The Boy I Love (14 page)

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Probably we can bring all the horses and cats and so forth to whatever crappy little apartment we end up renting.”

“The horses,” Allie said, like she hadn't bothered to remember about them. “Will the person who buys your place get them?”

“No,” I said, “because nobody's going to buy the place. That's what foreclosure means. The bank gets it, and I
don't think a whole lot of banks care anything about rescued horses. Banks just auction everything off. And do you remember what happens to retired race horses who go to auction? The whole point of my mom rescuing them in the first place?”

I felt my eyes fill up with tears, but at that moment they were angry tears more than sad ones. Allie had been around my family and our horses so long, it seemed like she should know why my mother saved them. But she just sat there, looking disappointed that she couldn't put some sort of cheerful spin on it.

“Look,” I said, pulling my hand out from under hers. My gauzy glove scraped in a way that made my palm hurt for the first time in weeks. “I'm late for English, so I'd better get going.”

“Okay,” Allie said. “Will you meet me for lunch, though?”

She looked up at me from under the brim of that hat. And I felt sorry for her, I did. But I also felt betrayed. How could she of all people not get how bad it was to have to move away from our farm? She had practically grown up there herself! But it seemed like she thought breaking up with Devon was a worse problem. So I said, “I can't. I have work to do in the library.”

Three minutes later, when I walked into English class, they were already discussing a Langston Hughes poem that starts out “What happens to a dream deferred?” I just
sat there thinking on how my mom's dream was saving horses, and nobody seemed to care that it was not only being deferred, it was dying.

*   *   *

Since I told Allie I had to go to the library instead of lunch, I figured I'd better do it. I had to start researching my paper anyway. I sat down at a computer in the far corner and went to the Google screen. Then I just sat there. I had no idea how to go about researching my own family. I thought about typing in Piner Plantation, Leeville, North Carolina, and put my fingers on the keyboard to do it. Part of me thought nothing at all would come up except my mom's horse rescue. The other part of me felt terrified about what
else
might come up. After all, when James's sister found out the information that busted him and Holly apart, the whole thing had started with an Internet search.

I sat there, fingers unmoving on the keyboard. The cursor blinked on the search bar for probably five whole minutes until a familiar voice said, “Wren. What're you doing? Aren't you hungry?”

There stood Tim, right next to me. Tim with his nice, freckly, smiley face. And this feeling I got lately came flooding over me, like the simple sight of him just made everything okay.

“Hey,” I said. “I wanted to do some research on my family
in Leeville. What we were like after the Civil War. But I don't know what to search.”

“Did you Google it?”

Part of me wanted to say yes I had, but nothing had come up. But I didn't want to lie to Tim. So I said, “No. I was too scared.”

He nodded. I knew he'd understand. “Well, why don't you ask your dad about it?” he said. “He probably knows the history.” Tim sat down in a swivel chair and pulled it close to me. “Can I show you something?”

Tim went to his e-mail and opened a note from his church. It was a mass mailing about the thing he'd mentioned before, how they were going to separate from the main Lutheran church. He clicked on a link that went to a website that was all about how bad homosexuals were. The website said some vicious things.

“There's a big meeting in Stony Mountain this weekend,” Tim said. “A bunch of Lutheran pastors and church members are going to talk about forming their own separate church. One that doesn't let in faggots.”

I hated hearing Tim use that word. “Is that what they said? I mean, that's how they put it?”

“No. But they might as well. They say a lot worse than that.”

Tim and I sat quiet, staring at the screen. I don't know if he was reading along with me about hell, and sin, and commandments. But as I read all these things, these mean and
awful things, I couldn't stand thinking of him reading them too, so I reached over his hands and x-ed out of there.

“I hate that website,” I said.

“My parents are going,” he said. “To the meeting. I said I couldn't go because we had rehearsals, so they're leaving me behind.”

We never had weekend rehearsal, but I didn't say anything about that. After a minute Tim said, in this very calm, very empty voice, “Sometimes I think I'd rather be dead.”

When I heard Tim say this, the word “dead,” a feeling came over me that was cold and hot at the same time. Icy on my spine but burning in my chest. I sure hoped he was saying this as an expression, and not meaning that he would ever truly want to
die
. Because he had to know—he had to—that one day he'd be out of high school and move away from Williamsport. And then the life he
chose
could begin. And meanwhile, he had me. Even though it was hard sometimes, I sure would pretend to be his girlfriend as long as he needed me to. If it kept him safe.

“Rather be dead than what?” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “A Lutheran?”

He laughed a little, but I could see his heart wasn't in it. Then he said it again and finished the thought. “I'd rather be dead than like this, a faggot.”

When he said it like that, along with that
word
, it didn't sound like an expression at all. It sounded like he meant it.
He looked like he meant it too, his face suddenly stone still, all the smiliness gone from it. I couldn't stand seeing him this way, or thinking about him hurting so bad he'd want to die.

“Tim,” I said. “Can't you see it's not you that's been born a particular way? A way that's bad, I mean. You're just fine. It's all of them who are the problem. They're being hateful and mean. They're
choosing
to be hateful and mean. It's like the Klan after the Civil War. One day all these people”—I tapped the computer screen, though the site was gone—“will be ashamed of this. Or else their children will be, or their grandchildren.”

I waited for Tim to nod, but he didn't. He just kept staring at the computer like that website was still there. “My parents would wish I was dead,” he said. “If they ever found out.”

“They wouldn't ever wish that!”

“You should hear them,” he said. “My dad, he's so angry about this church thing—I never realized how much he hates homosexuals. And that means he hates me, too. He just doesn't know it yet.”

I reached out and touched Tim's face. He smiled a bit but still looked so sad. My insides did this little tumble. Part of me felt like if I could only make him love me the way I loved him, all his problems would be solved. In some way I couldn't name, this thought seemed disloyal—disloyal to who Tim
was
. But as he leaned his lovely face against my
hand, no other word existed for how I felt. I loved him. I just did. I couldn't help it.

Once, ages ago, my mother and I rode up on an elevator with two men who were holding hands. It couldn't have been in Williamsport—we don't have many elevators, let alone men who hold hands in public. So we must have been traveling somewhere, maybe in Boston visiting her parents. I guess I'd have been about five years old, maybe six, and I'm sure no one had ever told me anything about homosexuals. Certainly nobody had ever told me being gay was bad or wrong. At the same time I knew what I saw was not usual—two men holding hands—and I kept looking over at my mother to see how she'd react. She just smiled at me, and smiled at them, and when they got off the elevator, she said, “Love is love, Wren. We smile when we see it.”

Sitting there in the library, I told Tim this story. I thought it would make him happy, but it didn't. He just looked grim and said, “Well, it's too bad you're not gay instead of me.”

*   *   *

Tim's dark mood hadn't left him by the time we rode home on the late bus after rehearsal. We didn't talk much, but I could tell he didn't want to hang out, so I just said good-bye with a little pang of loss and got off at my stop. When I got to the house, I saw Dad hosing off the ride-on mower.

I threw my backpack down on the picnic table next to Dad's old Winchester. He must've been out target practicing. Mom would give him hell if she saw it there.

“Hi, Dad,” I said.

“Hi yourself.” He looked surprised but happy at my sudden friendliness.

“Dad,” I said. I spoke loudly over the sound of spraying water. “I want to ask you some questions about the Piner family. It's for a paper in my American history class.”

Dad looked at me with this very strange expression. For a change he didn't have his glasses on, and his face seemed weirdly exposed without them. He put down the hose and went over to shut off the water. The water ran onto the ground and started soaking my sneakers, so I sat down on the bench and pulled my feet up.

“Now what's this?” Dad asked, when he came back. He sat on the other side of the table.

“Well,” I said. “This boy from Wilbur Beach is writing a paper for American history about local families who belonged to the Klan.”

Dad nodded, but he had a tense look on his face. I waited for him to bang his fist on the table and say, “No Piner in the history of North Carolina has ever belonged to the Klan!” But he didn't. He just sat there with an expression that seemed very un-Dad-like. A vein I didn't even know he had popped out on his forehead.

“Well,” I said, feeling less confident, “I was wondering what the Piner family was like before the Civil War. For instance, maybe we set our slaves free. Or maybe after the war we helped out ex-slaves, gave them jobs and such. I thought I would find out, you know, research it, and write my paper about how maybe we weren't so bad.”

Dad leaned across the table. He tapped his fingers on the board that lay exactly between him and me. “Wren,” he said, in this low, growly voice, “I want to tell you something. And I'm only going to tell it to you once. I have been remiss if I have never said this to you before.”

“Okay,” I said, not at all wanting to hear what he had to say.

“The Piners,” my father said, spitting out our last name like we were Hitler. “Your family. My family. Our ancestors. They owned slaves. Human beings. That's how they built their fortune. That's how they built this place, the ground where this picnic table is standing. Where we're sitting right now. There are no heroes in that past. There is no way to be
kind
to slaves, because there is no way to own human beings
kindly
. It is a crime against humanity. It is one of the
most serious
crimes against humanity. Do you understand that, Wren?”

“Of course I do,” I said.

“I know you love this place,” he said. “I love it too. But it's time to face the fact that every single acre is soaked in blood. Human blood. We should have let it go a hundred
and fifty years ago. So you know what I say now? I say good riddance. I'm sorry about your mother's horses, I truly am. But to the grass they graze on, I say good riddance, and I say good-bye.”

Dad stood up and started heading into the house. About halfway to the door he stopped and turned toward me. “I'm not a man who believes in censorship,” he said. “But you're not to write that paper, Wren. Do you understand me? You're not to go looking for honor in our past. Because there is none. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that. And I'm sorry I haven't made it clear before now.”

Burst. Deflated. I couldn't even answer. Like I knew that eventually everyone would succeed in making me hate the place I'd lived my whole life.

“You need to let me know you hear me,” Dad said. His voice still sounded like a growl, but I could also hear something else. Something like maybe he might start crying. I had never seen him cry, not even when Mom's father died.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I hear you.”

Dad nodded. And he walked into the house. I braced myself for the sound of the screen door slamming but it didn't, which surprised me. Last I knew the little closer valve was in need of fixing. Maybe they'd already begun making little repairs, for whoever was going to live here after we'd gone.

When I finally got up from the picnic table myself, I noticed Dad had left his rifle there. I checked to make sure the safety was fastened and carried it on up to the barn. Not that I felt like helping him any. I just didn't want to give him and Mom more excuses than they already had to holler at one another.

Weeks went by, unfolding into
colder weather, and for the first time ever we did not have Thanksgiving at the farm. Instead Mom paid Trudy's niece to watch the horses, and we spent three days in Raleigh. Or should I say we spent three miserable days in Raleigh, because everyone was so stressed out that even nice, cheerful Holly snapped at my mother and my sweet, calm mother snapped right back, and Dad got right into it too, taking Holly's side. There's not much point going into the details. Suffice to say I had never been so happy to get home. Straightaway I called up Tim. He said he'd borrow his mom's car and come get me.

Dad came out while I was waiting with Daisy on the front stoop. “Where you going?”

“Riding around with Tim,” I said.

He scratched his head a minute. If they hadn't been so
wrapped up in the farm, I'm sure my parents would have made Tim the topic of much discussion and warning and rules. But as it happened, they'd barely said a word.