All the Young Men

by Ruth Coker Burks

  Billy began to get furious at even Paul, impatient that he worked all the time and wasn’t home with him. He didn’t think Paul was fooling around or anything like that. He knew he was doing any job that would pay him. “Paul won’t come home from work,” he said.

  I winced at the idea of Billy calling around to all the places Paul found work, looking for him.

  “Billy, he’s busy.”

  “He works too much,” he said. “I need you to come over.”

  I knew he had at least two people with him. I had people to see.

  “Billy, I can’t,” I said.

  “No, I really need you,” he said.

  I thought that was code for a trip to Little Rock. “Okay,” I said. When I got to his door, he let me in, and sure enough, he had his hands behind his back. He was smoking, a cigarette in the corner of his lips.

  He said in a singsong, mischievous voice: “I’ve got something for you.”

  “What do you have for me, Billy?” I asked, tired. I didn’t feel like driving my best friend to Little Rock so he could spend the night in lockdown.

  “It’s something special.”

  “Well, what is it, Billy?”

  He whipped out a can of lighter fluid from his behind his back and doused me with it. I screamed as he threw the lit cigarette at me.

  I jumped back, and the cigarette hit me at an angle. It fell to the ground, missing a streak of lighter fluid on the floor. The two men who were with him jumped on him and held him back.

  I stared at him, frightened. “I can’t believe you did this to me,” I stammered. “You know, you know, we’ve got to go to Little Rock.”

  Billy had a glimmer of recognition of what he’d just done. He turned around and put his hands behind his back. I tied his hands and left him with the guys for a minute.

  I changed my clothes there, borrowing one of his T-shirts. In the bathroom I rinsed my face, using soap to try to get rid of the lighter fluid. It was no use. The scent of it still filled the air in the car as we drove to Little Rock. Even with the windows down, I could smell it the whole way. We both could.

  It was Halloween, a few days before the 1992 presidential election, and Hot Springs had Clinton fever. Allison and I were getting ready to go to Paul and Billy’s for a small party and were already in our costumes. I was in a Little Bo Peep outfit, and she was a sheep. But first we had to show a Northerner around. He came down in a shiny suit, wanting to open up an art gallery, and it was clear he was looking to make money on the Clinton name. I’d started selling real estate here and there, so we drove him around and showed him spaces. I knew we looked crazy, but at least he would know what he was in for if he came to Hot Springs.

  Three nights later, Allison and I watched Bill Clinton get elected on TV. We wrote a note of congratulations to President-Elect Clinton, keeping him updated on AIDS in his true hometown. They called him “the man from Hope,” but he was all Hot Springs. While campaigning, he certainly talked about AIDS. “I want to increase federal funding for research, prevention, and treatment,” he said. I knew that states were seeing an increase in need by thirty percent but were dealing with twenty percent cuts to federal funding. I was desperate for someone to do something on a real, national level to help people. We were all running out of time.

  I couldn’t tell if the rate of people getting symptoms was going up in Hot Springs, or if people just weren’t hiding now that Billy had shown them it didn’t mean having to leave town in secret. The morning after the election, I went to see Jerry, who was an Our House regular. He had so little money, it was like he even owed God. But it was the hospital that wanted the money. I’d gone spare-changing to get him AZT, but there had been a treatment he needed, and it cost something like two hundred dollars, which might as well have been a million to him.

  Twyman, the owner of Our House, had set up an AIDS fund from fundraisers. I went to him to ask if he could give some money to Jerry.

  “He’s down here every night,” said Twyman. “He can afford his own goddamn medicine.”

  “It doesn’t cost anything to come here,” I said. “He doesn’t go to the shows.” Maybe he just drank water. Twyman of all people should have known that this wasn’t just a bar. It was a home, a community center, and a church. But I was afraid to contradict him and be banned. Twyman was a vengeful person, and he would make sure of it. When I told Paul that Twyman had said no, he wasn’t surprised.

  “I asked Twyman for money when Billy and I needed help.”

  “Why didn’t you ask m—”

  He cut me off. “You’ve done enough. And you know how I don’t ask anybody for help. We had that fund set up, and I thought, Well, you know, do what you gotta do. And I asked him. It was three hundred dollars I needed for that month, to finish paying bills.”

  Twyman told Paul he needed to ask his lover at the time, David. “I said to myself, After all these shows and all the stuff I’ve done for you, I’ve probably raised all the money that’s in that fund.” Then Twyman called Paul back. “He said, ‘Well, we talked about it and, yes, we’ll give you the money, but you’ll need to repay it,’” Paul remembered. “I said ‘No, thank you. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.’”

  And now Jerry was in the hospital, dying. He could move a little but was beyond talking. I knew he could hear me, though, and when I talked I could see him relax. There was less fear in his eyes. I spent the day reading the Reader’s Digest to him. We had a raft capsize at the Crystal Rapid of the Grand Canyon; worked to save elephants from ivory poachers in Zambia; and kept losing and finding a seafaring dog named Santos, whose owner sounded like he would prefer the dog stay lost. I read it until there were no more words to read. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Jerry.” He gave the slightest nod, and I kissed his forehead.

  When I picked up Allison at school the next day, I told her we needed to go see Jerry. “He’s real bad, so we’re gonna sit with him,” I said. When we walked in, his head was turned to the window.

  “Jerry,” I said.

  He didn’t move.

  “Honey, I think he’s dead,” I said. “You might want to stay out here.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  I went in and confirmed Jerry was gone. I had to see to his body, give him dignity. I turned to Allison. “He might make a noise when I lay him back,” I said.

  “I’m outta here,” she said. She went and took a seat in the waiting area.

  A nurse came in. “When did he die?” she said. “I kept checking on him. Please tell me you were in here when he died.”

  I lied and said I was. I could just tell she couldn’t handle it. She shook her head quickly and blinked several times. “Okay.”

  “Thank you for looking after Jerry,” I said. I wet a washcloth and asked if she would like one.

  “Yes,” she said. She was new, and I wondered how many patients had died on her. She was the same age I was when I first started. We remained quiet, washing him one last time.

  Jerry’s family wanted to do a funeral at Caruth Funeral Home, which surprised me, but I welcomed it. Jerry was very popular at Our House, so I invited everyone. Suzann, the traffic cop who also ran the flower shop in town, was really fond of Jerry and offered to donate a casket spray. Allison and I went over, bringing some pastries. We watched her put it together, taking flowers from here and there, creating this gorgeous huge spectacle of color and life. Yellow button and blue chrysanthemums, snapdragons of every color, pansies, white and pink roses, gladioli—it was a piece of art.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I said.

  “Casket sprays are usually the responsibility of close family,” said Suzann. “And we were all his family.”

  She delivered the casket spray to Caruth’s, but something happened to the flowers before the service. The head of every single flower was drooping, the leaves browning, as if someone had poured
poison on them. Suzann gasped when she saw it. I know if the service wasn’t about to start, she would have run to the shop and brought something else.

  We and the Our House crowd sat in the back, taking up a third of the pews. More and more of Jerry’s family came in, and it made me feel better. It was getting so crowded, and I kept thinking how much I’d misjudged his family. I had thought he was so alone in life.

  Jerry’s brother got up to do the eulogy. He was angry. He pointed to the casket, then opened the palm of his outstretched hand. “This,” he said.

  There was a pause. “This is what happens. This is the homosexual lifestyle.”

  It hit us like a slap, but the family seated before us nodded in unison. This wasn’t a eulogy. It was a hate rally. “Jesus Christ gave my brother the greatest gift. Life. And this is what he did with it. If you sin like Jerry, you end up like him.”

  I wish I had said something. Later, we all had things we wished we’d said. But we didn’t. None of us wanted to get whipped. Jerry—their brother, son, cousin—was a stranger to them, and our love for him was a threat. They were just looking for an excuse to hurt us. Poison us, just like those flowers.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Allison and I both had the worst flu. She’d gotten it at school, and hers was at least on the way out the door, but mine was still heavy in my chest and sinuses. I hadn’t been able to see any of my guys for two days, because if this had me in bed, it could kill them. Around three in the afternoon, I’d finally gotten to sleep when the phone rang. I worried it was an emergency.

  It was Billy.

  “I did something really ba-ad.” He stretched out “bad” in a singsong, playful way.

  I tried to sit up. “What is it, Billy?”

  “I killed Paul.”

  “You did?” Now I sat up. “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “Why? How?”

  “I stabbed him,” he said, no remorse or sense in his voice. “Over and over and over . . . Stabbed him to death.”

  “Billy, stay where you are.”

  There was no answer. “Billy.” I could hear him singing to himself, the sound getting fainter as he walked away from the phone, leaving it off the hook.

  I hung up and called 911, telling them to send an ambulance and police to Billy and Paul’s house on Oak Cliff. Out of caution, I told them that someone there was HIV positive. As I got dressed, I called Mother Superior, their roommate upstairs, but there was no answer.

  I told Allison that Billy said he’d done something to Paul, and we needed to go over there right away.

  “Is he serious?” she asked.

  “I’m fifty-fifty on that one,” I said more to myself than her. Billy was so frail, I just couldn’t imagine him being able to hurt a big guy like Paul. But if he surprised him . . .

  It was only mid-November, but I put the car’s heat on full blast because I had chills from the flu—or fear. When I pulled up, I saw the cops were on the front porch, just standing there. “Allison, you stay in this car.” I’d pulled all the blankets off her bed to keep her warm and did a fast tuck around her.

  “I’m a friend,” I yelled to the cops. “The one who called.”

  They stepped aside like I should let myself in.

  “Well, did you knock?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone answered,” said the one with a mustache.

  “He tried to spray us,” said the other guy.

  “Spray you?”

  “He said that everyone who comes in has to be sprayed,” said mustache cop.

  “Oh God, that’s hand sanitizer,” I said. “He has AIDS, so it’s just a rule they have. Everyone has to spray their hands because he’s immunocompr—. Listen, can you just go in?”

  Both shook their heads, no. I put up both hands. “I have to go in there to find my friend dead in there? Probably blood everywhere.”

  They shrugged. “Y’all are the biggest wimps I have ever seen in my life.” I banged on the door. “Billy! It’s Ruthie.”

  He swung open the door. I looked at him in his blue bathrobe and pajamas. There was no blood on him. I looked at his socks to see if there was blood. None. None on his fingernails either.

  “I told them they needed the spray,” he said.

  I held out my hands for him to spray them. “Billy, where’s Paul?” I called out his name. “Paul?”

  There was no answer.

  I pushed past Billy to walk into the house, my eyes darting everywhere. I didn’t see any blood. I kept looking back. I could see Billy walking toward me. He’d left the front door wide open. The cops just stared, fear in their eyes.

  “Pa-ul,” I kept calling. “Pa-ul.” The bedroom door was closed.

  I opened it, afraid of what I would see.

  Paul was in bed. Snoring. I turned on the light and said his name firmly.

  He woke up with a start and sat up, fast, completely confused.

  I asked him, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “What . . . what are you doing here?”

  “Well, Billy called me and told me he stabbed you to death.”

  “Oh gosh,” he said.

  “I felt like I should check.”

  “No, I’m just getting a nap between work.”

  I turned to see Billy smiling. He clapped his hands together. “Fooled you!”

  “Billy, don’t ever do that again,” I said. “I’m very sick, and I don’t want you to get it.”

  I waved to Allison as I walked past the cops. Her face was pressed to the car window, and I could see her big eyes relax into a face that conveyed she knew all along that I would be fine. I wondered if it was real. I was fifty-fifty on that one too.

  “False alarm,” I said to the cops. “Sorry to put you through the trouble of doing absolutely nothing.”

  I got in the car. “It’s fine,” I said. “Billy was making up stories.” I turned the ignition. “Never a dull moment,” I said.

  “Nope,” she answered.

  I invited Mitch to spend Thanksgiving with us, saying it would be nice if he brought his mother too. He was still Mr. Saturday Night, but I liked him enough that I had made a rule with all my guys that I was out of pocket from four o’clock on Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning. Those were the only hours I would be unavailable.

  Mitch made it easy to stick to that. He employed my guys and went with me to the drag shows every two weeks. But he was always a plus-one, never a partner. If someone who he employed got too sick to work or died, he didn’t show any sadness. It was the loss of a good worker, but predictable. “Well, you knew that was going to happen,” he said once, when I was gutted to lose someone.

  He called me Thanksgiving morning to say they weren’t coming. I had already cooked more than enough for four people. I’d even set the table.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we can’t make it,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, in a way that said it was not okay. But Mitch was so literal he thought it was. I hung up the phone and told Allison that Mitch wasn’t coming after all. Maybe it was just too domestic for him. Too much like a real relationship.

  The table now looked silly with its fine linen tablecloth, inherited from my grandmother. I’d ironed it to make it perfect. I’d set out two candlesticks, orange and black, to look festive. I planned on bringing the leftovers around to my guys tonight and tomorrow, but there was something about four place settings that makes you want to fill them. I thought about who was well enough to come over and would be willing to on short notice. Bonnie would know she was a replacement and would resent it, so she was out. I didn’t want to intrude on Billy and Paul, because Paul took holidays seriously, and I knew he would end up hosting us.

  I decided to go to the rooming house to get Angel and Carlos, the tr
ee planters. Antonio, who lived with them, was in the hospital with pneumonia, so it would just be them. I’d purchased a Spanish dictionary, so when I went over I was able to ask them if they wanted to come over to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us. I stumbled through “La cena de Thanksgiving,” but they were in. We all drove back to the house to find our cat FooFoo lying in the middle of the table like a turkey. He was luxuriating in a slash of sunlight through the window.

  I didn’t let them know I’d been stood up for Thanksgiving, but this was somehow better anyway, sharing this most American of meals with two men who probably missed the meals they had with their families in Mexico. I got out my little translation book to say a prayer. I stumbled, and Carlos helped me.

  “Gracias por todo,” he said. Thank you for everything.

  “That covers it,” I said. We ate and ate, and Angel sang to me and Allison, there and on the entire way back to the rooming house.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Monday after Thanksgiving was Billy’s twenty-fourth birthday. He was having a party at Our House that night, but he had Allison over that afternoon so they could have time together. They picked her up at school, and I quietly let myself in to find Billy sitting up on the couch, two blankets lightly draped around him like he was a sultan. Paul sat next to Billy, holding his hand. Allison was sitting on the floor, doing her math homework on the coffee table. I stood there just a minute before saying hello and took a picture in my mind. These were the three people I loved most in the whole wide world. My family.