Everybody knew everybody else, and soon enough they knew us as well, that we were from south of there, and that the two of us—co-workers and friends—were headed for Abilene for a banking conference that would start on Monday. That was the story Kevin glibly told. Being known in a place like Springrose was unavoidable, and familiar, and a big reason why I had always been so careful—so very, very careful—in conducting my high-school-teacher life.
“No different from Gunning,” I said quietly when Kevin turned back to his drink and me. “Everybody’s in everybody else’s business.”
“Or Marathon,” he said, “though I never lived there as an adult. There’s nothing like a small town, is there?”
I drank from my second Jack. “Not for me there isn’t. The good, the bad, and the ugly. You ready to be going soon? Dinner awaits, right?”
“That’s right. But first, a little something I wanted you to hear. You’ll like this.”
He slid off the stool and wandered over to the jukebox to punch in a selection. A man started singing a song I wasn’t familiar with. But when Kevin came back he said, “Rufus Wainwright,” and I nearly choked on my swallow. Wainwright had to be the only gay singer listed, though of course nobody in Springrose would know that.
The music hadn’t come to an end yet when the door opened behind us and I heard, “Who owns that fancy blue Silverado outside?”
Any comfort I’d managed to feel dropped to the floor. Kevin and I exchanged quick looks, and then he swiveled on the stool and slid to his feet. I did the same thing right after him.
“That’s mine,” Kevin said. “What’s wrong, you want me to move it?”
“Your windshield’s busted,” the stranger said. He was somebody’s grandfather, with a bushy white moustache and a gray suit jacket on over jeans. He gestured over his shoulder. “Just saw it happen. Some eighteen-wheeler cut through the lot from the gas station, and a rock came flyin’ out from under his tires. Hit your truck square on.”
“Damn,” Kevin swore. “I guess he’s long gone?”
“Not sure he knew it’d happened.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
I was already putting money on the bar for our drinks. I drained the glass and said, “Come on, let’s go see the damage. Maybe it isn’t that bad.”
“It is,” the grandfather said as we passed him going out.
He was right. Maybe there’d been a weakness in the windshield already, because there was incredible damage from the golf-ball-sized rock that was sitting in the driver’s seat along with a small cascade of loose glass. A neat but definite three-inch hole gaped in front of the driver, cracks ran crazily everywhere else, and small cubes of safety-glass were strewn here and there from the impact. The truck just wasn’t drivable for anything but the shortest distance, and for sure not on the highway.
Kevin actually kicked the driver’s side front tire. “Fuck! Hell and damnation! Who would’ve thought?”
I stood there, wanting to do the same, feeling like a frustrated kid who’d been told Christmas wasn’t coming tomorrow—tonight—after all. I didn’t care about the condition of the truck except as it was supposed to bring me my one night out. In the past sixteen years, only one night out with a man I knew and liked and lusted after, and I couldn’t have it? My long-enforced habits of control and caution bent and then broke: I picked up a silvery cube of glass from where it rested on the hood, turned on my heel, and threw it straight at a bedraggled tree. Seeing it hit and then bounce down to the ground gave me no satisfaction at all. “Hell,” I said, and I meant it.
“I can’t believe this. Can you believe this bad luck? How could this happen?”
“Chance. Coincidence.”
“Fuck coincidence. I never should have stopped here.”
“You couldn’t know this would happen.”
“We’re caught between Abilene and home, aren’t we? It’s not like we can rent a car in a place like this and keep going.”
“There won’t be anything like that here.”
Kevin banged his fist on the top of the truck. “Shit!” he shouted. And then, a lot lower, looking over at me across the hood, he said, “I had plans. You and me….”
“Nothing compared to my plans.”
“If we don’t get to—”
“Shut up,” I said roughly. “Don’t make it worse.”
We peered into the cab from either side. Kevin keyed open the doors. He started to brush some of the glass off onto the ground, but a voice calling behind us stopped him.
“Wait a second! Don’t do that.”
It was Ernie, still wearing a white towel around his waist. “What a mess,” he said, coming up and surveying the damage. “You two won’t be going anywhere tonight. It’s a good thing your conference don’t start ’til Monday.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re lucky,” I said.
He gave me an odd look and then said, “Even so, it’s a bad thing. You don’t often see the glass shatter that much. How you gonna get this fixed?”
Kevin ran his fingertips through the sparse growth of hair on his head. “I guess I’ll call up my insurance and—”
“What insurance you have? Might be I could help you out.”
“State Farm, why?”
He nodded, looking pleased. “My brother-in-law does work for them, fixing windshields and a bunch of other stuff. I’d appreciate it if you could give him the business. Him and my sister are hard up.”
“Could he get it done soon? I’m not sure what the insurance will be asking for, but—I’d pay him extra to get it done soon.”
“Let’s give him a call and see what Avery says, but I don’t know that he could get to it tonight. Maybe tomorrow, though. We got a motel here, so you folks’ll have a place to stay. We won’t let you sleep out here on the ground. Only thing is, it’s Indians who own it. That okay with you?”
“We don’t mind,” Kevin said quickly.
“I bet we can rustle up a ride to get you over there. It’s on the other side of town.”
I kicked at a rock on the ground to hide my thoughts. If Ernie had known we were men who loved men—Tom Smith whose body cried out to lay with Kevin Bannerman—he would have spit on us, turned his back on us, and probably would have lobbed a rock at the truck himself. Small-town values led to pinched hearts where sexual differences were involved. But Ernie didn’t know about us, and so his essential humanity emerged. It was like I’d told Kevin about the people who lived in Gunning: if your car had a flat tire, or if your kid got sick, or if your house burned down, there’d be plenty of folks stopping by with offers to help. Small town values led to big hearts too.
“That’s real nice of you,” Kevin told Ernie. Then he looked over toward me. “Okay with you?”
We didn’t have any other choice, and at least there was a glimmer of recovering something. A motel, Ernie had said. I nodded. “Okay.”
We went back inside, and I got the chance to see Kevin argue with the insurance people over his cell phone, nicely, insistently, stating his case with clarity. We took our same seats at the bar, and while Kevin talked I was asked three times in succession what had happened, and then I was commiserated with all around. The manager of the local Purina Feed Store told me he was a member of the town council and would take up the issue of the trucks cutting through the lot. I thanked him, though I doubted we’d ever be back in Springrose. That I’d ever be back. Kevin’s eyes smiled when I turned to him, and then he explained to the third person at State Farm that it wasn’t a small crack in his windshield, no, not at all.
I asked Ernie for another round for both of us without checking with Kevin if he wanted a drink. I knew I’d appreciate one, so I guessed he would too. He took his with a grateful nod and stayed on the line.
“Ain’t modern life a bitch,” Jack the feed-store manager told me.
I was developing a real appreciation for Jack Daniels. The rest of the fellows at the bar were too. “It sure is.”
“Your friend
there will prob’ly have to fill out a hundred forms.”
“I bet his insurance rates go up,” one of the other men put in, “just cause of this bitty thing that wasn’t his fault at all.”
“And look at how your friend’s bein’ transferred from one dumb person to another,” Jack said. “Everybody givin’ him a hard time. It’s a shame.”
I looked at the friend in question, who was contemplating the bar counter. The corner of Kevin’s mouth quirked up; he was listening to us, I guessed, while he was on hold. He did look good and was undoubtedly up to the task of negotiating with the insurance people. Hopefully he was up to every task he’d be called on to perform this evening, because we weren’t going to be stuck here all night. There would be an ending to this bizarre sojourn at the Heritage House Tavern, and then we’d find that motel. My gaze got stuck on Kevin’s arm, on the way he held his cell to his ear, and at the hair on his forearm. I liked hair on my sex partners. Not too much, not bears, but men like Kevin. I sort of got off on that, on the unmistakable evidence of masculinity on chests, arms, and legs. Quickly, I took a breath and turned back to Jack the Purina man. I had to be careful not to look at Kevin too long, or with too much more than friendly interest. But Jack didn’t notice anything unusual. He started a long story about the last time he’d been rear-ended, and I had to carefully hide my amused reaction.
After State Farm gave their okay, Ernie provided Avery’s phone number. Kevin made the case to Ernie’s sister for a weekend repair by her husband, who was out with his dogs in the field and couldn’t immediately be reached. So we had to wait longer, because Avery would be back any minute, Beth said. Ernie asked if we wanted another drink.
“I think this one will do me,” I said. I had plans for later on. For once I didn’t think I’d need the booze to let go, and I sure didn’t want it to impede what would happen. I wanted to be hot and hard for Kevin.
“No, no more for me, either,” Kevin chimed in. “Hey, the music’s stopped. Tom, what do you want to listen to?”
I had the good sense to go for a George Strait album, which seemed to please the guys drinking with us so much that when the four pizzas they’d ordered from the place down the road arrived, they insisted that we join them in finishing them off.
Finally Avery got back to us, and we got the truck repair scheduled. He would replace the windshield, with the insurance company’s blessing, the next morning before eleven, he guaranteed.
“Eleven,” Kevin said into the phone, but his eyes were on me. “That’s perfect. It’ll give me the chance to sleep in.”
The entire population of the Heritage House Tavern listened to his every word until the last detail was finally arranged. A satisfied, self-congratulatory stir went through the bar when Kevin flipped his phone closed and said, “I guess we’re set.”
Grandfather Ray, who’d announced our bad news, was going in the direction of the only motel in town, the Motel 6, and offered to drive us there. Kevin put money on the bar for our drinks, and I got to my feet, feeling the effects of the booze only a little and mildly shocked that Kevin and I were escaping with good wishes, no suspicions, and the most important part of our evening still beckoning. I nodded my thanks to everybody there, and then I followed Ray outside.
The western sky showed the faintest hints of pink and violet left over from the sun that had set a while ago. A single tall lamppost stood guard over the bar’s parking lot. The glass that was still scattered on the Silverado glittered in the artificial light. Ray’s truck was off to the side, a battered GMC that used to be red and now glowed a strange pink. I didn’t mention it; the fellow was doing us a big favor. He got in on his side, shoved a pile of papers onto the floor, and leaned further over to open the passenger side door from inside. “Hop in.”
“You sit in the middle,” I told Kevin.
“I’ll flip you for it,” he said, and he pulled a quarter from his pocket.
“No way, I’ve got longer legs than you do. Come on, get in.”
Ray leaned over again toward us and said, “I don’t bite and I ain’t queer, so you don’t gotta worry ’bout sitting next to me.”
Kevin climbed aboard, but before I could follow, he said, “Wait a minute. We’re going to need our stuff for tonight.”
“Stuff?”
“You know,” he said urgently, “our stuff. In our bags from the truck for overnight.”
Oh, right. Lube and rubbers that I knew I had packed and he probably had too. “I’ll go get them,” I said, not feeling like the sharpest pencil in the box at the moment.
Kevin handed over the keys and I retrieved a gym bag for each of us, mine blue and Kevin’s red, picking off a stray piece of glass first. I transferred them to the GMC, climbed into the still-open door, and said, “Let’s go.” I watched the Heritage House Tavern retreat in the side mirror, not sorry to see it go but knowing we’d been lucky to receive the support we’d gotten there. We’d played the roles of friends—well, we really were friends, weren’t we?—and were escaping with a genuinely nice good old boy guiding us to a safe haven for the night, where I fully planned to perform unspeakable acts with Kevin that would have made poor Ray’s eyes bug out if he’d known. Probably give him a heart attack.
I glanced down at how close Kevin’s thigh was to mine. Not touching. But close. Then up to his face, to find him looking at me with I dare you amusement dancing in his eyes. He shifted, and I felt the press of his knee against mine, there without any doubt.
“Sorry,” he said out loud, and then he shifted away again. I could have killed him for taking the chance, but the danger did nothing to subdue the prickling in my cock.
It didn’t take five minutes to cut through town. Ray talked some, and Kevin answered, and I concentrated on keeping my body away from Kevin’s, when if I’d moved an inch to my left he would have warmed my perpetually cold arm. Highway 382 looped around Springrose like it was taking the town in its loving embrace, the way preachers told people Jesus embraced them, so the Motel 6 was on the north side of town but still on the road to Abilene. We saw its neon sign blocks away; there wasn’t much else lighting up the deserted streets. When we pulled up, there was a white banner hanging from the side of the second story that said Free Breakfast Free Wireless Internet.
“Here we go,” Ray said as he shifted into park. “The only game in town.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. I leaned across Kevin with my arm extended, offering my hand sincerely. Small town folks: I’d learned to appreciate them over the years, so long as you didn’t let them know the truth. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. You take care now. Maybe you’ll find something good on HBO tonight.”
“Maybe,” Kevin said, taking his turn with a handshake. “Thanks. Good night.”
We got out in front of the office doors as the rumble of the ancient engine faded down the street. There were only a few vehicles in the lot, but the place didn’t look like a dive. There were even chrysanthemums in pots by the entrance, and the small spots of grass were neatly mowed. In the sudden silence I could hear a bird chirping a nighttime song.
Kevin scratched over his ear. “Well. This hasn’t turned out the way I thought it would.”
“That’s for sure.”
He cocked an eye at me. “Are you still game?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I answered fervently.
His slow smile was laden with promises, his voice huskier than usual. “Let’s go salvage the evening.”
When we opened the door to the front office, the unmistakable odor of onions cooking stopped me in my tracks. And the sound of a baby crying. And a TV blaring. And young voices shouting. Behind me, Kevin said, “What the….”
Ernie had said the motel was owned by Indians. A little boy chased a little girl down the long hallway of sleeping rooms to our right, each of them in bare feet and screaming at the top of their lungs. I realized Ernie’d meant Indians as from India, and that his caution might not have been t
he prejudice I’d instantly assumed, but maybe came from the fact that the family seemed to live in the motel and certainly cooked there. I craned my neck as we got up to the desk to see the room directly behind it, door wide open, and there was a family sitting around a kitchen table, eating a late dinner. A mother, a father, a baby in a high chair, two older children, an old man, and an old woman, all of them ignoring us.
“You’re kidding,” Kevin murmured.
It wasn’t off-putting; it was funny. Could the day get any more ridiculous? Even I had to see the humor in it. I’d been cautiously surfing through the hours as the day took a sharp left turn, then a right, then a left, keeping fierce hold of the possibility that maybe, just maybe Kevin and I could have sex after all. In anger and frustration, I might have slapped my hand on the bell innocently sitting on the desk, but there were rooms with beds within sight, and even the aroma of frying onions and green peppers wasn’t going to stop us from closing ourselves inside one of them. Besides, Kevin was doing enough chuckling for both of us.
“Shhh.”
He pressed all ten fingertips to his forehead, looking down to hide his face. “Oh, this is too much.”
“Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.”
The younger man got up from the table and came up to us, asking “Can I help you?” in impeccable English as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
We registered for two rooms, both of them on the second floor, numbers 202 and 204. The kids who were playing tag zoomed through the lobby at the finely calculated right time and the boy asked, “Take your suitcase upstairs?”
“Of course,” Kevin said, and he handed over the accoutrements for our sex acts to a seven-year-old. I gave mine to the little girl, who was probably no older than four, but it was too heavy for her, so we compromised by each taking a handle and walking up the steps side-by-side.
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 87
