Creation: The Conclusion of the Lake Cycle

[ChrisGibson]

Well, we know how Pat reacts, because that's in the past and when we meet them in the present, they're living together. But yet, it was good to go through Javon's mind. I didn't see you had posted this, so I didnt respond until now.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER SIX

PAT THOMAS


“Hello, this is Pat speaking. Whaddo you need today?”

You were not supposed to say, “Whaddo you need?” but it seemed right. It seemed like what he would have wanted to hear if he’d ever had the sense to call a crisis hotline.

“I need to eat a fucking gun,” the voice said.

If he was new to this, Pat would have been excited, would have begged him not to do anything drastic, and if he’d never felt that way himself, he would have been repulsed by such naked upset, even told him he sounded a bit dramatic.

“But you haven’t,” Pat said, “and you’re still here.”

“I can’t tell if it’s because I think things will get better, or because I’m just too afraid to do anything.”

“Do you have a name? Do you have a name you’d like to be called?”

“You said you’re Pat?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Good to meet you, Pat.”

“It’s good to meet you—”

“Call me Aaron.”

“Aaron. Great. Good to meet you Aaron.”

There was silence for a while, and then Pat said, “I’m on here as long as you need me to be, alright? So, if you need time to gather your words, or you just need someone on the other end of this line, I’m here. Alright?”

“Thanks. Thanks. I… I need that. It’s hard you know. I… I don’t even know what to say,”

“That’s okay. Really, it is. Do you want to tell me about what brought you where you are?”

“That’s just it,” Aaron said. “It’s so many things. I feel like most of the time I can bear all the shit that’s going on in my world. It’s okay, and then now and again something happens, one thing that could be pretty little, and it just is like—whoosh—it just beats down on me, and it’s the last straw. I don’t believe in myself anymore. I don’t believe in life. I just…. The world looks as ugly as it is. Because it is, man. It’s an ugly fucking world, and I feel like every day I get up to fight in it. Keep up good spirits. And then it’s too much. I can’t do it anymore.”

Pat was nodding. Above him he saw a sign with a rabbit whose floppy ear was over the receiver of a red rotary phone that hadn’t been used since 1998 which read: JUST LISTEN. But this guy couldn’t hear him nodding his head, so he said in a soft voice: “I know. I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” Pat said.

“Truth is, I don’t think there’s a single person in this room with me that hasn’t been where you are. It’s scary as hell.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It’s one thing to think you might kill yourself, or to be like, ‘I wanna die’. But it’s something else when you are so tired that you think…. I’m gonna do this today. You just get so tired.”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, and his voice caught in a heave. Pat could hear the crack in it, the quavering.

“I’m so tired.”

“You’re not the only one,” Pat told him. “I promise you, you’re not the only one.”

“But it seems like everyone else has got their shit so together!”

“Some of them do, but so many of us are living with crazy pain, and you just can’t see it.”

“Why’s it gotta be that way? Why’s any of us got to live like this? It just makes me so…”

“Angry?”

“I was going to say sad, but yeah. I’m sad, then I feel helpless, then I feel so fucking angry that we’re all so helpless. When the fuck is it gonna get better?

“You know, I was talking to someone earlier, when I was trying to talk about how I felt, but all he could tell me was how bad he felt, and I didn’t know what to do about that because part of me was like, I’m sorry, and I want to be there for you. But another part of me was like, why every fucking time I’m trying to get something off of my chest and deal with the shit in my life, someone shows up and is like, but no, no look at the shit in MY life? Why can’t someone just fucking listen!”

Pat stopped a laugh from coming up and then let it go. He remembered one time when Javon’s cousin Donovan had told them that after the death of his mother, his stepfather, who had dementia, went missing every day, running off with the car, and the police had to find him and bring him back home over and over. As he was talking to the officer, he heard a change in her voice and said, “Are you laughing?” There had been tenseness on the other end of the line ,and then he said, “ It’s okay. Its funny.” And they both laughed.

“I felt better,” Donovan had said, “and I think she did too.”

And so when Aaron said, “Are you laughing?” Pat said yes. There was something about being in the midst of a terrible moment, going off on a tirade and knowing, somehow, you had brought some level of happiness to another person.

“It’s fune,” Aaron said. “It’s funny. I was almost a comic. Like, people always told me I was funny and should be a stand up, but it turns out it’s one thing to be funny and another thing to stand up on stage trying to make people you don’t give a fuck about think you’re funny. So,… that didn’t go so well.”

“Look,” Pat said, “do you think you are in danger of harming yourself?”

Aaron hummed to himself, and he said after a moment, “I thought that I was. I thought that I was and was really, really afraid. And I still am afraid. I feel better. I don’t feel good, but I feel better. I’m just afraid that after I get off the phone with you, Pat, I’ll feel awful again.

“Not feel awful,” Aaron corrected, when Pat said nothing, “Feel like I want to kill myself. Which is something totally different. You wish you felt awful then.”

“Whenever you feel that way you know you can call, right? You can call over and over again as much as you need to.”

“I just feel like such a loser. I just feel so fucking broken. I’m just tired of feeling bad. I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of doing this over and over again. It’s like I’m getting up to fight a battle everyday. And then I tell myself about people around the world, refugees, folks in Yemen. There are cripples—I mean handicapped people—driving cars and being large and in charge, and that just makes me feel worse.”

“Then feel worse.”

“What?”

“Feel as bad as you want to. I know it’s a cliché, and I’m probably talking more than I should. But listening only does so much. When I was at my worst, someone told me: here’s a rule, everything is allowed but suicide. Anything. You wanna not go to work, you wanna…. I’m not going to give suggestions cause I’m a professional right now, but whatever it takes you to get through the day, do it. And you only have one day at a time.”

“You’ve been through this,” Aaron said.

Pat had said he had been through this, but something in Aaron’s voice was the recognition that, indeed, Pat had been through this, that he knew what the bottom felt like and he was giving bottom advice.

“Yeah,” Pat said. “Been through it once and twice and maybe a third time.”

“Is there ever… Is there ever a last time?”

“I think so,” Pat said.

“I hope so,” said Aaron. “Cause I don’t know if I can take this again.”



Sometimes, sitting by the phones no one called at all, and sometimes he had to get over himself because what people had called about seemed stupid or petty or lazy. At the end of the day, no matter how awful you were feeling, there were only a few questions. Do you want to live or die? Do you want to keep feeling this way? And if the answer was you wanted to live, if the answer was that you didn’t want to keep feeling this way, then the next question was: What are you willing to do? A long time ago, Pat would have said that was harsh. He knew what it was like to despair. He knew what it was to be caught in the depths of wanting to give up, and he even knew that some people simply were not capable of helping themselves. This wasn’t a fair world. But if you were capable, if the resources were there, then holy shit, wasn’t it worth trying to get out of that terrible place?

What Pat wished he could do was find everyone, well not everyone, but people like Aaron, people afraid that they couldn’t go on, afraid to be left alone, and gather them all up, not to teach them anything, not to be their savior, but to tell them the total truth. He did not believe there was a savior out there. He just believed in stories. He believed in telling people his and sharing the pain he’d known. Maybe in that was salvation.

What were you willing to do to get better, to keep living, to be happy? Some people said happiness wasn’t that important, but they were lying. Ask someone in misery. Happiness could be sacrificed. Certainly comfort could be as well, but one could not live without happiness for long. He’d heard in churches and Catholic school that happiness was not the same thing as joy, but, as yet, he could not tell the difference.

He had heard Chris Donaghue on a podcast talking about something he’d said to a psychology student, and it had resonated with Pat. The student said he was burnt out and Donaghue had told him, you’re burnt out because you’re doing more work that your clients. So often people in therapy didn’t want to do the work. They thought they did, but they wanted someone else to heal them, and that made a lot of sense if you thought about how tired they already were when they arrived, maddened, saddened and sometimes suicidal. When Pat wasn’t at the phones just listening, but at one of the steps that came after listening, which was therapy, he had to pull back from how often people who came to him troubled did not take advice and did not follow assignments. He pulled himself away from thinking about how many of them did not wish to change, did not, it seemed, wish to get better, sometimes did not wish to come to therapy, sometimes walked away to find the therapist who told them what they wanted to hear.

Pat wanted to be honest. He wanted to say to Aaron or any one else who came to him not only, “You have to come to therapy”, or “You have to take the meds the psychiatrist assigned you”, or “You have to do the breathing exercises,” but, “Congratulations for getting up. Do what you need to do to live, because sometimes just living, just surviving was the goal.”


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent start to the chapter. I am glad Pat helps people through this hotline. It’s important work and as someone who has had some tough times it’s always nice to know that people care. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days.

 

[ChrisGibson]

What would I say if someone asked how I made it? What would I say if someone asked how I knew I was fucked up?

That I didn’t know, that for so long I barely knew myself. It wasn’t until I was sitting on the floor crying for three days in medical school that I realize all this time I had been just coping, and I looked back and saw the problem. It was so clear, so in my face I wondered how I could have missed it.



His mom and his sister on their way home and then dead in a car crash. Some things were so awful they could not be thought of. He could not allow himself to weep. In college he had a friend named Susan and her sister had died under a semi on prom night. Pat ugly wailed at the funeral, but now he knows that yes, it was for Susan and her sister, but it was for the whole world, and it was for his mother and sister. It was the first time he understood that grief really could be corporate, that you really could wail for another person, that their loss could really be yours.

When his mother and sister had been killed, when the world had been changed forever, Pat was with Rob. He wept with him a little, and then he kissed him, and then feeling something, and glad to feel it, he raped him. It wasn’t violent, but it wasn’t mutual. Rob hadn’t known what to do, hadn’t responded, had just been there, and Pat had done what he did and then gone up to bed, leaving Rob alone. He hadn’t spoken to him for years. It had taken him till graduate school to even use the word rape.

He was wrapped in a muffler. The world was grey. It needed to be. People who say there is no wrong way to mourn are wrong. He wishes someone had helped him out of the deadliness he was in where it felt like his feet and his hands and his mind were weighed down by concrete. He just kept telling himself, “Be helpful,” “be nice.” He cared for his father trying to make up for the loss of two people. He was pleasant, but no one touched him. He thought the only salvation was helping others and looking at death, so he ended up working in a hospice, but the death he saw there was not the sudden death of a beautiful forty-five year old Irish Italian woman and her fourteen year old daughter, Pat’s constant shadow, gone in a moment.

It was when Josh had come with his raw anger and thinly veiled suffering, that Pat had come to life. The life was uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary, and the two of them were drawn together in a mutual suffering. Josh was the first lover he’d ever known. He still loved Josh Dwyer. Josh was his friend. Making love and fucking they’d worked through so much of their pain. Sometimes you had to be with someone who understood what was happening to you if your broke down and wept in the middle of an orgasm.

Their fucking was the temple Josh and Pat had built for their love. Love as mere love or friendship would have been too naked, and seeking out a lover wasn’t what either of them was ready for. No matter how they might not get along in the day, that in the night, they would be on their knees for each other, entering and entered by the other was reassuring. They were too young to be cautious and too desperate to be smart. It was while fucking on the beach that, like angels of the sex apocalypse, the boys who would be their men arrived, Javon and DJ, as fucked up as they were, and they continued sucking and fucking on the beach, the four of them, Pat pounded into the ground by Javon’s cock as the waves pounded inexorably against the sand. The waves last, Javon did not, his body lifting, a groan burst from his lips, and Pat felt thick semen flood inside of him. Life didn’t have any taste if there was no risk, and if there was no taste then there was no life. People who worried about safe sex only needed to exist. For Pat, safe sex had no interest.



So, what would he say if he could be honest over the phone or in session? Fuck your way to happiness? Fuck your way to life? That was disrespectful, primarily because people did not know the beauty of the word fuck. It was a dirty word, Pat wasn’t a liberal who had thought things out, had an awakening, and come to live in a different way that he had been taught, and he wasn’t one of those liberals that had never had any conservative upbringing and so never thought abut much at all. He was a good Catholic boy. It had taken his mind and his conscience and finally his heart a long time to catch up to what he did and what he needed. He was still embarrassed in the dark to whisper “Fuck me”, still startled and a little ashamed when he and Javon were in bed together, and Javon said it, told him to do it. He preferred simply saying “make love”, but make love was something different. It wasn’t urgent. It wasn’t explosive, it wasn’t fast and forceful, bruising, dishonoring, dishonoring the parts of him that were bullshit and didn’t need to be honored. So even though he knew that fucking could save your life, even though he knew that he had been fucked and fucked people tenderly, and fucked them harder in love, he could barely form those words in his mind.



After the few days he and Josh had spent with Javon and DJ, days where he didn’t want to be away from Javon and was completely intrigued by him, they drove down to the monastery where Rob and Javon’s uncle were staying, Rob his first love and first friend and Javon’s uncle, who had apparently now together.

Pat was Catholic, It was hard to describe how Catholic he was. He’d thought he didn’t really believe, but religion had been drummed into him subtly. He felt on holy ground, quick to take his shoes off as it was summer and everyone was barefoot anyway. He was in awe and confused. He might have been no matter what monastery he came to, but this monastery was strange. There were odd pagan murals on the walls, men kissing, women holding hands, artists painting, nuns in blue jeans praying in a quiet chapel that seemed dedicated to something altogether wild, not like what he’d met at Saint Augustine. In this place he’d met Isaiah Frey for the first time, Javon’s uncle. He looked young. He didn’t appear to be much older than Javon except in his eyes, and then in his eyes he might have been as old as this abbey.

And he met Rob, whom he had wronged so long ago, and for the first time in years after dodging him, saw him. To Rob the sin Pat had committed was abandonment. Rob had let what happened happen because he loved Pat with all his heart, and then Pat had walked away.

“We need to talk about this. We really need to work this out.” Pat told him. “There’s a lot wrong between us, and its all my fault.”



He spent a lot of time with Rob. It was easy and hard all at once. They fell back into their old friendship, but had to look at their losses. Pat hated himself for how he’d hurt his friend. The fear that had sat at the bottom of his stomach concerning Rob turned into love and when love blossomed in his heart, there was warmth between his legs, a tightening of his scrotum, his penis rising like a siren. He never thought of himself as being untrue to Frey, the young and ancient figure Rob was going back to live with. And he was not yet exclusive with Javon.

Every Sunday Pat took his Dad to Mass, and Rob came with his father. These days they all sat together, and during the kiss of peace, he and Rob shared a lingering embrace. One Sunday the embrace lingered longer, and the smell of Rob, is cologne, his deodorant the warmth of summer on him stayed with Pat and, more than thinking about the possibility of what might happen, the certainty of what would happen blossomed in his mind. That first afternoon, in the same little house where he had first been with Javon and Josh, he and Rob began to undress. That was making love, the feeling something was actually being made, some alchemy boiling from the both of them, churning and being kneaded as their hands caught and their tongues twisted, as their bodies pressed together. As happened with no one, he and Rob came at the same time, and Pat felt that the hot fluid, syrupy, pouring out of them, mingling, was nothing less than love itself.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Things were boundless in those days, boundless the way things are in their embryonic state before a stem cell becomes a bladder cell or a stomach cell or a fingernail or the beginning of an eye, before heaven becomes earth and the earth grows a tree. There was no shame, and there was no greed. There was love in his heart every Sunday he saw that red headed mischievous Rob Dwyer, and total love and awe when they had made love and were lying in the warmth of the big bed, Pat marveled over the beauty of Rob’s milky body and the auburn of his groin. The strawberry tip of his penis. Her marveled over the friendship and the ease in which they spent the afternoon, and then he thrilled to the fury of the bed rocking fuck before they kissed and parted for another week.

It was in the midst of this that they had stopped and tumbled into reality when they had seen Isaiah Frey looking down on them, looking down on them like God because his face was impassive, but as he looked suddenly what was boundless to Pat Thomas was boundless no longer. It was clear that Rob belonged to Frey, that this was something like nascent adultery.

But even as this certainty formed in Pat’s brain, Frey changed. Like a serpent shedding its skin, rather than yelling or looking angry, he was stripping. The whiteness of sun and bed sheet and Rob’s body was eclipsed by Frey coming into the bed. And then there was something else, something else more…. Grown up, more… complete than what had happened between him and Josh and DJ and Javon. Pat found himself being loved by a couple, was aware that Rob was his on loan, was aware that Rob was only his by Frey’s grace, and in a way, like he was this afternoon, Frey had always been there. Day drew to late day and late day dimmed to evening as he became the dough, the bread, the love, kneaded between the two of them as they moved together like waves and cried out again, and again, making a series of little earthquakes in that bed.

When Rob and Frey drove back for Ashby, and Pat remained on the road, heading back toward town, he felt separate, but not lonely, loneliness had always been there. For once he felt whole.



Such a grace could not last forever. He knew now it had to be worked at.

Pat applied himself to school. He applied himself to being the person who was happy, who listened, who was a good friend, except slowly he began to perceive that he really was glad. He really was listening. Finally, sharing his thoughts with others, he actually was becoming a good friend.

“I thought that if I always listened politely and tried to be the nice person, the person who was there, that was enough. I never understood I had to give myself too. Tell things, Share them. I didn’t know people wanted that from me.”

“I want that from you,” Javon said at last.

He had come to Ashby and the house smelled like pot. Pat turned to his right and he could see the naked form of Josh, sleeping on his faces. On the other side of Javon, round rump in the air, open mouth turned to them was DJ. Pat felt himself getting hard again. Hard to mount DJ who never got tired of being fucked, but hard at Javon’s attention, at the fact that he and Javon were still high and awake.

He wasn’t ready to break down. Later, he broke down at Rob and Frey’s house and Frey gathered him up and took him to bed. He slept between them and thought: Couples are so exclusive. Even when they want threesomes they are about themselves. You’d think they would say, it’s two of us with all this love, let’s share it, and Rob and Frey are probably the first people who ever did that, who took someone hurting and brought them into their bed the way you would a child. So much strangeness took place in this family he didn’t question this. He’d been with Rob and his brother, with Rob and Frey at the same time, with Frey’s nephew and son…. After all that, to just sleep and be held meant nothing. It was total love. It was total acceptance and total healing. He was with them for several days. On the last day he turned to Frey and pulled down his sleeping pants. He reached into Rob’s shorts and pleasured both of them until they all made love in that bed. The being fucked was as tender as the being held.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion. All this backstory of Rob and Pat is fascinating. Sad in some ways but I am glad they came back into each other’s lives. The writing was superb and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Oh, its very sad. And you know, the world is sad. But that thye can get through it and be strong and happy, that's the good news.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Pat had what he hoped was his last mental collapse. It was then he knew he shouldn’t be a medical doctor, and he shouldn’t be in hospice. He was still living in Barrelon and he went to talk to his advisor.

“I want to help people,” he said. And then he corrected himself, “I know I’m helping people as a surgeon, but…. That’s not for me. I don’t think it’s for me. I’m afraid to try something new, but I feel like I should. I feel like I should leave here. Reapply or something. I feel like…. No,” Pat smacked himself in the head, and Dr Lotter looked both amused and shocked.

“I should be a therapist. I’m going to be a therapist.”

So he could apparently switch programs the next semester, possibly sooner because of his grades and his skills. He felt right. He felt good in the world. He felt like he was tall, olive skinned, curly haired, boyish faced and good looking, like one of those sexy Italians you saw walking around in Rome. He was vaguely aware this was exactly what he was except he’d never felt it before. He bought faded jeans that fit well and put on a g string under them. He bought a fitted pink tee shirt and some wraparound shades and felt sexy. He went around town knowing he was hot and smart and a winner in the world. These were all the things everyone else had seen since he was twelve years old, but he had never seen them. He felt beautiful and like a winner because he’d fought to get here, because he’d been scared and scarred, and had the marks on his wrists to prove it, but he could do anything now.

This is how he was feeling that night when there was a knock at his door.

“Javon, what’s up? Get in here.

“You didn’t say you were coming here. You didn’t—”

“I came to tell you something.”

What could he say? What news would force someone to drive for over two hours to knock on his door in the middle of the night.

Pat nodded, ready to face the worst.

“I love you,” Javon told him. “I love you.”











“Whaddid you learn today?” Javon asked from where he stood at the stove, and even though he was younger and lighter and taller than his uncle, he reminded Pat of Frey, standing in his kitchen preparing dinner. The one thing he didn’t like about being two hours north, was not being near the people who had come to be his family and more than family. But he loved that Javon has come with him, so he tilted his chin and he said:

“I learned that half the time my job seems almost useless, but now and again it’s pretty profound.”

“Cause you’re profound,” Javon said, stirring the Spanish rice in the pot and turning from the steam.

“No,” Pat said, ignoring the jibe. Or was it a jibe? With Javon it was hard to tell.

“Because people are profound. I mean they really are. We go through so much.”

Javon had turned the rice off and Pat said, “I met this guy who was on the edge, almost losing it. He was afraid he was about to kill himself. I saw a lot of me in him. We talked a long time, and I think he thinks I helped im. But he helped me.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” Javon said.

He said, “I miss home a lot.”

“Me too.”

“Sometimes I wonder what we’re going here. But today, today is telling me we’re in the right place.”

“You gave up everything to be with me,” Pat said.

“I didn’t have a lot to give up.”

“Your family.”

“I had a life that belonged to other people. My life is with you.”

“Fuck,” Pat said.

“What?”

“No one has ever said that to me.”

“You know it’s true.”

“I guess,” Pat said. “Yes. But…You’ve never said it.”

Pat stood there with his curly hair, jacket over his shoulder, looking a little bit like Michelangelo’s David.

“I’m trying to process that.”

“You’re so odd,” Javon said.

“No, seriously, I’m trying to process that and be worthy of your love. I want to be that.”

Javon, who preferred to process things in private, and showed his love by standing over the stove cooking for two hours said, “Could your process in the bathroom while washing your hands. Dinner’s about ready. I’ll make us plates.”



“Oh my God! Jay, this is delicious!”

“I told you so,” Javon said as, satisfied, he watched Pat wrap chicken in tortilla, then dip it into the brown mole.

“I mean, like this is really good,” Pat said, mouth full. “You’re cooking is always really good. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“You’re easy to please.”

“You’re a wonderful cook!”

“And you were talking about not another night of Mexican.”

“Baby, I’m an idiot,” Pat said. “I’ll shut the fuck up from now on. You cook whatever you want. This is the best thing I’ve ever had in your mouth.”

“Are you sure?”

“Huh?” and then Pat said, shaking the half finished tortilla at him, “You’re bad. Fine this is the best thing I’ve had in my mouth while sitting at this table.”

“Again, are you sure?”

Pat scrunched up his face like a little boy and grinned.

“We haven’t…. at this table? Have we…. Oh…”

Pat laughed, “Well, you know what I’m talking about. Say, what is this molé.”

“It’s lots of peppers and lots of green vegetables and tomatoes that are smoked and grilled and cooked down and mixed and mixed and mixed all day into the perfect sauce, Then you add chicken broth to it. And chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

“That’s what you’re tasting. That’s why it’s brown. It’s like, chicken, chocolate and pepper sauce.”

“Well, it’s amazing,” Pat said, and hardly stopped talking to eat his beans.

“I can’t believe you spent all day making that for us.”

“No, I spent some of the day doing the chicken and the tortilla, Dona Maria spent the day making the molé, and I went to the Mexican grocery store and bought it in a squeeze box for a dollar thirty five.”

Pat laughed.

“Work smarter not harder,” Javon said.

“I think you worked hard enough,” Pat said.

“We’re keeping Lent this year, right?”

“Yeah,” Pat had made that decision.

“Well, then I’m trying out the soufflé recipe tomorrow.”

“Cool.”

“I just feel like I don’t want to be one of those assholes bitching about how they can’t eat meat when it’s a chance to do something new. Cheese soufflé Ash Wednesday, tomato Florentine tart Friday—”

“Damnit, Jay. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to get licensed and would you just cook all day?”

“Be a house husband?”

“It sounds insulting when you put it that way, but you’re about to graduate. and I’ll be a doctor in a couple of years. I’m totally willing for you to be my house husband.”

“I’m sort of your house husband now, only with a full load of classes.”

“Do you mind it?”

“Should I?” Javon asked him. “Maybe I should, but I don’t. This last year has been the happiest of my life.”

“Yeah,” Pat’s eyes were still shining, but they were distant now. “We’re really lucky, you and me. You know that?”



THAT'S THE END OF THE CHAPTER, AND THAT'S THE END OF THE WEEK. LOVE YOU ALL. SEE YOU SOON!

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter! I am happy that Pat and Javon are happy. They deserve it and it’s a pleasant read. I am also glad that Pat found his calling in helping people. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days! I hope you have a great weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE BIRD


“It’s stacked because no one unstacks it.”

-Simon Barrow






































“You can’t do that,” Cade said.
“All I wanted to do,” Don said, “was stay here—”
“By yourself.”
“With May.”
“Without me. Without Simon.”
“I wasn’t leaving you. I was going to sort myself out. As myself. Figure out what came next.”
“But that’s just it, Don,” Cade began as if Don was stupid. “You’re not yourself. You’re not just yourself. You’re married. You’re married twice over. To say you’re just going to stay up here by yourself for awhile is the very opposite of a marriage.”
“I remember going to a Hindu Temple, and there was this man whose wife had gone off to live in an ashram for a few years. A few years. And he was at peace with it.”
“We’re not an old Hindu couple, Don! We’re not anything like an old Hindu couple. We are literally newlyweds.”
When Don said nothing, for he already knew he had lost, Cade continued, “Do you remember, when we first got together. After Simon had ended things. I came to you. We were so happy, and I said that I had to figure things out and you told me to go figure them out, and I asked you to come with me.”
“Yes.”
“And you said, you said some bullshit about how I needed to be by myself and figure shit out for myself. I came to this very house and sat here trying to figure things out. We wrote a few times, and then I was lonely, and then I stopped writing, and then I just went around hooking up with random people and you did whatever you did and when I finally came back to town we had to start all over again.”
“That was the way it had to be.”
“But it wasn’t the way it had to be, Don! And it wasn’t cause I wanted it that way. That was your bullshit. You should have just come with me. Don’t you see that now? None of that crap had to happen. We would have just been sane and together, and right now we are sane and together, and you’re talking about going off by yourself again. Do you see why that’s a problem? We’ve gone through all the trouble to be married, and you’re acting like you’re single.”
Cade was not quite yelling. If Donovan Shorter had responded in the same loud and earnest tone, they would have both ended up yelling, but Donovan was not a shouter, and over the years he had become a listener.
“Yes,” he said, at last. “I do see what you are saying.”
Cade did not press Don. If Don was going to differ with him, he would have said, “I see what you’re saying, but…”
“You’re right, you know,” Don said. “That whole summer when you were gone, when I wondered if you would come back, I got so much done, but I wondered what would have happened if we’d gone off together. I have been so afraid that being an us will stop either of us from being a me.
“But I am lost, a little,” Donovan said. “I do need a change of scenery. To figure things out. I need to be away from Wallington, away from Indiana.”
“Then let us stay here with you,” Cade said. “And when Simon has to go back, let me stay with you, and when Simon and you need time, let him stay with you.”
“Alright,” Donovan said. “Thank you. Husband. For putting up with me. We should do that.”

DONOVAN​

I am embarrassed by what a mess I am. I never thought of myself as inconsiderate. The truth is I thought I was the glue that held things together, things meaning our little family, and now Cade tells me I can’t do what I was planning, and even as he says it I know he’s right. I know I was foolish, wonder how I could have been so inconsiderate. There’s no use talking about how once Cade left for a long time to take are of his father, because, well, he was taking care of his father. What else could he do? But he reminds me of the time when we were first together, of how the summer passed and I began to think I had lost him, and I feel like the truth is I haven’t fought hard enough for that man. When I remember how Simon came into our lives and I chose to love him, I think I could have lost Cade right then. I haven’t fought hard enough for him. On one hand Simon came because of him and we became what we are because of him, but on the other hand I am why we are in the place we are.
Since we’ve come into this, often there are times when I say, I have to go talk to Simon, but now I have to talk with Cade, about all this, about how he has put up with me.
He is in the living room only half playing his guitar. May and Simon are out with Deanna. The snow is melting. It is over thirty today, a heat wave.
“I hadn’t seen it that way,” Cade replies when I tell him my thoughts.
“It would it have been easier if I hadn’t insisted on loving Simon. Was that untrue of me? To you? Were there things I dragged you into, taking you for granted? As I took you for granted today?”
Cade put down his guitar.
“Look,” he began, “you had an idea. I told you no. You said ‘ok’. That’s not taking me for granted.”
“But I was just going to leave. Just like that first time when I made you leave.”
“Do you remember what you said that first time?”
“No,” I say truthfully.
“You told me that you didn’t want me to be the next boyfriend, you wanted me to be the last one. And so instead of me hanging here you had me go off and figure things out.”
“That sounds like me.”
“If you love the bird set it free. If it’s free it will come back to you.”
“I think,” I said, “this is what was on my mind. I was also just so used to being alone.”
“But I wasn’t used to it at all,” Cade said. “I was used to being lonely, but not alone.”
“You said you should never have left without me.”
“And part of me thinks that’s true, but part of me thinks you knew what you were doing. Anyway, here I am, the husband who loves you, and here we are together. Along with Simon. Along with May.”
“I’m afraid,” I admitted.
“Of?”
“Of fucking it up. I was brought up by people who fucked it up, were selfish. I know how to be alone. I wanted to be your husband. I wanted to be Simon’s. Of course I still do. I love May with us. But I don’t know how to be part of something.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I’m used to being an individual and running off on my own. I still don’t always know how to share my life.”
“Then let me help you,” Cade said, placing his large hand in mine. “Alright?”
I say, “Alright.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

Afterward, Cade would think the lights in the old store were too bright. He was surprised Schorlings was still here. Everything else was a supermarket now, He went through the bread aisle of the old neighborhood grocery store that reminded him of his childhood. and while he was musing on the difference between Sunbeam and Home Pride, he bumped into a kid.
“Sorry guy,”
“That’s alright,” the kid said, and his mother, pushing the cart said, “Really Billy, watch where you’re—”
She stopped when she saw Cade and Cade didn’t know who she was, though he knew he should. It seemed they were looking at each other a very long time, though they couldn’t have been, before she said, “Cade Richards?”
And he said, “Ashley.”
“Mom, can I get Cap’n Crunch?”
Ashley pulled her glance away from Cade and said, “No, you just had a cavity filled.”
“But, Mom, it was only one.”
“Get it, but you have to eat a fruit with it, and you can only eat it in the morning.”
Cade thought it would have been easier to turn around and leave, except he didn’t want to. He didn’t know what to do.
“That’s your son?” he said, unnecessarily.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, with something between an exhale and a laugh.
“He’s a lot,” she said. “Maria’s with her dad.”
The little blond boy with the big green eyes came dancing up to his mother with the box of cereal.
“Hi,” he said frankly. “I’m Billy.”
“I’m Cade, Billy.”
“That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s short for Cademon.”
“That’s an even more interesting name.”
Cade laughed, or made himself laugh, feeling like a douche. He wanted to tell Ashley, I’m not a douche. You just caught me at a bad time. At a horrible time in my life.
“Are you and mom friends?” Billy asked.
“We used to be,” Ashley said before Cade could say anything.
“I moved away,” Cade said, which was true enough.
“Cool,” Billy said. “I’d like to move one day. Not right away. But one day.”
“Well,” Ashley said, looking like and not at all like the Ashley he had known, “we don’t want to hold up Cade, Billy. You have a good day, alright. It was nice seeing you.”
For the first time in fifteen years, Cade had seen Ashley Miller, and he felt as if the whole exchange had taken place in fast motion, with him looking on, unable to keep up with the speed of actual time.

“But that was how it was the first time. All those years ago,” Cade said. “Like something was happening outside of me, like I was watching someone else’s life on a TV show that I’d shown up late for, and everything was happening before I could think.”
Don just listened while Cade sat on the couch, his knees apart.
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“There wasn’t much to say.”
“I disagree,” Cade said. “See, the first time, all those years ago, I didn’t say anything. I’ve thought for years and years what I would say if I had the chance.”
“And what would you say?”
“I’d say I’m not a jerk. I’d say I’m sorry that I was a jerk back then, and I was going through so much. I’d tell her about the second and the third and fourth thoughts I have and how sometimes I think we could have done it. I don’t want her to think I just didn’t give a fuck. I’d even tell her about trying to drown myself.”
“But,” Donovan said, folding his feet under him, “you didn’t. You didn’t tell her any of that. And you didn’t for a reason.”
“She’s got two kids and a husband. Or a boyfriend. Something. She’s got this whole life, and… it seemed like anything I would say was just burdening her, trying to make her know what a good guy I was. And we were never that close. We didn’t even really date. We fooled around for about a week. It just…. It just didn’t seem right…. To try to make it right.”
Cade had been looking at the fire, but now he looked at Don from the corner of his eye.
“Did I do right, Don?”
Don exhaled, lifting his coffee mug, but not drinking.
“I don’t know.”
Cade opened his mouth and Donovan continued:
“And this time when I say I don’t know, I’m not being evasive. I really don’t know.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Donovan listened to Cade and didn’t just go off by himself. Donova, Cade and Simon are as husbands each other’s support systems and it is nice to see. Cade certainly had a blast from the past. Lots to think about for me and the characters. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

CADE​

I might have been wrong, this whole staying here thing. What I mean by that is I don’t want to run into Ashley again. I haven’t seen her in fifteen years. The thing about Ely is how few people I actually do see when I come back here. Part of that is I don’t venture very far into town, and another part of that is the town is bigger than it looks. And then, lots of people leave and don’t come back. I guess I thought that’s what happened with her. She was a ghost. I was as surprised to see her as if she had been Nash. This is the place of specters.
For Don it’s just a place to retreat. It’s the place to get his mind back. For me it’s the place I’ve been running from.”
“Well, then,” Dan Malloy says, sighing, “maybe you both need to stay. “If Don has come up here to stop running, then maybe you need to be here to stop running too.”
“I… You’re the first priest I ever told about Ashley.”
“Well, now I believe that.”
“Actually, Dan, you’re one of the few people.”
Dan nodded.
Finally he says, “I used to be a silent priest. I used to not ask many questions or press very far.”
“That sounds like the hallmark of a liberal priest.”
“It’s the hallmark of a bad one. How do you feel? About everything?
“Not…. what do you believe in or what should the law be, but how do you feel?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Do you….” Dan frowns and starts over again. “You said you saw her with her kids.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever wish you had kids?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Sometimes I don’t know means I haven’t dared to think about it,” Dan says.
“Maybe it’s time to .dare.”





Donovan stayed on the beach the rest of that afternoon, not minding the cold and rejoicing in the gulls and the waves and the enormous blue beyond him. Simon came back from roaming the town with May and Deanna, and though Deanna went home to join her mother, the rest of them went to Dan and stayed with him for dinner. May shrieked when she saw a brown patrol car and ran into the house to find Rob and Sheridan.

“You’re way beyond your jurisdiction,” Don said, wrapping his arms around Rob’s waist and squeezing him. “What are you doing here, cousin in law?”

“The trees called and said they were in danger, and for those assholes you can cross any border.”

“That.” Brendan said, “and Rob heard what we were having.”

“To be more correct,” Sheridan said, “we were getting off our shift and Brendan was around and it just made more sense for all three of us to come.”

“I hope Frey understands.”

“Frey and Jason are actually with Fenn,” Brendan said, smacking his hands together, “and when do we eat?”

“That’s the judge who married you guys, right?” May said to Donovan.

“I am,” said Brendan.

“You have very good hearing.”

“It’s a gift.”

“I just never saw a judge like you,” May said.

“A gay one? Cause I assure you, we’re everywhere.”

May shrugged that one off. “I meant a hot one.”

Sheridan shook his head, knowing he would pay for that tonight while Brendan, very good looking with just a couple of strands of early white going through his blond hair, smiled and said, “Just for that, you get off for one and a half crimes if you ever come to my courtroom. Anymore, and I’ll be disbarred.”

“Who’s getting disbarred?” Dan demanded, coming out of the kitchen and rustling Brendan’s hair like he was still a boy.

“Dinner’s ready,”

May looked out of the window and noticed that the sky which had just been grayish blue was now completely dark.

“Let’s act like heathens,” Dan suggested, “and eat in front of the new TV.”



Fenn, the husband of Rabbi Todd, Dan’s old friend, called during dinner, but neither Dan nor Fenn felt the need for him to get off as Dan put down his fork, crossed his legs under him and, beside Keith, relaxed into his part of the sofa.

“What are you all eating?”

“Lobster bisque, garlic biscuits, chicken pie. Keith made soufflé.”

“Hey, Fenn,” Keith called, mouth full.

“Well,” Fenn said, “send a plate back with Bren and Sheridan.”

“Are you serious? Of course you’re serious.”

“Is it really that much of a hardship? Besides, why the hell say what you’re making if you’re not sending any?”

“Fair, and no it isn’t a hardship for me. It may be a hardship for them,” Dan said loudly, and Brendan, who was drinking a soda, looked over and said, “Fenn asked for us to bring him a plate.”

Dan nodded and Brendan chuckled to himself.

“And don’t make it a small one. What are you all watching?” Fenn demanded. “It sounds like the news.”

“That’s because it is the news.”

“You get a giant flat screen,” his old friend said, “and the only thing you can do with it is watch that shitshow?”

“It’s not a shit show. It’s the news.”

“Well, maybe you should pay more attention to it than to stuffing your mouth, because away from my quiet house and your lovely lake, the world is a shit show.”



Dan put down the phone, and didn’t think Fenn would mind, and Fenn did not.

The newscaster showed cities in eastern Europe that looked like cities in America, but for the onion domed and goldem churches and now and again those scenes were interspersed with troops marching, pictures of planes, missiles, eastern dictators.



“Russians are largely unable to access Twitter and Facebook due to restrictions by a Russian government regulator,” the newsreader proclaimed.

“London-based internet monitor NetBlocks reported that users trying to access Facebook found it didn’t load or was extremely slow. Both social media sites have barred ads from Russia in response to the conflict. Russian telecommunication regulator Roskomnadzor said it planned to “partially restrict” access to Facebook on Friday.

“Stock prices in Asian markets fell following the announcement of added sanctions against Russia and President Vladimir Putin. Markets in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai were all down while the market in Sydney rose, the Associated Press reported. Japan was among the nations joining the U.S. and much of Europe in leveling sanctions against Russia including the rare move to suspend Russia from the SWIFT global payment system. The Russian ruble dropped 29% against the dollar on Monday morning...”



“Do you think they’ll do it?” Sheridan whispered.

“No, it’s too dangerous,” Simon said. “It’s like starting World War Three.”

“You don’t bring your troops to the border of someone’s country for the hell of it,” Donovan said, “They’ll do it.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Russia’s central bank has ordered professional stock market participants to suspend the execution of all orders by foreign legal entities and individuals to sell Russian securities from Monday morning, an internal document showed, according to a Reuters report. The document was published by ACI Russia, the national organization of Russian financial market specialists, Reuters added.

“Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday that 352 Ukrainian civilians had been killed during Russia’s invasion, including 14 children, The Associated Press reported. An additional 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded, the ministry’s statement said. It did not give information regarding casualties among Ukraine’s armed forces, according to the AP report...”



“But what are we going to do?” May said.

“Watch TV,” said Don.

“I meant as a country?”

“I know what you meant. I’m not entirely stupid.”

“Didn’t we ask Ukraine to give up their weapons?” Brendan said. “And didn’t they do it because we asked? Then isn’t it our job to help them?”

“We’re helpful when no one wants us to be and hands off when we should be hands on,” Cade said.



“Cultural organizations are seeking to distance and cut ties with performers who have voiced support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City made the announcement on Sunday, according to The New York Times. A Munich-based management company dropped Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, 68, who has ties to Putin…”



“We’re greedy, you know,” Don said. “We make a difference between them and us, but the difference isn’t as great as you think. These are Slavic white people invading other Slavic white people. Britain became America and Americans invaded America and stomped out all the indigenous people while dragging slaves from Africa to do their housework. I don’t see it’s much better. I’m sure in Russia they see it the same.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Brendan said. “I know you’re right.”

“Fenn, are you still on the phone?”

“Sort of,” he said to Dan, mouth full. “Call me back.”

“Whaddid Fenn have to say?” Sheridan asked, half paying attention to the TV.

“That watching the news was just watching a shitshow.”



“NATO member states Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have triggered NATO Article 4 to launch consultations within the alliance over Russia's attack on Ukraine.

“The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened,” Article 4 of The North Atlantic Treaty says.

“According to the NATO website, consultation under Article 4 can lead to collective action among the 30 member states.

“The website says Article 4 has been invoked six times previously since the alliance formed in 1949, most recently by Turkey in February 2020 after dozens of Turkish soldiers were killed by an attack by Syrian government forces in opposition-held areas of northern Syria….”



“Well, he’s not exactly wrong,” Donovan said.

“Wars. Ukraine, Yemen, Syria. Afghanistan!” Brendan said. “And we just got over a Plague.”

“Some of us,” Simon pointed out, “got over a Plague.”

“And the whole world’s getting hotter every day,” Brendan continued. “It’s like the world is coming to an end.”

“You know,” Donovan said, “Someone’s world is always coming to an end.”

“That’s something Fenn would say.”

“Fenn’s a wise man.”

“It seems like even in Rossford things aren’t what they used to be,” Brendan said.

“Crimes up,” Sheridan supplied.

“Crime’s definitely up,” Brendan said. “And they’ve started building all these apartments downtown.”

“That should be a good thing?” Cade said.

“But they’re luxury apartments no one can afford to live in. Meanwhile, a bunch of folks are moving further out to Wallington, to the country, south and east, or up toward Gary.”

“And let’s not talk about how desolate downtown is getting.”

“It used to be cute and small and old, but now it’s just getting sort of empty, and the bus system—”

“Sounds like Wallington’s bus system,” Don said.

“It’s so much worse than Wallington’s bus system.”

“And it doesn’t help that the choices for mayor are a Republican yutz or a Democrat yutz,” Simon said.

“It’s always that way,” Sheridan said.

Brendan said, “No one decent has run in years.”

“Then why don’t you run?”

May had said, it, and she realized she’d said it strictly to make the tall handsome man blush.

“What?” Brendan looked at her as if she was not twenty years younger than him.



May turned to the television



“It is up to the jury now to decide whether three former Minneapolis police officers violated George Floyd's civil rights while a fellow officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes and killed him. Thomas Lane held Floyd's legs down. J. Alexander Kueng knelt on Floyd's back. Tou Thao stopped bystanders from getting too close. This high-profile federal case is once again raising questions about policing practices in this country.

“Rashawn Ray is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He also runs a virtual reality training program for law enforcement at the University of Maryland. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.”

“Thank you for having me.”

“Does a civil rights trial like this one have the potential to change policing practices at a systemic level?....”



“You can’t do much about that,” she said. “But you can do something about Rossford being run in a crappy way. Run for office,”





“You could, you know?” Simon said, when he and Brendan and Dan were in the kitchen.

“But it’s an old system. Like no one thinks the Republican is going to win, but we set one up cause Indiana’s a Republican state, and this new Democratic mayoral candidate, he was just picked by the last mayor. City Hall is as stacked as everything, including the shitty education system—which was pretty decent once upon a time.”

“It’s stacked because no one unstacks it,” Simon said. “Now, if you want to bitch about how nothing changes, Judge Miller, that’s fine. But I have experience in a mayor’s office, and in your office, and if you want a campaign manager, well then I’m your man.”




“Okay,” May confessed in a stage whisper. “So, I said that shit because I was trying to make him blush, and now they’re in the kitchen talking about him seriously running for mayor.”

“That’s what you get for flirting with a forty year old gay man.”

“But he’s so hot, and I don’t mean in that way that dumb bitches go for gay guys. I mean—“

“Yes, we all know what Brendan Miller looks like,” Donovan said. “But it is time for us to be going, and if Simon wants to stay here and plot campaign strategies with Brendan, me and Cade are on our way.”

“You said Simon is going back home tomorrow, right?” May said.

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll let you all have the night together and stay with Deanna and Linda,” May said, knowingly.


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! It was cool to see some of my favourite characters from other stories back in this one. Feeling some anxiety at the moment and reading this was just what I needed! Thank you and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE CONCLUDE CHAPTER SEVEN



The trees made black shadows against the blueberry sky. Beyond, the dark water stretched out to meet the horizon. Cade took the long way, coming up through the north of town, across the bridge with the Wymar River, and he stopped for a while to look at the lamps and the walkway, the rails. He didn’t feel bad. He just felt like absorbing it, remembering, not running away from the place where Nash had been found. He didn’t say anything. He’d said it all, thought it all. Mainly he’d thought, “What if Nash could have held on a little longer?” “What if he could have left this town that was killing him?” Cade had thought the town was poisonous because the town had killed Nash, but as a car full of laughing teenagers honked and drove north in the direction from which he had just come. Cade realized this town was just the place where a wounded Nash suffered the most.
Donovan was in no hurry, and didn’t ask him what he was doing when he pulled off the main road and drove through the neighborhoods, little saltboxes in rows, little almost bungalows spaced out by wide and cluttered yards. Lights were on in the square windows and families were eating behind them. Couples were watching TV. In one of these houses Ashley lived with her two children and her husband and a memory of what had been years ago.
Passing into downtown there was the hospital where he was born, the hospital where his father died.
When it finally happened there was no drama like the first time when Freddy had rolled into Wallington and shouted that Stan was sick. There was just a phone call, and then a quiet drive like this, making smooth turns in the dark, not even breaking the speed limit. Freddy had been on his way home, and he arrived just in time to be at the hospital bed and watch his father pass. His wife and kids were on the way. The only drama came from Freddy wailing about how selfish he had been to stay away all these years. No one protested it, least of all Deanna who believed he was. She was the one that told the nurses where to send the body. They left the hospital quietly while the tubes were being taken from him like strands of lights off an old Christmas tree, Linda, who had been his wife, then his ex wife and now felt like his widow, was the last one to leave the room, and Cade and Donovan had sat outside waiting for her.
There was the old movie theatre now made into the Ely Performance Center where the original Cornerstone Church had been. The corner of Main and Hatchet was made of old stores, but beyond them, rising like a little peaked mountain with its steeple was the new Cornerstone, the church of his molestation, of his pissing on Pastor Pitt’s floor and stealing the guitar that was his to this day. That was the auditorium where he had fucked Nash and Nash had fucked him and they had become something like lovers, but with a love that wasn’t strong enough to save one of them.
And here on this gravel road was the old beige split level where Linda had brought her children, where Cade had come of age, fucked girls with the enthusiasm of someone screwing a lightbulb in a socket, impregnated Ashley, and made love to Nash, where Freddy had watched them from a ladder. And in that very back yard the split between Cade and his mother had begun to heal and now, turning, on an old road that was the long western point of a star, they came to the aqua blue house that was home.

Stan had left no Will, so they just had to decide on what happened to the things that belonged to him, foremost of which was the house. Everyone decided Deanna should have it. Deanna decided she didn’t much want it.
“Let’s just keep keys under the mat or some place a little less obvious,” Cade said, “and we’ll all just come in and out of it.”
Freddy stayed to introduce his kids to everyone, but Cade understood that, like Nash, Freddy had been hurt by this town, somehow, and wasn’t sticking around. A strange look had been on his mother’s face, and when Freddy and his wife left, Cade said, “What is it, Mom?”
“I just realized what I sort of already knew,” Linda said, “I’m going to be the grandparent that the kids don’t see. They’re going to have their real grandparents and then the other grandma. I’m the other grandma.”
“It sort of isn’t right,” Deanna had said. “Cade’s gay, and I’m a bitch. Freddy knew you were counting on him for grandkids.”
“Freddy’s a selfish fuck,” Cade said.
He hadn’t meant to. He had meant to be fair about the fact that Freddy had spent years here and had taken care of Dad a lot in that first year. But then he’d just left and felt no need to come back, contact his kin or reach out, and Cade had no use for this.
He, Simon and Donovan had gone to the house to clean it. It was mostly clean already, and while Donovan was washing his old clothes, he said, “You know this house is really going to be ours, right?”
“I had that feeling,” Cade said.

Right now it felt like home. After Cade parked in the driveway and they walked up to the porch, Don smiled, looking on the snowfields.
“I can’t wait till the spring, to sit on our porch, look at the spring trees, listen to the waves.”
“Well, we can listen to waves now.”
“True.”
They did, for a time, and for a time it did not matter that it was growing colder and colder and the February air went through their coats and chilled their faces. Donovan did not know there had been clouds until some departed and he saw stars he could not not name, some winking, some burning steady which he knew were planets, Jupiter, too big. He had once seen that in comparison to the earth it was like a basketball by a grape. So unimaginably far away it was a fat burning white star. God, what a God. No six day God making one world and two people out of clay, but a universe making being. The wind rose, and Donovan opened the door to go inside, holding it for Cade.
He thought of coffee, but choice to put on cider, and the house was filled with the sweet tangy odor of autumn apples. He planted cinnamon sticks in each mug he poured the amber cider, and placed one at Cade’s side while he took the other. Cade took out the guitar he’d taken from Pastor Pitts and begun to strum it. Donovan went to the bookshelf where he had been bringing his books for some time, and pulled down his own poems. Why write them if you never read them?
“What?” Don half sang around Cade’s strumming, “can you do with this?”


“At four thirty am after you have gone
I spread out the sheet and it still smells
like iron and man and perspiration and you
and bodies touching and pushing and pressing,
the tasting, inhaling what went on here.
The room is still stuffy with the stuff of you,
still filled with the filling up we did on
each other,

and I am still wet with your kiss
And oh how after all hope was gone,
against all odds you came at three in the morning
with the wetness of your mouth and the gift
of your kiss, unpeeling me like a fruit,
sucking me like a lollipop,
pulling the goodness out of me like milk,
hands and hands and hands and fingers,
tender, gentle unfolding,
and the hot opening, the warm milk love,
and the apple pie thrusting, trusting glide,

what means the thrill of the sea,
and the wind in the trees if you don’t have me?

and if we don’t, in this bed, have this
miracle of men, and then, the orgasm,
which is making stars,
which is what it is, which is hot and slick
and does not care?

which is what you need.”

Cade’s response is to strum and strum, repeating:
“It’s what you need, it’s what you need… it’s what you need.”
He hums to himself as he strums, and Don sips cider. They wait for Simon to appear and Don sends a message. Simon messages back that he and Brendan got carried away, that they’re meeting tomorrow.
“Then he’s running?”
“Looks like it.”


“At four thirty am once
You’ve
gone
I spread out the sheet and it still smells
like iron
and
man
you, man and your sweat and you and you—
and me
tasting and touching and pushing pressing,
and—oh, indeed,

This is what you need, this is what you need….. this is what you need…”


OUR WEEKEND PORTION IS TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Lots of reflecting both on the past and the present. Sounds like they made the right decision about the house. I particularly liked the poetry in this section. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

HELLO, FRIENDS! THE WEEKEND HAS ARRIVED AND WITH IT, THE WEEKEND PORTION!


CHAPTER EIGHT

ARKS

“That’s what atheists don’t get. It was never meant to be hopeful.”

-Donovan Shorter





Some time before Christmas, Riley Anderson Lawden had, after a shroom trip and the clarification of his mind, showered, gone downstairs to his parents’ kitchen, kissed his mother and father, chatted with his brothers and sisters, and gone back upstairs to type out his manifesto or his confession. He wasn’t sure which. Riley, a tall, sandy colored, green eyed good looking eighteen year old currently bearing an aureole of reddish hair, was a clever kid who had been encouraged to make statements early and often and, after all, this is what Facebook was for. In his dormer room on Lafferty Street, with his cup of coffee, a towel pressed to the door, and joint, he typed out his thoughts in Word before transferring them to Facebook for the world—meaning his family and friends and school mates—to see.



I’m sorry but I cannot continue to pretend to get behind any form of organized religion. It does no good for humanity and it’s full of hypocrites. If you’re offended or it goes against your religion to be associated with me then cease all contact.

I do not believe in any higher power whatsoever and I haven’t for a long time. This will come as a surprise to some of you and not to others. I apologize if you are one I haven’t been completely open with about my views.



Because the world is what it is, there were several comments before the end of the day, and before the end of the day Riley’s parents. Julian and Clare, were over at the house of Riley’s great uncle, Julian’s uncle, Fenn.

“Did you see what Riley wrote on Facebook?”

“No,” Fenn said truthfully and finally. He was in the kitchen, which was where he held court, and had told them coffee was on, and they could help themselves.

“I’m sixty years old, I don’t have time for Facebook.”

This was not truthful, though. The truth was that Fenn did not believing in being linked to his relations, including his children, by social media, and though he loved his nephews and nieces, he had very little interest in the posted thoughts of their children or anyone under the age of twenty-five. Or forty-five for that matter. Clare and Julian were both forty-five, and he supposed he’d better pretend to be worried over what worried them.

Julian held out his phone to Fenn, which annoyed Fenn, and Fenn squinted to read the post.

“He doesn’t believe in God,” Clare said.

“What did we do?”

Let your son get high and do drugs in your house for one thing, Fenn thought, but said nothing. He’d been forty before he’d had any children, and in the end both of them had fucked up royally. He’d thought he’d reigned over his house with wise parental control but it didn’t stop Dylan from having a string of sexual partners at a heartbreakingly early age and putting himself in dangerous positions, and it hadn’t stopped Thackeray from being a mop haired atheists, white as his father, but with two very brown children by Alice, the ex wife Fenn had never liked.

“You should relax,” Fenn said. “God is for grown ups.”

“I don’t get you,” Julian said.

“That’s because you didn’t know me till you were almost eighteen.”

“You say shit Layla would say.”

Layla was Julian’s half sister, and to make a long story very short Fem said, “That’s because she’s known me her whole life.

“Look, children don’t need faith. You keep the lights on, you pay all of his bills. What’s he know about God? You are God. You all are his higher power right now. You’d be worried if he was born again too. You’d be worried at any extreme. But children are extreme. That’s how they are.”

Still, Fenn did open up Riley’s page and scrolled all through the comments. Why did people always feel the need to comment? He hadn’t planned to remember her name or the icon of her face, but a few weeks later, when Donovan and Cade and Brendan’s friend Simon came for the wedding, he saw the blond girl with them, May Faulkner, and remembered her from the comment section. He wasn’t surprised when they began spending time together.

“Do you think it’s serious?” Julian had asked his sister Layla.

Layla was also his wife’s best friend, as Fenn was best friends with his wife’s older brother. They were a close family. Layla resembled her uncle Fenn, and they both wore black rimmed spectacles and were more dignified than beautiful. Layla had taken to wearing her thick black hair in plaits and twisting them into a braid and she said, “Oh, I can’t tell. Anything’s possible at that age Jules.”

But when Julian had left the house, Fenn, without smiling, mimicked his nephew.

“Do you think it’s serious?” he said.

And Layla, without smiling, sipped her tea and told her uncle, “I’m pretty sure Riley’s fucking her.”



Riley Lawden’s life had opened up when his cousin Thackeray went to college a year early. Thackeray had not always been part of the family. He had been adopted late by Fenn and fallen into the Houghton family rhythm quickly. Thackeray was always traveling to Chicago to visit his brother Dylan, Fenn’s first adopted son and Thack’s biological brother. And Thackeray, who’d never had friends, brought Riley with him. Sometimes they brought Rob, another cousin, and sometimes Rob brought Austin, but usually it was Thackeray and Riley tripping across DePaul’s or Loyola’s campuses and seeing how elite people lived.

And it wasn’t that Thackeray didn’t love living with his family in Rossford, but he had a powerful desire for college life, and the life of an adult, and his father more than understood this. So by the time Thackeray was seventeen he was on his way to the music conservatory. He had asked Clare and Julian if Riley could be his roommate, and they had said without missing a beat, no. But he might as well have been. One might think that two college kids spent their nights carousing and doing drugs, and there was a very little bit of that, but mostly they went to lectures. There was one by a light skinned poet who was reading his poetry of race, and Thackeray said, “You wanna attend?”

“Because I’m biracial?”

“Yes, actually.”

Riley frowned at his cousin.

“I thought you might get a laugh. Besides, I’m raised by a Black dad and dating a Black woman who’s going to be the mother of my children, so I feel like we’re all kind of biracial.”

It had all been very proper, very academic and the speaker was what Riley’s father called blond, that is, not just light skinned, not just tan or yellow, but so pale you looked like plywood, and he had pushed up his glasses to begin his poem.

 

[ChrisGibson]

My dear, on the sea

They could not agree



They could not see

(intransigence)

They could not see you

Could not see me



Black to white, to white to chasing the mulatto train

Of you are not me and I was not you

And so you know there was nothing



And they say that the world was made by six white men

In the mirror

And they spilled indigenous guilt on the feet of cowboys

Blood on the native land, the native they dared to called

Indian



IN-DEE-IN



In the end, they killed them and Apache revenge, tobacco

Killed the clowning clowns in their white faces, painted under a

Barnum and Bailey sky



But I am not your abortion!



My skin does not apologize



You realize that negritude is a state of mine

You make your mischiefs, twine, sin on Rudyard Kipling’s

Sin, but I am fine



Speak, sister speak!

My brother, repeat!



“Asalamalakim! Asalamalakim! Asalamalakim!”



“Alaikum salam!”



The Queen hopes for your hope diamond



Tangerind!



No, my homosexuality, my queer mulatto mania

It is just fine.





“Okay,” Riley had said as they were walking away, passing a fountain and sharing a bag of popcorn, “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that was shit.”

“It was academic poetry,” Thackeray said, tossing popcorn in his mouth. “It’s not like poetry poetry. It doesn’t have to be good, It has to make liberal white people feel good about being liberal white people.”

At that time, Alice’s belly was rounding with pregnancy. There had been some pretence of wondering if they would keep it or not, but not for long. It had come to Riley’s attention that Austin and Rob were having sex with each other. Sex was everywhere. For mere curiosity’s sake it happened to him one night at a college party, and he did view it as happening to him. He didn’t dwell on it often until he began talking to May online. Until she took the bus to meet him and talked about her family, until he learned that at the same time she was meeting him, her godfather was becoming friends with his uncle.

At the wedding, when Donovan and Cade and Simon had come to Rossford to be married by Todd, and Fenn and spread out the great dinner and everyone had been there, even people he didn’t know, he had snuck May away so they could look at the moon, and it was not clear which one of them had decided it was time for more, but in his empty house, his parents on the other side of town, they had sex. Like him, she was almost but not quite a virgin. The same feeling that went through him the few times he’d had sex went through him again, of some rocketing and fearful wonder that, like those repulsing neurons in science class, burned and twirled at opposite ends of him, his curling toes, his buzzing mind, but, dangerous as Los Alamos, converged in the middle of him and made the atomic explosion, shaking him out of his body, the only relief possible, the relief of intense, spurting ejaculation.



They were quiet and shy after that, not closer but somehow further away, and yet it didn’t matter. Sex was supposed to make you feel like a grown up, but it always made Riley feel like a child. The crickets seemed louder, the moon larger, his feet more unsteady as he shyly took May’s hand, got her into the car, and walked her back to his Uncle Fenn’s house where the party was still at its height.

“You’re going to be coming here a lot now, aren’t you?” he said.

“If you’ll be coming to get me,” May said.

“It’s just ten minutes from you.”

“I live right on Auten Road. My parents do.”

“I thought you were in Rossford.”

“I’m not sure where Rossford starts and Wallington ends.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Riley shrugged. “You’re close by.”

May screwed her face up.

“Why didn’t we know each other until now?”

“I don’t know,” Riley said. “But from now on we will.”


HAVE A WONDERFUL REST CATCH YOU IN A FEW DAYS!

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent weekend portion! It was nice to have so much of Riley. He was brave to post his statement on Facebook, people can be judgmental about things like that. I hope him and May turn out to be something good. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Have a wonderful weekend!