Travelin' Man

by Tom Mendicino

  The hotel room is okay, if nothing like the luxury suite Darrell had promised to book in Seattle. But the shower was hot and the bed was comfortable enough after a night spent in the cramped bunk of the trucker who’d picked him up at the Hillstop Travel Plaza at the Moses Lake exit on Interstate 90. Darrell had gone out for Chinese take-out shortly after KC arrived. That was just before midnight and he hadn’t returned when KC finally awoke at eleven in the morning. KC’s stomach is growling, but Darrell hasn’t left a room key. He’s stuck here until his host returns. He could prop open the door with his duffel bag while he searches for a vending machine. He’ll settle for a Coke and a bag of chips at this point. But when he opens the door a seedy-looking character is letting himself into the room across the hall. He’s going to need to tough it out until Darrell gets back.

  Darrell’s laptop is open on the desk. KC’s got time to kill and decides to do a search for used Camaros for sale in the Seattle area. The screen is open to a response to Darrell’s craigslist ad by a skinny, smooth young man with a long, thick cock. KC scrolls through his inbox. Thirty-six other possible “buddies” have sent messages overnight. Most of them comment on the photograph Darrell used in his ad, skeptical that it’s real. KC clicks the Sent file and finds the attached picture of Darrell’s erect penis, measured against a ruler, verifying a hefty ten-and-a-half inches. Darrell’s nickname for it is the Slavic Saber. KC feels like a sneak or a spy and closes the laptop. He flops on the bed and plays with the apps on his phone while he waits. He’s racking up a decent score on Slot-o-mania when a text message arrives.

  YOUR AGENT IS HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE

  RANGERS. NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU. WE NEED TO CONVINCETHEM IT’S NOT TRUE.

  Coach Freeman signs off, citing scripture.

  JOHN 3:3

  He doesn’t need to consult his Bible to decode the message. He knows this New Testament passage by heart. An incoming call appears on his screen. The number is familiar; the area code is Tampa/St. Pete. The caller leaves a message when he doesn’t answer.

  Hi, KC. It’s Callie. I hope you are all right and can call me back. Mr. Freeman called and asked if I’ve heard from you. He told me not to worry. That everything’s okay. He wants me to call him if I speak to you. Caleb wants to say hello.

  Hello, KC, a child’s voice says.

  We both miss you. Please call me as soon as you have a chance, she says before hanging up.

  He feels sick and dirty hearing the sound of her voice. They’d met in the young singles group at New Covenant. Mr. Stapleton introduced them—a shy young professional athlete with excellent prospects and the widow of an Army reservist, pregnant and only two years out of high school when her husband was killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan. She says KC is proof that Jesus has heard her prayers. KC respects her and loves her fatherless child. The Freemans think KC will make a good husband for Callie and role model for Caleb. They say it’s obvious he and Callie love each other, but KC knows better. He’s nervous around her; her expectations make him uncomfortable. She’s a nice girl, quiet, not the type who thinks she has to constantly be talking. But he keeps his distance, avoiding every opportunity to be alone with her, insisting they include Caleb in everything they do. She knows that girls with prettier faces and better bodies stalk boys who play ball. He swears there are no other women. He holds her hand because it’s expected, kisses her goodnight chastely. He likes Callie, but he knows he can’t really love her if the thought of sleeping with her fills him with dread. He’d hoped she would forget him when he left Florida to play in the Texas Winter League. But, encouraged by the Freemans, she’s moving to Sacramento so they can be together when she finishes nursing school next semester.

  There’s a sudden commotion in the hallway. Darrell is cursing on the other side of the door, frustrated his key card isn’t working. Darrell stumbles as KC opens the door and, tripping over his feet, falls on his ass. The guy from craigslist, more sinister-looking than his picture, follows him into the room, dragging a ragged backpack behind him.

  “Okay, are one of you jokers gonna help me up?”

  KC grabs an arm and pulls Darrell to his feet. He’s surprised at how light Darrell is; his bones feel practically weightless. He’d noticed last night how gaunt Darrell has become. His skin is blotchy and his cheeks have sunk into his once-broad face. But the hoodie he was wearing camouflaged the drastic change in his weight. KC had thought it was strange he was wearing a New York Giants sweatshirt in the middle of summer, but Seattle is cool and damp, not hot and muggy like July back east. He grabs Darrell around the waist to steady him until he can balance himself. He’s shocked to feel his ribs through the layers of padded cotton.

  “What are you doing?” Darrell asks, embarrassed in front of his new friend. “I can manage on my own now.”

  KC doesn’t smell alcohol on him. But the stench of his body odor is strong, nearly overwhelming, and his breath makes KC wince. His once-bright teeth are the color of dirty chalk. Darrell’s lost the Yankees baseball cap he was wearing last night. His thick hair, which he’d always worn clipped close to his scalp, with clean, sharp lines around his ears and along his neck, is long and shaggy and slick with grease.

  “Seamus, my friend KC doesn’t need to treat me like a baby, does he?”

  “Of course not,” Seamus says, winking and smiling at KC as if they were in a conspiracy.

  “So, did I lie to you?” Darrell asks.

  “No, sir you most certainly did not,” Seamus says, clearly seeing beyond the ripe purple and yellow contusions to appreciate KC’s good looks.

  Darrell squints and leans forward, staring at KC’s face.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” he asks, as if they hadn’t had a brief, but coherent conversation about KC’s bruises when KC arrived last night.

  “KC is my best friend in the whole world,” Darrell announces solemnly to his new acquaintance. “You tell us who did this to you, KC. Me and Seamus are gonna make ’em pay.”

  Darrell sits on the bed, then immediately jumps to his feet. He opens and closes the empty drawers of the bureau, then drops to his knees and searches for something under the bed. He’s hyper, not making complete sense, his speech on fast-forward. Jacked. That’s what KC would call him. Darrell stands and starts to swear, his mood brightening instantly when he sees a paper shopping bag on the floor in the corner. He retrieves a bottle of vodka.

  “You said you had the good shit,” Seamus says, feigning disappointment. “This crap costs ten bucks a bottle.”

  “KC can run out and get something else,” Darrell says, pulling two twenties from his wallet. “You like Belvedere? KC, how ’bout going down to the liquor store and get us a nice bottle of Belvedere. Get two, chilled if they have it,” he says, pulling more money from his billfold.

  “I’m just yanking your chain,” Seamus says. “This shit’s fine. You gonna join us my friend? What’s your name again? Casey?”

  “KC. Just the initials.”

  “Nice,” Seamus says. He’s got an accent. KC thinks he must be from Ireland since he has an Irish name. But he doesn’t look like any Irishman KC knows. He doesn’t have flaming orange hair and ruddy cheeks like KC’s late stepfather and his half-brothers and sister. Seamus’s face is long and thin, with grizzly muttonchop sideburns that almost touch at the tip of his pointy chin. His hairline is receding, but what’s left is thick and black, tied in a tight ponytail that falls between his shoulder blades. He’s taller than KC, but half his weight. No one would ever call Seamus handsome, but his blue eyes burn like lasers, making him inexplicably sexy.

  “Hey,” Seamus says, smiling at KC.

  “Hey.”

  KC is wearing the tee shirt he slept in and a pair of baggy boxer shorts, but Seamus’s gaze makes him feel like he’s buck naked in a room where everyone else is buttoned up and zippered.

  “Fuck man, your friend is something else,” Seamus laughs while Darrell is rummaging in the tiny bathroom, searching for plasti
c cups. “How old is he?”

  “Forty, I think. Somewhere around there. He’s old.”

  “He says you’re gonna be a famous baseball player,” Seamus says as he sits and begins unlacing his boots. They’re military surplus, calf high, scuffed and worn. The socks he tosses on the floor are thick and nubby and smell like sweat and damp wool. His feet are disgusting. They’re filthy, with long, yellow toenails. Seamus pulls his Henley shirt over his head and kicks off his jeans. There are stains in the armpits of his undershirt and the elastic waistband of his briefs is frayed. He opens his backpack and retrieves a small nylon bag, one of those cheap toiletry kits KC uses for toothpaste and shaving cream.

  “Whoa! Starting the party without me?” Darrell bellows as he emerges from the bathroom with a single plastic glass, still in its sanitary wrap.

  “Don’t worry dude. You ain’t gonna miss anything.” Darrell strips off his shirt, baring his chest. Even after feeling his ribs through his sweatshirt, KC is shocked at his appearance. He looks like one of those photographs of starving people in Haiti after a hurricane, except, of course, that he’s white. KC’s surprised by the fresh bruises on Darrell’s back.

  Seamus is holding a baggie of crystal and pulls a glass pipe from the toiletry bag.

  “This shit cost me, buddy,” Seamus reminds his new friend.

  “I’m good for it,” Darrell insists.

  Seamus gives him the I’ve heard that line before look, making no move to fill the bowl of the pipe with a hit.

  “Fuck,” Darrell complains as he drags himself to his feet and retrieves his wallet. Seamus zips the payment into a pocket of his backpack.

  “How come you still have your underwear on? I thought this was supposed to be a party,” Seamus asks KC. “Let me see it,” he insists, urging KC to pull his dick through the fly of his boxers.

  Seamus flicks his cigarette lighter and settles the flame under the bowl.

  “This is a non-smoking room,” KC reminds him, a remark both Darrell and Seamus find unbearably funny.

  KC gets a queasy feeling in his stomach as the crystals melt and smoke begins to curl through the stem.

  Darrell looks anxious as Seamus inhales. “Hey buddy, don’t be greedy. I just paid for this shit.”

  Seamus passes the pipe to Darrell, who chokes on the chest full of fumes he pulls from the stem.

  “Whoa, slow down, dude. You trying to have a fucking heart attack?” Seamus says as he offers the pipe to KC. “Wassup?” he laughs. “Your turn.”

  KC hesitates. He can’t imagine putting anything as filthy as the pipe, black with soot, in his mouth.

  “Come on, man. You wanna party don’t you?”

  “I gotta piss,” KC says, suddenly feeling paranoid, certain that the smoke alarm is going to summon the cops to break down the door.

  He hides in the bathroom, squatting on the toilet, gripping his phone in his hands. Fucking Darrell Torok isn’t buying him a new car. He’s blowing all his money on skanky hustlers and crystal, then he’ll fly back to Albany if he isn’t arrested first, leaving KC high and dry. KC should have stayed in Spokane and haggled with the Mexicans for a cheap set of shitty retreads. Now he’s stuck here in Seattle, with eight hundred dollars to his name and no car. The only way out of this mess is to call Mr. Stapleton again and beg him to persuade Coach Freeman to send him cash. Just enough for a used car. Nothing fancy. He’s twenty years old and no one, not even the Coach, should be able to stop him from spending his own money.

  “Hey man, what you doing in there?” Seamus calls.

  He panics, worried that this freak Seamus could be ransacking his duffel bag and the pockets of his jeans, not satisfied with the cash he’s taken from Darrell. Darrell’s too high to stop him; he won’t even try. KC jumps to his feet and rushes into the bedroom and finds them both naked. Seamus is on his back, sprawled across the bed; the soles of his feet are black with dirt. Darrell’s on his stomach, lying between Seamus’s legs, lazily sucking the younger man’s cock. Seamus pulls himself up onto his elbows, not understanding why KC is putting on his pants and tying his shoes.

  “Come over here, buddy, and fuck me. You’re gonna fuck my ass, aren’t you?”

  KC picks up his duffel, still unpacked, and smiles, explaining he’ll be right back.

  “I gotta do my laundry first. All my clothes are dirty,” he explains, promising to bring back a bottle of Belvedere.

  “We’ll be here partying, buddy. As long as there’s cash to spend,” Seamus says, falling back in the mattress.

  The keys to Darrell’s rental and the parking garage ticket are lying on the bureau. KC slips them in his pocket and closes the door behind him.

  It takes KC an hour to find the rental car in the garage. Either the cashier gives him shitty directions to Interstate 5 or he makes a wrong turn. He’s stuck in traffic near the Space Needle, then drives in circles until he finally finds the entrance to the highway. He doesn’t stop until he’s miles across the Oregon border. He parks behind a Burger King to call Mr. Stapleton. He reaches into his pocket for his phone, finding only a few loose coins. A frantic search of his other pockets yields nothing but his wallet and a dirty handkerchief. His heart is pounding in his chest and he feels the blood pulsing behind his eardrums. He unzips his duffel bag and dumps the contents on the back seat of the car. He finds the charger, but nothing to charge. He opens every door of the car and drops to his knees, running his hands under the seats, praying that the precious phone is lying on the floor. He slumps onto the asphalt and squeezes his skull with his hands, trying to remember the last time he held it in his palm. The bathroom. His phone is on the bathroom floor of Darrell’s hotel room where he dropped it when he thought he was being robbed.

  “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck,” he hisses, spitting the words through gritted teeth.

  He rises to his feet and pounds the hood of the car with his fists. His whole life is fucked, he swears as he kicks the tires. He could turn the car around and go back to Seattle. He can saunter into the hotel room as if nothing had happened, that he hasn’t been AWOL since morning. Darrell’s probably still too high to realize his car keys are missing, but the rental company won’t be forgiving if the car has already been reported stolen. You can’t use a phone in jail and it’s not worth the risk he’d be taking if he returned to retrieve it.

  “Hey!”

  A kid in a fast food uniform shouts at him, keeping his distance, not straying far from the safety of the back door of the building. KC can be scary when he’s angry and the fry cook doesn’t want to be tomorrow’s headline, the victim of a lunatic with a knife or a gun.

  “Hey, dude. You gotta go.”

  KC starts to argue with him. It’s a free country. He can park here if he wants. Go fuck yourself, asshole, he shouts.

  “This lot’s for customers only,” the kid says, retreating a few steps further.

  “I don’t want your fucking shit burgers,” KC yells as he slams the car door and races the engine. “You’re a fucking loser,” he shouts out the window as he peels out of the parking lot, barely avoiding a collision with a car traveling north. Asshole! the driver shouts through an open window. KC floors the accelerator, intending to chase the motherfucker, coming to his senses when he sees a patrol car approaching in the opposite lane. He makes a sharp right into the lot of a Dairy Queen and the cops continue on their way. He realizes he hasn’t eaten all day and needs something in his stomach.

  He orders ten bucks worth of food, thinking he’s famished. But he barely touches the crap on his tray, choking on a few bites of a cheeseburger. He’s finishing his Coke, about to dump the rest of the greasy shit in the trash, when a boisterous group of boys, none older than twelve, storm the door of the restaurant. Their grass and dirt-stained jerseys are wet with sweat and they’re wearing blue baseball socks and Adidas shower shoes, with black-and-white striped flaps. The Beaverton Grizzlies are celebrating a hard-fought victory. The coach, a good-natured middle-aged slob with a belly
that droops over the waistband of his sweat pants, makes a futile effort to get them to form a manageable line. They ignore him and rush the counter like a litter of wild puppies, shouting over each other, confusing the young girl at the register trying to take their orders.

  KC recognizes each of the boys from his own Little League days. There’s the fat kid, with power in his thick shoulders and arms, but too slow to reach first base safely unless he sends the ball deep into the outfield. The nerd with Coke-bottle glasses won’t be put in the game unless it’s a blowout, win or lose. The runt of the litter, a motormouth who is always talking trash, runs like a demon possessed and is the leadoff hitter on the team. Most of the boys still have the smooth, pink faces of childhood; a few have a faint shadow of hair on their upper lips. Some are gawky, with arms and legs too long for their bodies. The larger boys will soon develop the hard, defined muscles of young men. And one, lingering at the edge of the crowd, is clearly the leader, the captain, a boy who is deferred to, quiet, almost solemn, the player on the team who commands everyone’s respect. KC knows that boy well—the one he used to be.

  At that age, KC still believed that one day he’d stop being a lonely kid whose real name was Kevin Conroy, resented by his mother, beaten and abused by his alcoholic stepfather. He would be the Mighty KC, admired and envied, rich, with his face and stats on a Topps trading card. After he’d signed with the Rangers, his mother, a widow now, bitterly regretted how she had treated him. She seeks him out, sending letters pleading with him to write her a check because the house is in foreclosure or the car’s been repossessed. Mr. Freeman sends her a little money now and then. He calls it Christian charity and she always complains it isn’t enough. But KC won’t return her calls, refusing to speak to her, punishing her for not protecting him from a childhood of drunken insults and fists. But now he’s not a ball player anymore. The Mighty KC is just the stupid name of someone he will never be. He’s no one special. He can hear his mother mocking his failure, proving she’d been right all along when she said he’d turn out bad. He’s the loser she’d always known he would be. And worse yet, he’s a fag she can’t trust around her boys.