Eventually Channing went home with her mom, leaving only Kevin and a few other stragglers. I talked with Mrs. McDavid about her son the baseball player, and assured her that we would do everything we could to protect his dignity, whatever that meant. She seemed oddly reticent to go, and I began to wonder if there was something else she wasn’t saying: that she was considering withdrawing her son from the play too. But she never said that, just looked over my shoulder a lot as I talked with her, and eventually she said goodbye and went away.
That left George, Kevin, and me. Kevin had stayed. He stood with one hand in his pocket, diffident, uncertain. I looked at him and he looked at me, and it was as if he had been waiting for that from me, a signal of a sort. The smile he produced then transformed him in a way I remembered. I nodded back to him, trying to subdue my reaction. My body remembered him so well.
“Hi,” Kevin said to George, transferring the smile from me to him. “You said you needed a pickup to go shopping today? I’m free, and I’ve got the truck outside. What did you need? Oh, by the way, I’m Channing’s father.”
They shook hands while I watched, and George said all the expected things about his talented daughter. Then he pulled out a typed list from his back pants pocket. “We need paint, brushes, plywood…. Well, everything I’ve put down here.”
Kevin scanned the items and nodded. “Okay. How do I pay for it?”
“We’ve got an account set up with a debit card. Tom will go with you and use that. Okay, Tom?”
I’d promised George I was his for the day, hadn’t I? There wouldn’t be anything unusual about what I was about to do. This was my job.
“Sure,” I managed to say, though I felt as if maybe it was somebody else saying that, somebody braver than me. I’d never even imagined this scene that was taking place. In my wildest dreams, I ran across Kevin again in Houston, and we had hot monkey sex all weekend long… and then parted. Add a few months and repeat. Then repeat again. My uncertain imagination and inexperienced heart had never been able to go beyond that and had surely never contemplated Kevin-in-Gunning.
Kevin flicked a glance at me, then away, then toward me again. “Are you ready to go now?” he asked carefully. “Or do you want to wait? We can do this later.”
Groundhog Day, I guessed. Let’s give this another try. “No, let’s go now.”
Outside, the parking lot held scattered trucks and cars owned by teachers who were in for a few hours over the weekend, like George and I were. As I walked across the striped blacktop with my hands jammed in both my jeans pockets, Kevin strode next to me with equal concentration. Teaching was so much more than a full-time job. It was an avocation, a dedication to a certain life of service and giving, and one that I loved. I’d thrown myself into it, the life, the demanding rhythms of the weeks. There had been no way to merge my sexuality with teaching; I’d accepted that. I’d welcomed it. But maybe that’d been an excuse for hiding.
Kevin was driving a late model blue 2500HD Silverado with an extended cab. I thought of asking what had become of the Camry, but I wasn’t sure that was the way to start our conversation, by reminding both of us of that weekend. As he climbed in on the driver’s side, I hauled myself up into the cab and smoothed my hands flat on my thighs, carefully not resting my left arm along the console because pressure on it like that would always make it ache. We were silent as he turned the ignition, drove to the exit of the school parking lot, and then out onto Gillette Street.
“Do you—”
“How—”
He let out a chuckle after we’d talked over each other. “Me first. I don’t know this town too well. Which way to the Home Depot?”
“Turn left at the corner. You… don’t you live here?” Disappointment settled in my stomach.
“I’m leasing a house over in Kenneton, but I just moved there a couple of months ago. July.”
“Oh.”
He threw me a glance as he turned the truck onto the main drag of Gunning, which cut through town. As I’d noticed before, his actions were neat, economical, giving the impression that he was in complete control of his body, as I wanted to be in control of my life. “I didn’t come here with the intention of stalking you,” Kevin said.
“No?”
“I moved to be closer to Channing. Julianne has been having trouble with her lately, and I wasn’t too crazy about my job in Baton Rouge anyway. First National of Kenneton had an opening, so I took it.”
“I’d wondered if you had Louisiana roots.”
“You did?”
“Yes.” I looked out the side window at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, propping my right elbow against the door. “The way you talk. Your accent’s a mixture. I tried to sort it out.”
“I was born in Marathon, but I’ve lived for long stretches in Arkansas and Louisiana too. But Marathon’s home.”
That little town was one of the most isolated in the state of Texas, far to the south. “That explains why you know Big Bend Park so well.” Marathon was known as the gateway to the park.
“Right.” The light turned red and he braked until we stopped. The truck was a big one, powerful, with a V-8 turbo-diesel engine. Vibration subtly shook my body. I was very aware of how close Kevin and I were, how we existed in this enclosed space, and that we’d had sex. I wasn’t hard, far from it, but conscious of my cock in a way I normally was not. Kevin had sucked it….
Kevin kept his eyesight trained out the windshield, straight ahead. “This is quite a coincidence.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Me either. So… how have things been with you?”
He flashed a grateful smile, and I was glad that I’d given him that opening. “All right. The move was easy, but fitting into work hasn’t been. There’s lots of politics in that bank. Now we’ve got the economic downturn, and even though I’m the most recent hire, I’m pretty high up on the totem pole. There’s some resentment of me going on.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“How about you? How was your summer?”
Filled with thoughts of you. I bet you find that hard to believe of me. I hope you find it hard to believe, that instead I come across to you as a reasonable, mature man. But that’s how my summer was. Is it reasonable to have thought of you, as if I knew we would meet again?
I cleared my throat. “Boring. My summer was boring.”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I haven’t been back to the club. Have you?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“I don’t go there all that often, anyway. Actually, I don’t want to go back at all.” The light turned green, and he pressed on the accelerator.
“Right. You sort of implied that. Before.” I held onto the strap overhead as he accelerated through the intersection.
“I’ve got to admit, I was surprised— Am I going the right way? Keep going along here?”
“Right, it’s about three or four more miles straight north. You won’t be able to miss it. It’s in the middle of our only major shopping center, on the outskirts of town.”
“Okay. I was shocked when I saw you today, but even more so because you’re involved in this play. Rent. It seems that it’s all about us, in a way. I imagine half the rednecks who live around here will think that the Angel character represents all gay men. I’ve never put on a dress in my life.”
“Or Tom Collins,” I said seriously. “I’m a law-abiding citizen. I haven’t hacked into an ATM recently.”
“Does he do that in the play? Sorry, I haven’t read it or seen it.”
“Yeah, at the end. His lover is Angel, the drag queen, and after he dies, Tom hot-wires an ATM and sets it up to spew out money with ‘Angel’ as the password.”
Kevin chuckled. The rich sound of it filled the cab; it rounded over me and settled on my skin. I found myself relaxing in the same way I’d relaxed with him during that long, wonderful night at Brennan’s. Just two guys enjo
ying each other’s company.
“Extra cash like that would sure come in handy,” he said.
More for me than for him, I thought, because it looked like he was doing pretty well for himself. The truck was top of the line and must have cost $40,000 with all the extras it had on it. My little Miata I’d bought used four years ago for $15,995, and I was still paying it off.
“Anyway,” he went on, “knowing how closeted you are, I would have thought you’d be too careful to be involved with Rent.”
I scratched the back of my neck, acting the way we wanted the students to act for the play, trying to look casual. “Normally you’d be right. It’s sort of complicated, though.”
“And I’m surprised you’re with me right now. Talking to me. You made it clear that you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”
I took in a breath. Here was the cautious question he was asking of me. “That… isn’t really true.”
“It’s not?”
“No.”
“No as in you don’t mind working with me if I volunteer for the play, or no as in you wouldn’t mind getting to know me better?”
I turned a little in the seat to see him, though I still clutched the hanging strap. “You said in Houston you wanted to…. Haven’t you met anybody around here yet?”
He gave a short laugh and steered around the beginnings of a pothole. “There isn’t exactly a gay scene in west Texas. At least not one I’ve found.”
“Abilene’s not far,” I pointed out. “There’s a bar there.”
“Let me guess. A bar that you’ve never been to because it’s too close and there’s too much chance of being seen by someone you know.”
He had me figured, but then it wasn’t that difficult to do. It wasn’t like I had enjoyed the hours-long trips to Good Times. The Texas landscape was flat and uninteresting, and there were only so many times a man could listen to his favorite CDs or the endless drivel of talk radio. But those were trips I’d needed to take.
“I’m not interested in Abilene,” Kevin said with a quick shake of his head. “I’m interested in… life. Living normally, with someone I care about. Not being so hard up for sex all the time that I’ll go off with just about anybody.”
“You can’t live like that here,” I said. “You can’t be out; it would be suicide. Professional suicide and social suicide. Your daughter would suffer for it, and everyone else you’re close to would too.”
“I know I can’t be out here. It doesn’t change what I want, though.”
The shopping center appeared, up on a hill to our right. Kevin sent the Silverado toward it and turned the truck into the parking lot. He found a spot in the middle of the crowd of other vehicles already there, pulled in, pulled the parking brake on with a loud crank, and then turned the key in the ignition. The engine quieted right away, and the vibration of its power left too.
Kevin stayed where he was, and so did I. We couldn’t continue this conversation in aisles stocked with two-by-fours and hammers.
Kevin went back to gripping the steering wheel and steadily kept his gaze on me. “You haven’t answered my question.”
I looked down at my fingers and then back at him. “I know.”
“I’d really like to get to know you better.”
At that point, I felt as if I didn’t even know myself, whether I was the person who could answer Kevin the way he wanted to be answered or not. Until I said the words. “I don’t really know how to do this.” That was true enough. “This relationship thing.” I’d never let it happen to me. “I’m not sure it’s possible in this town. We’d have to be so careful.”
Outside I could hear someone shouting, “Wait up!” and the sounds of a Home Depot trundle cart passing behind the truck. A whole world was moving on outside this tiny space that encapsulated us, but I didn’t look away from Kevin’s blue eyes, didn’t allow myself to be diverted from what I was trying to say. “Do you understand?” I said, conscious of a catch in my voice but unable to stop it. “If I’m outed at school, I’m destroyed. I won’t let that happen.”
Kevin nodded. It looked like he tried to smile, but his lips only quivered. “Okay,” he whispered. He reached across the seat and grazed the back of his hand against my thigh.
If life had been fair, or a freely flowing river from thought to feeling to body and back again, right then and there I would have leaned across the center console and taken his mouth, doing what this community that surrounded us considered unspeakable. I could never kiss another man here in public, even in thankfulness, even in a rush of sexless affection because I’d been extended understanding I hadn’t ever expected to receive.
Kevin pulled his hand back. “So, how do we do this?”
I looked out the window for a long while as he waited patiently for me to sort through my thoughts. I wasn’t ashamed of the way I lived, because I did think my decisions showed my own form of strength. I wasn’t a coward, even though there was a form of terror—sharp-edged, new, and throat-clogging—growing in me at the thought of what I was willing to do in order to be with this man. The only gay man living nearby that I knew, not counting Robbie from the play.
A form of strength, a form of terror.
Finally I stirred. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m comfortable with. The situation here is impossible.”
“Maybe things aren’t as bad as you paint them to be.”
“You haven’t lived here,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, the people here are good folks. If your tire blows on the road, you’ll have half a dozen stop to offer to help. But they’re narrow-minded. They’re afraid of change, and they’re afraid of us. Fear turns into persecution and hate. Matthew Shepard could have happened here.”
Kevin spread his hands. “Okay, I defer to your experience. Mrs. Porter wasn’t encouraging. But….”
“Let’s take it slow.”
He nodded, as serious as I was. “That sounds good. Let’s do that. But I want you to know, I’m not in this for a casual fuck. I’m past that.”
“I hear you.”
“So. What’s next?”
“Find some way to…. But I don’t know how to—”
“What do you do?” he interrupted. “Besides teach school, that is.”
“That’s pretty much it,” I admitted. “That and helping with the play, which is going to take up a lot of my time. It’s just going to get worse as we get closer to the performances.”
He didn’t look happy with that, and suddenly I wasn’t either. I was committed to Rent now and couldn’t get out of it, but maybe I could wish that I had the free time it was going to fill. Maybe.
“Do you have any hobbies?” Kevin was asking.
I used to play on an intramural baseball team. I had attended poetry readings in the days before poetry slams got started. I’d been an avid supporter of the local rugby team. I’d gone out and gotten drunk with my friends and thought everything was hilarious.
Years before, in college. Since I’d launched my adult life, far from where anybody knew my younger self, I stayed home and read—my house was filled with bookshelves—or brooded. Occasionally, I went out to a decorous dinner.
“I don’t think—”
“Do you golf, by any chance?” Kevin snapped his fingers like he was abruptly remembering something.
My brother was an avid golfer and dragged me out onto his local course every time I visited. “A little.”
“Even, uh, even with your arm?”
I hitched up my shoulder. My good shoulder. “Yeah, I’m okay for golf.” The therapists had told me it would be excellent exercise for my arm, improve my range of motion, and the first few years afterward I’d dutifully played, and it had helped more than a little. But when I occasionally played with Grant, my arm always ached afterward, and on the course my disability was painfully obvious. Did I want to….
“Then how about joining me tomorrow? If you’re going to have obligations with Rent, we should— Is tomorrow too
soon?”
Yes, tomorrow was too soon, but next week or next month or next year would be too. Postponing the day wouldn’t erase my uneasiness. I wasn’t being paranoid about this situation. Being out and open worked in big cities, maybe, sometimes, but would surely never work here. Would never work with me.
Golf. Nobody would blink to see men together on a course; it actually worked the opposite, that men playing with women would be unusual.
“I have a lousy swing,” I said, stating the obvious.
“I haven’t played since I left Louisiana,” Kevin returned.
“Aren’t we going to burn up the course.”
“Maybe we will,” Kevin said. “Maybe we will. Then we’ve got a date? At the Gunning municipal course. Ten o’clock? Before the churchgoers get out.”
A date. “Sure. Ten o’clock.”
“Okay then, Tom Smith. Thomas Smith.” A wistful smile appeared then on Kevin’s lips. “Want my cell phone number now?”
Late that afternoon Kevin finally left the school, and half an hour later I found that my car was the last one in the parking lot. We’d spent the day sedately working together with George on scenery and costume planning, and Kevin was now an established part of the team. George accepted his help with pleasure, without hesitation, and without questions.
I unlocked the Miata, got in, and pulled on my seat belt, experiencing an emotion totally unlike anything that had ever accompanied me when I’d started one of my weekend journeys to Houston. Kevin was in town.
I drove down Gillette Street. Thomas Smith: equal parts terror and exhilaration.
Chapter 3
Act One
I LIKED what I saw of Kevin on the golf course. Not only the clothes he wore—simple black pants and white golf shirt—or the par he shot on the first hole, but the way he firmly shook my hand when we greeted each other on the practice tee, not holding my eye or my hand too long. And I liked the way he conducted himself as we were paired with two other men by the starter to make a foursome. Especially on the first few holes, I was very, very careful not to look at him too often, not to let my gaze linger on his neat, athletic body as his club swung back over his shoulder and then drove down on the ball, as he finished up high in a way that would have made Tiger Woods proud, the whole stretched line of his body revealed. Kevin Bannerman might not have been the best golfer in the world, but he looked like a million dollars to me.
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 80
