by J. D. Walker
Purple Daze
By J.D. Walker
Published by JMS Books LLC
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Copyright 2017 J.D. Walker
ISBN 9781634864602
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
Purple Daze
By J.D. Walker
Age 13
When I met Beebub Beaumont on the day my dad and I moved to town, I’d just come out of a tiny grocery store, change in one hand, and two plastic bags with sandwich stuff in the other. I remember it had been a ridiculously hot summer’s day, and my thin T-shirt had been sticking to my bony chest in sweat, since the air-conditioning was on the fritz in the truck and it was just plain sweltering everywhere.
My dad had remained in the vehicle, checking the map to make sure he knew how to get us to our new home. He’d sent me into the store to get some food to last a day or two while we got settled.
As I walked toward the vehicle, I heard some shouts and looked up, just in time to see about six boys push a kid twice their size into the street, and he almost got hit by a car. They laughed and ran off.
My dad leapt out of the truck and rushed over. I followed, setting the bags on the ground next to him and dropping to my knees. The boy, maybe my age or younger, had bruises on his face and a split lip. Still, he was unlike anything I’d ever seen, something that hit me in the stomach so hard, I lost my breath.
Those eyes, such a deep rich chocolate, broadcasted shame and despair. His hair was a riot of shoulder-length light-brown curls that, though dirty and oily, framed his strong face with its too-big nose, making him look like a fallen angel of some sort. I wanted to run my fingers through—
“Gabe!” my father yelled.
I quickly came back to the present. “Yeah, dad,” I replied, trying not to blush.
“Go get my bag from the truck, son.” He was a doctor.
“Yes, sir.”
I did as he asked, then walked to where my father had helped the kid to the sidewalk. People were milling around, whispering and pointing, but no one lifted a finger to help. I found that odd. And despicable.
While he checked over the boy, Dad asked if anyone knew him, or where he lived.
“That’s Beebub Beaumont,” a woman volunteered. “His momma died some years back. Sheriff took him in, though Lord knows why she even bothers. That boy is trouble walking. Look at the size of him. Unnatural.” The judgmental tone in her voice seemed to be echoed with agreement by everyone around her.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” my dad snapped, and that was one of the many reasons I loved him. He took shit from no one, especially when it came to taking care of the sick. “Where can I find the sheriff?”
Before anyone could respond, I heard a rumbling in the crowd and looked up to see the sheriff herself had arrived.
She was a short, stocky woman, a mixture of stern and pretty in her facial features. There was concern and love in her eyes. She kneeled next to Beebub.
“I’m here, love,” she murmured, voice husky as she brushed hair from his forehead and cradled his head in her lap.
“I’m sorry, Marlene,” he whispered, and I saw a tear fall as he hugged her waist. I wanted to do something for him, maybe start by punching everyone within a half-mile radius.
“Everything will be alright, you’ll see.” She sighed and focused on my dad. “Thank you for taking care of Beebub. Few people around here would raise a finger to come to his aid. As though any one of them could cast the first stone.” The glare she aimed at the crowd had most of them looking ashamed, though a few seemed to hold onto their “principles” by a thread. Slowly, they wandered away.
Dad and Marlene helped Beebub to his feet. “I can walk,” the teenager muttered, and they observed as he made his way to the sheriff’s truck that waited by the curb, lights flashing.
“Raphael St. James,” my dad said, introducing himself. And if he seemed to hold the sheriff’s hand a little longer than was appropriate, no one said anything. He caught himself, though, and cleared his throat. “My son, Gabriel.”
“Gabe, ma’am,” I added, shaking her hand as well. Her grip was firm and confident, rough callouses not unpleasant. She reminded me of my late mother who’d been a welder. Her hands had felt the same.
“Marlene Aberdine,” she replied, tucking a strand of blond hair behind an ear and adjusting her hat. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wait, are you the new doctor at the hospital?”
My father smiled. “That’s me.”
She grinned. “Well, I, for one, am real glad you’re here. You’ll probably experience a lot of anti-city-slicker nonsense for a few weeks. People around here don’t take quickly to change, but I was on the board doing the search for a replacement, and was adamant we find someone competent, no matter where he or she came from. You were by far the best we found. You’ll be a huge improvement over the man we had until he was released from his position. He was an idiot with a scalpel.” The way she wrinkled her nose made us both laugh, and I left my dad to chat her up while I wandered over to Beebub.
He was leaning against the passenger door, nibbling on his nails, which I now noticed were a dark purple and chipped in places. His T-shirt and shorts were lighter shades of the same, including the sneakers, which had white laces and trim. It seemed he liked purple. A lot. The word “cute” came to mind.
I settled beside him and remained quiet. I didn’t know what to say anyway. I knew what it was like to be different. My dad had decided to move away from the city because of how much I was hassled in school, by the kids on the street in our neighborhood…he thought that being out in the boonies would be better for me. But after what I’d just witnessed, I wasn’t so sure.
“Never seen you ‘round here before,” Beebub mumbled after a while. His accent was decidedly southern, compared to the Midwestern tones I was used to hearing. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He seemed fidgety.
“My dad and I just got into town. He’s the new doctor at Emmanuel Grace. Name’s Gabe, by the way. I’m thirteen. You the same age as me?”
He nodded and went quiet again. It didn’t bother me. We remained like that, not a word between us, until the sheriff arrived.
“I invited you and your dad over for dinner, Gabe,” Marlene said, running a hand over Beebub’s hair. He was a head taller than her. I watched as she unlocked the passenger door, leaving Beebub to hop inside and shut it, then crank down the window.
“Turns out, you’ll be living a quarter mile down the road,” she continued. “We’re easy to find. The name is on the mailbox, anyway, and the house is bright purple, courtesy of this youngster here.�
� She snickered when Beebub rolled his eyes.
I grinned. “Thanks for the invitation, ma’am. It would have been peanut butter sandwiches tonight for us. With Snickers bars for dessert.”
“It’s Marlene, or Sheriff Marlene. And I’m happy to do it. Beebub cooks, too. He has to, because he seems to grow inches every month, and I can barely keep up with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” She laughed and patted my shoulder before walking to the other side of the truck. “See you around seven.”
I waved as she drove away, and saw Beebub turn his head to look at me. The tiny wave he gave me seemed like a good start to a friendship.
* * * *
Age 18
“Beebub! Hurry up!” I yelled out the window, honking my horn for good measure. I was driving my dad’s truck, which I kept idling in front of the sheriff’s house. The front door was open, so I knew the idiot could hear me. It took forty-five minutes to drive to the nearest cinema, and the movie would start in an hour.
“Hold your horses,” I heard him shout back, and glanced out the passenger side window, almost choking at the clothes he wore. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, though I should have been used to my best friend’s dramatic flair by now.
“You expect me to be seen with you in public, dressed like that?” I asked as he sat in the truck and put on his seatbelt.
“You’ve survived this long,” he replied, and from the corner of my eye I caught a smirk as we took off down the road, gravel spraying behind us.
“I don’t know if my eyesight will ever recover. Where did you find this getup anyway?” He wore snug purple leather pants that laced up the sides, and a tight, pale purple poet’s blouse that stretched across a ridiculously firm chest. It all affected me in the best and worst ways possible. Dear God.
“The sheriff helped.”
I should have known. Marlene liked to rub people’s noses in Beebub’s idiosyncrasies, and was his enabler, on many an occasion. My dad argued with her about it a lot, but it was half-hearted at best. He loved her, no ring on her finger required to prove his absolute devotion. And he adored that she handcuffed him to the bed, something I found out by mistake late one night when I stumbled sleepily into the wrong room and paid for it. Still was. There wasn’t enough steel wool in the world for that.
“You and Marlene. Dad will flip his shit, then kiss her stupid. Whatever.” My father knew Marlene wanted her charge to be himself, and damn everyone else. But he worried. He wanted to the world to be a safe place for his “kids,” as he called us. To wrap us in bubble wrap and keep the mean people away.
Beebub found a station playing classic rock, and Jimi Hendrix was wailing away on his six-string. My best friend played air guitar all the way to town, and I sang along with the radio.
The stares we garnered as we found our seats in the back of the theater weren’t unusual. To hear “freak” or “faggot” or “pansy” wasn’t an unknown. But the threat of a stay in a cell overnight with Marlene growling at us wasn’t how we wanted the evening to end, so we behaved. For now.
Sheriff Marlene had told me years ago that Beebub and his momma were originally from Louisiana, and she had been very religious. She’d moved here to marry the town drunk who’d gotten her pregnant, and after she’d been left high and dry, while nine months pregnant, she’d gone into labor and named her one and only child Lucifer Beelzebub Beaumont in his father’s memory. That had explained a lot about my friend’s behavior.
We had clicked from the moment we met, Beebub and I, had stood up for each other in school against the bullies, and somehow, we’d made it out okay, both of us with the highest grades, with Beebub, the valedictorian. He was the attention-getter, and I preferred to stay in the background until he dragged me out, kicking and screaming.
Wherever he went, I could be found not too far behind. He and I had both been band geeks—percussion and woodwinds, respectively—and openly gay. Sure, there were others, but no one wanted to be associated with our antics, and that was fine with me. It made us one of a kind.
Beebub was always willing to pick a fight, and naturally I had to join in, to have his back. Most people didn’t mess with him, though, since he’d gotten even bigger in size by the time he graduated from high school. One look now and it sent the cowards running.
I was still scrawny, but I was tall, like my dad, topping six feet, which was still shorter than Beebub by six inches. I had my dad’s gray eyes and light-brown skin from my mom, with tight black curls in an afro that I’d let grow out for years until I decided to trim it back a bit.
The odd couple, that was what we were. I loved it. I loved him. And there would be no other.
* * * *
College-bound
I sat next to Beebub on an old tree stump on Marlene’s property. It was after eleven at night, and the stars were out, the moon full and bright above us. It was stiflingly hot, not even the hint of a breeze, but I didn’t care, because it was the last time I’d see Beebub before he went off to Harvard, and I hadn’t prepared myself for it.
“You gonna forget me?” I asked softly, pulling up the grass at my feet, blade by blade. I sounded whiny even to my own ears.
“Not possible, Gabby,” he replied, using his nickname for me.
I looked up, his white tank-top seeming to grip every muscle in his upper body, and swallowed as I glanced away. He was so beautiful, it hurt.
“It’s possible. You’ll be meeting new, shiny people who’ll want to climb all over you, and you won’t even think twice about me while you pursue your dreams of becoming an architect.” I’d known it would happen sometime, but now that it was here, losing Beebub to another state and maybe a lover made me desperately unhappy.
“You will always be my first, Gabby,” he whispered, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, wishing for the moon.
“Fumbling behind the bleachers after graduation doesn’t really count. There was never any penetration. We were experimenting, and not that successfully.” I remembered wanting to touch him so badly, I’d come inside my underwear in seconds.
“Of course, it counts.” He leaned in and kissed me softly. I loved his lips, how they tasted, how they fit against mine, and I tried not to cry. “I’ll write you every week, and we’ll see each other on vacations and weekends.”
It was a nice thought, but I wouldn’t hold him to it. Or at least, I shouldn’t. Beebub would have so many new experiences, he likely wouldn’t think twice about a tiny hick town in the Midwest where his only true friend was the other odd man out.
“I’ll miss you,” I murmured, and put my arms around him, head on his shoulders as we sat together and watched night fade into day.
* * * *
Age 25
The entire town attended dad’s funeral. Marlene had been front and center, beside me. Despite the cool reception he’d received when he began working at the hospital all those years ago, the locals had grown to love and respect Raphael St. James, and his death was a huge blow, especially to me and Marlene. He had been my rock. And now, he was gone.
When Beebub had stopped writing after his first year away, I was disappointed and angry, but tried to understand. I’d known it would happen, but had secretly wished it wouldn’t. He’d probably found bigger and better things out there in the real world, far removed from a small-town mentality, and could I blame him? Still, it rankled.
And then, my dad found out he had stage four bone cancer.
As nice as it would have been to have my best friend there to lean on, I had to deal with life without him, and Marlene and I did our best. I left school—I’d been commuting an hour each way to college—and took care of Dad, despite his protests. I found a job at the local music store to help with the finances, and keep my sanity.
By the time Dad died, I was the assistant manager, and while it hadn’t been my life’s dream, I wasn’t interested in going back to school for a music degree. That life was too far removed from my current reality, and it just didn’t matter anymore.
Marlene gave me updates occasionally about Beebub’s successes and what he was doing, though I’d stopped asking years ago. Apparently, he was interning at a Boston architectural firm enamored with his brilliance and potential, and he had a boyfriend—a guy he’d met during his last year in graduate school. Since Marlene knew my feelings for Beebub, she didn’t dwell on his relationship too much, thankfully. I did that all on my own.
As for my love life, no one else ever held my attention for longer than a quickie at a club somewhere. Even the locals of my persuasion knew not to push for anything further than a few hours of my company because someone else held my heart. Even if it made me look like the sappy “loser” kids my age called me back in the day.
So, of course, when Lucifer Beelzebub Beaumont turned up in town for a visit in the middle of summer a week after my twenty-fifth birthday, city-slicker boyfriend in tow, I had to face the reality of my feelings. And I was pissed to hell and back.
* * * *
I was putting some vinyl on the shelves when I heard a bit of commotion on the other side of the store. I wiped sweat from my forehead and wondered, “What now?” The air conditioner had been on the fritz for the last two days, and it meant I kept the door open. I carefully set aside the records and headed toward the front.
When I got there, I froze in my tracks next to a classic rock display at the sight of Beebub, resplendent in a deep purple suit, dark enough to almost be black, and a white shirt and lavender tie. His light-brown curly hair was cut in an expensive-looking style, his brown eyes as vibrant as ever.
He looked good. Great. Edible. Like he had the world in his hands and knew it. His brash and in-your-face behavior seemed to have mellowed into the confident man before me, though I thought that might also include arrogance. Was I projecting?
His companion was a man about half his size, with freckled cheeks, green eyes, pixie-cut hair, and a smile like apple pie and cinnamon. He clung to Beebub as if to let go would cause instant death, worshipful eyes trained on his boyfriend’s face unless he was smugly smiling at the “oohing” and “aahing” crowd. People were gathered around the couple, including some from the street who had wandered in to see what the fuss was about. Nosy.
