Nowhere Man - 10. Chapter 10: Stocked Home

I woke up, unaware of how long I’d slept. It could have been days for all I knew. The sun shone brightly through the uncovered windows. If we were going to be here for more than a few days, I would insist on getting blinds.

I surveyed the room and noticed different flourishes lying around. There was a pair of jeans and a couple of new shirts on the dresser. Next to the clothes was a small television with antennas sticking out of the back. Where had this stuff come from?

I hobbled to the bathroom, squinting and feeling empty after last night’s slow fucking. There was a small coffee mug with two toothbrushes in it. I couldn’t help but smile.

I peaked my head out to the living room and kitchen area and saw Tyler frying up beef patties with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Tyler,” I said, my voice scratchy from just waking up. “Am I blue or green?”

“Green,” he said, squarely. He seemed less harsh than normal in this new place. I smiled.

I brushed my teeth and freshened up, marveling at how stocked the house had become in one morning. It was like he had stocked it just for me. I knew what his Easton Park digs looked like and this was above and beyond all of that.

“You didn’t have to go through all of the trouble,” I said, joining him in the kitchen. I opened a fully stocked fridge and pulled out a pitcher of orange juice.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugged. The burgers were resting on a paper towel and I realized how hungry I was. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.

“Where’d you get the money for all of this?”

“Picked it from a tree,” he said with a shrug. He pulled out two proper plates and set them up with two buns. “Mayo?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He dressed two burgers and handed me a plate. He reached into the fridge and pulled out a beer. I wanted to ask him about Easton Park, about what had happened last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I wanted to enjoy this new home. Stocked.

“You chew loud,” I said, trying to break the silence. He did. His chewing was slow and loud as if his food smacked together inside his mouth. He turned slowly and glared at me.

“You always gotta say something? Can’t you just enjoy the silence?”

“I’d just rather talk, that’s all,” I said, stuffing my mouth with bread and beef.

We sat around for a few minutes after we ate. Tyler stood up and fetched himself another beer. I declined; drinking this early would surely waste the day. A few hours later, if I had realized we had nothing planned to begin with, I would have started when he had.

“So what do you do all day?” I finally asked, after suffering each other’s silence for longer than I could stand.

“I dunno,” he said. “I used to hang out with Pete. Now I hang out with you.”

“You don’t want to go out or anything?”

“Go out where?”

“I dunno. A bar or something,” I said the first thing that came to mind. It was nearing that time of the day, and intrinsically I could have used livelier company.

“I got beer here.”

“You don’t have music,” I retorted, hearing the boredom in my own voice.

“What kinda song do you want?” he challenged, ready to sing.

“Look, I’m just saying—“

“If you want to go out, go out. I don’t see any chains on you.”

The idea of being chained down frightened me. My captivation surely wouldn’t come to that. Would it?

I quashed the idea of going to a bar and instead had a few drinks with my nowhere man. His mood seemed to lighten when it became clear I wasn’t leaving. In the back of my mind, however, I made a plan for the following day.

“What was so important you had to go back to Easton to get?” he asked half a case later. I swallowed the cold beer in my mouth and shrugged at him.

I didn’t want to explain my irrational connection to the past. He was the kind of guy that buried the past next to a lake and moved on. He was the kind of guy that could blow the past up and pick up somewhere else. His past had a rising death toll.

My past was confined to a tin box under the seat of a car.

“And you say I’m the one who can’t deal.” He stood up and crossed the floor to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just personal stuff. Really personal.”

He came back, an unmistakable look of disappointment in his eyes. What did he expect me to do? Pour my heart out about my father who’d killed himself one cigarette at a time, leaving Dustin and me a series of letters teaching us how to be men because he couldn’t say the words himself? He might have been ready to talk about his dead wife, but I certainly wasn’t ready to pick at the scab of my issues. I’d gotten what I needed. That was okay for now.

A few cans later, the humming started. The suggestive looks. By the time the case was empty and Tyler and I were sufficiently sloshed, he led me to the bedroom and fucked me inside the army issue sleeping bag like I was the only guy in the entire world.

It was starting to get less cerebral for the both of us and much more passionate. As Tyler drilled into me that night, I heard him grunt and moan my name repeatedly.

“Fuck, Trav,” he’d breathe into my ear. And then he’d bite down onto my shoulder, causing my whole body to buck upwards into him. I could tell his orgasms were just as intense as mine, and for someone who couldn’t even bring himself to kiss a guy a few days prior, he sure was enjoying my ass.

The other thing that surprised me was the cuddling. He loved sleeping behind me, opening his nook up to me. He wrapped his arm around me, protecting me.

“A thank you would have been nice,” he whispered post-coital, as I was dozing off to sleep. I barely registered the words. Why would I thank him for sex he wanted just as much, if not more, than I did?

“A thank you for what?”

“You saw my place at Easton. All of this stuff here is for you.” His voice was deeper than normal. It almost sounded like he’d been waiting quite a while to say the words to me. He didn’t want me to feel bad, but he definitely wanted me to know he was hurt. I turned around in his arms and kissed him, realizing he was completely right. He’d never lived like this before me, thinking about someone else; including someone in his plans. Up until then, his life on the run had included himself and Pete. It was a pretty big way to show how much he cared and I felt bad for not acknowledging that.

“I’m grateful,” I said softly. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I could predict his expression. I pulled into him closer and willed myself to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up earlier than Tyler. I was restless and fidgety, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I’d always been a working man, so getting a job seemed like my only plan. If I worked during the day, I could appreciate the time I spent at the fully stocked home with Tyler.

I brought it up an hour later as I took a shower. Tyler had just woken up and stood across the flimsy curtain taking a leak.

“I think I’m gonna go out and find a job,” I shouted over the spray of hard water.

“Okay,” he said. He spat.

“Any thoughts?”

“Good luck.” The door closed and he was gone. I got dressed up in the new jeans he’d picked up for me and a solid button front shirt. I fingered my hair back as it dried, examined the week old stubble I had on my chin and decided it made me look older and defined my chin pretty well. I walked out to the living room where Tyler was sitting, legs up, nursing a beer.

“I’ll be back when I’m gainfully employed,” I said to him, expecting more than the nod he gave me. I’d have to learn to deal with the ebbs and flows of his moods, but they still concerned me. I grabbed his keys and disappeared into a brand new nowhere.

The town was Wellmington, Texas, in the southeastern corner of the panhandle. A small town; Easton was a metropolis in comparison. As I drove around, I approached the one stoplight from all four angles, wondering what else there was to this tiny town. In total, I passed a convenience store, a gas station, two bars, an RV sales and maintenance store and a Whataburger. All within a stone’s throw of the one stoplight.

What did it would look like, two guys swooping into town, living together? One a recluse, the other as skittish as they come. Hot off the heels of breaking news from the south. Would the Easton Park fire reach the eardrums of the locals? I decided to avoid TV and radio just to ease my mind.

Instead of dwelling on what I couldn’t control, I focused on what I could. I parked in the lot of the RV sales store and strolled into the front office. The man sitting in the glass building with four fans pointing at his disheveled desk must have been four to five hundred pounds. The cigar in his mouth emitted a cheap and pungent smell; mixed with the obvious smell of B.O., and it was no wonder it seemed he hadn’t moved a unit in ages.

“Can I help you son?” he asked, offering me a stubby hand. I shook it with the intense desire to wipe my hand on my jeans afterwards.

“I’m new in town,” I began.

“I coulda toldya that, son,” he said. “Have a seat.”

“Sure, thanks.” I took to a creaky leather-back chair and continued. “I was just stopping in to see if you knew of anyone who could use some help in these parts.”

“What sorta help do you offer?” he asked me, sizing me up.

“Well, I got a degree in heating and cooling repair,” I answered confidently. “And I’m real good with my hands. Worked at Ca- worked at a cabinet install company for a couple of years.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Which one?”

“Um, one out in New Mexico,” I said. A bead of sweat trickled along my hairline.

“You know, sad thing happened to a friend of mine,” he said, stretching his obese arms behind his obese head. “Just yesterday, blazing fires took half the town down in central Texas, did you hear about that?”

“I’ve been travelling all day, sir.”

“It’s been all over the news. They have no clue what started that damn thing, and had the ground not been wet from it raining finally, they said it woulda spread up two or three counties solid.”

The thought of Tyler’s fire, our fire, causing that much damage made me cringe. I wanted to throw up.

“Wow,” I muttered, controlling my face. “Anyone hurt?”

“A few locals,” he replied. “They haven’t released names, and I reckon they won’t. But no matter, just you saying you did cabinet installs reminded me of my friend Cale Sr. down there. Started that company with his bare hands and now at 82, he’s lookin’ to rebuild from the ground up.” The man rambled on about his acquaintance with Cale of Cale’s Cabinets as my mind wandered to what we’d done. I thought about Dustin and Ashley.

They’ll stop thinking about you eventually. I hadn’t expected eventually to be so soon.

“Like I said, I’ve got nothing moving around here,” he concluded, standing and shaking my hand again. I’d blurred the last fifteen minutes, including my own responses to his ramblings. “But with summer coming up, who knows. Check back with me in May, and I’ll let you know if I could use a repair hand.”

I thanked him and left, breathing for the first time only after I’d sped the truck down the road. Paranoid and sweaty, I decided that this was just too much for me to handle. I pulled into The Watering Hole, affectionately known as the Dirty W, south of the main road. I parked on the side of an oversized horse barn turned dive bar. Seeing a building I recognized, could identify even without a sign, reminded me that all of these highway towns were one and the same.

I stumbled into the dimly lit bar. A haze of smoke filled the room. I took a seat down at the edge, a couple of seats away from two old timers who were discussing the torching of Easton in Central, Texas. Of course they were.

“Miller draft, please,” I said to the pretty enough bartender, careful not to sound nervous.

I proceeded to drown my nerves with draft after draft, not once caring how it looked that I was pounding beers back alone in the middle of the afternoon.

“Sure you’d like another?” the bartender asked in a gravel voice. I glared at her and nodded my head. She slid one more draft my way.

Just as I was beginning to feel like I’d lost control, not only of my afternoon, but of my life in general, I heard a voice that was equal parts familiar and unexpected.

“Ala-fucking-bama,” the voice of a rodeo clown said behind me. “Now what the flying fuck is a guy like you doing at a place like this?”

I turned around, and came face to chest with Wade. He smiled down at me, his jovial cute face full of surprise and excitement. Seeing him was a sudden breath of fresh air, his energy emanating out to me.

“Please tell me this ain’t a coincidence. Dear Lord, I must have done something right as a child,” he said loudly. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, transfer this man’s tab to mine and get us both a Hop Skip and Go Naked.”

He winked at me. The same wink he’d given me at Big Bar back home.

“Now, are you gonna answer my question or are you gonna sit there and stare at me like you’ve seen some kind of a ghost? What brings you all the way up here to the panhandle?”

“Family,” I answered quickly. “Just spent the weekend up here, visiting.”

“Well I sure hope you aren’t heading back to Easton any time soon,” he said, handing me a short glass with dark liquid. “Thank you, ma’am. That place is up in smoke. Evacuated the whole rodeo circuit last night.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Don’t tell me you hadn’t heard, Alabama,” he said, circling me and having a seat next to me. As he got closer, his scent brought back a memory of a simpler time in the back of a pickup truck.

“I didn’t know if it was true.”

“True as I’m standing right here in front of you,” he answered. I took a sip of the drink he’d given me and almost choked. It was nearly all bourbon with a touch of lemonade and beer. I already tipsy. After just one sip of that, I was definitely drunk.

“Well then I’d better rethink my plans to go back home,” I said, reeling from the fact that he was there in the first place. It was more than just a simple coincidence. It had to be.

A stupid clown.

“You might wanna do that, Alabama,” Wade said. He leaned in close to me. “But I won’t say I’m disappointed to see you.” He pulled away and smiled at me. My Jim Beam pulsed in my new jeans. I pushed the thought of being with him out of my head. Not too long ago, the thought of being stranded in a strange town with a man like Wade would have excited me. But I had Tyler now. I didn’t need a stupid clown.

I needed to get away from him.

“Excuse me,” I said, standing up and stumbling to the bathroom. I didn’t realize how much I’d had to drink until I found it hard to walk straight. I reached the john and took a leak in a metal basin filled with ice. I got lost in watching the yellow stream melt the white ice, corrupting it. I chuckled, thinking that there was nothing the clean white ice could do but let it.

“Having fun?” his voice asked behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Instead, I took in a deep breath and swallowed hard.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Following you,” he said, trying to sound sexy. The fact that he’d followed me a couple hundred miles north made that sexy a little scary.

He reached his hands around me, grabbed onto my watering hole and gave it a couple of shakes. It instinctively jumped in his grasp. My dick remembered how great being with Wade had been even if my mind was trying not to.

“We can’t do this here,” I sighed. I knew what was about to happen was wrong on every single level. Tyler was waiting for me in our new home. A home he’d stocked just for me. And here I was, getting a feel down by a rodeo clown.

“Well then you’d better follow me,” he commanded.

I swallowed hard again and made a tough decision. I could follow Wade out and have the kind of carefree wild sex he was so good at and that I had so thoroughly enjoyed. Or I could return to a captor that was waiting patiently for me in our new home.

A stocked home dilemma.

In a split second, I weighed the pros and cons and made my decision. I closed my eyes, and for the second time in two days, I prayed to God that I was making the right one.