Bent Arrow (6 page)

A
FEW WEEKS
later Luther and Erik were driving down desolate highways. They passed farmers plowing fields, the only vehicles they saw for miles at a time. Luther was able to breathe deeper out here in the wide-open spaces. He felt free.

They didn’t stop except to use the bathroom and get a late breakfast at a restaurant with a twenty-foot tall Native American statue standing near the door. After their bellies were full, they asked a stranger in a cowboy hat to take a photo of them next to a gigantic totem pole and then left the tourist trap behind.

“Why are you going so far away for this treatment?” Luther asked after a radio ad for laser tattoo removal in a city they’d already passed through finished playing.

“There’s a new machine. Until a few months ago, Minneapolis was the next closest city that had it, but now a Fargo doctor got one.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“The ink gets broken down into much smaller particles, which the body can absorb quicker, so in the end I’ll need fewer treatments.”

“That’s good. How many?”

“Two to five rather than fifteen or more.”

“Big difference.”

“And because my tattoo is black and most likely not too deep, based on how it’s already faded, it might be less. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I’m glad you’re doing this,” Luther said as he glanced over to see Erik looking hopeful rather than fearful. “One question.”

“Yeah?”

“How often are you asked about your ink while you’re working?”

“Never. Not on
this
job.”

“How’s that? All you have to do is bend over and—”

Erik shook his head. “You caught me on an off day. My laundry service was late in delivering my clean clothes, so I wasn’t wearing my standard tank top under my work shirt. I tuck that thing in
deep
so no one sees. I guess I’ll have to thank Donna for messing up or this”—he gestured between their bodies—“may have never happened.”

“I need to thank her too. But you didn’t wear the tank on the oil field, and that’s how the monsters saw?” Luther didn’t want something like that to ever happen to Erik again.

“Hey, don’t worry about me. I’m not using communal showers after shifts any more like I did in Williston. The opportunity for something like that to happen is a lot less nowadays.”

Luther reached out and squeezed Erik’s fingers, staying silent as more miles passed beneath the tires. Meanwhile, his mind provided a vivid replay of horrid scenarios he’d heard happen to other men and women working on the Bakken. Too many people demanding too much from the land and from an area not prepared to meet their needs. North Dakota was a sleepy, slow-moving place that had been put on fast-forward by the oil boom, and the growing pains were extreme at times.

Luther let out a weary sigh. Erik remained silent, but he stroked the pad of his thumb over Luther’s knuckles.

Their easy conversation had been pittered away by Luther’s concern and was now stilted, so Luther suggested they play twenty questions as they drove. When that got old, they started in on other travel games they each remembered from their childhoods. The tension drained away, and soon they were laughing and flirting easily again.

“Are you close with your parents?” Erik asked during a lull.

“Not really. They’re too nosy. And… they don’t know I’m gay.”

“Is that why you’ve been running all these years?”

Luther stared at the straight road and the flat, green landscape and decided to be honest with himself for the first time in a long time. “Yeah. You know what it’s like in small North Dakota towns with
traditionally
minded people all around. Being gay isn’t understood as anything good.”

Erik took a noisy breath, so Luther looked over at him and reached for his hand again. Erik immediately grabbed it.

“I do, but not as well as you. Because of hockey, I lived with billet families starting at fourteen. I knew coming out in the world of hockey wasn’t a good career move, but I lived in more liberal areas than here. I was in Seattle and Portland. I still knew to keep it quiet, but that was more because of the culture of hockey. I only told the last family I lived with, and I told them because I was serious about a guy I was dating. They were cool. My billet dad was the one who took me to get my tattoo.”

“What about your
family
family?”

“They know and are totally accepting of me, but we don’t see each other much anymore. They moved to New Hampshire a couple years ago.”

“So you’re kinda all alone out here, aren’t you?”

“Like a lot of the guys working in oil.”

“Yeah. I suppose.” Erik was right. Oil fields were lonely places even though they were packed with people. Maybe that’s why this… whatever they wanted to call their relationship felt so good. Luther felt as though he had a friend and a lover wrapped up in one person. He had someone he could share his body, mind, and even his soul with, even if Erik didn’t know he’d been peering inside Luther’s soul each time they had sex.

There was over an hour to drive yet, and Luther couldn’t allow his thoughts to slip out. He had to find a topic to fill the time before he started spilling his guts. This was crazy.

“So… talk to me about hockey. I miss it.”

T
HE TATTOO REMOVAL
went better than expected, but Erik was in some pain—it was written on his face—as he scheduled his next appointment. The doctor was hopeful everything could be removed with just two treatments, but there could be more. No matter what, Luther would drive him.

At dinner that night, Erik didn’t stop smiling. Because of that, neither did Luther.

This guy made Luther so happy with so little. All he had to do was talk with a smile on his face or look Luther’s way or share his experiences playing hockey and Luther was being filled up.

In their hotel room, as Erik stared into Luther’s eyes—into his soul—as he filled him in other ways, Luther fought his thoughts back by biting down on his lips. When his post-orgasm haze made speaking impossible, he relaxed more as a knot of tension he didn’t realize he’d had in his gut finally untied.

Somehow the drive back the next day was easier. Having sex twice that morning—before
and
after breakfast—might’ve had something to do with that. Luther mostly felt dazed and content as the uniform lines of green fields blurred. Conversation was natural, silence companionable, and none of yesterday’s tension slipped into the truck. It had probably been a fluke.

O
NCE
L
UTHER GOT
over his fears of his tongue having a mind of its own, the ease returned. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Erik off because Luther was
feeling
things rather than simply enjoying the great sex and their effortless companionship.

When they had days off, they spent them in bed or driving into one of the bigger cities to get away from the drudgery of the oil field. They made a good team, naturally fitting with each other, slotting in where the other had gaps.

Occasionally Luther would head up to the lake on days he had off but Erik didn’t, to work on small projects he could manage alone. Erik often helped him plan out the jobs ahead of time, finding helpful Internet references so Luther didn’t go in blind. He even made lists of supplies Luther would need and lent him tools so Luther didn’t have to go broke buying a wrench he’d only use once. Luther was a grunt worker used to working with the enormous equipment on the rigs, not a well-rounded handyman by any stretch of the imagination.

In late July, Erik joined him two weekends in a row so he could replace the sump pump and help Luther fix the house’s drainage issues once and for all. They rented equipment from Harold at the hardware store, dug trenches, and laid pipe to carry water away from the front of the house, down the steep-sloping side yard, where it would water the backyard or trickle into the lake.

They skinny-dipped as the sun set, warming their skin to a golden hue. Erik was beautiful in this light, and Luther was powerless. Luther kissed him as water licked at their skin, unwilling to stop when a boat and water-skier zipped by. They floated and watched the full moon rise, and while Erik dried off on the dock, Luther almost gave in, words bubbling up all the way to his lips. He dropped to his knees and filled his mouth with Erik so he’d remain silent.

B
Y
A
UGUST,
L
UTHER
had supervised the new window installation and did a fair bit of gardening with water-thirsty shrubs near the foundation. He planted perennials and accepted his mother’s offered help of watering them until they were established.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “Proud that you’re taking this on. You’ve done so much work in the last month. And I heard from Harold that you’ve been getting some help. Is that right?”

“Uh….” Luther pulled the hose away from the spiraea and set it at the base of the barberry bush. “That’s Erik.”

“Friend from the oil field?”

“Yeah.” Luther felt his face brighten with a smile and saw his mom scrutinizing him, so he turned away and deadheaded a few of the blooms in the flowerbox so she couldn’t see his expression.

“I talked to Gloria Jenson, Sarah’s mom.”

“Oh?”

“Sarah just moved back to town. Such a lovely girl.”

“Ma—”

“I don’t know why you two ever broke up. Anyway, she divorced a few years ago and has the most adorable little boy. Blonder than you were at that age. You and Sarah were such a beautiful couple.”

“Mom….”

“Luther, don’t waste the best years of your life digging for someone else’s fortune in the shale. I know it’s good money, but it’s hard on your health breathing in all those toxic chemicals, and you want to have kids when you’re young and healthy, not sick. Find a nice girl and settle down. The house is well on its way to being fixed up. All it needs now is a woman’s touch to make it feel like a home.”

“I don’t need a woman’s touch to make my life worth living, Mom.”

“You’re just going to be single forever?”

Luther didn’t respond. There was nothing he could say that would make her understand anyway, so he tore open the last bag of mulch and spread it under the shrubs.

She backed off then, returning to the chore of watering and eventually heading inside to make a quick meal. His dad joined them for supper out on the back deck.

After eating, he waved at his parents as his dad drove down the driveway, then wandered around the side of the house, studying the plants. It looked good, better than it had since he was a kid, back when his grandma spent hours in the garden. His mom was right: he and Erik had done a lot of work, and they’d already made some damn good memories here.

He was starting to see his grandparents’ home as something new, he realized as he stood out on the dock and sipped a beer while the stars started lighting up the indigo sky. He could see the potential in the house now, and he had a better understanding why his grandparents had decided to stay here year round rather than using it as only a summer home like most of the lake folk did. He loved the peace and quiet the sparsely populated shore offered. School would start soon, autumn would arrive, and only a few families would stay on for the winter.