by David Connor
“That would be a delight.” I positioned Jefferson in front of him. “We were just imagining this, when ‘Endless Love’ was on,” I told Patrick. “I guess I was imagining it.”
“The two of them dancing, or us?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say no to that.” I turned Patrick’s words back on him.
“Dear Goose.” He bowed. “May I have this dance?”
“You may. And if we don’t hurry, the song will be over.”
As we rocked back and forth to “These Dreams,” I couldn’t help but think of how mine were coming true, there in the big, strong arms of a sweet, kind man.
“Do opposites still attract?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Jefferson and Calvin. I wonder how they would have managed, what their life would have been like after the war, had they lived. If Jefferson’s a motorcycle cowboy and Calvin’s a businessman, would they still be together?”
“Of course.” Patrick didn’t even pause for thought. “What two men feel in their hearts for one another doesn’t have anything to do with their clothes or where they work.” Patrick dressed for work like a grownup, in a button-down shirt and tie, like he still had on that night. “It’s the year 2050.” Patrick swooshed his hand in front of my face to set the scene. “Jefferson is just coming in from a day on the ranch, herding robot cows with his motorcycle.”
“Robot cows? What the heck are robot cows?” I asked as we slow danced.
“Robot cows are what motorcycle cowboys, like Jefferson, round up and take on a cattle drive.”
“Of course.”
“He walks into the White House, after a long afternoon on the range, and Calvin is waiting for him in the Oval Office.”
“The Oval Office?”
“Yes. They share a kiss, and then talk about their respective days. Calvin has just procured world peace, ended global hunger, and matched every neglected and abused child, adult, and elderly person up with someone who will forever more show them nothing but tender loving care.”
“Busy day.”
“Yes. He also found a way to reverse planetary climate damage and get every endangered animal species thriving again, while rescuing countless numbers of domesticated ones as well. Calvin is a go getter and an angel of mercy for all living things.”
“We should be so lucky to have him as leader of the free world.”
“Absolutely. But Calvin is interested in everything Jefferson has to say as well.”
“For sure,” I said. “Jefferson tells him which wildflowers are in bloom that time of year, and Calvin hangs on his every word. In addition to the White House, in preparation for the time Calvin is finished there, they also have a small farm, just for them, a couple of kids, maybe a general store in town, like the Olesons.”
“Mary Kate and Ashley?”
I put my head on Patrick’s chest. His burgundy necktie felt smooth against my cheek. “Nels and Harriet, silly.”
“Ohhh. That sounds nice, too.”
My whole body tingled when Patrick slid his hands down my back, stopped at my ass, and cupped each cheek.
“I like teasing you,” he said. But, suddenly, we stopped dancing. His doing. “You’ll let me know if it bothers you, right?” He looked so serious when I glanced up.
“Of course.” I reached to tap his nose.
“I don’t want to…”
“Be like Tom. I know. It’s different. I don’t think you could ever hurt someone’s feelings.”
“I hope not. It’s new. Us. We’re new. This is only our…eighth date?”
I added them up in my head. “Yes. Counting Halloween night—the day after, actually, where we talked for hours.”
“If we count phone stuff, it’s like our hundredth date.”
“Thousandth.”
“Millionth. I’m enjoying myself,” Patrick declared. “And I don’t want to fuck it up.”
“You’re not. I mean, to be brutally honest, you made yourself look like the clueless one with that Mary Kate and Ashley comment.” I shook my head. “Did they ever own a store?”
“One like this, I think.”
Patrick made me laugh.
“Let’s dress them as superheroes!” he suddenly exclaimed.
“Huh?”
“Calvin and Jeff—”
I turned, startled at a sound behind me.
“What was that?” Patrick was looking, too.
“Not sure. Let’s go find out.”
Patrick’s red brows furrowed, and he took his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“No,” he told me. “I’m afraid of critters.”
“Critters?”
“Mice, rats, raccoons, antelope.”
I laughed. “Antelope?” Then I sang a verse of “Home on the Range.”
Patrick waited for me to finish, and then said, “I saw on the news just recently how an antelope got into a store and head butted some poor guy in the nads.”
“I don’t think we have antelope in New York.”
“Ah. You don’t think, but are you sure?”
“Relatively sure. Besides, you go camping. We spent our first night together in a tent in the rain in the woods.”
“We did.”
“So, how can you be afraid of critters?”
“I had you and Wilbur to protect me.”
Wilbur, sound asleep under a rack of quilted flannel shirts, hadn’t stirred.
“To protect you from antelope?” I asked.
“And lions, and tigers, and bears.”
“I think we’ll be okay. Come on.”
Patrick grabbed my elbow. “Will you hold my hand?”
“I’ll even hold your nads, if you want.”
We didn’t find an antelope, but rather a board game that had fallen into the middle of the floor in the toy aisle.
“Life,” Patrick said. “Jefferson?”
My brain was racing to come up with a meaning, a message. “Maybe.”
“You think he wants to play?”
“It’s all sealed up. We’d have to buy it.” I put it back on the shelf, not at all convinced that was Jefferson’s message. “The good news is, I don’t think it was the work of antelope…antelopes?”
“I believe antelopes is acceptable.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Now.” Patrick’s lips left my pinky all wet when I traced his grin. “You were saying something about dressing up as superheroes.”
“I was saying we dress the mannequins as superheroes.”
I grabbed his blue shirt in both fists and gave a hard yank, to untuck the tails from his dress slacks. “Why do they get to have all the fun? Huh? Come on!” I let go and took off at a run.
“Where are we going now?”
Past the windows and the snow outside, I kept jogging toward the back of the store again.
“Ah back to the storage area,” Patrick said, figuring it out on his own.
“It’s a giant playhouse in here.” Once past all the doors, I led him to a section behind four rows of shelves twelve feet tall. “Here, we have Halloween costumes that didn’t sell on clearance. Pickings are slim, but I see a couple of superheroes. Iron Man, a Batman, a Power Ranger, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Take your pick.”
“For Calvin?”
“No.” I poked the spot where I recalled a thatch of orange hair, then got a jolt when I remembered a wilder one lower down. “For you.”
Patrick furrowed his brows again. “They don’t look big enough for me.”
“They’re adult sizes.”
“Not for this adult,” he muttered.
“We could squeeze you into…” I grabbed the Leonardo outfit. “Turtle tights. Oh no!” Melodramatically, I turned toward the door. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Patrick hunched down. He stared, as if waiting for someone to come in.
“Mr. Freeze. It sounded like Mr. Freeze.” Climbing up onto the radia
tor, to get to the small window up high, I looked out into the storm. “I knew it.”
“Be careful!”
“I have powers you don’t even know about. I won’t fall. But…but look! A snowstorm…in July!”
“July?”
“July,” I said. “I’m on it.” The Batman costume spoke to me. “Where’s my Batpole?” When Patrick glanced toward my crotch, I almost laughed. Sometimes we were ten, all imaginative and unabashed. Sometimes we were fifteen, all horny but awkward. Either way, had there been something to slide down in the room, I’d have done it. “I guess I’ll have to change the old-fashioned way.” From behind the rack of costumes, I hollered with my shirt partway off. “Hurry, Leonardo! I need you.”
As I stripped down to only my underwear, I could see Patrick wasn’t moving. Was he watching me, or did he not want to play?
“The storm will bring the whole town to a standstill.” With a dramatic parting of the out-of-season clothes on the rack in front of me, I could see him, and he could see me and my Batpole, thick for some reason against the fly in my boxer briefs. “Jefferson and Calvin are out there.” I gasped. It had been a while. “What if Mr. Freeze got to them?”
A smile spread across Patrick’s face, and within a moment, he was in motion, unbuttoning his shirt, unhooking his belt, kicking off huge black dress shoes, and then lowering his slacks. I studied him. I watched.
“Are you looking at me?” He was down to boxers over long johns and an ivory-colored waffle weave thermal shirt that fit like a second skin.
“Uh-huh.”
“Cool.”
“If we stop Mr. Freeze, we’ll be able to skinny dip.”
“There’s no water.”
I continued to gawk, as Patrick worked hard to slip the pair of green tights over his long underwear. It was comical. “The parking lot will turn into a lake once the snow melts.” Squelching my amusement was not easy, especially since I was having the opposite problem as I dressed. My outfit was quite large. The shirt went past my knees. “That, or there’s a shower back here.”
“What happens if I rip these?”
“Then we’ll have to buy them. Eighty percent off, we’re talking four bucks.”
Patrick pulled harder. “I think I can pony up for that.” Seven grunts in, however, as he tugged, yanked, and tried to roll the tights up over his thick legs and the fabric that covered them, he gave up. “I’m not getting these things on! Mr. Freeze is going to win if I waste any more time trying!” He chucked them to the floor.
“Okay.” I picked up the tights and tied them at Patrick’s neck, like a scarf.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Now, just go with the shell.” I stepped out from behind the rack and almost fell on my face. My costume was a little bit too big. The X-tra large tights flopping at the feet felt like flippers and the surplus of gray stretchy fabric sagging around my legs made walking difficult. “Oops.”
“You sure we shouldn’t just switch?”
I swooshed my cape. “No time! The town is already blanketed in white. Let’s go.” I ran for the door, then hopped up on the rolling industrial stocking ladder, climbing almost all the way to the top, nearly fifteen feet in the air.
“Goose! Be careful!”
“Push me. I want to fly!”
“I’m not sure that’s safe.”
“Snow day! No rules, Nerdy McNerdington. Come on. What fun is being Batman if I can’t soar through the air? We have to rescue Jefferson and Calvin! To the front of the store. Away!” I pointed. Patrick didn’t budge. “On, Dasher, on, Dancer…”
Still, he stood there.
“On, Leonardo!”
Nothing, so I whined.
“Come on, Patrick! Push me.”
With a heavy sigh, and then a deep breath, he grabbed the steel side rails. “Ready, set, go!”
“Wheeeeeee!” I puffed out my chest behind the black bat in the yellow oval. The costume top was so big, no one would have known, had they been there to see me do it. “Here I come to save the day!”
“I think that’s Mighty Mouse.”
We flew down the center aisle, then left, to the front of the store, back to where Men’s Apparel was.
“How come the men’s clothes are almost always in the front of the store?” Patrick asked.
“Because the men who do layout for these places aren’t much into shopping. They want to get in an out quickly. That’s what someone said. I don’t know if it’s true. I could hang out in housewares, hardware, and the craft section for hours. Oh, no!” I switched back to my deep superhero tone. “He got them.” I stretched forward to run my fingers through fake Calvin’s fake hair. “Frozen solid. You’ll pay for this, Mr. Freeze,” I bellowed, shaking a fist at the sky. “Leonardo’s going to kick your snow-white ass!”
“My ass is pretty white, too.” Patrick was only slightly out of breath. “White and red all over.”
“I know.” I licked my lips at the recollection of seeing it down south, seeing all of Patrick, as we swam together naked at dawn. “I bet it’s nice and warm, though.”
“Forget warm. My ass is hot, Batman.”
There was no debating that. “Mr. Freeze isn’t here!” I tamed my smirk. “Let’s look over in Toys.”
Back on the move, the wind we created made my cape fly behind me and my hair bounce. Looking down at Patrick, his butt flexing in his boxer shorts, his shell bouncing almost up over his head with every step, I could think of nothing else but getting at his hot ass on a mattress in Bedding or maybe in the locker room shower. When we finally came to a stop, he bent over, trying to catch his breath. Climbing down several steps, I considered telling him to forget the rest of the game, as I reached down to touch him.
“Looks like he got away, Batman. We won’t have warm days for months now.”
I pulled back. “Drat! We can still save Calvin and Jefferson, though. We’ll unfreeze them. Back to the front of the store!” I waited for Patrick to start pushing again.
“When do I get a turn up there, so you can push?” he asked looking up.
“Turtles don’t fly. Hurry. They’re freezing!”
Patrick laughed at me. “Hold on,” he grumbled. “Here we go!”
Back up front, I hopped off to the ladder from the six feet mark, all the way down to the floor. Patrick cringed. “I took gymnastics as a kid.” I kissed his nose, after climbing back up two rungs to bring us eye to eye. “Relax.” With the mannequin’s hand in mine, I dropped to my knees. “How do we thaw them?”
“Body heat,” Patrick said. “We’ll hug them back to life.”
We brought the two together and hugged as a foursome, until, within a matter of seconds, silly suddenly became sad.
“Maybe a kiss,” Patrick said, “like Sleeping Beauty.” He planted a chaste one on Calvin, and though I stood on my tiptoe and did the same to fake Jefferson, my heart wasn’t in it. My head wasn’t. Make believe had lost its appeal, because my heart was broken.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” I said.
“You wish they were real.”
“I love being here with you.” Patrick’s beard tickled when we touched lips. “The more the merrier? The four of us out in the snow, you and me on the ladder together while they push, then we switch?” I sat on it instead. “Why didn’t I get to meet Calvin the night Jefferson and I built the bridge? Where was he? Was that the night Jefferson died? Had he died before that and his spirit just wanted to finish what he’d started? Was Calvin gone by then, too? I don’t know. If I could just spend five minutes with them, so I could—” My tights got twisted under one foot when I stood with the intention to pace. With my first step, down I went.
“Goose!”
I heard Patrick call to me, and then all the lights went out.
Chapter 3
I sensed the shift in time and place immediately. Noting the musty smell and humidity that told me I was outdoors, the slightly hazy harvest moon overhead in a sky bereft of snowflakes
, and the sound of rushing water and the muffled din of dozens of chattering men, the line, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” came to mind. In another instant, however, I was thinking of Wilbur, not Toto, and New York instead of Kansas. Something comforted me, though, and in yet another, a feeling of familiarity brought about comprehension.
“Oh.”
Dressed in tight Union Army blue now, instead of loose-fitting Batman gray somehow, I realized it all meant I had traveled back to the past once again. “The Cracker Line is open! Full rations, boys!” I cheered.
The Tennessee night in October of 1863 was mostly clear and muggy, not at all like the frigid, snowy one I’d left back in 2019. Fifty or sixty men in smelly, ragged, damp wool, who’d been dragging with fatigue just moments ago, now had boundless energy to whoop and shout at each other and up toward the bright moonlit sky.
“We did it, Goose!” Jefferson hugged me.
“Jefferson. My Jefferson.” Barely a moment in, I gently shoved him back to arm’s length, as our troopmates ebulliently buzzed around us. “They are green.” Jefferson’s face was aglow from above and in the light of a bonfire not far off. I stared into his eyes, ran my thumb over the bridge of his nose, and then across both eyebrows. “Your eyes are green. Your hair is brown, like cocoa from the can, and those thin wisps on your chin can hardly be called a beard.” I used my fingertips, too, to commit his facial bone structure to memory. “So young. So small.”
The smile he wore dimmed just a moment. “You’re acting as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen me.”
“It feels like a while,” I said. “And I’m happy as hell to be here.”
There was cause for celebration for all of us. The fact I was back with Jefferson was reason enough for me. As for the others, knowing our mission was a smashing success had them going wild, like the wining crowd at a FIFA World Cup soccer match, a reference none of them would understand.
“As am I. We wouldn’t have succeeded without you, Goose.”
“I don’t know about that.” The moment I let go of Jefferson, he was airborne, as half a dozen of our soldier buddies hoisted him up on their shoulders.
“Hey! Set me down!” No one paid the least bit attention to his command, likely because it came with laughter.
