Back Where He Started

by Jay Quinn

  “Chris, that’s the goddamnedest thing I ever heard.” He walked toward me down the hall. “Start us some coffee, will you? And I could eat something, if you got anything easy.”

  “How about grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup?”

  “By tomato soup, do you mean that canned bisque stuff? The kind you doctor up with … what is it? Wine? I could eat the hell out of that.”

  “It’s sherry. I put sherry in the tomato bisque. If that’s what you want, I can have it done in no time.”

  Steve sighed with happiness. “If you can get it done so quick, why don’t you take your shower with me?”

  I took him by the hand and led him to my bathroom. We stripped in silence and, running the water, I found it was still plenty hot. By instinct, we knew what we needed from each other was more tender ministration than sex. I lathered his chest and lingered over the slick heaviness of his bulky genitals, rewarded more by a friendly fullness than by stiffening demand. I washed him like a small child—even shampooing and conditioning his hair—before I turned his big body to be rinsed in the hot water. Clumsily but lovingly, he responded in kind.

  Steaming in the rush of air-conditioned air from the bathroom’s vents, we toweled off and I left him to shave nearly three days’ worth of beard. I slipped on a loose, clean pair of his boxers that I retrieved from the dresser drawer that had become his by squatter’s rights. I briefly recalled him saying he was tired of living between two houses; it was a frustration I hadn’t seen coming. I filed it away for pondering later and went into the kitchen to make our supper and call my kids to let them know we were fine.

  I didn’t recognize the man standing on my deck. He looked to be in his early 60s, grizzled white and sweating in his gray long- sleeved working man’s shirt, slacks, and wet, heavy boots. But I could smell smoke coming of him as he stood outside the kitchen door and asked for Steve. “Please tell him his Uncle Buddy needs to see him bad.”

  “Won’t you come in? There’s coffee.” I stuck out my hand, feeling self-conscious and insubstantial standing before this genuine example of a Salter Path fisherman. “My name’s Chris Thayer.”

  The man hesitantly took my hand and gave it a shake. “Mr. Thayer, I hate to come in, I’ve—”

  “Chris, who the hell is it?” Steve yelled from the back of the house.

  “Please call me Chris, and come on in. Please.”

  Steve’s Uncle Buddy wiped his feet on a nonexisting mat, pulled off his cap, and stepped inside the door. He paused and looked around, and I couldn’t tell what his eyes registered. They only swept the house, taking in all they could see.

  I pulled a chair away from the dining room table and motioned for him to sit. He looked at the chair as if it might not hold him, but he sank into it easily and sighed as it accepted and held his weight.

  Steve walked into the great room barefoot and dressed only in a pair of jeans. He came to the table and leaned across to reach for his uncle’s hand. “Uncle Buddy, it’s good to see you. You’ve met Chris?”

  “Yeah, I did.” He looked at me and smiled shyly. “Chris, I’ll take a cup of that coffee, black, please, sir.” He looked at Steve and his voice grew gentle. “Son, you better sit down. I’ve got some bad news for you.”

  Steve looked at his uncle anxiously and took a seat across the table from him. I hesitated and caught Steve’s eyes before they went back to his uncle’s face. “What is it? Nothing’s wrong with my Aunt Peg, is there?”

  Uncle Buddy spared me a glance. “No, son. Your Aunt Peg’s fine. Your boat’s right where you left it.” I walked into the kitchen and pulled down three coffee mugs, filling one first with black coffee, then making Steve’s the way he liked it, and carried them back to the table, sitting Uncle Buddy’s before him first.

  “Thank you,” he said before he blew across the mug’s rim and took a sip.

  Steve ignored his. “Well, what is it then?” he asked.

  “Son, there ain’t no easy way to tell this, but it’s your house. We managed to save it as best we could, but she’s burned out over your mama and daddy’s bedroom and all through the attic. Water damage is pretty bad inside. I’m so sorry.”

  The blood drained from Steve’s face and he sat back in his chair. “What? How? When we left last night about dark, everything was just fine. Did somebody try to burn my house down? Who would do that? Who do I have to kill, Uncle Buddy?”

  “Settle down, boy. Ain’t nobody tried to burn your house down. Best the fire department can figure is the electrical feed outside your mama and daddy’s bedroom window got damaged in the wind. When the power came back on about 4 A.M., it started arcing and tore off through the wiring in the attic. Your cousin Eddie saw the smoke and called the volunteer fire department, but we had a hell of a time getting a crew together so quick after the storm. The wind took out our radio tower, but they patched us through to the county’s system. All of us got there as quick as we could, and we managed to save the deck and most of the house. But, son, you can’t live there. It’s that messed up.”

  Steve slammed his hand down on the table and stood up to stalk into the living room. “I gotta get over there. I got to see what I got left.”

  “I’ll wait for you, Steve. I’ll carry you over there,” his Uncle Buddy said sympathetically. Then he drained his coffee mug.

  Steve looked at me and raised a finger to point. “If I had been home, if I hadn’t been over here, I might’ve done something. Oh shit!”

  Uncle Buddy pushed back from the table and stood heavily. Commandingly he said, “That’s enough of that, boy. If you’d have been home, I’d be waiting on a coroner right now, and that’s the God’s honest truth. You’d have been dead from the smoke before you even woke up. The way I see it, you owe your friend here your life. Now go get some clothes on and come on. You’ve heard the worst of it—you might as well let me take you on over.”

  Steve rubbed his face and nodded. He gave me an apologetic look and headed dejectedly toward the bedroom.

  “Chris, could I trouble you for some more of that coffee?” Uncle Buddy said.

  “Yes, sir.” I said. I took his mug from his extended hand and walked back to the kitchen. I realized the man knew I’d been with Steve throughout the storm, and he knew exactly where to come to find him, to bring his bad news. He clearly carried the authority of the head of the family. Steve hadn’t even protested when the man told him what to do or how to act. I filled the man’s mug and brought it back to where he stood in the dining room.

  Uncle Buddy accepted the coffee with a nod of thanks and stood sipping it. He look me over now as appraisingly as he had surveyed the house when he first walked in.

  “Should I come too?” I asked quietly.

  Uncle Buddy shook his head. “No, Chris, not this time. I’m pretty sure I know how Steve feels about you, but he won’t welcome you being there right now. I helped his granddaddy build that house myself. His family’ll be there for him. As soon as he’s seen all there is to see, I’ll bring him back to you. Family’s good at a time like this, but there ain’t but so much we can do. He’s going to need you worse when he gets back. I hope you’ll take care of him.”

  I looked at the man with genuine respect—the same he was trying to show me—and nodded. “I appreciate you being so understanding of how things are with—” I began.

  The man raised his hand. “That’s enough of that. There’s some things that don’t need to be said. I’ve known Steve since my brother brought him and his mama here to live 26 years ago. He was a fine boy then and he’s grown to be a fine man. A man’s business is his own business. And you seem like a pretty decent sort. In a place this small, folks don’t miss much. We look out for family around here, you understand what I mean?”

  There was both an earnest promise and an implicit threat in what he said—a callused fist in a velvet glove. I understood what he said, and I understood what didn’t need saying. This was a world where actions spoke a lot louder than words. �
��What can I do to help?” I asked.

  Uncle Buddy looked around the house once more and then back at me. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing. Steve’s no different than any other man. What he’s always needed was a home. It looks like that’s what you’ve got to offer.”

  Steve returned to the great room, dressed and ready to go. “Uncle Buddy?” he said.

  “Chris, nice to meet you,” Uncle Buddy said sincerely, then gave me a earnest look. “This ain’t the best time to mention it, but we have a big family get-together coming up. There’s a lot of people that would be very pleased to meet you, if Steve’ll bring you.”

  Once again, I thrust out my hand for Uncle Buddy to accept. He took it in a firm grip. “I’ll look forward to it, sir. And if Steve won’t bring me, I’ll come on my own.”

  Uncle Buddy stroked my knuckles with his thumb like an adult will do with a fond child, smiled, and nodded. “Come on then, Steve. Let’s go get your Aunt Peg and see what we can save.”

  From the dock, the house looked fine viewed dead-on. It wasn’t until your eyes wandered to the west end that things went awry. That gable end was burned and blackened from halfway up the side of the house to the charred, exposed rafters of the roof. There was no way Steve could live there.

  We sat as the sun set over the water, and drank beer, with Steve staring at what was left of his house. He’d found the metal box that held his insurance papers, deed, and title to the long-paid-for house. His tax records and bank papers were damp but certainly salvageable. His Aunt Peg had taken the clothes that weren’t irreparably smoke-damaged, washed them, and packed them neatly in cardboard boxes that we’d loaded in the back of the Expedition for the trip back home. The family photos were few, but they had been buried so deeply under other boxes in Steve’s parents’ room that they escaped both water and smoke. Except for the indestructible weather radio in the kitchen, just about everything else was gone. All the dishes had cracked from the heat and were shattered by the water from the fire hoses. The family Christmas ornaments in the attic were among the first to be consumed. The bits of his past that weren’t blackened and ruined were smoke and ash on the wind.

  For a little while, he let himself hold my hand and cry. Then he stood and carefully placed our empty beer bottles in the 55-gallon plastic garbage can on the end of the dock. He stood next to his boat and looked her over. One of his many cousins had swum out to bring her back in safely to dock. “You know, if it had to be one or the other,” he said, “I’m glad it was the house and not the Lina G. As long as I have the boat I can earn a living and rebuild.” He sounded as if he was finding relief at last.

  “That old house was too small, anyways,” he continued. “Between the insurance on the house and the value of the land, I can build me a house like I want. I got my pier and dock. It’s going to be okay, Chris.”

  He turned around to face me and allowed himself a small grin. “I’m going to have to work hard for a few years, but I’ll end up better off. Hell, the land with the pier and dock is worth a half million. By God, I’m lucky.”

  I whistled and looked at him wide-eyed. “I had no idea I was sleeping with a rich man,” I said.

  Steve chuckled. “Well, you better get used to it, because I don’t intend for you to sleep with nobody else, Little Bit.”

  I remembered his Uncle Buddy’s words from the day before. “I think nobody else around here does, either.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  I recounted the conversation I’d had with his uncle. “So, when you told me they all knew, you were right,” I said. “I seemed to have passed some sort of test.”

  Steve snorted. “They all get Oprah and those kinds of shows down here just like the rest of the country. They know what’s what. But I had no idea Uncle Buddy would say anything. Damn. He told you that?”

  I nodded. “They love you, Steve.”

  “Yeah, that’s all fine, well, and good. I guess they’ve grown some since my daddy brought my mama down here. She had a rough time of it at first.”

  “Why? Were they mean to her?”

  Steve shrugged. “They weren’t exactly mean, but … well, my mama didn’t help any. She was a Yankee and a Catholic. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she was a women’s libber in their eyes and she also washed clothes on Sundays. It was just a culture clash. After a while, though, they all grew accustomed to each other.”

  “Why do you think Uncle Buddy and Aunt Peg are so nice to me, then? I mean I have the right accent, but I’m Catholic and I’m gay as a goose.”

  Steve stuck his hands in his pockets and slowly paced around the dock. “Well, you may be Catholic, but they know you go to church. And they’re probably hoping you’ll get me to start going back—that’s two things you got going for you. We’re at least the same religion, and my heathen ass needs to be sitting in a church somewheres come Sunday morning as far as they’re concerned. The other thing is, they figure I’m less likely to be out getting some strange disease, if I’ve got somebody taking care of me at home. It fits their … para … para … para-thing.”

  “Paradigm,” I said.

  “Yeah, that. They think being an un-hitched male is the worse thing you can be—that’s the women talking. The men, hell … Uncle Buddy? I don’t know what he’s thinking, but if he’s saying it, you can best believe he’s voicing the popular opinion.”

  I didn’t respond. I’d never been around such a tight-knit, family-oriented bunch of people. I had no conception of it. My kids didn’t have much extended family, and but for them, I’d be completely alone in the world.

  “There’s another thing, too,” Steve said.

  “What’s that, Big Man.”

  Steve swung back down next to me on the bench at the end of the dock and lit a cigarette. “There’s not a one of these families that hasn’t lost a son or daughter to being gay. My Uncle Tommy and Aunt Pat—Aunt Pat and Aunt Peg are sisters by the way—they have a son my age named Chad. Chad could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. Chad’s been gone. He lives in Charlotte and ain’t been home as long as I can remember. I got another cousin who’s a dyke. She lives in Richmond. These folks all had gay kids that left and don’t want to come back. The old folks are looking around and seeing it’s getting to be just them. The way of life around here is dying, Chris. And I hate to see it. This is my home. I don’t want to live nowhere else.” Steve looked back at his burned-out house for a long time. “No sirree. I’m not going to live anywhere else.”

  There were three long tables set up on one end of the church hall. One held nothing but desserts: beautiful cakes crafted of coconut, chocolate, and browning bananas; pies proudly crowned with golden meringue or mahogany crusts of pecans; plates of brownies and pans of layered confections rich with cream cheese and nuts, or made with chocolate or pistachio pudding, nuts, and canned mandarin orange sections topped with shredded coconut and whipped crème.

  The other two tables were laden with plates of deviled eggs and deviled crab; platters of fried chicken and fish filets; slices of roast beef; plates of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers swimming in vinegar; an odd platter of crudités; bowls of field peas cooked with okra; snap beans glistening with the shine of the fat of pot liquor; the seasoning of country ham tucked into biscuits homemade and so light they would have floated off the plates that held them were it not for the ham.

  Everyone greeted us warmly along with all the other smiles of welcome and cries of Come here and let me hug your neck, Bless your sweet heart, and Don’t you look good! A stranger, but not an alien, I pulled into the fold without reservation and held closely— not at arm’s length.

  Steve grinned and eyed the tables of food and endured more than one scolding for keeping me hid away and he grinned some more. I trailed him around the church hall from cousin to uncle to aunt to old family friend until my head spun with names and my faced ached from smiling. My ears fought to catch and hold a distinctive accent that was broad in the vowels and left cons
onants behind in a blur of sweetness.

  After a while Uncle Buddy called for quiet while the pastor led us all in returning thanks. As the amens were said, the din resumed, and the line formed for Chinet plates and plastic forks, I tugged at Steve’s sleeve and told him I needed to go smoke a cigarette. In truth, I was overcome with so much feeling. I had expected to be received with the chilliness of the late October outside; instead, my heart was full of their warmth of the welcome. It was almost too much.

  “Not until you meet somebody else,” Steve said. “You have to pay your respects to Granny Effie.”

  I gave him a quizzing look in reply that held more than one question. He divined them all.

  “You haven’t met her. See that tiny little lady over at that table? She’s my great-great aunt. She’s 92 and sharp as a tack. She’s really the head of the clan. Are you ready?”

  I nodded and let him steer me through the crowd and present me to the lady herself. In her presence his Banker brogue grew broader. It was almost as if she spoke a different, older language that he switched to when he introduced me as his friend.

  “Sit down here by me, son,” she said. “I can’t see so good if you’re too far.”

  Steve squatted before her; I sat in the metal folding chair next to her. She took and held my hand in hers. Liver-spotted and age-freckled, her tiny grasp was cool but firm. “So, you’re the boy’s come and got Steve finally settled some,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am. I hope so anyway.”

  “It’s high time,” she said. It sounded like Uhts hoi toime.

  She gave Steve a disapproving look then turned back to me.

  “Back when I was a young woman, there was only one kind of way to live. One kind of way to do things. Fish was fish and fowl was fowl. Nowadays, there’s all kinds of ways to live that we couldn’t imagine back in them old, hard days. But I have to ask you, son. Do you love the Lord?”