by David Connor
Calvin had lost his, I saw, as I looked back between the skinny trees. He offered himself to Jefferson’s mouth, with Jefferson still on his knees on a carpet of pine needles, moss, and velvety leaves not yet brittle. The same abundance of shade that kept the water cool all summer I’d have bet, had protected the fallen foliage in most places from the drying sun. I’d felt them, soft as Wilbur’s short fur, on the soles of my bare feet the closer we got to the pond. I wanted to lie in them with Patrick on top of me.
Pretending not to watch as Calvin reached down to stop Jefferson’s hand on his own cock, I could imagine the warning, “Don’t finish yourself too fast, Jefferson.” Hard beneath the surface of the still, clear water, the thought of taking my hard-on in my grasp was tempting. Facing away from Patrick, I wondered what he was doing. Did I dare turn to see?
“Hey.”
His voice brought me around.
“I don’t mind the back of you,” he said. “It’s quite beautiful, in fact, but your eyes delight me.”
“My eyes?” I asked, using them to take in his body, thick with muscle and coated in red wisps that curled when wet. He’d referred to the roundness at the sides of his belly as “love handles” once, in another century, in another setting. I wouldn’t have minded holding on to them right then, as I sank underwater to get at his dick.
“They seem worried,” Patrick said.
“My eyes?” I asked again.
“I’d like to hold you, Goose.” When Patrick took a step closer, the wave he created caressed me at the waist. The water rose higher on my body, because I was shorter. I saw more hair on him, abundant and wild, and the swing of his stiffness with each step just below it. “I’ll ask before I do that, certainly anything more,” he said. “You have my promise.”
I swallowed hard. “I’d like to be held.”
Pressed up against all of him, feeling each breath, when his arms pulled me tighter, I could hear them.
“Are you still in control?” Patrick’s smile always soothed me in tense situations. “Because I feel my lips being pulled toward you, like a magnet. Here they come. Here they come.”
His tight embrace was as enjoyable as I’d imagined, and the kiss atop my head was the gentlest I’d ever felt, reminiscent of a butterfly’s wings on the back of my hand from childhood. Soon I was distracted, though, by the sounds from Jefferson and Calvin.
“Wow.” We turned sideways, Patrick and I, toward the grunts and loud breaths. They were closer to us than before. I could actually hear flesh coming together, as Calvin’s outer thighs slapped against the inside of Jefferson’s.
“I never imagined doing this for the first time in front of people,” Jefferson said with a smile, contorting somehow to turn that smile and his sparkling green eyes in our direction. “But I must admit.” He was practically shouting, almost giddy, like Patrick back at the store. “I am very much enjoying the extra titillation of sharing the moment with the two of you.”
I thought back to his nickname in the war, the one I’d first read of in his diary. Small Jefferson seemed not at all accurate as his engorged dick shimmied and bounced against his pale, sweaty gut.
“Calvin, you doing okay?” I asked.
“I have never been better, Goose. Thank you for asking. Now, please be quiet.”
“You got it.”
The contrast in their skin tones, highlighted when the breeze moved the branches above, was exceptionally beautiful. I said so to Patrick.
“Visually stunning, erotically and emotionally, too.”
“Yes.” His erection flexed against the side of my leg. “Because they’re in love.”
I felt myself smiling as my mind bounced around the question of men in the nineteenth century so easily, so naturally coming together like they were, as if anal sex was an invention of a more modern generation. I softly laughed out loud at the thought.
“What?” Patrick asked.
“Just thinking about sex.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Silly thoughts,” I told him.
We were still gawking, like voyeurs, when Calvin threw his head back to howl like a beast as he no doubt came deep up inside Jefferson. After four hard thrusts, each one with a growl, he collapsed atop him, still inside, from what I could tell.
“I love you.” With the two of them grinding together, Jefferson’s words turned to moans. His orgasm streaked Calvin with ribbons of pure white, and together they writhed, mixing sweat and cum.
“For all eternity,” Calvin answered, “no matter where our journey takes us.”
Both men were still breathing hard when they joined us in the pond several minutes later. There was a span of water separating Patrick and me by then. We’d pulled apart sometime between Calvin finishing up in Jefferson and Jefferson coming all over the both of them. I almost came myself, just from watching.
The thickness between Jefferson’s legs was obvious when he pulled me into an embrace. It rubbed me when he lingered. The same happened with Calvin’s. “I thought perhaps the two of you might join us.” He hugged me, too. “Were you waiting, so we could watch you this time? Are you ready to make love now?”
Chapter 4
It never happened. I willed another time jump and brought us back to the farm. The date was now October 31, as if I had pointed the DVR remote at my head and hit the fast-forward button. I’d developed a skill somewhere in life, the ability to wake myself from troubling dreams. I had a lot of bad dreams, almost daily. I could bring myself out of them, now, and this was similar. If I recalled any of this journey afterward, I would vow the leaps in time were all my doing, and that I’d done it now to avoid the ambivalence, the nervousness I felt over giving myself fully to Patrick.
I wasn’t sure I had total control, but landing on Halloween was fantastic. Whether I had done it or not, I knew the date immediately, as I listened from the porch to Jefferson’s mother inside, whispering aloud as she wrote in a journal, just like her son.
“October 31, 1865. Each day is a gift, a treasure, with all of us together as a family again.”
She seemed embarrassed as she caught me looking, as if she maybe had to speak the words in order to put them down in ink. I turned away. It was a different time. Education was not a given. She had no need to be uncomfortable.
We were back in our clothes, or at least someone’s clothes, some sort of covering.
“Why are we putting on such strange attire again?” Calvin asked, snickering as I finished dressing Jefferson out there.
Though I felt as if I’d already told them all about Halloween, once I’d discovered it wasn’t a thing yet in their century, at least not as we celebrated it, I reminded them again. “We just dress up for fun,” I said. “Tonight is all about scary stories, eating chocolate, drinking cider, and acting like children. A lot of people get spooked when it comes to spirits and that sort of thing. I don’t happen to find ghosts at all scary,” I said, in the know.
“I don’t believe there is reason to,” Jefferson stated. “Though I am a bit frightened about what you might be doing to me.”
“All finished.” I took a step back to admire my handiwork. I’d covered his face with white flour to match the white sacks I’d marked with black splotches and tied at his waist, wrists, and ankles. “You’re a cow.”
“Moo.” Calvin laughed some more.
Supplies were limited, and the process was messy. We were all going as animals, I’d decided. When asked, Calvin said he was fond of birds, specifically, owls, so once I’d finished with Jefferson, I put him all in brown, with feathers made of oak leaves.
“These are just like the ones that will fill out your tree in Tennessee again next spring. Well, they’ll be green then, not brown.”
“We should go back then,” Calvin said.
“We should make it an occasion.”
Calvin turned away from me and my straight pins. “What do you have in mind, Jefferson Eaves?”
I gasped when Jefferson got
down on one knee.
“How does a wedding sound?” Jefferson asked. “Yours and mine?”
Patrick took my hand. His eyes were misty when I glanced at them, not wanting to take mine off Calvin and Jefferson too long.
“Marry me, Calvin Goodacre,” Jefferson said. “I cannot imagine anything more perfect in this world than you beside me forever.”
Calvin took a knee as well.
“That’s not how it works,” Patrick whispered.
I shushed him. “Maybe it is when two men are involved…unless that’s sexist.”
“Shh.” Now, to my slight annoyance, Patrick shushed me. He’d spoken first.
“I promised you eternity,” Calvin said, “and I meant it, Jefferson. I’d be honored, and lucky, and happy to be your betrothed, even as I’m not sure it’s possible.”
“Anything is possible if we’re together,” Jefferson promised.
“You make me believe that. I would also be lucky if you would make the same promise to me. Yes, at out tree, as soon as the leaves come.”
“I will, Calvin. I will.”
After a quiet celebration for four, because Jefferson wanted to tell his family when everyone was together again, we got back on task for Halloween.
“This seems so ridiculous now,” I said, wiping my eyes again.
“An owl in eyeglasses ridiculous?” Calvin asked. “I don’t see how.”
I’d fashioned a pair from brown stems of goldenrod. “All fictional owls in my day wear glasses,” I said, “to represent their intelligence.”
“Your day, Goose? What day is that?”
“Oh. Did I say day? I meant imagination. In my imagination. I draw. In fact, if someone would get me some paper and a writing instrument, I would love to capture this moment, or we could reenact the last one, an owl and a cow on their knees proposing marriage to one another. I would love to have a record of that.” Memorializing the one at the pond, however many days ago it had happened, would have been nice, too, had the opportunity presented itself.
“That moment was one in a lifetime,” Jefferson informed me. “You’ll just have to remember it.”
“I can’t imagine I will ever forget,” I said.
After coming up with several more Halloween costumes, I got my art supplies, parchment, and a cedar pencil. My Patrick was a brown bear. I was supposed to be a little bunny, our fur made from burlap and pelts. Chokeberry juice was perfect for turning my nose bright pink, though I worried it would never come off, or would come off too easily as Patrick rubbed mine with his.
“Stop,” I said, trying to squelch a laugh and tend to my project. “No bear has a pink nose!”
I’d blackened Patrick’s with ash, the same ash with which I’d drawn on my whiskers.
“Haven’t we established you’re the puppet master?” he asked. “Pulling the strings that rule my every move.”
“I’m starting to wonder.”
He let me move his head to one side, so I could kiss behind his ear.
Suddenly, Patrick was moving like a robot, a robot bear. “Bloop. Bloop. Beep. You now wish me to kiss you back,” he said, in a voice part C-3PO, part R2-D2. “Coming for your lips. I am under your command.”
After we kissed, he looked at me and snickered.
“Your nose is black and pink now. It looks like Good & Plenty candy.”
“What is that, Patrick?” Jefferson asked.
“I don’t think it’s been made yet.”
Strange looks from Jefferson and Calvin were becoming commonplace.
“It’s licorice candy with a hard, sugary shell,” I said as I sat to start drawing, “a confection which doesn’t taste any better than it sounds. Now this will be a lot easier if the three of you will stand still.”
The finished sketch was rough. My subjects were not patient with me. I concentrated on faces more than bodies. It was the faces I wanted to recall when I went back to the store and the blizzard.
“Now what do we do?” Calvin asked, once I was as satisfied as time allowed with my creative endeavor.
“Well, usually, we would go to people’s houses for candy right after dusk.”
“What do you mean?” Jefferson stared at me.
“We knocked on a neighbor’s door, said ‘Trick or treat,’ and they gave us chocolate. Or raisins, if they were mean.”
“I like raisins,” Patrick said.
“You would.”
“Why would neighbors give you candy?” Jefferson wondered. “Because you didn’t have any?”
“We had some. Well, other kid’s houses had some, but the kids who lived there weren’t allowed to eat it, because their candy was for the kids who came to their house, not for them.”
“I don’t understand.”
I found myself wishing I had my iPhone with me, so Siri could explain. “Never mind all that. We also bob for apples, dance, and watch Halloween-themed shows and movies on television.”
“Television?” Calvin asked.
I wondered if Jefferson and Calvin would ever get to come to 2019. If Jefferson recalled his last visit to my present, mine and Patrick’s, he wasn’t saying so. He’d seen my TV, my iPhone, my iPad, the whole shebang.
“Never mind.” There were apples on the kitchen counter in the Eaves’ farmhouse kitchen and a large tub hanging from the wall, so I decided to go in that direction. “Let’s do the apple thing,” I suggested. “Get the whole family.”
Within moments, a throng of first-time Halloween revelers were enjoying party tricks and tasty treats out on the Eaves’ front porch.
“This is fun!” Jefferson’s mother exclaimed, as she held a giggling Nancy on her hip. I’d dressed Jefferson’s baby sister in a costume similar to mine before starting the apple bob. She made a much more adorable bunny. Both mother and daughter seemed to enjoy watching Jefferson stick his whole head in a tub of water.
“I got one!” His flour face was gone, and he soaked us all when he shook his head, more like a Dalmatian after a bath than a cow.
“Me! Me!” Nancy clapped her little hands.
“You want a turn?” Jefferson asked.
Nancy twisted her head side to side.
“I think she wants you to get her one,” Calvin said.
“Me! Me!” Nancy cheered, so Jefferson went back in.
After bobbing, the others ate their apples as I performed a one-man retelling of the entire script of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown out in the yard.
“He got a rock?” Calvin asked. “And that’s bad?”
“It is,” Patrick said.
I felt myself drifting away by the final scene. My departure imminent, it seemed, I wanted to warn Jefferson.
“I don’t know how much you recall about coming home with me last fall from Tennessee,” I said to him. “But I believe I am just visiting here. For whatever reason, my doing or not, I think my visit is about to come to a hasty end.”
“Yes.” That was all he said.
“Did you bring me here?”
Jefferson simply smiled.
“Thank you, if so, for showing me your reunion with Calvin, and spending Halloween with me, since we didn’t get to last time.”
“I was there,” Jefferson said.
“Yes. But I wanted more. I’m selfish like that.”
“The time we had before that, and these days here, were all special for me as well. I adore you, Goose Tucker.”
“I adore you, too,” I said. “Both of you. All of you. I can imagine the smell of homemade bread, fresh baked apple, clove, cinnamon pies, and roasting wild turkeys in the kitchen as we celebrate Thanksgiving.”
Observing the day as a nation was a relatively new concept, set forth in a proclamation by Abraham Lincoln less than two years prior to his assassination. The Eaves had been speaking of it, how celebrating the day they were reunited with Jefferson would be the start of weeks of thankfulness. The Porters and Smalls had mentioned it as well, during the homecoming, how they were thankful for their
new start.
“I wish with all my heart I could stay here and share the experience, Jefferson. I wish I could sit beside you at the table, but I don’t think I belong here forever, wherever here is.”
“No. You have more living to do. More healing. You can love again, if you let down your guard.”
“Easier said than done.” I felt I might cry.
“Remember how you were before your Tom took your joy and your self-assurance. I’ve already seen glimpses of that man,” Jefferson claimed. “Though I can tell your heart is broken, it’s not unfixable.”
“I think that’s why I act like a child sometimes. I got with Tom as a teenager, right after getting away from a man who treated me the same. The last time I felt childlike, free, and self-assured—maybe lovable—was never.”
“Patrick feels you are all of those things and more.” Jefferson brushed the hair from my eyes. “The way he looks at you tells me.”
“If it’s anything like the way Calvin looks at you…”
“If I’m lucky, and I know that I am, it is precisely like that.”
“Come visit me,” I said, feeling the pull even stronger from the world I’d left behind when I’d hit my head. “Come visit, if you’re able. I’ll look. I’ll clear my mind and concentrate. Thanksgiving will be done, and Christmas, too. We’re deep into winter back there. It will last a while more. As harsh as it can be, it’s also fun. Imagine the four of us catching single flakes on our tongues or making snow angels under the stars. I’ll imagine it.” I took Jefferson’s hands. “I love you, my brother. I love you both, my sexy gay ghosts, my beautiful angels.”
Jefferson smiled, and I took a moment to commit it to memory.
“Goose.” Patrick called out to me from his seat on the front steps.
“What?”
“Where are you, Goose?”
“I’m right here,” I said. “But why is Olivia Newton John singing to us?”
“Go,” Jefferson said.
“Goose.”
“I hear you, Patrick.”
“Goose. Goose!”
* * * *
I came to with Wilbur in my lap and my head in Patrick’s. Waking up to his face staring down at me was something I thought I could get used to. “Hey, you.”
