Rory and Cary ate breakfast alone the next day. Rory kept grinning at Cary, who was wearing what appeared to be an ever-present smile, the smile he’d shown ever since returning from his ride with David the day before. Mrs. Connor had invited the two of them to eat breakfast with them, but Rory had excused them with the news they were going to eat fast and head out. “We have a long way to go today and we want to hit the road early. But thanks. It was great meeting you guys.”
Cary had told Rory that he’d finally had a sexual adventure with a boy and there was no longer even a shadow of a doubt that he was gay. He couldn’t stop enthusing about it, and Rory didn’t either stop him or tease him. What he was hoping was that this would be another step toward Cary losing some of his self-doubts and worries and gaining some self-confidence from the encounter. Accomplishing this would be a long process, he knew, but this was an important step for Cary.
In the car heading east on US 14 toward Greybull where they’d hit US 20 and go south, Rory asked Cary about David. “Is he someone you’d like a long-term relationship with, or were you two just two ships passing in the night and having a good time doing so?”
“I like him a lot. He’s fun and sort of like I am: not pushy at all, easygoing and friendly. But a long-term relationship. No, not with him.”
“Why not? You said the sex, what you did, was great.”
“Yeah, it was. But you know how I am. I want a whole lot more than just good sex with someone I’d partner with. David’s great, but religion is very important to him. He says he doesn’t want to devote his life to it like his parents do. He says their faith is the focus of their existence. He says he’ll always have his faith, but it’ll just be one element in the many that make up who he is. And he says he still has to work through the fact that extracurricular gay activities are banned by his church.”
Cary was distracted by Morris trying to get in the front seat. He really wasn’t built to be a lapdog. One-hundred-pound dogs generally weren’t. Cary patted him and pushed him back on the seat where he’d been, then turned back to Rory.
“I wasn’t brought up in a religious family, so faith issues aren’t part of my life. I want the things that are most important to me to also be important to my partner. I’d never be entirely on the same page with David. I’ll remember him, probably always. I’m happy we got together and did what we did. But I’ll be looking for someone else when I’m ready for that. I’m not, yet. Maybe in college.”
“You’re pretty smart for an airhead teen idol.”
Cary socked him in the shoulder.
« »
They didn’t have a set destination in mind. They were going to hook up with the I-90 in Buffalo, Wyoming, after passing through the southern end of the Bighorn National Forest, and then they’d continue eastward. But other than that, the day was open for them.
Rory enjoyed the drive. In his regular life, he was a quiet man. In the car with Cary, he was almost forced to talk, and he was a little surprised at how easy he was finding it. He was very fond of Cary, and neither felt the need to keep things from the other. What made it easier for him to talk to Cary was that the boy kept asking questions. Some Rory had to reflect on before answering, and some answers were simpler.
Cary interrupted a few moments of silence by asking, “How were you able to avoid spending yesterday with the Connors? I know Jocelyn was enjoying having you with them, and she had a way of being pushy.”
“It wasn’t hard. They knew I’d written Leaving Home. I told them I’d had an idea for another book, this one maybe a kids’ book; I wouldn’t know that till I was into the writing, but I wanted to spend the day thinking about it and starting an outline.”
“I’ll bet Jocelyn didn’t just let that go. That woman can talk! And questions? My God, I can see why David had never had sex before: she’s capable of asking him if he’s pooped yet that day, and if he ever had sex, she’d want all the details. So, she probably wanted to hear all about the book you said you wanted to write. Did you really have something in mind?”
“Not really. I had to come up with something off the top of my head, but you know, what I came up with isn’t all that bad. I might be able to actually do something with it. And it has film possibilities, I think. I’ll have to bounce the idea off Nolan.”
“Does it have a part for me?” Cary asked and then laughed.
“Actually, it might. I was thinking a younger kid, but that would present problems I wouldn’t have to solve with an older kid. And an older kid would work better with the denouement I was considering.”
“I know what a denouement is,” Cary said.
“Well, you’re smart for your age.”
“So, what’s it about?”
“I got the idea from Clyde, actually. I asked him if they bred and raised horses, and he got to talking, and I got to listening—you know me—and a story he told me could be made into something. It’s about a mare that abandoned her foal. Sounds odd that that would happen, but he was telling me something he’d seen happen, so I guess it does. Some humans make crappy mothers; maybe some mares do, too.
“Anyway, in the wild the foal will most likely just die of neglect or starvation or whatever. On breeding farms, it’s normal to have spare mares that can step in for the mother and feed the foal till it’s ready to be weaned. What Clyde was telling me was about a farm that had a few horses, not a breeding farm but one that did have a foal now and then. He explained what happened there. The farm didn’t have any surrogate feeding mares. So, without human intervention, the foal wasn’t going to make it.
“However, the farm was able to come to the rescue. They had a young boy with a very big and soft heart who decided he wouldn’t let the foal die.
“Now this was a huge job. You have an orphan foal and no nurse mare, and the foal won’t thrive unless he’s fed at least every two hours. Day and night. For a boy to do this, fixing a bottle and getting up all night to feed the foal, well, that’s pretty amazing. Think about that!”
“How long does he have to do it?” Cary asked.
“Probably around a month, give or take. Every horse is a little different, like human babies. But I guess they try a little grain in a pail mixed with the formula they’ve been feeding him—or her—and eventually the foal will begin taking that. Then the two-hour nipple feedings can stop.”
“And you can see a story in that?”
“Sure. The boy has just lost his baby brother. He turns his grief into saving the horse, something he couldn’t do with his brother. That horse is going to get attached to the boy and the boy to the horse, and if the boy has a problem dealing with the loss he’s had in his life, the horse can become his salvation if he can keep it alive. Lots of possibilities for drama there.”
“Hasn’t this sort of thing been done before? Several times?”
“So I’d make this one different. They always take the story past when the foal was a foal. It always becomes a horse, and then the drama can be escalated. That’s much easier for a writer. Maybe make it into a racehorse. Or make the horse save the boy’s life somehow. Make the dad need to sell the horse to save the farm. That sort of tearjerker.
“In The Yearling the dad shoots the deer, which I found dreadful. I think I can keep the foal as a foal throughout the story, and make the conflict be all the boy’s. How he turns his grief into action. How he can overcome his sadness through sacrifice of sleep and giving up other activities he likes. How he is always available for the needs of the horse. He can talk to the horse about his woes, but, in the end, it’s still just a horse, and his own life must go on. The horse can listen to him, but it’s up to the boy to do the work to leave his grief behind. This is something every boy growing into a man decides for himself at some point: what will become of him is up to him. That can be the point of the story, and I can make it dramatic.”
Cary was silent, thinking, for some time. Then: “I like it. I’ll play the boy. When does filming start?”
Rory laughed.
« »
They had lunch in Buffalo, Wyoming, then got on the interstate, driving east.
“Where are we going next?” Cary was looking at the map, and nothing looked obvious.
“I was thinking Sturgis, South Dakota.”
“Isn’t there some big deal involving motorcycles there?”
“Yeah, in August. We’ll be through there long before the rally starts. I just thought that since we’ll pass through it, we can look around a bit, if only to say we’ve been there.”
“It’s away a bit. Long drive still.”
“So let’s talk some more. You certainly haven’t run out of questions, have you? Or maybe you want to talk about that swim you had yesterday.”
“That’s all right. Nothing to see here, folks,” Cary said, laughing. “But, sure, I’ve got more questions. Here’s a good one: you didn’t talk much about the Deion character in the book but did say he was important in your gaining confidence. You wrote about how you let your anger loose when you saved him from being seen naked by the whole school. So, tell me more about him. Why didn’t you do more of that in the book?”
“Deion. Yeah, he was important. He was also a real person who moved on, and his being humiliated in front of a bunch of school kids doesn’t really fit with who he is now, so I thought it best to let that one incident be enough with him. But he was important in my life. Instrumental, you could say.”
He stopped, and Cary shook his head. “So tell me.”
“Okay, but this is private. What I wrote in the book wasn’t all of it. I wrote how they’d just got Deion’s pants down, and he rolled over so no one could see him once I got Rufus off him, and Rufus was blocking everyone’s view before that, so the most anyone had was a quick glimpse. Well, that wasn’t accurate.
“I didn’t get there that quickly. When I did, Rodney was holding Deion up so everyone could see everything. Rufus was laughing and making remarks about how tiny Deion was. Hey, he was 14 like me, and lots of guys aren’t very big down there yet. Black or white, it doesn’t make any difference.
“His real name isn’t Deion. Neither were the Rufus and Rodney names. I changed most characters’ names. I can tell you because I have a world of trust in you not to tell anyone. His real name is Bobby. Bobby Tate. And he was being held up naked to be laughed at by everyone. Can you imagine how that would feel? At 14?”
“It would be awful!” Cary shuddered, imagining it happening to him.
“Especially as you’d have to keep going to school every day after that, and everyone’s looking at you. You have to imagine them remembering what your dick looked like, but even worse, remembering how helpless you were. Anyway, back to what happened, I came up behind both Rodney and Rufus because they were looking at the crowd and I was coming from the opposite direction. Neither Shurber twin was looking at me.
“Now remember, I was small and weak and timid. The only reason I could do what I did was because of how angry I was. I wasn’t thinking, just reacting and being driven by my anger. I came up behind Rodney, and I didn’t know how to fight or hurt him. I just did the only thing I could think to do—my mind was at least still working. I kicked him hard in the back of one of his knees. His leg buckled, his grip on Bobby loosened, and Bobby pulled away as Rodney fell down.
“I didn’t even see all that. I kept going toward Rufus. He was probably a foot taller than I was and certainly stronger. My only advantage was, he didn’t know I was coming. He was playing to the crowd, his back to me, and I just did what I did. I lowered my head and ran into his back as hard as I could.
“Somehow, I got lucky. I hit him hard, and it was directly into his kidney. You’ve probably never been hit in the kidney, but it’s really sensitive. Hurts like hell if you bruise it. He screamed, kind of twisted around and lowered his head, trying to ease the pain, and when he did, I could reach his face. I did sock him then. I did break his nose, as I wrote in the book.
“Bobby was curled up on the lawn, crying, and I did cover him up. I comforted him the best I could. I did chase Rodney away. I did scream at the crowd. That part of the book was accurate. I’d never been that mad in my life; never have been that angry since, either, and I’ve been mad at times. But I’ve never before or after been so mad that I was outside myself somehow, like someone else was inside running the show right then.
“Neither of us went to school that day. We went to Bobby’s house. It was almost as big as ours was. Ours was huge. Well, you’ll see. To my dad, image was everything. He had to own the largest house in town because he thought he was the richest and most important person in town.
“Anyway, we went to Bobby’s house. As you can imagine, he was very upset. It took some time for him to settle down emotionally again. I spent that time telling him about me, about all the problems I had with my dad. I’d already told him how much I hated myself and why. That had been when he’d said he could fix it. And he did.
“His dad had a sort of gym in the basement. I hadn’t met him yet, but he was a large man and as fit as anyone I’d ever seen. He worked out every day. He told me it was good for a black man to be able to defend himself, and so he spent time making sure he could.
“Bobby and I started lifting those weights. I hated it. Bobby might have, too, but he didn’t show it, and he gained muscle much faster than I did. Different body types, I guess. But we lifted weights every day, and we ran, too. There’s a hill in town, a hill that’s almost a mile long. Not steep, but uphill all the way. We began running that daily, too.
“When we began, I could run it as well as Bobby could. I was lighter and leaner than he was after he’d started getting stronger. Running was easy for me. Harder for him. We started making the hill a competition; boys do that. I’d win the race most days for the first month we ran it. Then he began to win, and I never stood a chance against him again. I began telling him I was letting him win because I’d seen how much it had hurt his feelings when I beat him every day.
“By then we were best friends. Neither of us had another. He was black and I was a scrawny wimp with no self-esteem at all. But we had each other and were very close.
“He was cute, but he was also straight. He didn’t have any problem with the fact I wasn’t. He’d have to wait till he went to college before he could date, simply because of the racist attitudes in the southern Indiana town and scarcity of black kids, girls in particular. I couldn’t date, either. Well, I did have very elementary sex with Aaron a few times. Just simple stuff, more touching, feeling each other, that sort of thing. Then he decided he was straight. That’s when he stopped.
“I think a girl convinced him he was straight, and she was willing to satisfy him in more adult ways than we’d ever done with each other. Neither Bobby nor I had any romantic entanglements, and that made our relationship even stronger.”
Rory took a break then. It felt strange to him, talking this much.
Cary was digesting what he said, and he finally chipped in with another question. “Did two you remain friends all the time you were in Ripley’s Creek?”
“More than friends, really. He’d said he’d fix us, and he did. When my dad threw me out of the house, I was invited to stay with Bobby and his dad. Living with him, getting stronger, both of us listening to his dad, who helped us build up our confidence—we gained so much. His dad knew how to fight, too, and we learned how to take care of ourselves in those years, and that really helped both our self-confidence and self-esteem. Then my dad, who still had legal authority over me and hated that I’d found a place to stay in town and was no longer his whipping boy, sent me to New York to live with his brother. But that was later, and that’s a story for another time.”
Cary got the message and let him rest.
« »
The route to Sturgis took them through part of the Black Hills region of South Dakota, a vacation spot that featured biking, hiking and birding. They didn’t stop. Sturgis was only 20 miles ahead, and they planned to spend the night there. Both felt they’d had enough road time for the day.
They got a suite at the Hotel Sturgis—off-season rates were still in effect—and then, since dinner was still a ways ahead, just decided to take a stroll . . . stretching their legs.
Even with the Sturgis Rally still weeks ahead, there were some motorcycles in evidence. And, Cary thought, some scary looking dudes riding them and loitering on the streets. He walked a little closer to Rory, although the presence of Morris was very reassuring.
They parked Morris in their room when they went to dinner. They’d seen a barbecue place that looked good while walking around—Jake’s Kansas City BBQ—and had decided to go there. “See the motorcycles out front? Must mean it’s a good place to eat,” Rory suggested.
Cary didn’t need convincing. He loved barbecue.
The place was noisy. They could see a few guys they could identify as bikers, but mostly it just looked like townspeople were eating there. The inside was all wood, though, and country music was being played, and the noise bouncing around was enough to make conversation difficult. The food was mediocre.
However, they were stuffed when they walked out. It was still warm enough that they were comfortable in just their tee shirts. Cary was pleased that he hadn’t been recognized.
The town seemed to have lots of bars—like every second or third building on the main drag had neon letters in the front window advertising everything from Bud Light to Stella Artois.
They passed several Harleys parked on the street. Cary was at an age where motorcycles caught his attention. There was one with leather tassels on the handlebars and leather saddle bags along with bright red front-and-rear fenders with orange flames decorating them.
Cary stopped to look at it and lightly rubbed his fingers over the flames.
He was abruptly shoved from behind hard enough to knock him down. He sprawled on the sidewalk, stunned. A large, unshaven man with wild hair and a sleeveless vest jacket stood over him. “I ought to kick you a new asshole. You don’t touch my bike. Ever,” he growled.
Cary wanted to get up, but the guy looked like a giant to him, and he was sure the guy would simply knock him down again.
And then Rory stepped in. He got between Cary and the thug, giving Cary the chance to rise.
“You need to learn some manners,” Rory said softly to the man.
“Who the fuck do you think you are,” the guy scoffed, looking Rory up and down dismissively.
“I’m the guy who’s going to do the teaching,” Rory said. There was steel in his voice. “If you’re smart, you’ll turn around right now and walk away. Otherwise, you’re going to be on the ground hurting, maybe calling for your mommy.”
The guy laughed, but with no humor in it. “What are you, 170, 180? Maybe 5’ 10” on a tall day? I’m 265 and six-foot four-inches, and I kick ass for a hobby. I’ll enjoy this. You’re going down, punk. Hard.”
“You’ve been warned,” Rory said, and stood easy where he was.
Cary had been scared for himself. Now he was terrified for Rory. The guy was huge, and Rory wasn’t. Cary felt sick to his stomach. This was going to happen, and he couldn’t stop it.
The big guy shook his head, then stepped forward, closed in on Rory, and head-butted him. Well, that was his intent.
What happened next was a blur. It occurred so fast Cary couldn’t quite believe it. But the big man was head-butting Rory, and then he was lying on his side on the sidewalk, trying to breathe. Just like that. Rory gently put his arm around Cary and walked him away from the scene.
“What happened?” Cary asked when they were in the next block. He was still
almost in shock, full of adrenaline, feeling the effects of his fear.
“I didn’t like him pushing you down,” Rory said. He wasn’t showing any reaction to the fight. His breathing was steady, his face wasn’t flushed. “He needed to be brought down a peg. Maybe not be quite so quick to pick on a kid like you who didn’t do anything to deserve it. I hate bullies, and I hate guys who love fights and look for them.”
“But how did you do it? It was all over before it started. I thought he’d kill you.”
“I told you, Bobby and I learned how to fight, how to protect ourselves. Then, in the Army, I got even more training. A lot of it. I don’t get scared when I know a fight’s about to start. I look at the guy, read him, and act accordingly.”
“Tell me how you did that,” Cary implored.
“Okay. Guys like this one, they want to put you down fast. There are three ways they’ll go about it maybe ninety, ninety-five percent of the time. They’ll head-butt you, which has become popular since Lee Child began writing his Reacher books, they’ll kick you in the balls, or they’ll take a swing at you. The other five to ten percent, they’ll put their shoulder down and try to tackle you and land on top. I was looking for those, mainly the first three, but mostly just for one. Big guys like the head-butt. They’re taller so they’re striking down and usually their victim has no defense against it. They don’t expect it, and that makes them vulnerable.”
“So what did you do? He did try to head-butt you.”
“My advantage was I expected it. Being taller, his face would be coming down into mine. I put my pointer and middle fingers up beside my nose with my fingers folded so the large knuckles were pointing upwards. Before his forehead hit mine, while his head was coming down, I slammed my knuckles into his eyes. That caused him to jerk his head back, exposing his neck. I unfolded my fingers and jabbed my straight fingers hard into his neck, high up. Hit the right spot and you choke the guy. I hit the right spot and he went down, fighting for breath. You and I walked away.”
“You weren’t even breathing hard! You acted like nothing had happened at all!”
A pause, and then, “I don’t like to make a fuss.”
When Cary gave him a funny look, he said, “I learned from dealing with my father not to show emotions. Once you’ve started doing that, you get in the habit and it’s hard to change”.