Jericho's Wall - 5. Chapter 5

My parents called as we were finishing breakfast; it was afternoon where they were and they wanted to catch me before I went out to the garden. I missed them terribly, longed to be in their presence even if we didn’t speak much (at my age, this happened a fair amount), but the yearning was tempered with a sly and not-entirely-unwelcome frisson of this is what it feels like to have a life apart from them. As I placed the phone back on the charger I announced to the kitchen at large, “I’m gay.” Jericho grinned at me, his mouth full, a running-late-and-not-yet-caffeinated June muttered, “That’s nice, Mateo,” and the twins responded with a rousing and synchronized “Duh!”—they’d regained their camaraderie with a much-needed good night’s sleep. I helped clean up, distinctly underwhelmed at the reaction I’d gotten versus how much nerve my declaration had needed to make, but all of them found reasons to hug me more than usual for the rest of the day. The first of the weekly pair of postcards we’d receive from Europe arrived in the leaning mailbox next afternoon, we all oohed and aahed over the pictures on the front, places I still ached to visit . . . someday. On the morning I did manage not to burn my first pan of drop biscuits I was rewarded with not only the hugs I mentioned above but also with a pre-dinner trip to the diner for another hot fudge brownie, and although Jill was working I got the impression she hadn’t been Jericho’s primary motivation for coming there, or even secondary. She again didn’t speak to us (nor did my cousin comment on her silence to our server Rodi) but I’d look up every now and then from Jericho’s chatter to find Jill watching us, an expression of what I can only describe as irritated confusion on her face. I didn’t know why she looked that way nor did I care. On either Wednesday or Thursday (I can’t remember which) another afternoon shower halted our work in the garden, and since June needed to take the twins to the dentist for orthodontic planning anyway (“But we don’t want braces, we don’t want to be friends with anybody who’d laugh at us over a few crooked teeth!”) Jericho and I took a shift at the produce stand. Business was slow, as the weather was like I said rather wet and windy if not outright stormy, and I found I enjoyed talking to the few customers and helping them make their selections while Jericho huddled against the back wall, oddly quiet. “I’m not good at dealing with total strangers,” he muttered sheepishly when I asked. I was amazed, given how much he’d yakked my ear off from the moment he first laid eyes on me, and I could do nothing but shake my head in bemusement when another car rolled up and he took shelter in Truck. We sat on the back porch of an evening, his feet forever in my lap as we read, him some hefty tome on the mastery of agricultural business and maximizing yields, me spellbound by the books I’d borrowed from Bud—I’d finished the first Xanth novel and was eager for the next but figured they’d be easy to find in Atlanta, the gay novels Bud offered not so much, and I was proven correct—enraptured by characters and situations unfailingly normal (whatever normal means) but with a shift in perspective that was less abnormal than jarring, in a good way. I didn’t start Bud’s book, wanting to wait and savor his writing when I was home and away from his influence, and when I explained this to him he said he completely understood and was a marvelous idea. “But I thought maybe after I read them I could, you know, maybe, um, email you and we could discuss it?” “Another marvelous idea! Here, let me write down my AOL while we’re thinking of it.” As far as the other titles he turned me onto, I vowed I wasn’t going to mention any but I still remember the first: “Gaywyck” by Vincent Virga, a “gay gothic” Bud swore contained so many classic literary and film references (“easter eggs”, these days) to the genre the author himself couldn’t pick all of them out. The potboiler plot concerned a shy young man hired in the 1890s to oversee the library at a secluded estate and falling in love with its rich and brooding master, with identical twins and mistaken identities and all sorts of traumatic incest thrown into the mix, and it was utterly enthralling, cliched tropes lovingly twisted into a new-but-familiar configurations. The novel wasn’t particularly steamy, the love scenes romantic as opposed to titillating, but several times I found myself sorely tested in awaiting my trysts with Jericho. His smut-fests changed too, becoming less of a monologue and more a filthy dialogue between horny boys, where he’d describe what he was doing and ask me to describe what I was doing, comparing techniques and fantasies, and afterward we’d talk in the dark, him calling me Mateo, me calling him Jericho. We discussed many things in these bedtime conversations, not all of them to do with sex or love, but instead hopes and dreams and the questions we all ask ourselves in the endless hours before dawn concerning mortality and ambition and what if there is no God after all? I’m not going to mention all our topics, they’re private, even intimate, but he postulated something one night that yet haunts me. “What if we do have souls and they do reincarnate, only there’s a finite number of them? What if during times of teeming overpopulation there aren’t enough to go ‘round, so evil people aren’t only evil they’re also soulless, and the balance isn’t shifted back until a catastrophe or series of catastrophes knock the numbers of us back down to a more manageable level, evil eating itself the way Sister Sarah says it always does?” See? Haunting. He’d go to his mumbling slumber and I’d lay curled up facing him thinking about what he’d said or didn’t say or I’d mull his contradictions and wish I had courage to ask if he were sincere or teasing when he said he couldn’t tell if I was getting darker but my skin sure glowed and made me prettier every day. Or I’d wonder why he was always touching me; Jericho was a tactile person in general, constantly kissing his mother or roughhousing with the twins, but his feet were forever in my lap, his grip either tight or loose on my shoulder, his fingers resting lightly on the small of my back as we trudged back to the barn after a hard day’s labor, and of course his sweaty, meaty rump pressing against mine when we did our after-lunch thing. Not that I minded, I just couldn’t decide if they were more than open and honest affection for a bosom companion, and though none of the others in our household seemed to notice I had a niggling certainty June wasn’t as oblivious as she appeared. Come Saturday night we both got spiffed up, and as I was drying myself off I glanced into the mirror and abruptly caught a glimpse of what Jericho had mentioned: I was a bit darker, the area covering my middle providing the necessary contrasting evidence, but besides that my skin glowed. Hell, I glowed, healthy and happy, from more than just working in the sun, and I marveled, wondering if I were seeing myself through Jericho’s eyes. We inhaled a quick dinner at Waffle House and went roller-skating at the rink in Athens and as we changed our footwear Jericho remarked, “You’re sure popular ‘round here, Mat my friend.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Over there.” He nodded to the concession stand, where the boy I’d glared at last Saturday sat alone, jerking his gaze away when we noticed him. “He couldn’t stop looking at you last week either. Few girls drooled too, but I didn’t figure you’d be interested in them.”

“You’re crazy, Jer,” I hooted, twirling my finger at my temple. “All the slutty attention was on you last week, not me.” Why would anyone be looking at me unless—stop it!

“I don’t think so. He’s drilling holes in your backside again, do you want me to give you some space, let y’all get acquainted? He is kinda cute, don’t you think?” Jericho’s voice too casual, his fingers fumbling the laces so he was forced to try again, and I realized he was serious. Crazy, but serious.

“Absolutely not,” I assured him, and I was sure I wasn’t imagining Jericho’s sigh of relief. Feeling a little reckless, I continued, “I don’t need another date for the evening, I’m happy with the one I got.”

Jericho grinned, his faded-blue eyes twinkling, and he made no reply except to hold out his hand and drag me onto the floor. We ended up coming here every Saturday night for the remainder of my visit, racing and showing off for each other, circling round and round during the couple’s skate, not holding hands but fingers occasionally brushing while the DJ spun some random romantic ballad for the first song but always chose for the second “Tuesday’s Gone”, and we’d spend too many quarters in the arcade, playing too much Q*Bert because neither of us were good at it and the competition thus fairer, then more Waffle House for another round of scattered smothered covered before heading back home to the farm to do our nighttime thing. This particular Saturday he incorporated another twist into our dialogue. “Have you ever been fucked, Mat my friend?”

“Eep! Er, um, no.”

“Ever thought about it?”

Oh, only twice a day and three times on Sunday. “Sometimes.”

A brief pause while I wondered where he was going. “Do you like to play with your asshole?”

I clamped down on another goddam squeak. “S-sometimes.”

“Are you playing with it right now?”

I wasn’t, but I took his question as a suggestion. “Y-yes, Jer.”

“Does it feel good? Do you tease your finger around your hole before sticking it inside, not far, just barely enough to stretch yourself?” And he was off. I came extra hard that night, and I think he did too, the way he actively moaned as he shot, and I had more interesting contradictions to mull over while he mumbled in his sleep.

The next morning we walked the fence, finding neither breach (to his relief) nor snake (to mine), then headed to church, where we were offered another logical and thought-provoking sermon (on the predictable result of not trusting God and therefore needing forty years to cross a small desert, a trip that should’ve taken only around eleven days) and another mouth-watering potluck fellowship lunch. Bud and Ron weren’t in attendance, and when we stopped by their shotgun house we found them yawning on the back porch swing, having just arisen after spending most of the night at a hospital “up the city”—I loved the phrase, by the way, and Chisaw County was the only place I ever heard it used with any regularity.

“Our sick friend from last week? He passed away this morning,” Bud replied to our concern, his eyes tired and puffy. “We knew it was coming and in a way it’s a relief as he’s not suffering anymore but it’s still sad, he was one of the first people we met when we came out. Jeff was beautiful too, all high cheekbones and legs clear up to his neck. Ron was lucky he’d already chained me down.”

“Not lucky,” Ron noted, “but smart. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way he kept eyeing you the first night at Yum-Yum Tree. Mister ‘What’s up, doc?’ my Aunt Fanny.”

“I still think you went a little far spilling those drinks on him.”

“It was an accident, how many times do I have to tell you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eager to move on, Ron said, “They’re burying him on Tuesday,” (meaning their friend had likely been white; my mother’s side tended to put folks in the ground quick, my dad’s would be perfectly horrified at the notion of interment before the rest of our far-flung clan could arrive from Antarctica or wherever, one of those tiny cultural differences no one ever thinks to remark) “not that we’re invited to the service. His family only let us in the hospital when Jeff raised a stink and the last breath hadn’t left his mouth before his damn mother told us in no uncertain terms she’d be damn happy to see our damn backs as we walked out the damn door.”

“Bitch,” was Bud’s succinct response. “In a way it’s a good thing his partner Paul passed on several months ago, Jeff’s mother wouldn’t even have let him come to the funeral.” Too fatigued and consumed with grief to work up a satisfying irritated rant, Bud changed the subject. They’d not yet had the chance to visit Clarice and inquire on her knowledge of the albino artist but planned to speak with her this week, possibly bribing the chicken lady with lunch at the diner. Bud and I discussed the books he’d loaned me, a small smile playing on his lips as I gushed about how much I’d enjoyed “Gaywyck”, and Ron and Jericho did some more males-on-a-project pacing in the yard, still trying to narrow down the location of the original outhouse, but we left early, only staying an hour or so, as we could tell how exhausted they were. “Sorry we’re such lousy company today, boys,” Bud said as we stood to take our leave, “we’ll be better next time y’all visit, I promise.” Jericho let me drive, giving me my head, and I worked up enough nerve to putter through downtown and he grinned in approval. He directed me a fair ways out into the countryside and eventually up a forested and lonesome hill with a treeless plateau of humming power cables and gigantic metal support towers and a round pit with plenty of ash, some of it recent; Jericho said the pit was used for bonfires when the local Satanists gathered for their monthly full moon sabbats, and I didn’t think he was joking. Since we had plenty of time we lingered over our rump-to-rump thing, our dialogue meandering from technique to practice, with a disconcerting percentage of the conversation based around things I liked to do or would like to have done to my asshole. It was fun.

My third week at the farm in Jericho’s constant company was much the same, with a couple of minor differences. The first came on Tuesday when we discovered a mess in the carrot patch, some of the root tubers eaten, more torn from or trampled into the ground. “Dang deer,” Jericho fumed. He grabbed the shotgun while I grabbed the bag of tools and we found the breach to be barely out of sight of the house, an entire section of fencing between two posts laying on the ground. “We just walked this two days ago! Did you see any sagging wire or loose twists on Sunday, Mat? Because I sure as heck didn’t!” We spent a good portion of the day on repairs (no ugly boogers dared show their flickering tongues and dripping fangs, perhaps because they could hear Jericho cursing—after his fashion—in their hidey-holes and also perhaps because they sensed he’d brought along a shotgun he’d be thrilled to use—who says mindless predators don’t have common sense?) and the rest tidying up what the dang deer had destroyed. Jericho’s state of high piss-off lasted all afternoon so I stayed quiet and out of his way but after dinner when he swung his feet into my lap he seemed to relax some and the rest of evening was peaceful, or as peaceful as possible with Janey and Juanita once again irritated with each other for some reason no one else cared enough to decipher. “PMS,” June confided. I hadn’t asked. “Girls are getting their first periods younger and younger these days. Probably due to all the hormones in processed milk. I’m so glad we have Cow or they might’ve started last year. What do you think, Mateo?” I had no opinion.

The second minor difference came on Thursday, when we visited the diner for our weekly brownie. Jill was working but our usual server was not, and an older waitress I’d never seen before (nor had Jericho, it seemed) informed us Rodi had been forced to take the day off, her son having fallen out of his wheelchair and broken his wrist. “Not for the first time and probably not for the last,” Jericho said sadly. “Brittle bone disease is rough.” As I already knew, though I didn’t comment. “But still, Quincy is the happiest little kid I think I’ve ever seen, and did I tell you how smart he is?” He had. I caught Jill watching us a few times, the same expression of confused irritation on her face as before, and though she didn’t say anything to him she came up to me while Jericho was in the restroom.

“You’re Jer’s cousin, right?”

I bristled at hearing my nickname for him on her lips but pulled it back. “Sure am.”

“Huh.” Regarding me with a speculation I did not like. No, I did not like it at all. “I didn’t know Jer had biracial people in his family.” Her tone considering, and after a brief moment of being taken aback by her rudeness I concluded she wasn’t insulting me so much as probing for weakness.

“Lots of us around,” I said neutrally, although there weren’t, at least compared to these days. “I imagine most families have a mixed member, even if they or their friends don’t know it.” Stressing the second F-word enough to let her know which I considered her to be to ‘Jer’.

“Huh,” she said again, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. She changed tactics, seeming to soften some. “Jer sure talks a lot, doesn’t he? Natter natter natter all the livelong day.”

“Sometimes,” I admitted, irritated by her description but unable to deny its truth.

Jill pounced. “That’s just it. Jer—” I was certain she was using the nickname on purpose “—doesn’t talk much, never really has. Most of our classmates considered him kinda snobby, he never spoke to anybody but Darren and eventually me but I don’t think he’s ever even talked to us so much as he does to you.” The jealousy was evident.

I couldn’t resist savoring. “Huh,” I mocked, “he hasn’t shut up to me since the moment we met, but that’s cool because his conversation is always interesting.” Jill sneered but before she could respond our subject reappeared from the restroom hall and she flounced into the back kitchen. I watched her go, smug in the glow I’d won or at least tied my first catfight but my satisfaction was tempered with the knowledge Jill would end up winning the war. She was possessive of Jericho, no matter how she ignored him when he was around, and she had a weapon I didn’t: time. I’d be gone in the fall, she’d be back here picking up the pieces with him; he’d not spoken much of her, at least to me, but I knew she was still there in the back of his mind, the endgame of his passage to adulthood and a farm family of his own. I don’t think she knew exactly how close Jericho and I were but I think she suspected; I also think she still does. “What were you and Jill discussing so intently?” Jericho asked, his tone the too-casual one I’d come to recognize as his worried voice.

“Not much,” I replied. “She just wanted to meet the cousin she’d heard so much about.” I was confident he’d step in to defend me and I was not going to put him in such an unpleasant position.

Although dubious, he let it go. My funk lasted the next couple of days, and Jericho well aware. He was more affectionate, more touchy-feely than normal (whatever normal means) to the point it almost—I say almost drove me up the wall, and not in a good way. I gradually relaxed, however, and finally on Saturday night at the roller-rink the last of my teenage can’t-see-the-water-for-the-well blues slipped away. The prowling girls and guy left us alone, at last convinced we had no room or interest for anyone else, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d figured out why. We paid no attention to them anyway, our laughing gazes fixed on each other as we skated round and round the floor, not holding hands but brushing fingers occasionally as the DJ spun the one about how Tuesday was gone with the wind, train roll on.

During our rounds the next morning while Jericho repaired yet another minor breach in the fence I shot my first ugly booger, blowing its head clean off with my first blast, and it was such a long, ropy fucker Jericho remarked we might’ve had rattlesnake for dinner if my second blast hadn’t obliterated the body. “I’m good,” I replied, slightly queasy at the prospect, and Jericho grinned, commenting the meat was delicious. “Tastes like chicken.” (I found out many—many—years later rattlesnake did have a rather chicken-y consistency and flavor, but just like poultry I had a horror of the live creature.) “I’m good,” I repeated, trying to calm my racing heartbeat and wriggling my little finger in my ringing ear, and Jericho laughed. Bud and Ron were in attendance at church (Sister Sarah’s subject: Job and the infamous line “Where were you when I made the world?” I’d heard the story before, the pastor’s simple, logical sermon clarified it.) and at fellowship Bud extracted our promise we’d visit. “We pumped Clarice and guess what? She did know more about our poor albino artist!” After stuffing our faces we hurried over, eager for the ‘at least sixty or maybe even seventy’ year-old gossip. We came around the corner of the shotgun shack to find our friends once again on the back porch swing, Bud balancing an ancient portable radio/eight-track player on one leg and his beloved thesaurus on the other. Ron’s elbows were on his knees, fingers turning the black and yellow tape measure he held in both hands. At our greeting he called, “Hey boys, come up and grab some wood!” and winced in exaggerated pain when Bud smacked his arm for the atrocious joke. “Do y’all want some—wait, wait, it’s starting! Shush, everybody!”

“Welcome to the Best of Paul Harvey, gooood day!” the radio blared, Bud and Ron and even Jericho mimicking along with the last two words. The next voice I heard was warm, homey, slightly stern but compassionate, the voice of a grandfather imparting either a life lesson or an amusing anecdote about taking a left instead of right and finding himself in the midst of a lost herd of sheep, a story which would still turn out to be a life lesson in disguise. His topic for the day was a struggling actress from the 1930s, an ambitious young lady named Diane Belmont who was not well-known to the public at large but famous in New York and later Hollywood as a “trooper” committed to doing almost anything for almost any job. I don’t recall most of her exploits as related by Paul Harvey but two do stick in my mind, one about how she’d been hospitalized three times—three—for injuries sustained in shooting scenes involving big cats and the other a near-fatal drowning in a poorly-mixed box of fake quicksand. I bit hook-line-and-sinker into the account, sure ‘Diane Belmont’ would prove to be someone known under a more famous name but before the big reveal an announcer broke in for a “word from our sponsors”.

“Dinah Shore,” Ron speculated, not a more famous name I was aware of.

“You’re crazy!” Bud scoffed. “Dinah Shore isn’t old enough to have worked in the thirties. I don’t think,” he added as an afterthought.

“I’m telling you, it’s Dinah Shore!” Ron insisted. “I’ve heard this one!”

“I’ve not but I’m reasonably sure I’ve read Lucille Ball used the name Diane Belmont early in her career.”

“Aargh!” Ron sat up in the swing. “When we were teenagers they’d play the whole episode at once, these days they’ve sliced everything to ribbons, even shortened classic cartoons to make room for more toy and cereal commercials! Cutting offensive stereotypes my Aunt Fanny.”

“Man oh man,” Bud mused, “in my house growing up when Paul Harvey was talking no one else did—”

“Mine too,” Ron agreed.

“—under penalty of death by silent suffocation because everyone was interested in—oh wait, he’s talking again!”

We listened breathlessly as the warm, homey, grandfather-like voice advised us the plucky young “trooper” actress was indeed better known as . . . Lucille Ball. “And now you know the rest . . . of the story.” My fellow listeners quoted along with the last line with an unnerving degree of accuracy, and Ron groaned and tossed the tape measure to a triumphant Bud.

“You were wagering your thesaurus?” I asked, incredulous as Bud switched off the radio and lay it gently on the porch floor.

“He’d still let me use it, if I asked nice enough. Just as I’ll be munificent enough to let him use his treasure . . . if he asks nice enough.” Ron growled, a prolonged roll without the least threat but a whole lotta heat. “Now, would you boys like some sweet tea? Since my lovely life partner seems to have forgotten the manners I’ve endeavored so diligently to smack into his thick blond skull.”

“Hey, I offered—” Ron objected, but Bud interrupted him with a tart—

“Tut! Just know we’ll be discussing this later with our friend mister wooden backscratcher.”

“Oh,” Ron purred, stretching his arms across the back of the swing as Bud arose, “in that case I’ve been a terribly naughty and ill-mannered boy and I refuse to apologize.”

“That might’ve been a little TMI,” Jericho commented with his usual devastating grin.

“Maybe,” Ron agreed, scratching one of his crooked pinky piggies (inspiring more internal squirming on my part), “but don’t it sound like fun?” He cocked a brow at Jericho.

“Maybe,” my cousin echoed, his grin not dimming one single bit, and I could’ve sworn his laughing faded-blue eyes darted over to me for a split second to gauge my response.

Oh Jericho, I’m available and willing for whatever kind of games you want to play, up to and including a paddling with a wooden backscratcher. I didn’t speak the words aloud because he already knew. And our dialogue later sure ‘nuff did contain references to spanking my ass, as you shall see. It was (or would be) fun.

“Anyway,” Bud said, stepping back outside with two glasses of mint-garnished sweet tea, “we bribed, er, treated Clarice with lunch at the diner, carrying along the self-portrait and hoping she wouldn’t be shocked. Thank God we took her out in public, she wore her teeth and was stunningly intelligible, and thank God she wasn’t shocked at all but instead positively tickled at the racy sketch.” (Ah, our Bud does have a gift for hyperbole and rhetoric, doesn’t he?) He passed out the tea and again settled in beside Ron, curling up his legs so his bottom knee pressed against his partner’s outer thigh. “Clarice was only a wee lass of less than ten years during our first period of interest, which would have been the very early thirties in the darkest depths of the Great Depression, and while she has no clue who the curly-haired boy might be she remembers the white-trash family in question vividly, with less gossip and more eyewitness accounts, more trustworthy than the old-timers we’ve been schmoozing up for the last few years.”

“Any names?” I asked eagerly.

Bud shook his head, to my disappointment. “No. She thought the surname was a dirt-common one like Smith or Jones or Roberts, too common, in fact, to be recalled, but it for sure wasn’t Mundy or Mundys, as we pointed out the caption and asked. The Drunk and The Whore were similarly nicknamed in the black community, albeit with the prefix ‘White’ added to the nicknames, because The White Drunk bought their bootleg squeezin’s and The White Whore ‘entertained’ them if they came to her back porch on a slow night. Except Mondays,” Bud said suddenly and thoughtfully. “She was off on Mondays for some reason, one of the old-timers said so. Hmm. That makes sense.” He paused for a moment, ruminating, then shook it off. Returning and warming to his tale it as if he were typing the story into his WordPerfect software (as I was positive he eventually would—and I was right, but that’s neither here nor there), he continued, “Our artistic hero was known as The White Whiteboy, not in disparagement but more in sympathy, due both to his unfortunate family and to his pigmentation. The black community was well-aware of the albinism running in many of their bloodlines and knew it was natural, not a curse for once in their superstitious lives.” (And before you gasp and clutch your pearls in dismay at either Bud or me let us humbly remind you many poor whites were equally if not more superstitious back then—and both ethnic groups and more including Latino, Asian, whomever are just as in thrall today.) “There was a general consensus The White Whiteboy was in just as demeaning and hardscrabble a situation as their own. Now, here’s one and possibly two myths shattered by Clarice’s eyewitness account,” he paused, Paul Harvey-like, “because her born-into-slavery great-grandmother sold The White Whore and later The White Whiteboy medicinal herbs and salves for consumption and not syphilis, likely palliative rather than curative, although Clarice with her faith in her wise-woman great-grandmother insists the concoctions kept the old girl a-whorin’ a good two years longer than anyone believed possible. The White Whore was not a victim of a sexually transmitted disease, at least not a fatal one, but old-fashioned bloody tuberculosis.”

“And the other myth?” I asked eagerly when Bud paused for a sip of beer.

He shot me a rebuking glare for daring interrupt his pregnant pause but then his lips turned into a mischievous smirk and he glanced over at his partner. “Would you boys like a refill on your tea? No, I see you’ve barely touched yours. Drink up, there’s plenty!” Turning to Ron, “What about you, honeybunch? Are you ready for another beer?”

“Y’know,” Ron said slowly, “I believe I am, puddin’ pop. I could use a ham, salami and cheese sandwich too, with the fresh-baked loaf not even sliced yet, if you’ve a mind.” He “uhm-uhm”-ed and rubbed his belly. “Seventeen helpings of Sister Sarah’s delicious mac-and-cheese salad didn’t quite hit the spot.”

“Of course, sugar-britches.” He patted Ron’s knee. “I’ll be—”

Jericho and I both groaned in agonized impatience and Bud winked before dropping the tease. He resumed storyteller mode, although he did first comment to his partner, “And Ron? Darling? Sweetheart? Light of my life?” Ron uh-oh’d. “Drop the fucking ‘puddin’ pop’, a’ight?” The expression on Bud’s face would be bloodcurdling to any bonded partner and appeared staggeringly effective to his own, as Ron pouted and nodded his head sadly. Bud shot him one more severe look and returned to relishing his tale. “No, the second shattered myth, supposedly,” he emphasized, “was the rumor about The White Whore poisoning The White Drunk. Clarice said her great-grandmother took a liking, if rather mercenary, to the poor suffering soul. The White Whore was a perfectly lovely woman and a victim of circumstance like everyone else they knew and only sold herself to provide for her much-loved child and because she was forced to do so by her rattlesnake-ass father The White Drunk. Although if you ask me, if she herself were forced into prostitution what would stop the old fuck from pimping her child out, and if she loved the boy as much as Clarice’s great-grandmother claimed . . . Hmm. Somebody loved the dirt-poor boy enough to buy him sketchbooks and eyeglasses in the darkest days of The Great Depression, didn’t they?” Bud again paused to ruminate, and I swear I heard the hamster wheel spinning in his brain. He’d undoubtedly composed his story (using the thesaurus he’d wagered against Ron’s tape measure) before we arrived to entertain Jericho and me, now the creative possibilities enticed. “Whether there was murder most foul or not, the story skips a few years, some two to five, jibing with the white old-timers’ accounts, and the tale jibes in other ways too, Clarice’s eyewitness account confirming two myths.”

Bud paused again for yet another sip of beer and Jericho and I glanced at each other, half-annoyed and half-amused at Bud’s antics, though I was of the opinion that after both fetching bat-blind Clarice from and returning her to the appalling stench of the chicken farm Bud was entitled to some grandstanding. “Clarice was a young teen by this time, around the same age as our niece and the twins, maybe a little older. The first confirmed rumor is that our artist surely did set fire to this house the day after his mother was interred, and Ron and I are lucky now it didn’t burn to the ground then. The second confirmed rumor was that during the ensuing chaos and rush to rouse the volunteer fire department before the surrounding woods caught flame too—this was a more sparsely populated street back then, and stayed the same until not long before Ron and I moved back—though in my admittedly inexpert opinion if the house were too saturated to burn you’d think the woods would be as well, but concern about housefires back then was quite rightly more intense given the government-regulated buildings of today . . . where was I?”

“Panic and chaos,” Ron prompted in a bored voice, well-conditioned to his partner’s sporadically rambling thought processes. (Bud told me later he had plotted in his head an entire novel inspired by both this ancient gossip and Jericho’s concluding hypothesis by the time we finished that Sunday afternoon in 1992, although he didn’t sit down to type the tale until many years later. He didn’t get very far, spinning only a chapter, as he was stymied how to get where he wanted to go without descending into cliché and he quite liked the bittersweet ambiguity of the ending. He sold the sketch as a story for an obscene amount of money to a prestigious literary e-zine, where it generated a flurry of interest and pleas for more, but so far no dice. Bud retains the original full-length novel idea—though in my own admittedly inexpert opinion it might be better broken down into a series of interconnected stories—but he’s not yet written any more, mostly because he’s afraid he’ll be unable to do the characters justice, as they came out more finely-drawn and sympathetic than he’d had any right to expect or hope for and he didn’t want to spoil them with an inferior sequel. He’ll get there, he assures me, in time, when he figures out how to enhance and not destroy their myth. Novelists, huh? Bleh. But again, that’s neither here nor there.)

“Hmm? Oh, right, panic and chaos. In the brouhaha The White Whiteboy slipped away out of town. We know this because Clarice saw him leave. She didn’t find out about the fire until later because she’d been in—Oneonta, I think she said?”

“Oneonta,” Ron confirmed in the same bored voice.

“Yes, Oneonta,” Bud finished, not acknowledging his partner, “visiting relatives and she was in Athens stepping down off the colored car at the same moment The White Whiteboy was stepping up onto the lowest-class whites-only car. He recognized her and said something she specifically recalls, as the word ‘fuck’ wasn’t heard much in Chisaw County in those days and she asked her mother what it meant only to have her mouth washed out with soap for the trouble.”

“No, they couldn’t say ‘fuck’, they were nice enough to use phrases like ‘The Pink Bastard’ or ‘The Whore’s Git’,” Ron mused.

“Or ‘coon’ or ‘mulatto’,” I threw in; I’d not known what the latter meant until I asked Dad and wished I hadn’t. Ugly slur.

“Or ‘queerbait’ or ‘faggot’,” Jericho added, and I wondered if he’d ever been called those ugly slurs.

Bud seemed to agree with our sarcastic commentary, although he waited for me to prompt, “Well? What did our intrepid artist hero say?” before he resumed, mouth twitching at my gentle mockery—your gay sarcasm is getting there, young homo, he seemed to be implying. “He said, ‘The old fuck lied, they’ll stop for any damn body’s got the fare, won’t they?’ Clarice figured ‘the old fuck’ referred to The White Drunk and she understood the second portion of the sentence to be a reference to trains but she wasn’t quite sure how they related. So she just nodded dumbly and he waved goodbye and vanished into the whites-only car, never to be heard from again.” Bud paused, not for effect this time but in thought, and in addition to hearing the hamster wheel I swear I saw steam curling from his ears. “Wonder where he was going?”

We sat silent a moment, until an answer came from one I considered a most unlikely source, although I truly should have guessed better—I knew more than most the imagination his sunny aw-shucks persona concealed.

“He was going after the curly-haired boy,” Jericho said. “I know they were in love, you can quibble all you want about whether it was maybe only the intrepid artist hero suffering the unrequited kind or not, I’m of the notion the curly-haired boy loved him right back.” Jericho’s expression resolute, almost daring us to argue with him.

We didn’t. “I’m of the same opinion,” said Bud, and Ron and I hurried to agree.

“Class distinctions mattered more then than they do now, right?” Jericho asked, and Bud nodded. “The artist’s family was poor white trash, what if the curly-haired boy’s wasn’t? Only a step or two below their rung would be unthinkable, and adding homosexuality into the mix? Recipe for disaster.”

“Keep going,” Bud encouraged, his eyes shining.

“But still, despite everything, despite outside forces they had no control over, they loved each other in secret. Then the curly-haired boy goes away, leaves town, for college or Hollywood or just up the city, while the artist stays behind to nurse his dying mother.” Jericho’s tone growing ever more impassioned, his face even starting to shade red as Bud’s when irritated. “Then when she finally does die he sets fire to the old homestead and takes the train, he’s scraped up enough money for the fare. He may not know exactly where the now curly-haired young man might be but he has enough of a clue to know where to start looking. And you know what? I think he finds his lover, tracks him down and they live happily ever after as a professional sketch artist and lawyer or actor or farmer or whatever and they’re still living happily ever after today somewhere they can sit in the moonlight at night while an endless train rolls by. That’s what I think!” Jericho lifted his chin, again almost daring us to disagree.

We all blinked at him a moment, taken a bit aback by his fervor, and I remarked the expression in Bud’s eyes as especially intense, although I wouldn’t fully plumb the depths of his creative processes until over two decades later, when he and I were sitting in a hospital waiting room unsure whether Ron would survive his (ultimately mild, thank God) heart attack and I was trying my utmost to distract my distraught auntie. Now, in the afternoon sunshine, his green eyes sparkled as he observed, “Very romantic, Jericho! I’m impressed!” Ron toasted my cousin with his beer, murmuring, “Nice!” Jericho wasn’t looking at them though, he was looking at me, and the intensity in his own faded-blue eyes whispered things I’d be deciphering for not only many mulling-while-he-mumbled nights to come but for many years as well. I understood enough at the moment to assure him, “If that’s not the way it happened, Jer, it’s the way it should have.”

I drove when we left, again wandering the county not because he explicitly gave me my head but because he was far too quiet and introspective to notice or care my direction and I was even quieter because I sensed he was trying to work something out, something profound enough to impact our relationship and I wanted him to reach his conclusions by himself, no pressure from me either way; the practice had served me well thus far, had it not? So I clicked on the tinny radio, listened to the staticky classic rock station (yes, I’m almost sure now the classification was in already in use) from up the city that hadn’t yet made the switch to FM, and one of the songs they played was “Tuesday’s Gone”—Southern folks are always down for some Lynyrd Skynyrd. After a good hour Jericho reached his decision and although he didn’t mention what decision he’d reached it must’ve been the one I was hoping for because he grinned and clicked off the radio and said, “Dang, Mat my friend, we’re all the way up past Tanners Hill!” Jericho being Jericho, he worried about Truck’s motor oil level and bade me pull over at the next convenience store, where he added a full quart and filled the gas tank while I pissed behind the dumpster out back, the restroom so yucky I slammed the door immediately lest I be dragged in and dissolved. When I returned Jericho was inside so I leaned against Truck and waited. The sun was westering and low, throwing greater and deeper shades of dusk across the dimming partly-cloudy sky. Jericho came back out with two individual sweet teas—Southern folks are always down for some sweet tea as well, although this mass-produced crap ranked nowhere near Ron’s home-boiled, mint-garnished nectar in satisfaction. Thirsty, I drank it anyhow. “Pay phone wasn’t working but I called Mom from the store’s, told her we’d be out a little later tonight, not to worry. Okay with you? Cool, cool.” Jericho took the wheel and I discovered we weren’t as far from home as I’d figured as he only drove about ten minutes before turning up the winding dirt-and-gravel lane meandering to the electric plateau. It wasn’t dark yet but it was getting there and I asked Jericho if he’d been joking last week about the bonfire pit. “I wasn’t joking about the Satanists but they’re harmless if you leave them alone. Besides, the moon won’t be up for awhile yet and it’s not full tonight anyhow, not even close.” He shut off the engine and we listened to the power hum around us for a minute, me feeling the vibrations in my anticipating dick, before he turned to me and said in all seriousness, “Mat my friend, can I dry-hump you?”

“Eep!”

“We don’t have to take our boxers or even pants down,” he hurried on to vow, for once (quite wrongly) not reading my goddam squeak as an assent, “but I think it’d be fun and something I’d like to do with you.” His face was shadowy in the cab so I couldn’t tell but if his faded-blue eyes weren’t fiery with the intensity of earlier I’d be amazed. “Does this sound like something you’d like to do?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely!” I swore when I clamped down yet another goddam squeak and could speak again. He relaxed and although his face was still shadowy his grin lit it up. Grabbing some gumption from somewhere I added, “And I don’t mind if we take our pants down either. I don’t know about you but I don’t relish the idea of sitting in cold spunk all the way home and walking in front of your mother and the twins on the way to the bedroom.”

He protested, “We can go in through the laundry room,” (an egress I forgot to mention, where the old coal chute had been converted into a short, cramped stairway and low-angled hatch—you know the kind I mean), but his delivery was uncertain. Pressing my advantage, I opened the truck door, the cab-light startling the shades off his face for three seconds before I snicked him back into dimness. The sun was almost completely gone now, the stars not yet a-twinkle in the sky and the lightning bugs few, and I felt my way along the siderail to the vehicle’s rear, where I lowered the bed-gate with a thunk hard enough to shake Truck on its tires. The driver’s side door didn’t open and I prayed I hadn’t just pushed my luck too far but I was committed now so I unbuttoned and unzipped and, figuring I might as well go all out, kicked my shoes and pants and boxers clean off, leaving me clad in only socks and shirt and shadows. Knowing he wanted to dry-hump and not swordfight I bent over the dropped bed-gate with a thunk hard enough to shake Truck too, clenching my stockinged toes into the grass, feeling the warm metal against my forehead and palms and shoulders and upper thighs and achingly, achingly hard dick and waited. Praying.

Nothing for a long, very long, ridiculously long moment. So quiet, only the thrum of electricity and the faraway scree-er-scree of cicadas in the trees on the hillside. I shifted the warmth to my cheekbone, looked up over the siderails at the night sky surely the same level as the plateau but bisected by the thick power cables. I thought I saw one of the first stars twinkle into existence but it flickered away when the driver’s side door opened and the cab light blinked on and Jericho’s weight slid out, rocking the vehicle. The cab light blinked off, the first star twinkled and flickered away again when the cab light blinked back on. A loud click I felt strum through Truck’s body and my own, then tinny music swelled and dropped again to a softer level. The cab light blinked off and the first star tentatively twinkled and when the driver’s side door gently snicked shut twinkled some more. Jericho’s unhurried footfalls (anticipatory, not reluctant) stalked me down the driver’s side of Truck, step . . . step . . . step. I shivered, shivered again when a sudden breeze blew up, itching the wisps of hair on my ass-cheeks. The tinny music tinkled through the rolled-down windows and across the plateau, singing on the wind. It wasn’t Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Tuesday’s Gone” was already gone tonight too, the train rolled on, but a song I’m confident I’d heard my mother sing before. I know it wasn’t a commercial jingle because a guitar wept and it was so beautiful I wanted to weep too.

Abruptly, Jericho was behind me, as solid and immovable as if he’d always been. I felt him, not close enough yet to touch but close, so close. One tinny song slowly dropped to nothing and in the segue of another song slowly thickening I heard him breathing. Not talking, not chattering, just breathing. I reached around behind me to spread my cheeks, inviting him in, hoping he wasn’t offended by my balls, and the first star was joined by a second and then a third, all of them twinkling merrily to assist Jericho locate the place I needed him to be, and the tinny music and electric wires offered hints in a language everyone in the world must surely understand as they speak to the priorities we all share. Another sudden breeze blew up, but my shiver was caused not by the chilly tickle of hair on my ass-cheeks but because though he hadn’t moved he was closer than we’d ever been before. The rattle of a belt buckle loosening. The dull snap of a button unsnared. A zipper lowered. The slide of denim slipping down thighs, the softer slide of cotton slipping down just behind. I’d never seen Jericho’s dick and knew I wouldn’t see it tonight despite the few lightning bugs and stars slowly, oh so slowly twinkling to life in the sky but I felt it, felt the heat and stiffness quivering just behind me. Close, so close.

His fingers gripped my wrists, removed my hands from myself, placed them firmly to my sides, leaning over me so his stiff and quivering heat brushed against my sweaty skin for a single sticky heartbeat. The radio changed songs again, something with a clean and ringing hi-hat beat I felt in my ass-cheek. No, that was a very light sting, and another on the other ass-cheek made me jump again. I groaned and he laughed at me, not mocking but joyful. “Have you been a naughty boy too, Mat?” We weren’t being kinky, he was playing; he was also touching me somewhere new with his hands before using any other body parts.

“Y-yeah, Jer, I’ve been very naughty, s-so ill-mannered.”

Another sting made me groan, then sudden pressure as he grabbed hold, hard, and my groan intensified. “Do you like to have your ass squeezed like this, Mat?”

“Y-yes, Jer!” I gasped as he squeezed harder, then he loosened and spread my cheeks as I’d been doing with my own hands before he took charge of me. I bit my lip, more stars twinkled into being in the sky and a couple more lightning bugs flickered, and he finally stepped closer. I felt the brush of his bunched jeans on my upper thighs first and then, so smoothly I wondered why it had never been there before, his hot, throbbing length settled into my crack. I sighed. He moaned. He squeezed my ass-cheeks, tightening them around himself. He moaned again. I switched the metal warmth of the truck-bed to my other cheekbone, noticing a few more stars and even a few more lightning bugs had appeared there as well, and there were no power cables to bisect the view. He hunched against me, sliding up and down, far enough I felt his glans catch for a moment on my hole before popping free. He was thick, there’s no doubt, and I knew he was uncircumcised but I couldn’t judge his length, having never had another there to compare him to.

“When I have somebody bent over like this, just ready for me to fuck them, sometimes it’s all I can do not to cum before I even stick my big dick in. Do you like to be bent over, somebody rubbing his dick against your hole, ready to push inside?” His filth as powerful as the cables, his tone on par with the thrumming electricity, his words like the brightest fireflies in the dark, lighting and dimming so your eyes never adjust but can only dazzle.

“I . . . I like . . . when somebody . . .” We both knew my “somebody” was him and his me, but he wasn’t ready to hear or say it. “. . . somebody holds me down and fucks me hard, Jer, very hard!” I’d never had a fantasy so detailed in my life, even with Jericho, but the words spilled out anyway and I knew they were true.

“Do you, Mat? Do you?” His hands released my ass-cheeks and slid up my torso, pushing past my bunched shirt and locking onto my shoulders. His fingers had gripped me there many times, on either side, but never both at once, and never with this strength. “I like to hold somebody down and fuck them silly, grinding in deep.” His hold pulling my hips into his crotch, Truck shaking with his effort, the denim of his jeans rubbing my upper thighs into burns I’d feel the next day, his pressure indirectly stimulating the promised sweet spot I’d heard so much about (I was inexperienced, not naïve), and I wanted him to shove his big, thick, hot throbbing cock into me, using spit or going dry, I didn’t care. My own cock thumped against the bed-gate, demanding attention. As if he’d heard the cry Jericho tightened his grip on my shoulders and pulled me up so my back and his front touched all the way down, our sweat merging, his panting filthy breath on the nape of my neck. I instantly reached for my dick and noticed the sky was full of twinkling stars and the plateau was teeming with lightning bugs, I just hadn’t seen them from the confines of the truck-bed but I saw them all so clearly now, they were bright and shining and twinkling, and though I saw bats swooping here and there I didn’t worry, I knew from Biology 2 fireflies were toxic no matter how they enticed and the stars were safely away, further than the cicadas. Jericho wrapped his arms around my chest and whispered in my ear about his somebody and mine, his smut moist and warm and sending shivers through every part of me, shivers all meeting in my craving hole and the indirect pressure of his cock on a place inside me I needed to get to know better spinning like a HotWheels engine house spitting the toy cars out for another frantic lap. The tinny music swelled into something grand and symphonic and the distant cicadas heard and scree-er-scree’d louder in protest before admitting defeat and softening to complain amongst themselves. Jericho’s obscene sentences shortened into obscenities, his breath in my ear degraded to sporadic and harsh. “Gettin’ close, Mat my friend,” he warned, but “I, I am too, Jer,” and the stars twinkled and a guitar wept and the power lines thrummed and thrummed and thrummed and we came, me a split second behind, for every time he squirted on my lower back I spewed another line across the bed-gate. He held me tight an eternity longer before stepping backwards, and I closed my eyes to mourn the loss of him. I heard his boxers and jeans slide up, I heard his zipper rise and the rattle of his belt buckle, I heard his breath settling. When I didn’t hear these things anymore I opened my eyes and discovered there weren’t as many stars and fireflies as I’d thought, and the power cables and a tinny guitar thrummed and wept in sympathy.

“Wait right here,” Jericho said, and I watched his shadow move up the passenger side of Truck. The door snicked open and the cab light blinked on and I saw his face was red and sweaty but I couldn’t decipher his expression. When he leaned inside and thumbed the glove-box button I sneaked a hand to my lower back and swiped up a line of his cum, sampled it as he rummaged. I’d wondered if it would taste like elderberry wine; it didn’t, it was salty and dry, much like my own (yes, I’d tasted myself too, several times) but I didn’t mind; it was Jericho’s. By the time the cab light blinked off and the door snicked closed I’d finished savoring and had both palms on the bed-gate again. “Don’t panic,” he said as he gently wiped himself off my lower back. “I always carry my towel with me for emergencies.”

“Hitchhiker’s Guide?” I asked, mildly amazed; I’d never seen him read fiction, read anything not involved in farming.

“Bud’s idea. Said with my liking for British humor I’d enjoy it.” Sounds like Bud, I thought. “He was right, I liked all four of them, Darren thought it was stupid and didn’t read past the first chapter.” Jericho seemed uncertain, as if he thought I might’ve found it stupid too, and he paused in cleaning up his mess.

“I loved them,” I hurried to assure him. “The fifth one in the trilogy just came out. I haven’t read it yet though.”

“Eh,” he said, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be reading it at all unless Bud forced it on him . . . which sounded like Bud too. As if realizing he’d been stroking my skin with the cloth far too long he jerked away and swiped at my mess on the bed-gate. “But naw, this ain’t nothing but an oil rag—a clean oil rag,” he emphasized at my start. “We keep ‘em in all the vehicles, just in case.” While I dressed he walked over and tossed the cloth into the pit. “Might as well give the Satanists some essential fluids for their bonfire.”

“Jericho!” I yipped, scandalized, and he laughed. When he went to crank Truck nothing happened and he slapped the steering wheel, not irritated just inconvenienced. “Dang it. Figures.” He made a return trip to the glove-box and pulled out a flashlight (“We keep these in all the vehicles too. Just in case.”) for me to hold while he jiggled the starter wire since Juanita wasn’t handy. Truck roared to life and we meandered down the hillside, leaving the stars and the lightning bugs and thrumming power lines behind, and as we descended the cicadas in the trees scree-er-scree’d through the open windows, at last drowning out the radio, and they sounded happy too.

Although it wasn’t terribly late, half-past-nine or so, the twins were gone to bed by the time we arrived home but June was still awake, sitting in the darkened den watching an old black-and-white movie. She greeted us but didn’t ask where we’d been, just took her eyes off the screen long enough to hug us goodnight. Once in our bedroom I asked Jericho if she’d waited up for us and he said nah, anytime she ran across Casablanca on tv she’d always watch until the end, no matter where in the story or how late. (I do too now, the first time I saw it was the start of a beautiful friendship). After we rock/paper/scissored for the bathroom, we lay in the shadows for quite awhile before he asked, “Wanna go our usual Sunday third round?” He didn’t sound enthused.

“Nah, I’m spent,” I said, wondering if he’d get the oblique pun, and he did, judging by his faint snort. “I couldn’t get it up again if I tried.”

“Give you fifteen minutes?”

“Make it twenty.” We laughed and fell back into silence. It wasn’t a go-to-sleep silence, more a gathering-of-thoughts kind, because I sensed while we were skipping our usual almost-sex thing (can I still call it that? I wondered in the darkness. Seemed like real sex to me!) he still wanted to have our usual bedtime conversation, and at last he initiated with my full first name.

“Mateo?”

“Yeah, Jericho?”

“Thank you.”

You’ve heard or seen the word ‘nonplussed’? As Bud says, the perfect word for which no synonym would do. “For what?”

“For . . . for letting me dry-hump you.” Now his ardor had cooled Jericho had dropped back into his usual shyness with sexual references; I could almost hear his cheeks pinking. “It was fun, wasn’t it?” Too-casual. Ergo, worried.

“It was fun,” I promised him, and just as I’d heard his cheeks pinken I heard the relief in his grin. “And you don’t have to thank me, I enjoyed it just as much as you did. You wiped up my mess yourself.”

“Yeah, there was a lot, wasn’t there?” although he couldn’t have seen much in the dimness. A pause, not pregnant. “Next time we can swap, if you want.” He didn’t sound so enthused there either.

“We don’t have to swap, I liked what we did.” I’d always suspected I’d be a bottom, now I knew for certain.

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Relief in his polite acceptance. Another pause. This one might have been a little bit pregnant. “Did you imagine . . . somebody screwing you the whole time?”

I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me. “Yeah. The whole time. Did you . . . did you imagine screwing somebody?”

“The whole time, Mat,” he swore, and the heat in his voice made me wonder if we were about to do our thing again—it would likely take a minute for both of us and we’d pay for it in the morning but might be worth the fatigue. That wasn’t Jericho’s intention though, and I would’ve been disappointed had his next words not sent me back to nonplussed. “Me and Darren screwed a couple times.”

I waited, not sure what to say. When it became clear he was waiting for me to say something, I said, “Yeah? Did you like it?”

“It was okay, I guess. Pitching was cool.” I could hear his cheeks pinkening again. “Catching was . . . extreme. I didn’t like it but I didn’t hate it either, it was just . . . extreme.”

“What did Darren think?” Not for the first time I wondered where this supposed “best friend” was, I’d been here close to a month and not met him, but I didn’t ask; if Jericho wanted me to know he’d tell me.

“He liked pitching too, some, but he hated catching and after the second time swore he’d never do it again, I was spit outta luck. He didn’t mind the oral so much, but you know how I feel about teeth which is mainly because of him not knowing how to cover his and jerking each other off seemed pointless so we just . . . stopped.”

Another pause, this one again waiting for me to respond. “Well, maybe that was for the best if you weren’t enjoying it.”

“Yeah, Ron said the same.” A third spasm of nonplussed, but he didn’t wait for me get over it and answer. “I talk to him sometimes about stuff I can’t talk to anybody else about, especially since, since my dad died.” Jericho didn’t mention his father Joe much, hardly ever in fact, and he merely brushed by the reference now. “Ron said lots of straight teenage boys experiment with each other and have exactly the same experience. Fun for awhile, then the novelty wears off and they affirm they like fish and not sausages with mayo—you know how Ron talks.”

“Yeah, I know how Ron talks.”

“And it’s not that I’m not straight or anything—” despite Jericho’s garbled syntax I knew what he meant “—because I am straight—” I was beginning to have serious doubts about this but knew better than to interrupt “—I guess I’m not completely through fooling around and experimenting and having fun so I wanted to thank you for letting me.” Said in a rush, and, again, too-casual.

I wasn’t nonplussed this time, just absurdly touched. “You’re very welcome. And thank you for allowing me.”

“You’re very welcome,” he replied, and his grin sounded ready to light up the dark. I wondered why he was telling me all this, not realizing I’d asked aloud until he said, “I just thought you should know, that’s all.” Another pause. “Have you done much with . . . with other guys?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Jerked off with a few. Tried oral with a couple, but they seemed embarrassed after so I had to act the same. I’ve never had a . . . a best friend I could . . . I could trust. Until . . . until now.”

“I’m your best friend?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Nobody else.”

“Huh.” It didn’t sound like Jill’s annoying contempt, more contemplating something never imagined. Another pause, this one grossly pregnant, and I hoped he was about to give birth to the baby I wanted. He did. “You’re my best friend now too, Mateo.”

I said the only thing I could. “I know, Jericho.”

No more talking, and only minutes later he started up his slumber-mumble. I lay in the dark, mulling, smelling the elderberry wine though not yet ready to guzzle, but I didn’t mull his contradictions; they were starting to clarify now. No, I mulled Jericho’s theory about the end (or was it the beginning?) of the story of the albino artist and the curly-haired boy, and I understood what he’d been telling me by studying me so intensely with his faded-blue eyes just as I understood what he’d been confessing when I couldn’t see them. I comprehended concepts as well as he did. And if I wept some, well, let’s keep that between you, me and the tinny guitar, hmm?