I Loved You More (30 page)

I remember something else, too. Gary didn't get hard either.
When I asked Gary if that upset him, he said, “No, I never get hard the first time.”

That a man could know that about himself and be okay with it and then say it out loud. I liked that.

YEARS AND YEARS
these guys, my pals. Reuben Flores, Sal Nash, Gary Whitcombe. Like Ephraim, they're men who've known me through it all. Beauty by Gustav, a married man, a high school teacher, buying a home on Boise's North End. Then 1978 comes along and everything changes. My affair with Bette, maybe a bisexual, for sure a disco sister. Then a few years later, I'm a full-blown homosexual. Currently a resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a graduate of Columbia University, and now a published author. 1988. And we're together again in Atlanta, Idaho, in a big dark concrete room, huddled around a kerosene lamp and a potbellied stove, no electricity, way high up a mile closer to the moon and the stars, sitting around a low table listening to Hank Christian's little girl call in the family's cows.

A family.

ONLY THE FLICKER
of the kerosene lamp when Hank is finished. Inside the stove, a chunk of wood settles deeper into the fire. So quiet. The faces stare at us, stare more. Their front doors wide open.

Hank grabs a handful of chocolate chip cookies, hands me one. It's only then I realize I'd forgotten about dinner. After a while, Sal starts clapping and then everybody else claps too. Misty Rivers unzips her blue parka, lights a cigarette, takes a deep inhale. On the exhale she says:

“Both of you read us some more. Please.”

“Yeah,” the Victrola Guy says, “I haven't been read to since my grandpa died.”

Around the table, all of a sudden, everybody's moving, talking back and forth. People grab their coffee cups, pour more wine, move their chairs, uncross their legs, stretch their backs, light cigarettes.

Don't stop. Keep reading. No, don't stop reading.

Hank's black eyes, a spark inside, bright as the kerosene lamp. I'm surprised, too. Magic. The silence, what we took for bored locals, has turned out to be something else.

Hank reads his story about live nude girls. I read the part of the novel about the Blackfoot State Fair. Then Hank's story of his high school sweetheart. Then me, the part about my father's saddle room. We don't get out of there 'til midnight.

Everybody carries the dishes from the low table to the sink behind the bar. There's two chocolate chip cookies left. I take one and Hank takes one. Gary opens the door to the stove and checks the fire, turns the dampers down. As everybody is leaving, Misty Rivers unzips a pocket of her blue parka, pulls out a checkbook. She lays the checkbook onto the table, opens it, bends down, and begins writing. The kerosene lamp shows the silver roots under her dyed-red hair. One check for Hank's book, one for mine.

When she hands Hank his check, she looks him straight in the eyes and shakes his hand.

“You've made a wonderful evening for us in Atlanta,” she says. “Thank you.”

And to me:

“And you're from Idaho,” she says. “We're real proud of you.”

Her hands are small and strong, the skin is slick.

OUTSIDE, GARY LOCKS
the Atlanta Club's front doors. Sal's got the Wagoneer going.

“Let's walk,” Gary says.

It's chilly after sitting by the stove, but the night air feels like pure oxygen. We walk together, Reuben, Gary, Hank, and me. At first, it's so dark we can't see our feet. No moon in the night sky. The night sky so full of stars so close you know the earth you're walking on is part of the cosmos. I take a step and where I step the bottom isn't there, and my foot goes down and down and finally hits the ground. For all I know that step could have been
a cliff. Ahead of us, Sal driving slow in the Wagoneer. The headlights make a place of light onto the dirt road. The brake lights more stars. Red stars.

“You guys are part of Atlanta history now,” Reuben says.

“How's that?” Hank says.

“Misty Rivers just bought your books for the Elmore County Public Library.”

GARY'S HOUSE, THE
Main Spread
, is darkness inside of darkness. On the back porch, Gary takes a flashlight hanging from a nail and turns the flashlight on. Everything is blacker on the edges of the light. I can see an old table. A washtub on the table. A brick chimney, and an old screen door painted white. Gary pulls open the screen door, pushes open the back door. Hank steps back and lets me walk in first.

Each step I take into the house is a decade back into history. And with the flashlight beam bouncing around onto things, the house feels like an old silent movie. Through the kitchen, it's more like the museum of a kitchen than a kitchen. But there's no red velvet rope and you're not a tourist and you're just walking deeper into the past. Over the polished creaking floorboards, past the iron and chrome
Majestic
cook stove. Past an oak table with four wooden high-backed chairs. A tall wooden bookcase full of books. The big white dishes in the cupboards, the glasses in the hutch, rattle with every step.

I know I'm haunted, but by the time I'm in the hallway I am a firm believer in spirits. Fucking spirits are all around me, crowding in. They seem more curious than anything. They touch me the way you want to touch things sometimes because they are exotic. On the right of the hallway is Gary's bedroom. A bed, neatly made, covered in an old quilt. The light through the window, the way it makes the lace curtains glow, proves that we've entered another reality. Ahead of us down the long narrow hallway is an old full-length mirror. The flashlight beaming into it shows us that we're the ones who are the spirits. I look away as
fast as I can. Hank bumps into me from behind and my throat makes a high gargle sound. Hank's hand grabs my shoulder, doesn't let go.

We walk through a door to the left and through a bedroom. On one side of us a midget stove, stove pipe straight as an arrow through the roof. A double bed in the corner covered in quilts, two big white pillows.

“Reuben and Sal will sleep in here,” Gary says. “You guys are in here.”

Gary opens heavy wine-red curtains and points the flashlight down three steep wooden steps, then steps down into the room.

“Watch your step,” he says, and points the light to our feet.

Hank's still got his grip on my shoulder. I step down the steps, then Hank.

The room is a larger than the first bedroom and across the room it has a door, painted white, that Gary opens. It leads outside.

“If you got to pee in the night, stick close to the house,” Gary says. “There's been a bear around town causing some trouble. Some wolves, too, but they're as scared of you as you are of them.”

Gary's high-pitched voice talking about bears and wolves makes me think he's joking. But then when he closes the door, the way he pushes the door in with his shoulder, so the latch snaps tight, I know this ain't no joke. Hank standing in the dark next to me, knows it too. His hand on my shoulder is a tight squeeze.

The flashlight goes to the double bed. A white chenille bedspread with white pillows at the head and a folded quilt at the foot of the bed.

“This is a great old bed,” Gary says, “from the 1860s. Quite some stories about that bed. Some say it used to be Peg-Leg Ida's, but there's no real documentation.”

“Peg-Leg Ida?” I say.

“She was a whore up here got her leg froze off,” he says.

Gary's got the flashlight up close to the ironwork at the base of the bed.

“You see how the iron work links two circles in the middle?” Gary says.

“It's what they call a wedding ring bed.”

Hank's hand is off my shoulder soon as he hears
wedding ring bed
. Gary sets the kerosene lamp on the desk.

“Sleep tight,” Gary's high voice. “Don't let the bed bugs bite!”

Gary's up the three steep steps. He closes the heavy wine-red velvet curtains behind him. Hank and I, taking off our clothes, make strange huge shadows onto the walls.

“Can I sleep on the outside?” Hank says.

“Sure,” I say.

I'm stripped down to my undershorts. The bed bounces and creaks and the sheets are cold against my legs and arms. I pull the covers up to my chin. Just as Hank blows out the kerosene lamp, I see the painting on the wall. It's that painting of George Washington, his shoulders and his head, looks like he's floating on a cloud. The room is so fucking dark. Hank stands in the dark for a moment. I guess that's what he's doing. It's not long and his warm body settles in next to me. No doubt about it, we're both freaked out being in the same bed. And we haven't really talked since the sweat lodge. If it was up to Hank we'd probably lie there and not say a thing. But we have to say something. Something.

“Best reading so far,” I say.

“Unbelievable,” Hank says.

“Misty Rivers,” I say.

“Elmore County Library,” Hank says.

“The Victrola guy,” I say.

Hank is a big deep low snore. I'm worried about that snore at first. That I'll have to touch him, get him to lie on his side or something.

A GRINDING SOUND
wakes me up. I lie there with my eyes closed trying to figure out what that sound is. But I can't place it.
Hell, I don't even know where I am. It's cold and there's a smell, not a bad smell, just very particular and odd.

Then I open my eyes. The ceiling of the room is high and made of rough-cut barn wood. So are the walls. There's a window to my left at the foot of the bed. White curtains, the kind my mother used to wash and dry out on a stretcher. Just beyond my feet, through the double rings of the wrought iron bed, an oval mirror hung on the wall. Below the mirror, a table with a white doily. A yellow water pitcher on the doily and a smooth yellow bowl. Two big wine-red curtains hanging across the doorway. To my right, over the lump of quilts next to me, George Washington on a cloud is staring me down.

In the top corners on each side of the room at the ceiling, triangular cracks of sunlight coming through chinks in the wall. Around the room, an armoire, a steamer trunk, a wooden desk. Old books and papers on the desk.

The particular smell is the smell of the whole room. Old wood, old wrought iron, old books, and the sheets and the old quilt on top of me. That's when the quilted lump in the bed next to me moves.

Holy Christ, it's Hank Christian.

Those black eyes under a mop of messed up hair.

During the night, while me and Hank were sleeping in the wedding ring bed, no bears and no wolves had eaten us.

“Mornin' sweetheart,” Hank says. “What's that grinding sound?”

Inside me, all around me, on my skin. Something mysterious. Magic.

At first I think it's the spirits in the house, then I think it's that I fucking woke up in the same bed with Hank Christian. But it's something else. Some old part of me. Maybe the Most Miserable is back. I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. That old spirit ain't nowhere around.

Turns out that sound is Gary in the kitchen grinding coffee beans in his hand grinder. Then there's a smell. This mysterious
thing has a smell. A smell I haven't smelled in years. Fresh coffee and bacon frying. Magic.

THE
MAJESTIC
STOVE
is going and it's hot in the kitchen. Reuben and three big black iron frying pans on the stove. One with scrambled eggs and tomatoes and cheese, one with bacon, one with hash brown potatoes. Reuben's got a white apron tied around him and doesn't hear us at first because of all the frying. The tall wooden bookcase is full of cookbooks. On the oak table with the fancy kerosene lamp is a green bowl of red salsa. On the transistor radio, mariachi music. I walk up to Reuben, give him a kiss on top of his perfect haircut.

“Mornin' boys,” Reuben says. “Did you sleep all right in that lumpy old bed?”

“Fine,” I say.

“Yeah, fine,” Hank says.

“Gary's got the coffee ready outside,” Reuben says. “Just grab a cup and sit yourself down. Breakfast'll be ready in ten minutes.”

SUNLIGHT, MORNING SUNLIGHT,
coming down not too hot yet, onto the backyard. The backyard is a stretch of green lawn to Gary's barn and the outhouse. On the lawn is a wooden bench that was painted turquoise once. Tubs of water on the bench. One for washing dishes, one for rinsing, the next for rinsing too. Scattered across the yard are old porcelain pans filled with water. Half dozen or so.

Gary and Sal are sitting with their legs over the side of the porch. Sal's in his long-sleeved white shirt and red ballcap and Gary's still in his PJs with a sunbonnet on. Into a big white mug, Sal pours me coffee so black and thick it looks like what Arabs drink.

“Italian Roast,” Sal says.

Hank gets his cup, too. I sit down on the porch between Gary and Sal, sun on my Levi's and shoes. My face in the shade.
Hank squats down on the lawn, takes two sips off his coffee, gets up and walks the twenty steps to the outhouse. The door sticks but he gets it open. Ain't long and we hear a loud shit blast then a thud.