Country Boys, page 6
“We’re safe,” he said. “No one’ll bother us.”
I turned to face him, rough-edged against the screen. “I’m scared,” I said.
He spoke so softly I could barely hear him: “There’s only one thing to do when you’re scared of something.”
“Lights on or off?”
“I want to see you,” I said.
The living room light was still burning. Reaching down, I felt where he had fucked me. Pain flexed around my fingers, but they came up without blood. No real damage; the pain would go away. But the more I tried to ignore it, the more it kept me awake. Noel slept with his back toward me, didn’t stir as I swung my legs from the quilt and found my watch in my jeans pocket. I was surprised to see it was only eleven o’clock. I was more surprised to find my hip pocket empty; my wallet was gone. I could almost see it where it must have fallen, on the grass by the pond.
Restless, I turned off the light and stepped into the kitchen. Cigarettes and matches lay in moonlight on the windowsill. No headlights passed on the county road as I smoked in the dark, recalling times when I’d sat here watching for Margaret’s yellow VW to come shouldering over the hill. The car, an old Beetle, had once belonged to Noel. He sold it to her for more than it was worth. For a long time she kept everything he’d left in it, from old crushed sneakers and sweaty T-shirts to the Marlboro butts in the ashtray. “Smells like my brother in here,” she’d say, opening the car in stuffy weather. And what would she say if she were here now? “Gil, you smell like my brother.” It was true. Each time I raised the cigarette to my lips I caught his scent on my fingers—the scent of another man, so new, so fertile and deep, like the smell of the pond.
The house creaked, settling into itself. I rested my head on my arms and began to drift. Once I thought I heard Matt’s nails on the linoleum, but it was only the clock near the stove, out of sight from where I sat. Counting seconds, I fell asleep.
The metallic hum of the refrigerator woke me. Enough time had passed for my neck to grow stiff, but that was nothing compared to the hunger I felt. Lover’s appetite, Margaret would say. My bare feet made ripping sounds on the linoleum as I crossed to the counter where the cake plate sat. Lifting its cover released a whiff of chocolate. I sank my fingers into the cake—a Bundt cake with a fudge middle—and tore a hunk free and ate. Soon a thick sweetness coated the spot where my hunger had been. Licking my fingers, I suddenly craved milk. I opened the refrigerator gently and lifted the pitcher to my lips, violating a family rule. The flat-tasting raw milk loosened nuggets of chocolate from between my teeth, their flavor licking the back of my throat like a passion I’d stored up for years without knowing it. I closed my eyes and there we were, Noel and me, rising, falling, flowing into each other on the green and yellow quilt.
After fucking me, he’d flipped me over. My dick stood achingly hard between us. I wanted him to touch it, but as seconds passed and he didn’t move, just hovered above me, I grabbed it myself. His eyes flickered: this was what he wanted. “Bring yourself off,” he said, his voice husky. With him watching, my dick felt ten times bigger, still growing even as it leaped through my fist. When I came I shouted with each spurt. We were both soaked, the air filled with the smells of sweat and hot cum. I grabbed his upper arms and pulled him down. Before I knew it I was sucking my cum from his chest hair. Reaching down to feel him hard again. Pulling at him with my fist while my other hand cupped his balls, heavy yet fragile, like raised dough. I jacked him off, loving the way his dickhead slid through my fingers, knowing how it must feel. He shot all over my face, his hot cum sliding down my forehead and cheeks. We were soaked again—sticky, too, our chests plastered together as we kissed. When he finally rolled off me his skin tore at mine, stinging like sunburn. Not touching, heads turned toward each other, we finally drifted, our lips moving soundlessly in the moonlight, as if to repeat what our bodies had already said.
As I returned to the living room the farmhouse creaked and snapped like an old tree in a windstorm—nothing unusual for a two-hundred-year-old house. Noel sat up, everything clear in the moonlight except his expression as he said, “Thought maybe you’d left.” Before I could say anything he lay back down, and was snoring by the time I was next to him again, wondering. Was that how it usually went—they’d leave in the middle of the night, without saying good-bye? I moved closer to him. Closer still. Each time he grunted, moved away.
I woke to a room where sunlight took familiar shapes: a chair, a sofa, the gleaming floor beyond my toes. My body was stiff as I sat up, tasting stale cigarettes, milk, chocolate. Noel stood naked in the doorway. The fact of him there, facing me the way a naked straight man never would, unsettled the world again.
“It’s late,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine.”
“That’s late? On a Sunday morning?”
“Milking’s been done already.”
Milking. That meant Riley. “Did he see anything?”
“Who cares? Nothing happened here that he hasn’t seen before.”
I rolled the implications of that around in my cheek. Already this day was too much, too soon. It didn’t help when Noel kicked something that spun, clattered, and rang to a stop near my feet.
“What’s this?” he asked.
It was a large aluminum mixing bowl, with some powdery crumbs of dog chow at the bottom. “You know what it is,” I said.
He sat on the sofa and leaned toward me, his hands on his knees. “Where is he?”
I hugged a pillow against my chest, just to put something more between us. “You’re crazy.”
“Don’t say that.” He drove his fist into a cushion. “I don’t like it.”
“You won’t like this, either, but the dog is dead. Can we get that settled?”
“Then why was his bowl still in the barn? Why is there fifty pounds of dog chow under the sink?”
“Because the rest of the family is just like you—they can’t let go.”
His shoulders sagged. “Tell me where they buried him.”
“I wasn’t here when they buried him.”
“You’re lying.”
“Sure. I can’t call you crazy, but you can call me a liar.” I’d twisted myself up in the quilt till it was too confining. Breaking free would leave me naked in front of him, so I kicked only part of it loose, so I could stretch my legs. “I lost my wallet. I’ll have to go back to the pond to look for it.”
He got to his feet, came close enough to pick up the bowl. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
My clothes had a crumpled, desperate look, as if they’d spent the night trying to escape from the floor. As I picked up my jeans I moved my head to shoo a fly from my arm, and again caught Noel’s scent on my skin. I sniffed my arms, my hands; I sat on the quilt to bring my nose to my thighs. I touched his pillow, smelling of hair, sleep, troubled breath. The quilt slid along the floor as I gathered up its folds, pressing my face into them. When I looked up, I saw how dirty the windows were, how the room would be even brighter if they were clean. Yet I liked the way their veils of dirt obscured the view. There could be anything out there—new ways of being, of feeling, all the same under the sun.
In the kitchen I poured a steaming mug of coffee and carried it to the table, where Noel sat picking his lip with an unlit cigarette. Suddenly he looked at me and asked, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“People say you’ve got your whole life ahead of you? Ever hear that one?” He got up, rinsed his coffee mug in the sink. “Got a lot ahead of me, too. Fading away, or burning out? I think it’s burning out, that’s what my story is. Don’t belong in the city. Don’t belong here, either. Never did.” He grabbed a dishtowel and swabbed around the cake plate. “All these crumbs. You do this?”
“I got hungry during the night.”
“Lover’s appetite… What’s wrong?”
I wiped the frown off my face. “Nothing. Sometimes you use expressions she uses.”
“Well, that’s what you get for sleeping around in the same family.” He got a knife, sliced the cake to a clean edge and scraped the crumbs into the trash. “They ever talk about me?”
“Sure,” I lied. Not even Margaret mentioned Noel much anymore. She’d cleaned him out of her car long ago.
He leaned against the counter, sucked chocolate from his thumb. “They know about me. I know they do.”
I thought about that. “I’m not so sure.”
“’Course they know. A guy my age who never had a girl?” With a shock I realized that, though he might still look and act a lot like a high school kid, Noel must be in his early thirties. I stared out the window in the direction of Portland, where I’d always lived, and thought about the men who grew up in the country and stayed there—men who, by the time they were Noel’s age, had fat wives and several kids. Poker nights and Sunday services. Backbreaking work from early in the day, cussing under the sun. Yes, Noel had turned out differently, as few did. Hardly anyone, in fact. “As far as anyone knows, you’re just a loner,” I said.
“Oh, they know. It just never gets mentioned. That way it’s not real. It’s knowing and not knowing at the same time.”
I shrugged. “What difference does it make? You don’t live here anymore.”
For a half second he looked as if he might deny that. Then his eyes went hard. “You knew about me. That’s why you stopped here last night.”
“Look, I drove by, saw you sitting out there, and thought I’d stop. I didn’t know what would happen.”
“Bullshit.” His hands made fists, then relaxed. He finally lit the cigarette that had been hanging from his mouth. “Well, fuck. Who cares. It was just another one-night stand.”
“No.” Anger pulled me to my feet. “Not just another one-night stand. For me there’s only been Margaret. I’ve never slept with another woman, and I sure as hell never slept with a guy before.”
He blew a smoke ring. “Well, I won’t tell Margaret I tricked with her boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I didn’t say I was worried about anything.” I went over to him where he leaned against the counter. The line of his mouth was hard, but something in his eyes said, Yes, I remember. I brought my lips close. He didn’t resist when I fitted my mouth over his. Our tongues slid against each other. At the same moment we grabbed at each other’s jeans, unbuttoning, unzipping them. No underwear today. I hefted his cock, already half hard, and dropped to my knees. Took his dickhead in my mouth, surprised at its heat. He ground his hips in pleasure. I took another inch of him in, licking the underside, wondering how I could possibly take more. But it happened all by itself, his dickhead at the back of my throat, its smoothness, like the skin of a ripe fruit, belying its strength. His hips continued to move as he fucked my mouth. I reached to grab his asscheeks. His ass was hairy, curls tickling my fingers. His thrusts grew stronger. He gripped the back of my head, using me, filling me with his soft explosion, his bittersweet taste. I swallowed because I didn’t know what else to do; I swallowed because I wanted to.
His cock was still mostly hard when he pulled it from my mouth. “You’ve never had this, either, have you?” he said. “Let’s trade places.”
My body, with a new mind of its own, wouldn’t do what I wanted. I was all swollen, aching parts. “I can’t stand up,” I said, laughing at my own helplessness. Propping my shoulders against the refrigerator was the best I could do.
“Doesn’t matter.” He stepped free of the jeans bunched around his ankles and dropped to his knees, lowered himself between my legs. As his mouth approached my cock I felt it might tear itself free to meet him halfway. Nothing could stop the shaking, the fluttering of muscles throughout my body, just as nothing would ever make me forget the sight of his mouth taking me in, the hollows in his cheeks as he sucked. The reverse of what I’d felt a minute ago, the plum of my dickhead against his palate now, his tongue on the underside, just rough enough to make me crazy. My toes curled, my fingernails scraped at the linoleum. “Oh Jesus, that’s good,” I said, growling like a dog. I wanted two of him: two tongues, one filling my mouth, the other working my dickhead.
I thought my hips would leave their sockets, I fucked his mouth so hard. Filled him with cum, spraying down his throat. He swallowed, just as I had, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he stood, leaving me too soon, my dick still half erect, ass plastered to the floor.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling on his jeans.
I’d forgotten that we had anywhere to go, anything else to do.
He kept ahead of me all the way to the pond. It looked different in the daytime—yellowish green with pollen, pockets of yellow scum in the corners. I saw my cigarettes and matches, which had been soaked with dew and sunburned dry; but my wallet wasn’t where I thought it would be. I kicked through the grass, swearing under my breath. Losing my wallet meant losing things I might not miss, till each tiny absence came around like a time bomb. I was out thirty bucks for sure, plus two credit cards and my license. Getting home without money might be a problem: I wasn’t sure I had enough gas. So I retraced my steps, the sun like hands pressing on the back of my neck.
When I met up with Noel I said, “I can’t find the fucking thing.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Before I do anything else I’m going to take a swim.” I walked to the other end of the pond and stripped, keeping my back to him, and slid into the water. Its clinging warmth shocked me, and I climbed out in worse shape than before, scraping a slimy feel from my face. The water smelled like piss, and though pollen didn’t usually bother me I had a sneezing fit that left my nose stinging.
Noel was sitting on the bank, his T-shirt on the grass beside him. “You’ll catch hell for going home without your wallet.”
“I’m not a fucking kid, Noel. Besides, I live by myself.” I sat and used a handful of grass to scrub scum from my foot. I heard him moving, felt his hand on my shoulder.
“I need to know something,” he said.
I looked up at him. “Me too. Do they always leave in the middle of the night?”
He looked around, carefully, as if anything around us could have changed. “I need to know where Matt’s buried.”
Shaking off his hand, I got up to pull on my jeans and T-shirt. “They’ll tell you when they get home.”
“No, they won’t. I’m taking the next bus out. They won’t even know I was here.”
“Riley will tell them.”
“Not when I get through with him, he won’t.”
“What makes you think I won’t tell them?”
“You’ve got a secret to keep.”
True enough. What I didn’t know was the size of the secret. Was sleeping with him the extent of it, or was it something larger, closer to the matter of who I was? I finished lacing up my sneakers, tying them so tightly my feet ached. “I ought to be getting home.”
“Why? There’s nobody expecting you.”
“Well, there was nobody expecting me here, either.”
He snorted. “I always expected you, sooner or later.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
It felt good to strike out on the gravel road, away from him—till I remembered I needed a favor. Shit. I turned and said, “I’m not sure I’ve got enough gas to get home. If I can borrow a couple of bucks from you, I’ll make sure you get it back.”
I half expected him to refuse, but he pulled a wallet from his pocket—my wallet. Seeing it in his hand, I realized I’d known all along that he had it; I was ignoring the obvious, or trying to. He threw the wallet to land in the road between us, with Margaret’s photo face up in a plastic window. It was her high school graduation picture, which didn’t look much like her anymore. Now she had tight curls where her long hair used to be; and she had plans—the two of us getting married, her own photography studio bringing in money while I wrote novels. If anyone had told me that I could laugh, laugh hopelessly while thinking of this… I looked at Noel, who had so suddenly become the one person on earth who knew me. I saw how it could be, loving a man—how it wasn’t just about bodies, what flesh alone could feel. And I saw how it would make my life impossible. Before I could stop myself I blurted, “There’s nobody else here.”
He shrugged. “Sure there is.”
That sour laugh again: I couldn’t help it. “Don’t tell me to go to Riley.”
“You won’t have to. You’ll see.”
“Is that it? I’ll see?”
Another shrug. “That’s all anybody gets.”
I looked at him, standing there with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops—did city boys do that? Needing him was like a bubble about to break, I didn’t know if I could stand it. I walked up to him, not caring what he did as long as he was still there, because nothing had changed in that hot minute under the sun.
“I want you to fuck me,” I told him. “Right here.”
He started to back off. “The hell—”
“That’s right.” I grabbed the waist of his jeans, unbuttoned them with one tug. I wanted him to know I’d always been expecting him, too, even if it was fresh news to me. But Noel had been with me for a long time. Those dark hairs leading down from his navel to his groin—I knew them as well as I knew my own.
He stretched out on the grass. I got on top. The noon sun was stinging. His dick was hard as ever as I guided it in. I was so hungry I didn’t care if it hurt, and that helped it not to. Then he began to grind upward, into me, and I gladly gave up control. Gave up my silence, too, the wordlessness of the night before. “Fuck me like you never fucked anybody,” I said. “Make it the fuck of my life.”
We ended up yards from where we’d started, having rolled over several times. I wanted his dick to stay inside me, felt the loss when he slid free. I’d fired another cumload on his chest, which he’d rubbed into his skin absentmindedly. We found our clothes—he nearly put my jeans on instead of his.
