Foothills Pride Stories, Volume 2

by Pat Henshaw

  “Yeah, I’m Fen. How can I help you?”

  “I’m Robert Olsen.” His look said that I should recognize his name.

  I waited. Since he was the one whose presence screamed “fuck you,” I’d stand down until I understood what I’d done to the man.

  “I’m Jeremy and Boone’s father.”

  The light hadn’t gone on fully, but I had a sneaking suspicion where he was going now that he was standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and was eyeing me like a particularly fascinated snake looking at its next meal.

  “The boys come in with their mother sometimes.” He took a step into my space and again squared his stance.

  Now I was scared shitless. Fucking A. I started to settle into my self-defense position. I told myself I’d fought off bigger guys during practice at the gym, so I could defend myself against Mr. Olsen.

  Before I got in place, he punched me in the face.

  I put my hands over my nose as pain exploded in my head. I was dizzy and not too steady on my feet. While I was trying to get myself together to retaliate, he followed through with a punch to the midsection, and all the wind was knocked out of me.

  I fell to the floor, my body screaming at me to run and hide, to get away from the agony of burning in hell. Then his foot connected with my stomach. I curled tighter into myself.

  I was crying, panting, trying to breathe without antagonizing the pain and making it rear up to strike me again.

  “You told my kids they would be faggots, you cocksucker! You told my fucking boys they would be happy being fags when they grew up. You goddamned fucking homo!”

  I heard the words and felt another blow, but my fight or flight instinct had shut down in shock. If I could just roll up a little tighter, I could become small enough he wouldn’t see me.

  I couldn’t even yell for help I hurt so much. Instead I whispered over and over again, “Stop. Stop. Stop.”

  Then my world went black.

  WHEN I woke, I was in a bed at the clinic. John was standing next to my feet. He looked really upset. My body was wrapped in a thick membrane of numbness, surrounded by a blanket of pain waiting to attack. Whatever protection I had was eggshell thin. I could feel the pulse of pain waiting, biding its time until it could take over my body. My mind tried resisting. I was terrified that whatever the nurse or doctor had given me would wear off and I’d be kicked around some more.

  I’d been hit and punched as a scrawny, short kid in school, but for the most part, the kids lashing out at me weren’t all that tough or trained. Mr. Olsen proved himself to be both rough and skilled. He knew how to inflict the most pain, the quickest and easiest way. He’d hit with purpose as if trained to do it. I was past defenseless into innocent and clueless territory. I was a first-level baddie in his game, not even worth taking out his sword or putting on his armor. He’d felled me like DDT on an unwanted weed.

  I should have been obliterated and not waking up in the clinic alive.

  I took a breath and the pain snuck in, roaring like a pride of lions ready for the kill. I gasped.

  “Fen? Hey, Fen. You awake? He’s awake!” John sounded upset and relieved. For an instant, he seemed poised to reach for me—to hug me?—yet he backed off and looked around, thankfully keeping his hands to himself.

  Since the lions had me in their grasp and an acid rain poured over me, I didn’t want him to get torn to bits too. He couldn’t touch me or act like he was my friend and lover, or the lions would chew him up and the rain would erase the leftovers.

  As I gathered my strength to warn him of the danger, he was pushed aside by an older man wearing a white coat and a doctor’s name badge.

  After he examined me and asked my name and some irrelevant stuff, he told me they were keeping me for a while to figure out my condition and see if there was more than surface damage. He said that Beth and John and my mother could visit me, but that I should kick them out whenever I wanted. He finished by saying I should get as much rest as I could, like I was stupid enough to give the lions the upper hand by sleeping.

  John slid back next to my bed after he left.

  “Do you know what happened?” he asked.

  I started to shake my head, but the lions’ growl roared through my brain. When my tremors stopped, I whispered, “No. What happened?”

  “The nursery handyman, that big, old guy, said he came into the greenhouse from the tree lot and saw some guy punch you in the nose. Then before he could get there, the guy kicked you.” John reached for me, and I groaned. “He pulled the guy off you and tied him up with some green tree tape and called Sheriff Campbell.”

  “He’s the little boys’ father. He didn’t think my gay joke was funny.”

  “What are you talking about?” John shook his head at me. “He’s at the station. I called your mom, and she’s on her way. She told me not to let you annoy anyone.”

  Cold ants were running up my arm, coming from the monitor on my finger. I told John to get them off of me, but he said I should go to sleep because everything was going to get livelier when my mom arrived.

  He was right. So I slept. To hell with the lions. My mother would kill them.

  13

  A WEEK later, I’d more or less bounced back, and though my nose still looked a little odd, it had required no surgery. So it was just a matter of time for it and my other minor wounds to heal. Through the week’s ordeal, I’d made one career decision.

  I’d called UCD and regretfully declined the teaching position. Well, at least I said I was regretfully declining. Truthfully, I could never imagine myself in front of a classroom teaching undergrads. Then like any good, dutiful son with a PhD, I called my mother.

  “Good for you.” She sounded like her usual cheery self. I’d thought maybe getting the shit kicked out of me would have slowed her down, but she’d bounced back faster than I had, especially since I’d agreed to file charges against Robert Olsen. “I never saw you as the professorial type.” Now she was laughing at me.

  “Thanks, Ma.” I wondered what had happened. Her TLC meter seemed to be broken. “What did you see me doing?”

  “Well, getting out of academia quicker,” she told me, still laughing. “Other than that? I don’t know. I thought you were someone who knew a good thing when he saw it and latched on to a happy life when it presented itself.”

  “Translated that means what?” I sounded sullen. Was I pouting? Yup. I was acting like a five-year-old.

  “Fen, dear, if I have to point out what’s right in front of your eyes, then you need new glasses,” she chirped.

  “I don’t wear glasses.”

  “I know, dear.”

  Then she hung up. I couldn’t believe it. She hung up. On me.

  John called me downstairs for dinner, so I didn’t have time to start sulking and brooding. I’d been moving the rest of my stuff out of the upstairs, so it was now entirely Ricky’s space. John said it was ridiculous for me to be trudging up and down the stairs to get odds and ends. It made sense, so I agreed.

  I was supposed to move into his guest room, but I ended up in his room and his bed instead. Again, I didn’t argue, since it seemed sensible considering he was supposed to check me for signs of concussion for a few days. After the few days, we both needed the sleep, so I hadn’t moved. John seemed to have stopped working at the Star. But I didn’t ask.

  As we sat across from each other at the dining table, I told him about making my decision and calling my mother.

  “I can’t believe she hung up on me,” I finished. “She’s never done that before. She didn’t even sound sympathetic.”

  “Smart woman, your mother. You should listen to her.”

  I harrumphed and shook my head.

  “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to be looking at that I don’t see?” I took another bite of the salmon and wild rice he’d fixed for tonight. “If it’s this meal, then she’s wrong. I notice. It’s delicious. I don’t know what kind of cook Adam is, but you’re world-class.�
��

  He gave me a short, unhappy smile.

  “So have you decided to buy the Limelight?” Maybe it was time for me to stop thinking about myself and start considering other people. Was that what Mom meant?

  Before he could answer, Ricky was on top of us, happy, bouncing, and talking a mile a minute.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late for dinner.” He whipped around to glare at me. “Where were you? We were supposed to meet after work. We were talking about my new position watering plants. Did you know that Jimmy at the coffee place wants plants in his shops too? And the ladies at the hair salon said they wanted some too. Nobody can convince Stone to put them in the saloon. He said saloons didn’t need plants. Did you ever hear anything so silly? Where were you?”

  While he was talking, John served him a plate and laid out some flatware.

  “I was here, talking to John. I guess I forgot about the meeting.” Actually, I hadn’t forgotten. I’d told Beth I couldn’t make it and had come home because I’d been tired. Exhausted really. Already Ricky’s exuberance was poking away at my nerves, making me sag more than I had all day.

  A couple of people had told me I’d go through a few down days after I got out of the clinic and was recovering physically and mentally from the attack. They’d been right. They also said to stick with it because my energy would return and I couldn’t hurry it. Since they’d been right about it sneaking up and blindsiding me, I’d decided to believe the ennui would leave as it had arrived, quickly and without warning.

  In the meantime, I couldn’t ignore it. I just had to work through it as long as I could and then rest.

  Ricky kept up his monologue through dinner until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I’ll be in the bedroom reading,” I announced as I stood up.

  “Aren’t you going to have any of the brownies? They’re really good. And besides, they belong to you. If you aren’t here, can we have some?”

  I wanted to yell, “Shut the fuck up and let me alone!” But Ricky wouldn’t understand. He’d be hurt by my shouting at him. This was my problem, not his.

  “Yeah, help yourselves to the brownies,” I said and turned to go into the bedroom, leaving my half-eaten dinner on the table behind me.

  Joyce Tanner, former wife of Mr. Olsen, mother of the little boys, and nurse, had shown up at the clinic in tears.

  “Fen, are you okay? Robert didn’t hurt you too badly, did he?” she’d asked as she entered the room. Then she’d burst into more tears.

  She’d babbled on about how sorry she was, although I kept trying to tell her that I didn’t blame her or her kids at all. She wasn’t listening, so I let her carry on talking about her wreck of a marriage. In the end, she gave me a houseplant, and if I hadn’t been in so much pain, I would have laughed.

  After I was discharged, she came by Blue Cottage and gave me some cookies, which John thanked her for and Ricky scarfed up like they were peanuts. Then a few days ago, she’d dropped a shoebox full of brownies off at the nursery, and Ricky’d bugged me all day to open the box and share.

  Now he got his wish. I hoped the brownies didn’t go as fast as the cookies had. I knew I was developing a very bad attitude. I blamed my mother.

  TWO DAYS later, Ricky kept stopping me at work to ask if I’d seen Joyce.

  “Doesn’t she know we’re out of brownies? What are we going to do if she doesn’t bring us something else to eat?”

  As usual, he nattered on and on. I was beginning to understand how someone got to the point of wanting to hit another person in the nose. One bad joke was enough for Robert Olsen. A lot of pestering might be my limit.

  Joyce never showed up. So by dinner time, Ricky was totally upset and blaming me.

  “Me?” I yelped. “How can you blame me?”

  He glared my way and muttered, “You probably weren’t nice enough when you thanked her.”

  John laughed, which I thought was cruel of him.

  “It’s probably because she thought the brownies would last at least a week,” I told Ricky.

  He sighed. “She thought three guys wouldn’t eat them in a couple of hours? What’s she gonna do when her boys get bigger? Make them split a brownie?”

  I exchanged a look with John, and we both burst out laughing this time.

  “You laugh. But those kids are going to be hurting if she doesn’t figure out guys.”

  We nodded in agreement and snickered.

  As dinner was coming to an end, someone knocked on the front door. Ricky jumped up.

  “She’s here! What do you think she brought us?”

  “You mean brought me, right?”

  He looked blankly at me.

  John clapped me on the shoulder on his way to the front door. “You’re never going to convince him the goodies were ever all yours.”

  I sighed. He was right. What was mine was now Ricky’s.

  I gathered the plates and had made it into the kitchen by the time he opened the door.

  Ricky shrieked and ran into the kitchen with me. I heard Leo shout, “Shut up and get out here!”

  “No! You’ve got a gun!” Ricky shouted back.

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest. If my encounter with Robert Olsen taught me nothing else, it was that practical precautions beat foolhardiness every time.

  Leaving Ricky and John at Leo’s mercy for the moment, I scurried quietly up the back stairs.

  I called 9-1-1 and whispered as loudly as I could, “Blue Cottage. Leonard Waterson is here. With a gun,” and hung up. Help was coming.

  Now all I had to do was stall Leo long enough for the sheriff or his deputies to get across the street. I had to be armed.

  I snuck into my living room, avoiding all the creaking and groaning boards, grabbed an andiron from beside the fireplace, and then went to my back door. I figured I had the best chance of surprising Leo and making him drop his gun if I attacked him from John’s front door, which would be behind Leo.

  The air was freezing outside, too cold to be without a sweater or jacket for very long. I figured since I hadn’t heard it slam that the front door was still open. Leo would probably be trying to herd John and Ricky outside.

  I got snow in my shoe and had to stifle a curse. Damn.

  As I crept past the first-floor windows, I could see John with his hands up and Ricky yelling at Leo, his hands windmilling and gesturing his distress.

  At the corner of the house, I ran into the sheriff and two deputies.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing out here?” the sheriff whispered. Before I could answer, he asked, “Did you leave the back door open?”

  I nodded and pointed up to the second floor.

  “The upstairs door’s unlocked. There’s a stairway between floors in my kitchen.”

  The sheriff gestured for one of the deputies to head back the way I’d come. After being beaten by Mr. Olsen, I wasn’t very excited about getting into the fray this time, but I followed the sheriff because he seemed the safest of my options.

  I started to get closer to the sheriff as Leo blundered out the front door onto the porch, clutching Ricky to his chest with a stranglehold across Ricky’s throat. As a shield, Ricky was a joke, looking more like a human codpiece since he was so much shorter and thinner than Leo. Ricky also seemed to be dead weight at this point, his feet dragging over the threshold.

  “Let me go and I’ll release him!” Leo shouted at the sheriff and deputies while he waved his gun around.

  “Not gonna happen,” Sheriff Campbell muttered, and shot at Leo’s hand. Leo dropped his gun and fell on top of Ricky.

  I was stunned. Nobody looked like they’d been hit, but it had been an effective move.

  The deputies swarmed over Leo, one handcuffing him, the other getting Ricky out from under Leo’s body. Ricky was crying while Leo was shouting about how someone—namely him—could have been killed.

  My legs were so shaky, I slid down and sat in the snow. Almost immediately, Sheriff Campbell had hols
tered his gun and put a hand under my arm.

  “Okay, let’s get you inside and warmed up,” he whispered.

  “Where’s John?” I asked as I stood and shuffled forward.

  As the sheriff helped me up the porch steps, the deputy moving Ricky inside turned to us.

  “There’s a guy on the floor in here. He looks like he was hit on the head, but he seems to be okay. He’s coming to,” she reported.

  John was injured? Shit. I tried to hurry, but my feet weren’t acting right. So I staggered to keep up with Sheriff Campbell’s slow and steady speed as I got my breath back. I was shivering, but my head seemed to be clearing.

  By the time we got into the living room, John was already on the couch, a plastic bag with ice, wrapped partially in a dishcloth, clutched to his head.

  “Hey,” he greeted me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just cold. You?”

  He lifted the bloody cloth, grimaced, and nodded. “I’ve been better.”

  A cursing Leo was being led down the walk toward the police station as a couple more deputies arrived. Then Ricky found his voice, and chaos ensued. Every time he yelped or shouted or got really shrill, a buzz-saw pain ripped through my head.

  It was going to be a long night.

  14

  PROCESSING LEO took a little under forever. The sheriff asked me to stay and sign a statement about Leo threatening us with a gun. In the meantime, both John and Ricky had been taken to the clinic and examined by the doctor, then released. John’s wound amounted to a cut that needed to be bandaged, and he’d been cautioned to have someone stay with him to check for signs of concussion. To no one’s surprise, he volunteered me.

  We were exhausted and bundled up against the cold as I picked him and Ricky up at the clinic to drive them back to Blue Cottage. As we drove up, we saw the house had been sitting empty with the front door unlocked and a little ajar the whole time we’d been gone. I felt like a fool when I realized I hadn’t even checked the doors after I’d gone across the street with the sheriff to give my statement.