Outland

by Kiernan Kelly

  "Fargo, you keep rubbing at that thing and you're gonna go home to your mama with a stain on your crotch and hair on your palms," I said, reaching over and batting his hand away. "Shame about Joe and Billy Bob. They're decent folk, and with Jinx's gone and now Horton's closed up, won't be nowhere for folks to go grab a beer."

  "Guess we could go to the Hoghead or Frankie's Tavern over in Twilla," Hank said, looking thoughtful. "Pretty far ride for a beer, though."

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. "Hoghead? Right. I can just picture us sitting in a bar with all them biker boys. Those good ol' boys will figure us out right quick, rack up our balls, and start shooting pool with 'em."

  "We got as much right to be there as they do."

  "Yeah, and Joe and Billy Bob had a right to run a bar as they saw fit, too, but that didn't stop the cops from dragging their asses off to the hoosegow. You know how things are 'round here, Hank."

  "I know it." He leaned against the wall, twisting the dishtowel into knots. "Ain't fair, though. We got rights."

  "Never said it was fair, but there ain't no sense in going out looking for trouble, neither."

  He flipped the towel over his shoulder. "I'd best get back to the stew afore it burns."

  I sighed. The look Hank shot me told me all I needed to know, even without him banging the pots and pans and cabinet doors, and swearing a blue streak under his breath. He'd expected me to back him up, especially in front of Fargo. The boy needed somebody to show him right from wrong. Lord knows he didn't have a role model at home, not with his mama snorting everything up her nose but the Drano under the kitchen sink, and his daddy still rotting in prison.

  "Hank's right, Fargo," I said, loud enough for my voice to carry into the kitchen. My mama, God rest her soul, didn't raise a fool. If I expected Hank to make me happy later, I'd best make him happy now. "We got rights, just like everybody. We pay our taxes, work hard. Ain't nobody's business who we take to our beds but our own selves."

  "Yeah, I know it," Fargo said, his hand rubbing and rubbing, my eyes going up and down, following his hand, making me dizzy. "Beaver, I got me a problem."

  "You done it to your own self, Fargo. Told you to quit it."

  "Come on, Beaver! I got needs, man."

  "What you've got is a bad case of young, Fargo. Always ready to pop off like a dime store cap gun. What you need is to find yourself a boyfriend and stop hitting me and Hank up all the time."

  "Come on... please?"

  "Aw, Hell. Pull it out. Let's make this quick -- Hank will have supper on the table soon, and I'm near starving to death."

  Fargo grinned, looking like one of them angels you see at Christmas, all blond and blue-eyed and pink-cheeked. He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock, as hard as a railroad spike, rosy-red and ready for business.

  Oh, I talked a good game, but the bald-faced truth was that Hank and me looked forward to the times Fargo would have a need of one of us. Now, I know what you're thinking -- two dirty ol' men using a fresh-faced kid for that sort of thing is just plain wrong. Well, you can just get that thought right out of your head. First off, we aren't old, both of us being just past fifty, thank you very much. Secondly, Fargo used us every bit as much as we did him, maybe more, considering the little bastard never once got down on his knees for either of us.

  Still and all, I didn't mind, and neither did Hank. Fargo was a pretty boy, sure enough, if you liked 'em on the skinny side. Hank was forever trying to fatten him up, saying that he could take a spoon and play Fargo's ribs like a xylophone, but I know he liked looking at Fargo's lean, hard body as much as I did.

  Besides, Fargo was lonely, and we both knew it. There's not much in the way of pickings in Meridian, being such a small town and all, and we'd rather him come to us than go scouting around the countryside, chasing after every Tom and Harry's dick he came across. In our neck of the woods, that was a sure-fire way to get your ass beat. Come on to the wrong man and there was a good chance you'd find yourself eating dinner through a straw. We lectured Fargo about it all the time, but we were never sure he believed it. You know how it goes when you're young. Young folk always think stuff like that happens to somebody else, not to them. It ain't until a body gets a few years under his belt that he sees the truth in it.

  Anyway, it was a give and take situation, with Fargo doing all the taking and us doing all the giving.

  There wasn't any dirty talk -- we was just friends, one helping out the other, not lovers getting all hot and sweaty. I opened my mouth and took him right in, sucking hard the way I knew Fargo liked it. The boy wasn't much for delicate touches -- he liked it hard and fast, wanted a mouth like a Hoover vacuum and a hand squeezing him like a Kitchen-Aid juicer. That's exactly what he got, too.

  Fargo smelled like Irish Mist soap, fresh and clean. I inhaled deeply, wanting to enjoy his scent as much as I was enjoying his taste. I ain't gonna lie -- Fargo tasted pretty damn good. His pre-come dribbled onto my tongue, salting the flavor like a master chef adding a dash to an already tasty meal.

  He threaded his hands in my hair, massaging my scalp as I sucked him, those lean hips a-rocking, moaning a little. I hoped he wasn't going to get too loud -- he did that sometimes, whooping and hollering loud enough to wake the dead when he came. I was still half-listening to the NASCAR race on TV; there were only a couple of minutes left, and I wanted to hear who won it.

  It didn't take long -- it never usually did with Fargo. He was young and could come almost at the drop of a hat, not like me and Hank. We both usually needed a good deal of priming to get the pumps to work. When Fargo came, he let out a howl that made my ears ring.

  I never did find out who won the race. By the time he'd finished painting my face with semen like some fucked-up Picasso, and his scream died down to a whimper, the race was over and a sitcom was playing.

  Fargo sighed happily, and I grinned along with him, despite having missed the end of the race. He looked so damn pleased with himself, like he'd gone and blown his own damn pecker. Nice to know I still had it, and that's a fact.

  Just about then I heard Hank calling for us to come to supper. My knees popped like firecrackers when I got up -- I'd been sitting in that chair for the better part of the afternoon, first watching the NASCAR race and then racing to get rid of Fargo's problem before dinner was ready. When I sit too long, I get stiff. It gets worse every year, too, especially in the winter. I was a lumberjack for the mill, and five years ago I broke both my legs and my hip when a greenhorn felled a tree the wrong goddamn way. Bastard never yelled "timber" either -- I never saw it coming until I was pinned under a ton of solid oak. Shit, I'm lucky to be alive, and that's the truth. A little stiffness and a few twinges now and then are a small price to pay.

  I went into the bathroom and washed my face before following Fargo into the kitchen. Hank would've tore me a new one if I showed up at the supper table with my chin sticky.

  The smell of Hank's stew made my stomach grumble. Hank could cook like nobody's business. The stew was his mama's recipe, and he served me up a bowlful with a big hunk of bread, knowing how much I loved to sop up his thick gravy with it.

  "Set yourself down, Fargo. You need to put some meat on those scarecrow bones of yours. Lord! Don't you ever eat, boy? I can practically see right through you like a pane of window glass," Hank said, setting another bowl down and pointing to the chair next to mine. He set the salad down in the middle of the table, took a bowl for himself and sat opposite me.

  Fargo lifted his spoon and I kicked him under the table. Hank and me, we might not be church-going men, but we was raised right. "We didn't say grace, Fargo. You know better than that when you're eating in this house," I said.

  We joined hands and Hank thanked the Lord for what we had, for each other's company, and our health, and I put in a good word for Joe Horton and Billy Bob French. Fargo thanked God for Trojan rubbers and Astroglide, and Hank batted him upside the head for being blasphemous at the supper table.

  Leroy
lay on the floor by Hank's feet like an old, tired throw rug. We'd rescued him from the pound out in Bixby a few years back. Good dog, shy a leg and half-blind to boot, but sweet, and he loved Hank to pieces. He lay quietly on the floor, watching Hank with his big sorrowful brown eyes, floppy ears twitching whenever Hank spoke. He liked me well enough, too, especially when I chucked him a heel of bread, but Hank was his favorite.

  "So, what do you reckon we should do?" Hank asked around a mouthful of salad.

  I passed on the salad and went straight for the stew, although I knew I'd get an earful from Hank later on about a man my age needing roughage. Hank was big on fiber. Said most health problems were caused by a man's plumbing getting backed up. "Do about what?"

  "About a place for us to go on Friday and Saturday nights. Lord, Beaver! If'n we got to stay here all the time with just each other to look at it, I swear I'll start chewing on the walls."

  I laughed and helped myself to another slice of bread. "Maybe we just ought to hose out the stable and open our own damn bar." I was kidding of course. We called it "the stable" because the folks who owned the house afore us kept horses, although we never did. The stalls had long since been torn down; it was where we stored our crap that didn't have a place in the house anymore, like the washing machine Hank insisted we keep "for parts," and the odd pieces of furniture we'd replaced over the years that he thought "somebody might have a need for someday."

  Hank's favorite saying was "waste not, want not," and he's a pack rat if ever I saw one. Came from growing up without a pot to piss in, I think. Hank's folks already had twelve children by the time Hank popped out and made it a baker's dozen. He grew up wearing hand-me-downs, and he knew what hunger felt like. His Pa worked at the mill, earning a wage that barely fed two, never mind fifteen. Said there were plenty of times when his Ma watered down the soup and stretched the eggs with breadcrumbs and there still wasn't enough to go around but a bite and a half.

  Hank laughed, but it sounded a little strange, as if he didn't think the idea was very funny at all. "Our own bar! Now wouldn't that be a hoot?"

  "Yes, sir, it would at that. Pass the butter, please," I said, and no more was mentioned about a bar, our own or anyone else's; the conversation switching to the possible winners of the NASCAR race, and the new truck Fargo was considering buying.

  We didn't know it at the time, but that was all going to change just three months later.

  Chapter Two

  "Do you believe this bullshit?" Hank asked, bending over and turning up the sound on our old Sony TV. We didn't have cable, not out in the sticks where we lived. No fancy satellite dishes, neither. Had an antenna on the roof and a pair of rabbit ears on the set, and made do with whichever of the seven broadcast stations came in the clearest. We had a VCR player, a closet full of tapes, and watched movies more often than not. I was planning to get Hank a DVD player for his next birthday, since VCR tapes were getting harder to find than hen's teeth.

  I wasn't listening to the television anyway -- I was too busy watching the way Hank's ass rounded out and pressed against the worn fabric of his jeans. Hank had a great ass, even at fifty-one. Always did -- his rear end was what caught my attention when we first met and held it for purty near twenty years. His belly might have got a little bigger over the years, but his butt was still mighty fine.

  "Mmm, mmm. Bend down a little more, sugar. That's the prettiest thing I've seen all morning!" My cock agreed with me, standing up like a compass pointing north. Been a while, maybe a week or more since me and Hank got frisky. I grinned, thinking it was about time for that to change.

  "Do you hear what that slimy little bastard is saying?"

  "Huh? What bastard? What are you going on about, Hank?" I was a little disappointed that he'd stood up and turned toward me, cutting off my view of his sweet rear end.

  "Listen!" Hank snapped, plopping down on the sofa next to me. The look on his face was not one that I'd come to associate with him being horny, not at all. He looked angry enough to chew up iron and spit out nails. "Goddamn little shit was an asshole in high school, and he's only gotten bigger and hairier since!"

  On the screen, the picture was snowy and flipped a bit, but I could make out a man standing at a podium surrounded by microphones and cameras. The shot zoomed in, and I realized I was looking at Reverend Jasper Bellows of the First Corners Church. At first, I couldn't understand why anybody would want to stick his mulish face on the television, or why Hank -- of all people -- would want to listen to a word that asshole in a turnaround collar would have to say. I turned to him. "You went to high school with Bellows? You never told me that!"

  "It ain't something I'm proud to claim, Beaver. Now hush up and listen."

  "I am pleased and proud to announce that the Soldiers of the Lord have triumphed over evil, and rid our fair county of them homosetshuls! We have cleansed the streets of their foul and evil presence forever. Those two bars, those two dens of iniquity, those sin-halls of the damned have been closed down for good! First, God smote Jinx's with heavenly fire until there wasn't nothing left but a smoking pile of rubble. Now, the two men who owned Horton's sit in jail, awaiting the judgment of man just as surely as they'll await the judgment of the Lord, and both will be harsh and swift!

  "Ladies and gentlemen, we here at the First Corners Church know the simple truth. God hates homos. He does! It says so over and over in the Good Book, from the burning of Sodom right on down the line. Those peacocks strut around, claiming to be the same as the rest of the chickens, but they ain't! They go against nature; they're an abomination in the eyes of the Lord! Well, I'm standing before you today to tell you that Haggerty County is now and forever homo-free!"

  Hank popped up off the sofa like his britches were burning and snapped off the television set. He was so riled up that his face was red, and the vein in his forehead was throbbing so badly I could see it from clear across the room. I was worried he'd keel over from a heart attack if he didn't calm down. He'd already had one, about two years ago. I near lost him that time and didn't care to repeat the experience.

  "Did you hear what he said? Did you?"

  "I heard. Come sit down, Hank. No sense in getting yourself all worked up, now."

  "Didn't you hear him? He makes us sound like we're a disease, Beaver. Like we got us a sickness doctors ought to have a shot for -- like rabies or something. God hates homos? How could they let him say such shit on the television, Beaver?" Hank began to pace back and forth, getting redder by the second.

  Leroy picked his head up, his soulful eyes watching Hank from his spot on the floor, whining a little. Even he could sense Hank's fury.

  "Calm your ass down, Hank. You're gonna give yourself another heart attack. You know it ain't true. God don't hate us, but I'll bet He ain't too fond of Bellows for spouting that bullshit," I said, patting the sofa next to me. "Bellows ain't nothing but a loudmouthed jackass braying whatever nonsense comes into his pointy little head. Ain't nobody gonna believe him, Hank."

  "No? Then how come Jinx's burnt down, and Joe Horton and Billy Bob French are in jail?"

  "There is that, I'll give you, but--"

  "If I want to suck cock, then by gum, that's what I'm gonna do! Who is he to tell me that I can't, or that I'm a sinner just because I fell in love with somebody whose plumbing matches mine? I got a good mind to march right down to the First Corners Church and have me a good and righteous fuck right in the middle of the flower garden he's always pruning--"

  "Hank! Sit down, and I mean right now! Lord, your blood pressure must be getting ready to pop off the top of your skull!" I yelled, reaching out and grabbing his arm. I pulled him off balance and he practically fell in my lap.

  Hank settled back, but I could still hear the steam hissing out of his ears. "People believe what they hear on the television, Beaver. Don't matter if'n its true or not. Besides, Bellows is right about one thing. He got the bars shut down and now there's no place for folks to go. He's been trying to drive us out for years an
d now it looks like he's finally gone and done it."

  "We live here, Hank. Our home and our lives are here. We ain't going anywhere, especially not because that sorry asshole took a dump on national TV."

  "Not us, Beaver -- we got each other, but what about the young folks like Fargo? He ain't got much tying him here. You want to see him leave, go off to the city and maybe get hisself in trouble? He's only a kid who don't know his ass from his elbow! Besides, it’s the principle of the thing. We deserve a place of our own, where we can be ourselves and not have to worry about who's watching us, or who's a-waiting to beat the shit out of us in the parking lot!"

  Hank had a point. "Yeah, but what can we do?"

  He paused, and I could see him thinking hard on it. Suddenly, he smiled, big and wide, and that worried me more than when he'd been pissed off. "We're gonna do exactly what you said, Beaver. We're gonna hose out the stable and open our own bar!"