PART TWO
CHAPTER SIX
“I don’t have to be big, but I gotta get out. I gotta live.”
-Kyle Norman
“All those times I was angry,” Paul began, “I was afraid.”
After years of friendship, conversations began with no context, and Fenn accepted it.
“I mean every time I worried about Dylan and Elias. Or every time I blew up. Or the times we didn’t talk. You must have thought I was a terrible asshole.”
“No,” Fenn partially lied. “You had seen things I hadn’t. I,” Fenn stopped to think. “I always figured you were dealing with things.”
Paul grinned out of the corner of his mouth.
“You think I’m still a fucked up person.”
“No,” Fenn shook his head. “I think I am really difficult, and it really is something that we have stayed friends all of these years.”
“You are my best friend!” Paul said, shocked, heartfelt and earnest.
“I hope I am,” Fenn said. “I’ve tried to be. But there were times you hated me. Or almost did.”
“I was angry at Dylan.”
“And at me. I thought I had seen the end of you.”
When Paul had learned about Dylan and Lance and his son, it had been happening for a year. Elias was safely off in Chicago. In his own house, Paul had spiraled into a rage, and against Kirk’s counsel, driven to Fenn and Todd’s, screaming and shaking his finger. Todd had stepped between Fenn and the red headed man.
“I was embarrassed,” Paul said. “I was embarrassed for a long time about how I had behaved.”
“I think we both were.”
“You?” Paul said. “But you didn’t do anything.”
“Yes,” Fenn agreed. “And I always did something. That whole time I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even tell you the truth. What a bad time that was.”
Paul’s hand went over Fenn’s and clasped it. Paul was just turned fifty, and though in his early life, the accidents of long nose and big ears had gained him his fame, he also had the good looks of an ex model who cared for himself. Fenn looked at his friend, at the faint fan of lines around his grayish green eyes, and was surprised to see so much love in them.
East Carmel was certainly not the smallest town in Indiana, and Paul was well into his twenties before he knew it had a reputation for being racist, or indeed that any small town in Indiana had that reputation. How could he have known? He had never met anyone who wasn’t white until he was nineteen. There were the Mexicans who did field work and sent their kid to the high school, but they were seen more than talked to.
It is odd, Paul thinks over thirty years later, that he could have believed he was sophisticated when at sixteen he didn’t even think he lived in a small town. A fairly new school with a great football team had been built a few years back, and Paul was in drama and choir. He had ideas of New York. His father had made the offhand comment that he was turning into a queer and once, coming out of choir, laughing with his friends, some members of the soccer team walked by and muttered, “Fucking faggots.”
It was time to play a sport.
Paul’s father wasn’t easy to talk to, and he would have been embarrassed to ask his mother, so he went to his little sister, who was only seven, and said, “Claire, what’s a good sport.”
The little girl was impossibly white with bright red hair and she put down the Barbie doll she was beheading with a butter knife, looked reflective, and then said, “You’re good at running. Every time those boys chase you, you sure can outrun them.”
It takes almost thirty years to remember this clearly because for a very long time it was just too painful, and Paul conceived of himself as the constant athlete, the man of all talents, without asking why. He was a born runner, or a made one, track, cross country, triathalon. He couldn’t keep up choir, but he could do the annual musical. And if anyone had anything to say to him now, fuck them. And if anyone had anything to say now, well then he also had long, wiry muscles, defined thigh muscles, triceps, a young, fluid, strength and a circle of friends that resisted fag bashing.
And then came the girlfriend.
Whatever people said about Paul or sensed in him, he never felt gay. It was in track, in the locker room, in the showers with his new friends that he began to feel different. Not just about their bodies, but his own. There was a great pleasure in seeing the muscle play on his own body, in running with his friends and knowing girls were looking at them in the shorts that hung low revealing that V of flesh that descended to the sex unseen, their strong calf muscles, their buttocks, rounding under their shorts. And the mutual admiration of fellow runners in the shower, casually touching each other, muttering, “You’re looking better and better everyday, Anderson.”
And he noticed his friends were looking better and better too.
So when Mariah showed up, and they were kissing in the back of his car, he noticed how much he didn’t noticed, how much he’d rather be with his friends. She was nice though, very good, and he thought it would be okay to confirm his suspicions.
“I think I might be gay.”
“You’re a Christian, right?” she said.
He was Catholic. He was devout. He went to the little stone church, Saint Stephens, the only Catholic church in East Carmel.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding more doubtful than he should have felt.
“Then you can’t be gay,” Mariah said with confidence.
To prove it to him, she said they should have sex.
“You don’t want to be gay, do you?”
He liked the way he felt with the guys. He liked it when they would touch his hip and he would get excited. He liked looking at his friends in the shower, and the way he smelled after a work out. If he had thought about it, his answer would have actually been yes. His answer would have been, “I don’t like your question.” But he didn’t think about it, and so he had sex with her that night. Anyone who thinks it is impossible is underestimating the power of the promise of sex on a seventeen year old boner. When he came, she patted his head and while he was still hard inside of her, she said, “See, I knew you weren’t gay.”
When he thinks of humiliation, even with all the things that happened to him after this, it is this moment that comes to mind.
But when he remembers joy, he remembers Wyman. When he thinks of Wyman, Paul thinks of the bright hot sun in late spring, and his legs stretching, barely touching the earth as, gazelle like, he almost flies over the track. And it isn’t that pain isn’t there. There is pain aplently. Only it doesn’t matter. He almost thinks he could run like he used to, and then he stretches out his arms and his legs, looks in the mirror and remembers he is fifty. He stands looking a little longer and notices a little white at the temples and the little bit of lines around the eyes, but goddamn, he looks good. Real good. He has even taken off his clothes and looked at himself naked. No, he isn’t seventeen, but he is beautiful the way only an adult can be. He thinks, if only he weren’t married he could probably get a young thing like the young thing he once was.
He thinks, can it really have been thirty years ago? How can it be? There is almost a violence in the idea that thirty years have passed since he was running track. Thirty… more. When he thinks of Wyman it is all just happening. They are seventeen and he wonders if Wyman—frankly—looks as good now as he does. If you can see the boy in the man. They were best friends senior year, exchanged knitted caps and stayed the night with each other. When Paul saw Elias doing that with Dylan he was so glad. No boy should miss that friendship. And when he thought of what had happened between himself and Wyman, well, Dylan was Fenn’s son, and he would never hurt Elias the way Wyman had done him. But, still, Paul feared. All these years later, with all that happened, that first night when he and Wyman were nervous on the bed together, and then Wyman offered him the comforter his grandma had made and they played footsie and then began the tentative touching that led to kissing, that led to pressing bodies against bodies that led to coming…
When it was over, in the dark room, neither one of them said anything for a long time.
“This isn’t like being with a girl,” Paul said, making his voice work. It hardly wanted to.
“No,” Wyman said.
“I did it with her cause I had to,” Paul said, and understood the same thing had happened to Wyman. “I didn’t feel like I’d lost my virginity. I just felt like a fool when it was over. Right now, now I feel like I just lost my virginity.”
“I love you, Pauly,” Wyman said simply.
They lay face to face, heedless of the slickness on their chests or the sweat on their bodies.
“No one ever told me that before,” Paul said.
“Come’on,” Wyman said. “I know that’s not true.”
“My mom,” Paul said. “I guess.”
Then Paul wrapped his arms around Wyman and smiled.
“You’re so goodlooking,” Wyman said.
“Everyone says I look like a rat,” Paul said. “Or at least they used to before…” Paul pulled the covers down to display his lightly muscled body.”
Wyman could not deny Paul’s long nose, slightly sharp face, his—yes—faintly murine appearance. So he shrugged, touched Paul’s nose and said, “Fuck, I like mice.”
He’s not mad at him. Even then he was never mad at him. Most of that year they were so easy with each other, arms around each other while they smacked their gum, showing up almost hand and hand to the school cafeteria. All athletes were like that, and only athletes had an excuse to be like that. And if someone called them faggots, well then, look, they were. Right?
When they went down to run in Indianapolis, Paul and Wyman fell in with other runners from schools around the state. Kyle Norman was from Rummelsville not far off, and he and his best friend, Kurt would be rooming with them.
“Rummelsville is even smaller than East Carmel,” Kyle said. “I can’t wait to get out of there. Go someplace real. Where peopelare… I dunno, open minded.”
“Yeah,” Paul agreed.
He thought Kyle was one of the most beautiful guys he’d ever seen, tall strong like wire, bronze skinned with thick copper hair and dark green eyes. All four of them sat long into the night and Kurt said, “I know he’s gonna get out of Rummelsville.”
“You will too,” Kyle said, smiling. “We’ll get out together. I promise you. We’re not gonna let this Indiana bullshit get us down. If I can’t drive I’ll run! But I’m gonna get out of here.”
“And be big,” Wyman added.
Kyle said, “I don’t have to be big, but I gotta get out. I gotta live.”
Paul thought Kyle was the most alive person he’d ever seen. He didn’t doubt he’d have everything he wanted.
Late that night, while Paul and Wyman were trying to be quiet, they heard sighs, thumping, giggles across the room from the bed where Kyle and Kurt were.
“What they…?” Wyman began.
As a sigh came from the other bed, suddenly Wyman went down on Paul, causing him to cry out.
“Wyman!” Paul hissed, but Kyle pleasured him until Paul cried out and then, suddenly, in the other bed, Kyle and Kurt did the same, now all four of them, laughing, and they unabashedly set to, a rush going through Paul as Wyman humped him and the backboard continued to hit the bed, and the bed across from them creaked quicker and quicker. Wyman, or Kurt, came with a relieved shout and a minute later, Paul did too, staggering, crying out, thinking, Oh my God! When they had all come, there was silence in the room, and then suddenly—Paul thought it must have come from Kyle—chuckling. And then they were all laughing, all exhausted, all found out, all glad to be found out.
Being with Wyman was like being on top of the world.
So it hit Paul harder a punch in the face when Wyman said he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they were getting married.
“You an me shouldn’t have even been doing it,” Wyman told Paul. “It was a sin.”
“It’s actually a sin to have premarital sex with anyone,” Paul said, even though he remembered his girlfriend pulling in down onto her that night a year ago to make sure he was straight.
Paul leaned in and hissed, “I gave you love. All she gave you was… a fucking baby.”
There was no point in rehearsing it. Wyman ended things with him. He was rough about it and Paul went cold. He was so cold when Mariah said, “You don’t even like me. You won’t touch me. You’re in love with Wyman, you fucking faggot,” he just slapped her savagely. She burst into tears, but he didn’t care. He shoved his ball cap on his head and turned his face from her to the window.
His Dad had been gone a few weeks and Claire said, sagely, “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“He is!” Matty protested.
Claire, just turned eight, looked at her little brother and said, “I hope not.”
It seemed to all happen at once. Wyman was married and his girlfriend just got bigger and bigger like the moon. Paul stopped acting and dedicated everything to sports, and those soft feelings were gone. If he let himself go soft again, he didn’t know what would happen.
This was the year when Kyle Norman went missing. When his picture showed up on the news, Paul remembered his friend, the person who was like him who lived in Rummelsvile. Kyle had seemed so happy, so untouchable, so beautiful. Now Paul, looking at the picture of the copper haired track stair learned his mother had abandoned him and his siblings with his stepfather who hadn’t even reported him missing. Had Kyle turned to track to outrun his bullshit the way Paul had? Had he taken Kurt with him, or had they fallen apart too?
“He had the sense to leave,” Paul said. “I ought to leave too. He knew this place would kill him.”
He thought of Kyle on his way to California, having the sense to get out of Rummelsville before the place ate him up. Or maybe he’d only gone to South Bend. Whatever helped.
I hope you’re okay, man. In that room they had both revealed themselves to each other, having sex with their boyfriends in the dark, almost as intimate as making love to each other. Kyle had heard him come. Later, after they had laughed in the dark, they’d gotten up together, naked, to wash the come of their bodies. Paul felt so tender for that moment of seeing another boy like himself, sharing that bathroom, neither of them having to explain what had happened. The glance they had shared. Paul ached to talk to him again. Maybe soon, maybe wherever the track star popped up. Maybe Paul would get there too. At any rate, he had to get out of here.
Paul’s mother said nothing when his grades dropped, though years later she reflected that she ought to have said a little. Her life was in shock at the time as well. He was in the car one day with Claire and Matty, taking them to the shoe store? That sounds about right. When he saw two cars side by side like something from ma drag race movie and he heard someone shouting, “Faggot!”
It had been so long since the bitterness, he did not fear for himself, but he paid attention to who was being yelled at.
“Put your heads down,” Paul said to his siblings, his adrenaline rising. The car in front of him zoomed faster and the one beside it went immediately behind as the red light commanded Paul to stop.
“Are we gonna help those people?” Claire demanded.
“You’re going to stay in the car,” Paul said. “Both of you.”
He got impatient with the light, looked for cops, and then crossed Buren Avenue, gunning his engine to catch up with the cars. He drove up and down blocks for about five minutes before he found the cars, parked his and crossed the street to the house with the open door. He stopped for a moment, looking around the front yard, and then finding a metal pipe, took it and went into the house. He heard the kicking and stomping before he saw it.
“You’re a fucking faggot. Admit it. You goddamn faggot.”
“I got a kid!” the man wailed as they beat him. “I’m married!” he cried.
Just like that, Paul slammed the pipe on the first man’s head and the other stopped in mid-kick terrified.
“Get the fuck out!” Paul bellowed, beating him. He was possessed by a demon. With his pipe he was beating the two of them, chasing them out of the house, and it wasn’t until they were well gone, Paul turned to the man whose jaw was a bloody mess and whose blood was in a pool all around his floor.
“Wyman!”
There was no time to ask anything or be afraid. He called 911 and an ambulance was there not nearly quick enough to take him to County Hospital. Paul followed behind with Claire and Matty, and from the hospital he called his mother, commenting, “The hospital closes at nine! Whoever heard of a hospital that closes? I hate Jasper County. This place is barbaric.”
Merilee came to the hospital to take the kids, but Paul stayed in the dim waiting room, and the whole world was dim. He watched the news and they reported that what police believed to be the body of seventeen year old Kyle Norman had been found headless, in a reservoir outside of Rummelsville, and his stepfather had been brought in for questioning.
It was late that night that Wyman’s wife came in.
“You’re him,” She said.
“Huh?”
“You saved him,” She said. Paul had never known Her name.
“It was my brother who did it,” She reported. “The doctor told me over the phone Wyman’s probably gonna have a steel jaw.
“Were you fucking him?”
“What?”
She looked at Paul, eyes narrowed. He thought, what a fucking hillbilly! Then he thought, we’re all fucking hillbillies. I’ve gotta get Claire away from this place.
“You weren’t,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone was. I was just so mad. He’s awake now. Do you want to go see him?”
Paul nodded. He rose slowly.
Wyman’s face was so swollen and his eyelids were fat pillows. He was covered in stitches and nothing like the beautiful boy he’d shared his life with a year before. He was married with a fat, nasty wife and in laws who were probably in the Klan, and he’d just get her pregnant again next year. He was a hillbilly.
“Paul,” Wyman croaked. “Paul.”
He burst into tears and Paul sat there, awkwardly, as Mrs. Wyman walked into the hospital room, Paul patted Wyman’s shoulder and sat down beside his bed.
All the next day he was desolate. He sat in his room until he realized he was thinking about death too much, and then he went running until he was out of town and his legs ached and his butt cramped and his arms were on fire. His lungs burned and it took him till evening to get home. That night, on the news, they reported that, having followed Kyle Norman’s stepfather’s lead, the police had gone to a ditch and found Kyle Norman’s head, obscenities carved into it by a pen knife. The next morning, when Paul opened the Chicago Tribune which had no problem with niceties and plainly stated that Kyle was gay. His stepfather had possibly molested and then killed him and, before sawing the boy’s head from his body, he had carved into his forehead in sharp capitals, the word: FAGGOT.
Just like that, Paul got up. He packed two bags and got the little money he had. He couldn’t wait till his mother got out of work, or the kids got out of a daycare. There would never be a better time. He had to get the fuck out of this place.
He went to the truck stop and caught the Greyhound that would take him to Gary. From Gary he would go to Chicago and from Chicago he would go as far west as he could.
He wouldn’t return for five years.
