“A few years ago, I saw it over at Rattlesnake Westernwear and bought it. And then a few days later, I bought it again ’cause I’d forgotten about the first one. I guess my brain was especially scrambled that week. Couple days later, I did it again. Then again. Christ knows how many of the damn things I’d have ended up owning if Grisel hadn’t realized what was going on and said something to Aunt Belinda. Belinda marched over to the shop and told them if they sold me that shirt again she was gonna make sure their rent got doubled. I was so pissed off when I went there again and they wouldn’t let me buy that shirt! Anyway, now I have four.”
“It looks good on you.”
Shane grinned at him. “It’ll look good on you too.” He went in search of his camera.
When they walked out to the lobby, Jimmy was fairly certain Belinda swallowed a laugh. “Are you making a statement or maybe lobbying for a new employee uniform?”
“Just keeping warm,” Shane said.
And because Belinda didn’t seem put out by the obvious fact that he’d spent the night with Shane, Jimmy asked a question. “Frank said you gave me the morning off. Are you sure?”
“Positive. You worked hard last night. And I understand it was a big success. A few of the guests have checked out already, and they were raving. Oh, and your gentlemen in 106? They were thrilled with the champagne and the music. They told me they’ll be back to celebrate their anniversary every year. And they’ll be recommending us to their friends.”
Jimmy grinned at a momentary vision of the Rattlesnake Inn becoming overrun with aging gay couples. “Glad to hear that, ma’am.”
“I will need you by this evening, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Now, go.” She made a shooing motion. “Enjoy your time off.”
The morning was as beautiful as could be, with blue skies and twittering birds. The shops hadn’t opened yet, but Mae’s looked crowded already. Somebody sitting near the window waved at Shane, who waved back.
Shane set a leisurely pace down Main Street, past the park and then up the hill to the sign for Chuku Cave. “You should go there sometime,” Shane said. “It’s quite a sight.”
“We could go there now.”
“The walk’s too steep for me. And the only way into the cave is down a couple hundred stairs. I’d never make it down, and I’d sure as hell never make it back up again. Anyway, I’ve been plenty of times. I don’t figure it’s changed much in the past decade.”
A few yards past the sign, the overgrown remains of a gravel driveway disappeared into the trees. Shane turned down the driveway, grunting a little as they climbed the slope. After a short time, they came to a clearing filled with wildflowers and saplings. At the center of the clearing, the fieldstone foundation of a house was barely visible, although the two fireplaces still stood.
“This was one of the oldest homesteads in Rattlesnake,” Shane explained. “It might even have predated George. But it burned a bunch of years ago.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Guess so. But things change.” Shane flipped off the lens cap, held the camera to his eye, and started snapping pictures. He had some trouble moving to different vantage points due to the uneven terrain, but he seemed to want to get shots from a variety of distances and angles. “I’ve been taking photos of this place for a while now. I like seeing how the forest’s taking over.”
Behind his camera, Shane focused on his subjects, allowing Jimmy to watch him closely. Every one of Shane’s steps came with a little hitch, yet he kept on taking more steps. Soldiering through.
He must have clicked the shutter close to a hundred times before he sat on one of the foundation walls. Smiling, he aimed the lens at Jimmy and took one more shot.
Jimmy strolled over to sit beside him, and for almost five minutes, they just listened to the birds. Something flashed quickly near the edge of the trees. Jimmy didn’t get a good look, but he thought it might be a fox.
“Jesse’s family owned Hawk Ridge Ranch,” Shane said. “So we were neighbors, but I didn’t really know him well. He was three years older than me. Then his parents got divorced and his mother moved away. I guess his father didn’t have the heart to keep ranching after that, and anyway he’d racked up some big debts. He sold out to my parents. Jesse had just graduated high school, so my folks hired him on full-time.”
As he spoke, Shane’s gaze was faraway. “God, he was so good-looking! I was slowly coming to terms with being gay—I’d known for a few years, and people at school knew—but I wasn’t out to my family. Ty must have heard about it, though. We were in the same grade. And later, Pokey told me he suspected ’cause I’d follow Jesse around like a lovesick calf. And Jesse, well, he’d kinda flirt with me a little when nobody was looking. But I was only fifteen and he never touched me.”
Grudgingly, Jimmy upped his opinion of Jesse a bit. At least he hadn’t taken advantage of a kid, which was more than a lot of eighteen-year-olds could manage.
“I was only seventeen when I graduated,” Shane continued. “Wouldn’t turn eighteen until August. But I figured I was man enough, I guess, and three days after I got my diploma, I managed to corner Jesse in that building where we keep the four-wheelers. Poor guy hardly knew what hit him. I won’t say it was great sex, because I was a virgin and Jesse had only fucked one other guy, but I’d been waiting for it for three years, and boy, I wasn’t disappointed.”
Jimmy couldn’t even be jealous, the story was so sweet. Shane lost his cherry to his first real crush, in a building smelling of motor oil and cows, and with both of them terrified someone would walk in on them. “So you became a couple?”
“Yeah. We were sneaky about it at first. We spent a lot of time in that place by the creek. I can’t believe we never got caught, and hell, eventually everyone suspected. I don’t know. Maybe the sneaking was half the fun.” He paused and looked at Jimmy. “Was your first fling like that?”
Jimmy hung his head. “No.”
“Well, we had fun. But you know, the weather turned cold and sex outdoors got a lot less appealing. Plus… I don’t know. I looked at Jesse and he was so handsome, and I wanted people to know he was mine. So I told my parents.”
“What happened?” Jimmy asked.
“Fireworks. Thunder and lightning. I mean, Mom was pretty cool. Like I said, she’d already had a pretty good idea what was going on. I was eighteen and I’d never had a girlfriend. But Dad, well, first he was ready to get his shotgun and hunt Jesse down. I had to convince him I was the one who did the seducing. Then he said I was too young, I couldn’t possibly know I was queer if I’d never even tried anything with a girl. I asked him if he’d ever had sex with a guy, and while he was still sputtering his denials, I asked him how he could know he was straight.”
Jimmy laughed. He could picture Shane doing exactly that. “Did that work?”
“Not really. But Mom kinda pulled him away, and after a week or two of both of us being really uncomfortable, he came around. Hugged me and told me he loved me. And then he told Jesse that if he broke my heart, Dad would feed him through the combine.”
“How long were you and Jesse together?”
“Until the accident.” Shane was quiet after that, and Jimmy wondered what it meant that even in his teens, Shane had held on tight to one man.
Shane stood. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for Jimmy to answer, he trekked across the clearing to the driveway. When they got back to the road, he turned left toward town. But before they got there, he made a right onto a narrow road that rolled past a few small houses and then climbed a gentle hill. Jimmy recognized where they were when they reached the top.
“The cemetery,” he said, surprised and slightly uneasy.
Not answering, Shane took him around to the main entrance gate and then inside. He didn’t stop until they reached George Murray’s gravestone. “You saw this already?”
“Yeah.”
“He lived this wild, dangerous life, but he lived to eighty-
six and died in his sleep.”
“Lucky him.”
“I suppose.” Shane rubbed the stone absently. “Maybe he was just too stubborn to die young.”
“Runs in the family,” Jimmy said mildly, earning a weak smile.
Shane crouched awkwardly and took a few photos of George’s grave. When he stood, his eyes looked oddly vacant. He limped slowly to the edge of the cemetery and halted in front of a small marker made of polished black granite. He didn’t say anything, so Jimmy stood next to him and looked down.
JESSE JAMES POWELL
MAY 20, 1979—SEPTEMBER 8, 2005
IN GOD’S CARE
“His father paid for the stone and chose the inscription. I was in no shape to do it myself anyway.”
A part of Jimmy wanted to put an arm around Shane to give him comfort, but Shane stood so stiff and proud that he couldn’t do it. Maybe right now Shane needed to stand alone.
“We’d spent the day down in Fresno. We needed some stuff for the ranch, so me and Jesse volunteered to go. After we picked up the stuff, we went to a bar we knew. The Stockyard. The name always made us laugh. It wasn’t… it wasn’t much of place, but it wasn’t Rattlesnake. And we could dance together. Which is what we did that night. I don’t remember if we had a good time, but we usually did. And I wasn’t dumb enough to drink. The cops said my blood alcohol level was zero.
“It wasn’t that late when we headed home. And my truck, it was a good one. Good tires and everything. But I was driving too fast. Maybe I was in a hurry to get home and get into Jesse’s pants. We shared a trailer at the ranch. Did I tell you that part already? Small but private.”
Jimmy didn’t want to hear what was coming next. Didn’t need to, really. He could easily guess the rest. But he wasn’t about to silence Shane now, so he stood and waited.
In a monotone totally unlike his usual voice, Shane finished his tale. “We weren’t far from home. I dunno. Maybe something distracted me. Jesse was a little buzzed, and he was always real funny when he drank. Maybe he said something to make me laugh. Anyway, I took the corner too fast, lost control on the gravel shoulder. Rolled the truck. Jesse died on impact. That’s what they told me, like maybe that would make me feel better. Maybe it does. I would’ve died too, if some tourists from Modesto hadn’t seen the wreck. One of them even got decent cell service, which was a miracle here in 2005. I didn’t die.”
For the first time since he’d begun his monologue, Shane looked at Jimmy. “I loved Jesse and I killed him. Lots of people… after, lots of people told me it wasn’t my fault. Just an accident, they said. But they’re liars. I was driving too fast, I lost control of the truck, and Jesse died. I killed him just as dead as if I’d put a bullet through his heart. I killed him just like old George killed thirteen of the men buried here.”
Jimmy didn’t tell him it wasn’t his fault, because it was. Shane had done something mildly stupid, something people did all the time. Hell, Jimmy had a lead foot that wouldn’t quit, and when his vehicles were capable of it, he often pushed them well past safe and legal limits. If he drove more often, he probably would have wrecked a bunch of cars by now, maybe killed himself. He’d come close more than once. But he hadn’t wrecked any cars, and he hadn’t killed anyone. Shane had.
Moving slightly closer, Jimmy briefly touched his shoulder. “When you kick yourself over this, is that the first kind of pain or the second?”
Shane blinked at him. “I don’t know. But you know what’s worse than the guilt? I robbed myself of our last few weeks together. It’s worse than not being able to say good-bye. I don’t know…. What if I was a jerk to him? I can be kinda pigheaded. He said so, a lot. And it used to drive him nuts how I left crap all over the place in the trailer. We used to fight about it. Or what if we had the best evening, the best sex, the best anything? What did he say to me? What movies did we watch and what did we eat and what….” His voice cracked.
That was enough. Jimmy moved around and gathered him into an embrace. Shane held on to him like a drowning man and sobbed into his neck, even though the camera dug unpleasantly into them both.
Any words of comfort would be meaningless—Jimmy knew that—and he had no experience uttering them anyway. He did the best he could, which was to let this strong man lean on someone else for a bit. Jimmy’s eyes remained dry, and he found himself thinking about Tom’s advice just before dying—fix things while you can, because eventually you’ll run out of time. Yeah, but Jimmy had nothing to fix.
Nobody could cry forever. The sobbing died out, but even then, Shane sagged in Jimmy’s arms. Finally, with a few sniffs, he dropped his arms and took a step back. “Sorry,” he muttered, rubbing his face with his sleeve.
“You’re going to have to get that shirt dry-cleaned.”
Shane’s lips almost twitched. “Good thing I got three more.”
“Yeah, except I’m pretty sure you got snot on this one too.”
This time Shane did smile, although his eyes still looked cloudy and faraway. “Thanks, man.”
“Thank you. For….” Trusting me. No, he couldn’t say that, because Shane shouldn’t trust him. “For sharing your story with me.”
“Let’s go back. I’m hungry.”
“Me too.”
More slowly and unevenly than usual, Shane walked toward the gate. Jimmy kept even at his side. When Shane stopped beside the grave of E. Foss, who’d died in 1927, Jimmy stopped too. He thought maybe Shane wanted to take a few more pictures or tell him another tale from Rattlesnake’s past. But then he realized that Shane wasn’t looking at the tombstone. Wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, in fact, because his eyes had rolled partially up into his head.
“Shane!”
Before Jimmy could grab him, Shane collapsed like a tree felled by an ax. He landed hard on one arm—Jimmy heard the sickening crack of bone. But that wasn’t nearly as horrible as the echoing thud Shane’s head made against the asphalt path or the unearthly screech that burst from Shane’s lungs.
“Oh God!” Jimmy fell to his knees and tried to help, but Shane’s legs kicked out and contracted and straightened again, tossing him onto his side. His arms extended stiffly in front of him, crossed just beneath the wrists, the hands clenched into fists. He began to jerk, his back bowing horribly and his head thunking against the ground while his legs kicked powerfully.
Completely at a loss about what to do, Jimmy managed to get his lap under Shane’s head to protect it. He looked frantically around, but nobody else was in sight, and it was unlikely anyone was within earshot. Still, he tried. “Hey!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Help! We need some help!”
Not surprisingly, nobody came running. The camera strap was twisted around Shane’s neck. With difficulty, Jimmy untangled it and pulled the camera off. It was broken, but that was the least of his worries. Shane’s spasms were so strong that Jimmy had trouble keeping him in place, and his right forearm was bent in an ugly way. His mouth gaped open, displaying bubbles of froth, and his eyes rolled wildly, but Jimmy didn’t think he was conscious. A large wet patch formed at his crotch. Jimmy smelled piss.
“Stop it stop it stop it stop—” Jimmy bit his tongue when he realized he was babbling. Praying? He didn’t know.
It felt like years, but was probably only a few minutes before Shane’s jerking slowed and then eventually stopped. His eyes were open but unfocused, and his body was limp. His breathing sounded okay, though. That was good, right? But his arm, that was not good. That nasty-looking red bump on his head was even less good. And the vacant look on his face was the worst of all.
Phone. Shane carried a cell phone in his pocket.
Jimmy reached into a wet pocket. God, let it not be broken. Let it not be shorted out by the urine. He huffed a loud noise of relief when it appeared to be working. But he didn’t know how to use it. He’d never used a fucking cell phone. It was almost as alien to him as it would be to old Rattlesnake Murray. He was ready to throw it away in frustration when his fi
nger swiped across the screen and he saw the word “emergency” at the lower left. He stabbed at it and nearly sobbed in relief when a keypad appeared. He hit 911.
While he waited for help to arrive, Jimmy used the corner of his shirt to wipe the drool from Shane’s mouth. Shane blinked slowly, groggily, then moaned when he jostled his arm slightly.
“Stay still,” Jimmy ordered as he stroked Shane’s cheek. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. Just don’t move.”
Chapter Nineteen
JIMMY SAT in the hard plastic chair, slowly losing his mind. The hospital waiting room provided little in the way of distraction—posters and pamphlets about flu shots and breast self-exams, a TV tuned to a health channel, and a single large watercolor of a garden scene, hanging crookedly.
He probably would have been better off at the Rattlesnake Inn, where he could have found chores to keep him busy. But after the ambulance took Shane away and Jenn gave him a ride back down to Main Street, Belinda had insisted that he go to the hospital too. She’d even roped Jenn into driving him. And although Shane’s parents had turned away the flood of worried relatives who appeared in the small hospital’s lobby, they’d unaccountably allowed Jimmy to stay.
He’d been there a long time—long enough to have experienced two cups of awful vending machine coffee and, when his stomach protested, a vended candy bar and plasticky pastry. He paced. He picked up golfing and parenting magazines and put them down again. He stared out the front windows at the highway that ran atop a nearby hill.
When Adam appeared from the hallway leading to Shane’s room, Jimmy nearly tackled him. He halted, though, when he saw the expression on Adam’s face: tired but not grief-stricken.
“Shane and his mother are in the middle of an argument. He wants to see you when they’re done.”
Jimmy let out a long breath. Shane couldn’t be in too bad a shape if he was fighting with his mother. “Okay.”
Adam gave him a long look. “We might as well sit down ’cause they’re gonna be a while. The two most mulish people I have ever met. She’ll win, but it’ll take him a good long time to give in.” He folded himself into one of the uncomfortable chairs.
Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits Page 93
