Nathan’s Story
Luke Hartwell
© 2013 Luke Hartwell
Watersgreen House
All rights reserved.
BISAC: Fiction / Literary
BISAC: Fiction / Gay
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Chapter 1
My father's passing was harrowing. I don't mean the pain, although there was plenty of pain. I don't mean the disgusting details of an aged body that does what it wants without regard to the brain's commands or social decorum, although there was enough of that as well. It was harrowing because even though he had told me only hours before his death that he was not afraid to die, in those last minutes, in the final hour, he seemed terrified.
I had hoped he would tell me he loved me. He did not. He thanked me for being there. He told me to look after my mother.
“I love you,” he said to her. To her.
And he told her he could not bear the thought of not being with her. And that, I think, was the source of his terror. When you see someone dying, calm for hours then suddenly in terror, a look about them that breaks your heart in its agony, not from pain but from sheer terror, it changes you.
And I think when I die, I may also be terrified, and what I shall fear will be the loss of love. I have been blessed with sustaining love. Early in life this came from my mother and my grandmother. As a teenager I felt it from my two best friends. I have definitely felt love from at least one person my entire life, and usually from at least two or three. It is a love that encompasses and tries to protect. It is return love. It is love that keeps one company. And then comes death, with its infinite unknowns. Who knows if there is love on the other side? I want to believe so. I want to believe it is a love so strong it heals all the bitter scars of one's life and makes one thankful and happy to have finally left this world of suffering behind. I suppose some call that heaven. It's a lot to hope for, but I’ve never discounted it. What gives me pause is the unknowing. Knowing what I will be giving up—a lot of pain, hurt, annoyance, and disgust, for certain, but also that love—and not knowing what I'll be getting in return. Knowing the hole I will be leaving in hearts because I know the hole they would be leaving in mine. Knowing I may never see them again, hear them again, feel their love again. That is the terrifying thought. I can no longer imagine being without the safety of that love. Knowing I am sinking into the dark hole of death, away from these people, out of reach of their love, that is what will terrify, will put the look of horror on my face as it did on my father's face.
The nurse said most people go peacefully. Some, like my father, have a “restless departure.” Those were her words, but you knew that; I put them in quotes. It is such a trite expression for such a profound moment that I blamed her for trivializing the experience. Just call it what it is: terror. The honesty of death is no time for euphemisms, although probably more euphemisms have been invented for death than just about any other human experience. Monty Python fans will be familiar with a hysterical rendering of them in regards to a deceased parrot. But a human death. My father's death. My death. Your death. If it ends in tears or terror, don't tell me it's a “restless departure.” I think I know what it is. I think it is the terrifying fear that one will never again feel love.
Chapter 2
What matters to me:
John.
Harper.
Our families.
Chapter 3
I spent my childhood in a small town in the middle of the country, but south. Most of the residents, like my own family, are descended from the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia. Bohemian. It’s funny what that word has come to connote because most of the Bohemians I’ve known are anything but bohemian. Some of the Czechs came to America for better economic opportunity; some to avoid being conscripted into the Austrian Empire’s army. But the people I grew up around were not musicians and poets living in voluntary poverty and wandering around the country. If anything, they were noteworthy for being conventional and staying in one place. In my case, that would be my home town.
As a boy, I played in the dirt a lot. We had grass, but cars rolled better on dirt, balls bounced higher. It was a country house; no asphalt once you left the highway. My choices were grass, the rooftops of various sheds that I wasn’t supposed to play on, and dirt. If I raked or hoed the dirt under the grove of shade trees in the back yard, it was pleasingly cool to the stomach when flopped upon. I rarely wore a shirt during summer months, not even to eat or for company. I liked the feel of the sun and the wind on my body. I never was much on wearing clothes.
As I inferred, my home town is a conservative town. Although everyone is friendly enough, there isn’t much tolerance for difference. The most obvious example is that if you aren’t Czech, you don’t get elected to anything and are never made to feel like you really belong. But that’s one thing I didn’t have to worry about; my father’s family, the Cernochs, and my mother’s family, the Novaks, have been here since the beginning of the town. But for whatever reason my mother had switched religions after my father’s death, leaving the social security of the Catholic Church to join an evangelical church that was attended mostly by ex-Baptists and non-Czechs. Suddenly, we were viewed differently, and we knew it.
All through my childhood I was attracted to older boys. I couldn’t hardly talk to them I was so in awe. If a boy was older and attractive, everything about him filled me with the strangest feeling. I didn’t know what to do with it. If there was a good-looking older boy in the room, all I could do was stare.
At age ten, I fell in love. This happened at the town bowling alley. I had gone, reluctantly, because I knew my limitations, with a group of kids from church. I could not bowl to save my life, and after embarrassing myself in front of the church kids numerous times, I told them I was bored with bowling and would just watch. Then, watching them enjoying the lanes together, bowling the occasional strike and cheering, I truly was bored, and also humiliated, envious, and miserable. Despite my being thoroughly Czech-American, the only place in that town I ever felt like I truly belonged was my own house and yard.
Maybe a cheeseburger would help. I walked over to the concession.
“What’d’ya want?” the oily-looking girl behind the counter asked me. I gave her my order, glancing at the sign hanging on the wall above her head: “Now Hiring Friendly People.” Obviously the unfriendly people presently employed were not working out.
When my order was ready, the cook slid it through the little window between the kitchen and the counter area, but the girl was busy talking on the phone. I waited impatiently, smelling the fries and burger, longing for a taste. Then an older boy further down the counter came to my rescue.
“This is going to get cold,” he said, stepping behind the counter, picking up my basket of food, sitting it in front of me, then returning to his seat.
I felt my heart stop. When I could breathe again, I looked down the counter at the boy, who was eating a chili dog, licking chili from his fingers. Don’t do that. Don’t lick yourself like that. It was that feeling again of not knowing what to do with the longing surging inside of me, stronger than ever before. The boy looked different than anyone I had ever seen—big holy eyes, earnest face, self-confident, muscular build, and so attractive I was in a swoon. I couldn’t take my eyes from him.
He did not immediately notice me looking at him, but when he did, I memory-photographed the response in slow-motion: the inquisitive glance that met my eyes, the handsome face breaking into a friendly expression something short of a smile, then a casual, “Enjoying your burger?”
“Yeah.”
The next time the church kids went bowling, I tagged along despite their protests, hoping luck would once again put the older boy in my path. He wasn’t there, and I had a miserable, desolate time, became moody, caused a small scene by rolling a bowling bowl into the reset mechanism, and was thereafter banished from church bowling trips.
I didn’t see the boy again for three years, but I never forgot his face. I learned his name and age when I was thirteen by coming across his photograph in the local paper while checking the movie listings. His name was Harper Clements, he has now eighteen, and he lived in a small area nearby known as Roe. But not for long: He had been accepted into the Air Force Academy.
The next day, after lunch, I put a shirt on to look respectable, got on my bike, and headed for Roe. It was a five-mile ride, and I took my time, not wanting to arrive a sweaty mess. Still, I was there sooner than I expected. It did not take me long to find a mailbox with the name Clements on it. Of course there could be more than one, or Harper could be living with a stepfather with a different last name. In any case, I was too afraid, once I found the mailbox, to approach the house to see if it was really his. I sat on my bike staring at the mailbox for quite some time, then rode to the only store in town, which doubled as a service station, to buy something to drink.
I recognized him instantly even in the motorcycle helmet, filling his tank with gas. Harper glanced at me as I rode up, but no look of recognition crossed his face. This is what I expected. Why should Harper recognize me? I was thirteen now and looked nothing like I had at ten. No goofy kid expressions to smile at now, just the usual early adolescent confusion playing about the face, threatening to erupt into The Scream. So I shyly made the first move.
“Your name’s Harper, right?”
Harper looked up again only briefly, then turned his attention back to the pump. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
How could I explain?
“I saw you once at the bowling alley when I was younger. And I saw you in the paper yesterday, about you joining the Navy.”
Harper looked at me again, said nothing. Then, when the tank was full, he took off his helmet, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled the widest smile he could possibly smile.
“You saw me once at the bowling alley? And you remember me?”
The force of the question drove the stupidity of the situation deep into my eyes. All I could say was “Yeah.”
“I haven’t been bowling since, well, I don’t know. Long time. When did you see me? How long ago?”
“Three years.”
“Three years?” At least he hadn’t repeated the words with ridiculing emphasis, as if I were a nutcase. He’d merely repeated them with a question mark.
“Yeah.”
Harper just kept staring at me. Then he broke into another smile. “Come on,” he said. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Sure.”
“Just put your bike in the garage. Hey, Jim? Okay if we leave this bike in here? Keep an eye on it for me, will ya?”
A voice from inside the garage said it was fine.
“Just a second. I need to pay for my gas.”
While I waited for Harper to return, I admired the cycle. Black and silver, with a bit of blue. Pretty sharp. And Harper was dressed to match: black jeans, blue shirt. And next thing I knew I was sitting behind Harper on the cycle, wearing Harper’s helmet, holding onto Harper’s waist as instructed. I was in heaven, or at least felt myself drifting there. I sensed myself rising, and I could see myself on the cycle with my arms around this older boy. I could see the entire road, the countryside, the county, the whole state, and for a moment the whole blue south, the continent, then I vanished from earth altogether, toward my own white sun, like an asteroid, shooting through the cosmos. Then I returned, and I held on tighter.
Harper drove to West Mountain, then turned off on a hiking trail, then, finally, on a smaller trail that led to a clearing in the forest. He parked the cycle, and I followed him into the woods, carefully stepping around the poison ivy and the slightly more exotic poison dogwood, saying nothing.
“How old are you?” Harper asked.
“Thirteen.”
Harper nodded, kept walking. Sometimes he paused to hold a briar back so that it wouldn’t slap me in the face. We came to a second clearing surrounded on one side by a grove of fir trees, and on three sides by oak. Harper stopped, looked around, and sat down on a fallen log. “Come on,” he said. “Sit.”
The clearing was flat, and wide enough that a good portion of the sky was visible. But the log we were sitting on was to one side and shaded. Except for the pairs of dragonflies coupling in mid-air, it was pleasant enough—although with perhaps more spiders and gnats than a rational god would provide. I could hear a frequent buzzing in my ear, and when something landed on my arm, I instinctively slapped it.
Then I said earnestly to the dead gnat, “Sorry. I thought you were a mosquito.”
Harper grinned at me but said nothing. In fact, we both fell silent for a while.
“I never been out of state,” Harper said eventually. “Now I’m going to Colorado.”
“Why’d you pick the Air Force?” I asked, just glad I had thought of something to say. “You want to fly planes?”
“Spaceships.”
“Spaceships?”
Harper laughed. “Yeah, why not? Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Really? Spaceships?”
Already an apt student, like Harper I repeated his information without condescension. Nothing ridiculing in my voice at all, just wonder.
“Well, maybe just a shuttle. Whatever they’ll give me. I want to be an astronaut.”
There was a long silence while I pondered this astonishing piece of news. Can you really do that, I wondered. Wasn’t that something first graders said?
“You gotta be pretty smart to be an astronaut, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“So you’re pretty smart.”
“I guess so. You?”
My grades at school indicated I wasn’t stupid.
“I guess so.”
“Just keep up with your schoolwork then. Maybe you’ll join me in space someday.”
“I’d join you anywhere,” I said, and was immediately embarrassed that I’d said it.
Harper just stared at me.
“Do you squeak when you’re squeezed?”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You’re a cute kid,” Harper said. “I like you.” I turned a light shade of red, said nothing at all. “Cute as a baby duck. The epitome of cute. If you were in a morality play, you’d have to be Cute.”
Like I said, I do well enough in school to think I’m reasonably intelligent, but I have to admit, I didn’t have a clue.
Harper just kept staring at me, then asked, “Did you know ducks mate for life?”
“No.”
“It’s true,” Harper said, still staring. Then he took off his shirt, got down in the dirt, and began to do push-ups in the clearing.
“I’ve got to stay in shape or they’ll kill me at the Academy,” he said. He must have done a hundred of them before we left. I just watched at first, admiring the smooth masculinity of his older body, the trim fullness of it, the color of the smooth skin, the muscles flexing as he went up and down. He looked perfect, exactly like I’d want my man to look, I kept thinking. It was like he had come out of my fantasy imagination, like my sheer desire for him had made him real. He was gorgeous. He was melting me. Nothing but smooth, smooth skin. And a dog tag.
“You already got your dog tags?”
“No. Those were my dad’s. He was killed in action.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It happens.”
“You close with your dad?” he asked.
“He’s dead too.”
“Then you kno
w. It happens.”
I decided to stop talking to make it easier for him. He continued the push-ups; I continued watching him.
“Any brothers?” he asked.
“No. Just me. You?”
“Two little sisters. Younger than you.”
I just kept watching him.
“Come join me.”
I wanted to just keep watching, but I also wasn’t ashamed to show him I could do a few myself. I got off the log and got in position, my head facing his, not far away, almost invading his space, but not quite.
“You’re going to get your shirt sweaty,” Harper said.
I stopped to remove it. “I usually don’t wear a shirt in the summer,” I said.
Harper looked at my torso. “You shouldn’t,” he said.
We both continued our push-ups. Then Harper got into position for sit-ups and asked me to spot him. I had such a wonderful view of his stomach muscles then, flexing and straining with each sit-up. His face showed no stress at all, and it was pretty intimate the way his face kept approaching me then receding, approaching and receding. My mind was in a daze.
“Your turn,” Harper said, and he spotted me just as I had him.
I could see him looking at my stomach muscles as well.
“You’ve got a good body for your age,” he said. “You should work out more though, make it really special.”
I told him I would.
I did as many sit-ups as I could, with Harper smiling at me every time I leaned forward, but I couldn’t do as many as he could, and eventually he saw that I was struggling.
“Come on, my turn,” he said, switching positions with me again. Now I was back in the position of watching his face come close to my own then recede over and over again, just like before. I could see that he was struggling slightly more than before; still, it seemed like he could do these all afternoon if he wanted to. He looked so good there, his body so agile and muscular, his face so beautiful.
Nathan's Story Page 1
