The Grand Ballast (34 page)

“
The ‘performers’ at
Belvedere Farm are slaves!” Finley’s voice silenced even the
whisper of bodies against straw. He looked right at Bode. “They are
slaves. They were never given a choice. They live like animals, and
if the government won’t put an end to that, we will.”

Bode felt Valen watching him. He looked up
and imagined a spark between them, catching the straw, sending up a
roaring blaze, nothing visible through the flames but Valen’s dark
eyes. But the shed remained cold and cloaked in shadow.

“
We want love in the
world.” Bettina’s voice sounded far away. “A wiiiidespread love. We
want to offer what we have here in Harkville to those who have been
trapped.”

“
There’s no way love can be
used up,” Horse Leg put in. “There’s not a finite amount of it in
the world. We always wanted more, and so we never learned to simply
live with what we had.”

“
When I look back, what
will always be beautiful is the way we tried. Tried again. And
never quite knew if we were getting it right,” Bettina said.
“Harkville thrives because we don’t stop trying. While we’re here,
and whatever we are, we will all love as much as we can.” She
leaned against Horse Leg’s knees, her light pink skirt covered in
sawdust.

“
Hear, hear,” Horse Leg
said softly.

THE PROMISE

Bode was sitting on the bed when Valen came
up later. The Liberators had retired for the night.

“
What crawled up your ass?”
Valen asked.

“
I don’t have much patience
anymore for people who
talk
.” Bode pulled his shirt off.
Faced the wall. “Who talk and talk, and nothing ever gets
done.”

“
They’re talking
so
that things get done,”
Valen replied. “And what makes you think they haven’t done anything
already?”

“
How many shows have they
liberated?”

“
I don’t know. But the
protests all around the country—those started here.”

“
Yes, waving a sign is a
noble pursuit, isn’t it?”

“
You can either help or
stay out of it.”

Bode looked at Valen over
his shoulder. “You’re gonna liberate the farm, and then what? What
does that accomplish? You’ve freed a bunch of strangers, a bunch
of
criminals
.”

Valen stepped back. “A
bunch of
prisoners
. Jesus, you’re a self-centered fuck, aren’t you?” He
unbuttoned his shirt.

“
Belvedere Farm uses
criminals it pulls from jails. Death-row types.”

“
So they should be
tortured, then? Treated like animals because they’re
criminals?”

“
Why not?” Bode snapped.
“You kill someone, you deserve to suffer.”

Valen shook his head. “I’ve offered to help
these people do something good. If you’d rather wallow in
self-pity…”

Bode’s mind spat a shower of yowling sparks
that wouldn’t go out until they’d set something alight. “Yes, of
course. We can’t all be you—brainwashed from childhood, ready to
commit suicide, and then—oh, you suddenly dust yourself off and
become a fucking revolutionary.”

“
I’m going to fight!”
Valen’s words were like a flag whipped across the pole by a fierce
wind. “I’ve wasted most of my life being a coward, and I
will
change that
now.”

“
And how would it not be a
change to
love me
?”

Valen stared at him for a long moment,
looking as though he’d expected Bode to say anything but that.

“
Is that what this about?”
Valen sounded so derisive, vicious, that Bode looked away. “You got
yourself into some toxic, co-dependent relationship with a madman
and now you can’t fucking survive without someone holding your
hand?”

“
I saved you.” Bode’s anger
fed on itself. “I saved you because I
felt
something when I looked at you.”
He stood and approached Valen. “Tell me the truth. Tell me you
don’t feel anything for me, and I’ll leave you alone to
fight
. But if you feel it
too, then be a man and tell me. Because the way I choose to wake
people up is by loving with my whole heart. Give it back to me, or
I’m gone.”

A sudden helplessness appeared in Valen’s
expression. “I…”

“
Tell me.”

Valen tilted his chin up and sighed. “No. I
don’t feel anything for you. Okay?”

Bode remembered water and chains, the way
they’d both almost drowned. He climbed onto the bed and pulled the
blanket over himself. Valen could sleep on the floor. Or sleep with
the revolutionaries. Or drink himself to death in the saloon; Bode
really didn’t give a fuck.

After a moment, he heard Valen climb down
the ladder. He wanted to be grateful and instead was lonely. He
tried to imagine the sound of the piano in the saloon. Imagined
dancing to it. He must have dozed, because he tensed awake when the
ladder creaked again. Held still as Valen approached the cot.

“
Hey.” One word, deep and
uncertain. A hand on Bode’s shoulder, sliding gently down his
arm.

Bode struggled to sit up.
“Get away from me.” He could imagine for an instant, with perfect
clarity, how it would feel if Valen grabbed his wrist, held him
down. He jerked away. “Get
away
from me!”

The bed creaked as Valen sat on the opposite
edge of it. Bode stole a glance over his shoulder. Valen was
shirtless, sitting with his back to Bode, shadows from the
mullioned window slinking across his broad muscles.

“
I’m sorry.” Bode touched
his own skin in fits, imagining thorns.

“
I wasn’t trying
to…”

“
I know. I’m
sorry.”

Valen climbed onto the mattress beside Bode
and lay on his back.

“
I do feel something,”
Valen muttered. “I just don’t understand it. I don’t think I can be
what you want.”

“
What I
want
is a goddamn friend.”

“
Okay,” Valen said after a
long moment.

“
I know it’s stupid,” Bode
said at last. “I know it’s pathetic. I know I shouldn’t want it.
But I do. I don’t need a stunning act of heroism. I just need you
to…I don’t know. Look out for me.”

Valen swallowed audibly. “What if I can’t
protect you? Why are you still looking for someone to save you when
you should’ve learned—”

“
I didn’t say save; I said
look out for.” Bode kept his voice even.

Bode didn’t know what either of them could
say or do. He was foolish and Valen was stubborn, but Bode still
wanted to be in love.

Valen faced away for a while. Bode let his
gaze follow each ceiling beam. Felt the fine layer of grit on his
skin. Eventually, he heard Valen roll over again. Saw, out of the
corner of his eye, that Valen was staring at the ceiling too.

Valen tilted his head toward Bode. “If you
would accept, in place of my love, for right now—my—my loyalty… I
would give you that. I would stay with you.”

Bode laughed hoarsely.
“God, listen to you. They don’t make ’em like you anymore.” He
paused. “
I want you to make me a promise.
And this’ll be the only thing I’ll ask from now on.”

“
What?”

“
I want us to promise to be
kind to each other. No matter what. No matter what anyone else is
doing. Just be good to me. And I’ll be good to you.” He looked into
Valen’s eyes. “Please?”

“
Okay,” Valen
whispered.

Bode smiled. He felt less
empty, looking at Valen. And maybe that’s all love ever was—just
something you hung over loneliness, like a photograph put up just
to cover a square of faded paint on a wall. But if he could just
practice being nothing but good to somebody—being selfless, being
hopeful, being loving regardless of whether he was actually
in
love…then maybe he
would finally pay his debt.

“
Yes,” Valen said more
firmly. Bode saw the scared boy again. “I promise.”

SOMETHING REAL

The next night in the
saloon, Darkenage was performing. He was a castoff from the Last
Operas—a short, stout young man with a small goatee and a
nervous-looking smile that never left his face. He’d been slated to
play Edgar in
Lucia
, and to stab himself onstage, but he’d changed his mind
before the curtain rose the night of the performance.

A man in a white dress lay
faceup on the piano. As the evening progressed, he slid off the
surface until he hung upside down by his knees, his dress falling
over his head, making him look like a flower with a snapped stem.
He wore black stockings attached to a black lace garter belt. His
cock was visible, soft and curled under the lace. It made Bode
anxious to see the man lying there exposed like that, but nobody
bothered him. Every now and then someone would walk past on the way
to the toilet and touch the man’s flat stomach, or run their
fingers along his inner thigh, and the man would quiver with
muffled laughter, the fabric of the upturned skirt
rustling.

Finally Skullprute walked
over. His boots were heavy on the floorboards, his muscles bunching
under a collared shirt. He leaned down and kissed the man’s belly.
Over and over again, tracing light circles with his nails on the
jutting rib cage. The man on the piano laughed so hard Bode could
see where the skirt was getting sucked against his mouth with each
gasping breath. He almost slipped from the piano, but Skullprute
caught him and adjusted him so he wouldn’t fall again.

Bode was shocked—he
couldn’t have pictured Skullprute being tender with anyone. The man
flailed until he found Skullprute’s shoulder and gripped it. His
cock was hard now, straining at the garter belt, but Skullprute
never touched him there—just on his bare stomach and
chest.

Bode’s first instinct was
to assume something was wrong with the man. But the man’s body was
relaxed, and though Bode couldn’t see his face, he could
almost
feel
his
joy. And in Skullprute’s expression, he could see a gentleness he
never would have expected. Skullprute looked up suddenly and caught
Bode’s eye. Bode looked away.

He began to imagine Valen
stretched out on the piano—no wariness, no tension. Just quiet
abandon. Valen’s chest would rise and fall as Bode kissed him; his
cock would harden and the muscles of his thighs would become deeply
furrowed as his pleasure grew. He’d laugh, tease Bode, until Bode
rendered him incoherent and he couldn’t manage a single sound that
wasn’t a gasp or Bode’s name.

A saccharine fantasy. Bode
and Valen lay like strangers or corpses each night, neither
touching the other. Bode had never seen Valen laugh—really laugh.
And Valen didn’t love him. But he had made Bode a promise. And
maybe that promise could be something real.

Skullprute lifted the man
gently off the piano and set him on his feet. Helped him straighten
his dress. They hugged, Skullprute running his hand down the man’s
back with an air of possession that made Bode ache.

Darkenage was finishing his aria.

“
And all
I could ever dream ooooof…”
His
vibrato was violent as an earthquake.
“Was
so-ooooooooomethiiiiinnnng…reaaaaaalllllllll!”

He finished to raucous
applause. Darkenage bowed and looked around. Asked for an audience
suggestion so that he could improvise the next song. He drained a
glass of water and raised his eyebrows at the shouted suggestions.
Bettina’s voice rose above the rest. “Bode! Sing about Bode—our
guest.”

Bode looked over at her in
horror, and she winked and smiled. He glanced around for Valen, who
was at the bar, seemingly oblivious.

Darkenage glanced at the
piano player. “A fast one, please!” The piano picked up, and
Darkenage got up on a table, while the people seated there laughed
and clapped and moved their drinks to give him more room. He
launched into a song.

“
He was once a dancer,
dance-dance-dance, a dancer…”

The crowd got to its feet
and began to dance.

And no one in town could
dance-dance-dance like Bo-deee Mar-tin!”

Horse-Leg bobbed merrily
on his backward-hinged leg.
Finley banged
on the piano, and Hedda swayed with her eyes closed. Through the
glass scars, the dark mess of her organs shifted and glistened, and
blood vessels pressed against her panes like vines.

Someone grabbed Bode and
whirled him between two tables.

“
Stop!”
Bode wrenched away. The music played on. He bumped into a painted
girl as he backed up, and then people kept jostling him. Someone
took his arm and tried to tug him into a circle of dancers. It was
getting harder to breathe. “Stop.
Stop
!”

“
Clear
some space!” The words were sharp enough to rise above the music.
Valen pushed through the crowd, breaking up the circle. “I said
clear some
space
.”

People parted. The piano
slowed then stopped. There was some muttering and laughter. Valen
walked up to Bode, who remained in a half-crouch, trying to
breathe. He didn’t want to let anyone near him, but he was going to
need help in a minute if he didn’t get some goddamn air into his
lungs.