. Then it was another boyfriend, who Uncle Sean said was a “knockout,” only I don’t think Uncle Sean ever fell in love with him. And finally, it was this last guy, who Uncle Sean sounded like he loved, telling me, “I think he’s the one, Will.” Which was the last I knew until Uncle Sean got here the day after Christmas.

  But when Lance and I put him up in our room that first morning so he could sleep, Uncle Sean had said he needed me to talk to him like we used to. So the first chance I got, I asked him if he’d like to see the farm.

  That was just a signal that if he wanted to talk we could be alone. I was expecting him and me to spend a couple of hours alone together. I was sure Lance would understand. So I was surprised when Uncle Sean asked Lance to come along. When all three of us were a little ways from the house, Uncle Sean said, “I hope you don’t mind, Will, but I wanted Lance to come with us.”

  I didn’t mind and said so, but Lance seemed a little uneasy about it and said he didn’t want to intrude.

  But Uncle Sean insisted. “It’s important to me, Lance. I don’t have much time to stay, and you and Will are part of each other. I want to feel the two of you together. Will and I always talked about getting him a boyfriend, and Will says you’re that guy.”

  I was embarrassed, but Uncle Sean’s words made Lance smile—and that made me feel warm.

  Anyway, it turned out that Uncle Sean was running away from San Francisco by taking that job in Austin. He was running away from the way his last boyfriend had hurt him.

  “He didn’t come home one night,” Uncle Sean said. Lance and I and Uncle Sean were out in the barren fields where the corn crop had been. It was a cold, blustery afternoon and we all had on heavy jackets. Uncle Sean’s longish blond hair whipped around his face as we walked and he had this habit of running his fingers through it, to get it away from his face. He’d lost some of the weight but not the muscle he’d had when he was here in 1969, fresh out of the army, and even his hands were thinner, though just as pretty. He looked honest to gosh more like an intellectual now than he did a soldier. Those years had made a difference in that way. His face was bonier, too, but he had such good looks, all the angles of his face made him look even prettier, his soft pink lips even more pronounced. Lance was walking on the other side of Uncle Sean, and like him, Lance’s hair was longish. The last five months had made a difference in Lance’s appearance, too. His hair was a burnished kind of sandy brown, and caught the gusts of wind, sometimes obscuring his violet eyes, sometimes lifting away from his face and revealing his own beauty. He had put on more weight since he had been here and the almost too bony features of his face were gone. He was deeply tanned from all our work outdoors and, compared to Uncle Sean, and even compared to what Lance had looked like when I first met him, he looked tougher, more confident. Yet his face revealed his own ache at Uncle Sean’s sadness.

  “And when he did get home, Will,” Uncle Sean continued, about his last boyfriend, “he wouldn’t tell me where he had been, though I saw he had hickies on his neck—big, deep, blood-red marks, like whoever he had been with had devoured him.”

  My stomach clenched at the thought of having Lance do that to me. I guess like Mrs. Collins cheated on her husband, Uncle Sean’s boyfriend had cheated on him.

  “Is that when you took off?” I asked, looking at Uncle Sean, but also past him to Lance and seeing Lance’s concern, too, even though he hardly knew Uncle Sean.

  I was on Uncle Sean’s left, and he turned to look at me. It was either the cold wind causing his eyes to tear up or he was moist-eyed remembering, but he shook his head, his piercing blue eyes holding mine. “I hadn’t graduated yet, Will. So I had to stay. I tried to fo
rget what Dean had done. I tried not to think about it or talk to him about it, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking. That’s when he told me how dumb I was. Didn’t I know that our ‘marriage’ was a cheap fake of a thing? What was I trying to do, he asked, be like straight people? He said men are naturally promiscuous and want to spread their sperm as far as they can and it was a social game to be monogamous.”

  That was a lot for me to take in, especially the promiscuous thing. It made me sad to think that his boyfriend thought he couldn’t be married because they were just two men. “Is that how it is out there in San Francisco, then, Uncle Sean? Do all the men think like that?”

  He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his hair. “Probably not, Will,” he said, looking at me and taking in Lance then kind of staring off toward the north, which is the direction we were headed. “But that’s all I found. It’s just that there are gay night clubs and bath houses, and San Francisco is full of gay men. Having sex with as many partners as you can is the thing to do.”

  I couldn’t imagine. The way it took Casey and Dick so long to get together, and the way people hated the thought of Lance and me, ready to castrate Lance, ready to beat us both up, it was like being from a different planet. In a way, I could see Dick Lamb heading straight for San Francisco and loving it. Maybe even Casey.

  “But that’s not what you want, is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head, still staring toward the horizon. “No. I want my Teddy, Will. And I can’t have him.”

  I felt tears sting my eyes. “Or someone as mad about you as you are him.” I also felt guilty, glancing at Lance, because I thought that’s what he and I had, now.

  When the sun began its quick descent toward the west and was just sinking behind the Peloncillo Mountains, the wind sort of died down and we all headed back to the house. It was almost a quarter of a mile away, and by the time we got there, it was coming on dusk, and there in the driveway was Mrs. Collins’ Caddie.

  “Hey, Uncle Sean,” I said, trying out a lighter sounding voice, hoping to make a joke. “Margie Collins is here. She’s always had the hots for you. Won’t that help a little?”

  He groaned and so did Lance. “Maybe you’re right, Will. Maybe she’s just what I need!” Then Uncle Sean kind of laughed, but it sounded forced.

  * * *

  May moved out a few days after Uncle Sean got here, and I helped her pack her stuff. She didn’t have nearly as many clothes and things like that as Rita had, and everything she was taking with her fit into the back of my pickup. We didn’t forget Daddy’s tools, and a few other things from around the house. Still it wasn’t much. It was kind of sad I told her after she had said good-bye to the other girls and Uncle Sean…and Mama. That’s when May kind of got misty-eyed, when she hugged Mama good-bye. “I’ll call you every day, Mama. And if Will needs any help you let me know, ‘cause he sure won’t call and ask.”

  Mama was crying. But everybody expected it. She was smiling too, so I knew she was just crying to say good-bye. That’s what she always did. “When we sell the farm, May, I’ll send you your share.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Mama,” May said. “You’ll need it. You are gonna buy a house in Hachita, ain’t you, or at least Lordsburg?”

  Mama squinted at her. “I haven’t made up my mind exactly where I’m gonna live, honey. It won’t be Hachita, though. I can tell you that right now.”

  We were all out by the pickup. May and I got into the cab, and Mama waved and went back into the house with Rita and Trinket. Lance and Uncle Sean were standing by May’s door.

  “You take care,” Uncle Sean said, slapping the top of the pickup, and Lance looked into her side, looking like he was about to cry. “I’ll make Will take me to visit you on the ranch, May. I’m really gonna miss you, you know that? You’ve been great to me.”

  May suddenly reached out through the passenger side window and hugged Lance awkwardly. “I’m gonna miss you, too! You’ll take care of Will, won’t you, since he won’t have me around?”

  When May let him loose, he was sure enough crying. “I will, May.”

  Then he and Uncle Sean turned and walked together back into the house.

  It was weird to me to see the two of them together and, again, I took myself out of the picture and tried to imagine that they were boyfriends. This time it hurt a little to think about that.

  So May and I talked all the way to the Snow ranch. Mainly, May told me about Kelsey after all this time of being secretive, even though she knew I knew what was what.

  Kelsey was a few years older than May and, according to May, her parents made her work off the ranch, to get a notion of what it was like to try to make it on wages. “They told her they weren’t paying her way to go to college, either,” May said, after a while.

  “That was kind of mean, don’t you think?” I asked. “Their only child?”

  But May just laughed. “Kelsey could’ve cared less about that, Will. She said that when her parents die and she takes over the ranch, she’s not going to run cattle.”

  Then May went into the plans she and Kelsey had for turning part of the ranch into a resort. It all sounded neat, but I wondered just how long it was going to be before Kelsey’s parents did pass on.

  When we arrived at the ranch headquarters, which sits just on the other side of the Peloncillos in a small valley surrounded by pines, the change in the scenery from desert to forest is breath-taking. Though that’s how it is in this part of the country. I could tell that, at one time, the ranch was a big operation because there was a bunk house for the cowboys up on the side of a hill, as well as two or three small houses where I figured the foremen and their families had once lived. The main house was huge and rambling and was surrounded by old trees that looked about as tired as the fences and rock walls that had fallen in places.

  Still it was beautiful and, as we drew near on a well-graveled road, May was becoming excited.

  “It’s one hell of a drive into Hachita from here, May,” I said. “How does Kelsey do it?”

  “Oh she doesn’t live here, Will. We’re renting an apartment in Lordsburg. But this is where I’m going to store my stuff.”

  “Ain’t that gonna look kind of suspicious to her parents, though?”

  May shook her head and sat up in the seat. She instructed me to drive past the main house and to pull up in front of a small wooden cabin. Smoke was curling out of the metal chimney pipe on the side of the house, and when I killed the engine, Kelsey came out of the cabin. She was dressed like a cowboy in boots and Levi’s and a cowboy hat. The only thing that gave her away as being a woman was her breasts, which filled out the western-cut shirt.

  I stayed in the pickup, while May got out. May was wearing Levi’s, as well, and a pullover sweatshirt, but there was no mistaking her for a man with her long red hair, which shone suddenly in a ray of sunlight peaking through a split-topped pine. Then she was in shadow as she stepped onto the porch. They kissed right in front of me, and I didn’t even have time to look away, in case they thought I was spying.

  I looked back toward the main house and saw that they could have been running around naked and nobody would have seen them from here. The cabin was a little downhill from the main house and surrounded by shrubs and pines.

  When they finished kissing, May came and got me out of the pickup and introduced me to Kelsey. We knew each other, but had rarely talked.

  “May’s got a soft spot for you, Will,” Kelsey said, smiling. “You and your little boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, well she’s my favorite sister, too,” I said, wondering why I had put it exactly like that, because I loved all my sisters, just in different ways.

  “It’s probably because you and May have more things in common,” Kelsey said. “We’ll get your things unloaded in a minute, honey,” Kelsey said to May. Then she turned back to me. “Might as well come on in and have a cup of hot chocolate, Will. It gets a lot colder on this side of the continental divide, and this hi
gh up. We’ve already had snow.”

  It was like being in a western as the sun went down, and Kelsey stoked a fire in a wood-burning stove. The cabin was mainly one big room, with a couple of doors leading off to what I bet was a bedroom and a bathroom. Still it was kind of rustic and neat, and Kelsey told me that this is where she lived when she didn’t have to be at work for a few days. I told her it was neat, and she retorted that I’d freeze my butt off at night, because the only heat in the cabin was the wood stove. But it was hot in there, and when I finally left, it was well after dark. I wanted to get back home, figuring everybody had already eaten supper.

  * * *

  So I got home a little after eight o’clock. When I drove up, I expected Uncle Sean’s car to be in the drive and everybody to be in the living room watching television. But his car was gone.

  When I went inside, Mama, Rita, and Trinket were sitting at the kitchen table working a jigsaw puzzle. Mama’s cigarette smoke filled the air above their heads like a cloud, and I could tell she’d been chain-smoking.

  I asked where Uncle Sean was, and Trinket said he and Lance had gone off somewhere.

  I tried to act like it didn’t bother me, but all of a sudden I had a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust both Uncle Sean and Lance. It was just a sudden thought, like those I had been having, imagining that Lance would find Uncle Sean as pretty as I did, and Uncle Sean would think that Lance was as beautiful as I did, too. And maybe they had feelings for each other.

  I ate a quick sandwich and watched Mama and the girls working the puzzle, trying not to act upset, then I went to my room and got caught up on writing in this journal. That’s where I’ve been now since I got home. I have to take snatches of time like this to put things down. But as we haven’t been doing any farm work now for a while, I have more time. Sometimes, though, maybe it’s too much time to think and write. I’ve read over what I just wrote and right away I see that I don’t need to worry about Lance and Uncle Sean, because Uncle Sean has always been honorable, and he knows what it feels like to be cheated on by somebody he loves. And Lance and I just put on wedding bands that says we’re married like those guys Uncle Sean and I saw in Deming that time.