All Over Him

by Ronald L Donaghe

  It was so cold, taking in a breath felt like swallowing shards of ice, and breathing out filled the air with my frozen breath. I shivered violently. I hoped that Lance had stayed in Lordsburg—if he had made it that far—and that he was snuggled into a warm bed.

  * * *

  I awoke to a tickling sensation on the bottom of my foot, coming into consciousness hearing giggling. When I finally popped my eyes open, I saw that Kelsey was bent over me tickling my foot with an icicle. I pulled my foot under me, wincing at how cold it was against my thigh.

  “Time to get up, sleepy head!” Kelsey said. For some reason, she had always enjoyed teasing me, which might have been her way of being less of a stranger. Back in New Mexico, I had only known her as a friend of May’s and when I had taken May to the Snow ranch with her stuff, where she had moved, Kelsey had enjoyed teasing me a little even then.

  But I smiled. “What a way to wake up,” I said, then whispered, “by a lesbian with an icicle!”

  She horse-laughed at that, with a kind of surprised snort. Then she landed a not-so-soft punch to my stomach. “Come on, Willy-Nilly. The way you were laying there with your legs all flopped open, I figured you wouldn’t want to be embarrassed if Trinket and Rita come down.”

  I knew what she meant. Old habit. No underwear under my robe, and I guess I was so tired, I was probably splayed out like a rag doll.

  A little later, I emerged from the shower in the downstairs bathroom in a cloud of steam, feeling refreshed and ready to wait some more, except for my eyes, which felt like they had been scoured with sand. I figured I might have slept for about three hours, until Kelsey had awakened me at seven.

  It was now about eight-thirty, and I was dressed and joined everyone in the kitchen for breakfast. I was delighted to see that May and Kelsey and Hank were the ones doing the cooking. Mama and Ernie were sitting across from each other at one corner of the table. Without them noticing much, I saw that they were kind of intimate, which automatically made me wonder if they had done it. I got rid of that thought as quickly as I thought of it and joined Uncle Sean, Trinket, Rita, and Hanky-Hank at the other end of the table.

  Trinket and the kid were sipping on hot chocolate and both were still in their pajamas. Rita was bathed and dressed, but I saw that she hadn’t yet put on any makeup. And of course, Uncle Sean looked sharp in his pull-over sweater, khakis, and snug roper boots. Then I looked at Hank and saw that Uncle Sean’s flare for dress was rubbing off on him. He was wearing a sweater, as well, but not a pullover. Beneath it he wore a black turtleneck. Black made him look a little slimmer. The same with his black pants and roper boots like Uncle Sean’s.

  As I looked around, I saw that everyone was a little subdued, except for May and Kelsey. They were as lively as cooks on a cattle drive as they flipped pancakes, scrambled eggs, checked the oven for the biscuits, and Hank was helping out with a satisfied smile on his face, I think enjoying all the hubbub May and Kelsey were creating with the creation of the feast. He caught my eye and winked, and I smiled back.

  Almost everything was perfect.

  Except Lance was out there somewhere, possibly even driving on ice in the vastness of the Texas desolation.

  But he didn’t call, and I just gritted my teeth and encircled ‘Lance’ in my pocket, the talisman that I kept with me all the time—especially as the weeks and months had passed and the tether to him had been stretched as far as I would allow it to be.

  By lunch, on this day before Christmas Eve, everyone seemed a little subdued, and in snatches of conversation they were saying the same thing I was thinking: it was treacherous to be out on the road. The ice storm just wouldn’t let up. The day was dull and the landscape was burnished with the gleam of ice. Every once in a while, however, the sun peeked out and shone on the icy world like a spotlight on cold jewels. The icicles I had seen on the eaves of the barn were longer after a night of buildup, as they were on the eaves of the house, and hanging off the vehicles out in the driveway.

  As we all prepared to sit down to eat, I heard the phone ringing and raced to answer it. I hated the fact that everyone could hear my end of the conversation with Lance on the other end. But I plowed ahead, not holding back my feelings.

  “Where are you, honey?”

  His voice sounded so small and far away, and there was a disturbance on the line, which just added to my anxiety.

  “Hit ice in Fort Stockton.”

  “Is that where you are now?”

  “Ran off the road. Cars were piling up.”

  “Where are you, Lance? I can’t hear—”

  His voice was so broken up at the end, I was shouting, then I heard him say good-bye. I still didn’t know where he was calling from, but it had to be at least as far as Fort Stockton. He must have driven ninety-miles an hour to have already hit West Texas, way down south below El Paso on I-10. It wouldn’t do any good for me to scold him for that. But at least he had called, and I hoped he had slept the night before and hadn’t just kept on driving after his first phone call.

  Then I raced up the stairs and checked on the map. West Texas was approximately as desolate and as sparsely populated as the moon, but as long as he stayed on I-10, he would meet truckers, and could pull off and rest at the truck stops. Once he had passed through a little spot off I-10 called Junction, he would be nearing the Highway 290 cutoff. But with the ice-storm, the roads would be slick, going would be slow, and during the day, there might even be slight melting of the ice, which would make driving even more treacherous. I calculated that it was at least another three hundred miles to Dripping Springs, and with icy conditions, no telling how long he would be on the road.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  At Last

  During the afternoon of the twenty-third, the pewter skies began to clear up, and my spirits lifted a little as we waited.

  May, Kelsey, and I took a walk around Mama’s place. Like I said, May was a little thinner than she had been, though she was never one to be lazy. She and I had worked the most on the farm back in Hachita, and she had been a girls’ coach after she graduated from high school. But maybe she and Kelsey put in a lot of work around the ranch, or they ate leaner foods. Who knew? But I thought May looked better than she ever had. Kelsey was always thin, but I’d also call her wiry, as I had thought of May. Although I knew of Kelsey, I had only become truly aware of her when she came to pick up May every day, during that last year of high school. After that, it hadn’t taken me long to figure that May and Kelsey were lesbians. Now they appeared to be a little more at ease about it. They even dressed alike. Because it was cold and the ice still hung off everything in the farmyard, including the hard-packed drive between the house and the barn, May and Kelsey were wearing boots, Levi’s, and sweaters. Kelsey was wearing a cowboy hat, which is what I’d always seen her in. She had grown up on a ranch, after all. May was wearing one too, though hers wasn’t nearly as worn in as Kelsey’s.

  “So what did you think of Ernie?” I asked, since they had spent the night at his house. I figured they would have had a chance to talk about themselves and to hear of his gay brother.

  All around us the ice glinted off the trees, roadway, eaves. The sun was coming out and the shine of the ice hurt my eyes.

  May and Kelsey were actually holding hands. Maybe Kelsey felt freer here than she did in Hachita or Animas. I filed away my impressions of them and just walked along as May thought about my question.

  “If you’re wondering if I like him well enough for Mama to maybe one day marry,” May said, glancing from Kelsey to me. “I don’t know. I want Mama to be happy, Will, but I also don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “But—”

  “He’s a good man, though,” May said, ignoring my interruption. “And if Mama ends up loving him, that’s all that matters.”

  “I think she already does, May. She’s been real quiet about everything concerning Ernie. She just sort of let me discover him one day when we came to visit. But I think they’ve really gr
own to like each other.”

  “I like him just fine,” Kelsey said, though she was addressing May more than me. “I think he made a point of asking us over yesterday to spend the night to show us that he knew about us and it didn’t bother him.”

  “I do too,” May said. “But if Mama does marry him, I hope she doesn’t move over there. Her new house is beautiful.”

  “But his workshop and tools are at his house...”

  And so they kept on talking, forgetting I was even there.

  I didn’t mind, though. We were just killing time waiting to hear from Lance, and I just enjoyed being with May for a little while.

  Uncle Sean and Hank decided they needed to get back into Austin, since they had to bring out our presents. They hadn’t planned on spending the night, but the ice storm had caught them, too. So I watched as they left in the Cherokee, and kind of caught my breath as Hank did a quick correction after beginning a slide down the hill as he approached the Barton Creek bridge. If it was that slick and that easy to go into a slide, Lance would have to drive very slowly, or go off the road as he said he had done yesterday.

  Suddenly, I was too weary of worrying to stay outdoors.

  “You guys seen Trinket’s horse?”

  May and Kelsey shook their heads.

  “You should get Trinket to show him to you,” I said. “I think I need to take a nap.”

  “Well do it upstairs,” Kelsey said with a gleam in her eye. “Nobody needs to see your horse again.”

  It was barely two in the afternoon, and as I made my way to the house, I felt so tired I thought my legs would buckle under me going up the three steps onto the porch.

  * * *

  I snuggled down into the covers in Trinket’s bed, lying on my stomach, and feeling myself begin to drift immediately. I would just nap for about an hour and then get up and try to figure out where Lance might be then.

  When I woke up, the room was perceptibly darker, and I squinted at my watch. It read nine o’clock. At night?

  I jumped up, dressed, and flew down the stairs.

  It was the same scene as the night before. Everyone was in the living room. Ernie and Mama were sitting on the couch. Trinket and Hanky-Hank were on the floor and were playing some kid’s board game. Hank and Uncle Sean were messing with the presents that had suddenly grown to a large pile and placing them around the tree. And Kelsey and May were coming out of the kitchen with drinks on a tray with steam rising from the mugs.

  My stomach growled, realizing I hadn’t eaten since lunch. So I passed by them and Kelsey grinned.

  “We left you some ham and a few beans. Told you, you should’ve slept like a normal person last night.”

  I shrugged and passed on by intent on finding what food was left over from supper.

  The phone rang, and before I could get back to the living room Trinket had answered it.

  “Hey, Lance!”

  “Yeah, Umhmmm.”

  “You are?”

  Trinket’s one-sided conversation let me know that Lance was calling, though that was about it. So as soon as she saw me coming, she handed the phone to me.

  “Lance is in Dripping Springs!”

  Everyone actually cheered at the news, and I felt tears sting my eyes, relieved.

  “Hi,” I said into the phone. “Did you hear that?”

  Lance laughed, his voice sounding clear and close. “Yeah. Is everybody there?”

  “Absolutely, honey. Waiting on you. Where in Dripping Springs are you?”

  “Uh... a Shell station. I can see a blinking light down the street. It’s so beautiful, Angel! So much like a painting.”

  That would be Lance, composing paintings at every opportunity.

  “Then I’m on my way. Watch for a Jeep Cherokee, red.”

  * * *

  In a moment after I hung up, pandemonium reigned at Mama’s deciding who was going with me and who was staying. Trinket begged to go, and I felt a little badly because Mama didn’t let her. Hank offered to drive, since I had volunteered the Cherokee, but Uncle Sean suggested that May drive. And everyone thought it was a good suggestion. Kind of a surprise, since I hadn’t told Lance that May and Kelsey were here. Considering how much Lance liked May, I figured it would be pleasant for him to see her.

  Then in what seemed like half an eternity, it was just May and me, heading down the road. As I had been sleeping through the afternoon, I guess the storm had subsided and the sun had shone, because now the roadway looked fairly clear of ice, except over the bridge we had to cross, where the ice had not melted, and then we were heading through Dripping Springs, came to the blinking light, which signaled the tiny downtown. Then up ahead we saw the brightly lit Shell sign and next to a phone booth what had to be Lance’s car. It looked so tiny and forlorn in the light, caked with mud and ice and a windshield that was so crusty, it was a wonder Lance had been able to see while he was driving. As we slowed and turned into the station, my heart was in my throat. And a figure emerged from the car.

  Lance. Dressed only in a T-shirt and jeans in this cold. He waved as May pulled up next to the Subaru, and before she had quit rolling I was out of the passenger side, a wide grin breaking on Lance’s face.

  My eyes took him in, cataloging the differences in his appearance from the last time I had seen him, and yet it was unmistakably him moving toward me and finally, into my arms. Actually, he seemed to have grown from his kid-like appearance when I first laid eyes on him. I felt, rather than saw, that he had gained a little weight, as I held him. My memory or my imagination hadn’t failed me all those nights when I lay awake and tried to remember what it felt like to hold him.

  For a moment, I pulled away and took in his face, as he did mine. The strange light of the shell station darkened his normally violet eyes into a silky brown, but his sandy colored hair was a sheen, which made it look like burnished copper, and like me he had let it grow longer, though he had it tied back from his face, and as he looked into my eyes, smiling, studying my face, I saw that confidence had replaced his old hesitancy—hard to describe, especially in the few seconds that we stood apart to get a look at each other. And then we just gripped each other, hard. I was all over him. I couldn’t help it. Pulling him close, standing back, glancing into his eyes, kissing him, hugging him against me, and him hugging back and kissing back and slamming his body against mine, both of us hanging on so violently, we began to giggle and kiss and pull apart, and run our hands over each other. Neither of us said a word.

  But May sure did.

  “Like, am I chopped liver? Hello, Lance!”

  The Cherokee door creaked shut and Lance stopped in mid-kiss.

  “May? May!” he said, hugging me once more, tightly, then broke away and they were hugging and kissing each other’s cheeks and hugging some more.

  Then I caught sight of the attendant on duty inside the station, watching us, his face a giveaway to the spectacle he was witnessing. First two men kissing like they were drowning, and now Lance and May.

  Lance looked so tired, and I could see that he was beginning to shiver in the cold wearing only his T-shirt. So as soon as I could without being rude I said we needed to be getting back to Mama’s.

  “We’ll see you there,” I said to May, and then Lance and I were alone and settling into his little car. On the passenger side where I sat was a mass of fast-food wrappers, paper cups, and whatnot on the floor. But I just scooted my feet through the mess. I helped Lance into his jacket, even though he protested that he wasn’t cold.

  Then for just a moment, with the engine idling, we sat there looking into each other’s eyes. I couldn’t see much in the dark, except that he looked awfully tired, and I knew that as soon as everyone had said hello, I would be taking him to bed.

  “I’ve missed you, Angel,” Lance said, looking sad and beautiful.

  “And I’ve missed you, too,” I said, biting my tongue about blurting out the news that I had withdrawn from the university. I wanted the moment to be just rig
ht when I told him that.

  It was also all I could do to keep from attacking him right then, so I settled for a long kiss. The feel of him against me was at once familiar and strange. So many lost months, I thought, as we parted and he put the car into drive.

  It was actually a short drive back to Mama’s, but we both exploded with news and questions and comments, trying to get caught up on each other’s lives in the fifteen minutes it took to get home.

  We were still talking when we went over the bridge, up the hill, and Lance came to a halt in front of the house.

  “Nothing...not even the pictures can describe this, Will. It’s beautiful!”

  And it was. Something straight out of a Texas Christmas story book, with the Christmas tree showing through the French windows, the glistening icicles still hanging off the roof, the lights along the eaves, the face of the house itself looking sturdy and cozy against the night under the full moon shining in a clear sky. A postcard, until everyone came outdoors when they heard us arrive, changing the effect.

  Then Lance had to run the gauntlet, though looking happy as he was kissed and hugged by everyone. Mama got at him first. Of course she was crying with delight as she kept brushing back his hair and getting a look at him. She introduced him to Ernie, who just nodded and shook Lance’s hand. “My other son is finally home,” Mama said, “Now let’s feed you and get you to bed.”

  “I have a horse!” Trinket said. “We can ride him tomorrow.”

  “Is you Will’s husband?” Hanky-Hank wanted to know. “My daddy—”

  “Missed you,” Uncle Sean said, hugging Lance and introducing him to Hank, who shook Lance’s hand and then pulled Lance into a hug.

  Rita stood back until it was her turn. “Maybe you can talk sense into Will,” she said. “He was really stupid to ever let you go, you know.” They hugged, hard, and as everyone moved indoors, Kelsey threw her arm around Lance. “Rita’s right. Will’s nuts, so I hope you’re the sane one. You two shouldn’t live so far apart!”

  It was a script I could have written myself, so with everyone expressing their opinions at the stupidity of us ever living apart, I figured it would be easy to break my news to Lance.