Chapel of Ease (18 page)

Our chapel was
this
chapel.

I wondered at this amazing similarity, then realized: of course Ray had pictures of it. I mean, he had to, right? Even if he'd described it in excruciating detail in the script (which he didn't), there was no way the designer could've gotten it so right without visual references. But why had we never seen those photos?

Oh, who was I kidding? Actors never saw things like that. We only saw the results.

The walls appeared to be made of stones about the size of cinder blocks, cut into rectangles and held together with some kind of cement or plaster. All the wooden parts were gone: there was no roof, no door, not even any window frames. Grass and weeds grew up all around it, inside the walls as well as outside, and vines climbed the walls at one end.

“Don't touch that,” C.C. said when he noticed the vines. “That's poison ivy.”

“It is?”

“Yep. Gives you a hell of a rash. You ever had it?”

“No. Never even seen it before.”

“Well, you don't want it. I knew a fella who threw a stick into a campfire once. He was a little drunk, so what he thought was tree leaves turned out to be poison ivy wrapped around it. Whatever that chemical is that makes you itch, it got into the smoke, and he breathed it in. Got poison ivy in his
lungs,
man.” He shook his head. “They had him sedated in the hospital for a week.”

I stared at the innocuous-looking vine. “Thanks for the warning. Anything else here that might kill me?”

“Oh, that won't kill you. It'll just make you wish you were dead.”

I took several pictures with my phone as we approached the open, vine-free end. C.C. perused everything
but
the chapel, watching the woods with quick, darting eyes. He looked so hot standing in a shaft of sunlight, his broad shoulders straight and his feet spread defiantly, that I snapped a quick shot of him.

He caught me. “Did you just take my picture?”

“Yeah. Hope that's okay.”

“Yeah, well, you can take a picture of me anytime. This is your one chance to see this place.”

I belatedly realized that, whatever he'd said earlier, he really
was
worried, perhaps even scared, at the prospect of meeting these Durants. And
that
scared
me.
I went to the chapel entrance and peered inside.

The floor of the real chapel was all dirt, with weeds sprouting wherever they could. Sunlight bathed the whole area, eliminating shadows and making everything pop in high-def clarity. A few big chunks of the wall had fallen off and remained where they landed, and a snake basked across one of them.

Our set was different: we had a platform at the back for the ghosts to stride so they'd be above the other actors onstage. And yet in the center of the real chapel's floor, where we had our ghosts burying something, there was in fact a clear spot, bare of weeds and stones, where the hard-packed dirt lay naked.

“Watch out for snakes,” C.C. said, and threw a rock at the one stretched across the piece of wall. It slithered rapidly away. “Copperheads and rattlesnakes love this sort of place.”

“Which one was that?”

“That was just a spreadin' adder. It won't hurt you. But you gotta watch for those others.”

“I had no idea the woods were so dangerous.”

“Yeah, good thing nothing bad ever happens in the big city.”

I crept carefully closer to the empty spot in the center of the chapel floor, watching for snakes as instructed. I saw none. When I reached the spot, I said casually, “Wonder what's buried under here?”

“Where?”

“In the center. This clear spot.”

“What makes you think something's buried there?”

“Ray's play says there is. Says a woman named Byrda buried something there.”

“What did he say it was?”

“He never told us.”

“What, you mean if you see his play, you never find out?”

“No.”

C.C. chuckled. “That doesn't sound like a very good play.”

“It's about more than that,” I said a little defensively, sounding exactly like Ray.

Before I could fully appreciate that irony, C.C. grabbed my arm. I'd never felt a grip so strong. He said, “Shh!” in a way that gave you no choice. I shut up and listened.

Then I heard it, too: voices. Two men, talking.

“Follow me, keep up, and for God's sake, stay quiet,” C.C. said. He led us out of the chapel and into the woods. We slid down into a small gully just as the voices grew loud enough to be distinct. We could peer over the edge and see the chapel, and his truck.

Footsteps, the kind people make when they're not trying to be quiet, grew louder as well, and I could at last make out the words.

“… and that ass of hers, it just don't quit, man, you know what I mean?”

“Do you ever think about what you're saying?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You're always saying ‘that ass won't quit.' Asses only do one thing; you saying she's got the runs?”

“What?”

“I mean, think about it.”

They came into the chapel clearing then: two big men in camouflage, each carrying a large gun of some kind. One had a
Duck Dynasty
-style beard, while the other sported a mustache that drooped past his chin. The one with the mustache carried what I eventually realized was a dead turkey.

“Durants?” I whispered.

“Durants,” C.C. agreed just as softly.

They stopped dead when they saw his vehicle. The one holding the dead bird put it carefully on the ground. They walked over to the truck, opened the door, and peered inside. One of them looked in the bed. Then they methodically scoped out the woods all around. When their eyes passed over our hiding place, I swear I felt the air grow colder.

“It's that faggot's truck,” one of them said.

“Hey, faggot!” the other one yelled. “You better get out here right now! You on Durant land, you know that?”

C.C. didn't move or, obviously, reply.

I looked at him in a mix of wonder and amusement. So he
was
gay, or at least the Durants thought so. That, at least, explained my attraction to him. Subconsciously I must've picked up on something.

“We ain't gonna hurt you, faggot!” Mustache Durant said. “But you best have a good reason for being here.”

As silently as I could, I put my hand on top of C.C.'s. He didn't look at me, but he did curl his fingers around mine.

Beard Durant slammed the truck's door and looked around at the woods again. “What the hell could he be doing up in here?”

“Hunting?”

“Ain't got nothing on our land that you can't find on everybody else's.”

“Meeting another faggot?”

“Here? That don't make no sense.”

Mustache Durant pulled a knife out of his pocket and snapped the blade open. It looked as big as a sword to me. “Want to slice his tires?”

“Naw, we do that, he'll just have to get somebody to tow it out. You want a bunch of other people up in here, getting in our business?”

“Maybe somebody stole it and dumped it here, figuring he'd never find it.”

“Maybe,” Beard Durant said. “Or maybe he's hiding, listening to us right now.”

“Want to try to track him?” Mustache Durant asked as he put away the knife.

“Naw. We need to get this turkey home.” Then, louder, he continued, “If you can hear me, cocksucker, you best know we'll catch up with you one day. Don't nobody come up on our land without asking.”

They waited for the reply that neither C.C. nor I were ever going to give. Then they collected their turkey and walked away back the way they'd come. After their footsteps faded, I started to rise, but C.C. jerked me back down. “They're not gone,” he whispered, icily calm.

I looked at him closely. Our faces were inches away now, and in his dark eyes I saw little flecks of gold that you had to be very close to see. I wondered if all the Tufa had that, or just him. With a surprisingly steady hand, I brushed his hair from his forehead. He didn't pull away.

Perhaps it was the danger of the situation giving me courage, but I slid closer and kissed him. It was a simple, gentle, tongueless kiss, sweet and as innocent as it could be under the circumstances.

When our lips parted, I whispered, “Okay?”

He smiled wryly. “Okay.”

The next kiss was not so innocent.

When it broke, he motioned for me to stay put, then carefully rose up to look around. He stayed absolutely still, listening. I heard only the wind in the trees. He looked back at me and motioned me to follow him.

We had reached the truck when a voice said, “Well, if it ain't the lovebirds.”

The two Durants came out of the woods. Mustache Durant still carried the turkey, but the other one held his gun, some type of shotgun, leveled right at us. My breath caught in my throat.

C.C. moved to stand between me and them. “Just sightseeing, Winslow. Not looking for any trouble.”

Beard Durant, whose name was evidently Winslow, said, “Then it's your lucky day, 'cause we ain't, neither.” He looked at me. “Who are you?”

“He's a friend of Rayford Parrish's from New York,” C.C. said.

“And he cain't talk?” Mustache Durant said.

This whole confrontation now felt familiar. I'd been having them since junior high school, and believe it or not, the fear suddenly receded. I knew exactly what I was doing. “I can talk,” I said, and stepped past C.C. to stand close to them. They didn't back up, but they looked at me uncertainly. “But you don't really care what I have to say, do you?”

C.C. gasped like I'd lost my mind.

Winslow laughed, a smug-bully chortle. “Well, lookee here, this big-city faggot thinks he's all tough, don't he?”

“No,” I said calmly, letting my shoulders relax and my hands hang loose. “I'm not tough. I just don't like wasting my time. C.C. and I would like to leave. Either let us, or stop us.” I spread my hands in a shrug, using the gesture to distract from sliding my feet into position.

C.C. whispered, “What are you—?”

I was close enough now, and when I moved, I moved fast. I turned my hips and grabbed the barrel of the gun in my right hand. I pushed it so it pointed toward the empty woods.

Then I kicked backwards with my right foot, directly at Winslow's groin. It wasn't a hard blow, but it didn't need to be. He squeaked, and his hands dropped the gun as they flew to belatedly protect his balls.

I caught the shotgun's stock with my left hand. It was heavier than I expected, but I spun counterclockwise and drove the butt into the side of Mustache Durant's head.

He dropped the turkey and his own gun, then stumbled away from us. By then I had stepped back beside C.C. and had the shotgun leveled at the brothers. I'd never fired a gun in my life, but I was a goddamned actor and I'd seen a lot of movies. I knew how to look intimidating.

The whole thing took less than five seconds.

C.C. picked up the other gun before Mustache Durant's head cleared. Winslow was on his knees, hands between his thighs, eyes scrunched tightly closed. Tears streaked the dirt on his cheeks.

Mustache Durant shook his head, looked around for his gun, and when he saw we held them both, growled like an angry animal.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “what was that you said about big-city faggots?”

He continued to growl, and a little spittle collected at the corners of his mouth.

“We'll throw your guns out when we get down the road a ways,” C.C. said. “I wouldn't recommend trying to follow us.”

We backed up to the truck and got inside. I admit a rush of relief when the doors closed on us. C.C. propped the shotguns stock-first against the floorboard, the barrels wedged against the cab roof. He spun the wheel and slammed the gearshift into first. The vehicle roared back onto the road and we headed, not the way we'd come, but deeper into the Durants' valley. I had to assume he knew what he was doing as he whipped us around sharp turns and near intimidating drop-offs.

“That was something,” he said with a rough laugh.

“I didn't really hurt either of them.”

“You did worse, you made 'em look stupid. What was that? Karate?”

“Muay Thai.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's from Thailand. It means ‘the art of eight limbs.'”

“It sure looked like it.”

I flexed my fingers, which were numb from the intensity of my grip on the shotgun. I remembered my dad's words the day I came out to the family: “All right, son. But you're learning a martial art.”

“Why?” I'd asked him.

“Because lots of people will want to hurt you just because you're gay. It's not right, but it's true. We have to face the world like it is before we can make it like it should be.”

I'd said nothing; I already knew that from school. You couldn't be a boy taking dance lessons without getting beat up for it, let alone a gay boy. We tried several forms before we found one that didn't directly contradict what I was also learning in dance class, and muay Thai was perfect.

“So they were Tufa, too, huh?” I asked C.C.

“Oh yes. But they were from the other side.”

The other side of what?
I wondered, but it didn't seem like the time to ask.

We hit the bottom of the valley, and the road straightened out. I saw a big, ramshackle house ahead, the first sign of civilization I'd seen other than the chapel itself. Two old cars sat up on concrete blocks, and a pair of big dogs moved to the shoulder of the road to bark at the truck as we approached.

C.C. slowed enough to toss the shotguns out the window into the yard. As we passed, I saw a young girl and an old woman on the porch, looking at us with dead, malignant eyes.