If I Should Fall

[ChrisGibson]

Jill telling her truth and Brad and Nehru exploring certainly was the center of this section.

So often women get talked about, I guess all people do, but women in especial, and Jill got to tell the truth of what happened to her and confront Leon for what he said way back like four chapters ago at the beach about her.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER SEVEN

In the courtyard of Soubirous, Rob watched Cody and Russell, both long haired, smoking cigarettes and murmuring together. They had been fast friends and Cody was going to take Rob home tonight. The two of them, one redheaded, long and tall, the other muscular and compact and brunette, looked strangely complimentary. Rob knew that if he’d gone around the trickling fountain and talked with them they would have welcomed him into whatever conversation they were having, but the conversation seemed intimate now. Russell’s life seemed intimate now. Yes, that was it, in these last few days, Russell had grown up, somehow. Russell had secrets.
Once I had secrets too, Rob thought. Once secrets bloomed in me and exploded like a summer flower. There was a burning life in me then.
“Rob, what’s on your mind?” Anigel asked.
She always startled him, popping up and tearing him from the memory of a bedroom in Paris two years ago, a touch he had craved and feared all at once, and spent the entire flight back to Chicago cursing himself for turning down.
I am still burning with secrets.
What was on his mind in the half hour after Jill had made her speech, is that he hoped she didn’t get killed. He’d been around in this world and a woman humiliating a man could be a dangerous thing. You never even knew which man might crack, but it was generally the weak, and Leon Dixon definitely seemed weak.
But now he came back to himself and Anigel said, “You’ve been staring at that door a while.”
“I think,” Rob considered, “I’m ready to go home. I didn’t want to crash anyone’s good time.”
Anigel slipped him her keys and said, “I’ll come home later with Jill. Sometimes we all need to turn in early.

Rob loved his new friends, but he was almost joyful driving home in the dark, turing back into town and taking the long Reynolds Road until at last, it met Curtain Street.
He was taking off his loafers at the door when Chayne in pajama pants and tee shirt came in from the kitchen.
“I thought you all were out.”
“They were,” Rob said. “I just wanted to sit around and be here.”
“I understand.”
Chayne had wondered if it was Russell, but he knew things were different now. He wasn’t a parent. He didn’t long for childhood for anyone. He had always wanted Russell to grow up and get out of himself. A few days ago when he had sat with Russell having what seemed like their first grown up discussion, he had nodded and shared cigarettes with him while the boy had unfolded how he was becoming a man. He had come to the house with new friends, with that shy and courteous Jason Lorry who treated Chayne like a parent, and Chayne had sensed that things were changing and becoming what they should be.
Rob was unbuttoning his shirt sleeves as he spoke, his beautiful face frowning a little.
“Actually, I don’t think I even wanted to go out at all once I learned you weren’t.”
“That’s very... flattering.”
“No, it’s not,” Rob said. “It’s true.”
“You wanna beer?” Chayne lifted his bottle.
“Yeah,” Rob said. “A beer would be good.”
They didn’t talk about much. It was still mostly warm outside and a faint breeze rattled the pods in the catalpa trees.
“You know,” Chayne said, “I’m glad you came back. This is nice.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t say things like I should,” Chayne said.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m just… very glad.”

There was really no knowing when Anigel would be back or if she would return with Russell. They left one lamp on in the living room and they left the kitchen light on as well. Chayne said goodnight to Rob, and it felt awkward but he couldn’t quite figure why. He felt satisfied though, not itchy as he had, but glad like the night was well spent, and the whole world was embracing him, like he had when he had come back here after being gone out East for so long.
He had drifted to the very coast of sleep, when he lay pleasantly between waking and slumber and a thin light made a thread across the room.
“Russ….” he began, but Russell was no child anymore who would disturb him in the night.
He sat up, reaching for his glasses almost as much to come to mental clarity as to actual vision.
Rob had closed the door, and he stood there only visible by what there was of moonlight, and from what chayne saw, only in his Jockey’s. He hugged himself, looking afraid, his eyes dark pools.
Chayne tried to speak, but could not. Rob stepped forward and stopped, and Chayne’s mouth was dry, but he understood now, and felt foolish, felt like no matter how lively he’d been he;d been half dead before, for even as his mouth dried, the heat in him was rising, and he pulled back the comforter and moved aside, and Rob climbed into the bed and then, pulling the sheets over both of them, they embraced.



TOMORROW NIGHT, THE BOOK OF THE BURNING

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great end to the chapter! I had suspected something might happen between Rob and Chayne and I am happy that it did. Excellent writing and I look forward to The Book Of The Burning tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

EIGHT


REVELATION


But, in truth, had you asked Russell Lewis, who had been half dead for his Freshmen year of high school, died a little more at the beginning of his sophomore one, when one age ended and another began he would tell the story of how he had been on his way to church and had just entered the church when he saw his friend and godfather and protégé, Chayne Kandzierski, returned from out east. Both were lost, though one more lost than the other, and it turns out maybe the whole of Lothrop County was equally lost, but that old world, and his first life ended the night Caroline Balusik gave birth, and everyone around Russell felt it ending. It sparked life in Robert Keyes and brought a smile to Gilead Story. It brought confusion to Russell, but also new life, and he remembered a year ago, when he had first seen this thing, when he had received what he would walk in ever afterward, the gift of a true, hot and sometimes blinding light. Having seen things from Jill and Chayne and Robert Keye's view, we must rewind and tell that story again, and tell it through Russell's eyes.


“So whaddo you think of her?” Ralph Balusik asked Russell, taking a sip from his shake.
“I like her,” Russell said, shrugging. They were in the new Value Burger on Elmhurst Street.
“That’s it,” Ralph put down the shake. “That’s all you can say?”
“Whaddo you want me to say? She’s a great girl. I like her. Vanessa’s really cool. Alright? In fact,” Russell added, sitting back and taking a swig from his Coke, “so cool I was surprised she’d go for someone like you.”
Instead of reaching across the booth to slug him in the arm, Ralph sat back and said, “I know.”
“Hunh?”
Ralph smiled.
“I know, Russell. Van seems a little high class for someone like me. I don’t know what she sees in me.”
“Well,” Russell played the line between funny and honest. “You are on the football team—even if you don’t get that much play, and it is summer. And you’re really not bad looking—”
“You don’t think so?” Ralph looked pleased.
“No,” Russell shook his head. He had always assumed that with the exception of a few ugly ducklings in the sophomore-graduating to junior class of Our Lady of Mercy everyone was more attractive than himself, and that they didn’t have to be told.
“And you’re nice,” Russell went on. “Once you let people see that.”
Ralph grinned and shrugged, sucked noisily from his shake, then looked disconcerted at the noise.
“Sometimes,” Russell said as a station wagon sped down Elmhurst, “do you ever pull away and watch yourself doing stuff and wonder—what the hell am I doing?”
“That’s you Russell. The rest of the world isn’t that deep.”
“I don’t think it’s deep, just that...”
“Just what?” Ralph sat up straight and raised an eyebrow, all ears now.
“Just that I never actually pictured myself sitting in Value Burger, or anywhere else eating lunch with you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” Russell eyed him.
“Aw, com’on, now Russ. I know I gave you a hard time in the past, but—”
“Ralph, all through Freshmen year you spit at me to get myattention—”
“I was a kid.”
“You did it this year too.”
“I’m growing up now.”
“And then you’d call me a faggot.”
Ralph shut up.
“You wrote in my yearbook, Russell Lewis—you’re a fag. And I’m not trying to hold it against you. I’m just saying this is a weird turn of events. You and Jason, doing all the mean shit you two did. The way he would look at me.”
“Well, yeah,” Ralph looked suddenly not so at ease. “Yeah, that was… That was an asshole thing to do. And I’m sorry. I really am.”
“And Jason.”
“You know he didn’t mean it. You….”
“What?” Russell looked at him.
“Whaddo you think of Jason?”
“Jason Lorry?” Russell said unnecessarily, shrugging. “I dunno. He’s alright. He’s not a jerk anymore. He says hi in the hallways.”
Russell didn’t really want to think about Jason Lorry.
“Well, he likes you,” Ralph said. “He always wants to know if you want to hang out with us.”
“That would be… weird.”
“Com’on, Russ.”
“He treated me like shit. Called me a fag, grabbed my ass. Made me feel…. Look, I’m not against him, it’s just, I’m not social and everything, and… All last year was a weird turn of events. The Virgin Mary stunt, getting suspended. Gilead, the party, people pretending to like me... You! It’s all weird,” Russell shook his head.
Ralph laughed. He looked, for a moment, very knowing. There was that old insolence in his hazel eyes.
“You’re really smart, Russell Lewis, but sometimes you’re dense as fuck.”
Now it was Russell’s turn to look incredulous.
“For a guy you don’t know anything about guys,” Ralph went on. “That’s how guys are. Nobody pretends to like you. People like you. You know I like you. You’re my friend.”
“When did you start to like me?” Russell asked. “Was it the party? After the police raided it and me and Gil—”
Ralph, looking very older brotherly, put up an exasperated hand. “Russell, I always liked you. I was just fucking around. Getting your attention I guess.”
“Did it ever occur to you to just say hello—like a natural human being?”
Ralph laughed and then said, “No. But that might be my resolution for junior year. I’ll put it in my Rolodex: act human. It’ll be the second thing I put in my Rolodex.”
There was silence and then, baited, Russell said, “Well, what’ll the first thing be?”
Ralph smiled at his friend, sucked the last of the shake out of the cup and said, “Get a Rolodex.”

Robert Keyes had come to the house before Christmas. He was blond and pale with wrap around shades and pulled them off to reveal sincere blue eyes.
“Sir, I read your stories and I’ve come to be a writer and live in your house.”
Chayne had heard that white people could be ballsy, but he’d never really known this to be true, and this was the ballsiest young man he’d ever met.
“I can pay good rent, and I can cook and clean. I’ve got references—”
But at cook and clean and rent, Chayne had already opened the door. This wouldn’t be the first kid he’d collected and unlike Russell, this one paid rent.
In the backroom that was becoming his library, Anigel Reyes stretched out on the old daybed that had belonged to Chayne Kanzierski’s grandmother, and turned the page of the typing paper as she read Rob’s short story. She heard his footsteps and felt Robert’s shadow looming over her and said, “I can’t read with you hovering over me.”
“I just wanted to know if you were done yet,” Rob, against his will, kept pushing himself up on his toes and clasping and unclasping his hands.
“Not yet, and the funny thing is that the more interruptions I get the longer it takes me to finish.”
Rob Keyes sank down on his heels and sighed and then the doorbell rang. Chayne called, “Somebody make themselves useful!”
Rob went to the door. Anigel had come two months back to visit her brother Bobby and been seen by Russell who brought her to Chayne who liked her and thought she should live here with him and Robert.
“But… I can’t,” she began.
“What else are you doing?” he asked.
And so she had become the third resident on Curtain Street.
Rob was gone a long while and now, in curiosity, Anigel Reyes got up and went to the living room, only to see that Chayne was already there too.
Rob was talking to some grizzled old man he had ushered into the living room.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything? We’ve got lemonade. I think juice—apple juice, Chayne?”
“Yes, Rob, apple—”
“And I went and got some V-8 and we’ve also got—”
“Robert.”
“I’m just trying to be a host, Chayne.”
“Thank, Rob. Can I help, you sir?”
“Do y’know a Thomas Lewis?”
Chayne looked at the old man again. Medium height, white, grizzled, looked like a drunk pulled off the corner of some country town in a 1950’s TV show.
“I know’m,” Chayne said. “You’re at the wrong house. But I know him. I—”
“Just...” said the old man. “If you see him tell’m Arrell’s looking for’im.”
“Arrell?”
“Um,” the old man nodded.
“God bless,” he said, and tipping his hat, walked out of the house, down the steps and down the lane.
Rob’s elven face looked intrigued as he shut the door and he and Anigel followed Chayne into the kitchen.
“Now that—” Rob started.
“I know,” said Chayne, and they both said, “could go in a story.”

When Ralph dropped Russell off and honked three times before speeding away in his mother’s station wagon, Thom Lewis was standing in the yard looking half young, half silly as he watered the lawn in white tee shirt and khaki cargo shorts, a floppy fisherman’s cap on his head to keep away the sun, his legs covered in black hair that Russell had not inherited.
“Y’should have invited Ralph in,” said Thom.
“He had to go home.”
“You got a phone call,” Thom told his son.
“From who? Whom?”
Thom shrugged and knitted his brows. “One of your friends.”
“It’s not like I have raging social life, Dad.” said Russell, heading into the house. “Gilead must be back.”
As Russell entered the house, Patti shouted from the kitchen. “Gilead called. He just got back from Washington.”


“Cousin Chayne!”
“Cousin Gil,” Chayne murmured in the monotone that did not mean he was unhappy to see his little cousin.
“Russell,” Chayne added, as the boy came into the house with Gilead.
“How is Sharonda?”
“Mom’s fine,” Gilead said, walking into the kitchen.
“And Washington?”
“Dirtier than I expected,” Gilead admitted, tilting his head, then sitting down on the couch between Rob, whom he greeted as Russell took the large wing back chair by the picture window and Anigel. “But fun. I think I wanna go back. The National Shrine was something else.”
“The what?” said Rob.
“It’s the really big Catholic church on CUA’s campus,” Anigel said. “One of the ugliest buildings—at least from the outside—that you’ll ever see.”
“What did the inside look like?” Chayne asked Gilead.
“Well the basement has all of these chapels, rows and rows of chapels.”
“In the basement?” interrupted Russell, and Gilead nodded, put Chayne shushed Russell away with a hand and said, “But whaddid it look like Gil? The actual church?”
“Oh, I never saw it,” Gilead said.
“What?”
“I never got around to actually seeing the church proper. I was worn out by the basement.”
“Well did you at least go to the Smithsonian?” Anigel demanded, sounding a little put out.
“Of course.”
“What was it like?” Rob leaned forward. “I went all over Europe, but I never saw our capital.”
“It wasn’t bad,” said Gilead.
“We’ll never make a travel writer out of you,” Chayne muttered. Then he snapped his fingers.
“That’s right!”
“What’s right?” Gilead looked at his cousin.
“This man came by. Grizzled. Old.”
“Whaddid he look like?” Russell asked.
Chayne cocked his head at the boy and repeated, “Grizzled. Old.”
“White?” Gilead suggested.
“Well... Yes. He said he was looking for your father. And his name is Arrell. You know any Arrells?”
Russell stuck out his lips, furrowed his brow and looked amazingly like Thom for a moment. Then the moment was gone.
“No,” said Russell.
“Well,” Chayne shrugged and sipped from his glass.
“Speaking of weird,” Russell said now. “I still can’t believe I’ve been hanging around with Ralph this summer. I mean. I thought he hated me for the last two years and I returned the favor and now....”
“Peace rains at last,” Rob declared.
“I told you,” Gilead said. “It’s like when you’re walking down a street and you see a dog just growling and barking at you. At first you’re a little scared. A little pissed off. Then you hear it whimper and you realize—It’s just trying to talk to you. The damn thing just doesn’t know how to.”
“You’re saying Ralph’s a dog?” Anigel asked Gilead.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Gilead hedged, “but... Sort of.”



MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was good to get back to Russell’s point of view. So much is going on with bullies becoming friends and in some cases admirers. I am really enjoying this story still and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That night Patti felt like cooking. Smothered chops, fresh, bright green beans and baked potatoes with fat yellow pats of butter melting into them and thick sour cream, green onions and bits of crispy bacon. She was glad to have Chayne over and even happier because of the two young people staying with him. Russell had something like a crush on Anigel, a girl who had far more sense than Patti could remember having at her age, and he liked Rob, whom Patti thought of as a healthier big brother figure than her own brother, John.
John had been strange and irascible last Christmas and returned from Russell’s room with a black eye. Neither she nor anyone had asked any questions, but Patti was sure he had earned it. It had taken so long to get Russell feeling right about himself, and then a few minutes with John and he had returned almost in tears and cut most of his hair off. A mother could not pry into her son’s life when he was sixteen, but she was sure he had given John Mc.Larchlahn a black eye for a good reason, and her younger brother had greeted the rest of that Christmas as a quieter, wiser man.
“What have you kids got planned for tonight?” Thom asked.
“Am I a kid?” Chayne asked.
“To me you are.”
“Nice,” Chayne said. “Well, I’m going to be at Jewell’s club with all the old folks, and Russell and Rob are doing… Something?”
“That new movie,” Russell said. “Where the guy gets hacked to death by his wife and son and then comes back as a caterpillar to get revenge on his family.”
“That sounds….. horrible,” Patti said.
“I know, right?” Russell said, brightly.
“And Anigel is going to have her sister over. I think?” Chayne said.
“Yeah,” Anigel said. “Caroline’s big as a house, which is why she says she needs to get out of hers.”
Chayne told Russell, “You forgot to tell your father.”
“Tell your father what?” Thom said while cutting into a chop.
“Oh, yeah,” said Russell. “This guy came to Chayne’s house looking for you. His name was Earl.”
Thom frowned and lifted meet to his mouth.
“I don’t know any Earl.”
“Not Earl,” Chayne said. “Arrell. Like Ar-El.”
Thom stopped cutting and looked up sharply at Chayne, blenching.
“Who?”
“Ar-El,” repeated Chayne, certain this time. “Do you know such a man? He was country as anything....”
Chayne dropped the thread of conversation as Thom’s face paled a little more and his brow beetled.
“Thom,” Patti reached out to touch her husband. “What’s wrong?”
Thom looked vague for a second, and then shook the troubled look away from his face and said, “Nothing, Pat.”
He patted her on the arm and smiled. “Just thinking.”
“Well,” Felice murmured to her cousin. “That was the worst lie I’ve heard in a while. Pass the corn, Cousin Chayne.”


-- Thomas, go down to the cellar!
--I wanna be here with you, Mama!
--Not when your father gets in.
--That’s why I wanna be here! I don’t want you to have to be with him alone.
--And what can you do if your father gets out a’hand? Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with him this long. Now you get! Go! Take Jaclyn with you. Go to the cellar.
--Where;s Kristin?
--I don’t know. Now Go!
--Kathy! KATHLEEN! AHM Home now!
--Go!
--Fix me somethin’, baby! I’m hungry. You ain’t seen your papa for days and you ain’t got nothin ready for him when he comes through the door.
--Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t come through the door!
--Kristin, be quiet! Where’ve you been?
--You dirty mouthed little bitch! I’ll teach you to talk to your daddy that way--
--Leave her alone!
--What are you gonna do? Beat me? You can’t even walk straight across the floor to do it you drunken ole sonovabitch!
--Potty mouthed slut!
--Fat ass drunk. Ow, shit! You fucking bastard!
--LEAVE ‘ER ALONE R.L.!!!

Thom shot up in bed, the scream still vivid in his ears. He was covered in sweat and fear and shame. His heart was beating. It was cool. The air was on at 1735 Breckinridge. There had been no air conditioning back then in that house.
Thom, in his boxers, climbed out of bed. Patti was asleep. It was hard to believe that loud and vivid horror had not leaked out of his mind into the cool darkness of this bedroom. He tipped down the hall to see if Russell was home yet. But his door was open. He stepped into the large bedroom made blue by the moonlight through the open window. Thom sat on the edge of his son’s bed.


Russell Lewis and Rob had been talking animatedly when suddenly Rob and the hearse formerly belonging to Prince Funeral Home and currently the properly of Chayne Kandzierski, stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Russell asked after a while.
Just for ceremony’s sake, Rob turned the key in the ignition again. The engine coughed.
“The car’s dead,” Rob said.
“Well shit,” Russell murmured. “Engine shot?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes the hearse does this. It just stops.”
“Gil’s car does that too. We always pray when that happens. Wait a few seconds and pray.”
So they sat on the desolate stretch of Thompson Street, by the river and not near anything even remotely safe, and Russell chanted over and over again. “Come on, Jesus! Come on Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Jesus. Hit the ignition now, Rob.”
The engine coughed when Rob turned the key.
Jesus was not forthcoming.
“Com’ on, Jesus!” Russell urged, a little miffed at his savior now.
On the fiftieth “Com’on, Jesus,” Rob said, “Maybe we should just walk home.”
“Rob, you don’t even know how unsafe or impractical that is. Com’on, Jesus!” Russell demanded again, but instead of Jesus the lights of the first vehicle they’d seen on this stretch of Thompson Road rolled unsteadily up the gravel. Country music was blaring from the truck, and over it, out of the window, a woman’s voice was screaming,

Ooooooooooooooh!
Ooooooooooo
oooooo
AH!
I’m a happy girl!

Then, as Martina Mc.Bride died down, the girl screamed out into the hot, cricket song filled night:
“I’m a happy girl, goddamnit!”
And the enormous truck stopped beside the… hearse? with the two mystified young men.
It was a tow truck.
The red headed girl who had been singing looked down at them. Looking down from the driver’s seat, was a square jawed, dark complexioned brunette whom Russell almost mistook for his father.
“Yawl need some help!” he shouted.
“Thanks, Jesus,” said Russell.

While Loretta Lynn was threatening to send a certain young woman to Fist City for not staying away from her man, Cody and Jill Barnard were introducing themselves.
“We were feeling in a country mood tonight,” Jill told Russell and Rob as they rumbled out of the belly of Geschichte Falls, and onto midnight Main Street. “As evidenced by my brother’s use of the word yawl.”
“We went to see a tractor pull down in East Sequoya,” Cody was telling them. He no longer had any accent.
“My brother loves tractor pulls.”
“You didn’t hesitate to go.”
“I don’t have a life. It was the best thing to do in Lothrop County on a Wednesday night. What brought you guys to Thompson Road—?” Jill asked Russell and Rob, “at midnight?”
“Or at any time,” muttered Cody.
“We just got back from Noble Red’s.” Rob told Jill. They were all sitting together in the wide front seat.
“Some friends of ours have a band that plays there.” Russell added.
“I forgot all about Noble Red,” Jill smiled, bemused. Rob noticed that she was very pretty. He wanted her to toss her red brown hair no matter how impossible that would have been in such a cramped space as they now occupied. They had turned onto Kirkland now.
“What band plays there?” Jill said.
“Chilli Comet Sundae.” Russell felt stupid saying it.
Jill’s eyes widened, and Cody turned to his sister and muttered.
“Isn’t that...?”
“Yeah,” Jill looked a little depressed.
“What?” Rob asked her.
“That’s my ex’s band. Shane Meriwether.”
“You know Shane?” Russell marveled.
` “I just said he was my ex. Fuck, this town is too small. And Brad is the only other one I know from the band.”
“Brad Long?”
“Yes,” Jill said.
“And then there’s Hale Weathertop and Leon Dixon.”
Jill’s eyes went wide and turned hazel.
“Leon who?”
“Leon Dixon,” Russell repeated.
Jill looked mystified and then muttered, “Oh, my God.... Oh, my God.”
And Rob Keyes watched the girl he’d fallen in love with throw her head back like a madwoman and laugh.
Once his sister had stopped laughing, Cody said, “So you live on Curtain?”
“Yeah,” Rob said. Then, “Well, I’m staying there, but Russell lives a couple of more blocks down on Breckinridge.”
“That’s cool,” said Cody. “We’ll drop you off and then Russell.”
“Russell might want to stay with me,” Rob said. “He’s friends with my roommate. She—”
“She?” Jill began.
“She’s a poet. She’s like a philosopher.”
“I’ve never met a girl philosopher,” Jill said.
“You’re pretty philosophical,” Cody told her.
“That’s kind,” Jill said.
She said, “I always wanted to so something. Hear good poetry and writing and be someone. An artist or something.”
Rob opened his mouth to speak, but Russell said, “Oooh, here we are.”
And Cody, thanked Russell and said, “I almost missed the turn. So this is Curtain Street?”
“Never been here?”
“You’d think that having grown up in a town this small I would have been everywhere,” said Cody.
“That’s it,” Rob, who was in the middle, squished between Jill and Russell pointed at the green house with the wrap around porch. They couldn’t park because there were two other trucks parked on the brick street.
“Say,” Rob said, “It seems like the house is awake. Do you guys wanna come in? Meet Ani?”
“Your roommate?” Jill said.
Cody said sure and Jill thought it was so nice to be a man, to be so sure that someone would want to meet you.
“She might want to go to sleep. Or something.”
“Lights are still on. Caroline’s car is here.”
“Caroline?”
“Her sister,” Russell said. Then Russell said, “Just come on in.”
They attempted to park the tow truck with the black hearse dangling from its back end on the other side of Curtain, and then crossed, pushing back the iron gate and entering the garden kept up by Robert. Robert was about to tell this piece of information to Jill when the door flew open and out came, very large and very pregnant. the apparent Caroline with a black haired honey colored and very calm young woman.
“Anigel,” Rob began, “This is Cody Barnard, and this is his sister Jill. They brought us back home after a spot of misfortune, and we thought to invite them over for some hospitality.”
Anigel’s black eyes regarded Rob as if he was mad. Caroline screamed. Anigel swallowed, then said, “Cody, Jill. I’m pleased to meet the both of you, and if the two of you would like, you can come with us to the hospital. I’m afraid my sister is in labor. Again. Aren’t you, Care?”
Caroline Balusik looked up at her sister and frowned.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I liked the description of the food at the start. Jill seems to unfortunately know a lot of people she would rather forget in this small town. So Caroline is in labor again? I hope things turn out well for her and I look forward to seeing what happens tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well Caroline is obviously not in labor again. That is physically impossible. You are forgetting that at the beginning of the chapter you were told we were watching the same events from before, only through Russell's eyes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER EIGHT

TONIGHT WE'VE GOT A BIG FAT PORTION

“Do you need a cup of coffee... Or anything?” Rob asked as they paced around the waiting room.
“I’m not the one in labor,” said Anigel.
“And the coffee tastes like shit, anyway,” Russell chimed in.
“Amen to that.”
John Balusik came bustling out the elevator, looking this way and that before Shannon and Chayne caught him by his tee shirt.
“I just left Mom’s—”
“She’s fine,” Anigel said. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Well, hell,” said John, “let’s go.”
The elevator opened again and Jill saw two high school aged boys run out, one with a summer tan and off blond hair, but the other definitely Indian or Arab.
“What the hell?” Anigel looked at them.
“Are we on time?”
“On time for what?” Anigel said before John could speak. “You’re not having a baby.”
Russell leaned in and told Jill. “That’s my friend Ralph. John is his brother. And that other one—”
“The hot Indian?”
“Is Jason Lorry,” Russell said.
Anigel, who had heard none of this, followed John into the delivery room down the hall.
Ralph said, “Oh my God, Russell. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why?” Russell started.
Jason said, jamming his hands into his shorts, “Because Russell wouldn’t let anything happen to anyone.”
But Jill noted he wasn’t looking at Russell, and Russell seemed as confused by the pretty boy’s remarks as Jlll was. Jason looked up suddenly at Russell, and laughed, and Russell laughed too.
There was the sound of scuffling for a few moments, and then a bit of shouting. Then Russell, Rob, Cody, Jason, Ralph and Jill, standing in the dim lit waiting room, saw the doors fly open and Anigel march out of the delivery room in high dudgeon.
“Well, shit on you, anyway!” Anigel yelled in the direction of the swinging doors, then told everyone, “Apparently I’m one too many people in the delivery room. But it looks awful in there. You don’t ever want to go through that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to entertain you good people the way I should have,” she told Jill and Cody.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Jill, crossing one leg over the other. “This is entertainment enough.”
“I’ll make sure not to share that with Caroline.”
From the other side of the door they heard Caroline give a long wail.
“Oh, God!” Jason gripped Russell’s hand quickly, and when Russell looked at him, Jason grinned at his own panic and dropped his hand.
“So....” Anigel let the word hang in the air. “How did you guys end up with,” she looked to Russell and Rob, “these guys?”
“The car—” started Cody, then smiled. “The station wagon broke down. And we happened to come along with our tow truck. I have a little shop.”
“Serendipity,” Anigel remarked.
“Or maybe it was God,” Ralph suggested innocently.
“The two don’t have to be exclusive,” Anigel said.
“And then we were dropping Rob and Russell off,” said Cody.
“And Rob asked if we wanted to meet you,” said Jill, eyeing Rob the same time Anigel eyed Rob, and the younger man ducked his head and blushed.
“Russell said you should come too,” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill agreed, though Russell did not react. “Russell did say you’d be glad to meet anybody.”
“And then instead of drinks and refreshment,” said Anigel, “I had childbirth lined up for you. You all don’t have to stay,” Anigel said.
“I think we do,” Cody disagreed, rolling over on his side. “We drove you all. Remember?”
“Oh, Ralph’s here now,” Anigel said. “We could find a way back.”
Jill looked to the young man. He was handsome, actually. He had been in the middle of talking to Jason and Russell and when he’d heard his name called and Anigel volunteer him, something had changed in his face when Anigel said this and Jill observed, “I don’t think he wants to go be your chauffeur. I think he had other plans.”
“Teenagers usually do,” Cody said.
“We were going to drive around,” Jason said, hopefully. “See what happens.”
He turned to Cody courteously and said, “You could come too.”
He seemed to remember something and said to Jill, “And you—”
“Do not belong with a bunch of teenage boys and a Cody,” Jill said, “and am glad to stay here.
“So,” Jill turned to Anigel, “unless you’re deliberately trying to get rid of us—”
“No, no. Just trying to be courteous.”
“I think Jill doesn’t want to be cheated out of her chance to meet a poet,” Cody said. “And Rob said you were a philosopher.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Anigel demanded.
“You know, Ani,” Rob said. “You’re deep and shit. Always writing. Always doing stuff. And now you’re going to college and everything, after being all off on your own.”
“Rob told me—” Jill began.
“Rob elaborates.”
“And I was impressed,” Jill continued. “I admire anyone who’s up and doing things.”
“And what are you up and doing, Jill?” Anigel said. “I know I can’t the only one.”
Jill looked uncertain. She hadn’t expected to be asked questions, certainly not by this direct woman, roughly her age. Rob looked between the two of them.
“Right now all I do is want to be an artist,” Jill began. Then she said, “Actually, right now, all I do is want.”



“I really hope she’s okay,” Ralph said. “I mean, I know she’ll be okay. It’s just a baby, and Caroline’s had babies before, but still, at the same time, it’s like, it’s a baby. That’s a big thing.”
Ralph winced. “I just hate to imagine it. Having a baby.”
“What should we do?” Russell said, because he didn’t really want to think about having a baby, either. “Where should we go?”
“That is the problem,” Cody said. “Turns out there isn’t that much to do in Geschichte Falls at this time of night.”
“Or any time,” Jason said.
They all laughed, but when he was done laughing, Russell said, “It just means you have to make your own fun. And my godfather says that you have to make your own fun anyway in the end. Speaking of,” Russell turned to Cody, “that’s probably where I need to go. I need to see if Chayne is home so I can tell him where everyone is.”
They took Jason’s car because Cody was insistent that Jill have the truck just in case she needed it, and Russell felt strange directing two people who had never made any sense in Chayne’s world to Chayne’s house. Chayne’s house had been a refuge from high school and now, here he was, bringing high school to it. When they’d crossed the parking lot to reach the car, Ralph had immediately climbed into the back and, of course, Cody did the same. It was only for a minute that Russell stared at the passenger door before climbing into Jason’s car. It smelled new. It smelled of something else, and Russell was unnerved at his proximity to Jason and his even now perfectly combed black hair and dusky skin. Jason took a pack of gum from his pocket, handing a strip to Russell, grinned before he took one for himself and, adjusting the mirror, said in his soft voice, “Everyone strap in now. Let’s follow Russell’s directions.”
They’d reached Curtain and stopped on the narrow old street where Russell pointed out Chayne’s house. Jason got out of the car and followed him. Russell stopped for him, again surprised by Jason’s closeness, and also surprised by the scent of his adult cologne on a boy in shorts and tee shirt, heavy, spicy like the night. Russell pushed this out of his mind and went up the porch steps, entering Chayne’s house.
Chayne and Gilead were standing in the kitchen, and Chayne said, “We wondered what happened to everyone. You know how late it is? I mean, I know it’s Friday, but—”
All Gilead said, tilting his head, was, “Jason Lorry?”
“Hey Gil,” Jason’s cheeks went red and Russell said, “Caroline’s having her baby. We’re all at the hospital.”
Chayne’s mouth opened in an O and Russell said, “Well, most of us are at the hospital. And by the way, we made two new friends. Jill and Cody.”
“Cody’s in the car,” Jason said, fiddling with his hands.
“Jason,” Gilead asked, “are you alright?”
“I’m great,” Jason said a little too loudly.
“Well, thank you, Jason,” Chayne said to the olive skinned boy, “for bringing Russell over.”
“Oh, sure.”
“What else you all have planned?” Gilead asked.
For some reason Russell took pity on Jason. For some reason he said, “We’re going to Jason’s house.”
“Really?” Gilead looked astounded.
“Yeah,” Jason said, breathlessly. “It’s me and Cody and Ralph. They’re in the car. You can come if you want, Gil.”
“No,” Gilead said. “Five is a crowd as they say, and it’s closer to morning than not. I’m going to head home.”
“Have fun you guys,” Chayne added. “Or something like that. I’ll be at the hospital eventually.”
As they headed back into the warm darkness of late night, Russell waited for Gilead to come right after him, but there was no Gilead, just he and Jason walking down the steps.
“I’m glad you said that,” Jason said. “About going to my house.”
“I’m glad I said it too,” Russell smiled. “I guess that means we should probably go.”





They drove west toward Russell’s neighborhood, and then up about three blocks and around the corner. They crossed Thompson and parked in front of a large faux Tudor, and Ralph cheerfully announced, “See, Jason’s rich like you, Russell.”
“We’re not rich,” they both said, and the boys looked at each other.
But this was undoubtedly still the Breckinridge, or either it was Waldersworth, the wealthier neighborhood that bordered the Breckinridge. At this time the wide street was empty and Jason Lorry’s house was a large brick behemoth, windows darkened in the night.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” Jason stage whispered, and they took the path that led to the side yard of the house.
“You really live in something like this?” Cody asked Russell.
“Not quite,” Russell had to be honest.
The lawn alone was enormous. This house was far larger than Thom and Patti’s, but Russell didn’t want to embarrass Jason who lifted the latch, and let them into a garden smelling of rich flowers and overgrown with plants, high white fleshy flowers that shone in the late night. Here were the shades of sunflowers like crowns, and a little trickling pool in the middle. The fence was high and of natural wood but much of it was hidden by great trees.
“I love your backyard,” Russell said.
“Really?” Jason smiled at him, pleased.
Russell realized now, that because the first time he’d encountered Jason outside of school was at a party near the Far Westside, and because Ralph’s brother lived on the Far West, he’d assumed Jason did as well. Jason opened the back door, or a back door, Russell realized after passing a line of windows and doors that must have been a sunroom or something like it. There were padding feet, the feel of a tail swishing against them, but no barking. Jason bent down to pat something in the dark and with the dog panting beside them, they followed a long hall before Jason opened a door and they came into a new darkness. A switch was flipped and they were in a large room, lit by strings of fairy lights.
“Cool,” Russell pronounced, noticed that there was another room, darkened, beyond this one.
They talked about more than Russell thought they would, a blond golden retriever who seemed to like him and four people who didn’t know each other very well saving Ralph and Jason.
Ralph said, “Well, me and Cody are gonna go on a little run and be right back.”
“Yeah,” the handsome Cody said, standing up and pushing his dark hair out of his tanned face. “We’re gonna go around the corner and be back soon. Okay?”
“Alrighhht,” Russell said, slowly. “I guess me and Jason we’ll just hang out here.”
Jason reached into his shorts pocket, his eyes sparkling in the yellow dimness of the room, and tossed Ralph his car keys.
“Don’t hurry,” he said. “But don’t take forever, either. We’ve got a baby to get back to.”
Ralph nodded, and the dog escorted him and Cody to the back door.
“You wanna see my room?” Jason asked Russell.
“I thought…. This was your room?”
“This is the room before the room,” Jason said, pointing to the darkened doorway. “That’s my room.”
“Wow,” Russell said. He laughed and then said, “Your house is huge.”
But part of him wondered, what the hell was going on? Ralph and Cody were gone. He was in Jason Lorry’s house, in his room that was amber lit with hanging white Christmas lights. They were leaving the room that had clothes racks and chairs and an old sofa and Jason caught Russell’s hand and led him to the next room, flipping the light on. This room was hung with the same lights and Jason said, “There are real lights too. I mean, for when I want to do homework. Not that I do homework like I should. I mean, I’m a real disappointment to my parents probably.”
Russell was looking around the room. The windows were covered by wooden shades. It was classy, and over the large bed with its dark covering, was a great image of a terrible goddess, eyes nearly crossed, tongue lolling, a string of arms around her neck.
“Kali,” Russell breathed.
“How’d you know?” Jason said. Then he said, “You’re smart, so you would know stuff like that. You know my mom’s Indian. I mean, I’m Indian. My family’s Indian. My dad’s white. He’s Catholic. I guess I am too, but mom, her family’s Brahman—”
“Priests,” Russell said, and stopped Jason’s babbling. “Hindu priests.”
“Yeah,” Jason said.
“Does that make you a Brahman?”
“I don’t… I don’t really know. Russell can I kiss you?”
Jason’s hand in his, kneading his, the amber light of the room, the two of them alone in this place. Russell had understood what was going on three seconds before or one second after Jason had asked. But he had probably understood when he had told Chayne they were going to his house, when Ralph had said, “Jason likes you,” when Russell could hardly look at Jason tonight, but kept smelling the rich spicy sweet scent of his cologne. And he didn’t want to be passive, and he thought maybe they were led into this, and he didn’t want to be led, so he pulled Jason’s face to him, and pressed his mouth to his and Jason’s hands went to Russell’s face, to his hips, and they fell to bed, rubbing each other, running hands through hair, inhaling the fragrance one of the other, kissing deeper and deeper. Russell could feel Jason hard through his shorts and when he pulled his hand away, Jason said, “No, you can touch it. I want you to.”
They were shirtless and hot when Jason said, “We should stop.”
Russell almost moaned and then felt embarrassed, felt like a slut for protesting, took a great breath.
“We don’t know when Ralph and Cody are gonna come back, and we still gotta go back to the hospital.”
“You’re right,” Russell sat up on the side of the bed, brushing his hair back and pulling his shirt back on. He blew out his cheeks.
“This is…”
“A lot,” Jason said.
“Russell, can I tell you something?” Jason said, quickly.
“Yes.”
“I know how to do it,” Jason said. “With boys. I mean, you probably don’t but I do and I could teach you. I mean, if you want to. If you want to come back. I want you to come back. I’d like you to stay with me. Or… whatever.”
“I…” Russell stood up
“This is all very confusing. This is not what I thought about happening to me when I got out of bed this morning. Or really when I had dinner tonight. You’ve…. Things are different now. It’s a different world, even if it’s a world that I kind of sort of saw at a distance. You… you all were calling me a faggot not too long ago, and now here I am in your room. Being a faggot. And you invite me to come back, and I want to. And I shouldn’t because… I thought I was sophisticated and everything, but the one thing I get living in Geschichte Falls is it’s wrong to be a faggot even if you don’t know what one is.”
Then Russell said, in a tone of discovery, “Gilead always said you called me gay so people wouldn’t think you were.”
“That’s part of it,” Jason said, honestly. “I think the other part was I called you gay cause I hoped you were. You’re innocent. You don’t really know about sex… And your feelings. You live in your head.”
“You’re not the first person to say that.”
“I’m not that bright—”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not smart like you,” Jason said. “Hell, I flunked second grade. That’s why I’m older than you. My whole family thinks I’m dumb. Everyone does. I hear them. Dumb, but good looking. But I do know my body, how it feels. You made me feel so many things it made me angry. At me, at you. I didn’t want to be this. I… Girls thought I was good looking so I made it with girls. Lots. To prove something. And then last summer I got tired of that, and when I went to India… I didn’t really see anyone I liked. I found a guy. I… I wanted to learn what it was like, how to do things I knew I was going to do. So…. Now I do know. I’d be gentle with you. And you could be gentle with me.”
At the end of that speech, suddenly Jason Lorry smiled, looking more innocent than Russell ever had. Even now his hair looked perfect and glossy and the dusky skinned green eyed boy with the always five o’ clock shadow, the faint smell of rich tobacco, touched Russell’s hand shyly.
“I’d like that.”
“Yes,” Russell said, trying to calm down his raging boner, something he’d never really felt before, trying to tamp down this desire to touch Jason, to be locked in his arms again, to push back the covers of this private bed and climb into it with Jason, have nothing at all between them.
“I’d like it too,” Russell said. “But I’d like to clear my head first.”



TOMORROW, BOOK OF THE BURNING

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! Now that I am clear in the timeline this all makes a lot more sense. I am glad Jason acted on his feelings and made a move with Russell. This is all very interesting and I look forward to more of this soon and Book Of The Burning tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Jason's made his move. Russell has been kissed, and now our story moves in a whole new direction.

 

[ChrisGibson]

NINE


ANGELUS














“




“It’s really cool of you to come back and wait with us,” Russell said in the cafeteria.
“And it’s really cool how they don’t lock up the food here and still play by the honor code,” Cody said, bringing out chocolate pudding and some very alright looking baked chicken from the refrigerator.
“You and Ralph have a good time?” Russell asked.
“Ralph,” Cody sounded distracted. Then he said, “Yeah, that Ralph is a good kid. He’s good people. You and Jason?”
Russell’s face went hot and he said, “I’m glad we got to talk. I’ve never gotten to talk to him.”
“That’s what your friend Ralph said. He said Jason really wanted to talk with you, and we made ourselves a little scarce for that.”
Cody sat down at the end of the long cafeteria table across from Russell.
“Of course, now I’m violating that honor code, and I kinda sort of have a problem with that. I’ll have to philosophize my way around this.”
Cody ripped off the aluminum lid of the chocolate pudding and stuck the spork in.
“I hate sporks,” he said. Then, frowning. “I’m talking too much.”
“No,” Russell waved this away with a sophisticated hand. “I’m just sleepy.” And to demonstrate this, he yawned again.
Cody Barnard was not really taller than Russell, but he had a larger structure, large shoulders and hands, a thick neck. He had a thick nose and jutting chin but his smile was quicker. Cody was more animated and fond of pulling his hand through his dark hair, which he could not organize. He sort of reminded Russell of… Russell could not think of it.
Cody stopped eating and scrutinized Russell, scrutinizing him.
“What are you looking at.”
“You remind me of someone. I can’t put my—my uncle—Finn. You sort of look like a cross between my Dad and my uncle.”
Cody shrugged and laughed. “Maybe we’re related.”
Russell shuddered inwardly, because he was enjoying looking at Cody. Upstairs Jason was with Ralph, but not long ago and a couple of miles away, in what seemed like a fantasy, he had been making out for the first time, and making out with Jason Lorry. Jason was gorgeous. Always had been, but he had never been allowed to say it, not even to himself. And Cody, with his solid frame and dark complexion, with his thick lips was godly as well. It was like, having been turned on by Jason, he was on for anything, and he wondered what it would be like to press his lips to Cody’s too.
“God,” Cody said. “I hope something happens with this weather.”
Thank you, Jesus, for giving us something else to talk about!
“I know. I’m gonna have to start wearing shorts and—”
“I hate shorts—”Cody finished his sentence. Russell blinked, and the dark haired good looking guy laughed.
“I swear I hate them. I hate—legs. I just like to wear pants. And then, I’ve got these nasty hairy legs,” Cody threw up his hands. “It’s like I can’t grow a beard. All I get is this scrag! But you could weave a sweater out of my leg hair. It’s unreal.”
From the look on Russell’s face, while he laughed, Cody said, “I take it you agree.”
“I’m not big on shorts either,” Russell allowed. “If I can keep a pair of khakis, I’m good to go.
“So you’re a mechanic?” Russell said after a while.
“Yeah. I’m a entrepreneur. I’ve got my own shop. Well, I’ve got my uncle’s shop he’s gone for the summer, so it’s mine right now. We’ll take care of that hearse for you tomorrow.”
“Chayne’s good for it.”
“Good for what?”
“Whatever the price.”
Cody made a face, then a noise and blew the matter away with his hand. “Screw that. Sometimes the experience is worth it.”
“This is an experience?”
Cody shrugged. “How many times do you get to sit in a dark cafeteria and eat chocolate pudding?”
“Point taken.”
“And I believe in fate. Or Jesus or kizmit or whatever. If your car had broken down later or not at all, then my sister couldn’t be hitting on your friend, Rob, and we couldn’t be talking about shorts, and sometimes I just think we’re all caught up in this... big old sacred net. like a bunch of fish. Only... no one’s going to eat us.”
Cody laughed suddenly. It was a little maniacal, but it was also free. He threw back his head.
“That’s cool,” Russell said at last.
“What?” Cody went still and ran a hand over his the scrag that he complained about that Russell realized he didn’t mind.
“Most guys aren’t like you. You’re loud and free and make all these gestures. You’re not tough… Well, you’re not trying to be.”
“Guys like us,” Cody stated solemnly, “are few and far between.”
Cody tried to stay solemn, sucking in his chest and straightened his mouth. He frowned. Then, after holding it in, laughed and said, “But, it’s true man.”
Cody set his attention on rolling the foil top of his pudding into a cylinder and then said. “We could pass this around to certain people and call it the joint from Mars and tell them everyone who puffed on it would gain enlightenment and fly directly to the moon.”
“We could start a cult,” Russell suggested.
“I think we’d have to.”






“Chayne?” Shannon murmured from the couch where she was half passed out in the waiting room. “Do you ever think we’ll have kids?”
“Not with each other.”
The sun was coming up gold and orange through the large windows on the other side of the waiting room, and darkness was beginning to creep away.
“You know what I mean. I don’t think I will. I didn’t think Jewell ever would. I felt sort of betrayed when that happened, and now here we are, and I’m glad I brought you, but damn, births weird me out.”
Chayne laughed.
“I’m serious,” Shannon said, then she repeated. “I’m SERIOUS.”
“I know you are.”
“And I know that that’s stupid, but.... I mean. I’m almsot forty. The fuckin’ clock’s tickin. No. It’s ticked. No—you know what? It never ticked and I feel a little bad for not having kids. I feel like I should have. Or I should have wanted to. Do you ever feel that way?”
“Yes,” Chayne said. “Sometimes I think the only people who don’t regret are the dead.”

The doors swung open and they looked up to see Ralph Balusik with Jason Lorry at his side, panting and smiling.
“You wanna see a new baby?” Ralph invited.
Rob looked at Jill and she said, “I’m all about seeing new babies.”
“It’s a boy,” Ralph said. “My first nephew.”
Russell and Cody were just returning from the cafeteria, and Chayne, yawning, said, “Come on.”
“I thought you guys were gone,” Jill murmured from the plastic chair beside Rob, where she had fallen asleep.
“We were gone,” Cody said. “And then we weren’t. And then we looked for you, and then Anigel came out and said the baby was here, and you were outside.”
Chayne didn’t think Caroline Balusik would let a lot of random people into her room to see her baby, but whether she would have or not, now the baby was with all the others in the nursery and it was very much asleep and not worried about any of them.
“Is that baby white?” Ralph wondered.
“No, fool,” Anigel said tenderly, her fingers pressed to the glass, looking blissfully on the young cheeks and shut eyes.
“It looks white,” Ralph judged.
“Please shut up.”
“It looks new,” Jason said, tenderly. “It looks new, and it makes you want to sort of be new too. Not be the same dummy you always were.”
Then the black haired boy said in his soft voice. “I’m talking about me, of course, but—”
“I think it applies to all of us,” Chayne said.


MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Sounds like Russell likes Cody as more then a friend too. It sounds like this baby is a signifier of a new start for a few people. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was an excellent portion! Sounds like Russell likes Cody as more then a friend too. It sounds like this baby is a signifier of a new start for a few people. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

That's a really great point. The baby is the sign of a new start for almost everyone present, and it does indeed look like Russell has lots of feelings for Cody which.... well will explore soon.

 

[ChrisGibson]

IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE BIRTH OF CAROLINE'S BABY, RALPH REVEALS SOME SHOCKING NEWS

At the house, having departed from the Jason and the Balusiks, Chayne opened the freezer and turned on the deep fryer. They had fried mushrooms for breakfast with bacon and eggs and milk and since there was no orange juice, a bottle of wine. After a while, when it probably wasn’t prudent, Cody and Jill said it was time to get back home and they’d call when the hearse was ready. Russell slept off his buzz on the couch and thought that this whole last night was strange and unethical. When he woke up and Jill and Cody were gone he wondered if it had all really happened, but did not dare ask Chayne or Rob.
Russell did not say goodbye. He just tipped out the door and went down the three blocks to his house. It was terribly hot, and even the short distance from Chayne’s house to his had him red and dripping with sweat.
When he got home, Patti said, “So the prodigal finally returns.”
“Anigel’s sister had a boy.”
Patti shook her head over her ashtray, tipped her cigarette and commented, “Chayne’s gonna have more godchildren than he knows what to do with.”
Then she said, “And Anigel’s sister is married to Ralph’s brother.”
“Right.”
“Small world,” Patti said.
“Small town,” said Russell.
Without thinking, Russell found himself in the little bathroom to the side of the kitchen. He locked the door and pissed loud and long, surprising himself a little and realizing that he was not completely sober. And then the doorbell rang.
Russell turned on the water, pretending to wash his hands before coming out of the kitchen, through the dining area and into the living room where he saw his mother, burning cigarette in one hand, the other on her hip, talking to a grizzled old man who said, “Ma’am. My name’s R.L.”

Thom Lewis did not go to work that day. His wife thought he did and for some reason Thom let her, but he had gone to his sister Jaclyn’s.
“Did you ever know Dad?” he asked.
“How could I?” Jackie said. “Wasn’t I about five when he left?”
Thom nodded. “Finn wasn’t even born yet. Plus, it was kinda Mom who left. Dad had been leaving a lot. He was gone all the time and I guess one day Mom just wasn’t there. She was here. She was through.”
Jackie nodded, grimaced and said, “Thomas, you’ve been my brother for, what? Thirty years? And you’ve never ever mentioned our Father, let alone referred to him as Dad.”
“I had a dream about him last night,” Thom said. “You and Finn just know you had a father and that he was a creep. You all don’t know him. Me and Kristin knew him. As well as you could know him. And I dreamed about when you were real little and he’d gone away for a few days, and he came back to the house and he and Kristin were fighting calling each other all...” Thom seemed to loose track of his thoughts. When he spoke again his voice was softer. “All kinds of names. It was ugly, Jackie. And I forgot all about it. And I woke up just shaking and I was embarrassed.”
“To be afraid?”
Thom shook his head.
“Of what I did. That night Mom told me to take you into the room that we shared. It was like a closet—”
“You used to call it the Wardrobe,” Jackie remembered fondly. “You used to tell me all sorts of stories and sing to me. You used to sing. I don’t think of that a lot, but when I think of West Virginia, that’s what I think about, you singing to me. It makes me smile.”
“Well, childhood’s funny like that,” said Thom. “I was trying to make things better for you. I remember taking you into the room and being afraid that Dad was going to beat up Mom or Kristin, but the thing that embarrasses me is that I was too afraid to come out and fight him.”
“Thom, you were twelve.”
“Still,” Thom dismissed this, reached for his cigarettes and then stopped.
Jackie grew serious and she said, “I never really thought about what it was like for you and Kristin. Our Father was never a part of my life.”
“Well, I think he’s gonna be.”
Jackie looked up at her brother. Waited for further explanation.
“Jackie, I think he’s back here. I think he’s in Geschichte Falls.”



Jackie entered the house on Breckinridge street first, announcing, in a bad Cuban accent, “Lucy, I’m—” before taking in the sight of Patti and Russell in the living room sitting with a strange old man. She felt the hairs on her neck rising.
Thom came in behind her, closing the door, looking immediately concerned. He and Jackie walked fully into the living room and Thom stared at the man, his face hard, as if he were trying to figure out what to ask or who he was.
“Tommy,” said R.L. “And you must be Jaclyn?”
Jaclyn cocked her head as if to say, “But who must you be?”
The man got up, walked past Patti to Thom.
Patti spoke softly, “Thom, it’s your father.”
“I know,” Thom said slowly, “who it is.”
“Tommy,” R.L. started.
Thom said, very quietly, precisely. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Tommy—”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.”
Jackie put a hand on her brother’s shoulder and felt it trembling. Russell turned away from his father.
R.L. looked at Thom a little longer and then said to Patti, “I should have expected that. Ma’am, thank you—”
“What,” Thom cut him off, pushed his hands into the old man’s chest, pushed him toward the door, “Don’t you understand—? ”
“Thom,” Jaclyn said before Patti could.
“About Get The Fuck Out! Get out!”
Russell sat back and saw his father, in black slacks and white shirt and red tie, hair well groomed, nearly out of control, physically forcing an old man out the front door and bawling in his face. It terrified him. He couldn’t stop looking at him.
R.L. got out. Everyone wanted to run to Thom, but everyone was afraid of him as he stood there at the door, no longer looking angry, but forlorn, as if he was afraid of the monster that had just entered him.
They all waited for Thom to say something. When he finally spoke it was to Jackie.
“He didn’t even know you. How d’ya like that? You’ve got a personality so big the Pope even knows you, but he didn’t.”
Thom finally succeeded in taking his cigarettes out. There were, he noted dismally, very few in the pack.
“I need to walk,” he said.
Then Thom headed out of the same door he’d just thrown his father from.


When the phone rang, Russell picked it up immediately.
“Hello.”
“Russ.”
“Ralph?”
“Yeah, what are you doing?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Wanna get a bite? My treat.”
“Alright.”
He had thought coming home would make the night before normal, but nothing was normal.
Maybe a burger would ground him.
Ground beef ground him.
He would keep that joke to himself.
On the other end of the line Ralph said, “I’ll be there in about twenty.”


When Ralph got to the house he was in shorts and a tee shirt. He’d bothered to comb his off blond hair, shaven to the sides and parted in the middle as usual. Ralph was always a little vain about the wings he let fall in his face. He and Russell were about the same height. Russell would get taller. But Ralph’s calves and shoulders were wider and when he was trying to be exciting, he looked bigger. And tonight he was trying for some reason. He looked eager to please, a little like a dog, and a little distressed and Russell was worried., He thought, and felt guilty for the thought, I wish you had something good to tell me. Something wise. If you were Gilead you would. I bet it’s something weird. I can’t take anymore weirdness.
They got in the car and drove to the Noble Red.

Whatever Ralph had to say, he was not forthcoming with. They were through a second Coca Cola and half a basket of fries before Russell said, “You’ve got something to tell me.”
Ralph looked a little startled.
:”You’re acting weird,. You’ve got something to say. Just say it. It’s been a long day.”
Ralph looked concerned. “Russ, what happened?”
“My grandfather—my father’s father—”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Well, neither have I,”
Russell reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. “He left my family when my dad was twelve and they all lived in West Virginia.”
“You all are from West Virginia?”
“My Dad’s family. Now could I get on with the story?”
“Alright, already.”
“Anyway, this old guy pops up at the door, and it turns out he’s my grandfather.”
“That’s so,” Ralph started, then shook his head and said. “Fucked up.”
“Yeah, a little bit,” Russell agreed, turning his head to exhale a jet of smoke. “And now what did you have to tell me?”
“I had sex with Cody.”
Russell nearly gagged on the smoke. He tried to look sophisticated.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Ralph said quietly, playing with the rim of the fry basket. “I haven’t told anyone yet. I want to tell Jason, but I haven’t. I didn’t really want to tell anyone, but… I thought that if I didn’t tell you it would be like... keeping secrets. You know?”
Russell nodded, feeling suddenly very tired and sullen. He wanted to go home now. He wanted to turn out the lights on the world. Why did Ralph have to say this in the Noble Red, he wondered looking up at the high, raftered ceilings. Brad and his band would be playing in an hour. Russell thought how the Noble Red had been a haven until now.
“So,” Ralph said after a few seconds.
“Huh?” said Russell.
“How do you feel?”
“Confused as fuck,” Russell said, “Cause I don’t understand you, Or Jason. I don’t get what you’re playing at.”
“I’m not playing at anything,” Ralph said, sounding a little angry. “And…. I’m confused too.”
“Should we even be talking in here?”
Ralph looked around sharply, then said, “Nobody’s listening. Not over that shitty band.”
“Explain it to me,” Russell said. “Goddamn it, you have to explain stuff, because the world just got too big.”
“Jason kept saying he liked you, and I kept saying I understood, cause, cause I liked you too. And then he came back from India and he was really quiet and he just told me…. That he was gay. And that he’d been with a guy. And that all that teasing he did was because he liked you. Liked you liked you. And please don’t tell anyone, and I said of course I wouldn’t.”
Russell nodded, his body trembling, his head feeling light and weird.
“He kept asking if I could make it so you all just had time to hang out, to know each other. I… It’s not that we thought you were gay. We thought you were… open. Different. I thought, Jason’s great and you are too, and you just need to talk to him for a while and let things happen. Whatever happens.”
“Alright,” Russell said, nodding his head up and down, his voice a whisper.
“And so, while you and Jason were in Chayne’s house, last night, I started telling Cody about it, and he asked if I was…. That way.”
Russell turned his head to Ralph, frowning while he waited for an answer.
“And… I said,” Ralph was looking at the table and picking at the fry basket, “I didn’t know. I didn’t really know anything. I had a girlfriend but I wasn’t sure. Cody said he wasn’t any kind of way and that he liked the idea of guys and guys, and we should hang out together while you and Jason were hanging out, and we’d give you time to do whatever you all wanted and we could do… whatever we wanted.”
The band played on, the guitar was annoying, the lead singer trying too hard.
“The funny thing is I thought I had more of a bond with Cody… Than you, I mean,” Russell said.
Then he said, “Did you like it?”
“I dunno,” Ralph said. Then, “Yes, But I don’t know if I like that I liked it.”
“I don’t know if I like the fact that two people who made my life a hell just decided they were going to be gay, and here I am, still a virgin,” Russell said. “And a confused one at that.”
“Do you like Jason a little bit?” Ralph said, ignoring this. “Or do you want Cody, because—”
“I like Jason a lot bit,” Russell said. “I always did, but I couldn’t know it because when I tried to know it, I just saw the two of you calling me a faggot.”
“Russell, I’m sorry for that,” Ralph said, emphatically. “You’ve got to believe that. It was a fucked up thing. Everything we did was fucked up. Clearly.”
“Are you…. Are you going to see Cody again?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said, hugging himself a little and looking confused.
“I love Vanessa. I do, for real. She’s my girlfriend. And I can’t ever tell her about what happened last night.”
“But if you… If you liked it,” Russell said. “And if you liked Cody—”
“I don’t like Cody. Not like that. He wanted some fun. He likes you, like in a real way. He said that. We fucked. I fucked him first and then he fucked me. I liked that, but that’s not love.”
Russell’s mind reeled. All day he had been thinking not only of the night before, but of all his meetings with Jason, and the jarring events of the party last school year.

“Ralph!” Gilead started.
“Shush!” Ralph warned, “I’m keeping guard.”
“Over?” Gilead said.
“Jason,” Ralph hissed and pointed into the pantry.
Russell heard it before Gilead looked into the darkness. Russell’s eyes adjusted to Jason, in the back of the pantry, his trousers down around his ankles, his white boxers around his knees, fucking some girl, her legs rising to encompass his waist, falling, rising up again as he drove himself steadily into her and she cried out in light pants. Russell could not stop looking. There was fierce concentration and loveliness on Jason’s handsome face, a light trickle of sweat. The girl’s hands were pushing frantically through his black curls. Her pale hands were pulling up his shirt, reaching down to caress his ass. Russell saw his ass.
His dick was hard.
Russell felt himself breathing harder and was embarrassed to realize Ralph was right beside him, watching.
Jason’s grey-green eyes turned to them, while he was fucking, looked fiercely on Russell while the girl moaned, and Russell felt all of himself turn red, felt the erection wither. Where was Gilead?
“Ey, Lewis, you like?” Jason’s voice was cruel as if he had caught Russell and not the other way around. “Watch this, Lewis.”
Jason, put his hand to the girl’s face so that she was turned away from him, and then suddenly he pushed her down into the floor and started to jackhammering her so she cried out frantically.
“You like?” Jason hissed. “You like? You like?” And Russell didn’t know who Jason Lorry was talking to. “You like it, Lewis? How’s it feel, Russell Lewis? Take it, Russ! Take it, Russ. Take my cock! Take my fucking cock, Russ! Take it! Take…Oh, God! Jeeeesusss—” and then he shouted, gasped, and Russell saw Jason’s eyes widen, his face lose control. Russell felt Gilead’s hand tug at his wrist and pull him away. Everything was dizzy to Russell.

When Russell had finally gotten home, he told himself he needed to shower, but all he’d done was pee and then climb into the deep covers of his bed. It was barely spring and cold then, and he’d spent the morning masturbating to the look on Jason’s face. Every time he’d come in his hands or on his bed sheets, he’d been humiliated that the person who despised him so truly made him come so quickly. But he hadn’t stopped masturbating, and now Jason liked him, had always liked him, wanted Russell to come to him and spend the night in his bed.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! So Ralph and Cody had sex? Interesting! Sounds like Ralph, Russell, Cody and Jason have a lot of feelings to sort out. I can’t believe Thom’s Dad just turned up after abandoning all of them. Good for Thom to kick him out. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

My gosh, it's a lot going on right here in these few pages. Clearly no time for Book of the Burning tonight! And Ralph and Cody? What was that all about, and meanwhile Russell and Jason and Russell's feelings for Cody. There sure is a lot to sort out. To top it off, Thom's Dad!

 

[ChrisGibson]

WE BEGIN A LITTLE EARLIER THAN WE LEFT OFF LAST NIGHT....

“I don’t like Cody. Not like that. He wanted some fun. He likes you, like in a real way. He said that. We fucked. I fucked him first and then he fucked me. I liked that, but that’s not love.”
Russell’s mind reeled. All day he had been thinking not only of the night before, but of all his meetings with Jason, and the jarring events of the party last school year.

“Ralph!” Gilead started.
“Shush!” Ralph warned, “I’m keeping guard.”
“Over?” Gilead said.
“Jason,” Ralph hissed and pointed into the pantry.
Russell heard it before Gilead looked into the darkness. Russell’s eyes adjusted to Jason, in the back of the pantry, his trousers down around his ankles, his white boxers around his knees, fucking some girl, her legs rising to encompass his waist, falling, rising up again as he drove himself steadily into her and she cried out in light pants. Russell could not stop looking. There was fierce concentration and loveliness on Jason’s handsome face, a light trickle of sweat. The girl’s hands were pushing frantically through his black curls. Her pale hands were pulling up his shirt, reaching down to caress his ass. Russell saw his ass.
His dick was hard.
Russell felt himself breathing harder and was embarrassed to realize Ralph was right beside him, watching.
Jason’s grey-green eyes turned to them, while he was fucking, looked fiercely on Russell while the girl moaned, and Russell felt all of himself turn red, felt the erection wither. Where was Gilead?
“Ey, Lewis, you like?” Jason’s voice was cruel as if he had caught Russell and not the other way around. “Watch this, Lewis.”
Jason, put his hand to the girl’s face so that she was turned away from him, and then suddenly he pushed her down into the floor and started to jackhammering her so she cried out frantically.
“You like?” Jason hissed. “You like? You like?” And Russell didn’t know who Jason Lorry was talking to. “You like it, Lewis? How’s it feel, Russell Lewis? Take it, Russ! Take it, Russ. Take my cock! Take my fucking cock, Russ! Take it! Take…Oh, God! Jeeeesusss—” and then he shouted, gasped, and Russell saw Jason’s eyes widen, his face lose control. Russell felt Gilead’s hand tug at his wrist and pull him away. Everything was dizzy to Russell.

When Russell had finally gotten home, he told himself he needed to shower, but all he’d done was pee and then climb into the deep covers of his bed. It was barely spring and cold then, and he’d spent the morning masturbating to the look on Jason’s face. Every time he’d come in his hands or on his bed sheets, he’d been humiliated that the person who despised him so truly made him come so quickly. But he hadn’t stopped masturbating, and now Jason liked him, had always liked him, wanted Russell to come to him and spend the night in his bed.
Russell’s face was hot and he felt almost sick because the moment Ralph had said he’d fucked Cody, he had wanted to fuck Ralph. He wanted to fuck Cody too. And remembering last year, he knew, he knew, he knew, he wanted Jason Lorry to fuck him before the night was through.
“Jason kissed me.”
Ralph blinked at Russell.
Ralph had looked confused, upset, offended, worried. Now he looked soft.
“Russell, don’t hurt him,” Ralph said.
“What? What are you….?”
“I don’t know if anyone could survive you. You…. People love you. I love you. And you’re kind of a hurricane.”
“I am not. You… You don’t have the right to say that about me,” Russell said.
“I would never hurt… I never could. I would never… not love him.”
“But I think your love is strong,” Ralph said.
“Everything you do is so strong. The way he feels about you…. You’re a lot for a tiny mortal.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Ralph. And… I’ve never been strong.”
Ralph blew out air from his nostrils.
“You’re a moron, Lewis. Except for maybe Gilead, you’re the strongest person I know.”



When Ralph had dropped him off at home, Russell was humming, now not so much full of confusion as resolve. There was the possibility of bed that called to him even as he heard Ralph’s car rumbling down Breckinridge, and yet the night was still alive. The house was not. It was all in darkness. Mom must have gone to bed. Upstairs Dad was working at the computer in his little side office. Russell entered.
Thom continued to type a little, and then he turned around and said, “Russell, if I’ve ever hurt you—no, scratch that. I’m sorry for all the times I hurt you. I want you to know that. I love you.”
“I love you too, Dad,” Russell said.
Thom said, “I need a cigarette.”
He rattled his empty pack of Reds.
Thoughtlessly, Russell took out his and handed them over, and only when he saw the look on Thom’s face did he realize he’d given away the habit he’d been hiding.
“Well,” Thom looked as if he’d given up on discipline, “you picked the right time to let me know.”
He took out one of Russell’s cigarettes, lit it, inhaled, took out another, put it in the other corner of his mouth, lit it, inhaled until the tip glowed red, and then took it out and, sacramentally placed it between the lips of his son, handing Russell the rest of the pack.
Thom laid back in his office chair, stretching full out, his head looking at the ceiling while he watched smoke tendril from his mouth and make greyish patterns on the white plaster. Russell sat on the floor, back against the wall, knees to his chest. Thom pushed over another ashtray for his son.
If I actually think about what we’re doing, I won’t be able to believe it anyway, and as if he’d been doing it a lifetime, Russell smoked in his father’s presence.
“Life doesn’t make any sense,” Russell said.
“No,” Thom agreed.
“The thing is,” Thom said, “you have to make it make sense for you.”
“I might as well tell you I’m probably gay.”
“Well….” Thom exhaled again, “Well…”
“What?”
“I guess I won’t be counting on you for grandchildren.”
“Do you mind if I go out?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes,” said Russell.
“Is it to make the world make sense?”
“Yes.”
Thom nodded, still looking at the ceiling.
“I can accept that.”

He walked the two blocks down, one up and then across that he remembered from just this morning when everything had changed and Caroline’s baby had been born. This morning last night had seemed like a dream, but now all of life was a hothouse dream where anything could happen if you let it, and maybe that was what life was, only most people never saw this. He went up the long walk and unhooked the gate, and he loved the jasmine smell of the garden. He heard the tinkling trickle of the fountain in the pool and passed the lit solarium, its shades pulled. He tapped on the window of the little wing that came out from the house, and the slats opened. The most handsome face he’d ever seen, the face that had haunted him since Freshmen year, looked out at him smiling, and then the slats fell, and a moment later Russell heard a side door opening.
Jason stood there, the dark hair going up his lovely thighs as he wore only black briefs fitting snug to his body, and the blond tail of the golden retriever beat his dark ankles and the hem of Russell’s khaki’s like it had this morning, Russell reached out his hands and placed them in Jason’s black hair, pulling Jason to him and kissed him. He entered the darkness of the little hallway leading to Jason’s room as Jason, kissing him deeply, embraced him, and then reaching up a little, Jason Lorry closed the door behind them.

He was afraid. Tomorrow morning he could go through his mind and realize why, pick apart everything about this moment, walking down the dark hall with Jason, his fingers linked into Jason Lorry’s soft fingers he was more scared than he’d ever been. The dog padded around them and Russel thought there had been many times he had gone to places he didn’t want to go and done things he didn’t want to do and that was a different type of fear, not this soaring fear where he thought if his emotions ran any higher he wouldn’t be able to the breath.
“You came to me, Russell. You came to me.”
The darkness ended when they came into Jason’s room, and he gently shut the door and the dog out so it was only hi mand Russell and the fairy lights strung about Jason bent down wolfishly kissing him, his hands on his shoulders and down his sides and back again. He’d seen Jason with girls and Jason at school, hanging with the boys, looking cool, but Jason was hungry now and almost sloppy. Russell wanted to slip out of his mind, slip out of this analytical place to the place he’d been before. He didn’t want this to stop, didn’t want Jason’s kisses on his eyes and his mouth, his hands on him to end. But he wanted this consciousness to end, this monologuing in his brain.
“You came to me!” Jason kept saying, as he kissed Russell. “You came to me.”
He stopped kissing Russell for a moment, and he said, “Are you alright? Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” Russell said. Then: No! It’s just…. I’m nervous. I’ve…I did come to you. I’ve never done… anything. It’s a lot. You know?”
“You don’t have to,” Jason said. “You know… If you don’t want to.”
Russell knew that Jason didn’t mean that, or rather, he knew that Jason didn’t want that. He didn’t want that either. He’d left the house for a reason, knowing where he was going and what would happen.
“It isn’t that,” Russell said now. “I just… we have all night.”
“Of course we do!” Jason said eagerly. “We have all the time that you want.”
Russell remembered listening to two girls talk on the phone and one saying, before I got with him we had a talk I wanted to know who he’d been with and how many people and where, we really had that talk….”
Russell had suspected that such a talk didn’t mean anything or lead anywhere, and at this moment Russell wasn’t greatly curious about anyone else who had been to Jason’s room or to the seventeen year old boy’s bed. This moment was about him, and in the time where quiet had come back to the room, a power he had not felt until last night—or very early morning here—returned to him, He remembered the need, the desire, the sort of revelation of lust that had come to him kissing Jason this morning, and of Ralph saying, don’t hurt him. He had, in this moment, a glimpse of who he was, not of the loser he thought he was, but who he was.
Jason, shirtlyess, brown chested, with his glossy black hair and black eyes was looking at him, expectantly, and in the dim light of the room, Russell lifted his tee shirt and folded it and put it in the chair, and then he quietly unbuckled his belt and pulled down his thick long khakis. His clothes had been an armor to hide him, but this was another type of armor he was find and he promised himself he would never wear these baggy boxers again as he pulled them off and just for a moment stood naked before Jason. Without touching him, he walked past him into the darkness of the bedroom, and he heard Jason’s feet pad toward him. Russell had pulled the covers over himself, with the air conditioning on in the large house, it was not too hot, but now he pulled them up and welcomed Jason into his own bed. He could not see, but in the darkness his sound was like sight and he helped Jason pull away his shorts, felt the heat of penis rising, pulled Jason between his legs, pulled his mouth down for kissed and thrust his fingers into Jason’s curls. The fire built up in his stomach and rose out of his chest in this joy in the darkness as he linked himself to Jason and.. also… he felt distantly, as he forever left the place of not knowing, not understanding what this was like? Only dimly did the picture of Cody and Ralph move through his mind, could it have been like this, this eager runnings over each other, this hot kissing, lips clinging to lips, tongues twining, the shock of Jason’s mouth on him, sucking him, the shock of his own pleasure, how it did not last for only a moment, but how Jason did not stop nursing on him until weakly, Russell pleaded to do it himself, until here unfolded the meaning of dirty whispers “sixty nine”, here in this bed where nothing was dirty, where there was only joy and need and the joyful feeding of need, where he was shocked by Jason’s finger inside of him, and then his tongue.
His eyes adjusted to the dark, his hands longed to run down Jason’s shoulders, down his back down the small of his spine. He longed to get his fill of looking at the ass he’d always wondered about, been ashamed of wondering about. He remembered Jason;s hand on his ass, pinching it, saying, “firm, honey”, and he remembered Jason, just now, inside of him and his mouth moved to be inside of Jason, was surprisied by the welcome he felt, thrusting his tongue deeper and deeper into him. Russell wasn’t sure how long any of this lasted. He wasn’t sure how long it was before they were like spoons and Russell pressed himself against Jason feeling the cock he had grown to love and desire pressed against him.
“I don’t have a condom,” Jason whispered. “I just got lube.”
“Do it,” Russell said to him.
“Are you sure—?”
Russell reached back and pressed Jason’s ass, pressing him to be inside of him.
“I wanna do it so bad.”
“Do it like when you were doing it to that girl at the party—”
“Don’t say that Russell.”
“But when you were looking at me. Do it to me like that.”
“I’m gonna use lots of lube, okay? Cause it might hurt a little.”
But when Jason began to lube up, laughing nervously, saying, “I’m getting it all on the sheets,” Russell reached back and began to stroke him, feeling Jason go harder, feeling the already firm penis take more shape, the roundness of his bland, rounding like a helmbet, the veins under his cock rising, He slipped the lube in himself and then guided Jason in, and Jason’s thigh draped over Russell.
“Breathe in, okay,” Jason said.
Russell understood that Jason hadn’t learned this from fucking other boys. He’d pretty much been with girls, sometimes grown women. Jason had learned this from being fucked and somehow this made things better. Russell breathed in and they both closed their eyes and were quiet at the joining. Both of them grimaced, fitting together, and Jason whispered, “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
It hurt. It wasn’t like anything Russell could have imagined except he did imagine it would hurt. But he did not imagine all of these nerves in him, or the sensation which was beyond physical of being filled with another human being. He closed around Jason, who gave a groan of not quite pleasure and Russell tightened his eyes feeling something that was definitely pain and yet definitely the sense of being held, caressed, kissed, breathed upon, by someone so close they were inside of him. They were like that for a while, and Russell wondered if Jason was afraid of hurting him. It was he who pushed back, who began the rhythm, and he who had seen and heard things, who put Jason gently on his back and began to push down, to feel him as deep as he could, to squeeze him and see the pleasure and wonder in the dark on Jason Lorry’s face. Jason reached up to him, mouth open and after a while, after it felt so good, Jason asked, “Can I… Can I?”
He didn’t need to ask more, and having been entered the first time it was easier the second. Russell lay on his stomach his face in the pillow filled with the spicy smell of Jason.
“Pound me,” he whispered, and Jason did and the pleasure of the bed shaking, the two of them shaking pushing back, bound together, the pleasure of being pressed by Jason’s love and desire, kissed over and over again stroked while being fucked and fucked made Rusell want to cry out.
“I’m going to… I’m going to…” Jason began.
“Do it.”
But at the same time he felt Jason’s cock swelling and jumping like a heartbeat, at the same moment he felt himself pumped with hot seed, he shuddered as his own body gave way and he knew he was coming all against his stomach, all over the bedsheets.

TOMORROW NIGHT: THE BOOK OF THE BURNING

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well I am glad Russell came out to his Dad and went to see Jason. Sounds like they had some good sex and I am interested to see what happens next. Great portion and great writing! I look forward to more of The Book Of The Burning tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT THINGS GET EVEN MORE INTENSE

When he woke up, half drowsy and heard the whir of the air conditioner, Russell didn’t ask what time it was. None of that seemed to matter. This bed was huge and expensive and soft and he lay on his side and Jason’s arms were about his waist. They had been covered in sweat and come and it didn’t matter. None of it did. The room smelled of sandalwood and Jason’s cologne and his musk and something else that Russell wondered if it might not be himself. He pressed himself closer to Jason and wanted to lift him up, but Jason was only a little asleep, and instead of lifting up, went down, taking Russell in his mouth. Russell didn’t know how long they lay lazy like that, Jason sucking on him, making the cock he didn’t think much about a long, hard, real thing with a geography, a central vein to lick, a helmeted head to trace with his tongue, balls, heavy to hold, to massage, to leisurely suck on this devils road between balls and asshole to be licked and traced and ass to be licked, to be fingered, to still ache after Jason’s entry. Russell lay in the dark and was serviced by his lover. Jason didn’t know much more about being with boys than Russell knew, but he knew enough, and he knew far more about went on in the bed. Was he doing to him what he liked done to him? Jason guided him wordlessly, with hand movements and nudges and finally Russell felt Jason’s thumb and finger massaging him, making his penis hard and curved, longer and heavier than he’d ever known it, and then Russell was inside of Jason. In the darkness they repeated what they had begun. There was a thrill in the timeless beauty of their sex. Far from Breckinridge or Curtain Street, in a part of a large house built off of much of the house, in a room beyond a room in the deepest part of of the night, the bed squeaked with a rhythm, and Jason looked up at him, dark eyes vague and shining, mouth open, his thighs bent to his knees, while kneeling, and then descenind, Russell fucked him. This time his coming started like a flutter of butterflies from the inside and ended in a corkscrew. He wasn’t able to stop himself from shouting, and as he collapsed between Jason’s thighs, neither was Jason.


The sun had been up a long time before Russell asked what time it was. It was after Jason had asked if he wanted breakfast.
“Nine o clock,” I think.
Russell didn’t even pretend to not panic. He was past pretending with Jason.
“My parents aren’t cool like yours,” Russell said. “There’re going to wonder where I am.”
“I don’t know if that makes them not cool,” Jason said, “but I’ll get my phone so you can call them.”
Jason wasn’t wearing any clothes. There was no need for that and even while Jason went to the ante room to get the cordless, Russell’s eyes linged over his bodyh, over the gentle roundness of his ass. Jason came back and when Russell took the phone he had the sense to call Chayne instead.
“Russ?” Rob picked up. “Oh, good. Chayne said you’d call sooner or later.”
“Are people looking for me?”
“A little,” Rob said. “Here’s Chayne.”
“Russell?” Chayne seemed unconcerned, not exactly like he was looking very hard for Russell and he explained when Russell asked:
“Your mother didn’t feel bad about calling me at 8:30 in the goddamned morning to ask if you were here, so I didn’t feel bad about telling her you were.”
“Oh!” Russell took a deep breath. “Good. Well, I will be there. I’ve been out.”
“I assumed,” Chayne said, voice measured, and he didn’t ask where.
“I guess I’ll be there around noon.”
“Alright,” Chayne said. “Depending upon how comfortable you feel about lying to your parents, you might want to call them before then.”
Jason dressed in shorts and a tee shirt and came back with spicy patries and puffed dough wrapped about potatoes and meats. There were sour sweet sauces and rice bright with herbs and Russell thought that, even though Jason was half Indian he probably ate Cheerios for breakfast when he ate it all and he was surely showing off. They rolled naan around chicken and rice and stuffed their mouths hungrily and Jason’s grey green eyes rolled when he said, “I had thought we should do all this stuff today, but right now all I wanna do is go back to sleep. Come to think of it, we really didn’t sleep that much. And you said you had to go back to Chayne’s?”
“I will,” Russell said. “Around noon.”
“Do we do something special now,” Jason said. “How’s it going to be with us?”
“I don’t know,” Russell said, licking his fingers. He hadn’t planned that.
“How would you like it to be?”
Russell could still feel Jason inside of him. Naked on the bed, he allowed his penis to rise with the memory of being touched by Jason, being in him.
“It was good how it was. I’d like it to be like that. You and me and Ralph friends, except with nothing weird hanging between us. And I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to pretend that what happened didn’t happen.”
“Is it going to keep happening. I mean?” Jason looked doubtful. “Are you going to come back? Are we like boyfriends now?”
“This and all the other questions that had made Russell afraid, that he had pushed out of his head last night.
“What would you like?” Russell asked.
“I’d like to drive you places,” Jason said. “And I’d like to get on a motorcycle and have you get on it with me and you would put your arms around my waist and put your head to my back and we’d ride through the wind.”
“Yes,” Russell said. “I think that’s what I want too.”
Russell could not imagine not telling Chayne the truth of last night. There was so much, and usually so much that wasn’t very good that he told Chayne. He would tell Chayne, but not today. He could not help but tell Gilead. It would fall right out of his mouth. He owed the telling, in a minimal way, to Ralph. He told him everything, and yet he could not phrase telling him this. Telling him of all last night had turned into, of how they slept in each other’s arms, but as the summer sun began to leak past the tight slits of the windows they had begun again, kissing, tasting, not being exhausted of each other. They had fucked and fallen asleep three times before breakfast and each time felt like a new discovery, like a pressing forward into new country. That’s what he wanted to tell Jason, If Jason asked him what he wanted he would tell him that. He would say:
“I always wanted to look at you, but you wouldn’t let me. I always wanted to touch you, but you made me feel strange about it. I always wanted to feel you touch me, but you had made me feel off about that. I want to do all of that. I want to come into the back of this house so we can keep on finding out what we found with each other. And I want us to be friends because we never have been till now. I don’t now what else I want. Except I want to be good. I want to feel like this, like someone who is sexy, who isn’t a scared kid, who knows a thing or two, who is powerful, I want to be that, and I want to be good and I want to be good to you.”
And he had said this by the time Jason had driven him up to 1421 Curtain Street.
“You coming in?” Russell asked.
“Nope,” Jason shook his head. “My mom says guests and boyfriends you just slept with for the first time should always have the since to know when you leave or else you get sick of them.”
“Your mom said that?”
“Well, she said the first part, but I am smart enough and have done enough to know the second part, so… See you tonight?”


When the tow truck came down the street followed by a hearse like some strange funeral, Rob hopped up from his desk and Anigel uncurled herself from the sofa. They both went out to see if Jill Barnard was in the hearse and Russell was sure Cody was driving the truck. When he got out, broad shouldered, tee shirt stretching across his chest and jeans clinging to his thighs, Russell was not sure of how he felt.
“You need to talk to me,” Chayne said, standing beside him, “Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yes. I don’t know how to, though. And that’s a first.”
“It won’t be the last,” Chayne said. “Just make sure it doesn’t stop you from coming to me, just because the coming isn’t as easy as it once was.”
Russell nodded. They went out to the porch and Anigel was saying, “You mind if we go out with Jill?”
“I’m not your mother,” Chayne told him.
“You mind if I take Russ around in the truck?” Cody asked Chayne. “I mean, you aren’t his mother, but… you kind of are.”
Chayne laughed and said, “I don’t know. Trucks are fun. Russell was talking about what a good guy you were. Why don’t you all go out and come back for dinner. I think Ani’s cooking up something Boricua.”

But Russell knew he had never been the only thing on Chayne’s mind. Chayne had taught him how to love like a grown up. Chayne’s heart was always big enough for him, but he wasn’t the only thing in it, and Chayne was always ready to hear what Russell had to say, but if Russell had nothing to say, or wanted to hold a secret, then that was fine too. Up until now, Russell had never had persona business, and he was a little sad for having it .
As he was leaving, he saw a battered old red Escort driving in the other direction. It honked at him and a copper haired woman scared in his direction before driving on.
“Faye Mathisson?” Russell murmured.

Russell had wanted to go out with Cody, but he also wanted to understand the way he felt. Sex was supposed to make him feel bound to Jason and it did. It made him want to go back to the room where he and Jason had been and it filled him with the smell of Jason, the light tobacco, the cedarwood and sandalwood, the dark saltier smells of his sex and between his warm thighs….
But the sex also simply reminded him of sex, made him aware of what he hadn’t before, and thinking of him and Jason he though of Ralph and Cody. He thought of Cody’s arms that bulged a little from his shirt sleeves, thought of Cody’s red mouth, thought of how Cody was supposed to be his new friend, but had spent the morning before with his other friend, Ralph.
“Is there something you want to say to me, Russell?” Cody asked him, pointedly.
“Uh… not really.”
“I talked to Ralph. I mean, he called me at the shop babbling about some shit. And I thought I was going to hear from you and we would hang out. I thought you wanted to, but you’re being very silent, and you were very weird, so I’m going to ask you again: is there something you want to say to me?”
“I’m gay,” Russell spat out without thinking.
Then he added, “And Ralph, who is my friend, who gave me such a hard time when I didn’t know what I was, who had a girlfriend and everything. He said… he said…”
“He told you we had sex.”
“Yes!”
Cody leisurely turned the wheel on Bunting Street, and his face didn’t change.
When he didn’t say anything, Russell said, “But I thought you were my friend. And not his. And…”
“Do you have a crush on me?” Cody looked at him.
“Are you jealous of what me and Ralph did?”
“I am…” Russell began. “I am… sixteen. And really fucking confused.”
Cody sighed. He was glad for the red light.
“Russell, I’m nineteen and really fucking confused. And I thought…. I thought you liked Jason. I thought he liked you. And I thought we were friends, you and me. And Ralph, I hardly know the guy, and I can hardly explain why we did what we did. I think it happened because both of us were thinking about you and Jason. I don’t know. It’s fucked up.”
“Did you like it?” Russell said after a time.
“Did you like doing it with Ralph?”
“What did he tell you?”
“Not much. He just… I’m confused because…. Because I was with Jason.”
“You?” Cody said. “Had sex with Jason?”
“Yes.”
“You tell Chayne?”
“Not yet, and I tell him everything. I will tell him, but I didn’t know how. And I needed not to tell… anyone. It needed to be mine.
“But, I slept with him because we’ve thought about each other for a long time, and last night I stayed with him. We… it happened. And I like him, and I care about him, and I love him, and I want him, but I want other things too. I don’t know. It is confusing. I thought…. I thought when you went to someone he… or she… was the Someone, and the door was closed and that was it. But that’s not quite how I feel.”
“Fuck,” Cody said.

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