They took off the next morning feeling anticipation. Their long, long trip was coming to an end: they were finally reaching their intended destination. However, that destination wasn’t the one Cary was looking forward to.
Rory thought it was time to tell Cary that Ripley’s Creek wasn’t where they were headed. They’d get there, but that wasn’t their current destination, not what Cary was expecting. Cary didn’t like surprises all that much. Doing this now would get the surprise over with and give Cary time to digest it.
“Cary, I need to tell you we’re not going directly to Ripley’s Creek.
We’re going there, but going to the next town down the road from there first.”
“Why?”
“I’ll get into that later. I just didn’t want you getting all excited and then upset when we didn’t end up where you thought we were going. We’ll visit Ripley’s Creek soon, just not today. I do want you to see where I grew up. You probably want that more than I do.”
“Where are we going, then?”
“Briston. It’s only a few miles from Ripley’s Creek. We’ll probably spend the night there, then go on to Ripley’s Creek.”
“Why the detour? I want to see Ripley’s Creek!”
Rory laughed. “I know you do, and we will. You’ll find out why soon enough. I need to lead into telling you about it, not just blurt it out. Patience, young man. Patience.”
Cary scowled at him and hugged Morris. Morris licked his face.
They had different feelings about what they were expecting when they did arrive in Rory’s hometown. Cary was looking forward to seeing where Rory had grown up, the sights he’d seen as a kid, some of the people he’d rubbed shoulders with. Rory wasn’t sure exactly what he was feeling; he had so many emotions he was dealing with. He did have a main purpose for returning home, although Ripley’s Creek no longer felt like home. Without that purpose, would he have come back?
He thought that was very unlikely. He did have some happy memories, but a whole bucketful of unhappy ones.
They drove mostly on interstates, through Peoria, Illinois, staying in the state to visit Bloomington, then Champaign. Rory asked Cary if he’d like to visit the University of Illinois campus. Cary had another suggestion.
“You told me about going out for and training for football. Did you play? Tell me about that.”
“Aren’t you tired of hearing about football? You hate football.”
“True, but I like you, and I love hearing all about you when you were my age. I want to hear if you as much as you remember, and how you were a lot like me. Whether you lost your fears. And why there was nothing in your book at all about playing football.”
“You know I fictionalized much of the true details of that story, don’t you? I mean, there were real people who would be affected by what I wrote; there were real events, real places I’d be throwing open to opinions, too. So I changed names and places and events so there was distance between the real and the book’s accounts. In the book I substituted hockey for football. Hockey’s a really rough sport. It made a good stand-in for football.”
Cary took that news in silence and didn’t speak again while digesting it. Finally, he said, “So we’re not going to Ripley’s Creek at all. And your dad isn’t the president of the bank. And Deion isn’t Deion. Well, you already told me his name is really Bobby.”
“That’s right.”
“When were you planning to tell me the other things that are different?”
“I don’t know. Right now, I guess. I already started, telling you we’re headed for Briston first.”
More silence, then: “Why don’t you tell me about being a football star?”
Rory could hear anger in Cary’s voice. It stung. The boy had never been mad at him before. Rory could understand it; not having said anything about this before showed a lack of both trust and closeness. Why else keep it a secret, other than he didn’t trust him to keep it secret?
“Okay, I can hear you’re upset. That’s what we need to talk about first. You’re probably angry because you think I should have trusted you to keep it to yourself and I didn’t. If we’re friends, I should have told you. Well, we are friends. More than friends, I hope. But it wasn’t a lack of trust that kept me silent. Not really. It didn’t have anything to do with you. I was thinking about how real names getting out would affect those people. It would not have been fair to throw their lives, their pasts, open for public judgment. We had so much publicity about the book and then more about the movie. I wasn’t about to undress people in public.”
“So you changed everything. What I read wasn’t what happened to you? Growing up wherever that was? Your school days? Moving to New York? What happened in the Army? All that was made up?”
“It was all more or less true. I based the book on real events but disguised them. I’m sure you can understand that. Hey. Cary. You know me! I’m still the guy you knew in the book, in the film, the guy you actually played, for Christ’s sakes! That didn’t change.”
Cary was silent again, and Rory could see him fussing. Finally, he asked, “Your name must not be Rory Spencer. What is it?”
“Spendler Roy Thornton.”
“What? Wow! Nothing’s real.”
“You’re an actor, Cary. You have been since you were six. You’re used to make believe. I’ll bet when you started, you didn’t even know you were acting. Some of those parts, some scenes, you had to think it was real life.”
“Yeah.” Cary’s anger was now gone, but his intensity was elevated. “And it played with my head. I still have memories of stuff that wasn’t real but seemed to be, seemed like it was part of my real life. The actors I met were, to me, the parts they were playing. Like, the dad in an early TV series I was in was more real as a dad than my own. Then the series finished, and I never saw him again. He never said goodbye. He was just gone. Out of my life. Do you have any idea how hard that is for a little kid to understand?”
Rory gave him an empathetic glance. “I do, but not on the level you’re talking about. Nolan and I discussed this. Kid actors often get exploited, and no one seems to care about their mental health. He and I totally agreed that this should be a good experience for all the underage actors in our film, and nothing like what they’d been through before. I hate the fact your dad always got his hands on eighty-five percent of your pay. By law only fifteen percent went into your trust fund, which isn’t nearly enough and isn’t fair. We worked a deal that your father fought us on and lost. Now, fifty percent of what pay you got from us went to you. Into your trust. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Nolan told me. I didn’t know you had anything to do with it.”
“He and I talked about it. We both agreed it was a good idea. If your dad hadn’t agreed, we’d have hired someone else. When I learned about the problems kid actors have . . . it’s unbelievable how some are treated. We simply weren’t going to have that. You had a good experience on the film, didn’t you? You sure seemed to.”
Cary looked at him. “Mostly that was because of you. I was getting to hate acting. All the auditions. All the being away from kids at school. No time for friends, no way to make any. It isn’t a real life. And eventually I knew I was gay but couldn’t tell anyone. But then you were there, and you paid attention to me. Not the me in the film, but me. That could be creepy, a grown man hanging around a kid, but you were never that way. You talked to me and listened to me. You spent time with me and managed somehow to keep my father at bay.”
“I liked you right off, Cary. I saw a lot of myself in you, and I saw you were hurting. I hated that. I tried to help. And when you told me you were gay and you’d never told anyone else, well, we talked about that, and I think it made us closer. I wanted to make you happy and to be someone who you knew was in your corner, someone who had your back, no matter what.”
Cary nodded. “You do that. You do that all the time with people: help them. Anyway, I have to get used to the fact that the book is more or less real, just with changes. And now I see that the changes are to protect people. It’s more of the same, you being you. Why are you like that? No one else cares about people they don’t know very well—or even at all.”
“It probably has to do with growing up with a father who felt nothing but contempt for me. There was no one to help me before I got with the Tates, and I suffered from that. It made me very aware of the unfairness in the world and to want to do what I could to change that. I think that’s where I come from. I do like to help people. I still hate unfairness.”
Cary was quiet again. He had a lot to think about, to adjust to. Then: “Spendler? What kind of a name is that?”
Rory laughed. “One I was happy to never use again. I’ve now become Rory Spencer—dumped all three of my given names and became Rory Spencer—and plan to retain that name and that persona.”
“And what about in—wait a sec! We’re not going to Ripley’s Creek, are we? What’s the name of the town where we’re going?”
“Landale. Landale, Indiana. It’s just like I described in the book, but the name is different. That’s all.”
“Landale. Huh. Anyway, you have to be Spendler when we’re there, don’t you?”
“No. I didn’t even use that name any longer than I had to when I was lived there; I used Roy. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the last name. Landale was a small town when I grew up there and is even smaller now. I’m only going for a couple of reasons, and I’ll have to see how much I’m recognized by people who once knew me. I don’t expect anyone will other than relatives. Young people tend to leave small towns like Landale when they reach their late teens or early twenties. I’d guess there aren’t many still there who I associated with when I was a kid. Anyway, back then, I was called Roy. That’s what I’ll be when we’re there, I guess, but you can continue to call me what you usually do: sir.”
“Sir? I never call you sir!”
Rory laughed. “Well, if you slip and call me Rory, I’ll just tell them you’re a little simple and have a speech impediment to boot.”
They rode in silence for several miles, heading generally south, finally off the interstates and on state and county roads. Most of the towns they drove through were small, and most of the buildings looked old and tired.
“You never did tell me about your football career,” Cary eventually said. “If you were like me, you’d have been too chicken to play.”
“I would have been if it hadn’t been for Bobby.”
“And that’s his real name.” A statement. There was still some hostility in Cary’s voice when he said it.
“Yes, it is.”
“And why again was it so important to disguise it?”
Rory didn’t answer right away, and when he did, he sighed first. “It’s just that it’s important that Bobby’s past isn’t seen for what it was. It would be sensationalized, and that wouldn’t be fair to him.
“Look, I know you’re not into sports, but you’re not isolated from the world, either. You know the name LeBron James, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And Tom Brady and Mike Trout?”
“Sure. I’ve heard or read those names.”
“Well, it’s the same with Bobby Tate. He has a similar stature to those guys. You know he’s an NFL running back for the Seattle Seahawks. Led the league in rushing last year. But no one knows he was stripped naked in middle school and humiliated. How’d you like to be him and have some reporter shout at you when you’re out in public, yelling, ‘Hey, Bobby, how’d that feel in school, everyone seeing your pee-pee?’ It wasn’t my place to put him in that position. I changed his name in the book because I was saving him from that.”
“But you played high school football with him. Bobby Tate?”
“Or you could say Bobby Tate played high school football with me.” Rory grinned. “But that’s why I couldn’t use his name in the book. He and his parents, along with Harper, are my best friends in the world. They saved me when I was a teenager. Bobby, if you ever meet him, will tell you I saved him, but he lies a lot. Don’t believe him.”
“But he was the one whose pants they pulled down? And you stopped them?”
“People change when they grow up. Mentally and physically. I changed with him. Not as much as he did physically, but in all other ways we helped each other.”
“Is he going to be in, what, Landale?”
“He said he’d try. He might have summer camp with the Seahawks. He wasn’t sure. He hasn’t got back to me. He said if he could, he’d meet me there.”
“So tell me about him. Playing football with him. Working out with him.”
“Okay. I already told you about how we met and how we decided we needed to get stronger. To fix ourselves. About how we worked out, how he made me go out for football when I was too scared to do it. And about that coach taking me under his wing. He was great, and just what I needed. It wouldn’t have worked with most coaches. I had so much criticism from my father, I’d have quit on any coach that tried to motivate me with harsh derision.
“My coach taught me by using praise and support. He taught me the fundamentals of blocking, tackling, running routes, and he made me realize what I had been scared of had been because I’d blown it out of proportion in my mind. I just needed to give it a chance. I did, it wasn’t the monster waiting to eat me I’d imagined, and I got to actually enjoy football.
“Remember, Bobby and I were still sophs and still two of the smallest kids on the team. But we also were two of the most determined because we felt we had something to prove: that just being smaller didn’t mean we didn’t have the heart and drive to play the game.
“I found out all the running we’d been doing had made me fast. Not as fast as Bobby, but faster than most of the other guys on the team. I was lucky; the receivers who’d played the year before had graduated. There were a few receivers returning, but they hadn’t started the year before because they weren’t that good. I could catch the ball, and I could outrun them. The coach installed me as a starter right out of the gate.
“Bobby had two guys in front of him, and he didn’t have the opportunities to play that I had. I played a lot in every game. He sat on the bench a lot. We were both still small, and small guys tend not to play a lot, especially on offense. But Bobby never got discouraged, and he was my biggest fan.
“That was our first year. Over that summer we, like a lot of sophomores, grew a lot. We ended the sophomore season as five foot-two and -three-inch, one-twenty-five- and one-thirty-five- pound peewees. We began the next season as five-foot-eight- and -eleven-inch, one-sixty-eight- and one-eighty-eight-pound juniors. And man, could Bobby run.
“We played as juniors and seniors. I was bigger then and not afraid any longer. It became apparent we needed help in the defensive backfield, so I ended up a two-way player my last year. My senior year I was only there for the football season. Then my dad had me shipped out to New York City. You read about that in my book. Bobby, well, Bobby was amazing. He set all the school records for yards gained. He ran through defenses like they weren’t there. He juked and jived through openings no one else could see, and when there weren’t openings, he just ran over linebackers and safeties. It was like an NFL player against kids in middle school.
“He got all sorts of scholarship offers to major colleges, and he ended up playing at Ohio State, which pissed off the IU coaches, but they had a terrible team and OSU was fighting for college-football championships every year; they send several guys to the NFL, a few of them first-round picks, every year. It wasn’t a difficult decision for Bobby to make.”
“Uh, you just talked more about Bobby than you did about you.”
“Well, I don’t like talking about me. Bobby was phenomenal and an even better person than football player. I moved in with him and his parents that senior year. I couldn’t live with my dad any longer. He couldn’t live with me, either. I came out to him, and he threw me out of the house. My mother didn’t say a word. I had nowhere to go, but Bobby told me that was ridiculous, that I had a room in their house, and his dad told me the same thing, and his mom welcomed me with a hug. That very same day, his dad took me back to my house and told my dad the things in my room were legally mine, and if he didn’t allow me to go in and take what I wanted, he’d take him to court. My dad’s a racist along with everything else, and being spoken to like that by a black man? Yikes! But he took it. Bobby’s dad is a force of nature. Even in that town which still had racist elements, no one messed with him.
“I didn’t spend even a single night on the street. Bobby’s dad became a surrogate dad for me, and his mother . . . Well, I discovered how a mother is supposed to act, to be warm and caring and the opposite of a cold fish. Just one example: whenever I’d leave the house, she’d kiss me on the cheek and tell me to be safe. For a boy who’d never felt any affection at home, this was an awakening. Bobby might tell you I saved him, but nowhere near as much as he saved me.”
Cary turned in his seat. Morris had woken up and needed petting. He showed that by sticking his head through the seats into the front and licking Cary. Cary had to turn to scratch Morris’ head. While doing so, he commented, “You said there were a couple of reasons for coming back here. You didn’t say what they were. I should know, I think. So I don’t screw anything up.”
“Okay. I guess you deserve that. One is to get some closure with my dad. He was shitty to me, and I’ve never faced him about that. I couldn’t as a kid. It’ll still be hard. The attitudes you develop as a kid tend to stick with you. He was always intimidating, and I’ll take that view of him with me when I face him. But I need to do that. For my own self-esteem.”
“And the other reason? You said there was another one.”
“It’s the main one I came back. It’s also one I don’t want to tell you about. But I need to. So I’m not sure what to do.”
“Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“It’s more that I shouldn’t tell you than not want to. Sort of like with Bobby, that I’d be telling you something that’s really not mine. I’m torn. But, you know, you’re an actor. I can tell you something, and when the time comes, you can act like you don’t know. So it’s probably all right. It simply doesn’t feel right.”
Cary shook his head. “Now you’ve got me confused, and you’re probably making this more important than it is. Why don’t you just trust me like you said you can? Trust I’ll do the right thing, whatever it is.”
“I want to. It’s one of those things where you’re damned whatever decision you make.”
“So tell me.”
Rory didn’t answer. They drove on. It was getting close to lunch time, and still about an hour out of Landale. Rory said they should eat in Terre Haute. “We’re almost to Terre Haute, Cary. This was the big city we talked about back when I was a kid here. Indiana State is here. It’s right on the Wabash River. That forms part of the border between Illinois and Indiana. I’ll tell you what you want to know you over lunch, okay?”
They ate at Gil’s Cafe, a burger-and-wing restaurant on the south end of town that had outside tables. They took their food to one of those tables where there was no one else nearby.
“I guess I’ll do this. I don’t like it, but I think you should know what we’re getting into. So, here goes.
“You know Harper. She suggested after I was fired that I take a vacation, get away from it all, especially from L.A. Travel, she said. Thought it would help me recharge my batteries. Then I spoke about visiting my home town, which she sort of pooh-poohed. Said I wouldn’t fit in. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a terrible idea.
“All the years I lived here, the only happy ones were when I knew Bobby, and that wasn’t all that long. Coming back, I knew I’d face my father again. And I both wanted to do that and dreaded it. But I felt the need to man up and go home to do it. End that part of my life on a high note. So that’s one reason, the one I can easily tell you about. The other is, after I’d talked to Harper and eventually decided the idea of returning was silly, I got a letter. Not an email. An actual letter. From a cousin.”
“I didn’t know you had a cousin. He or she wasn’t in the book. What’s their name? And age?”
“His name is Trace. Trace Edwards. His mother is my mother’s sister. They live in Briston, the town I told you about earlier that’s close to Landale, and it’s where we’re actually going today. We’ll visit Landale, I’ll show you the sights in the five minutes that’ll take, but probably not today. Tonight, we’ll stay in Briston, maybe with the Edwards family.”
“You didn’t say how old Trace is.”
“Or anything else about him, or why he wrote me a letter.” Rory gave Cary an irritated look; he was being led by the nose again. Damn impatient teens!
Cary returned it with a snarky comeback. “Yeah, that.” His voice was as sarcastic as a boy his age could make it.
Rory laughed and lost the scowl. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Cary blushed and looked down. He raised his eyes and said, “I love you, too. You’re about the only one in my life I do.”
Rory smiled and nodded, then waved it all away dismissively. “Okay, enough of that. Anyway, Trace wrote me. It was our first contact. I don’t know him at all and didn’t even know he existed. Back in Landale, we never had much to do with the Edwards family, even though the women are sisters. My father ruled the roost and didn’t like my mother having outside friends. He felt she was there to satisfy his needs, and anything that took her mind off that was discouraged. I think I only visited the Edwards three or four times in my life. I’ve been gone from Landale since I was 17. That was when Dad sent me to New York to live. I’ve never been back.”
“Trace?”
“Damn! I’m getting there. Keep your pants on.”
Cary couldn’t help but giggle. “I thought it was your shirt.”
“Keep that on, too. I’m getting there. You have to set the stage for this sort of thing. Lead up to it.”
“Okay. Well, I’m ready.” Then he giggled again.
Rory shook his head. “All right. When I left Landale, Trace was two years old. I’d never even met him; no one told me about him. He was a late child for them. I was living with the Tates then. I wasn’t talking to either of my parents. I didn’t know about Trace.”
He paused, giving Cary room to interrupt again. The boy remained silent, but grinned.
“I took a moment when I saw the letter to wonder about it. It was addressed to Roy Thornton, which set me back a little. And who’d sent it? I saw the return address was in Briston and saw the name Edwards, but I didn’t know a Trace Edwards. Anyway, I opened it. It was an emotional letter.
“Trace told me he was my cousin, he was 15 years old and that he didn’t know who to turn to, and I probably wasn’t interested anyway but he was reaching for straws and felt this was about the last one that might be available for him. He was gay, he was living in Briston, Indiana, he was the only gay kid in town, and he was being bullied a lot because everyone thought he was gay even though he’d never come out.
“The town was located in the Bible Belt, and homosexuality was railed against in all the churches in town; it was the one thing they could all agree on: it was proscribed by the Bible and an abomination.
“Trace said everyone assumed he was gay because he had never really fit in, wasn’t dating any of the girls in town, and was a little effeminate. He told me he was very close to his mother, and his mother told him about me and how I’d come out when I was his age, and that my dad had thrown me out because of that. She thought maybe I was now a big deal in Hollywood; she didn’t know for sure, but thought I might be. He didn’t say why she thought that, but it was a surprise for me to read it because I didn’t know anyone back there had any idea where I was. But Trace wrote that she’d said if I really had been gay way back then, then I probably was now, and if I was a big shot, maybe I could help him. At the very least, maybe I’d agree to talk to him.
“He wrote that they don’t have much money. He doesn’t even have a cellphone. Every other kid in school does. His dad wants nothing to do with him. He wrote he couldn’t take the bullying any longer. He said he was about at the end of his rope.
“He didn’t say how he got my address. I guess if you’re desperate enough, you can find things out. Anyway, after I read the letter, I called Information, but the Edwards don’t have a landline and so that didn’t help. That left me having to do something I didn’t want to do. I called my mother. I did have her cellphone number. I’d never used it, but I had it. I called her and asked about Trace. She didn’t know much, said they hadn’t spoken in ages, but she did know her sister’s cellphone number and gave that to me. We didn’t talk much more than that. I had nothing to say to her, and she felt the same, I guess, because she didn’t make any attempt to say anything more, either.
“I called Trace’s mother. She was really happy to hear from me. She said the person who really needed to talk to me was Trace, and she handed the phone to him. We talked for just a bit. I could tell he wanted to talk longer, but I told him I was planning a trip to Landale and we could talk then. Also, that it was quite a coincidence he’d written me just when I was thinking of coming east, but it was a happy one, and I’d come and talk to him when I was there, which would be in a week or two.
“I did ask him if he’d be safe, if he could wait for me and not take any
desperate steps before that, and he said he would wait. He said that his life wasn’t as
bad in the summer when he didn’t have to go to school and could stay home reading. He
said he rarely left the house. But he said he didn’t ever want to go back to his school,
that he’d made his mind up about that and if he was being forced to go, he’d do
what he had to do then.
“So, Cary, that’s the real reason for coming back to Indiana. If it was just to see my father, I’d probably have talked myself out of that. But Trace, a desperate kid who’s considering killing himself, who sees that as an option? That’s different.”
“Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want to out him to you unless he gave me permission. He’ll probably spend some time with us, and he may not want you to know. So now, you’re going to have to pretend you don’t know he’s gay. I’d guess that’ll be too hard for you to do, you being such a poor actor and all.”
Cary growled. “If you weren’t driving, I’d set Morris on you. He likes me better than he does you.”
“Yeah, he probably does. You have to wonder about the mental discernment some dogs exhibit.”
Cary snickered.