Life on Pause

by Erin McLellan

  Todd stared at him for several seconds and then strode off toward the entrance of the grounds.

  “Fucking fabulous,” Rusty said under his breath. Louder, he called, “You’re my ride, Todd. Come on!”

  But Todd didn’t slow down, and Rusty could do nothing but follow.

  Cricket Plague Days was not really what Rusty was expecting. All he knew about it was the outlandish history Niles had told him. The sheer scope of vendors and booths and activities boggled his mind. There were people selling different kinds of produce, from normal stuff, like corn on the cob, to the unusual, like dragon fruit. There was a large area set aside for arts and crafts vendors selling paintings, pottery, baskets, candles, and things made from reclaimed wood, as well as a tasting area for local breweries and vineyards. On the far side of the property, past the farmers market, was a lineup of antique farm equipment.

  And there were crickets everywhere. Not real crickets, necessarily, but people dressed up as crickets or with cricket face paint or with cricket art at their booths. It was kitschy and weird and strangely delightful.

  An unexpected pang hit him in the chest when he realized this would be last chance to attend this festival. By this time next year, he’d be living in Sapulpa, and he’d have no reason to come back and visit. It made him feel ridiculously homesick, which made no sense, but the feeling was so overwhelming he almost stumbled.

  Rusty hadn’t spotted Niles by the time he caught up with Todd, and he was so relieved. He didn’t think he could face Niles, not after their disastrous last encounter. He’d been reflecting a lot on their relationship since then. He needed to give Niles some space to move on, and then he needed to follow suit.

  Todd slowed down right at the end of the produce vendors, which was by the entrance to the concession stands and food trucks. “Let’s at least eat, and then I’ll take you home. I’m sure Niles is too busy to be wandering around the concession stands.”

  Directly to their right was a booth selling candied crickets—yes, real crickets, cooked and covered in cinnamon sugar or pumpkin spice. Rusty was almost hungry enough to contemplate trying a sample, which he decided was a red flag that he needed actual food, not sugarcoated bugs, so he agreed.

  “Food and then we leave.”

  Beside the concession stands, there was an area set up to provide information about issues affecting Native Americans, including a busy booth about running for office. Rusty spotted Victor with his perfect hair and gleaming muscles adding his name to a petition about water protections, and he contemplated ducking behind a crowd of teenagers so he wouldn’t have to face him. But Victor saw them immediately and waved them over.

  They caught up with him right as he reached an informational table for a Two-Spirit club at a liberal arts college in western Oklahoma. The table was covered in coozies and lanyards and pamphlets. Victor hip-checked Todd in greeting, and Todd scowled like all his money had been stolen.

  “Hi, Victor,” Rusty finally said once Victor and Todd finished eye-fucking and eye-murdering each other.

  “Where have you guys been?” Victor asked.

  “Shut up,” Todd snapped and bumped Victor with his elbow. Victor’s face didn’t change at all, but he elbowed back twice as hard.

  “Were you expecting us?” Rusty asked. He did not like that thought at all.

  Victor rolled his eyes. “God, you’re dense.”

  Rusty turned on Todd, ready to ask him what the fuck was going on, but a young woman behind the table interrupted him. “You guys are like the three gay stooges.”

  He glanced at the four college students in the booth. They were all watching the drama with glee in their eyes.

  “I’m bi,” Rusty said.

  “Yes! Bi power!” the woman said. She leaned over the table to give Rusty a fist bump, and he couldn’t help but notice she was exactly the type of woman he was normally most attracted to—tatted, strong, a bit butch. But his mind was so full of Niles, and his anxiety about being here, that she hardly made a blip on his radar.

  “You’re bi?” Victor said. “How did I not know that?”

  “You got a problem with it?” Rusty asked a little too aggressively.

  “No. But my sexual fantasies about you just got a bit wilder.”

  Rusty couldn’t help his horrified laugh, and Todd seemed ready to rip Victor to shreds with nothing but his teeth.

  Fuck this.

  Victor and Todd could play out their aggression with each other, by themselves. Rusty was hungry. He waved to the college kids, and set off in search of something greasy. After buying a pulled-pork sandwich, all slathered in sauce and pickles, he found an empty picnic table and hoped for a few minutes of peace.

  Todd slid in beside him seconds later. He had a cup of coffee and nothing else, which was aggravating. The original plan had been to get food, and now Todd wasn’t even eating. At least Victor, who plopped down across from him, had a cinnamon roll the size of his head.

  “Have you seen Niles?” Victor asked, getting right to the heart of things, like always.

  Todd tensed, and Rusty wanted to snap at him. It had been Todd’s idea to come here, after all.

  “No. Do you know where he is?” Rusty said.

  “Not right this exact second,” Victor said. “He’s doing a demo in about thirty minutes, so I figured I would go to that. This is a really hard day for him.”

  “Why?” Todd asked, his voice gentler than before.

  Victor still shot him a dirty look. “This fall festival was kind of like a reunion for his mom and dad.” His vitriolic gaze moved from Todd to Rusty, and his eyes softened. “Niles is going to have to spend the day explaining how poorly his dad’s doing, all while representing Bushyhead Homestead in an official capacity. It sucks. He’s barely holding it together, in all honesty.”

  “That’s horrible,” Rusty whispered.

  He pushed his food away, his appetite fleeing him, and Todd pulled the sandwich toward himself and dug in. Victor watched the interplay, which admittedly was perhaps overtly familiar, and then narrowed his eyes at Rusty.

  “It’s partly your fault, you know,” Victor said, and Todd nodded. Rusty was definitely getting whiplash. Victor and Todd were ganging up on him now? Together?

  “How is it my fault?” he asked, defensiveness bristling through him. “I hate that his dad is sick, and I get that today is going to be hard because of that. But it’s not exactly my doing.”

  “Nope. But you are one of the reasons he’s barely holding it together,” Victor explained.

  “And he’s the reason you’re barely holding it together,” Todd added.

  “Oh, screw you, Todd,” Rusty snapped, hurt by what he was now seeing was an intervention.

  “Nice. Thanks for that. We’re trying to show you that you’re making a huge mistake, you jerk.” Todd stood up, grabbed the trash from Rusty’s meal, and strode off.

  Which left Rusty with Victor, Niles’s best friend and all-around terrifying person.

  “I’ve made lots of mistakes. You think I don’t know that?” Rusty said.

  “Do you consider moving a mistake?” Victor asked.

  Jackie’s words from the other day echoed through his head. Was it a mistake? Everyone kept asking him that. Maybe they saw something he didn’t.

  “I’m moving to be close to my family.” Rusty repeated the sentence, but it sounded painfully rote.

  Victor narrowed his eyes at Rusty. “Niles doesn’t know you’re here. You’re probably the last thing on his mind.”

  “Oh, that’s great. So why did you guys arrange for this showdown, then?” Rusty dropped his head into his hands.

  “Because we’re both awful meddling friends. Or, in Todd’s case, ex-boyfriend. He’s horrible, for what it’s worth. Todd, I mean. Not Niles. Niles is wonderful. But I can say this for Todd—he doesn’t want to see you heartbroken anymore. And I don’t want to see Niles torn to pieces again and again. He either does it to himself, or you do it to him because
you can’t make up your damn mind. You complain that Niles bailed on you and broke up with you, but guess what, asshole? You fucked him and then rejected him. You’re not an innocent little lamb, Rusty.”

  “I know! Okay? I’m aware.” Rusty didn’t need two interfering jerks to tell him that he’d messed this all up. “How did this happen? You and Todd aren’t exactly friends.”

  “That’s an understatement. I messaged him on Grindr.”

  “Oh, God. Grindr to the rescue.”

  Victor laughed. “That is my life’s motto.”

  “I don’t know how to remedy this, Victor,” Rusty admitted. “I’m tired of hurting him. And I’m tired of him hurting me. Of me hurting myself. Everything is all mixed up in my head. I want him. I do. But I’m honestly not sure getting back together is the best idea.”

  “Hey, I get that.” Victor grabbed Rusty’s hand and dropped his acerbic attitude completely. “You’re making a lot of life decisions right now. I was just hoping that seeing Niles in this element, in his element—you know, wearing a costume, and doing old-timey demos for children, and being a total nerd—might help you see all sides of this choice clearly. And yeah, I want that decision to go a certain way. So does Todd, despite being a jealous loser about it. But ultimately it’s up to you and Niles.”

  Rusty didn’t know what to think, but his hands were shaking and his breath was coming up short. “Well, are you going to take me to this demonstration then?”

  “Of course.” Victor stared at him thoughtfully, his lips curving up into a barely there smile. “Niles is a wonderful person, but he doesn’t always see it in himself, and he deserves someone to champion him, to tell him that he’s worth it. He deserves to know you love him, whether you get back together or not.”

  Victor dragged Rusty through the crowded festival to an open area behind the main Bushyhead Homestead house. Rusty was no longer resisting. Everything about the day had been out of his hands up to that point, and he wanted to take some control. He wanted to see Niles. Maybe seeing him would lend Rusty clarity.

  There were several demo areas set up with hay bales for seating at each one. At the first one they passed, a burly old guy was demonstrating how to make a broom by hand. At another, a young woman was wrapping up a presentation on the Appalachian dulcimer. The only thing that kept Rusty from stopping immediately at that one was Niles.

  Niles was chatting with a small circle of kids, parents, and other adults, and he was in his normal work outfit—wool trousers, leather chaps, Western shirt, suede jacket, bandana around his neck, and a lawman hat.

  Niles was spectacular up there. So often, it seemed as if his homesteader clothes were wearing him, but he was holding himself differently today. Like he didn’t care what anyone else thought.

  “Oh shit,” Rusty said under his breath. Victor grinned at him.

  “He looks good, huh?”

  “He always does.”

  Victor tipped his head back and laughed. “See that’s how I know you have it bad. Because, yes, Niles always looks good. But it is normally despite whatever weird shit he decides to put on his body.”

  “Not today.”

  “No. Not today.”

  Rusty narrowed his eyes at Victor. “Why’d you say he was barely holding it together then?”

  “Just because he’s found some confidence doesn’t mean he’s not hurting. Niles is good at putting up a mask for the rest of the world.” Rusty was about to respond, but Victor cut him off. “Look, there are some seats. Let’s grab them.”

  Niles spotted him as they skirted the back row of hay bales, and his eyes rounded out. Rusty tried to conjure up a smile to put him at ease, but he wasn’t sure it worked. Niles ripped his gaze away from Rusty and continued talking with an older couple on the edge of the demo area.

  Eventually, Niles made his way to the clear area at the front of the hay bales. He smiled at everyone, and Rusty could see him putting on his teacher hat, so to speak. It was like a layer of armor he donned. Rusty did the same thing before beginning a class. He would fix his posture, deepen his voice slightly, and prepare for whatever the teenagers might decide to throw at him.

  And Niles did the same thing. He took a deep breath, pushed his shoulders back, smiled, and introduced himself in his clear, pleasant voice.

  “Good morning, everybody. My name is Niles Longfellow. I’m sure glad you were all able to make it to the local market today. Market days and trade days can certainly be busy. Open markets like this one have been taking place in the area since this was Indian Territory, and the Bison Hills Trade Days, now called the Cricket Plague Days, dates back to about 1909.”

  A teenage docent Rusty hadn’t initially noticed pulled some framed newspaper articles from behind a partition set up on the other side of Niles. She handed them to people on the front row.

  Niles continued, “Caitlyn is passing out newspaper clippings about one of the first Trade Days here in town, so you can get an idea of what it looked like. Traditionally, everybody would travel in from out of town, sometimes several days in advance, with their homemade dairy products, fresh produce, and livestock, and all of the farmers would sell and barter with each other and the townsfolk. It often ended up feeling like a big shindig. There would be games and competitions, big campfires, sometimes there were even dances. As much as market days were an economic necessity, they were also a chance for the community to come together. That is what Cricket Plague Days is now—a chance for the community to get together and celebrate its strange and quirky history. Now I know that there’s some pretty wild stuff out there this morning. What’s the coolest or craziest thing you’ve seen at the festival today?”

  The children on the first row of hay bales responded with excitement. Niles encouraged every child to talk, and listened closely when they did, often inserting historical information when it was appropriate.

  Rusty could have watched that all day.

  Once the kids’ chatter died down, Niles said, “Now today, I’m going to show you one of the ways prairie settlers and Plains Indians made fire from scratch. Doesn’t that sound totally fun and really dangerous?”

  A little cheer went up from some of the kids, and Niles laughed.

  “He’s charming,” Victor said under his breath, like he couldn’t quite believe it. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

  Rusty couldn’t respond. He was too caught up in watching Niles’s eyes spark.

  Niles gave a precursory fire safety lesson, and then said, “Now fire was a necessity for the Native Americans who are indigenous to the area, the Native Americans who were forced to relocate here, and the prairie settlers who came with the land runs. Fire helped us cook our food and it kept our homes warm. And some Native American tribes used—and still use—fire in their spiritual ceremonies.”

  Niles moved to the partition and pulled out his fire materials and a low stool to sit on. He went over each tool and supply, explaining its name and purpose, from the fireboard to the spindle to the tinder made from dried prairie grass to a handful of small twigs. The last thing he laid out in front of him was a pile of buffalo chips, which made all the kids giggle. Niles played to their adolescent humor, and Rusty thought his face was going to hurt tomorrow from smiling so much.

  “You’re all giggling now, but later today there is a buffalo chip throwing competition. Is anyone here going to participate?” Niles asked. He received mostly laughter in response. “How about I give you some insider information? Some tips and tricks on how to win the competition? I’ve heard there are awesome prizes.”

  This finally piqued the kids’ interests, so Niles arranged the buffalo chips in front of his stool.

  “Now, here’s the trick. There will be a big pile of chips, and you get to pick your own chip to toss. Search for a smaller chip that is flat and as perfectly round as possible. Like this one. See how it’s shaped like a small Frisbee?” He held up one of the chips and showed all the kids. “But here is the most important piece of advice. A
re you listening?”

  Niles paused for dramatic effect and several little kids scooted to the edge of their seats. One shouted, “We’re listening!”

  “You want to choose a fresher buffalo chip, if you get what I’m saying,” Niles said with a smile. “One that has a little heft to it. I know, I know. That sounds gross. But the drier the chip, the more likely it will be to break apart in the air, so you want one that is still solidly packed together and fresh but not too fresh.”

  “Where do you even get buffalo chips? Aren’t buffalo, like, super endangered?” Victor asked Rusty as Niles got back to his fire demonstration.

  “Yeah, they are. There’s a protected herd of them nearby, though. I drive by them on the way to my sister’s duplex, but my guess would be they use cow chips for the competition. No shortage of cattle in the area.”

  “This place is freaking crazy,” Victor whispered as they watched Niles roll the spindle between his hands until the friction created a spark that ignited the kindling. Rusty was impressed with how quickly Niles was able to do it, and he couldn’t help but stare at the sweat gathering on Niles’s upper lip and the flex of his biceps through his shirt. “I mean, how do you stand it here?” Victor continued. “Isn’t it stifling? The small town with a buffalo herd and a biker bar and a prairie museum and absolutely horrible radio stations and literally the worst Grindr options I’ve ever seen?”

  Rusty smiled but didn’t move his gaze from Niles. “You get used to it.”

  “And you like it here?” Victor asked.

  “Yeah. I love it here,” Rusty said distractedly.

  “Then why the hell do you want to move?”

  Rusty whipped his head toward Victor, caught out. They eyed each other—Victor grinning and Rusty flustered and confused. He tore his gaze away from Victor in time to see Niles add a couple of buffalo chips to the now healthy fire. It flared up briefly and many of the kids squealed.

  “Well, folks, that is the end of my demonstration. I will be doing a storytime later today about how Cricket Plague Days came to be, if you want to come back at 3 p.m. for a story about apocalyptic preachers, bootleggers, and dance halls. Now does anyone have any questions for me?” Niles asked.