by Blair Aaron
He looked down at Carter for a second. Stetson's steel blue eyes peered into Carter's soul it seemed. Then Stetson picked up his own weight under his thick arms and rolled off him without saying a word. He bent down, naked in the room, grabbed his jeans, shoes, and socks, as he slammed the door shut to his bedroom. Carter heard Stetson say under his breath as he got up: “I ain't no queer. Get away from me.” Then the shower made muffled sounds from Stetson's room.
Almost immediately Carter's heart started racing again. He could feel a pang in his chest at the thought of the future, what his older brother would say about his obvious sexual orientation, whether his family would protect him, what dangers being out in a rural part of the country would pose, but above all, what was going to happen to him and Stetson. They had shared the briefest moments of warmth, giving Carter some relief from that aching sadness which accompanied Maddox's death. The irony was that, despite the momentary release from the sorrow of losing his only true love, the pain of being kicked back out of the warmth of a new relationship and subsequently the memory of an old one was far more painful that never having met Stetson to begin with. Carter's heart couldn't bear it, over and above all the prejudice and annoyances he'd surely endure as a result of being outed by his older brother. Nothing compared to the pain of being alone, except of course remembering what it felt like to have company from someone who loved you and then losing it all over again.
Carter got up from the bed, his legs sore from the sex. He put his underwear on and looked in the mirror. His body was long and thin, not too thin for worry, but without muscle to make him look adult. He had a teenager's body. For a second his gaze locked on his reflection, so pathetic, so sad, so lonely, and then this reverie was abruptly broken by the sound of the front door closing. A jolt of fear shot through Carter as he wondered if Jamie was back and whether he was going to kick him out for having sex with his roommate. He ran to the window to see if Jamie's truck was in the front yard. Instead he saw a bareheaded blonde man walking toward Stetson's blue truck, and Carter looked around the room in confusion. Stetson's hat still sat on the lampshade, and Carter realized that the blonde man was Stetson himself. That Stetson would leave without his cowboy hat was reason enough by itself to wonder if everything was all right with him. Carter did worry about him, because the man seemed to be very out of touch with his feelings. Carter thought back to what Stetson said before they made love, that he had been burned before and didn't want to “go through all that again.” Stetson must have been through a recent heartbreak, and with the new experience with gay feelings, Carter longed to help Stetson. He felt the same tug in his heart as Stetson blue truck faded into the distance along the road leading out of the driveway of the cabin, the same tug he felt when Maddox left him for the first time, a feeling as helpless and vulnerable as it was indescribable to another person. It made Carter feel all the more alone and at the same time resolve to save Stetson from whatever confusion he was enduring.
To take his mind off his life's most recent complications, Carter went to the shower to clean off. He turned the hot water on as it spilled into the bathtub with a metallic roar. As he changed the faucet to a shower, he thought he heard some glass breaking outside the door. Thinking it was just his imagination under stress, Carter ignored it and jumped behind the beige curtain and sat down to relax.
But then, a louder sound almost broke through the shower wall. Carter screamed out loud.
III
Stetson drove his truck through the woods on the mountain, his mind and heart in turmoil. Whatever it was that had taken over his mind and made him fuck that boy was never going to happen again, that much he was sure of. Stetson figured there was something about Carter that had reminded him of Lee Ann. The alcohol, mixed with Lee Ann's memory, combined just at the right time to make Stetson do it with Carter. That was the explanation, he was sure. He thought about Lee Ann and all the love he'd invested in their relationship. The feeling of her betrayal was something he still could not bear to think about for too long. Even though he told Jaylon on his cell at the time that he would murder Brock, the real reason he called his best friend at that moment had more to do with fear. He knew he would never be able to forgive Lee Ann, just as if he would never be able to forgive his father for missing all his rodeo tournaments. Stetson was not a forgiving person.
But at the same time, he would always love the girl, despite her mistakes. He couldn't help that, and maybe that was the reason he had been so careful about getting close to her. To love someone meant he had the power to hurt you with almost no effort. It was a trap Stetson could not get out of: living without the miraculous feeling of connection he'd had, even if only on occasion and even if it had been accompanied with near constant pain and misery, with Lee Ann was not something he could bear. At the same time, he could not bear the shallow, hollow feeling of floating through life un-tethered to any other human being. There was no winning.
He had forgotten just exactly where he was going at the very moment he pulled into Lee Ann's driveway. He knew the house her father had bought her to live in, while Stetson dumped her. He tried ignoring the probable fact that Lee Ann had spewed a load of shit to her family about the way Stetson treated her. At this moment, he wanted nothing more to taste his ex-girlfriend. He wanted inside her, he tried to convince himself, as he got out of his blue truck, hoping he would not have to break up some social gathering Lee Ann might be having. It was 7 o'clock on a Thursday, and Stetson figured that, even though he didn't plan to pull into her driveway tonight, her place was as good as any. He wanted whatever would take him away from today's rather confusing events.
He raised his giant paw to bang on her door, but the door opened just as his fist came down on the wood. Lee Ann stood there.
“I knew it,” she said. She was wearing her nightgown, a pink polka dot silk top over an off-white bottom. Stetson thought he could smell the faint smell of alcohol. But in that moment he didn't care, he wanted away from the memories of Carter as fast as he could. He'd run, he thought. He'd run as far and fast as he could into his ex's arms. There, he wouldn't care, because they cannot hurt you if you do not care.
He grabbed her by the waist and carried through the hallway, dark at this point. The front door stayed open, and he could see into the bedroom the soft orange light of dusk bathing Lee Ann's bed. He tried not to notice the pair of men's jeans hanging off the doorknob or the male underwear beside her bed. She was single, he told himself. She stayed single, because they needed each other, and she knew that.
He threw her on the bed and pulled off her panties in one fell swoop, revealing her bare, beautiful legs and soft, wet kitten. He took his shirt off in a hurry, as she caressed herself in anticipation of the big event.
“God I knew you would come back baby. I have needed your dick inside me for so long. God give it to me,” she groaned, almost painfully.
He kicked off his boots and pants, naked as the day he was born. Then he crawled onto the bed, his big chest and legs hovering over Lee Ann like a big gorilla. She wrapped her legs around him and stroked his gargantuan back with her bare hands.
“You massive son of a bitch,” she said. “God you're sexy.” She twisted herself around, grinning, placing her face directly under his dangling cock and went to town. She licked his testicles, stroking the head of penis the whole time. Then he began performing oral sex on her at the same time, remembering those same tastes of her thighs and folds of her pussy like he'd never left. Then he flipped around and began humping her chest, rubbing his member between her breasts softly. They kissed for several minutes calmly, as if things were about to slow down.
But they were just getting started.
He spread her legs and split her open, ramming his thick and throbbing dick into her moist kitten. They did for over an hour, before Stetson came suddenly on her chest. Then he rolled over, exhausted and fell asleep, convinced at last, beneath the veiled sick feeling he got when looking at Lee Ann's naked body in post-coital
bliss, he'd forgotten about Carter forever. He was gone, for sure.
IV
The next morning he woke up to an empty house, Lee Ann nowhere to be found. Stetson sat up in the bed by himself, remembered last night fuck session with his ex, and ran to the toilet to puke his guts out. He was sure it was the vodka he must have drunk, or maybe the disgust of having sex with the drunken version of the person he was sure he loved more than anything. But images of Carter continue roaring from the back of his consciousness. He didn't have flashes of their time in his bedroom the day before; instead, it was simply his face, smiling, innocent, and unconditional. He saw that face from the moment he met him, even though he wasn't aware of it at the time. Of course, Stetson had been preoccupied with other things—his break-up with Lee Ann, her betrayal, the desire to beat Brock's ass, the work that had to be done on the fence for Jaylon, the fact that he was hemorrhaging money. All this was more than enough to consume his thoughts two weeks ago, away from the awareness of what was blossoming in his heart for Carter. But looking back it was clear it was happening from the very beginning. He knew from the start.
He cleaned himself up, put on his clothes, and high-tailed it away from Lee Ann's place as fast as possible. There was no way he'd ever see Carter again. He couldn't let the situation progress any further than it already had. So he drove west, down Highway 82, toward the ranch house his father had left him in the will. He got halfway down to the place and pulled over to the side of the road, his stomach's knots growing tighter the farther he got from Carter. He couldn't do it. He had to turn around.
It was over two hours back to the place Carter was staying in the mountains. And for Stetson, every mile marked a graduated increase in regret and remorse. He was ashamed he'd hurt the kid, and he worried whether he would be okay. Jaylon's reaction was something he'd forgotten about, and it was certain to be something he would have to deal with.
As he pulled into the driveway, Jaylon's truck was nowhere to be found. Stetson figured that much after the peep show his friend had stumbled upon the day before, but the front door was open. That was the first clue something was not right. Stetson's hunting instincts kicked into gear, and he quietly parked his truck behind the cabin. He reached behind the seat for his gun to make sure it was loaded.
On the porch, he could see all the lights were off, and a window was broken. Stetson's gripped his gun, keeping his index finger near the trigger. Stepping inside the house, his boot crushed window glass, and he looked around the empty house, listening for any suspicious sounds.
“Ya'll here?” he shouted.
But there was no answer. He walked to the right, in the direction of Jaylon's room, the master suite. He put his finger on the bedroom door and pushed the door open. It creaked slowly in the stillness of the house. Stetson could find nothing amiss there, except Jaylon's window was open.
A door slammed.
Stetson whirled around, ready for the fight of his life. He stepped over the kitchen and den area, undisturbed on first glance.
A door slammed again.
He walked over to Carter's room, the door shut completely this time. Stetson's heart plummeted at the thought of what was on the other side of the door, but he couldn't ignore it. Wrapping his giant fingers around the doorknob, he turned it slowly and let the door swing open. The door revealed the thing Stetson feared the most, no matter how much he tried to deny it. The room was destroyed—the lamp crushed on the floor, the dresser drawers pulled from the places, clothes strewn everywhere, the mirror shattered into a million tiny little pieces. He looked around in panic and heard himself say out loud, “Carter, kid where you?” Adrenaline flooded his face as he turned the bathroom and found similar carnage throughout that side of the room. He could tell the guy struggled as best he could. The shower curtain was violently torn down, and the rod had blood smeared across the end of it. But unfortunately there was no Carter to be found. In the mirror, Stetson could see a broken window in the bedroom with blood on it as well. He realized Carter must have tried to escape. The very worst had happened, Stetson understood now and he was overcome with anger. He took his giant fist and punched a hole in the sheetrock, fighting back tears and vomit at the same time.
“Dear God,” a voice said. Stetson looked up at Jaylon, standing in the door way again. “What the hell happened?” he asked.
“Call the police. Tell them there has been a kidnapping,” Stetson said, looking away from Jaylon so he would not see the tear rolling down the cowboy's face.
V
In the hours after the police looked over the cabin for forensic evidence, after Stetson forced several cops through fear of physical punishment to take fingerprints when they initially refuse, the lead investigator Presley Watkins told Jamie and Stetson that they had virtually no clue who could have taken Carter, given that he was virtually unknown in the town and no one therefore could have had a grudge against him. They continued to ask the two men to tell anything they knew about Carter, which might help the investigation. At the moment, Stetson and Jaylon looked at each other, in their own minds remembering the incident the day before, when Jaylon found Carter fucking his brother. The look of tiger-like rage directed by Stetson in that moment communicated everything it needed to, and Jaylon refrained from saying anything about Carter's homosexuality or the semblance of a relationship between Carter and Stetson.
But behind closed doors, Jaylon was not nearly as cooperative.
“Okay,” he said. “If you're not going to help the cops do the best job they could do, then we're going to do it ourselves. Do you understand that I did not really know who my brother is? I'm 10 years older than he is. I moved away when I was 18, when he was eight. I know virtually nothing about him—not who his friends were, not the kind of music he liked, nothing. If we're going to find him, we need to let my mom know.”
Stetson silently agreed, on the outside doing it all to appease Jaylon, but on the inside because he had decided he would die before he gave up on finding that boy. He should have been there, he thought. He should have been there when it happened, and maybe he could have prevented it.
“I dreamed about this,” Sheree Simmons said. Stetson leaned against the kitchen counter of the Simmons family trailer, his legs crossed long ways, one boot over the other. He sat listening quietly, as Jamie did all the talking.
“Mom, you don't use dreams to figure out missing persons cases. They say the first 48 hours are critical. Do you know anything we don't know about my brother? I need to know everything so we can find him fast.”
“I dreamed someone took him, chopped him up into little pieces, and put him in the trunk. They buried him way out in the desert, by some kind of crater, or dig. All because of who he was. He was so careful.”
“Careful about what?” Jamie said.
“I don't know if he would want me telling you.”
“What is it, god dammit!”
“His nature. He was different. He liked his own kind,” she said, composing herself. Sheree Simmons was without a doubt a very strong woman; her upbringing required her to be, and motherhood had only intensified this pattern. Despite her warmness, her own nature was solid stone.
“He was queer?” Jaylon feigned ignorance and shock. “Dear God. Do you think maybe someone knew, maybe Uncle Ed said something and it got out.”
“No of course not. Ed has not told anyone.”
“You know he's got a big mouth. Maybe he did and they told someone else and maybe that he was living with me.”
“It's impossible Jamie.”
“Let's talk to him then,” Jamie said. So Sheree got up from the table called in Uncle Ed from the other part of the trailer. The family was in the progressive of loading up their attractions, and no one besides Carter’s parents knew about his disappearance. After they informed Uncle Ed of what had happened, he stood there in disbelief, but then started laughing uncontrollably.
“What about this situation could be funny to you Ed,” Sheree said.
“Kid's probably staged his own break-in. He's just looking to run away.”
“That's not what happened. There was blood everywhere. I assume it was because he staged that part too, right Uncle Ed,” Jamie said.
“Yeah of course. I bet it wasn't even real blood.”
“You're an idiot.”
“Well this idiot knows who could have grabbed him, or who he might have run off with. I guarantee you it was his little buddy's family. The friend of his who died.”
“What friend?” Stetson asked, showing only a hint of jealousy no one caught onto.
“He had this friend since he was about 10 years old. They did everything together. He's dead now.”
The television in the small den in the trailer began flashing breaking news. The image caught Stetson's peripheral vision, and he walked away from the kitchen to get a better look, as the rest of the family continued talking.
“Tonight, we have breaking news, of a routine traffic stop gone wrong. A cop was killed tonight after he approached a white sedan for mild speeding. On the dash cam footage, we're about to show you, you can see the cop never had a chance, as the perpetrator point blank shot him in the face, after a short conversation between them. No one knows what the cop said at this time, as the body cam footage is currently classified and under review by the police department. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.”
In the footage, the cop approached the white sedan; the driver was wearing a hoodie. Stetson could see the cop talking with the driver for a few seconds, and then the driver handed the cop his license. When the cop turned around, the man pulled a gun and shot him from behind. Stetson was a fantastic hunter, and even in videos, he had a great instinct for zeroing in on his prey. In the footage, the driver briefly looks in the direction of the dash cam of the police car, and Stetson caught a glimpse of the driver's unforgettable green eyes.
