Sweetwater

by Lisa Henry

  Grady pulled him further into the trees. He pushed Elijah against the trunk of an aspen. Elijah’s skin seemed almost to glow in the dappled sunlight, as though he was made of porcelain. Grady ran his fingers through Elijah’s hair, dislodging a yellow leaf.

  “Here?” Elijah whispered, his eyes wide. He glanced back in the direction of the camp.

  “Here,” Grady said. He planted his hands above Elijah’s shoulders, the bark rough underneath his palms. He shifted forward, his right knee gentling Elijah’s legs open. He watched Elijah’s face closely, looking for any sign of reluctance. It was hard sometimes to know what was going on in Elijah’s head and too easy to mistake those wide eyes of his as innocent, as guileless. Too easy to forget what he’d done. Grady didn’t blame him, not for a second. But he shouldn’t mistake him for anything else, either.

  “What are you doing out here?” Grady asked him. “I gotta be jealous of Matt now?”

  Elijah flushed. “No!”

  “You sure?”

  Elijah nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else, and Grady leaned in and kissed him. He loved hearing Elijah’s sharp intake of breath every time they did this. Like a kiss could still surprise him.

  Grady had never known anyone like Elijah Carter.

  He curled his fingers around Elijah’s throat, tightened his grip just a little, and Elijah moaned.

  The sound went straight to Grady’s dick, and he kissed Elijah again.

  I’m keeping you. As soon as I figure out how, I’m keeping you.

  It was the next evening when they found the track to McCord’s cabin. Without the rain lashing down like last time, it was a pleasant ride, even with the cold beginning to bite. The ground was thick with fallen leaves, brown and yellow, dropped by the pale, ghostly aspens that rose up around them. The moon was nearly full and seemed large and close.

  There was no light coming from the cabin. No smoke rising.

  “Shit,” Cody said.

  Grady sighed. He waited until Elijah had slid down from the back of his horse and then dismounted. Handed the reins to Elijah and approached the cabin. He banged his fist on the door. “McCord? You in here?”

  There was no answer. Grady hadn’t expected one, really.

  He pushed the door open.

  The smell almost drove him back. It took him right back to his childhood: death.

  He was surprised when Elijah slipped past him, tugging his shirt up over his nose. “Can you find a lantern or something?”

  It took Grady a little while to find a candle, and a little while longer to find a flint box to light it.

  “He dead?” Dale called through the doorway. “Grady?”

  “Yeah,” Grady said, trying not to breathe.

  McCord was lying on his bed, his eyes half-open and a grimace frozen on his red-painted face.

  Grady crossed himself, and it had been years since he’d done that.

  “His . . . his face,” Elijah said.

  “The Sioux do that. Paint the face of the dead.”

  Elijah looked at him warily.

  “I’ve seen it before,” Grady told him.

  Elijah nodded and reached out to manipulate McCord’s fingers stiffly. “The rigor mortis is wearing off. He’s probably been dead about a day.”

  Grady stepped away again, trying to escape the stench.

  “Gangrene,” Elijah said. “We should bury him.”

  “Not tonight.” Grady leaned in the doorway, holding the candle so Elijah could see his face. “Tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow.” He drew Elijah back outside with him.

  “Where’s the woman?” Matt asked.

  “Gone, I guess.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Gone back to wherever the hell he found her,” Grady said. “What does it matter?”

  “She didn’t even stay to bury him?” Matt asked.

  Elijah stepped closer to Grady, the candlelight illuminating his pale face.

  “She painted him, though,” Grady said. “Saw him off in her own way.”

  Elijah hugged his arms, shivered suddenly, and walked away.

  “Hold on now.” Grady followed, wax dripping down his hand as the candle shook. He swore. The tiny flame guttered and died in the wind. “Elijah, hold on!”

  He caught Elijah by the arm, and Elijah spun around. “She walked away, just like that?”

  Grady stared down into his pale face. “What’s got you so upset? You didn’t know him.”

  “I know that!” Elijah yelled. He pushed at Grady’s chest, but Grady didn’t let him go. “Someone dies, there oughta be something. It oughta shake the world! You’re not supposed to walk away!”

  “You listen to me,” Grady said. “You are talking nonsense.”

  Elijah’s face crumpled. “I know! I know I am!” Tears ran down his face, but his mouth was twisted in anger. “It ain’t right!”

  “Elijah.” Grady held his gaze. “What happened here has nothing to do with anything, you hear? The old man’s dead. It makes no difference to him that the woman’s gone. Why’s it matter to you?”

  “Oughta shake the world,” Elijah whispered, his eyes wide.

  “This about Walt? Or this about your pa?” Lot of reasons for Elijah’s world to still be shaking, the aftershocks still trembling through his bones.

  Elijah pressed his lips together tightly and shook his head.

  “What’s it about then?” Grady rubbed his thumb along Elijah’s lower lip, gentling him, easing the tension out of that tight seam. Encouraging him to let his words spill out. “Come on now.”

  “Me. It’s about me. If something happens to you, where do I go?” Elijah’s voice broke, and he buried his face in Grady’s shirt and sobbed. “Do I just walk away? Where do I go?”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to me,” Grady said. Tempting fate, a voice told him. He ignored it. “Nothing. You hear me?”

  He couldn’t make out anything Elijah said then, but his tone was clear enough despite the garbled words.

  “Nothing,” Grady repeated. “And if something does, Matt would look out for you.”

  Elijah lifted his tear-stained face. “More’n I deserve. You ever killed anyone, Grady?”

  “No.” Grady leaned down and pressed his forehead against Elijah’s. Trying to tether him to the moment with that contact and wondering if he was already spinning out of reach. “I ain’t afraid of what’s inside you, Elijah.”

  Elijah made a noise like a whine in the back of his throat.

  “You’re a good man.” Grady made a fist in Elijah’s hair. “You hear me? You’re a good man.”

  “What if I’m not?”

  Grady drew back and stared into his eyes. “You are. I feel it in my fucking bones.”

  “I don’t want to be left alone, Grady,” Elijah said. “Not again.”

  “That won’t happen,” Grady told him. “I won’t let it happen. You hear me?”

  Elijah nodded, his eyes wide.

  “Good,” Grady said. He held Elijah’s face between his hands. Stared at him while his heartbeat slowed again. “Good.”

  They spent the night in McCord’s stable.

  With Elijah in his arms, Grady could almost ignore the murmurs of snuffling and snorting of his cousins. He could pretend nobody else was here but Elijah.

  Grady dreamed of the Sweetwater again that night, breaking its banks and spilling across the plain.

  When Grady woke up, Elijah was gone.

  He pushed the blankets off and scrubbed his face with his hands, bringing warmth into his cheeks.

  It was still dark, although a gray light was doing its best to soften the gloom. It was cold. Grady pulled on his boots before he headed outside for a piss.

  And to find Elijah.

  Frost cracked under his boots. His piss steamed.

  Grady found Elijah around the side of the cabin, shovel in hand, his shirt streaked with mud. He was digging a grave.

  “Elijah.” Grady walked up behind him, then stopped
to watch the muscles in his neck and arms cording as he worked. The kid was a stripling but not a weakling. “Elijah!”

  Louder this time, pitched differently.

  Elijah turned.

  “You don’t need to do that yourself,” Grady told him.

  “I wanted to start,” Elijah said.

  Grady rubbed his hand over his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No rush, is there?”

  “What else is there to do?” Elijah asked.

  “Huh.” He doubted very much it was boredom that had driven Elijah out of the stable and into the dark and the cold to start digging. “How many times you gotta be told, Elijah?”

  “What?” Elijah’s eyes were gray in the ghostly light, and his face was pale.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” Grady asked him. He moved closer and peered into the grave. It was too short, and too shallow, but a decent start. “Who you really burying here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Grady shrugged. “Just trying to figure you out is all.”

  Elijah jammed the blade of the shovel into the wet earth and stepped back. “What do you figure then?”

  “Might take me a while.”

  Elijah squared his shoulders. “How long you got?”

  There was a universe of uncertainty in those words, and in Elijah’s eyes. Grady had taken him from South Pass City, from the only home he’d ever known, and set him on an uncertain path. And right now Elijah might consent to follow, but would he forever? Grady cared for Elijah; he hadn’t wanted him to be hanged. A world of difference between that and wanting to stay together always. But what if promising Elijah the here and now wasn’t good enough? Not for the kid who was always getting left behind.

  “I reckon we got the time,” Grady said.

  Something flashed across Elijah’s face that Grady couldn’t interpret. Disappointment? A challenge? He reached out and pulled Elijah close, pressing up against Elijah’s ass. Slid one hand across his chest to hold him in place, and the other down the front of his trousers.

  Elijah squirmed. “Don’t! I gotta finish this.”

  He leaned his chin on Elijah’s shoulder. “Told you, there’s no rush.”

  Elijah’s breath hitched.

  Grady slid his hand farther down, working his way past Elijah’s drawers. Space opened up as Elijah sucked in a breath, and Grady’s fingers brushed over his suddenly taut abdomen. Followed the trail of hair down and closed his hand over Elijah’s cock.

  “Don’t!” Elijah twisted out of Grady’s grasp. Scowling, he reached for the shovel again. He tightened his hands around it, his knuckles white in the cold. “Leave me to finish here.”

  Elijah had blood on his hands. Maybe that was why he was digging McCord’s grave on his own. Maybe he figured it was some kind of recompense. Impossible to tell, hidden underneath all the things that Elijah couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say.

  Grady walked a few steps away and stared into the trees as the dawn breathed color into them. He heard the scrape and thock as the blade of the shovel cut into the wet earth as Elijah continued to dig.

  “He still digging?” Dale asked later, smoking a cigar around the side of the cabin.

  “Yeah,” Grady said.

  “At least the woman didn’t take all the horses. Might as well take your pick for the kid.”

  “He ain’t even buried yet, and you’re already figuring what we can steal?”

  “It’s not stealing,” Dale said. “Better than to leave ’em here to starve.”

  “I know.”

  Grady got a picture in his head of him always scrabbling in the dirt to make a living, stealing to get ahead, which would be bad enough except he never did get ahead, did he? There was no ranch. There never would be. He’d known it for a while now; he’d just never bothered to look for an alternative. Except suddenly there were hundreds, thousands, opening up in front of him, and he could choose any one. He wasn’t bound to Wyoming. Wasn’t bound to his cousins. Wasn’t bound to anyone except Elijah Carter.

  “Listen.” Dale dropped the butt of his cigar on the ground and trod it into the dirt. “We’re heading home. Now. You want to ride with us, that’s fine. You want to wait for your boy to finish digging, that’s fine too.”

  Grady thought of his dream again. “Any reason you’re pushing this now?”

  Dale’s face was regretful. “I reckon it’s been a long time coming.”

  “Yeah, maybe it has.”

  “Not like you can bring the kid to Ham’s Fork and expect nobody to talk.”

  “I guess not.” Grady remembered what Matt had said weeks ago. About how nobody would pay any mind to two brothers living together. Maybe he had to do what McCord and his woman had done and find some place that worked for them. Some place where neither of them were known. That was never going to be Ham’s Fork. “We’ll stay. Get the old man buried.”

  Dale nodded, his gaze not quite meeting Grady’s.

  “Catch you up, I guess,” Grady said. “In the spring maybe.”

  “Yeah. You do that.” Dale’s voice was hollow.

  Elijah watched, solemn faced, as Grady bid farewell to his cousins.

  “Ain’t no ranch and there ain’t never gonna be one,” Matt said in an undertone. “You going west?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Matt said. “Maybe alone, maybe not. Don’t you go nowhere without hearing from me.”

  Grady embraced him. “I won’t.”

  He watched them ride out. Should have felt more somber, maybe, but God’s honest truth, the only one he’d really miss was Matty, and he was coming back anyhow. If anything, Grady felt relieved as he watched them go. That noose he’d been imagining for so many months loosened at last.

  He and Elijah buried McCord at dusk and stood silently over his grave.

  “I don’t want to be the reason you fight with your family,” Elijah said at last.

  “You’re not the reason,” Grady said. He reached out for Elijah’s hand. Twined those fingers through his own, and marveled at the rightness of it. There was no deceit between them. No lies. Grady didn’t want there to be any distance, either. Not when it was so easy to close with only words. “You ever seen a man light a fuse? All the explosives were already packed in place. You’re the . . . the spark, I guess.”

  Elijah smiled hesitantly.

  Grady tightened his fingers. “Me and Dale have got some different ideas on plenty of things. Not just you.”

  He kissed Elijah, hooking his fingers into the top of his trousers and tugging him closer. Tilted his chin, encouraging him to open. Touched his tongue against Elijah’s and shivered at the rush of heat that flooded him from just that tiny contact.

  “Grady!” Elijah’s smile broke the kiss. He leaned his head on Grady’s shoulder for a moment before he pulled back. “We just buried a man. That ain’t proper!”

  “Yes, sir,” Grady said, touching the brim of his hat.

  Elijah laughed suddenly, the sound flat and discordant, more like an ugly tear-filled sob than a laugh. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “What’d you do that for?” Grady asked.

  “Sorry.” Elijah’s face was red.

  “Cover your mouth, I mean, not laugh.” Grady tousled his hair. “I’ve never heard you laugh before. I like it.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” Elijah said. He was enunciating carefully now. Once bitten, twice shy, Grady guessed, though it wasn’t Grady that had bitten him. Elijah drew a breath. “I know it sounds bad.”

  “It’s a laugh,” he said. “No way a laugh can sound bad. You heard the way Cody snorts like a pig? You got nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Elijah chewed his lip and said nothing.

  Grady wanted Elijah to feel secure without feeling trapped, possessed without feeling beaten down. He wanted to see that smile he’d seldom glimpsed. He wanted Elijah to be with him for more than any sense of obligation the kid might feel for Grady having gott
en him out of South Pass City. Wanted to see him unbend a little, as well, instead of just standing there with his hands clasped in front of him. Too worried to make a move in case it was the wrong one.

  “Come with me,” Grady said.

  He led Elijah into the center of the stable. It was gloomy, and it was cold. The horses stomped and whickered.

  “Get your clothes off, Elijah, and get on your knees.” Grady spread a saddle blanket over the dirt floor. Lifted his saddle down from the rail and set it on its side on the blanket. Unhooked the reins from his horse’s bridle and tossed them down there, as well. Followed them with the jar of liniment he’d picked up in South Pass City that was good for chaffing and didn’t smell too bad.

  “Wh-what?”

  “You heard me. I know you did.” The kid liked it a little rough, liked to meet the challenge of a man who took what he wanted, but it didn’t have to hurt. It didn’t have to humiliate. Grady would never look at him the way Crane had: like he was nothing better than a whore or a dog. Elijah was neither of those things. Just had to get it through his head first.

  Elijah’s movements were jerky. His eyes were wide as he stared down at the saddle blankets on the ground and the saddle and reins laid out around it.

  “Go on,” Grady said. “On your knees, in front of the saddle.”

  He watched Elijah kneel. The line of his back was stiff. His fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides. Grady studied him for a moment, letting his tension build before he drew his hand down Elijah’s spine. He arched into the touch, and Grady took one of the reins. It was worn with use, the edges cracked.

  “Hands behind your back now.”

  “What?”

  Grady leaned closer. “I said, hands behind your back.”

  Elijah nodded, swallowed, and obeyed.

  Grady looped the reins around his wrists and cinched them tight. He pushed Elijah forward gently until his belly was resting on the edge of the saddle. “More, come on. I want your ass up in the air, Elijah.”

  He moaned, stretching out over the seat of the saddle. He took most of his weight on his knees, but leaning over the saddle forced his ass up into the air.