You Don't Know About Me (35 page)

I stepped out of the camper. The cool air pulled my naked skin to gooseflesh. As I walked, a furnace lit inside me. My skin ironed smooth.

I moved through an arch in the stone circle. The dirt under my feet felt soft and warm. Moving toward the square table, I caught my shadow walking with me. It made me feel less alone.

I thought I'd be more scared, the closer I got to the stone table. I felt the opposite: kind of giddy and calm at the same time. My mind, heart, and body had decided.

I'm an abomination.

I stood next to him. He lay on his back, on top of his blanket. The sheet lay over him. It glowed white in the moonlight. I stood, not moving except my breathing. I watched the sheet rise and fall at his chest. I could hear his breathing. It reminded me of the silence in the desert.

His eyes fluttered. They opened full. He stared for an unfocused moment. Like he wasn't sure if I was real or a dream.

I wanted him to know it wasn't a dream. I opened my mouth and words tumbled out. “This feels nice.”

He closed his eyes, then suddenly swung up to a sitting position. It was so smooth and fast, it made me jump. He turned his head, pushing his sheet toward me. “Cover yourself.”

The furnace inside me exploded. My skin felt scorched. I snatched the sheet, clutched it over me and ran. I shot through a gap in the stone circle and stumbled down the hill.

“Billy!” I heard him yell. He was coming after me.

I picked my way down the rocky hill until I found a rock big enough to hide behind. I scrunched behind it and buried my face in the sheet. I hated God with every sliver of my being. I hated Him for his cruelty. I hated Him for making the world. But I hated Him most for making me.

“Billy,” Ruah called from the top of the hill.

I didn't answer.

“I won't come down. I'll let you be,” he said. “Just let me know you're there, and okay.”

I knew he wouldn't budge till he knew. “Go away!”

“That'll do.”

At dawn the river valley below was buried in fog. Anyone else might've thought they'd woken in Heaven and were looking down at the cloud-covered earth. Not me. It was
God's way of torturing me more. He'd put me in hell and made it look like Heaven. The Hilarious Father strikes again.

I thought about what to do. Ruah would probably still be sleeping. Maybe I could sneak back in the camper, grab my clothes, and start hitching. There's no way I could ride with him to Portland. Not unless I could hide in the bathroom and finish my trip the way I'd started it: safe in my pod, like he didn't know I was there, like he'd never opened the door, like last night had never happened, like the whole thing had been a big fat nightmare.

I wrapped the sheet around me and climbed the hill. Reaching the top, I found my clothes folded on a rock next to my sneaks. I saw a movement through the gaps in Stonehenge. Great, I thought, he's awake.

I grabbed my clothes, hooked the sheet over my head, and got dressed under it. As I yanked on my shoes, I figured I'd go back down the hill, find the road, and sneak away. Then he called from inside the stones. “I got breakfast if you want it.”

He had a small fire going and had set cereal and milk on the stone table. I couldn't look at him. It was totally bizarre. He was acting like nothing had happened. Or, if I was really lucky, maybe he thought the whole thing
had
been a dream. That would've been fine with me.

I ate a second bowl of cereal. I wasn't hungry, I just had to do something with my hands.

When I finished he said, “There's something we haven't done the whole trip. We've never prayed together. Would you like to?”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

He stood up and stretched out his hand.

I stood. I didn't take his hand. He didn't drop it. I told myself it was just a prayer, and took his hand.

He lowered his head. “T.L., thanks for showing us another day. Thanks for showing us the night. Even last night.”

I tried to pull away; he clutched my fingers.

His voice stayed steady and calm. “Thank You for sending a child of God, who reminded me of Your most important teaching: ‘Above all things, put on love.' Thanks for sending me a messenger. But next time You send Billy Allbright to spread the gospel, You might want to remind him that putting on love doesn't start with taking off clothes. Love isn't always naked.”

My cheeks felt on fire. I couldn't believe he was talking about it in a prayer. Like God needed to be reminded.

“If I'm not mistaken,” he continued, “putting on love starts with simply being present. So I thank You for the blessing of his presence on my journey. We pray You'll help Billy find his father's book. We pray You'll help me”—he hesitated—“find the right path in Seattle. We ask You to guide us and protect us in these last miles to Portland, and on our separate roads ahead. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.”

“Amen,” I muttered as he let go of my hand. I glanced over.

He was smiling. “Thanks, I needed that. Now I wanna show you something.”

I shrugged.

“It's waiting for us on the road. As long as you still want Giff to deliver you to Portland.”

He was waiting for an answer. I didn't know what to say. “Do we have to talk?”

He shook his head. “Nope. But we need to get going. I checked out the tourist shack in the parking lot and someone's gonna be opening it up any minute. You take the breakfast stuff back to the RV. I'll douse the fire and bring the rest.”

I grabbed the bowls and milk and headed for the camper. In the parking lot I noticed a bike by the tourist shack. It hadn't been there the day before.

Suddenly, a guy came around the back of the camper. He was about my age. He didn't look friendly. “Did you camp here last night?” he demanded.

“No,” I answered. “We drove up this morning to have breakfast and take a look around.”

“You're lying. I saw you by the fire, holding hands. This isn't a campground for faggots.”

The word made my insides tighten up. “We were praying.”

“Bullshit, faggot.”

I lost it. I slammed my hand in his face. He came back at me. After that, all I remember were fists and milk flying. We rolled on the ground punching fast and hard. The next thing I felt was something hitting my back, lifting me in the air.

It was Ruah. “Enough!” he shouted.

The guy jumped up and started after me again. Ruah raised one of his huge hands. “No!”

The guy heel-planted. He knew he'd have to get
past Ruah to get at me again. He pointed. “He's fuckin' mental!”

Ruah lowered his hand without taking his eyes off the kid. “I've never seen him throw a punch. It had to come from somewhere.”

The kid jerked his jaw at the folding chairs on the ground behind us. “You're not supposed to camp here!”

I noticed the sheet, now folded, on one of the chairs. Ruah must've found it where I left it on the rock.

“It's the only place we could find,” Ruah said as he pulled out his wallet. He took out two twenties and handed them to the kid. “Maybe this'll make it right.”

The kid wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve and grabbed the money.

“Have a blessed day,” Ruah said before pushing me toward the camper.

Less than a minute later we were winding down the road below Stonehenge. “I know you don't wanna talk,” he said, “but that was before you started whaling on the locals. What the hell was that about?”

“He saw us by the fire,” I told him. “He didn't believe we were praying.”

“He thought we were something else.”

“Yeah.”

“So you decided to hit him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what Jesus would do?”

“You told me not to walk around in a WWJD shirt. You told me to be a rebel.”

He laughed. “That's true. And you're a rebel, no doubt about it.”

I didn't know if he was talking about more than the fight. I didn't ask. Like I said, I didn't want to talk. I didn't even want to think. I took a vow of not thinking.

We didn't get far before he messed up my vow. Crossing over the river into Oregon, he said, “Say goodbye to the SayWA State.”

I looked to see if the Oregon welcome sign was the same as the old, shot-up one we'd seen the day before. At the end of the bridge the sign said
WELCOME TO OREGON—WE LOVE DREAMERS
. If I hadn't been so miserable I would've laughed my guts out.

Ruah passed the entrance to the interstate and drove toward a town.

“Where we going?”

“To the thing I wanna show you.”

We parked in front of a drugstore. I followed him inside, and he stopped in an aisle. “See the magazines?”

At the end of the aisle was a wall of magazines. “Yeah.”

“I want you to do a little experiment.” He took a can of Old Spice shaving cream off the shelf. “Go find the magazine covers with half-naked people on 'em. They'll be girls
and guys. Open one of each, look at the pictures, and see which ones throw your switch.”

I felt my cheeks turn red as the Old Spice can. “You're kidding.”

“That's the deal.” He kept studying the can. “You wanna ride to Portland, you gotta see what throws your switch.”

I went over to the magazine rack, found a girlie magazine, and opened it. The naked woman staring back at me threw my switch right away. I turned a few more pages. The women made Victoria's Secret models look like nuns in skimpy habits. Then I took down a magazine with an oily muscleman on the cover and flipped it open. What stared back at me gave me a major case of chung. I shut the magazine and turned around. Ruah was gone.

I went outside. He was in the camper.

Driving to the interstate, he said, “Did your body tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“For sure, for sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good.”

There was a long pause. I couldn't believe he wasn't asking me what. “You don't wanna know?”

He lowered his shades over his eyes with a slight smile. “I'm all ‘
Don't ask, don't tell,'
remember? Besides, I thought you didn't wanna talk.”

But I did. I wanted to do more than talk. I wanted to shout out the window.
Hey, everybody, I passed the crotch test! I like girls! I'm not queer!
I didn't, of course. It
would've been rude, considering Ruah. I also didn't because I still didn't get why I'd trampolined off the gay cliff. I just said, “I'm straight.”

He nodded. “Congratulations. That's gotta be a demon off your back.”

A laugh jumped out of me.

“What's so funny?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” I said.

“Yes and no what?”

“Yeah, it's a demon off my back, and no, it's not, because last night I was sure it was God's will for me to be gay. I'm a little confused about God right now.”

His forehead wrinkled. “I was wondering about that. I mean, it's one thing to be horny and do something crazy. It's another thing to think T.L.'s the one pulling your strings.” There was a long pause, then he asked, “Ever heard of walking back the cat?”

“No.”

“It's from the spy business. When something bad goes down—like a cat killing a mouse—you walk the cat backward to figure out how it happened.” He looked over. “Someday, not necessarily today, you should walk back the cat on last night.”

I thought about it and realized today was as good as any. I mean, who else was I going to walk back the cat with? Mom? Case and the R-boys? Yeah, right. So I started telling him about the signs God had thrown me that made me think I was gay.

I told him about kissing Spring, and not liking her glow-in-the-dark boobs. He said anyone might be turned off by
that. “When you kiss a girl, wanna make love to her, and her tits turn out to be bright enough to read by, that's usually a deal breaker.” After I stopped laughing, he said, “Don't tell me you thought you were gay because of one encounter with Martian boobs.”

“No.” I wanted to tell him about the dream, but I couldn't. I skipped that and cut to the chase. “The Bible made me do it.”

“The Bible made you do it?”

I told him about my providence check, and how God guided my finger to the verse in Job about me being born to trouble.

He shook his head in disbelief. “I'm not sure poking your finger in the Bible to see if you're straight or gay is a good idea. It's the Good Book, but it's not
that
good.”

I was debating whether to tell him about the dream or not, when he started chuckling. “I mean, if everyone decided sexual orientation by the finger-in-a-book test, imagine what would happen if someone didn't have a Bible around for their moment of truth. What if some kid who only had
The Polar Express
, poked his finger in it and discovered God wanted him to be a Santa-sexual? Or if someone stuck their finger in
Moby-Dick
and decided they were a whale-sexual? And what if, God forbid, someone opened their favorite cookbook? There'd be some miserable guy out there convinced he was an eggbeater-sexual.”

I knew he was having fun and trying to make me laugh—and I did a little—but it made me realize that the only way he was going to understand why I did what I did was to tell
him about the dream. If I was going to walk back the cat, I couldn't lift the cat over that one.

After I told him, he thought about it for a while. “I'm no shrink or dreamworker,” he said, “but it sounds to me like your dream confirms it.”

“Confirms what?”

“That you're no different than any other teenage boy: you think everything is about sex. But maybe your dream wasn't about sex at all. Maybe you're confusing sex with intimacy.”