by Amy Lane
They lived—quite literally—in Dogpatch, California. Population 200. Of course, there were a bunch of tiny towns in the same fifty-mile radius up in the Sierra Mountains, but the one on their addresses and college applications and driver’s licenses was Dogpatch.
Vern was well aware that after he graduated from high school and hay-baling season was over, if he didn’t find someplace to work through the winter, he and his mom might not even be able to afford rent on the tiny shack in the back of Frank Gilmore’s property.
He couldn’t afford to piss off Keith Gilmore. But dammit—dammit—this just wasn’t right.
As if to prove he didn’t know what right was, Keith sneered. “You think living in Dogpatch is hard now, asshole, just think of what it’s gonna be like if I tell everyone I saw you sucking Dirk Hogarth’s dick behind the fuckin’ Frostie last week!”
Vern stared at him, mouth opening and closing slowly. Dirk Hogarth was the high school English/history teacher, a slight little man who lived alone with his cats and his sweater vests and his bow tie. Everyone knew he was a fairy, but because he was so mild-mannered, such a sweet little person who never bothered anyone, nobody gave him shit.
All the mothers in the town adored him, and even the students were kind, but that didn’t stop the jocks from making fun of him behind his back, daring each other to go suck the guy’s dick when they got riled or didn’t like their grades.
For the first time, Vern thought about Mr. Hogarth and the rude, stupid shit people said about him behind his back, and felt bad. Mr. Hogarth had been nothing but nice to Vern, and here this redneck cheater was using the guy as a threat.
A credible threat.
“What are you saying?” Vern asked quietly, trying to get a bead on this sitch. “Say it very plainly, Keith. I want to hear you say the words.”
Keith had the grace to look ashamed. “Just… you know, Vern. Keep doing what we do. Don’t make a big moral deal out of it and everything’ll be fine.”
Vern’s mind raced—although he’d never really been accused of being a brain trust before.
“So if I don’t agree to keep blowing you, you’re going to spread rumors that I’m blowing someone else,” he said slowly. “Like, blackmail.”
Keith’s jaw thrust out and his lower lip trembled. He looked ready to cry, and for the first time, Vern got maybe an inkling of what was going through his mind.
“Yeah,” he said, pretending to be cavalier but achieving instead a sort of pathetic bravado. “That’s it. I’m a blackmailer. Making you do something you goddamned enjoy.”
Vern nodded. “Enjoyed. Past tense, Keith. I’ll do it if I have to. I need the job, and your dad don’t give jobs to fairies. But from this moment on, I enjoyed doing it. I don’t enjoy it anymore.”
With that he turned around and grabbed his boots, which stood at the open doorway. He paused for a moment to slide them on and then kept right on walking. He and Keith had another two hours of work to do in the goddamned baler, and by God, he didn’t want to be here one more minute longer.
THAT NIGHT he went home to the tiny bathroom he’d newly tiled and took a shower, scrubbing at his body—his genitals in particular—until the water ran cold. When he came out of the bathroom, he put on his sleep shorts and joined his mom in the cramped, yellowing kitchen. She was hunched over the beat-up wooden table, tapping on the laptop furtively, like when Vern’s father had still been there, afraid every keystroke would be the one that spun him into a rage.
“Looking for recipes?” he asked, because she sure did like to cook.
“Cross-stitch,” she replied promptly, smiling. She had an entire library of floss now that his dad had split. He looked at her fondly, her lined face and graying hair too old for her actual age. She was, what? In her early forties?
“You should be looking for a cruise,” he said, suddenly wishing bitterly he could send her on one. “A place you can read all your romances by the pool and come back all tan.”
She laughed, obviously pleased. “Oh, Vern—that’s sweet, but we don’t have the money for a cruise.”
He sighed. “Mom, I don’t think we’ll have the money for rent this next year if I can’t get something to do besides baling Frank Gilmore’s hay.”
Soberly she looked up from their aging laptop. “There’s not much you can do here,” she said, but she didn’t look happy about it. “And you know, my job at the insurance agency—you never know how many hours.”
She worked in Truckee, about an hour away.
“I know,” he said softly. “I… I think I need to maybe look somewhere else.”
She swallowed unhappily. “I… baby, you’re not even eighteen.”
Something in his chest loosened. They hadn’t spoken much, him and his mom, not before his dad left and not in the five years since. But he’d always known she loved him.
“I know,” he said, giving her a watery smile. “And maybe it’s time I went down into the big city and maybe found something to do.”
She took a breath and rubbed her palm under her eyes. “After graduation,” she said huskily. “I… you know. Have a present for you.”
He knew. She’d been saving up for a truck—it was one of the reasons she was on the laptop, looking up free cross-stitch patterns. She didn’t want to spend money on the ones she could buy at the store.
“I can’t wait,” he said. From somewhere—somewhere near the bottom of his toes—he pulled a reassuring smile. God. His mom deserved more. More than an empty house. More than empty promises from a drunk with a mean temper. More than to send her only family off into the world with a used truck she’d get cheated on at Frank Gilmore’s brother’s dealership.
More than a cocksucker for a son who was leaving her alone so he didn’t have to give head to a guy he’d trusted with his dick but not much more.
A MONTH later, after graduation, he managed to find a job at a construction firm that was willing to train him up, provided he had some basic skills. At the end of August, he loaded his clothes, his paperback books, and a new pair of work boots into the cab of the fifth-hand Toyota truck his mom had managed to buy him. He’d complained bitterly to Keith—who was speaking to him like they were friends now that Vern was blowing him without question—about how Keith’s uncle was screwing his mom over on the car payments. Three days later, Desmond Gilmore had shown up during their regular hay-baling “break” with an unpleasant gleam in his eye.
The fucker didn’t wash his cock, and his come tasted like he drank goat piss for breakfast, but at least Vern wasn’t leaving his mom with a shit-ton of debt as he went. He had a construction job lined up, and with any luck, he’d never have to see another dick up close and personal. Or a penis neither.
He’d told Jessica he was looking for a way to make money for them.
God help him, he’d hinted at marriage.
“You think you can get a job down there?” she asked, mouth slightly parted, pale blue eyes alight. “Like, maybe get us an apartment and everything?”
For a moment Vern was caught by her, by her big eyes, by her innocence. No, she wasn’t a virgin, but she believed in happy ever after. She didn’t believe in boys giving blowjobs behind the barn, and she didn’t believe it wasn’t cheating if it was another boy.
But you were getting something you weren’t getting from her. Something you wanted.
He didn’t know how to answer that voice, so he buried it down where that strange tenderness for Keith had gone to die and smiled.
“Sure, babe—we’ll have to see. I mean, I’ve got a job, but I don’t know if it’s going to be all wine and roses.”
She squealed like he’d just given her a marriage proposal that included a trip to New York as the honeymoon and threw herself into his arms. He held her for a moment and then kissed her, like she wanted him to.
They had sex then, in his bedroom, before his mom got home from her job. He was careful about cleanup after, throwing away the condom and washing the sheets, becaus
e he was trying to be respectful of his mom’s feelings.
And because he didn’t want it—the kiss, the sex, the lie—to be any closer to his skin than it had to be.
The day he left, Keith and Carla came to see him off, and Keith laughed and joked with him like he had all the time they’d been bailing hay when they hadn’t been sucking each other’s cocks. Vern waited for something—some sign, some breath, a lowering of eyes, anything—that said he meant more to Keith than just a mouth on his privates.
At the end, when he was hugging everyone, Keith said, “You’d better be ready to suck me double when you visit” into the shell of his ear, and Vern pulled back as though stung. He turned to Jessica and gave her a long, wet lip-lock, the kind of thing she’d probably been dreaming about from him since they’d started kissing but he just could never bring himself to give her—until now.
She melted into his arms, and he pecked her on the cheek and then turned to his mom.
“I’ll be back in a month,” he said softly. “I promise. I’ll call when I can.”
She nodded. “You sure you have the address of the flophouse?” she asked, voice quavering. Apparently a bunch of guys who worked for the company all stayed in a trailer. The guy hadn’t sugarcoated it—a bunch of guys sleeping on cots with a shower—but then, what did Vern really need if he wasn’t moving there for good?
At least that’s what he’d told them.
Because he didn’t want to run away.
Because he felt like enough of a coward already.
“Yeah, Mom,” he said quietly. “I got it.”
She smiled at him, her eyes—hazel like his—troubled, and nodded after cupping his cheek. “Take care of yourself in the big city,” she said, her mouth quirking because they both knew Sacramento could be a lot bigger.
But he also knew it wasn’t Dogpatch either.
“I promise, Mama,” he said, drawing out his fake-Southern drawl. “I won’t let those big-city slickers corrupt your little baby boy.”
She smiled and patted his cheek. “You just might be wicked enough to beat them all,” she said affectionately. “I look forward to seeing you try.”
And that was it.
He got into the truck and drove down to Sacramento. Every mile he put behind him as he wound through the mountain roads to the foothills was a load of stone off his shoulders.
No more Keith Gilmore.
No more sucking guys off when they wouldn’t give him the time of day.
No more queer shit, period. He was done with all that, because he had a girlfriend, and he was going to try to do right by her.
He really was.
THREE WEEKS later, he drove a nail through his thumb.
“Fuck,” he said dully, staring at it as the blood welled out.
The guy next to him turned around and threw up, but Vern could hardly pull his head out of the haze of exhaustion that enveloped him. The “flophouse” the company provided was seriously a bunch of guys on mattresses on the floor of a trailer—with no air-conditioning and windows that barely cracked. It was early September in Sacramento during a heat wave. That thing was like a convection oven, and the only guys getting any sleep were the three who could fit on the roof without it buckling. Vern had taken twenty dollars of his savings to buy himself a cheap sleeping bag—on sale—so he could at least stretch out in the bed of his truck. He slept a little better there, but not much, because he was sleeping with only a layer of his clothes between him and the hard bed of the truck, and his body hurt more every damned day.
“Dammit, Roberts!” Collins, the supervisor, yelled from across the site. “Stop playing around there!”
Vern blinked hard and caught the nail in the claw end of the hammer, yanking it out before his brain could even register what he was doing.
He stared at his thumb, complete with brand-new hole, and thought stupidly that he could probably push a stud through it like a piercing, when the pain penetrated the fog of exhaustion and he collapsed sideways, letting out a slow-boiling wail that felt like it would cripple his stomach, his balls, and all the other things he was screaming from.
Then God was really merciful to him, because he passed out.
HE WOKE up in the foreman’s trailer while someone bandaged his left thumb and someone else shoved a pen into his hand.
He ignored the pain because he had to and asked, “What in the fuck am I signing?”
“An affidavit that says you got your last check,” Collins said flatly, his pale blue eyes and sunburned face impassive and disgusted.
“Where’s my last check?” he mumbled.
“Right here.” Collins shoved it at him, and Vern grimaced. He’d gotten the first one, for a week’s work, the week before. This was for two weeks—and it was a lot, compared to what he made baling hay, but he’d seen prices down here in the city, and it might buy him parking for a month, with some gas thrown in.
“You’re firing me?” His brain felt like it was expanding and shrinking in his skull. “How’s that right?”
“This is your second time getting hurt,” Collins muttered, pointing to the bandage on Vern’s thigh. He hadn’t seen the brackets screwed onto the ends of the lumber in the pile, and he’d misjudged where to turn. He’d ended up with a puncture in his thigh the shape of a blunt, short blade.
“Yeah. It’s hot. We’re not getting much sleep,” he defended.
“Rest of the guys don’t bitch.” Collins smiled meanly. The rest of the guys were illegal immigrants working to send money home to their families. Even if they felt like risking deportation, they spoke very little English and weren’t aware that they were supposed to be protected, immigrant or not.
“They’re afraid you’ll turn them in,” Vern said. “Which sucks.”
Collins glared at him as he held his hand poised over the affidavit. “Sign the fucking paper,” he snarled.
But Vern was ready for this—he hadn’t sucked Frank Gilmore’s brother’s dick without a contract either. “Give me the check,” he snarled back.
Collins shoved it off the edge of the desk, making Vern pick it up with his good hand. Once he got it back, he folded it in half and tucked it in the front pocket of his jeans.
He stood up then, half turning to make sure he had a clear way out to the door, because he didn’t trust Collins not to pay guys to beat him up and take his money as he left.
“I’ll come back and sign the paper when it’s deposited,” he said decisively.
“You’ll what?” Collins yelled.
“You heard me.” Vern stood his ground. “Look—I’m not signing shit until I get this thing to the bank. I’ll come back to collect my tools.”
Collins shook his head. “You leave now, don’t bother coming back.”
“Then I’ll bring my tools with me,” Vern said decisively. “I don’t trust you, and I need the fucking tools.”
“You got your money, you little prick.” Collins reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a gun. The guy next to Vern—Vasquez, who had been putting the bandage on as Vern tried to pull his brains back into his ears—put both hands over his head and backed up so fast he upended his folding chair.
“I do,” Vern said, hoping this worked. “Look, you can’t shoot me. My mom knows where I work, she knows I got hurt, and I told her about this little operation here. You shoot me, she sends the cops here. Let me get my tools, and let me get the fuck out of this hellhole, and you and me are done. I’m gonna find someplace legit.”
Collins lowered the gun and spat. “You go ahead and try, you dumbass cocksucker. I’ll make sure no outfit in the state’ll pick you up. Not a greenhorn like you. No certification, no training—what in the fuck did you expect for eleven bucks an hour?”
Vern’s thumb throbbed viciously. “A boss who wasn’t a scum boil on a rotting snake’s ass,” he replied, just loopy enough with pain to say something that awesome. “You have a lousy fucking day, you hear?”
He backed out of the room then, s
paring a thought but not a look for poor Vasquez, who had tried to be a decent guy. He backed down the stairs and turned to run through the site, going to the house in the project he’d been working on when he’d nailed his thumb.
To his surprise, his tools were all gathered in their chest, and it sat on the edge of the foundation. He looked around miserably at his coworkers, who mostly had spoken to each other but not to him because they didn’t speak the same language, and they were all too tired to try.
“Uh, thanks,” he said to the listening air around him. He looked up and caught Gomez’s eye and smiled faintly through the pain. Gomez was a young guy, Vern’s age, who had a really sweet round face and the beginnings of a mustache.
“De nada,” he said with a sad little smile.
Vern got slammed in the gut with a protective streak he didn’t know he had. “You can come with me?” he asked, wondering if these words at least would translate.
“No,” Gomez said, shaking his head. “Mama… Mama needs money.” He grimaced again and gazed at Vern with the same sort of look Vern had seen in Keith’s eyes—but, oh God, with the tenderness Keith had always lacked.
Oh. Well, hell. Those nights in his truck, and….
You could have cheated on your girlfriend and taken advantage of a guy without power too, you bastard!
But it wouldn’t have been like that, would it?
“Take care,” he said softly. “Gomez, just… don’t let this guy beat you down.”
Gomez nodded and shrugged, turning back to his job.
THE FIRST place Vern went was the Y for a shower and a chance to wash at least one load of clothes. The next place he went was a coffee shop. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then McDonald’s. And Carl’s Jr. And Round Table. And Jamba Juice.
Most of them told him he had to apply online—but he’d left the computer with his mom, and his phone wouldn’t update enough to fill out the app, so he’d suckered an actual pen-and-ink application out of the day managers and at least put his name on a piece of paper that said he wanted a fucking job.
