Chicken (28 page)

Brant Mitchell is coming. I’ve set these words on repeat in my brain. One syllable per chew. A bite of fried okra. Brant Mitchell is coming. A bite of fried porkchop. Brant Mitchell is coming. A bite of mac and cheese. Brant Mitchell is coming. He’s on his way. He’s busting me out. Any minute now, I will escape this family sit-down hell.

Me, Laramie, Mama, Daddy, and Fox News. 

Daddy sits with his back to the windows and makes Laramie sit across from him so he can glare right over her head into the living room. He plants his elbows on the table, holding his porkchop to his mouth so he can rip the meat right off the bone. Grease dribbles down his chin. He used to care about cleanliness and table manners, but I guess you never outgrow trying to fit in with new friends.

A reporter has just informed us that the homosexuals have launched a counter strike, and the gravity with which he said it suggests we need to start preparing for the Second Civil War—or, as they’ll call it around here, the War of Liberal Aggression. There’ll be a draft, of course—assault rifles thrust into the arms of every healthy boy—and I’ll have to decide between fighting with my father and fighting for my man.

The counter strike is scheduled two days after National Wings of Glory Appreciate Day. Gays around the country will descend on their nearest Wings of Glory and do something so vile, so heinous, the United States of America may never recover. Yes, folks, they are going to kiss each other. Right there in the booths where everyone can see ’em. 

Daddy throws his bone down. “I’m so sick of hearing about these fags.”

“We could turn off the news,” Mama murmurs over the rim of her tea glass.

“We’ve got to know what they’re planning, don’t we?”

“I don’t agree with them any more than you do, Russ, but I don’t think it’s as serious as all that. Did you take your pills?”

“Yep. Can’t even feel my leg. You don’t think it’s serious that these freaks are telling all the other freaks to show up at Wings of Glory and have an orgy?”

“Russ, enough. Did you take the other pills?”

“I don’t need those anymore. I’m fine, Janet. Give it a rest.”

Mama sighs. “Just because you got baptized—”

“What’s an orgy?” Laramie asks.

“Something nasty people do.” Daddy reaches across the table to ruffle her hair. “Not something you need to worry about, Buck.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s when a whole bunch of people have sex,” I say with my mouth full of okra.

Laramie blinks her big dumb eyes. “What’s sex?”

“That’s enough.” Mama slams her glass down on the table. “This conversation is inappropriate and I won’t have it at my table.”

“Why are people having an orgy at Wings of Glory?” Laramie asks.

“Because they’re nasty.” Daddy takes a long slug of soda. “Nasty faggots.”

“I swear to God, Russell. I won’t have these kids using language like that.”

“What language? These are just facts, Janet.”

A bite of porkchop. Brant Mitchell is coming. A bite of mac and cheese. Brant Mitchell is coming. He’s probably at the intersection of the highway and Main Street, passing Pizza Arcade and the newspaper office. Then it’s just a straight shot out of town, past the suburbs, past the farms, over the Ditch Bridge, hang a right, and then he’s here. Any minute now.

“Why are people having sex in Wings of Glory?” Laramie’s eyebrows turn into angry slashes. “Why won’t anyone tell me?”

“Laramie, nobody is having sex at Wings of Glory.” Mama puts her hand on Laramie’s head. “They’re having a kiss-in protest. They’re just going to be kissing.”

“Who is?”

“Faggots.”

“Russell.”

“What’s a faggot?”

“Laramie, what did I just say? I don’t want you using that word. Not in the house. Not out of the house. Not ever.”

She wrinkles her forehead. “But what is it?” 

“It’s a not-nice name for men who date other men.”

Laramie shoots me a side-long glance, and I understand too late that her stupid questions were nothing but a set-up. 

“So Casper is a faggot.”

Daddy’s fork hits the floor. 

Mama’s hand slaps Laramie’s cheek.

Brant’s tires crunch on our dead grass.

“Casper, have you been crying?”

Hannah climbs into the backseat and immediately takes my face in her hands. I already went through this with Lauren when we picked her up and I let her have shotgun. I clench my jaw, but can’t stifle the sniffle. 

“I’m fine. Hay fever.”

Hannah looks at Brant. He shrugs. “Man’s got hay fever. What can you do?”

She smooths my hair and strokes my puffy cheeks. “Maybe you should go home and rest.”

“No!” Brant and I shout.

Now Hannah looks at Lauren, who is twisted around in the seat that really belongs to me. Brant told me we could cancel on them, but that seemed counter-productive. Brant was right. We need the girls. We can’t be together without them.

“Did something happen with your dad, Casper?”

“Because you can tell us. You can tell us anything.” Lauren lays her hand on my knee and glances from me to Brant and back again. 

“No, nothing. I’m fine. Really. Stop momming me.”

“Casper Has Two Mommies,” Brant jokes, but nobody laughs.

He drives in silence, occasionally biting at the edge of his thumb, making a tiny red stripe. The girls make small talk, but the atmosphere in the car is as flat as a can of soda left under the Hickory Ditch sun for three days. 

Socky’s Drive-in Diner is on the west side of town, snuggled in between Walmart and the Hickory Ditch Credit Union. Daddy has the night off or else there’s no way I’d let them come here. Purple and blue neon lights rim the sheet metal canopies that shade the stalls where you park your car. Teenage girls and twenty-somethings who never made it over the wall skate around with trays full of burgers and deep fried green beans and tater tots buried under blobs of Yellow Number Five. 

Hannah sits in the middle of the back seat so she can rest her hand on my thigh and rub her foot against my shin. Me and the girls order milkshakes—they sip theirs through straws, I drink from the edge of my cup. Brant gets a chocolate soft-serve cone and spends a good three minutes quietly smearing it all over his face like he’s trying to ward off Lauren’s lips for the rest of the night. But she still reaches across the console and takes his hand. 

I lean my head against the window, watch dark clouds moving quickly into town. 

“This is the worst date ever,” Hannah announces.

Lauren slurps her shake. “To be fair, no one has tried to date rape us.”

Hannah takes a dainty sip. “Fair enough.”

“But clearly these boys aren’t telling us something.”

Brant sighs. “Hay fever is harsh.”

Hannah brushes the hair over my ear. “You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”

“Leave him alone,” Brants snaps, chucking his half-eaten ice cream cone out the window and into the bed of his truck. 

“We’re not stupid,” Lauren says. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lauren’s eyes find Hannah’s in the rearview mirror. Hannah takes it from there. “Exactly what it sounds like. We’re not stupid. That’s all.”

Brant bites his little finger so hard he winces. “You got something to say just say it, Sister Hannah.”

“All I’m saying is I’m not the one with something to say.”

“You boys are in early!” Sister Cindy says brightly when we walk through the carport door. The kitchen smells like chocolate chip cookies, which seems like a reasonable indication that my mother didn’t call and tell her that my sister says I’m a faggot.

“It was kind of lame.” Brant gives her a big hug and reaches for a cookie.

She swats his hand. “Serve your friend first.”

I scoot out the same chair I sat in two weeks ago. Brant tosses a paper plate in front of me, and then carries a warm cookie over on a spatula. It slides across the plate, leaving a gooey chocolate streak that I swipe up with my finger and pop into my mouth. I’m gonna take a wild gander and guess there aren’t any special ingredients in these cookies. Brant sits across from me just like before. 

Sister Cindy opens the fridge. “Do you like milk, Casper?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is whole milk okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Brant leans over the table, whispers, “She’s trying to fatten me up for when I’m a preacher.”

Sister Cindy sets the glasses on the table, and then sits down between us. She puts her hands on our wrists. “Are you having girl troubles? Because believe it or not, I was a girl once, and I do remember a little bit about it.” 

Brant smiles and shakes his head. “Thanks, Mama, but it’s fine. We were all just hot and cranky, I reckon. We’ll patch it up.”

Sister Cindy smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. My heart almost flat lines. I glance at Brant. His Adam’s apple bobs.

“Got something on your mind?”

Sister Cindy folds her hands. “I just hope you’re all moving at an appropriate pace. I know you and Lauren sing so beautifully together, Brant, but it takes a lot more than that to walk with someone in the Lord for all the days of your life.”

Brant assures his mother that he and Lauren are moving at a snail’s pace while I try to figure out what it means to walk with someone in the Lord. All I can picture is a stroll through Christ’s arteries, which seems creepy until I remember the premise of communion and that basically everything about church is kind of creepy if you think about it too hard.

Sister Cindy gets up to refill our glasses. “Just remember, boys. First relationships can be very exciting, and it’s easy to get caught up in a moment, but you should always be thinking, hey, my body is a temple for the Lord!”

I look at Brant. The forelock hanging over his right eye, down past his cheekbone. The dimple in his smirk. He’s scrawny by Hickory Ditch standards, and it’s clear he’ll never be as tall or robust as Brother Dean, but his shoulders are broad and his chest is solid and when he held me in his truck on the side of the road, I felt safe. 

If his body is a temple, I want to attend every service.

The breeze blowing through his window screens smells like distant rain. The twinkle lights dance in the blue and green and brown bottles swaying over his bed. The last time we laid here, I thought he’d never be mine. But now his fingers comb my hair and his heart beats under my ear. The tiny silver beads of his dog tag’s chain gouge into my temple. 

I lift my head. The flat piece of metal rests where it always does, just below the V of his T-shirt. The blank side faces up, so I turn it over, rub my thumb across the inscription—I Corinthians 13:2. One of the few verse I know by heart. Because it’s the one that hangs over his. I can’t believe I ever believed them when they told me this was wrong. The Bible spells out pretty clearly what love is, and it’s exactly how Brant makes me feel. 

I press my hand over the dog tag, feel my skin sink into the letters. “Has anyone ever moved a mountain? Like, is that a real thing?”

Brant shakes his head, curls shifting on his pillow. “Not without explosives.”

I roll on top of him and straddle his hips, slide my hands under his shirt. His chest is sticky with sweat, but so are my palms. He sits up and takes my face in his hands, pushes his nose and forehead against mine. I run my hands over his shoulders out through the neck of his T-shirt to caress his neck, which I realize is a really awkward move, so I wind up lifting his shirt right over his head.

He gasps and looks down at his bare chest like he doesn’t know what happened. Then he grabs the back of my shirt’s neck and rips it upward. I fight the urge to hug myself, because why? I’m not a girl. I don’t have breasts to hide. He’s already seen me a dozen times. But that was different. Everything keeps being different than it’s ever been before.

He presses his hands to the muscles of my back and makes me feel strong. He leans in, kisses my collarbone and my throat, much softer than I would like, but I understand we can’t afford to leave any evidence behind. And then he flips me over, growling in my ear as he stretches out on top of me, our belt buckles clinking together. I push my hips against him and he pushes right back. I slip my hand between our stomachs, reaching—

The second I touch him through his jeans, it’s over. 

He rolls away, right off the bed, somehow landing silently on all fours. He looks up at me with wild eyes, and then he scrambles around the foot of his bed, finds his shirt and pulls it on. Then he dives into his closet and grabs a long-sleeve flannel shirt, shrugging his shoulders into it and fumbling to button it up. 

I roll across the bed and off the other side. I kneel outside the dark closet, afraid to touch him. He’s curled up in a ball, hugging his knees.

“Brant? Baby, I’m sorry—”

He shakes his head, digging his fingers into the back of his head. “Just give me a second.”

“What’d I do?”

“Nothing. Just hold on. Give me some space.”

I think that’s a weird thing for someone hiding in a tiny closet to say, but I go back to his bed, sit on the edge and wait. I can only see one logical reason for a reaction like that, but it’s too terrible, too impossible, I mean, he’s so sheltered, who could have? My mind flashes to the cabin and the creepy cellar and my skin crawls. 

Fifteen minutes pass before he skulks back to the bed. He’s outgrown the flannel shirt since last winter, but he doesn’t take it off. He hugs himself, rubs his arms like he’s cold. I start apologizing again, but he cuts me off with a finger on my lips.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I shouldn’t have let it go that far. I’ve just—I have some problems that I can’t talk about, and I should have warned you because they aren’t ever going anywhere.”

“Has someone? I mean were you? I mean—”

He shakes his head. “No. No. I promise. It’s not that.”

A wave of relief washes over me, followed by a tsunami of confusion. “Are you sure I didn’t do something wrong? I mean, I’ve only ever touched myself so maybe I didn’t do something right? Did I hurt you?”

He rakes his hands through his hair. “No. It felt amazing. I can’t—it’s just not something I can explain. But I need to tell you—you need to know that I can’t ever—I can’t ever be with you like that.”