All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  And beside him, even more chillingly, is Wally’s mother’s name, her death date just waiting to be carved.

  They head back to Miss Aletha’s. The swamps of Dogtown are particularly rank this evening, foul and tart. But Miss Aletha is cooking something good in the kitchen, some kind of gingerbread cake, and that takes care of that. Wally sinks down deep in an overstuffed armchair, transfixed by the flames in Missy’s fireplace.

  “So when are we gonna do it?” Dee asks, coming around at his side.

  “Do what?”

  “Get naked. Your body parts and mine.”

  Wally laughs. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “Fuck off. You think treating me like a kid is funny. But you’re just making yourself look like an idiot.”

  The boy flops down onto the couch, flicking the TV on with the remote control, settling on some stupid reality thing. Wally hates those shows. Dumb-ass twentysomethings doing whatever it takes for their fifteen minutes and a fistful of spending money. Not to mention using up all the airtime and taking jobs away from real actors.

  He sneaks a peek at Dee on the couch. He’s stretching, showing off his torso again, all those sinewy young muscles, no body fat. Wally looks away. Had it been this way for Zandy too? Had he looked at Wally with the same mix of repulsion and attraction that Wally feels for Dee?

  “I’m going up to my room,” he announces. Dee just grunts in reply.

  Wally heads upstairs. He undresses, lies down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The first time Zandy fucked him, he remembers, he cried. There was so much pain—pain as he had never known, before or since. Not even his father’s blows had hurt so bad. Zandy encircled him around the waist and lifted Wally up off his feet, holding him in front of him, pushing his dick deep up inside him, causing the boy to squirm, to writhe, to cry like a little baby.

  He was fourteen.

  And then afterward, they built a fire, in an open section of the old factory, where the roof had caved in. There was a pool of oily black water beside them, where Zandy rinsed off the Vaseline from his hands. Wally sat in front of the fire, feeling his sphincter still contracting, feeling as if he needed to shit, to piss, to pass out. And Zandy came up behind him, wrapped his big arms around the frail, shaking boy, holding him tight, kissing his neck.

  In that moment, Wally loved him more than anyone else in the whole world.

  Alexander Reefy was not a handsome man. His nose was too long and his eyes too small. And his hands, of course, were rough and gnarled, hit too many times with a hammer, scarred from too many cuts with a saw. But they were a man’s hands, nothing so pristine as Wally’s father’s hands, hands of a naval officer, soft and manicured. Zandy was a bear, a big old lumberjack, whose scent was strong, whose embrace was solid. Wally can still smell him, taste him sometimes, when he closes his eyes, imagining his face pressed against Zandy’s chest, falling asleep on his furry, silken pectorals, listening to his heart. Zandy would caress his hair, whispering in his ear: “It’s gonna be okay, babe. Trust me. It’s gonna be okay.”

  Wally never knew exactly how old Zandy was. Not quite thirty when they started, Wally thinks. Younger than he is now. The thought staggers. To Wally, Zandy had seemed much, much older than he was, but he also seemed ageless, like a genie or an elf out of Tolkien. And what did Wally care how old Zandy was anyway? Or even what he looked like? Zandy was a man—a man with a penis and a chest like a bear, a man who recognized the urgency within him, and affirmed it.

  Zandy taught Wally the things his father should have: why he had to shower more frequently now that he was sprouting hair, how to wash his dick to keep it clean, how to lather up and shave the pesky little whiskers that showed up on his chin. He taught Wally that the feelings he’d been having were no cause for concern. “It’s a natural thing,” he said, “and don’t you ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  It was twenty years ago. No, even more than that. Twenty-one, twenty-two … a time before The Real World, before Gay-Straight Alliances, before Ellen on Newsweek, before there were any Wills or Graces. What Zandy was suggesting to Wally was a radical thing, a subversive act. “It’s perfectly natural, your gayness,” he told Wally. “It’s the way God made you.”

  Of course, there was more that Zandy taught: how to give pleasure and how to receive it, the best way to handle a man’s dick, the best way to show your partner what turned you on.

  But Wally never sucked Zandy’s dick. He offered his own, and gave him his ass, but never could he bring himself to place his lips around the older man’s penis. Wally was fascinated by it, and often couldn’t take his eyes from it: but to put it in his mouth seemed vile somehow—dirty—and Wally just could never do it. Zandy didn’t insist. He never pressured Wally to do anything that he didn’t want to do.

  Except, of course, he had.

  “You had no consent to give,” the judge said to Wally. “You didn’t know what consent even meant.”

  He had said nothing then. The time for spilling out the truth had ended the moment he signed his name to the complaint and handed it back to Sergeant Garafolo.

  “Hey.”

  Wally jumps. A voice in his ear.

  He sits up in bed. Had he fallen asleep? Was he dreaming?

  “Hey,” the voice in the dark whispers again. “It’s just me.”

  A shiver of moonlight reveals Dee in bed beside him.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Make love to me,” the boy says, his voice urgent. “Make love to me, Wally.”

  The kid’s naked. Wally can see that now, as the sheet falls away, the moonlight exposing Dee’s arms, his smooth, hollow chest.

  “What, are you crazy? Get out of here.”

  A fragrance of soap reaches Wally’s nostrils. The boy leans forward, tries to kiss Wally on the lips. Wally pushes him back.

  Dee grimaces. “Am I that bad looking?”

  “You’re sixteen.”

  “Yeah. Age of consent in this state.”

  “I don’t care. Get out of here. Find a boy your own age to get your rocks off with.”

  “Why? Are you suddenly against older guys and younger guys doing it?”

  Wally is getting furious. “Yes! Yes, I am!”

  The boy sneers. “So you are saying what you and Zandy did was wrong.”

  Wally doesn’t reply.

  Dee pounces, gathering force. “You don’t think it was wrong. If you did, you wouldn’t be going back to apologize to him. It was you who did the wrong thing by sending him to jail!”

  Wally feels as if he might explode. “Get out of my bed.”

  Dee slides out, his long boydick swinging between his legs. Wally notices a tattoo of a rose on his abdomen.

  “Well, at least I’ve learned one thing,” the boy says.

  Wally sighs. “What’s that?”

  “You do find me attractive.”

  Wally’s suddenly aware that his cock is spearheading his white briefs. He whips the sheet back up to cover himself.

  Dee grins. “’Night, Wally,” he says, and shuts the door behind him.

  But he can’t sleep. Wally throws the sheet aside, gets up, pulls on a pair of sweats. He heads downstairs to find Miss Aletha sitting at the kitchen table.

  “That foster kid of yours …” he says.

  She smiles. “Have some cake. You went to bed before I could slice you a piece.” It’s gingerbread and banana. Wally takes a bite. It’s good. Everything she makes is good.

  “I told you Donald was smitten,” Missy says.

  “Well, I just had to kick him out of my bed.”

  “Such willpower.”

  “Why does everyone assume it’s such an act of will not to sleep with a teenager? He’s skinny. He’s got acne on his chin. His hair looks like a Halloween pumpkin.”

  Miss Aletha laughs. “You were just like him.”

  Wally grins in response. “Yeah, I suppose I did turn into a real derelict there for a while, didn’t I? At least I didn’t
dye my hair.”

  “You were always a good boy, Wally.”

  “Please. You sound like my mother.”

  “Is she as confused as you feared?”

  “More. She asked me to take her to see Uncle Axel.”

  “Not that monster you would stay with when you were little?”

  “The very same. She wants to say good-bye to him. He’s dying.”

  Miss Aletha clears off his empty plate from the table and sets it in the sink.

  Wally sighs. “I still can’t believe I came back here, that I’m dealing with bullshit like bringing dirt for her rock garden and taking her to see Uncle Axel.”

  Missy comes up behind him and strokes his hair. “Sometimes we have to go back. Sometimes the past just doesn’t stay where you want it to.”

  He closes his eyes and enjoys the feel of her hand in his hair. “My father,” he says.

  “What about your father?”

  “He’s the one I should be seeing. He’s the one. He’s what really fucked me up.”

  Miss Aletha sits back down beside him.

  “Something bad happened to my father,” Wally says. “I thought of that again when I saw his stone in the cemetery and his naval rank wasn’t inscribed there. I never knew what happened. I don’t think my mother did, either. One day he just came home for good, never to return to his ship, and he was miserable.”

  “He couldn’t have been a very happy man to do the things he did.”

  “It must have been money-related. He must have been embezzling or something like that. They don’t care about sex scandals in the military. Unless it’s a gay scandal, of course.” He laughs. “Hey, maybe good old Dad was taking it up the butt out there on the ship. After all, they were gone months at a time. It would explain why he was so fixated on his faggot son.”

  “I suspect your father’s unhappiness went back a long time before that …”

  “All I know is he was miserable after it happened. Not that he was such a prince before that, but after he came home for good, he was nasty. He drank a lot. Bullied my mother. Hit me whenever he felt like it.”

  He lets go of her hand and gets to his feet, walking over to the window. He looks out at the dark silhouette of the abandoned factory next door, standing forlorn in the swamp.

  “You know, my grandfather was in the navy, too. I was supposed to follow. I imagine my father felt a lot of pressure when he was a kid and so he then put pressure on me. And so it goes.”

  Missy has risen, too, walking up behind him. She slips her arms around his waist and rests her cheek against his back.

  “My parents had expectations of me, too,” she tells him. “They expected me to be a boy. At least you made good on that much.”

  Wally manages a smile. “Guess everyone is pressured one way or another.”

  “It’s how we respond that counts. Bertrand used to say, ‘I yam what I yam, and whatever I’m meant to be, that’s how I’ll turnip.’ Get it? Yam? Turnip?”

  “That Bertrand had a way with words,” Wally says, smiling harder now.

  “He sure did. Now his father was a great showman. He was with Barnum and Bailey for years. He expected Bertrand would follow, but poor Bertrand could never even get a rabbit out of a hat, though he was always trying. Remember all his magic tricks?”

  “I remember.”

  “So we all have pressures. We all have expectations to either live up to or say ‘no thanks’ to.” She sighs. “Like your mother. She must have had her own pressures, too.”

  Wally shrugs. “If she did, I don’t know about them. All I really know about my mother’s life is that she went off to the city to become a singer before she married my father, but she failed.”

  “She must carry around a great deal of disappointment then.”

  “Yeah. She must.” He laughs bitterly. “Both of them, disappointed and miserable, and the result is me.” He thinks of Dee. “Ah, the legacy we inherit.”

  “Maybe that’s why you came back,” Miss Aletha whispers. “To put an end to that legacy.”

  Wally turns around to look at her.

  “You can do it. I know you can. You can put an end to it if you want to.”

  Their eyes hold.

  “Make the choice, Wally. When does the cycle end? When does it finally end?”

  And suddenly he’s crying. She takes him in her arms, as she’s done so many times, stroking his hair, shedding not one tear for herself, though both of them know she has just as much right to cry.

  10

  THE PURSE

  Last night, Luz’s grandfather died. Her father is blaming Luz, smashing empty whiskey bottles around the apartment and making Jorge cry. So their one-night sleepover at Regina’s has quickly turned into two nights, and maybe more.

  Maybe forever, Regina thinks.

  “Did you think my son was handsome, Luz, when he came in after my doctor’s appointment this afternoon?” she asks.

  The girl looks at her but doesn’t offer her usual smile. “He’s very handsome, Mrs. Day,” Luz says, though Regina thinks there isn’t much enthusiasm in her voice.

  Sitting at the small table in the living room, Regina dithers with a few pieces of her still-unfinished jigsaw of the Taj Mahal. Luz’s uncertainty disturbs her. Walter had asked the girl some questions that Luz hadn’t seemed to like. Oh, how much Regina was hoping that Walter and Luz would become friends. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of them could live here together, happy and gay?

  From the kitchen comes a bolt of energy, a tiny whirlwind spinning through the dining area into the living room, like that character from the cartoons Walter used to watch, the Tasmanian devil. It’s Jorge, his cheeks and fingers covered with peanut butter. He’s laughing about something, one of those invisible little experiences that only he can see or hear. Regina smiles. She enjoys having young people around. Young, happy, vibrant people filling up her house with happy words and big smiles.

  Not the way it was with him. Not like Kyle.

  Regina’s hand pauses as she is about to fit a piece into her puzzle.

  Kyle.

  He’s not buried in the yard.

  The thought had come to Regina when they were all out there with the dirt. He wasn’t there—of course not, because she put his body in the shed. That’s what she did with it. Wrapped him in that old tarp and stuffed him in the shed.

  “Walter,” she had asked, “might I ask you one more favor?”

  He wasn’t listening to her. He was going on about her medications, which ones the doctor had given her, pinning up a list to the corkboard beside the telephone. “You’ve got to remember to take these,” he was saying. “Can you do that, Mother?”

  “I can help her,” Luz had said, coming into the kitchen. “I can help her remember.”

  Walter looked at her. Regina saw the look. It wasn’t a good look. It was dark.

  “How long are you expecting to stay here?” Walter asked the girl.

  She stood her ground beside him, so small, barely coming up to his chin. “Just until I can find a job,” she told Walter.

  “Luz is such a help to me around the house,” Regina offered.

  Walter hadn’t taken his eyes off the girl. “Who were you with at the drugstore the other day, Luz? Who was the guy you were fighting with?”

  Regina had seen her lips purse tightly as Luz kept her eyes locked on Walter. “I wasn’t at the drugstore,” she said.

  “And no word from Kyle?” Walter asked, without missing a beat.

  “None,” Luz replied, also without faltering.

  Of course there had been no word from Kyle. He’s in the shed, surely decomposing by now, starting to rot. He’s in there crumpled beside some moldy bags of Hollytone, a big, dried, bloody gash in the side of his head.

  “Missa Day.”

  Regina blinks, lifting her eyes from her puzzle. Jorge is on the floor, looking through the comic books she had bought for him yesterday. Archie’s Joke Book. Richie Rich. He’s pointing at so
mething in one of them. She has to strain her eyes to see.

  “It’s the Taj Mahal,” she says, smiling. “How very smart you are, Jorge. You’ve recognized it from my puzzle.”

  The boy gives her a wide peanut-butter grin.

  How much like Walter he is, sitting there with his comic books. Walter had prized his comics, inserting each issue into a plastic bag and carefully ordering it into his boxed collection, which he kept downstairs on shelves.

  “Don’t you want your comic books, Walter?” Regina had asked, following her son to the door as he prepared to leave.

  He grunted. “You ought to find a collector who’ll buy them from you, Mother. You could make some money for yourself.”

  “Oh, Walter, I could never do that. They’re yours.”

  His eyes narrowed at her. “She knows where Kyle is,” he said, nodding toward Luz in the living room. “She’s in cahoots with him.”

  “Oh, no, Walter, she doesn’t know. She’s glad he’s gone. He was terrible to her, just terrible.”

  Her son sighed. “Well, I suppose for now it’s good you have someone to help you remember to take your medication. Just be careful, Mother. Keep your eyes open.”

  He turned, his hand on the doorknob.

  “One more favor, Walter?”

  He looked back at her strangely.

  “I was hoping you could board up the shed out back. You know, where we keep the rakes and the lawnmower.”

  “Board it up?”

  Regina eyed him intently. Her heart was pounding a little bit faster. “Yes. Board it up. You don’t need to go inside. Just nail some boards over the door.”

  Walter made a face in confusion. “But why?”

  Regina twirled a button on her blouse. “Well, because, well—there are skunks that come around and get inside …”

  “So just put a lock on the door. You don’t need to board the thing up.”

  “No, I want it boarded. Sealed shut. I’ve taken all the rakes and the mower out already. You can put those in the basement. I want the shed secured so no one is tempted to try to get inside. A child could get trapped in there, Walter. He could die if he got trapped in there!”