Gay Fiction, Volume 1

by Mel Bossa

  Even with the quickly fading light around us, we could make out that this had once been the driveway up to the house. Having seen it by daylight helped—I was familiar with it, at least for a hundred yards or so, before it turned sharply right to go uphill slightly, to the house. Tall trees lined the road, set closely together, as though purposely planted to afford shade, but nothing seemed to be growing on the dirt road in front of us. I could see two sets of deep ruts in the dirt, made by a wagon decades ago.

  We walked on without speaking for a long time, until it seemed that the road came to an end; that was where it veered off, I suppose, to run a service road around the back of the house. I could hear Chas’s shortened breathing a foot or so to my left. Without saying anything, I turned right with the dirt road and tried to make out the alleyway of trees. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but it seemed to be pitch black only a few yards ahead.

  It was then that I heard an eerie whoosh on either side of me. Chas heard it too; he whispered, “The wind.” That was followed by a sharp, mechanical-sounding cry and a rushing of wings just over our head. “Just a stupid bird,” Chas said in that same hoarse whisper. “Let’s go.”

  We continued on. It was dark but not dark enough to hide something darker still in the middle of the road. We stopped at the same time, then I walked up to it, staying off to one side and ready to dash off. It was the carcass of a dead animal—from the gleaming stripe down one side, a skunk. It smelled like month-old garbage. “Just an old skunk,” Chas said and poked it with a stick.

  We’d been walking so long I didn’t know how far we had to go, when I began to hear the falling water. It sounded as though it was trickling down rocks. From what both Grandpa and Chas had said, I knew the Pritchard house was set up off the ground, approached by two sets of stone steps placed in a fieldstone retaining wall about eight feet high. The water must be coming from there, I thought. But it sounded all around me, not only from one direction—first to my right, then to my left, then straight ahead.

  Chas must have heard the water too, even though he didn’t say anything. It was such a clear trickling, the only distinct sound among the engulfing whoosh of the wind all about us—so clear a sound, it might have been inches away from me instead of yards off.

  It was then that I sensed it was becoming less dark. Not that I could make out any real light. The foliage around us was still so thick above our heads, we couldn’t make out a patch of starred night sky. But it was lighter—light enough to see the leaves of the trees, the dappled bark of their trunks, more ruts crossing and crisscrossing the dirt road: a sort of seeping light, as when daylight is an hour off but you still can see that it’s coming.

  With my sudden ability to see things because of the light, I felt better somehow. Curious too about where the light came from. Could someone be up at the house? Living there? Some vagabonds? That would be terrific. I walked on, it getting brighter, until the leaves of the trees suddenly gave way on either side and we were in a clearing covered with dirt road.

  It was a large space, filled with that same strange light, which was oddly brighter in the center than on the sides. To my right I made out what seemed to be the doors of a barn or stable, where all of the ruts in the dirt yard crossed each other the most. This must have been where the carriages and wagons were kept, I thought. Across the yard from it were just more trees. But in between was a wall and, feeling it gingerly, I made out huge chunks of rock set in mortar. The trickling water was clearest here, though no louder than before, and it had suddenly become windlessly quiet but for the trickling. I ran my hand over the rock wall until I reached some that were glossily wet. Then I moved along the wall until it gave way and I found one of the stairways up.

  I was so entranced with my little discoveries that I was halfway up the steps when I remembered Chas. I turned around to find him.

  “Chas!” I whispered.

  Silence, then I heard, “Where are you?”

  I followed the sound of his voice until I made out his figure, far away, standing with his stick held out in front of him, at the edge of the yard. His head turned from side to side, as though searching.

  “I’m here!” I whispered loudly. “On the stairway. Come on.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going up the stairs.”

  “What’s that sound?”

  “It’s water. It’s coming down the side of the wall.”

  “From the well?”

  “I don’t know. Is the well up here?”

  “I think so.”

  “Don’t you know?” I asked. “I thought you’ve been up here before.”

  Silence from him. Then, “Come on down.”

  “What for? We’re this far. We might as well go right up and into the house.” As Chas didn’t answer, I urged him on. “Why are you waiting way over there?”

  “What’s that light?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. Aren’t you coming?”

  “I don’t like it,” he said, and, distinct as his words were, his voice had a tremor in it. “It’s not natural. I don’t like it at all.”

  I felt sure he was still trying to scare me, so I said, “I’m going up the stairs and into the house.” I wasn’t afraid. Nor did I think Chas was afraid. He was just being silly. I had reached the top of the stairway and turned to face the dark mass of the big house some fifty feet in front of me. There seemed to be as much light up here as on the ground, although it didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular, certainly not from any windows in the house. The light seemed to hug the ground. With its aid I could see the front of the Pritchard house fairly well: the tall four-story turret and the big, flat three-story facade with its large entry and high dark windows. I could even make out smaller structures behind it, and the tottering bulk of rocks and wood off to one side, which must have been the well.

  “Chas!” I whispered, “Chas! The well is up here. Come look.”

  Chas was standing exactly where I’d left him, still holding the stick, still looking around. I heard him say in what seemed to be a tiny voice, “I don’t like it here. I don’t!” He threw down the stick, spun around, and began running faster than I’d ever seen anyone run before.

  “Chas!” I called after him, the first time I’d dared to raise my voice above a whisper. But he never looked back. He just ran until I couldn’t see him anymore.

  It was then that I had a moment of the sheerest terror of my life. What hadn’t he liked? What had he seen or felt or heard that had made him refuse to come across the yard, that had made him run off? Terrified, I looked all around me, at the dark mass of the house looming, and I wondered, What if he saw Amity’s ghost up here? I even calculated how fast I could get down the steps if I had to. I was poised now, alert, ready to leap down to the ground if I saw or heard anything.

  But I didn’t. Everything remained just as it was before he’d run off: the soft, curiously nonbright light all around; the clear trickle of water. I kept trying to see if there was anything moving in the windows of the house. But nothing seemed different to me.

  Then I felt exhausted, so much so that I just sat right down at the top of the stairs on the wall and even threw my legs out and stretched out on my back. I looked up. I could make out the constellation of the Archer clearly, just beyond what seemed to be another tall spire of the house. I lay there, smelling the grass and, more distant, ripe honeysuckle, hearing the trickle of water beneath me, and feeling inexplicably calm, as though I were effortlessly floating in cool water on a hot sunny day. Little eddies of air passing over and around me; not a care in the world. I felt as though I could go to sleep. I was so soothed, so comforted.

  I don’t know how long I rested there. But suddenly it seemed to me that the trickling of the water wasn’t just dripping. It had changed somehow, stopping, starting up, modulating slightly—as though someone were sipping from it; as though someone were using its sound to communicate. Softly, very softly but insistently too, as thoug
h it had something very important to say, but not in any language I knew, as though someone were trying to talk—a foreigner perhaps, or a woman. I couldn’t tell.

  Not understanding irritated me then, and I sat up, looked around, and sort of laughed. Here I was, after all of Chas’s talk, sitting right up at the Pritchard house on a moonless night, and there was no ghost, no ghost at all. Grandpa had been right as usual; and Chas… Then it struck me why Chas hadn’t come up to the house, why he’d done all that talking about not liking the light and the trickle of water. He’d seen I wasn’t frightened, but he tried to scare me anyway. It was all an act, because there was no truth at all to his story about seeing a ghost. None at all.

  “You rat!” I said, out loud. “You rotten rat! I’ll get you for that.”

  A sudden whoosh of wind around the house seemed to rush at me, half knocking me off my perch. The water trickled on, babbling, and I was chilled in my little sleeveless polo shirt so that I had to hug myself to keep from shivering. It seemed to be getting darker too. Well, I’d been here long enough, no sense in missing my ice cream just to be hanging around here.

  I took a final look about me, just so I would be able to remember it and detail it later, then turned and went down the steps to the clearing, out of that, and onto the dirt road. The more I walked, the angrier I became at Chas for his trying to trick me.

  I thought he would be waiting at Atwood Avenue for me when I got there, and I was all ready with what I planned to say to him. But he wasn’t there. Even angrier, I went across the bridge toward the ice-cream store.

  It was closed. I couldn’t believe it. Closed and shuttered. I walked around to the back of the shop, and it was closed up there too.

  What? Where? I suppose I was really surprised because I went directly to Eileen’s house, expecting to find her there. Her mother appeared at the kitchen screen door when I knocked. She held some knitting in her hands and seemed surprised to see me.

  “I thought you were with the other children,” she said. “They closed a little early tonight. Weren’t you with them? Your cousin was.”

  “No, ma’am,” I lied. “I had some chores to do. I thought maybe they were here.”

  “No. And I don’t know where they’ve gone to. I thought they were at your Grandpa’s house.”

  “Could be,” I said. “I wasn’t there; I was at a neighbor’s, doing my chores,” I said, elaborating my lie.

  “Oh, well! Then that’s where they are. Would you like to come in and have some ice cream? Eileen brought home some blackberry tonight.”

  “No thanks, ma’am. Ma’am? When did they close tonight?”

  “About nine.” Then, looking behind her at the kitchen clock set into her oven, she added, “It’s almost eleven. I do hope Eileen will be home soon. She’s supposed to be in by ten.”

  “So am I,” I said. “Good night. Sorry to bother you.”

  “If Eileen is still at your Grandpa’s, call me. I’ll pick her up in the car.”

  “No bother, ma’am. I’d be happy to walk her home.”

  “If she isn’t… Oh, well. I’m sure everything will be all right. Chas is such a little gentleman.”

  Chapter 9

  Chas didn’t come home for a long time, and he awakened me when he did. I couldn’t hear the sound of the television—Mother and Aunt Linda must have turned it off and gone to bed already. Chas didn’t put on any lights—I watched him undress in the dull, silver gleam of the moon shining right into one of the bedroom windows.

  He must have noticed the moonlight too, because he went over to close the blinds.

  “Leave it,” I said.

  He turned, startled. “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “A lot of what you thought is phooey.”

  He decided not to answer that. “It’s going to get in my eyes,” he said with determination.

  “Nothing wrong with a little of your own medicine,” I said after he’d left the blinds and settled into his bed.

  “What are you talking about?” Chas asked. His voice sounded not tired, but as though he’d just gotten over some earlier excitement, the way he sometimes sounded late at night telling about some particularly special piece of mischief he’d been involved in.

  “You know,” I said. I wasn’t sure he did. I was simply trying to catch him out.

  “How can I?” he asked. Then, “Anyway, I’m tired.”

  “Running from ghosts?”

  He sat up now. I could see his face clearly in the moonlight. Any childlike softness still there was obliterated by the strong coloration. He might have been ten, twenty years older.

  “There was something there!” he said. “There was!”

  “Oh, yeah. Where? I stayed there so long, I thought I would fall asleep, it was so boring.”

  “Up on the steps?”

  “Yes. And at the well.”

  “At the well?” He sounded impressed.

  “All around the house. I couldn’t get in because it was locked shut, even the windows locked. But if I could have, I’m sure it would have been the same—a lot of malarkey.”

  “I saw something,” he insisted.

  “What? A ghost?”

  “No…but the light was really funny, wasn’t it?”

  “Not as funny as you thought you were being when you turned around and ran off. Try that trick on Janet or Cathy—they’re just kids. Not on me, Chas.”

  He moved up close to my bed. The moonlight was coming in through the blinds, making sharp pale lines on his head and body.

  “I wasn’t trying to trick you, Rog.”

  “To scare me then. You can’t tell me you weren’t trying to scare me, to make me believe there was something there, when there wasn’t.”

  He seemed to think that over, then he burst out. “Look, Rog. I’ll tell you the truth. I lied to you before. I never saw any ghost there. But Rudy Muller did. So when we got there, I remembered what he said, and then, seeing that funny light and hearing that strange watery sound, I got frightened. That’s why I ran away. Because I was spooked. Really.”

  That was exactly what I wanted to hear Chas say. But it had come out too easily—so easily that it sounded wrong now. I knew Chas well enough to know he wouldn’t admit to being frightened, especially to me and especially when I hadn’t been frightened in the same situation. No, Chas didn’t operate like that. Which meant he was telling me what he thought I would believe and hiding something more important: the truth.

  “Really, Rog,” he said, trying to convince me, uncertain now of my silence.

  “Where did you go after you ran out?” I asked.

  “Nowhere. I waited a little while at Atwood Avenue, then, when you didn’t come out too, I hung around.”

  “You mean that even though you were so scared for yourself, you would leave me there?”

  “You said you weren’t scared,” he explained.

  “You went to Eileen’s,” I said.

  “That’s right. I thought you’d meet me there.”

  “No, you didn’t, Chas. You thought that after you ran that I would suddenly get scared too and I would run out too. Only straight home.”

  Chas didn’t say anything then; his face became blank and hard-looking.

  “But you weren’t planning on going home,” I went on. “You were planning all the while on going to Eileen’s. When you got there, you told her I couldn’t come out or something. You got her to close the store early, and when that was done, you went somewhere with her. That’s what her mother told me.”

  He was silent for a while, thinking up more lies.

  “I did trick you, Rog,” he said. “But I had a good reason. I wanted to be with Eileen. Alone with her. See, Rog, she really likes me. And I like her too. We wanted to do something together. She promised me we would that night, but we couldn’t if you were around. So I had to trick you to be alone with her.”

  Now I knew Chas was telling the truth. With every word I shrank farther from him. I almost wished
I had believed him the first time. I wished now I could stop him from going on.

  He didn’t. I’d been right to think he was all wound up when he’d come home. Now he let go and talked, all his suppressed excitement from before bursting out of him.

  “You know how we talk every night, Rog, how we tell each other all the things we do with girls? All the things we want to do with them. You know how we do them with each other, pretending it’s the same thing. Well, that’s what I did tonight. Only not pretending. I knew she would let me because she’s sweet on me, has been for weeks, for months, really, ever since the summer began, she said, but she was too shy or too stupid or something to say so. Well, yesterday she said she would. We had fooled around a little before, but yesterday she said I could do whatever I wanted. And that’s why you would have just been in our way. That’s why I had to trick you. Do you see now?”

  What Chas said came to me slowly, so slowly, as though it were something I’d heard and was only now remembering. I had to make certain of what he’d said.

  “You mean you did what we do…with a girl?”

  “Not the same things. Not all of them. But I did some…” and he made a fist with one hand and put the index finger of the other in and out to make certain I knew what he was talking about. “Only in the front.”

  I was incredulous. “With Eileen?”

  “Who else, you jerk! That’s who I was with all night.”

  That hit me worse than anything else he’d said. Knowing Eileen, being so fond of her, thinking of her as so much better than me—certainly miles above Chas—I simply couldn’t believe it. At the same time, remembering how she had recently changed her mind about him, how she’d begun saying she’d misunderstood Chas, made me unable to disbelieve him. Even more persuasive was Chas himself, being so proud and offhand. That was the clincher.

  “You…you…bastard!” I finally spat out at him. But even this wasn’t strong enough, and as I said the word, I punched Chas as hard as I could. He fell off the bed, fell between the two beds, and I jumped down, still shouting, onto his chest and went on punching him blindly, all the while shouting at him. In only a minute he had twisted away from my blows and was on top of me, punching at my face and chest wildly. I grabbed on to his throat and began choking him. He did the same to me. We were there grappling away for only a silent half minute before the bedroom door was thrown open and the light switched on.