The Battle for Jericho

by Gene Gant

  Yeah. There went the embarrassing part. Actually, it was more degrading than embarrassing. That’s when it felt as if I’d sunk right down through the dirt.

  That’s also when the doorbell rang. Since Dad was up to his wrists in raw carrots, I drifted through the living room, guilt dropping off me like leaves falling from a tree. I opened the door and saw Lissandra standing there.

  She looked cute in her blue jeans and boots and jacket. I was still reeling from my conversation with Dad, and I gave her a distracted smile. “Hey, Lissa.”

  “Jerry. I thought you were going to call me this morning. I thought we decided to see a movie today.”

  Pow! Pow! With that one-two punch, guilt took me down and out.

  “LISSA, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  For privacy, we stood outside on the porch with the door closed. I didn’t have on a coat, and my body was shivering. If I froze to death, it would be a fate well-deserved.

  Lissandra shook her head sadly. “Jerry, what’s happening with us? We used to talk a dozen times a day at school. We texted even more than that. We’d talk every evening until our parents made us get off the phone. Now it feels like you’re going out of your way to avoid me.” She shifted to one side, trying to get me to look her in the eye. I turned away. She sighed, an angry rush of breath. “You stood right at your locker yesterday—when I finally cornered you there—and promised me that we’d see a movie today.”

  “I know, I know. Things have been really crazy around here today. I got into some trouble, and my dad just got through chewing me out about that—”

  “You’re always in some kind of trouble now. You’re always running around with a guilty look on your face, hiding from me.” She grabbed me by the chin, forcing me to face her. “What is it with you? It’s like I have to stalk you just to get your attention. I don’t like feeling that way, Jericho. What’s going on? Have you met someone new? Is that it? Are you tired of me?”

  “No, Lissa. Uh… no….”

  “Then what? Whatever it is, just say it.”

  This was torturing the hell out of me. I was hurting her, and I hated myself for it. She didn’t deserve this. But how could I tell her what I was feeling? How could I tell her about the desires I was having that had nothing to do with her, or any other girl? I pulled away from her, backing up against the cold brick wall of the house, trying to think of something to say to her. She stared at me for maybe a minute, waiting for an answer.

  Finally, she threw up her hand. “Fine, Jerry. Don’t say anything. But I’m through being the stalker. You want to talk, you come to me.” She turned and stormed off the porch, hurrying across the yard to the street. Her mom’s Volkswagen was parked at the curb. She slipped behind the wheel and drove off without another look in my direction.

  I went back into the house, my mood so low that it felt as if I was crawling on my belly through the dust.

  WHEN Mac found out I’d made chicken stew, he invited himself to dinner. It seemed as good a time as any to tell him about Hutch’s new living arrangements. Hutch wanted to tell the truth, that his parents kicked him out for being gay. I didn’t think that was a good idea, at least for me. I didn’t think Mac would handle the news all that well, and I was afraid he would distance himself from Hutch and, by extension, from me as well. It was bad enough having to live with the wall I’d put up between Lissandra and me. I couldn’t stand to be cut off from Mac too. As a favor to me, Hutch agreed to stay in the closet a while longer.

  “Your parents caught you smoking weed again?” Mac grabbed Hutch in a headlock and rapped his knuckles on Hutch’s forehead. “Earth to Hutch’s brain. Earth to Hutch’s brain. Come in, Hutch’s brain. Over.”

  “Okay, I get it, Mac,” Hutch said with a strained laugh. “You can let me go now.”

  We were in my backyard, just hanging out and watching the sun go down while Mom and Dad set the table for dinner. I wanted to push Mac off Hutch, but I forced myself to stand back and smile in a wooden kind of way.

  Mac rapped on Hutch’s forehead again. “If you’re in there, Hutch’s brain, listen to me. See, this is what all that dope smoke will do for ya. It messes you up.” He let Hutch go. Then, in a sudden show of tenderness, he smoothed Hutch’s jacket collar back into place and patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. “That was wrong of your dad to kick you out, man. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “Thanks, Mac,” Hutch replied.

  “Your old man will come around,” Mac said confidently. “He’ll let you come home sooner or later. Hell, it was just dope, right? It’s not like he came home and caught you in bed with another dude or anything—”

  “Wow, Mac,” I cut in quickly. “Who knew you could be such a comfort?”

  Chapter 18

  HERE’S the thing about my feelings. That week I hid Hutch in my room was the most intimate I’d ever been with another person in my life. What I felt for him during that time was pretty intense. He was in a lot of pain, emotionally and physically, in those first days after getting kicked out of his home. Sometimes I sat close to him with my arm around his shoulders while he talked about his fears of what lay ahead of him. Sometimes he cried at night, and I would cuddle him in bed until he fell asleep. There were times when we sat quietly in my room in the dark, watching television or playing video games before going to sleep, and he would just tune out with no warning, his face going slack. I could see that he was sinking into his misery. I took his hand and held on, trying to give him an anchor, wishing I could do more. I had seen him at his lowest. I had literally propped him up when he couldn’t stand. I had bathed him when he was helpless.

  In all that, I felt nothing even remotely sexual. He was this tragic figure in my eyes, a wounded soul with nowhere to turn. My only thoughts were that I had to take care of him and protect him. There was no right or wrong in my mind about what I did with him that week. I was never ashamed to touch him or hold him. I was being his friend.

  The next week, things began to change. My parents were fully aware of Hutch’s situation, and he was now living openly in the house, with his own room no less. His black eye had pretty much healed. He stopped shrinking into himself and started being more like the old Hutch, even when we were alone. I stopped seeing tragedy every time I looked at him and started seeing something else—a hot, cute guy.

  I tried not to feel that little charge every time he got near me. I tried not to think of him so much. At school, with no Lissandra to distract me, I focused my attention on the hot bodies of other girls, and it worked for a while, giving me someone else to fantasize about, someone it was okay for a guy to fantasize about. But it always came back to Hutch, sitting across the table from me at dinner, helping me clean up the kitchen, sprawling on the floor in the den, watching television, his jeans fitting him very nicely. He was alive again, and I liked seeing him smile. I liked hearing his husky laughter.

  He had this exercise routine, which was the way he had built up his body. I went up to his room one evening to get him down for a video game session. When I knocked and said, “Hutch, it’s me,” he responded with an out-of-breath “Come on in.”

  He was stripped down to a pair of white boxers, doing pushups on the floor. I stopped in the doorway, my mind caught by the way the muscles in his back and arms rippled with every motion. He went right on with his routine, his mouth working as he silently counted out his reps. After what seemed like several minutes, he suddenly paused in the middle of a rep and looked up at me.

  “What?” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He laughed. “Dude. You’re staring.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s just… uh, I always wondered how you got your body so cut. I try working out, but you can see it doesn’t do anything for me.”

  Hutch pushed himself up, getting to his feet. “I guess it’s all in the way you do it. My dad—” He caught himself, his mouth twisting as if a bug had flown in there. He still got angry and sad every time he thought of his parents. “I was never able
to get any free weights at home, so I got some books from the library and found some routines I could do that didn’t need weights. They work pretty well for me.”

  I let my eyes do a quick roam over the tight muscles in his chest. “Yeah, I see that.”

  “You want me to show you?”

  “Please.”

  He took me through his routine of sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and toe-raises. I was already wearing sweats, so I didn’t strip down the way he had. And aside from him using his hands to position my arms or my legs properly for a particular exercise, there was no physical contact between us. Just being close to him, however, was exciting in itself.

  When Hutch wasn’t around me, I’d find myself thinking about him at odd moments, especially in that lazy, quiet time when I lay in bed at night, warm beneath my blankets, waiting for sleep to fall. I wanted to hold him again, not to comfort but to share in the smooth, strong wonder of his body. Those thoughts freaked me out, as they had before. I prayed a lot in that week, sometimes in gratitude that Hutch was safe here with my family. Most often, though, the prayer was for my mind and body to be wiped clean for all time (or until I died, whichever came first) of all feelings for Hutch except pure, platonic friendship. I prayed for a reset that would focus my attention exclusively on girls.

  I prayed really, really hard for that to happen. It was the kind of prayer where I threw myself down before God in the humblest act of supplication, which is a neat phrase my pastor used in his sermons, pounding my chest and wringing tears from my eyes in desperation as I begged to be relieved forever of my impure desires. I prayed so long and hard on Wednesday night that it gave me a headache.

  And here’s what I learned Thursday afternoon: You don’t always get what you pray for.

  THURSDAY after school, Hutch went off to hang out with some friend of his from the MLGBT Teen Society. I walked home with Mac. I managed to joke and laugh with him enough that he never suspected how I was actually feeling. Once I was inside the house, I turned off the act. I wasn’t interested in snacks, video games, or television shows. Making it as far as the living room sofa, I slumped on the cushions like a zombie without even taking off my jacket. I let my backpack slide to the floor.

  I didn’t move again for forty-five minutes.

  Then the doorbell rang. It was Hutch, I knew. He’d said he wouldn’t be out very long. I got up, shrugged out of my jacket, and dropped it on the floor. I opened the door and let Hutch in.

  He must have realized my sorry mood right away. “Hey. What’s wrong, Jerry?”

  I waved my hand just a little, as though brushing aside his concern. “I think I’m turning into a girl, man,” I said, managing a weak smile. “I was just sitting here feeling all… weepy.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the devil in me, I guess.”

  That got a tiny, sad smile out of him. He closed the door and put down his backpack. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  I shrugged. “I miss Lissandra.”

  “Oh.” His sigh was full of sympathy. “I noticed you two weren’t making out every five minutes at school like you usually do. You have a fight?”

  “I think we broke up. Kinda.”

  I must have looked really miserable, because Hutch made that sigh again and held out his arms. “Come here,” he said.

  I walked into his arms, and he hugged me. The weepiness hit me again, and I fought back tears. My noisy sniffles filled the space where I had buried my face against Hutch’s shoulder, and I expected him to push me away before I got him all snotty. He actually held onto me even tighter, one of his hands rubbing my back in a soothing way.

  Honestly, I was really hurting then, and confused, and afraid. Sex was the farthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was to be held, to know that someone understood what I was going through, and Hutch was giving me that. But in just a matter of seconds, it seemed that I became hyperaware of the way Hutch’s body pressed against mine. Even as I wiped tears from my eyes, I felt my body respond.

  Hutch felt it too. He froze. And then he said, “Jerry?”

  “Sorry, man.” I was ashamed, and I half turned my head away from him. I backed up a little, creating a space between us. He looked into my eyes as if trying to see what was going on inside my brain. I looked at him as that crazy charge I’d been getting lately around him went through me, and I thought, Get away from him. Go outside, run. Run anywhere. Just get away from him. But I found myself reaching out for him instead, taking him by the shoulder.

  I studied his face. His eyes were clear and perfect. His mustache was really just light brown fuzz, and I could see more of that fuzz on his jaw now. Hutch was going to have to start shaving soon, and that brought an envious thump to my chest because my face was baby-smooth. His hair was getting longer too. Mom and Dad hadn’t said anything so far about giving Hutch an allowance, and I didn’t think it would be wise of me to bring up the subject. Maybe I’d give him part of my allowance to get his hair cut. I thought all those things because they were safer than the desires that were rapidly taking control of my body. I wanted to slide my hand into Hutch’s hair. I wanted to touch the faded bruise around his left eye. I wanted to feel his body against mine once more. Suddenly, I found myself wondering how a guy could have a face that was so… fantastic.

  And then I was kissing him. I took him by the shoulders, pulled him to me, and I started kissing him. With my eyes closed, my other senses seemed to get stronger. The taste of cinnamon was sharp on his lips. His breath was very warm, caressing my cheek like a finger. Both our heartbeats drummed in the air around my head, the only sound I could hear, the only sound that mattered. I kissed him hard, and he let me. He stood there in my arms, accepting, and I knew somehow that he would let me do anything I wanted. Protest buzzed in the back of my mind, but it was lost beneath the steadily rising wave of desire that crashed over me. I could feel his muscles against me, so much firmer than my own, and there could be no pretending. There was no doubt that this was a guy I was crushing in my arms, a guy I was kissing so eagerly. What I was doing should have felt wrong, but the reality was that nothing had ever felt more right.

  I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe anymore, until it felt as if I was going to choke. “Hutch….” I gasped out his name because I wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear it because it was suddenly the most wonderful sound in the world. I grabbed onto him even tighter, my fingers stroking through his hair.

  Then we were in my room, and I had no idea how we’d gotten there. I was kissing Hutch again, guiding him across the room in a weird, slow dance until I backed him up against the bed. We broke the kiss long enough for us to sit down together on the bed. I slid my arms around him, kissing him on the face, gently pushing him down on the bed. He lay back, his head on my pillow, and he watched excitedly as I crawled in and lay my body over his.

  If you ever lay a girl down, boy, you’d better sure as hell have your marriage license hanging on the wall over that bed, and you’d better be ready to bring up a baby. I was twelve when Dad gave me that warning. It came back to me now out of the blue. Well, I didn’t have to worry about that last one, because Hutch damn sure couldn’t get pregnant. There was still the matter of my eternal soul, however. If homosexuality was a sin, the way I was going at Hutch now made me a major offender. My hormones decided that I should worry about hell later.

  I’ve never been a kiss-and-tell sort of guy when it comes to really intimate stuff. Some of the things Hutch and I did on my bed that afternoon will stay forever between the two of us. I will say that, while we didn’t go all the way, we went a lot further than I’d ever gone with a girl. The weirdest thing is that, although Hutch and I were both boys, there was as much wonder and mystery in being with Hutch as there was the first time I made out with Lissandra. I was completely wild in the way I wanted him. I didn’t hold anything back until we reached a point where I knew that if I crossed that final line, there would be no stopping. Hutch looked up
at me then, and I could see the fear in his eyes at where we were going. But I could also see that he trusted me, and that lit a swell of emotion in my chest which made me want to latch onto him and never let go.

  I did let go, however, sitting up on the edge of the bed, breathing heavily and pulling my clothes back in place. Hutch sat up on the bed behind me.

  “Why’d you stop?” he whispered.

  “My dad will be home any minute. I think maybe you should go on upstairs before he gets here.”

  “But, Jerry, I—”

  I got up and left the room before he could finish that thought.

  HUTCH was pretty good at playing things cool. Maybe it was from all that time having to live undercover with his parents. When we were together around other people after that intense session in my bed, you’d never know anything unusual had happened between us by looking at Hutch. He was never uneasy or nervous, and he never showed any sign of guilt or embarrassment. I, on the other hand, was uneasy, nervous, boiling over with guilt, and ashamed to the point where I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury my head in it.

  When we sat at the table with Mom and Dad that evening over a dinner of baked chicken and mashed potatoes (one of my favorite meals), I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. And my stomach was feeling so temperamental I couldn’t eat a thing.

  I felt Mom’s eyes on me. “Jericho? Why aren’t you eating?”

  “I guess I’m still full from lunch.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” Her chair creaked just a bit as she leaned forward for a closer look at my averted face. “You look… not sick but… out of sorts, as if you took a knock to the head.”