A Death On The Wolf, page 12
“Can’t.”
“How come?” I asked.
“The doctor says I can’t get in the water until my nose is completely healed. He said I might get an infection or something if I got water up my nose.”
“How long’s it gonna take to heal?”
“He said at least a couple of months.”
“Geez,” I said. “Wanna toss the football around?”
“Can’t do that either.”
“What? Why not?”
“He said I can’t do anything where I might get hit in the face. He said if my nose gets hit while it’s healing I’ll have to have surgery.” All the remorse I thought was gone over my breaking Frankie’s nose came back in full force. Here I was thinking he was well, when in fact he was far from it. Not only had I broken his nose, but with one well-placed punch I’d effectively ruined the rest of his summer—and his fall. He couldn’t do anything. Two months put us into football season and Frankie was on the team at school. Coach Underwood’s notorious pre-season practice sessions would be starting up in a week, so clearly Frankie would not be playing. I looked over at him and I guess he could see from my expression what I was about to say. “Don’t apologize again, Nels,” he said. “I know you feel bad about it.”
I smiled and nodded my head. “You want to sleep over tonight?” I asked. “We could camp out down at the river.”
“When are we gonna build the cabin down there? We’ve been talking about it forever.” That was true. Frankie and I had decided last summer that a small cabin for camping out down at the river was what we needed because my pup tent was getting too small to sleep the two of us. The problem was having funds to buy the materials to build the thing. I was saving every spare dime to buy a car and Frankie never seemed to have any money, spare or otherwise.
“Next summer, I guess,” I said. “Maybe after I get my car I can start saving to buy the stuff to build it. Hey, we could go down there and throw a couple lines off the bridge, see what we can catch,” I offered. I waited for him to tell me he couldn’t go fishing with a broken nose.
“What’s playin’ at the movie in town?” Frankie asked.
“You want to go see a movie?”
“Yeah, let’s check the paper and see what’s playin’.”
We got up and went inside to check the listing at the Palladium in town.
“True Grit,” I said, pointing to the ad in the paper. “It’s a John Wayne movie.”
“What’s it about?” Frankie said.
“I don’t know, but who cares? It’s John Wayne. Let’s go see it.”
“What time are the shows?”
I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. “We’ve got plenty of time. The next show starts at two.”
“You’ll have to take me by the house to get some money,” Frankie said. “I didn’t bring my wallet. And if I’m spending the night I’ve got to get my stuff.”
“So you do want to sleep over tonight?”
“Yeah, but here, not down at the river.”
“Don’t worry about your ticket for the movie,” I said. “I’ll get it.”
“What about popcorn and a drink?”
“I’ll pay for that, too.”
“Wow…is this like our first real date?” Frankie said with a grin.
He was standing right next to me at the kitchen table so I shoved him. “Fag,” I said in feigned contempt.
We both laughed.
True Grit had been playing at the Palladium since the middle of June, and judging from the number of people at the Saturday matinee, I figured this would be its last weekend. The theater was nearly empty.
“That’s Glen Campbell singing,” Frankie whispered as the lights dimmed and the credits started rolling on the screen. We were both munching on popcorn and were sharing a large Coke with two straws.
“He’s in the movie, too,” I said.
We settled down and didn’t talk anymore until Frankie said, “Is that a girl?” He pointed to the screen where Mattie Ross was sitting at a desk giving her father cash money to take on his trip.
“Yeah,” I whispered and stuffed some more popcorn in my mouth.
“Look at her hair. She looks like a boy,” Frankie said.
“You wish,” I mumbled with a mouthful of popcorn. Frankie started laughing and almost choked on his popcorn. “Shut up before they throw us outta here,” I hissed.
— — —
When Frankie and I got back from the movie, Mary Alice and her brother were sitting on Aunt Charity’s front porch so we decided to walk over there and meet him.
“Nelson?” her brother queried as he stood up and looked from Frankie to me as we stepped up onto the porch.
“I’m Nelson,” I said and extended my hand.
“Beau Hadley,” he said, and we shook hands. His shirt was not blue as I’d first thought. It was white with dark blue pinstripes. His double-breasted navy blazer had gold buttons. His hair was combed to perfection. You could slice bread with the crease in his slacks. He was as tall as me and exceedingly handsome. Had the word been part of my vocabulary at the time, I would have called him a fop. “My sister has told me all about you,” Beau said.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “This is my friend, Frankie Thompson.” I gestured to Frankie.
They shook hands and Frankie had a thunderstruck look on his face. His mouth was half open like he wanted to speak but couldn’t. “Hi,” he finally said.
I went over and sat down beside Mary Alice on the swing. Beau and Frankie sat in the two chairs facing us on the other side of the porch. I could read Mary Alice’s gestures now, so when she moved her right hand in my direction ever so slightly, I met it with my left. Taking her hand, I leaned toward her and quietly said, “Hey.”
She smiled, and still looking straight ahead, said, “Hey yourself.”
I put my mouth to her ear and whispered, “If I kissed you right now what would your brother do?” Mary Alice didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Her blush said it all—and she was squeezing my hand so hard it hurt.
Beau was looking at us with a curious expression on his face. I couldn’t quite decide if he was pleased or concerned. Maybe it was both. Surprisingly, it was Frankie who broke the tension when he looked at Beau and said, “That’s a neat car you’ve got.”
“Thanks,” Beau said, looking at Frankie.
“Is it new?” Frankie asked. Something was up, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Frankie was somewhat into motorcycles, but he didn’t give a hoot about cars and here he was trying to pursue a conversation with someone he’d just met based on one.
“It’s a ’67,” Beau said. “I got it when I started my second year in law school.”
“You’re in law school!?” Frankie exclaimed in mock surprise. I had to roll my eyes and I’m glad Beau didn’t see me. I’d already told Frankie earlier that Mary Alice’s brother was in law school.
“I’ll be starting my last year at Ole Miss this fall,” Beau said as he studied the strange boy sitting three feet from him. He was clearly bemused.
“So what’s it like?” Frankie asked.
“What?” Beau said, looking back at me and then Frankie.
“Law school,” Frankie said. “Tell me about it.”
I realized what was going on and I knew I had to do something before Frankie made a fool of himself. I stood up. “Frankie, I need to show you something inside,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, especially since we were sitting on Aunt Charity’s porch.
Frankie looked up at me with pursed eyebrows. “What?”
I was already over at the front door with my hand on the knob. I had to think of an answer, and quickly. “Something Aunt Charity got the other day and I’ve been meaning to show you.”
“What is it?” Frankie said as he got up out of the chair.
“Well, if you’ll come on, I’ll show you.” I looked at Beau and said, “We’ll be right back.”
When I got Frankie inside and made sure Aunt Charity wasn’t within ear shot, I looked at him and said in a whispered shout, “Are you nuts?!”
“What do you mean?”
“Frankie, you’re hittin’ on him.”
“Who?” His question sounded seriously innocent. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. Or maybe I’d completely misread the situation.
“Beau, you dummy,” I said. “Your tongue practically fell out of your mouth when you were shaking his hand. And then you start asking him about his car and school with your eyes all bugged out.”
A sly grin slowly appeared on Frankie’s face. He knew exactly what I was talking about. “Are you mad?” he asked.
“Frankie…look…you and me joking around about you being queer is one thing, but you can’t go making goo-goo eyes at guys you’ve just met. You’re gonna get the crap beat out of you.” Frankie’s grin quickly faded, replaced by a blank emotionless stare. And then it dawned on me what I’d just said. We were not playing around. There was no pretext of humor to gloss over the truth this time. I’d just told my best friend explicitly, matter-of-factly, and to his face, that I knew he was queer. These were uncharted waters and I wasn’t sure if either of us was prepared to navigate them. There was a long silence between us, and as uncomfortable as it was, I would not let myself look away. I held Frankie’s stare.
“Do you think he noticed?” Frankie finally said, and I knew he was back with me and all was well.
“No, but if you’d kept it up, he would have.”
“I should go out the back and go on home,” Frankie said, sounding a little embarrassed now.
“No, you’re not. Just go out there and be yourself.”
Frankie looked down at the floor. “I was being myself,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I said and put my hand on his shoulder. “If you like the guy, just don’t be so obvious.”
— — —
It was a little past eleven and Frankie and I had decided to go to bed and read. There wasn’t anything good on the TV. We’d just finished brushing our teeth together in the bathroom and were getting undressed in my bedroom. The house was quiet. Daddy and Sachet had long ago gone to bed.
Whenever I slept over at Frankie’s, I had to bunk on the floor in his sleeping bag because he had a twin bed. Mine was full-size and Frankie had always slept with me when he spent the night at my house. I was thinking about that now as I slipped my jeans off and laid them in the chair by my dresser. I wasn’t sure if this arrangement was going to be awkward or not. I put on my pajama bottoms and looked over at Frankie. He had just pulled his shirt off and I watched him unfasten his jeans and let them fall to his ankles. He was wearing Fruit of the Loom briefs just like me. He stepped out of his jeans and then folded them over the back of my desk chair.
“Quit staring at my butt,” he said as he pulled his socks off.
“Yeah, right,” I said. I picked up one of Daddy’s motorcycle magazines off my dresser. I went over and pulled back the covers on the bed and lay down.
Frankie dug around in his bag and pulled out his pajama bottoms and put them on. It was warm and muggy from the thunderstorms earlier and we were both going topless. The oscillating fan was blowing over on my dresser. With a comic book in hand, and like he had done countless times before, Frankie crawled over me to get to the other side of the bed rather than walking around and squeezing in beside the wall.
I let him get settled and didn’t say anything. Several minutes went by as I was trying to read the road test on Honda’s new 750 Four, but I kept thinking back to what had happened earlier, when Beau had taken Frankie, Mary Alice, and me for a ride in his Mustang. Mary Alice and I sat in the backseat and Frankie rode up front with her brother. Frankie had managed to get himself together after our little talk in Aunt Charity’s foyer, and while not as obvious as before, it was still plain to me, every time he would steal a glance at Beau, that he was smitten to the core. The irony did not escape me as we rode along, me holding Mary Alice’s hand and my best friend sitting up front wishing, I’m sure, he were holding her brother’s hand. I probably should not have, but I leaned over and whispered in Mary Alice’s ear (loud enough so she could hear me over the wind noise of the open car), “Does your brother have a girlfriend?” She got a puzzled look on her face and then whispered back that he had a fiancée and asked me why I wanted to know. I told her I was just wondering. But her answer made me think again, as I had done that day at work when Dick made his comment regarding “fags,” about the difficulties that lay ahead for Frankie. Life wasn’t going to be easy for him—that was for sure. He didn’t have an effeminate bone in his body, so there was no question he could blend in anywhere and go unnoticed—or maybe undiscovered would be a better word. He just needed to be careful.
“Frankie?” I said, looking over at him lying beside me.
He was already deep into his comic book. He flipped it down onto his bare chest and looked at me. “Yeah?”
“How long have you known?”
“Known what?” The fan made its sweep by us and tossed Frankie’s hair up in the front.
I hesitated because we were approaching those uncharted waters again. But I felt this was a conversation Frankie and I needed to have. Everything about our new normal couldn’t always be sexually charged jokes, insults, and snide remarks.
“Known what?” Frankie repeated, his dark eyes narrowing as he stared at me.
“How long have you known you liked boys instead of girls?”
Frankie stared at me. There was a long pause before he said, “I don’t know,” and went back to reading his comic.
I closed the bike magazine and laid it on my stomach. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
Still looking at the comic, he said, “It’s not like I woke up one morning and said ‘Oh wow, I like guys instead of girls.’” He looked over at me. “How long have you known you liked girls?”
“It’s not the same thing,” I said.
“It is the same thing if you’re gonna ask a question like that. Can you answer it? How long have you known you liked girls?”
I thought Frankie was just trying to evade an answer until I actually attempted to formulate one for myself. How do you respond to a question like that? It’s like being asked “How long have you known you were you?”
“See, you can’t answer it either, can you?” Frankie asked. There was a hint of triumph in his voice.
“I guess not,” I said. I looked at him again. “I meant what I said over at Aunt Charity’s. You’ve got to be careful, Frankie.”
“I know,” he said. “But didn’t you think he was good-lookin’?”
“Who? Beau?”
Frankie rolled his eyes. “Yes, Beau. Of course, Beau.”
“Yeah, I thought he was good-lookin’. But not the way you thought it—and showed it.”
“That was pretty pathetic, wasn’t it?”
“It was pretty funny,” I said. “Too bad Beau’s not queer.”
“How do you know he’s not?”
“Mary Alice said he’s got a fiancée.”
Frankie sat up like he’d just lain in a bed of fire ants. He looked down at me and said, “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“Tell her what?”
“That I’m—” Frankie stopped in midsentence, no doubt realizing what he was about to say, what he was about to verbalize—probably for the first time.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I didn’t tell her anything. I just asked her when we were riding in Beau’s car if he had a girlfriend. But Frankie…man, if she could see she would have figured it out for herself.”
Frankie lay back down. “I think knowing that you knew made me feel like I didn’t have to hide it anymore.”
“Yeah well, you can’t think like that. You know what’s gonna happen if you don’t hide it.”
“I can tell you’re serious about Mary Alice,” Frankie said, changing the subject.
I reached up and ran my hands through my hair. “Yeah. I think I’m really in love.” Frankie started laughing. I looked over at him. “What’s so funny?”
“You are. What do you know about being in love?” he asked, still laughing.
“Nothing. And that’s what scares me.” There was no humor in my admission.
“Geez…you are serious,” Frankie said and resumed reading his comic book. I did the same with the bike magazine, and now I could concentrate on the article. This new four cylinder 750 that Honda had come out with was amazing. It was obvious my father had already read this road test many times because he had marked it up extensively using two different color inks. I flipped back and looked at the cover. This was the March edition of Cycle Guide. I remembered what Peter Bong had said about us “Yanks” not having a bike that could run with his Vincent, and that the “Japs” never would. But it looked to me like they did now. The performance specifications listed at the end of the article were unreal: 67 horsepower and a top speed of 130 miles per hour.
As I read over those specs for the second time, my eyes were getting heavy so I closed the magazine and yawned. I looked over at Frankie and said, “Let’s go to sleep. I’m tired.”
Frankie turned to me. “So, are you okay sleeping in the same bed with me?” He did a Groucho Marx with his eyebrows just like he had done the day I apologized to him for breaking his nose.
“Just keep your hands to yourself,” I said. Before I could react, Frankie leaned over and gave me a wet smooch on the cheek, then retreated back to his side of the bed with a big grin on his face. “Do that again,” I said, “and I’ll punch you in the nose again.” I wiped his slobber off my cheek with the back of my hand.
“You said keep my hands to myself. You didn’t say anything about my lips.”
“Lips, hands, whatever…keep it all to yourself.”
“You know I’m just teasing you, right?” he said.
“Yeah, I know.”
Frankie handed me his comic book. “Okay, let’s go to sleep,” he said. “I’m tired, too.”
I put his comic and the bike magazine on the table beside the bed and switched off the lamp. We lay there and my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. The sound of the fan was quickly lulling me to sleep.
