CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Great new portion! It was nice to read about Rob and Alex, they had some hot times together! Excellent writing and I look forward to reading whatever happens next. Hope you're having a good night.
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EDEN: A Sex Story
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
What did you learn?
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I guess I just learned about Rob's past with Alex. I don't know if there was anything more to learn but I could be wrong.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Personally, that was what I learned. That Rob was more than just his experience with Pat. That's Rob's had a pretty full life.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That's true, it did show that he had more experience in the past then we knew.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
It may seem strange to say I "discovered this" but writing is like discovery and i didn't know anything about Rob the first time I met him like Frey, at that door.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER SEVEN
CONCLUSION
“I remember your letter.”
“You do?”
“It’s not like I get a lot, and that was the first. I always hoped you would write back.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I feel like I said, write back.”
“I didn’t know you meant it.”
“I always mean what I say.”
“Yes,” Rob said, “I’m beginning to see that now.”
Jason came to visit at the beginning of fall before classes started again. He said he wanted to take DJ, and Frey said that DJ had school and he was used to being here, and Jason said he would bring him back, but that he wanted to take him to Arizona. Jason stayed on the couch. Frey did not even think of sleeping with him. At least not seriously. He knew he’d be angry with himself for doing it, as he was angry with Jason for his carelessness. The next morning Frey came to wake DJ up, and DJ was stoical about the whole thing.
And then DJ was gone.
Adam came at what Frey thought of as “the beginning of the school year.” Really he was thinking of how DJ ought to have been in school as much as he was thinking about the uncertainty of the life he and Melanie had embarked on, both deciding to just take the courses they wanted, and live off of the remains of their student money. They didn’t spend much, so it would be doable, even with the children.
Adam played them songs through the night and then, when it was time to go to bed, Adam came with Frey, and while he was undressing he reached into his duffel bag and said, “Here, I got you something. I don’t know. It spoke to me. It’s totally you. It’s Hindu.”
“Yes, I always think: me, Hindu, Hindu, me.”
Adam grinned, and reaching into the duffel bag, pulled out a framed portrait.
“Oh, my God!”
Frey was terrified. He put it face down on the bed.
Adam looked at him, still smiling quizzically, and walked across the room to pick it up.
“What?” He lifted it up.
“I know her,” Frey thought of saying. Or: “She comes to me.” But telling this to even Adam made it unreal.
Adam showed the Indian painting of the goddess with four arms, sitting on a swan, playing a lute of some type.
“This is Saraswati. She is the wife, or the feminine part of Brahma the Hindu Creator God, and she is the Goddess of Creative expression, of Art. See, this book in her hand is for scholarship, and the veena—that’s the lute—is for musicians, and the rosary is for prayer and meditation. This water is purification. Purification of intentions I suppose. I thought you would like her.”
“I do,” Frey said. “Only, have you ever received something so right that it shook you in its appropriateness? Well, that’s this, you see?”
Adam, from behind his tinted glasses looked at Frey as if he knew there was something more to it, but he simply nodded his head and said, “Yes. I see.”
CONCLUSION
“I remember your letter.”
“You do?”
“It’s not like I get a lot, and that was the first. I always hoped you would write back.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I feel like I said, write back.”
“I didn’t know you meant it.”
“I always mean what I say.”
“Yes,” Rob said, “I’m beginning to see that now.”
Jason came to visit at the beginning of fall before classes started again. He said he wanted to take DJ, and Frey said that DJ had school and he was used to being here, and Jason said he would bring him back, but that he wanted to take him to Arizona. Jason stayed on the couch. Frey did not even think of sleeping with him. At least not seriously. He knew he’d be angry with himself for doing it, as he was angry with Jason for his carelessness. The next morning Frey came to wake DJ up, and DJ was stoical about the whole thing.
And then DJ was gone.
Adam came at what Frey thought of as “the beginning of the school year.” Really he was thinking of how DJ ought to have been in school as much as he was thinking about the uncertainty of the life he and Melanie had embarked on, both deciding to just take the courses they wanted, and live off of the remains of their student money. They didn’t spend much, so it would be doable, even with the children.
Adam played them songs through the night and then, when it was time to go to bed, Adam came with Frey, and while he was undressing he reached into his duffel bag and said, “Here, I got you something. I don’t know. It spoke to me. It’s totally you. It’s Hindu.”
“Yes, I always think: me, Hindu, Hindu, me.”
Adam grinned, and reaching into the duffel bag, pulled out a framed portrait.
“Oh, my God!”
Frey was terrified. He put it face down on the bed.
Adam looked at him, still smiling quizzically, and walked across the room to pick it up.
“What?” He lifted it up.
“I know her,” Frey thought of saying. Or: “She comes to me.” But telling this to even Adam made it unreal.
Adam showed the Indian painting of the goddess with four arms, sitting on a swan, playing a lute of some type.
“This is Saraswati. She is the wife, or the feminine part of Brahma the Hindu Creator God, and she is the Goddess of Creative expression, of Art. See, this book in her hand is for scholarship, and the veena—that’s the lute—is for musicians, and the rosary is for prayer and meditation. This water is purification. Purification of intentions I suppose. I thought you would like her.”
“I do,” Frey said. “Only, have you ever received something so right that it shook you in its appropriateness? Well, that’s this, you see?”
Adam, from behind his tinted glasses looked at Frey as if he knew there was something more to it, but he simply nodded his head and said, “Yes. I see.”
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
E I G H T
“We pretend to be wild, pretend to be free, hurt each other and ourselves, and no one gets any wiser.”
- Isaiah Frey
After the last message, Isaiah Frey realized he had been gone far too long without giving an account of himself. Rob was at work. He sat down at the table in the kitchen and wrote:
This is the true beauty. It isn’t the common beauty. There is no common beauty. Not anymore. I left to get my eyes back. You know people are always offering to take our eyes away. I had forgotten how to see a thing. They offer us their own vision so we forget how to see. Then you have to get out. You have to stop seeing so you can see again. You have to stop tasting so you can learn what taste is. You’ve got to get your ass out into God’s own country. That’s a country of loneliness and silence. That’s the country of two women: the Goddess of the Land, and the Goddess of the Water, lying together. And those Goddesses, gentle and rough all at once, tell you under the starlight: Now, you look here. I’m going to teach you what it is to be a man. And being a man isn’t conquering. Being a man is standing in awe, and lying under the stars, letting the beauty of the earth unmake you.”
I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re well. I hope you are letting your clay get wet. I hope you’re letting the beauty of things undo you. Don’t be too finished. Let yourself get unfinished. Let yourself be undone. Remember what Jack Kerouac said. I never had much time for that silly white man, but he heard the Word of God on a mountain. In the beginning was the Word, and Word was Wow. Wow is the Word of praise, and the Word that shows you are alive. So be alive.
Love,
Frey
“What the fuck?” Javon muttered, and put down the letter in something between amazement and disgust.
“What now?” said DJ.
Javon handed the letter to the white boy who was, he guessed, his cousin.
“Read this shit.”
The brown haired round faced boy sat back in the chair beside Javon, reading, stretching his long legs out, and while he read the message, his face screwed up and he said, “Well, it is beautiful.”
“But tells us absolutely nothing,” Javon said.
“Uncle Isaiah gets up two weeks ago—”
“Almost three.”
“Almost three,” Javon said, “Catches a train and disappears, and whenever the hell we ask him what’s going on, we get these crazy ass messages that are poetry.”
“Or landscapes.”
“Or bullshit,” Javon stood up.
“That’s it,” he said. “There’s one thing we do know. He told us where he is. He told us the address of the house. Let’s get the hell up and go there.”
“Now?” DJ said while his cousin’s back retreated, and then he saw Javon going up the back stair.
“Now,” DJ realized as Javon departed.
“Did we tell anyone we left?” DJ wondered as they zoomed down the country road.
“I am nineteen. You are seventeen. It is summer. No one asked, and no one cares,” Javon said. “Do you have that joint rolled yet?”
“I….” DJ frowned as the paper slid from his fingers, “am not good at this as you are.”
“Well, unfortunately, you aren’t as good at driving as I am either,” Javon said as the Jeep rumbled over the road. “So you’re on joint duty. You know what. Never mind, I didn’t want it that bad. But you can at least put on some music.”
This was the way it had always been between them. DJ, who had no trouble being assertive in the rest of his life, was content to be told what to do by his cousin, and his tall, golden colored cousin of bright eyes, thin bones, and small beard, was content to tell him. Once Isaiah had said, “You know you’re a bit bossy,” but Javon, who had just now jumped into his mother Sharon’s car, taken his best friend ala cousin, a bag of clothes and a bag of weed to find his uncle whom he was sure was being ridiculous, had never seen it this way.
It's the same story the crow told me; it's the only one he knows.
Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go.
Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait,
Wo, oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?
“This good?” DJ said.
I live in a silver mine and I call it beggar's tomb;
I got me a violin and I beg you call the tune,
Anybody's choice, I can hear your voice.
Wo, oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?
Javon hated The Grateful Dead. He hated Phish, that sounded like The Grateful Dead. He hated The Mamas and the Papas. He hated all that white shit.
“It’s fine,” he told DJ neutrally.
As far as Javon was concerned, the fact that he had not said, “Turn that shit off,” was a sign that he was not bossy. That he was full of care and concern for his cousin.
“I was thinking,” DJ said.
“Uh,” Javon said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“When we find Dad, do we have to stay with Dad?”
“What else would we do?”
“Get a hotel room. As long as we’re traveling.”
Javon was quiet, chewing his gum. He nodded.
“You got money? Cause I didn’t bring money for that.”
“I got money,” DJ said.
“K,” Javon said. “If you get on your phone and find a cheap one, we’ll go.”
DJ shrugged, got on his phone, and they kept driving.
“We pretend to be wild, pretend to be free, hurt each other and ourselves, and no one gets any wiser.”
- Isaiah Frey
After the last message, Isaiah Frey realized he had been gone far too long without giving an account of himself. Rob was at work. He sat down at the table in the kitchen and wrote:
This is the true beauty. It isn’t the common beauty. There is no common beauty. Not anymore. I left to get my eyes back. You know people are always offering to take our eyes away. I had forgotten how to see a thing. They offer us their own vision so we forget how to see. Then you have to get out. You have to stop seeing so you can see again. You have to stop tasting so you can learn what taste is. You’ve got to get your ass out into God’s own country. That’s a country of loneliness and silence. That’s the country of two women: the Goddess of the Land, and the Goddess of the Water, lying together. And those Goddesses, gentle and rough all at once, tell you under the starlight: Now, you look here. I’m going to teach you what it is to be a man. And being a man isn’t conquering. Being a man is standing in awe, and lying under the stars, letting the beauty of the earth unmake you.”
I hope you’re happy. I hope you’re well. I hope you are letting your clay get wet. I hope you’re letting the beauty of things undo you. Don’t be too finished. Let yourself get unfinished. Let yourself be undone. Remember what Jack Kerouac said. I never had much time for that silly white man, but he heard the Word of God on a mountain. In the beginning was the Word, and Word was Wow. Wow is the Word of praise, and the Word that shows you are alive. So be alive.
Love,
Frey
“What the fuck?” Javon muttered, and put down the letter in something between amazement and disgust.
“What now?” said DJ.
Javon handed the letter to the white boy who was, he guessed, his cousin.
“Read this shit.”
The brown haired round faced boy sat back in the chair beside Javon, reading, stretching his long legs out, and while he read the message, his face screwed up and he said, “Well, it is beautiful.”
“But tells us absolutely nothing,” Javon said.
“Uncle Isaiah gets up two weeks ago—”
“Almost three.”
“Almost three,” Javon said, “Catches a train and disappears, and whenever the hell we ask him what’s going on, we get these crazy ass messages that are poetry.”
“Or landscapes.”
“Or bullshit,” Javon stood up.
“That’s it,” he said. “There’s one thing we do know. He told us where he is. He told us the address of the house. Let’s get the hell up and go there.”
“Now?” DJ said while his cousin’s back retreated, and then he saw Javon going up the back stair.
“Now,” DJ realized as Javon departed.
“Did we tell anyone we left?” DJ wondered as they zoomed down the country road.
“I am nineteen. You are seventeen. It is summer. No one asked, and no one cares,” Javon said. “Do you have that joint rolled yet?”
“I….” DJ frowned as the paper slid from his fingers, “am not good at this as you are.”
“Well, unfortunately, you aren’t as good at driving as I am either,” Javon said as the Jeep rumbled over the road. “So you’re on joint duty. You know what. Never mind, I didn’t want it that bad. But you can at least put on some music.”
This was the way it had always been between them. DJ, who had no trouble being assertive in the rest of his life, was content to be told what to do by his cousin, and his tall, golden colored cousin of bright eyes, thin bones, and small beard, was content to tell him. Once Isaiah had said, “You know you’re a bit bossy,” but Javon, who had just now jumped into his mother Sharon’s car, taken his best friend ala cousin, a bag of clothes and a bag of weed to find his uncle whom he was sure was being ridiculous, had never seen it this way.
It's the same story the crow told me; it's the only one he knows.
Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go.
Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait,
Wo, oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?
“This good?” DJ said.
I live in a silver mine and I call it beggar's tomb;
I got me a violin and I beg you call the tune,
Anybody's choice, I can hear your voice.
Wo, oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?
Javon hated The Grateful Dead. He hated Phish, that sounded like The Grateful Dead. He hated The Mamas and the Papas. He hated all that white shit.
“It’s fine,” he told DJ neutrally.
As far as Javon was concerned, the fact that he had not said, “Turn that shit off,” was a sign that he was not bossy. That he was full of care and concern for his cousin.
“I was thinking,” DJ said.
“Uh,” Javon said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“When we find Dad, do we have to stay with Dad?”
“What else would we do?”
“Get a hotel room. As long as we’re traveling.”
Javon was quiet, chewing his gum. He nodded.
“You got money? Cause I didn’t bring money for that.”
“I got money,” DJ said.
“K,” Javon said. “If you get on your phone and find a cheap one, we’ll go.”
DJ shrugged, got on his phone, and they kept driving.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am confused, are DJ and Javon Frey's children or is he their uncle? I think he is their uncle but the last bit makes me question that. Interesting new portion anyway I just wondered. Its good to see that some of Frey's relations care enough to look for him. Great writing and I look forward to more!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I could explain, but it's already explained, you've just forgotten. So keep reading until it's clear again. If you can't remember, in a few pages you will.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I think I get it re-reading now. DJ is Frey's kid and Javon is his nephew. Hopefully I have got it right now lol.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
EDEN: THE WEEKEND PORTION
“I’ll answer it,” Rob said.
“What?” Frey called from the backyard.
“I’ll answer it?’
“What?’
“Nevermind,” Rob bellowed, and left the kitchen with the open sliding door and came through the little hall into the living room and opened it. There were too teenagers standing there, the skinny black one in front of the white one, and when Rob blinked at them and said, “Hello,” the black one, actually he was light golden more than brown said, “I’m Javon. This is DJ. Do we have the right place? We’re looking for my uncle Isaiah.”
And still, Rob found himself standing their stupidly before he said, “Well, yes. Frey… Isaiah is out back.. Come on in.”
“Nice house,” Javon said, entering and looking around at the living room. “Is it yours?’
“No,” Rob said. “No. I just… I’m just visiting. I’m Rob.’
He held out his hand. DJ took it first and then Javon, and Javon said, “At the cost of sounding redundant, Javon and DJ.”
“He’s in the backyard,” Rob said, pointing down the hall ot the kitchen. “Follow me.”
Out in the yard, Frey was on his back, his feet stretched under a tree, and when Javon and DJ came out, at first he didn’t notice them. He was wearing a fedora over his shaven head and holding a cigarette, and suddenly he turned around and blinked several times before saying, “What are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you too,” DJ said, falling down beside Frey, and wrapping his arms about him.
“Well,” Frey said, despite the fact that he was fiercely hugging the young man and kissing him on both cheeks, “What’s the point in getting away if you can be found so easily?”
“Everyone’s been wondering about you,” Javon said, crossing his arms over his chest. You just took off.”
“Well, let’s not talk about all that unpleasantness,” Frey said. “You all are staying. We…” he turned to Rob… “have got extra rooms.”
“We actually decided to stay in a hotel,” Javon said. “Or DJ found one and he can afford one so, swimming poools and a view of the lake sound good.”
“You dorve all this way—”
“You know it was only a little over an hour.”
“That’s still some way,” Frey said, “and you drove all this way just to scold me and then turn around.”
“We’re not turning around,” DJ said. “We are staying here. We’re just not sleeping here. I already made the reservations at the hotel,”
“But you can eat here,” Isaiah said, then Rob said, “What about a decent restaurant? In town? The one I was going to say we should go to before we ended up at that honky tonk again.”
“If I had known,” Isaiah said, “that this was the alternative to the honky tonk, I’m not sure I would have gone to the honky tonk.”
“Ah,” Rob said, as they were led to their seats, “but lots happened that night that couldn’t have happened if we’d gone here.”
“True,” was all Isaiah said, and as his cheeks heated and he tried not to grin and Rob grinning at him, he hoped the teenagers could not pick up any implication. Certainly Javon and DJ could not read his mind and see in it, sex in the bed of a truck under the stars, or understand what stirred Isaiah and made him long for it again.
…Javon sat across from his uncle. This Rob seemed not much older than him, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. How did Isaiah manage to do it? Wherever he went he found a man, and this, surely was his man.
“…And then, you know, we were bored and needed something to do,” DJ was saying.
“The truth is,” said Javon, “there isn’t much fun in town without Isaiah.”
“When are you coming home, anyway?” DJ said.
Rob turned to him, “That is a fair question.”
“Uh… I…” Frey furrowed his brow. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I had planned to be holed in silence and get away from my life. Not meet people, not meet Rob, specifically, and have a whole different life. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
Javon shrugged and said, “Maybe you should.”
He sort of wanted to hit his nephew, but he also had to admit that Javon was right.
Late that night, Isaiah Frey thought of making another pot off coffee, but simply used the remains of that last pot and poured it into two cups. He mixed the cream and sugar until it fissed. This was the first of the humid nights. It had been cold. That change in weather, he supposed, was why his sickness had come. This new humidty melted the heavy places in his nostrils and behind his head. He came into the backyard, where he could hear the train passing and Rob was sitting in that direction, looking at the hedge, and watching the thin clouds pass over the stars.
“You look like a forlorn hound,” Isaiah said as he sat down in the lounge chair beside Rob’s and put the mug of coffee into his huge hands.
“The coffee should make me hotter,” Rob said, taking the mug up and sipping, “But I still always want coffee late at night.”
“It’s almost like you ignored what I said,” Frey noted, putting the coffee cup down on the little tray between them.
“What are we doing?” Rob said.
“Frey thought of being facetious and saying, drinking coffee, but instead he said nothing, and let Rob keep talking.
“What are you going to do?” he said. “You’re going to have to go back to town, go back and work. What happens when you leave?”
Frey was thinking of what would happen when they went back in, when they showered off the restaurant and his nephew and his foster son, who thankfully were not staying. Frey was thinking of when they returned to the bedroom and slept. He was thinking of the good things of life, the coolness of the air conditioner, the smell of delicious food from the restaurant, his nephew and his son around him, Rob pressed against him, nothing separating their skins, the adventures in love they made every night.
“I haven’t allowed myself to think very far,” Frey said, “Because nothing has ever led very far, not in a long time. And so I take things for what they are in the moment. I loved the moment. I wasn’t thinking of the future at all. I can’t trust many men to want much of a future.
“The Bible is right. Men really are like grass and the flower of the field. And they want. They have lusts. They want to fuck, but they want to be loved. They want so much, but they don’t know how to get it and they want it like impulses, little electric shocks and when the shocks pass through, they don’t have the energy for the stuff that matters.
“Men don’t have desires. Not really. Desire is deep. Desire persist. It turns into strength then turns into will. You need something that carries you past the moment of your erection, or the moment of your depression for that matter. Most men don’t have it. So it doesn’t do to make plans for them.”
“Are you saying that about me?” Rob turned to him.
“No,” Frey said. “That has never been you. But it wasn’t a lot of men, and so I started to count on them, and then… they weren’t worth counting on.”
Rob touched Isaiah’s hand. He ran his finger along the lines of his fingers as if he were tracing them, but he let them go before he spoke.
“I’ve had sex with a lot of people.”
Isaiah did not look at him, and Rob continued.
“Once, I met a man. I brought him home. We smoked pot and drank bourbon and he fucked me in my ass so hard I could feel it for three days. I don’t speak to him and don’t wish to. There was no conversation he had to offer. But he meant everything. The night he fucked me it was everything. And it was all that it could be.
“I,” Rob said, picking up his coffee cup, “Get what it means to take everything of everything you get from a guy and not count on tomorrow. I completely fucking get that. One night, online, I said I wanted to fuck faceless and nameless in the dark, and I needed to fuck faceless and nameless in the dark and you must have too. So we did, and we were that to each other. And we’ve been more than that, but what we will be, we haven’t decided that, Frey. I haven’t properly asked.
“But for me, sitting here with you is everything, and every time we fuck it’s everything. When we had sex under the the stars in that truck it was everything, and when I brought you medicine and watched over you, that was everything.”
Frey had not spoken, and still he did not speak, and though above them the sherbet colored lights were haloed by moths, his yard was in darkness.
“When I was younger,” Frey finally said, “when I was with Jason, I wanted a husband, or maybe I wanted to be a wife. Since then I’ve known love in a lot of different ways, and the men who want something just like straight people only gay, the same old married thing only in pink,”
Frey shook his head. “I don’t want that. When you try to tie up love and lust in convention, make them look like what people have said they should, then they suffer. So, you have to decide what you want what we’re doing to look like, but don’t come back telling me you want it to look like some shit you’ve seen a thousand times before.”
Rob took his hand in the dark and kissed him.
“Mr. Frey,” he said, “I wouldn’t dare give you the some shit you’ve seen a thousand times before.”
“Tomorrow we should go to the beach,” DJ decided from the bathroom.
In his bed, Javon turned a little so he could look out of the balcony windows to the highway and said, “We could do that. We’ll also go see Isaiah and that new friend of his.”
“I like Rob,” DJ was saying, “and I admire Dad’s ability to always find a friend.”
“Find a friend!” Javon barked out a laugh.
As the bathroom door came open, DJ stepped out, his brown hair sticking up still wet from the shower, a white towel wrapped about his waist. He sat on the other twin bed, and put on deodorant and then reached for the nightstand and began combing his hair.
“Can you imagine if we could afford to stay on the beach?”
“I think homeless people afford it every night.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“And with no effort,” Javon shrugged, then said, “Can you imagine how much those fucking beach houses cost? Palaces!” Javon declared. “Every one.”
“But we can afford to go to the beach, to Dune Park, at least.”
“This is the strangest town,” Javon said. “On the beach these huge palaces and then, once you cross to the other side of the train tracks, literally on the other side of the train tracks, a regular little almsot hillbilly town.”
“Maybe the downtown is where it all makes sense.”
Javon had turned out his lamp light and removed the too heavy comforter from his bed so he lay on his back feeling the cool air from the vents, and listening to DJ who sat in the dim glow of his bedside lamp.
` “You know what I was thinking?” DJ said.
“I feel like you’re about to tell me.”
“You’re right,” his cousin said. “We could go prowling at night. We could go to the beach at night.”
“And I could be a Black eighteen year old male around really expensive houses in a not very progressive state and be arrested.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m always thinking of that,” Javon said, his eyes closed. He yawned. “Are you done now?”
“Yes, Javon,” DJ said, almost penitently.
“Then let’s go to bed.”
Without shutting off the light, because he knew Javon wanted to see him, he stood up, unwound his towel, and naked, came into bed with his cousin, reaching behind him to turn off the light as they lay together in the darkness
“I’ll answer it,” Rob said.
“What?” Frey called from the backyard.
“I’ll answer it?’
“What?’
“Nevermind,” Rob bellowed, and left the kitchen with the open sliding door and came through the little hall into the living room and opened it. There were too teenagers standing there, the skinny black one in front of the white one, and when Rob blinked at them and said, “Hello,” the black one, actually he was light golden more than brown said, “I’m Javon. This is DJ. Do we have the right place? We’re looking for my uncle Isaiah.”
And still, Rob found himself standing their stupidly before he said, “Well, yes. Frey… Isaiah is out back.. Come on in.”
“Nice house,” Javon said, entering and looking around at the living room. “Is it yours?’
“No,” Rob said. “No. I just… I’m just visiting. I’m Rob.’
He held out his hand. DJ took it first and then Javon, and Javon said, “At the cost of sounding redundant, Javon and DJ.”
“He’s in the backyard,” Rob said, pointing down the hall ot the kitchen. “Follow me.”
Out in the yard, Frey was on his back, his feet stretched under a tree, and when Javon and DJ came out, at first he didn’t notice them. He was wearing a fedora over his shaven head and holding a cigarette, and suddenly he turned around and blinked several times before saying, “What are you doing here?”
“It’s good to see you too,” DJ said, falling down beside Frey, and wrapping his arms about him.
“Well,” Frey said, despite the fact that he was fiercely hugging the young man and kissing him on both cheeks, “What’s the point in getting away if you can be found so easily?”
“Everyone’s been wondering about you,” Javon said, crossing his arms over his chest. You just took off.”
“Well, let’s not talk about all that unpleasantness,” Frey said. “You all are staying. We…” he turned to Rob… “have got extra rooms.”
“We actually decided to stay in a hotel,” Javon said. “Or DJ found one and he can afford one so, swimming poools and a view of the lake sound good.”
“You dorve all this way—”
“You know it was only a little over an hour.”
“That’s still some way,” Frey said, “and you drove all this way just to scold me and then turn around.”
“We’re not turning around,” DJ said. “We are staying here. We’re just not sleeping here. I already made the reservations at the hotel,”
“But you can eat here,” Isaiah said, then Rob said, “What about a decent restaurant? In town? The one I was going to say we should go to before we ended up at that honky tonk again.”
“If I had known,” Isaiah said, “that this was the alternative to the honky tonk, I’m not sure I would have gone to the honky tonk.”
“Ah,” Rob said, as they were led to their seats, “but lots happened that night that couldn’t have happened if we’d gone here.”
“True,” was all Isaiah said, and as his cheeks heated and he tried not to grin and Rob grinning at him, he hoped the teenagers could not pick up any implication. Certainly Javon and DJ could not read his mind and see in it, sex in the bed of a truck under the stars, or understand what stirred Isaiah and made him long for it again.
…Javon sat across from his uncle. This Rob seemed not much older than him, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. How did Isaiah manage to do it? Wherever he went he found a man, and this, surely was his man.
“…And then, you know, we were bored and needed something to do,” DJ was saying.
“The truth is,” said Javon, “there isn’t much fun in town without Isaiah.”
“When are you coming home, anyway?” DJ said.
Rob turned to him, “That is a fair question.”
“Uh… I…” Frey furrowed his brow. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I mean, I had planned to be holed in silence and get away from my life. Not meet people, not meet Rob, specifically, and have a whole different life. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
Javon shrugged and said, “Maybe you should.”
He sort of wanted to hit his nephew, but he also had to admit that Javon was right.
Late that night, Isaiah Frey thought of making another pot off coffee, but simply used the remains of that last pot and poured it into two cups. He mixed the cream and sugar until it fissed. This was the first of the humid nights. It had been cold. That change in weather, he supposed, was why his sickness had come. This new humidty melted the heavy places in his nostrils and behind his head. He came into the backyard, where he could hear the train passing and Rob was sitting in that direction, looking at the hedge, and watching the thin clouds pass over the stars.
“You look like a forlorn hound,” Isaiah said as he sat down in the lounge chair beside Rob’s and put the mug of coffee into his huge hands.
“The coffee should make me hotter,” Rob said, taking the mug up and sipping, “But I still always want coffee late at night.”
“It’s almost like you ignored what I said,” Frey noted, putting the coffee cup down on the little tray between them.
“What are we doing?” Rob said.
“Frey thought of being facetious and saying, drinking coffee, but instead he said nothing, and let Rob keep talking.
“What are you going to do?” he said. “You’re going to have to go back to town, go back and work. What happens when you leave?”
Frey was thinking of what would happen when they went back in, when they showered off the restaurant and his nephew and his foster son, who thankfully were not staying. Frey was thinking of when they returned to the bedroom and slept. He was thinking of the good things of life, the coolness of the air conditioner, the smell of delicious food from the restaurant, his nephew and his son around him, Rob pressed against him, nothing separating their skins, the adventures in love they made every night.
“I haven’t allowed myself to think very far,” Frey said, “Because nothing has ever led very far, not in a long time. And so I take things for what they are in the moment. I loved the moment. I wasn’t thinking of the future at all. I can’t trust many men to want much of a future.
“The Bible is right. Men really are like grass and the flower of the field. And they want. They have lusts. They want to fuck, but they want to be loved. They want so much, but they don’t know how to get it and they want it like impulses, little electric shocks and when the shocks pass through, they don’t have the energy for the stuff that matters.
“Men don’t have desires. Not really. Desire is deep. Desire persist. It turns into strength then turns into will. You need something that carries you past the moment of your erection, or the moment of your depression for that matter. Most men don’t have it. So it doesn’t do to make plans for them.”
“Are you saying that about me?” Rob turned to him.
“No,” Frey said. “That has never been you. But it wasn’t a lot of men, and so I started to count on them, and then… they weren’t worth counting on.”
Rob touched Isaiah’s hand. He ran his finger along the lines of his fingers as if he were tracing them, but he let them go before he spoke.
“I’ve had sex with a lot of people.”
Isaiah did not look at him, and Rob continued.
“Once, I met a man. I brought him home. We smoked pot and drank bourbon and he fucked me in my ass so hard I could feel it for three days. I don’t speak to him and don’t wish to. There was no conversation he had to offer. But he meant everything. The night he fucked me it was everything. And it was all that it could be.
“I,” Rob said, picking up his coffee cup, “Get what it means to take everything of everything you get from a guy and not count on tomorrow. I completely fucking get that. One night, online, I said I wanted to fuck faceless and nameless in the dark, and I needed to fuck faceless and nameless in the dark and you must have too. So we did, and we were that to each other. And we’ve been more than that, but what we will be, we haven’t decided that, Frey. I haven’t properly asked.
“But for me, sitting here with you is everything, and every time we fuck it’s everything. When we had sex under the the stars in that truck it was everything, and when I brought you medicine and watched over you, that was everything.”
Frey had not spoken, and still he did not speak, and though above them the sherbet colored lights were haloed by moths, his yard was in darkness.
“When I was younger,” Frey finally said, “when I was with Jason, I wanted a husband, or maybe I wanted to be a wife. Since then I’ve known love in a lot of different ways, and the men who want something just like straight people only gay, the same old married thing only in pink,”
Frey shook his head. “I don’t want that. When you try to tie up love and lust in convention, make them look like what people have said they should, then they suffer. So, you have to decide what you want what we’re doing to look like, but don’t come back telling me you want it to look like some shit you’ve seen a thousand times before.”
Rob took his hand in the dark and kissed him.
“Mr. Frey,” he said, “I wouldn’t dare give you the some shit you’ve seen a thousand times before.”
“Tomorrow we should go to the beach,” DJ decided from the bathroom.
In his bed, Javon turned a little so he could look out of the balcony windows to the highway and said, “We could do that. We’ll also go see Isaiah and that new friend of his.”
“I like Rob,” DJ was saying, “and I admire Dad’s ability to always find a friend.”
“Find a friend!” Javon barked out a laugh.
As the bathroom door came open, DJ stepped out, his brown hair sticking up still wet from the shower, a white towel wrapped about his waist. He sat on the other twin bed, and put on deodorant and then reached for the nightstand and began combing his hair.
“Can you imagine if we could afford to stay on the beach?”
“I think homeless people afford it every night.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“And with no effort,” Javon shrugged, then said, “Can you imagine how much those fucking beach houses cost? Palaces!” Javon declared. “Every one.”
“But we can afford to go to the beach, to Dune Park, at least.”
“This is the strangest town,” Javon said. “On the beach these huge palaces and then, once you cross to the other side of the train tracks, literally on the other side of the train tracks, a regular little almsot hillbilly town.”
“Maybe the downtown is where it all makes sense.”
Javon had turned out his lamp light and removed the too heavy comforter from his bed so he lay on his back feeling the cool air from the vents, and listening to DJ who sat in the dim glow of his bedside lamp.
` “You know what I was thinking?” DJ said.
“I feel like you’re about to tell me.”
“You’re right,” his cousin said. “We could go prowling at night. We could go to the beach at night.”
“And I could be a Black eighteen year old male around really expensive houses in a not very progressive state and be arrested.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m always thinking of that,” Javon said, his eyes closed. He yawned. “Are you done now?”
“Yes, Javon,” DJ said, almost penitently.
“Then let’s go to bed.”
Without shutting off the light, because he knew Javon wanted to see him, he stood up, unwound his towel, and naked, came into bed with his cousin, reaching behind him to turn off the light as they lay together in the darkness
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I enjoyed this weekend portion! I understand who is related to who in which ways now. I get DJ and Javon's point that Frey was running away from his life and all but I think he is building a good life with Rob now. It will be interesting to read whatever happens next. Great writing and I look forward to reading more in a few days! I hope you are having a good night.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, you know, young people have their points of view about what their elders are doing, and they aren't really too concerned with Frey's point of view. He doesn't seem terribly concerned with theirs, and after all, he did just get up and leave for a while. As things continue we'll see more of DJ's side, but that is all for now and there will be more on Saturday night. I'm glad you enjoyed. Have a great couple of days.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER EIGHT
CONCLUSION
In the middle of the night, Pat shakes Josh by the shoulder.
“What?” Josh says, half asleep.
“Are you asleep?” Pat says unnecessarily. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“You went to sleep before I did.”
“And then I lay awake for the last half hour. Let’s go to the beach. The moon is out a little. “Let’s go to the beach.”
They lay side by side in the dark and Rob said, “Whither thou goest, I will goest.”
“What’s that, Ruth?”
“Whither thou goest I will goest.” Rob said. “My grandma, the one who had the farm, she was a Baptist and she knew the Bible forward and backward. She used to quote all sorts of shit from it, and she said when she married my grandfather that’s what she told him.”
Rob turned over on his side and told Frey, “So, whither thou goest, I will goest.”
Frey turned to him and Rob said, “I had a really educated boyfriend, well, not a boyfriend. He didn’t last. He was always trying to change me. He said, “You’d do real good in college. You should go to college.”
Frey blinked but said nothing.
“Well, you’re real educated, sir, what are you going to tell me?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Frey said.
“You don’t think I could do college?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Rob turned on his back and said, sighing, “I’ve been twice. I try to get into it, and that sounds dumb. I’m twenty-seven talking about, getting into it, like it’s a book or a tv show. But it’s not not me. And I like to read. Or at least I like to read some things, but college just passed me by.”
“I always loved it,” Frey said. “College. Education. I remember, I had this shitty job in a department store, the very last time I wore a suit, and I remember this Vietnamese woman saying, ‘You’re going to college, right?’ and I said yeah. And she made me promise ot get my education. And I loved it. It opened a door to me.”
“But you did it right.”
“Maybe,” Frey said. “I know a lot of people did it wrong. I just loved it so much. But now so many people I know who are really smart and capable didn’t do it, can’t really do it, and so many people who are sort of stupid seem to breeze right rhough it, so, something’s wrong. A lot is wrong, really. Everybody wants really easy answers to so much, and so much is wrong. It’s like… we ought to be thinking more than ever, and we don’t know how to do it.”
“Where are we going to go?” Rob said. “What are we going to do? I know you’re right. I don’t want the same thing. I want us to do something that hasn’t been done before. I want us to be people who haven’t walked this earth already. I…Do you live in a gay neighborhood?”
“No,” Frey looked disgusted.
“Good, cause that’s just another ghetto. That’s just a big closet. I… hate gay men. I really do. I wish I didn’t but they are so awful. They like being ashamed Maybe I like it too. You can do so much when you think you’re doing it in the dark and it’ll never come out in the light of day. We always blame everyone else for being homophobic. But that isn’t right. We’re homophobic.”
“People aren’t free. Not really. People don’t even want to be free. They bust out. They wild out. They do little bitty things, sometimes huge crazy things. Then they go back into their shells, because the change is too much. So we pretend to be wild, pretend to be free, hurt each other and ourselves, and no one gets any wiser.”
HE GAVE IN BECAUSE he always gave in, no matter what DJ said. It was far too late to go back and wake up Isaiah and there was nothing happening in this town. Maybe one part of it was a regular old hole, and the other part was luxury, but it all went to sleep at around eleven. It was too much quiet. Heavy and oppressive like no quiet he had known. They parked on the street nearest the beach and kept walking.
It was almost a relief to come to the breakers and the breeze of the shore, noise and life after the lack of both and the lonely drive. They walked on the high grassy hills that rose like cliffs over the beach and now and again, Javon caught DJ’s hand as one or the other began to slip. We should go to Chicago, Javon thought. It wasn’t that far away. Honestly, it wasn’t that close either, but there was always something to do there Hell, even in South Bend there was always something to do. The nothingness of this place was entirely too much, and Javon couldn’t understand what pleasure his uncle had in it.
But even as he was thinking this, he heard a cry, and DJ had heard it first and was rushing, heedless as ever to the side of the sand cliff. As he neared it. DJ suddenly hit the ground, lying flat on his stomach and looked over the grass, kicking off his sandals. Javon joined him.
He didn’t ask what DJ was looking at. Beneath them, under the cliff, they could see two boys, two guys their age, and one was blowing the other. Javon watched, dry mouthed, and the boy with the black hair, or brown hair, leaning against the cliff, pulled up his tee shirt and put his hands in the curly hair of the other boy who was blowing him. Javon was getting hard, and as he looked at DJ, suddenly DJ got up and walked away. Javon looked from DJ to the boys down below, but DJ made a gesture. They were going down the hill? What? To get a closer look? What the fuck?
“Fuck,” Javon heard the boy getting sucked moan, and he got up and followed DJ.
The breeze had picked up, and Josh was thinking how there was nothing better than this moment with Pat’s strong hands in his hair and Pat, full and filling up his mouth. Pat thrusting into his mouth, deeper and deeper, gagging him as the waves washed over his legs as the sand made a mud pool for his knees.
Suddenly there was a change in Pat. A stillness, but he hadn’t come. Josh pulled away from Pat. He turned around. Coming down the shore, not quite menacing, but not unmenacing, were two boys? One was Black. How old were they. The white one looked maybe eighteen, and as he was preceding the other. His hands were in his pants and he was massaging his dick.
“Whats up?” DJ said.
Josh was aware that Pat’s dick was still out of his pants. It wasn’t limp now. It was harder than it had ever been, thicker, straight out in the night, and Pat had a sort of… fuck you look on his face.
Pat started to stroke his dick.
“Whaddo you plan on doing with that?” he asked DJ.
Josh looked from one to the other, and then because he didn’t know where else to look, he looked to Javon. Javon looked to him.
Javon came right up to him. He pulled down his shorts. He pushed his cock in Josh’s mouth, and Josh closed his eyes and took it all in.
The white one was what they called sturdy. Dark haired, cute more than hot. He might be muscular but he would never be thin. He would play football, not basketball. That’s what went on in the dim corners of his mind while Josh, face in the water, watched the boy fucking Pat, watched his hands bunch up on Pat’s shoulders, watched thighs bunch like powerful cords as he thrust, thrust, thrust, and his buttocks bunched as he pushed pushed, pushed into Pat and Pat screwing up his face bellowed, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” each time that boy fucked him.
Josh didn’t say anything, he just gripped the sand impotently as it turned to nothing his hands and let out great desperate gasps while the other one fucked him as hard as the white boy fucked Pat Thomas.
Javon Washington had not envisioned any of this when he woke up this morning, but here at whatever the fuck o’clock, Javon was fucking this random white boy and now and again he and DJ watched each other fuck, and the watching made each of them harder, made them thrust more and more and spend themselves on these random boys’ bodies. It was DJ who came first, crying out, almost screaming, shocking himself with the orgasm.
Javon didn’t have any idea about masculinity and topping. He just liked and needed sex. Sometimes. When it was happening it was happening. DJ was the same. Turnabout was fair play. When they were done, they went up to the grassy dune and Javon lay down in it and let himself be fucked. He closed his eyes cause it felt so good, to be out here, in nothingness, with no one, with only the sounds of the waves, distant cars and trucks, a night bird, gulls, and the desperate grunts of sex. He opened his eyes on occasion to see the moonlight on DJ’s white body. He was on his hands and knees, groaning while the skinny boy with the curly red hair drilled him.
When they were done, wordlessly, they parted, Javon, and DJ heading in the other direction from the other two boys. His ass hurt. He could feel that guy in him. He got hard remembering how the boy had grunted and come all over his back, got hard again remembering the tightness of that guy when he had fucked him on the water. Back in the car, he and DJ sat silently, worn out, crushed by sex the way it felt good to be crushed, and then Javon, because he was still hard, because the night was lawless, pulled his dick out of his shorts, and DJ bent down to suck it. As he closed his eyes and rested his hands in DJ’s hair, DJ nursed him like a sucking babe.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
A great conclusion to the chapter. So Pat and Josh met up with Javon and DJ without any of them knowing that they had people in common and had a good time. Interesting and hot. I wonder what will happen next. I guess I will have to wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to the next chapter.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I don't know if they had a "good" time, but they had a time. and something that seemed vital and necessary. I have big feelings about sex and thing it's usually beyond good time bad time. This is why morning afters or even five minute afters are such a mess for a lot of people, but especially gay men. You come looking for a good time, or so you think. But what you get is a revelation, and you may not like what is revealed. If you read the scene again, read it like that.How they fair with the consequences remains to be seen.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I meant really that I hoped they had a good time. Whether it becomes awkward later and there are consequences is what I am interested in in the next portion.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
PART
T H R E E
SOUL
N I N E
“You have to let him be himself. He always comes back.”
- Javon Harrison
“Don’t try to drink,” Pat said. “Just wet your ips. Just let me hold this to your mouth.”
Mr. Hanley did, and Pat brought the cup to his lips, and then letting it down said, “Do you think you’re ready to drink? When you are just let me know. Don’t even try to tell me. You can just blink. Alright?”
There was a sound from Mr. Hanley’s mouth, and Pat nodded and said, “Blink once for yes and twice for no. just like they used to say on TV.”
He had stopped himself from saying, “Just like they used to say in the séances.” Everyone in this room was too close to the world of the dead to make that kind of joke.
They sat together doing nothing, and Mr. Hanley’s daughter said, “Come on Papa. We know you can do it. Open up them eyeballs so we can go home.”
Beside her was a friend she’d brought and she said, “I remember back when I was growing up in the country. We used to have faith meetings all night long, and you know we had one boy, all the bones in hs body were broken, and the doctor said he’d never walk again. But we prayed in the name of Jesus, and he walked straight and tall. So God can do anything.
Maybe God can, Pat thought, but he won’t. Still, it wasn’t his place to say anything. It was only his place to keep bringing ice to Mr Hanley’s lips, keep making him as comfortable as possible. They didn’t understand, or didn’t wish to, that death came to everyone.
Even Lazarus must have died, Pat decided. After Jesus brought him back, he msuth ave died eventually.
“His breathing’s changed,” the woman who came with Mr Hanley’s daughter said. “Things might be getting better.”
“That change of breath is common,” Pat said.
The woman said, “Are you a person of faith?”
Pat would have said, “I’m Catholic”, and this woman would have said it wasn’t the same, because whatever snake handling inbred church she belonged to was real faith. So Pat just said, “Yes.”
“Well, then we just have to believe.”
Pat nodded, and he listened to the changing breath. He wanted them to go, or this woman to go, or more sensible relatives to come, relatives who knew. This change of breath was what the old folks called the death rattle. This was the end. He wanted them to know. He had been the last one at the bed of the dying before. He wanted to be here for Mr Hanley because he had loved the man, because the man had understood him.
Pat had surprised himself by telling Mr Hanley all about losing love and not being sure he would find it again, about thinking he’d had someone and then ruining it and being alone.
“You think that something comes once and its gone, but if you live long enough everything comes back,” Mr. Hanley had said. “So you just have to live long enough.”
Pat stood up and went to the door, and asked a nurse, “Could you call Dr. Everett in here?”
“Is there something wrong?” Mr. Hanley’s daughter said.
“There is something natural,” Pat said, and was surprised he had said it.
He sat by the bed, listening to the wheezing, crackle of breath, and then waiting. He leaned forward. As the door opened and Dr. Everett entered, Pat stood up and nodded.
Dr. Everett bent to check, though he had already looked at his watch. With no sympathy and all precision, Dr. Everett said, “Time of death 12:05 pm.
Life was moving ahead. It was still going on. Rivers were rushing, the wind was blowing, the trees were green. The insects crawled on the ground. Mr. Hanley, who had been talking every day, coughing now and again, who he knew was dying of cancer but seemed full of life, was gone. One day, Pat supposed—no, knew—he would be gone too, and the world would keep on moving. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it.
His eyes burned. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t .The cry had been dried out of him because he couldn’t do it in front of those silly people. Not that he could have done it no matter how silly or not silly they were. It was, after all, his job to watch the dying and not entertain his tears.
He took out his phone and texted, “What are you doing tonight.?”
He waited, and nothing came, and then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled the thing o the filter before checking his messages again.
“I don’t know,” the message came back from Josh.
“I’d like to see you,” Pat texted back.
He did not wait for an answer. He just used his ID card to get back in the building, and then went back to his last hour of work in the hospice.
Sometimes Isaiah had the feel of someone very old, at least as far as Javon was concerned. He had never really known a grandmother, but it was on mornings like this, that Isaiah felt something like one. He was sitting on the sofa, and he had stopped packing. He said, “Do you need to tell me things. Do you need me?’
DJ looked surprised. He blinked. He said, “We always need you. And you’ve been gone. All summer.”
“I’m always gone a little bit of the year,” Frey chided him.
“And you’re going away again,” DJ said, starting to frown. “Aren’t you?”
On the day before he left, before he drove south with that Rob, Isaiah said, “I did leave for a reason.”
“And then we found you and so you’re going even further away.”
“It isn’t like that,” Isaiah said, tenderly And then he said, “Maybe it is, a little bit. “I don’t know. All I know is I’m not ready to return yet, and you don’t need me as much as you think you do. At least, you don’t need me around all the time. I’m not going to stay gone ,but I need to be gone.”
Javon had never known his father, and he had never known relatives outside of a dead grandmother, his mother and his mother’s brother, Isaiah Frey.
“When are you leaving?” DJ said.
“When you let me,” Frey said. “And not until then. And even then, I will return.”
When DJ did not speak, Frey said, “Soon you will be leaving me, anyway. You are seventeen.”
“I might stay in town. I might go to college in town.”
Frey shrugged. “I would be delighted if you did, but…. I am here. I’m here all day. To be what you need me to be.”
“Well, that’s what I need you to be,” DJ said, almost sounding like a child ,aware that he sounded like a child. “I need you to be here.”
“Fine,” Frey said. “Then I need the two of you to go out to McDonalds and get breakfast and get me some cigarettes. And you can be underfoot, just like you always were, but not so underfoot I can’t get work done.”
“When will you leave?” DJ said, turning to go to the door.
“I’m not Jason,” Frey sadi. “I’m not Jason and I don’t come and go and return when I feel like it. I’ll leave tonight.”
When Jason returned with DJ, the school year was about a week under way, and he seemed so oblivious to this, so smiley faced and gee-willickers stupid, that Isaiah wanted to slap him. But Adam had spoken to him before he left and Sharon and Jazmine had weighed in as well. He told DJ, “Go and play with Javon, and I’ve left your homework assignments for what you’ve missed. I told your teacher you’d have it all done by the middle of next week. No. Don’t look at me like that.”
When DJ was gone to the back of the house Isaiah told Jason, “You have two options. Turn over custody of DJ to me right now—I’ve got the paperwork, you can stay a few days to get it notarized—or go and take him with you. Those are your options.”
Jason hemmed and hawwed about it. He really wanted to have his cake and eat it too. Isaiah continued, “And of course I expect you to pay for his schooling, and his clothing, for his upkeep, really, because he is your son who you brought here. But he stays with me. I have the raising of him.”
In the end, Jason realized what had become clear to Isaiah and Melanie long ago. He had no long term parenting skills. And so he agreed, and two days later they sat in a law office by the highway and DJ looked from Jason to Isaiah, then said, “You’re my dad now?”
Isaiah raised an eyebrow and looked at the papers, and then at Jason.
“That would seem to be the way of it.”
DJ was a discreet, sensitive child, and he waited until Jason was gone to ask Isaiah, “Does that mean I can call you Dad?”
And Isaiah said, “If you must.”
And DJ decided that he did.
“Dad, can I stay at Tom’s?”
By then the papers had been signed somewhere around three years, and everyone had always called DJ by the name of Frey. It wasn’t official. It became official the year he began to meet up with Tom. That year, after football, they would jack each other off or blow each other in the equipment room. They were always together. No one dared say anything about it. Faggots were the little fry that no one liked at school who were weak and didn’t fit in. DJ was an altar boy at school masses, and over at Sacred Heart he was second on the football team, filling out. Definitely no one would have said boo to Tom, so what he and DJ did, and if they were together a great deal, was no one else’s business.
“Take your toothbrush and pjs,” Isaiah commanded. “You forgot your pjs last time. And say thank you. I wouldn’t want them thinking we don’t have manners.”
He fell into fatherhood so easily, or motherhood. Often Isaiah caught himself sounding like his mother, and he had said that to DJ. Now that DJ knew Isaiah’s mother, his grandmother he supposed, he agreed.
“Do you need me to drop you off?” Isaiah said, by which he meant, Do you need me to tell Melanie or Sharon to drop you off?
“Yeah,” DJ said. “I’d like that.”
T H R E E
SOUL
N I N E
“You have to let him be himself. He always comes back.”
- Javon Harrison
“Don’t try to drink,” Pat said. “Just wet your ips. Just let me hold this to your mouth.”
Mr. Hanley did, and Pat brought the cup to his lips, and then letting it down said, “Do you think you’re ready to drink? When you are just let me know. Don’t even try to tell me. You can just blink. Alright?”
There was a sound from Mr. Hanley’s mouth, and Pat nodded and said, “Blink once for yes and twice for no. just like they used to say on TV.”
He had stopped himself from saying, “Just like they used to say in the séances.” Everyone in this room was too close to the world of the dead to make that kind of joke.
They sat together doing nothing, and Mr. Hanley’s daughter said, “Come on Papa. We know you can do it. Open up them eyeballs so we can go home.”
Beside her was a friend she’d brought and she said, “I remember back when I was growing up in the country. We used to have faith meetings all night long, and you know we had one boy, all the bones in hs body were broken, and the doctor said he’d never walk again. But we prayed in the name of Jesus, and he walked straight and tall. So God can do anything.
Maybe God can, Pat thought, but he won’t. Still, it wasn’t his place to say anything. It was only his place to keep bringing ice to Mr Hanley’s lips, keep making him as comfortable as possible. They didn’t understand, or didn’t wish to, that death came to everyone.
Even Lazarus must have died, Pat decided. After Jesus brought him back, he msuth ave died eventually.
“His breathing’s changed,” the woman who came with Mr Hanley’s daughter said. “Things might be getting better.”
“That change of breath is common,” Pat said.
The woman said, “Are you a person of faith?”
Pat would have said, “I’m Catholic”, and this woman would have said it wasn’t the same, because whatever snake handling inbred church she belonged to was real faith. So Pat just said, “Yes.”
“Well, then we just have to believe.”
Pat nodded, and he listened to the changing breath. He wanted them to go, or this woman to go, or more sensible relatives to come, relatives who knew. This change of breath was what the old folks called the death rattle. This was the end. He wanted them to know. He had been the last one at the bed of the dying before. He wanted to be here for Mr Hanley because he had loved the man, because the man had understood him.
Pat had surprised himself by telling Mr Hanley all about losing love and not being sure he would find it again, about thinking he’d had someone and then ruining it and being alone.
“You think that something comes once and its gone, but if you live long enough everything comes back,” Mr. Hanley had said. “So you just have to live long enough.”
Pat stood up and went to the door, and asked a nurse, “Could you call Dr. Everett in here?”
“Is there something wrong?” Mr. Hanley’s daughter said.
“There is something natural,” Pat said, and was surprised he had said it.
He sat by the bed, listening to the wheezing, crackle of breath, and then waiting. He leaned forward. As the door opened and Dr. Everett entered, Pat stood up and nodded.
Dr. Everett bent to check, though he had already looked at his watch. With no sympathy and all precision, Dr. Everett said, “Time of death 12:05 pm.
Life was moving ahead. It was still going on. Rivers were rushing, the wind was blowing, the trees were green. The insects crawled on the ground. Mr. Hanley, who had been talking every day, coughing now and again, who he knew was dying of cancer but seemed full of life, was gone. One day, Pat supposed—no, knew—he would be gone too, and the world would keep on moving. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it.
His eyes burned. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t .The cry had been dried out of him because he couldn’t do it in front of those silly people. Not that he could have done it no matter how silly or not silly they were. It was, after all, his job to watch the dying and not entertain his tears.
He took out his phone and texted, “What are you doing tonight.?”
He waited, and nothing came, and then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled the thing o the filter before checking his messages again.
“I don’t know,” the message came back from Josh.
“I’d like to see you,” Pat texted back.
He did not wait for an answer. He just used his ID card to get back in the building, and then went back to his last hour of work in the hospice.
Sometimes Isaiah had the feel of someone very old, at least as far as Javon was concerned. He had never really known a grandmother, but it was on mornings like this, that Isaiah felt something like one. He was sitting on the sofa, and he had stopped packing. He said, “Do you need to tell me things. Do you need me?’
DJ looked surprised. He blinked. He said, “We always need you. And you’ve been gone. All summer.”
“I’m always gone a little bit of the year,” Frey chided him.
“And you’re going away again,” DJ said, starting to frown. “Aren’t you?”
On the day before he left, before he drove south with that Rob, Isaiah said, “I did leave for a reason.”
“And then we found you and so you’re going even further away.”
“It isn’t like that,” Isaiah said, tenderly And then he said, “Maybe it is, a little bit. “I don’t know. All I know is I’m not ready to return yet, and you don’t need me as much as you think you do. At least, you don’t need me around all the time. I’m not going to stay gone ,but I need to be gone.”
Javon had never known his father, and he had never known relatives outside of a dead grandmother, his mother and his mother’s brother, Isaiah Frey.
“When are you leaving?” DJ said.
“When you let me,” Frey said. “And not until then. And even then, I will return.”
When DJ did not speak, Frey said, “Soon you will be leaving me, anyway. You are seventeen.”
“I might stay in town. I might go to college in town.”
Frey shrugged. “I would be delighted if you did, but…. I am here. I’m here all day. To be what you need me to be.”
“Well, that’s what I need you to be,” DJ said, almost sounding like a child ,aware that he sounded like a child. “I need you to be here.”
“Fine,” Frey said. “Then I need the two of you to go out to McDonalds and get breakfast and get me some cigarettes. And you can be underfoot, just like you always were, but not so underfoot I can’t get work done.”
“When will you leave?” DJ said, turning to go to the door.
“I’m not Jason,” Frey sadi. “I’m not Jason and I don’t come and go and return when I feel like it. I’ll leave tonight.”
When Jason returned with DJ, the school year was about a week under way, and he seemed so oblivious to this, so smiley faced and gee-willickers stupid, that Isaiah wanted to slap him. But Adam had spoken to him before he left and Sharon and Jazmine had weighed in as well. He told DJ, “Go and play with Javon, and I’ve left your homework assignments for what you’ve missed. I told your teacher you’d have it all done by the middle of next week. No. Don’t look at me like that.”
When DJ was gone to the back of the house Isaiah told Jason, “You have two options. Turn over custody of DJ to me right now—I’ve got the paperwork, you can stay a few days to get it notarized—or go and take him with you. Those are your options.”
Jason hemmed and hawwed about it. He really wanted to have his cake and eat it too. Isaiah continued, “And of course I expect you to pay for his schooling, and his clothing, for his upkeep, really, because he is your son who you brought here. But he stays with me. I have the raising of him.”
In the end, Jason realized what had become clear to Isaiah and Melanie long ago. He had no long term parenting skills. And so he agreed, and two days later they sat in a law office by the highway and DJ looked from Jason to Isaiah, then said, “You’re my dad now?”
Isaiah raised an eyebrow and looked at the papers, and then at Jason.
“That would seem to be the way of it.”
DJ was a discreet, sensitive child, and he waited until Jason was gone to ask Isaiah, “Does that mean I can call you Dad?”
And Isaiah said, “If you must.”
And DJ decided that he did.
“Dad, can I stay at Tom’s?”
By then the papers had been signed somewhere around three years, and everyone had always called DJ by the name of Frey. It wasn’t official. It became official the year he began to meet up with Tom. That year, after football, they would jack each other off or blow each other in the equipment room. They were always together. No one dared say anything about it. Faggots were the little fry that no one liked at school who were weak and didn’t fit in. DJ was an altar boy at school masses, and over at Sacred Heart he was second on the football team, filling out. Definitely no one would have said boo to Tom, so what he and DJ did, and if they were together a great deal, was no one else’s business.
“Take your toothbrush and pjs,” Isaiah commanded. “You forgot your pjs last time. And say thank you. I wouldn’t want them thinking we don’t have manners.”
He fell into fatherhood so easily, or motherhood. Often Isaiah caught himself sounding like his mother, and he had said that to DJ. Now that DJ knew Isaiah’s mother, his grandmother he supposed, he agreed.
“Do you need me to drop you off?” Isaiah said, by which he meant, Do you need me to tell Melanie or Sharon to drop you off?
“Yeah,” DJ said. “I’d like that.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Excellent start to the chapter. I did not know Pat worked in a hospice. It really adds something to his character. It was nice to read more about who DJ and Javon are to Frey. I hope if Frey does leave that he takes Rob with him and doesn't just disappear. I guess I will have to wait and see about that. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you have had a great weekend! 
