by Sarina Bowen
* * *
Two hours later, I lay in my bed, shaking. From fear, not illness.
In front of me, I held my Bible. Quiet prayer was one of the few activities acceptable just before curfew. So I often sat here with the heavy book on my lap, thinking.
Or worrying. And tonight I was definitely doing that.
After our meal, our Divine Pastor had walked into the bunkhouse common room. All conversation stopped, of course. He was accompanied by Elder Michael and two others.
“It has come to our attention that a handgun has gone missing from the tool shed,” our Divine Pastor said.
I’d felt Caleb’s body go completely still beside me.
“I must ask,” our Divine Pastor continued, “Which of you was the last to perform an inventory of our supply of tools?”
Lord in heaven. My stomach cramped in distress. Slowly, I raised a shaking hand into the air.
“Joshua,” our Divine Pastor barked. “When was this?”
“T…two weeks ago,” I quavered. “After the pumpkins were in.” I always volunteered for inventory jobs, because it meant brainwork instead of outdoor labor.
“Did you perform the inventory piece by piece? Or do you keep an old list as a guide? I am trying to discern how easily you might have erred. Which might, in turn, help me learn when the gun went missing.”
“I…” I cleared my dry throat, feeling every pair of eyes on me. “I never use my old lists, because if there are new tools then I’d miss them.”
“So. You make a new list each time?”
“Yessir,” I choked out.
“The missing weapon was part of your recent inventory,” Elder Michael said, pinning me with his gaze.
I nodded. It was silent in that room. Nobody even breathed. Because no one else dared draw the attention of an angry elder.
“Do you have anything to say for where it might be?” he asked.
Of course I did not. And many people had access to that storage room. But I would not point this out, because it would sound as if I were desperate to shift blame. “I have no idea, sir,” I said. It was not a great defense, but it was my only move. “I remember the gun. It was new in August.”
The portly elder frowned. “Well then. Tomorrow, first thing, you will come with us to the tool shed and look again at the inventory. We need to know what else may be missing.”
“Yessir,” I’d said.
My stomach had remained in knots ever since.
I had no idea what would happen tomorrow. None at all. It was possible that they really only wanted my assistance. But an inventory was an easy thing to read, with or without help.
My fear was that someone had stolen the gun, knowing the theft would be pinned on me. There was nothing I could do about it. A man cannot prove his innocence. He can only prove another’s guilt.
I had, of course, no idea who took the gun. And it did not matter a whit that I had no reason to take a gun. I had no way to sell it, or curry favor with another for handing it over.
But you must never look for logic in Paradise.
Stewing over the problem wasn’t going to help. It’s just that I didn’t have anything better to think about. Caleb was not here in our room. He was in the garage, changing the oil in the Tacoma.
And kissing Miriam, maybe.
Someday it would happen for real. Caleb would marry a woman. He was just the sort of bachelor who would eventually be granted a wife. When the time came, I would watch the ceremony with horror in my heart. And I would lie awake in the bunkhouse that night, wild with jealousy as he made his bride into a woman.
I forced myself to imagine it from time to time, if only to maintain my grip on reality. Caleb building a house for his bride. Caleb in a wedding suit.
Caleb removing all his clothes, and spilling his seed into a woman.
When I was twelve, I had seen the act done. I’d been home at an odd time of day, because my mother had asked me to change a couple of lightbulbs after lunch. With my task finished, I’d walked quietly along the upstairs hallway of our house.
At the end of the corridor was the youngest wife’s room. The door had been open a crack. I paused there because I heard the strangest sounds coming from within.
My real father had died when I was four, when he overturned a tractor. The man I’d called “father” ever since had married two of my birth father’s wives, including my mother. His name was Seth.
Seth’s hairy ass was the thing I saw first when I peered into that room.
It took me a moment to realize what I was witnessing. But even when I understood, I could not look away.
It was fascinating.
The breathy grunts he made washed over me like steam. And the way his powerful thighs flexed through each thrust was beautiful to me. He growled and he groaned, and finally he shook. With a cry, he collapsed onto the wife that I’d barely noticed was underneath him. Coming to my senses, I’d snuck away.
Someday, that would be Caleb. And no amount of wishing otherwise would help.
I stared at the page of my Bible until the letters blurred together.
* * *
Perhaps two hours later, I woke in the dark. The Bible was gone from my hands, but I spotted it on the bedside table. Someone had placed it there for me.
Caleb.
Even in the darkness, I could see his large form in bed across the room that we shared with two others. He lay on his back, hands clasped behind his head.
Strong and confident, even in his sleep.
There were snores coming from Ezekiel’s and David’s corners of the room, My head did not ache so much now, but I felt hot and irritable. To ease myself, I focused on Caleb’s silent form. His shoulders were wide, taking up a goodly portion of the narrow bed. His legs were long and solid under the quilt.
I wished I could spread my body out on top of his, sinking into all that muscle. I wanted to bury my face in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, breathing in his cottony clean scent.
I wanted so, so many things that I would never have.
My cock began to feel full between my legs.
Lying there, I squeezed my ass together a few times. It had been such an awful, scary day. I deserved a little comfort, didn’t I? Unbidden, my hand slipped beneath the waistband of my boxers. Touching myself was risky. It was a sin, of course, although surely everyone did it sometimes. Even Caleb.
In fact, once when we were sixteen, he asked me to stand guard. We were out by the cow shed, sitting on the hay bales in between jobs. “Can I ask a favor?”
“Sure?”
“I need five minutes alone. Would you stand at the fencepost and wait for me? If somebody comes, just talk to them, and I’ll know to cover up.”
“Okay,” I’d said, “but why?”
He’d rolled his eyes at me. “I have to jerk. It’s a desperate situation. You can take a turn after I do.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
Do not look at his dick, I’d ordered myself, scandalized. Do not. I’d marched away immediately, where it was safe. Then I’d stood at that fence post like a sentry, ready to holler at the first sign of anyone.
But not a soul had wandered by. And all the while my ears were peeled, desperately hopeful that I’d hear him come. And I did, though it was just a quick gasp, over practically before it began.
“Your turn?” he asked me about two minutes later.
“Nope, I’m good,” I stammered, my face the color of a tomato.
“Suit yourself. But if I were you, I’d stay out of the tall grass back there for a day or so.” He’d laughed at this joke, and so I did too.
That was the extent of my sexual experience—watching my step-father plow a teenage wife and listening to my best friend jerk.
And touching myself, of course, which I was doing now. I closed my eyes and ran my hand slowly up and down my shaft. When I did this, I made it a point never to stare at my best friend. He wouldn’t like being the center of my sexual fanta
sies. And it wasn’t his fault that I was a pervert.
But who was I kidding? The faceless bodies in my dreams all matched his. And it was his full lips that I so badly wanted to kiss…
I clamped my mouth shut, to avoid making noise. And I sank into my mattress, silently coaxing my body toward climax. I pictured Caleb smiling at me. And I heard him whisper my name…
“Joshua!”
My hand went stock still. Because that whisper was not part of my imagination.
I opened my eyes to see Caleb moving through the shadows. He tiptoed silently to my bed, sitting down on the edge. In the dark, I could see his blue eyes roll at me. Stop it, he mouthed.
Then, as my heart shimmied with surprise, he put an elbow down on my pillow and leaned down, his lips skimming my ear.
My entire brain short-circuited. And then I realized that he was just trying to talk to me in the only way possible at this hour.
“Move over,” he whispered directly into my ear.
Immediately, I rolled onto my side, away from him. Not only did this make room on the mattress, but it pointed my traitorous dick as far away from him as possible. God have mercy on me, I inwardly begged. My friend caught me stroking myself while I was thinking of him.
Hell was waiting for me. No question.
Caleb cupped one of his big hands over my ear, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to hide my reaction. “How can you jerk at a time like this?” he asked, while my heart spasmed. “We need a plan. Like, yesterday.”
“Sorry,” I mouthed, stupidly. I wished the mattress would roll up and swallow me whole.
Caleb gave me a little punch to the shoulder, like he always did. But then he put his hand on my bicep and squeezed. He was always touching me. Caleb was a toucher. That was just his way. It made me crazy half the time, because I wanted those touches to mean something. (They never did.)
“I’m worried,” he said into my ear. “This isn’t good.”
That snapped me out of my own head, and quickly. Because Caleb wasn’t a worrier. In fact, I craned my neck to see just how serious he was.
The most familiar set of eyes blinked back at me from inches away. He beckoned to me, and I put my ear up against his mouth again. “Tomorrow, I need you to be prepared. Just in case. Can you do a few things for me?”
I gave him a little nod.
“Okay, listen. I need you to put on your newest clothes in the morning,” he breathed. “Anything valuable you have, put it in your pockets.”
A chill snaked down my spine. “Really?” I mouthed.
He gave a sad sigh, his warm breath sweeping sweetly down my neck. “Maybe I’m being paranoid. But I’m afraid they’re going to…” he didn’t finish the sentence. Caleb couldn’t stand to say it. Throw you out.
I shivered.
With another sigh, he put his hand on my chest, right in the center. “Do not panic. Maybe it won’t happen tomorrow. But Joshy, it’s coming. And I need you to listen to my instructions.”
Nobody had called me Joshy since we were seven, and eating cookies in his mom’s kitchen. And now my throat was tight.
It’s coming, he’d said. Not only was this terrifying, it meant that I was just as pathetic as I’d always feared. Caleb knew I was useless. He saw.
“Sh sh sh sh sh,” he said into my ear. His hand closed over mine. “Are you listening? This is important.”
I squeezed his hand to tell him that I was.
“I’m not sure where they’d take you. If I had to guess, I’d say the bus station in Casper. They’d pick somewhere far enough away that you wouldn’t try to walk back and steal anything. If it wasn’t Casper, it would be Riverton. Either way, you and I are going to meet up in Casper. Whether this happens tomorrow, or any other time, I need you to get to Casper. Hitchhike if you have to.”
My heart skipped an actual beat, and I spent the next few seconds trying to figure out if I’d heard him right. Slowly, I turned my head on the pillow so that I could see Caleb’s eyes.
We? I mouthed.
Slowly, he nodded. Then he pushed my chin aside so that he could get to my ear again. “We’re going together. But if they toss you one morning and I don’t see it happen, I have to know where to find you.”
All my insides did a nauseous, crazy dance. It was the maddest thing I’d ever heard, and I really did not trust that I’d understood him. I whipped my head to the side again. WHY? I mouthed.
He put his lips so close to my ear that I could feel them tickling my skin. “I have to get out of here. There’s no life for me here. I’ve been saving money, but I don’t have enough yet. I could really use a little more time.”
I’d never been so surprised. Caleb was set up to do very well in Paradise. He would someday be married and have his own house. Everyone liked him, except the jealous ones. And he’d managed to steer clear of trouble even from them. And…
There was one question that I had to ask. I pushed an elbow into the bed and rose up to get near his ear. “What about Miriam?”
Caleb flinched. He whispered to me again. “Elder Asher wants her.”
Oh no! I mouthed.
He gave me a sad nod.
I felt a stab of pain in my chest for Miriam. Asher was not a nice man. At sixty-something years old, he had five wives already. And two others had died, while one had run away. In fact, it was Miriam’s own sister who had escaped from him. One morning she was just gone. Nobody knew where she went.
What Asher wanted, Asher got. He was the half-brother of our Divine Pastor. If Asher wanted Miriam… I shuddered.
I turned to study Caleb’s serious profile. It was hard to make sense of everything I’d just heard. My best friend thought that I would be taken out like so much garbage tomorrow. Into a world where I knew literally nobody. Penniless, too. And Caleb wanted to run away?
If he couldn’t have Miriam, that made a tiny kernel of sense. I’d always dreaded the thought of him in another’s arms. Perhaps it was the same for him. If he could not stand to watch Miriam marry another man…
I put my hand close to his ear. “You could ask for Miriam first.”
The expression on his face then was hard to read. It was disappointed, maybe. “She wants me to ask,” he whispered. “But I know it will never work.” The pain on his face doubled, and so I did not ask more questions. The fact that Caleb wouldn’t even try was a shock to me, though. He was loyal to a fault.
Abruptly, the snoring from Ezekiel’s corner of our room came to a halt.
I felt Caleb go absolutely still beside me. We could not be caught like this, lying on the same bed. Plotting together was nearly as great a sin as whatever else they might imagine we were doing.
For many long seconds, we lay there like statues. I still had a hold of Caleb’s hand, though, and I squeezed it. He squeezed back, too.
No matter what happened, I would always remember this night.
An agonizing minute later, Ezekiel began to snore again. Beside me, Caleb relaxed. Then he gripped my hand one more time. Into my ear he said, “the bus station in Casper.” And then he stole silently across the room to his own bed.
Two
When the wake-up bell rang, my eyes flew open. My first emotion of the day was fear. And the second one was shame. I was afraid, and I was ashamed to be afraid.
That’s how it always was with me.
I got up, stumbling into my clothes. Mindful of Caleb’s instructions, I put on my good pair of Carhartts, and a clean undershirt.
“Josh.” I looked up to see Caleb watching me. “Catch,” he said. Then he tossed me something.
It was a new pair of socks. The woolen kind. His mother knitted them for him every winter.
My mother did nothing like that for me. Ever. Even my own mother valued me at zero.
I sat down on the bed to pull on Caleb’s socks. My hands were shaking now. And maybe for nothing, right? If Caleb was wrong, I could give him the socks back after laundry day.
One of my flannel shirt
s had no holes, so I wore that one. Then I added a wool sweater that had been my father’s, and my canvas work jacket.
The last thing I did was slip a pocketknife into my trousers. That too had been my father’s. My mother gave it to me when I’d turned ten, before it became too obvious that I would not be a leader of our community.
The bell rang again to call us to breakfast and Ezekiel and David ran out of our room. Caleb waited, though. There was a moment of silence, and I could feel him holding back until all the other bachelors assembled in the common room where the food was.
“Josh…” he whispered.
But he was cut off by another voice yelling my name from the hallway. “Josh!” David stuck his head back into our room. “Elder Michael is waiting outside. He wants you at the tool shed right away.”
My heart plunged. David was watching me, so I didn’t risk a look in Caleb’s direction. Though I wanted to. I wanted one more glance at his beautiful face, for courage.
I didn’t see Caleb again, but I did hear his voice. “Bus station” he whispered as I left the room.
Bus station, I repeated to myself as I stepped into the cold morning. I walked quickly toward the tool shed. I was practically racing there, which made no sense. Why hurry to your own execution?
Bus station, I chanted inside my head. Bus station. My own little descent into hell would be accompanied by two words for a place I’d never been, and really had no wish to see.
But they were words that Caleb gave me, and that was something.
Bus station, I whispered as I saw not one but four men waiting near the toolshed. Elder Michael was there, but also Evil Ezra and two of his cronies.
It got worse, too. The Tundra was idling nearby.
Still, I stepped closer, trying to keep the fear off my face. “Good morning,” I said.
Four grim faces were silent in return. That’s when I knew. That’s when I was sure that Caleb was right.
Elder Michael pointed at the door to the tool shed, which confused me for a moment. Were we going through with the charade of performing another inventory?
