Burning (12 page)

“You know,” I said, “moving on to junior high is a pretty big deal. And you’ll be in a new town, too. It’s a good chance
for a fresh start. Maybe you should think about joining a team or something. You know … to make some friends.”

James nodded, looking into the dying fire. It was down to embers now, not as grand as the fire had been, but still crazy hot. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “About joining a club, maybe.”

“A club! Yeah. Or maybe a team. Your swing looked pretty solid tonight.… Maybe you could try out for the baseball team.”

He seemed to think about that for a minute, and when he answered it was like maybe some of the air had gone out of him. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think that’s really my thing.”

“Or whatever,” I said. I was backpedaling. He knew it, I knew it.

James was quiet for a few minutes. I felt nervous. Jittery. Like I’d downed a few cups of coffee.

Then he spoke. There was something in his voice that I couldn’t really place. Almost like he was joking, or testing me. “I was thinking maybe I’d try out for the cheer squad. You know, if they have one.”

It was silent for a minute before I could come up with a response. “Yeah.” I choked it out. “Not a bad idea. It’s a good way to get to know all the hot girls.”

James turned, slowly, and looked at me. The fire was almost dead now, and his face was mostly in shadow. “Ben, you know I’m gay, right?”

And it was like the ground opened up under me.

It shouldn’t have been. Of course James wasn’t telling me
anything I didn’t already know, or at least mostly know. But until he said it out loud, I guess there had still been room for me to hope.

“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded flat. “I know.”

James turned back to the fire. He nodded. “I know you worry about me, Ben.” He was matter-of-fact, as if we were talking about plans for dinner or how many reps to do at the pull-up bar. “I’m not dumb, you know. I hear what people say about me sometimes. I see you getting into fights, and I know what they’re about.”

I didn’t deny it. He should know the dangers of what he’d just said. He should know the risks.

It’s not that I thought there was anything wrong with being gay. It’s just that it’s a big goddamn leap between being okay with
other
people being gay and being okay with my own brother announcing he was.

“I can’t help who I am, Ben.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s just—damn it, James, isn’t there anything you can do about it?”

I felt stupid. I wasn’t some closed-minded redneck. I knew that being gay is no more something you choose than the color of your eyes. But I also knew about the value of hard work. Sure, I was a natural runner. But I ran every day. I made myself into an athlete.

“Even if I could,” James said, “I wouldn’t.”

I couldn’t help my anger. “I won’t be there to protect you in Reno, James. You’re going to get your ass handed to you. Especially if you walk around asking for it—wearing the clothes you wear, joining the
cheer squad
.” James flinched at
the sound of venom in my voice. “A big school like the one you’re headed to, and it’s not like you’re moving to L.A. or Seattle. You’ll still be in Nevada.”

James just shrugged. He wouldn’t look at me at all, and his face was unreadable now that the fire was dead.

I was so angry I wanted to shake him. I wanted to hit him myself, just to give him a taste of what it would be like. I wanted to scare some sense into him.

“Maybe you’re gay, James, and maybe you can’t change it. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t even
want
to change it. But damn it, can’t you try a little harder not to
look
so goddamned gay?”

James still didn’t answer. It seemed he closed his eyes, though I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t see anything except the ghost of the fire that had been there but wasn’t anymore.

He stood up then, and wiped his hands down the front of his shorts. He turned to walk inside, but before he did, he paused. Slowly, deliberately, he tucked his T-shirt into the waistband of his shorts. Neat as a motherfucking pin.

And then he went inside.

It was a good hour before I finally went in, and by then James had already showered—he left the bathroom steamy as always, forgetting to crack the window—and was in bed, his back to the door. The light was out.

I stood in the doorway and watched him breathe. “James,” I said.

But he didn’t answer.

My people tell many stories. Some of them tell of Gypsy kings and princesses, poor travelers, unhappy sorceresses, dealings with the devil.

One of our stories goes like this:

Once there was a Gypsy blacksmith who had three sons. The first two were strong and handsome, but the youngest was crippled. The left side of his body looked just fine—handsome, even—but the right was twisted, weak, and ugly
.

One day the blacksmith learned that the Gypsy king was looking for a bridegroom for his daughter, who was said to be a great beauty. He wanted to marry her only to the strongest Gypsy lad in the land. Wealth didn’t matter, and anyone was welcome to present himself for a test of strength
.

Each of the blacksmith’s two elder sons bragged that he would win the princess’s hand and tried to lift their father’s anvil to prove his strength. But each struggled with the weight of it, unable to swing it onto his shoulder
.

At last the crippled boy—Jepas—wanted to try to lift the anvil. His brothers laughed at him, but their laughter stopped
suddenly as Jepas swung the anvil up to his shoulder as if it were a sack of feathers
.

And when he proved his strength again in front of the Gypsy king, he was granted the hand of the princess, even though the king did not like the thought of marrying his daughter to a cripple. Still, a promise was a promise, and the king did not like to be a man who did not keep his word
.

The princess wept when she saw the man she was supposed to marry. She tried to refuse. But Jepas insisted on wedding her, in spite of her unhappiness with the union
.

When his brothers saw Jepas’s new bride they were overcome with jealousy, and it was easy to see that she was not happy; her beautiful face was twisted in anger and contempt as she rode alongside her crippled husband
.

That night, as Jepas slept, his brothers tied him to a tree and told the princess that now she was free and she could choose either of them to be her husband
.

As coy as she was lovely, the princess demurred, saying she would have to think for a while before she could choose one or the other of them, but she let the brothers lead her away from her husband, who still slept, tied to a tree, and toward the blacksmith’s house
.

When Jepas awoke and found himself tied up, he was angered by the treachery of his brothers and his bride. As if the tree were no more a burden than a pack tied to his back, Jepas stood and made his way to his father’s house on foot, the tree still strapped to his back
.

When his wife saw him coming down the path, the mighty oak upon him, she shivered with mingled fear and admiration. Her
husband was the strongest man she had ever seen! Immediately she regretted her decision to abandon him and prostrated herself at his feet, begging his forgiveness
.

Jepas broke the straps that bound him to the tree and turned away from his wife and his brothers, leaving them to each other
.

But now that the Gypsy princess had seen Jepas’s strength, the other brothers were of no interest to her. She vowed to recapture her husband’s love, no matter what the cost
.

This is not where the story ends. The Gypsy bride travels far and wide searching for Jepas. She is captured by an evil sorcerer, she finds solace in a song she sings about her lost husband, and at last she is assisted by a helpful bird that sings her song to Jepas, far away.

Finally Jepas forgives his wayward bride and rescues her from the evil sorcerer. Together they live in happiness until the end of their days.

As a young girl I had listened with rapt attention as my mother told me this story, one of my favorites. I loved many things about it—most especially, it sat well with my innate sense of justice that the naughty princess was punished before she was forgiven for abandoning her husband. I liked to imagine that I was the princess. Of course I would never be as shallow as the girl in the story. I would see the crippled Gypsy’s hidden potential; I would be faithful from the start.

But it turned out that I would not have to see inner beauty in spite of an ugly façade; the groom my father had chosen for me would not have caused the king’s daughter any misgivings. He was fine and straight, darkly handsome in just the ways Gypsy men are said to be.

The morning after I had done a reading for Ben Stanley, we had a little flutter of business. It was Wednesday, the middle of the
gazhè
’s Burning Man festival, and many busloads of people headed up and down the highway to get more supplies at the little store in the dying town. Some of them stopped and visited us.

Violeta was cranky and said her back was hurting. Mother was busy with the baby, and Anelie was still my apprentice, a watchful learner but unable to do readings on her own. So it fell to me to deal with the stream of visitors to our tent.

It was difficult for me to focus on the readings. The oppressive heat seemed to bear down on me, and I felt like a leaf or flower that was being pressed between the pages of a thick, heavy book—trapped, smothered.

I must have done a dozen readings all through the morning and early afternoon. It was nearly three o’clock when all the
gazhè
had gone away. The heat was the worst at this time, and no one in his right mind would be out in it now.

The perpetual dryness was perhaps just as bad as the heat. At home in Portland everything was damp, even when the rain ceased temporarily. Nothing ever dried out completely, not the lawns or the flowerbeds or even the pavement. This desert world was bone dry.

Almost all of my family was resting. Mother had quieted Stefan, laying a wet washcloth against his back to cool him down until he settled into sleep. She must have fallen asleep too, for the curtains were drawn in the motor home.

Violeta and Marko were in their tent. It was silent there.

Romeo was sitting with Alek in the shade cast by the
motor home, showing him how to strum chords on his guitar. Alek watched him with intense concentration. He loved Romeo and could not wait until we were married and he could rightly call Romeo his brother.

My father was crouched not far from the entrance to the tent, and as I showed out the final group of
gazhè
Questioners, three young women who all wanted to know if they would find love, he nodded to them cordially.

Anelie stood behind me and we watched as they drove away, waving to us.

“I will never be good like you and Violeta,” she whined to me.

“Your problem is that you do not listen, and you do not really look, either. It is easy to know what someone wants if only you are aware.”

“What do
I
want, then?” asked my father. He looked amused by the little lecture I was giving to Anelie.

“That is easy,” I said. “You want a glass of iced tea.”

“Exactly right.” My father beamed. “Anelie, bring us each a glass. But be sure not to wake your mother.”

I squatted down next to my father. It was perhaps slightly cooler closer to the ground.

When Anelie returned with the iced tea, handing a glass first to my father and then to me, she asked, “How did you know he wanted a drink?”

I took a sip of my tea before answering. “Anelie,” I said, “it is well over one hundred degrees right here in the shade where Father is sitting. Who would not want a cold drink?”

“Hey!” she said. “That’s cheating!”

“No, it is not,” I said. “It is fortune-telling.”

Father laughed. “You are my clever girl. Always you have had insight beyond your years.”

I hid my smile against the rim of my glass as I sipped more tea.

“Well,” said Anelie, with that particular tone of argument in her voice, “what about you? What do
you
want?”

“Become a better observer,” I said. “Perhaps you will see for yourself.”

We sat, the three of us, in companionable silence, enjoying the tea.

After a time, Father spoke to me again. “Soon,” he said, “you will not be my girl anymore at all. You will be Romeo’s.”

There was nothing to say to this. It was not a question; it was a statement of fact.

“Your wedding will be even bigger than Violeta’s,” said my father. “Everyone loves coming to a fall wedding.”

“I wish you hadn’t chosen purple dresses for the bridesmaids,” Anelie complained. “I look much better in blue.”

“No one will be looking at you,” Father said. “Everyone will have eyes only for Lala, the beautiful bride.” He nodded.

My tea was gone. All that was left were two ice cubes, and as I watched they turned into water at the bottom of the glass. I drank this too, and stood. “I think I will take a little walk,” I said.