The Beard - 2. Chapter 2

Dale was still in a haze the morning after his late-night discussion with Cole Pritchard. A night of tossing and turning hadn’t helped much, nor had getting up at six-thirty in the morning. It was summer vacation, but the sounds of his grandparents getting up, making coffee, and reading the newspaper as they did every morning was just too much for him to sleep through.

Sure, he could have shut the door to his bedroom, but then he wouldn’t have been able to hear his mother calling for help if she needed his assistance. That was something that had happened once before, and waking up to find her sobbing in her bed in the next room had made him vow to never put her through that again. The whole situation was bad enough that she didn’t need to feel abandoned by her son as well.

I need you to be my boyfriend. Those words had haunted him all night with a mixture of feelings that he wasn’t sure how to handle. Looking at his face in the bathroom mirror didn’t help him find any answers that morning. Nor did the shower.

Looking at his face and body in the bathroom mirror while he squeezed out the last of his prescription acne cream wasn’t all too helpful either. Cole was beautiful, and just as importantly he was a really nice person. If he needed a boyfriend, or girlfriend, for whatever reason, he could have his pick of the school. Why then would he come to Dale’s pimply, acne-scarred face?

The angular, harsh lines of his face looked no better in the mirror, nor did the curly mess of brown hair on his head. His body was skinny, bony in places no matter how much he ate, and working out just wasn’t his thing at all. Sure, he could run pretty well, but the idea of wasting his time working with weights when he could be reading a book was plain silly.

It was the word ‘need’ that had struck him the most about Cole’s statement. Cole was a smart person for all that he could barely make a computer work. Like his father, the politician, Cole always chose his words with care and he had chosen the word ‘need’. It wasn’t ‘want’ or ‘desire’, but need. Dale had been so shocked by the statement that he hadn’t replied, insisting that he had to go home right away.

Cole had been ever the gentleman, helping clean up the mess Dale had made with the lemonade, and dropping a twenty-dollar bill on the table before leading Dale to his car. The drive home had been silent, until they’d reached Dale’s house. He hadn’t even known that Cole knew where he lived.

“What time do you go to work tomorrow?” Cole had asked after putting the stick shift in neutral in front of Dale’s grandparent’s home. Like the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, it was a 1950’s style tract home, a little on the small side and showing every bit of its 60-year age.

“I go in at one, just after the lunch shift.” Dale answered after searching Cole’s face for the answers to questions he didn’t know if he wanted to ask.

“Would you mind if I take you to lunch, then?” Cole asked. “I can pick you up at eleven and we can talk over lunch. I’ll drop you off at work afterwards.”

“I… okay.” Dale had replied after a moment of thought. Cole’s smile lit up his face, even in the dark car and Dale got out, looking in the car after shutting the door. “Thanks for the dessert.”

“You’re welcome.” Cole said, and he waited there until Dale had gone inside the house.

Finishing with the cream, Dale sighed again and tried to comb his hair so it didn’t look quite so disheveled. On the way back to his room, with the towel hanging on his narrow hips, he looked in his mother’s room to see that she was still asleep, or at least faking that she was asleep. The 42” plasma television on the wall across from her bed was turned off, so she probably was really sleeping.

The long weekend would be over tomorrow, and he’d be going back to school like everyone else. At least he’d finished his homework by Saturday morning and didn’t have to worry about that as he dressed in a pair of blue sweat pants and an old gray Six Flags sweatshirt. It barely fit him, and the socks he put on had a small hole already in the bottom. He’d have to buy some more next time he could afford the luxury of buying clothes.

It was one thing to buy his pants and shirts at the Goodwill store, but he’d never wear used socks and underwear. They had to be bought new, and maybe Wal-Mart would have a sale soon. Either that, or maybe Target. He liked their things better, just a little bit at least and he might find something on the discount rack that was cheap enough and hadn’t been worn by another person before.

It wasn’t that his family was exactly poor. His grandparents had lived in this house for nearly thirty years, and they owned it outright. The old house had to be sold to pay the lawsuits after the accident, and of course his mother’s ongoing medical bills. Both of his grandparents were retired and on fixed incomes, although their pension plans let them live at least somewhat comfortably.

His mother’s medical bills though ate up most of the discretionary income so he used his paychecks to help around the house, keeping only a little bit for himself to pay for things like lunches and clothes when he needed them, as well as his monthly bus pass that let him get around town most of the time. It wasn’t a lot, but in his family everyone contributed what they could, and they worked together.

Dale was just grateful that his grandparents were willing to help their youngest daughter so much, as well as her son. After the incident with the football team and the GSA club, he thought they’d disown him, but they hadn’t. The worst he had to deal with were cold looks on occasion, and pointed comments when they read something about gays in the paper, or saw something on television. It wasn’t ideal, but it was far better than what some of the kids in the GSA had gone through after the incident.

He slipped his feet into the house slippers that had been a birthday present from his grandmother last year and left his room for the kitchen. As he expected, Grandma had made some of her homemade buttermilk biscuits, smothered in butter. He put two of them on a saucer and filled a cup of coffee with the requisite cream and sugar before taking everything into the living room where his grandparents were reading the newspaper.

“Good morning.” He said as he sat in one of the free armchairs, across from where they were sitting on the couch. Their coffee cups were half-full, but their biscuits saucers were empty on the coffee table in front of the couch. There was a side table next to the chair he sat in, and he sat the cup and saucer down there before going to the coffee table and looking for through pile of paper they had finished reading.

“Good morning, Dale.” His grandmother said after finishing the paragraph she was reading. She wouldn’t speak until she finished a paragraph. His grandfather just grunted. “You got home a little late last night.”

“Sorry if I woke you.” Dale said as he picked up the Local section of the newspaper and went back to his chair.

“You didn’t.” She answered quietly. “I was just trying to drift off to sleep when you came in. I saw the lights of a car out front.”

“A friend invited me to dessert after work and dropped me off.” Dale said, hoping she wouldn’t pry too much. Looking at her over the top of the newspaper he was certain she wouldn’t. Instead she put down the Entertainment section and grabbed her coffee with her long, slightly gnarled fingers. She’d worked in the factory all her life, and the hard wear showed mostly on her hands. Her silver hair was still kept short to fit under her hat, but it was a lot fluffier than it had been before she retired.

Grandpa had been a Paver for most of his life, working on the big paving machines that built and repaired roads. His broad gut had expanded only a little since retiring, and his skin was still just as tanned as it had always been, even if his dark, bushy mustache was now silver, as was the fringe of hair around his bald head.

“You still have friends?” His grandfather asked gruffly, and then frowned at his own rudeness. Dale knew better than to rise to the bait, so he swallowed the sarcastic comment that came to his lips and scanned through the front section of the paper. An article about Cole’s father caught his eye right away.

“Was it a girl?” His grandmother asked gently.

“No, it was Cole, the guy I did that big project with last semester.” Dale answered.

“The congressman’s son?” She asked with a look of approval.

“Now that’s a much better group than that last lot you hung out with.” His grandfather voiced his own approval.

“He’s picking me up for lunch at eleven, if that’s okay.” Dale said, throwing it out there since they seemed so inclined to like Cole without having met him.

“Why?” His grandfather asked suspiciously.

“He said he needed my help with something last night.” Dale answered without giving any real details.

“Well, you do what you can for the boy.” Dale’s grandfather grunted. “His old man is a good, solid, Democrat that supports the Unions, and you know how much trouble we’d be in if it wasn’t for the Union pension we both get.”

“Yes, sir.” Dale answered in the only way possible and was relieved when they went back to their own reading. The article on the senior Pritchard was kind of interesting, talking about the challenges he was facing in the Democratic Primary that was still a few months away. The discussion about the affects of last year’s redistricting left Dale putting two and two together in order to get an answer about what Cole was after.

The question was: Did Cole’s father come up with the idea, or was it Cole’s?

After reading the article, the word ‘need’ made every bit of sense to Dale. Perception was everything in politics. He’d learned that from Cole during their project last year. Cole had the intimate familiarity with politics that their project had needed, while Dale had the experience with numbers and computer know-how to make their project look better than any other in their class. With Mrs. Landreau having already given Jessica and Andy an A+ for their less informative and less flashy report, she’d had no choice but to give Dale and Cole a top grade despite her dislike for Cole.

Cole was too crafty to let her giving him a bad grade slip by, too. All he needed was evidence of bias that he could take the Principal, and he’d have had her hide. Unfortunately for him, she knew that too and didn’t give him what he needed to get her in trouble.

“Dale!” His mom’s voice calling from her bedroom drew him out of the paper. He’d finished both biscuits and his cup of coffee by that time. With one last glance at the paper, he’d finished everything but the comics, he picked everything up and called out to his mother that he was coming.

“Good morning, mom.” He said as cheerfully as he could after putting everything away in the kitchen. His grandmother had already gone into the room and was sitting in one of the chairs on the far side of the bed.

“Morning, Dale.” She said with a smile. “Mom was just telling me about your new friend.”

“Yeah, um, I was going to go to lunch at eleven, before work if you don’t mind.” Dale said with barely a verbal stumble.

“You need to get out.” His mother said firmly, with the typical wistfulness in her voice that was there every time she mentioned ‘getting out’. “You’ve done nothing but work all weekend and take care of me. I can’t remember the last time you’ve gone out with friends.”

“Last year.” Dale answered for her. “You ready to get up for the day?”

“I don’t see why I bother, but okay.” His mother said grimly. Dale hid the frown he was feeling and started to help his grandmother get her ready for her morning bath. They’d redone the bathroom after the accident, making it more accessible. He normally used the separate shower stall, but they had put in a large Jacuzzi-style tub that really helped his mother every morning – when they could get her to go through the hassle of getting ready for a bath.

His grandmother actually helped her with the bath part, all he had to do was get her from the bed and into her wheelchair. His mother had never been particularly large, but the amputated legs, cut off just above where her kneecaps had been meant there was less of her to lift and carry around. Still, he was sweating by the time that he’d left her in the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Grandma would begin filling the tub after removing his mother’s nightgown, and she wouldn’t do that until he was out of the room.

An hour later, his mother was much more cheerful after grandma had dried her and gotten her dressed in a nice pair of dark slacks, the legs pinned just below her stumps, and a nice blue blouse that brought out here blue eyes. Her long brown hair was done up in a long ponytail, and the bangs had been nicely styled.

“You smell good today.” He said after lifting her back into her chair and reattaching the catheter tube to the urine bag already attached to the chair. It was easier to have bags in different rooms that they could use rather than having to lift the bag too every time they moved her from one room to another.

“Mom bought a new bubble bath for me.” His mother said pleasantly. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad a day after all. “It’s lilac rose or something like that.”

“It smells good.” Dale said with a smile as he watched her flip on the wheelchair’s power. She had fair use of her arms, and very limited use of her hands, so she wasn’t a full quadriplegic, but it had been close for her.

“Do you want cereal, dear, or maybe something hot to eat?” His grandmother asked her daughter.

“I was thinking bacon and eggs, if we have any.” His mother answered wistfully and Dale sighed with relief.

“Dale bought some fresh bacon yesterday before he went to work, so we have plenty of that.” His grandmother said with a smile. “I’ll make some up for all of us.”

After they finished the full breakfast his grandmother fixed, Dale took his mother into the living room and helped her go through her exercises. She hated them even on good days like this one, but they kept her from developing bed sores and all number of nasty problems that had happened the first year after the accident.

She’d ended up back in the hospital after eight months at home, and Dale had vowed when she was released that he’d never let her get that bad again. They didn’t talk much while he helped her do her exercises, except to talk about the different things he had read in the paper. Her eyes had been damaged in the accident, too, and she had trouble concentrating when reading. She could see the large television without too much trouble, and so she got most of her news from that, but she still liked to hear Dale talk about what he’d read that day.

He just didn’t mention the article he’d read about Cole’s father, or anything relating to his new ‘friend’, and she didn’t bring it up again either. Like his grandparents, she seemed to think any guy he talked about was a ‘love’ interest and after a few verbal battles an uneasy truce had developed on that topic. She wouldn’t say anything bad about his male friends, and they wouldn’t have a nasty fight in the process.

By ten in the morning she was back in her bedroom, watching some movie that she’d found on the satellite channel. The cable bill they had was expensive, but all the channels gave her plenty to keep her mind occupied, and it was worth the added cost in his opinion. The doctors had been very clear keeping her mind as active as possible was important.

Normally he’d have messed around on the computer in his room after the morning routine, but today he focused on going through his meager closet, trying to find the nicest clothes he owned. After a lot of searching he settled on a thick A&F sweater that hadn’t been new for the past decade, and a pair of faded brown cargo pants that had just begun to get really thin in the knees. It wasn’t too noticeable, and they went well with the red sweater.

The doorbell rang just as he finished getting dressed, and was trying something different with his hair. It almost worked, making his curly hair look like it actually was meant to look slightly disheveled and still in some decent shape. It looked less like a mop, or an afro this way, which was how it looked far too often. When he left his bedroom, barely remembering to grab the small bag holding his uniform, he could hear his grandmother talking to Cole already.

“…we’ve always been supporters of your father’s.” His grandmother was saying. “You get too many liberal Democrats these days, but he’s good old-fashioned Democrat. It’d stick in my craw if I had to vote for a Republican, you know.”

“We’re always glad for support from people like you, ma’am.” Cole answered smoothing, probably having had long years of practice like this. When he came around the corner, it was all he could do to not gape.

Cole was wearing a pair of black slacks that fit his form snugly, showing off his butt that was every bit as perfect as the rest of him. He was also wearing a form-fitting black turtleneck that showed he had a very nice chest, not too built and yet not slender like Dale’s. The best word that fit it was: sleek.

“There he is.” Dale’s grandmother said with a smile when she saw Dale standing there. It was her polite smile, and he knew she was holding something back, probably something about the obvious reaction he was showing. Her look almost caused him to blush, but instead he smiled and tried to clear his head.

“You’re right on time, Cole.” Dale said with that little smile and felt his cheeks blushing slightly at the look Cole gave him.

“You ready to go?” Cole asked and Dale nodded. Then Cole turned back to Dale’s grandmother with a smile on his face. “It was nice to meet you Mrs. Sewell.”

“You boys be good.” Dale’s grandmother said with a smile and a pat on Cole’s shoulder before Dale went out the front door. Cole was right behind him, and he didn’t have to look back to see his grandmother watching them as they got into Cole’s car. The top was up, probably because of the rain clouds overhead, and Dale threw the bag into the back seat before getting in and shutting the door.

“You look nice.” Cole said as he pulled away, this time without any wild maneuvers.

“So do you.” Dale replied quietly.

“See, that wasn’t so bad.” Cole said with a little chuckle. “I think your grandmother likes me.”

“Just wait until she hears you asked me to be your boyfriend.” Dale murmured and then felt guilty.

“Yeah, well, that’s life.” Cole laughed as he turned out of their neighborhood, heading towards the nearest freeway entrance.

“Where are we going?” Dale asked nervously when they neared the freeway and Cole began accelerating.

“Don’t worry, you won’t be late for work.” Cole said as he merged into the freeway traffic. His driving made Dale nervous, but he tried not to show it too bad.

“You’ve been thinking about what I said.” Cole spoke after a few minutes of silence while he drove.

“Yeah.” Dale admitted. “I saw an interesting article in the paper today.”

“We all read it this morning, too.” Cole laughed. “Not quite right, but then news articles are rarely all accurate. Reporters have to sound like they know more than anyone else, whether they are right or wrong.”

“Redistricting is biting your father in the butt.” Dale said with a slight laugh. Every ten years the United States conducted a census of its population. From that census, politicians finagled changes to their district as mandated by the U.S. Constitution and in this state, the State Constitution. Each member of congress was supposed to represent a specific number of people, no more and no less. Over the centuries since the Constitution was adopted, politicians had adopted many ways of doing this redrawing, usually to help protect the incumbent.

In the case of Cole’s father, it was coming back to haunt him in unexpected ways. The man was officially a Democrat, and when he first ran for Congress, the seat had been held by a Republican. Their north coastal district had a fairly even Republican/Democrat registration split, and a healthy dose of the Decline-to-State voters.

Before the project he’d done with Cole, Dale would have had no idea of all that information, but he’d learned it while they worked together.

Cole’s father was a fairly conservative Democrat and had gotten elected on a platform that was more conservative than most people thought from that party. He’d voted against a number of liberal proposals, and while those positions had gotten him elected, and reelected up to now, the redrawing of his district lines had changed things. This year, Cole’s father was facing a primary challenger that actually posed a real threat.

“You can say that again.” Cole laughed at Dale’s comment. “Dad’s been pissed at the folk’s responsible for how they redrew the district. The idiots took out a bunch of Reps and put in more of the city on the southern edge of the old district and that new development that’s full of retired gay folks.”

“Who are all pissed at him for voting against the DOMA repeal.” Dale quoted from the morning’s article. It had made a lot of sense when he put everything together. “They think he hates gays and are supporting Harold Diem, who is openly gay.”

“You’re practically quoting that article.” Cole chuckled as he took an exit from the freeway, crossing two lanes at the last moment. He drove on, oblivious to the sound of car horns speeding by them.

“Jesus!” Dale gasped and looked down to see his knuckles were white on the door’s little grab bar.

“I know what I’m doing.” Cole said in complete confidence as he barely stopped at the off-ramp intersection. For some reason, Dale was not surprised when he pulled into a little diner that looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the 1950’s.

“Is this another place you’ve gone to since you were a little kid?” Dale asked sarcastically as they pulled into the diner’s parking lot.

“Nope.” Cole answered with a smile. “I don’t think my folks even know this place exists, but they have this great chicken-fried steak.”

“Sure, no problem.” Dale sighed. “You’re the one with the zit-free face. I’m sure all that grease has no effect on you at all.”

“I only let myself eat here once a month.” Cole’s voice now was defensive. “They have healthy stuff on the menu, too.”

“Yeah, the fruit cup.” Dale’s sarcasm was rich as he opened the door. Cole had shut off the car and was getting out. When they entered the diner, a tired looking woman in her forties smiled at them, but without the recognition that had come from Linda, so Dale began to give Cole the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

“Here you boys go.” The woman said with a trace of cheerfulness in her voice. “You want something to drink while you look over the menu?”

“I’ll have an iced tea, please.” Cole said without looking at the menu.

“Um, I guess I’ll have apple juice.” Dale said after quickly perusing the beverage section of the menu. He was jittery enough without having something that contained caffeine.

“I’ll be back with your drinks in a minute.” The waitress said after scribbling their drink order on her pad. When she left, Dale looked around and noticed that they were all but alone in this part of the diner.

“The chicken breast is good, too.” Cole said as they looked over the menu.

“I’ll have the chicken-fried steak.” Dale said flatly, putting the menu down just in time to see Cole smiling at him.

“The acne doesn’t look that bad.” Cole said quietly, causing Dale to both blush and grow angry at the same time.

“You’re not even gay.” Dale said with a slightly angry tone.

“No.” Cole admitted with a sigh.

“Then what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dale demanded angrily, letting his voice rise just a bit. Cole didn’t even look around, like Dale thought he might.

“My father has an image problem with the gay community, and he needs to fix it without looking like he’s doing it to improve his chances of election.” Cole said firmly and calmly. He paused when the waitress approached them with their drinks.

“You boys ready to order?” She asked and Cole smiled at her with all of his considerable charm.

“Yep, we’re both having the chicken-fried steak.” Cole told her and she nodded, scribbling some more. He answered her other questions for both of them while Dale just watched him.

“So your father has an image problem.” Dale said with a shrug as soon as she was far enough away from them. “You pretending to be gay with a boyfriend isn’t going to fix that for him.”

“No, but it would help him justify his changing his positions on certain issues.” Cole said with certainty. “Years ago, a big city mayor changed his position on gay marriage after his son came out of the closet. He took some heat for it from people opposed to gay marriage, but he picked up a lot of support from that city’s gay community because they believed the reason he changed his position was because of his son, not because he was playing politics.”

“So your dad thought up that having his son be gay was the solution to his problem?” Dale asked with heavier sarcasm in his voice than before. “Then you thought ‘Hey, I know this gay kid at school! He can pretend to be my boyfriend and everything? Sorry, I’m not going to be your gay beard, Cole.”

“My father doesn’t know.” Cole said and there was a slight frown on his voice. “He’s ready to change his position, but he doesn’t have a way to do it that won’t be seen as pandering. The Diem asshole, and he is an asshole with a capital A, well he’s painted Dad in a corner. All those new Dems in the district down there are much more liberal than what we had before, and they number just enough that dad’s polling numbers look bad. People like him on spending issues, but feel he’s behind the times on social issues. Only thing is, social issues aren’t something you can just change your position on overnight. Most people won’t believe it.”

“So have him support abortion.” Dale shrugged.

“That won’t work at all.” Cole frowned deeply. Dale wanted to say something to change it into a smile, but he squashed that urge. “Dad hates abortion with a passion. They nearly lost me when mom was carrying me, and he thinks every life is precious. He’d rather lose an election than change his position on that. His original position on gays, well he’s never had a problem with gay people before. That position he took was because all those years ago, the District wouldn’t elect someone who didn’t have that position.”

“And now he’s going to lose the election because of that position.” Dale’s sarcasm wasn’t letting up at all. “Oh, the irony.”

“I thought you liked me.” Cole said with a hurt look that made Dale’s heart lurch a little in his chest. Fortunately their food arrived. While the waitress put the plates in front of them and asked a couple of inane questions, Dale took a deep breath and tried to get rid of the sarcasm.

“I do like you.” Dale said when the waitress was gone, and that dazzling smile almost took his breath away. “You have to know you’re damn good looking, who wouldn’t like you?”

“I thought you liked me for more than my looks.” The hurt look was back and Dale frowned.

“I do.” Dale said immediately. “I mean, well, I really got to like working with you on that project, and when the whole GSA/Football thing happened, well it seemed like you were working to get the remainder of the football team to let things die down. Then you told off that one kid that tripped me in the cafeteria, and did I ever thank you for that?”

“Yes, you did.” The smile was back on Cole’s face now. “See, you know I don’t have a problem with gay people.”

“But – you’re – not – gay!” Dale insisted. “Me being your boyfriend, and I assume once you tell your father that you have a boyfriend, he’ll see the light and make a public announcement about changing his position and all that. You don’t need a beard to do all that.”

“But when the stupid press people start snooping around, and they will, they’re going to be hard pressed to believe it if I’m dating girls.” Cole said with a stab of his fork in Dale’s direction. “Even if I’m single, they’re going to be quoting every kid who’ll talk to them from the school. They’ve done it before in other election years when they heard a rumor that Dad was pushing the Principal to doctor my grades. It wasn’t true, but this jealous girl from my history class pushed the rumor because I outscored her on a class project.”

“So if you’re not publicly gay, with a boyfriend and all, they’ll say it was a trick to help your father’s election.” Dale said with a shake of his head. “They won’t be wrong, will they? You’re not really gay.”

“No, but Dale, please?” Cole asked with a pleading look. “My Dad’s a good man. He’s a damn better man than that Diem character. When Diem was on the Board of Supervisors he was investigated for corruption twice, but they never found any proof and my dad refuses to use that in his campaign ads.”

“What’s going to happen after the primary?” Dale asked. “That’s after school lets out. Your dad wins and you’ll dump me, right? Go back to dating some bimbo of the week while your buddies laugh at the little fag?”

“You know I won’t let them laugh at you.” Cole said firmly. “Look, I don’t know what we’ll do after the election, but Dale, I need your help, buddy. I need help from a friend like I’ve never needed it before, and Dale, I promise you, I won’t forget the favor that I owe you. Once the election’s over, it’s up to you to pick how and when things end, and after that, well I won’t forget and I’ll do my best by you, okay?”

“Okay.” Dale said with a sigh.

“Yes!” Cole’s voice was triumphant.

“Wait, I meant it as in okay, I’ll think about it.” Dale said quickly and this time the frown on Cole’s face didn’t pull at his heartstrings. This time he was the one with an evil smile.

“What’s that smile for?” Cole asked suspiciously.

“You know people won’t believe we’re going out without at least some public displays of affection.” Dale said evilly. “I think my price will be getting as much public affection as I can get away with, straight boy.”

“Oh.” Cole’s eyes now held the look of a prey in the sights of a predator, and Dale was chuckling as he cut off a piece of his steak. Taking a bite, he had to sigh and smile.

It really was a good country-fried steak.