Desperate Times (36 page)

Jimmy sat on the couch, leafing through an
old photo album. He felt as if he were reliving someone else’s
past. There were wedding photos, graduation and baby pictures;
shots of strangers on vacations in the Black Hills and the
Badlands. Jimmy looked at them all, feeling as if he knew the
people on those pages. The photos reminded him of a time, not all
that long ago, when things like vacations and graduations were
still possible. He wondered if they would ever be again. He heard
footsteps.

“Hey, there you are,” said Jon, from the open
doorway. “What’re you doing?”

“Just looking at some old pictures,” answered
Jimmy. He closed the album and placed it back on the coffee
table.

“Well, come on out. We’ve got to go get the
truck. Burt’s going to wait for us in the park.”

“Okay,” said Jimmy. He picked up his rifle,
ejected the empty clip and slapped in a fresh one. He then gathered
the spent clips and put them in his backpack and hung it over his
shoulders. He stuffed the remaining full clip down the front of his
pants. “Let’s take the back door,” he said, flatly.

“Sure,” said Jon, acting if it were perfectly
natural to take that way. “Hey, this place reminds me of my aunt’s.
Old people sure don’t have much flair, do they?”

“They don’t need it,” Jimmy answered, leading
the way out the back door. “They don’t have to impress anybody.
They decorate their homes to remind them of the life that they once
had. If we ever get out of this and I get back home, I’m going to
do the same thing.”

“I guess I never thought of it that way. You
know what, Jimmy?
When
I get back home, I’m going to do
that, too. I’ll have you over sometime and we’ll go out for some
beers.”

Jimmy smiled at that. He wanted to put what
had just happened behind him and Jon was making that happen. Jimmy
played along, walking down the uneven concrete slabs of the alley.
“Where would you take me?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jon. “Have you ever been
to a gay bar?”

“You’re kidding, right? What do you
think?”

“Right… I forgot I’m talking to the guy who
has the prettiest girls in camp fighting over him. Yeah, you’ve
never been to a gay bar.”

“Funny. Listen, I don’t want to talk about
that right now. Can we keep that topic off limits for a while?
Let’s talk about you. What’s your story, man?”

Jon laughed. “Okay, give me a second, here.
I’ve got to decide where to start. Are you sure you want to hear it
all?”

“You can skip the graphic details,” said
Jimmy. “But yeah, I do want to hear it. How in the hell did you end
up here?”

“Okay,” said Jon. “Just a minute… You asked
for it.”

They found a side street which was three
blocks from any view of the park and turned north toward the
highway. Jon began to speak. “When I was a kid, I used to like to
play dress-up with my three cousins and my sister. I’m talking
about when I was four or five. No big deal, right? My aunt had
picked up all of these old prom and bridesmaids’ dresses at a
thrift store and altered them to fit her girls. I was the only boy,
and I didn’t want to be left out. We had a blast. I loved doing
that. They had a roomful of stuff like that—old dresses, fancy
hats, high-heeled shoes. We’d put them on and then give each other
a little fashion show.”

“So that’s what happened to you?” asked
Jimmy. “Dressing up like a girl made you turn gay?”

“Of course not,” said Jon. “I just remember
looking in the mirror and wishing that I were a woman, even back
then. My old man was in the army and we traveled a lot. Mom was
pretty cool. She let me do pretty much whatever I wanted, but she
always kept a close eye on me. Dad lost a leg in an accident and
was honorably discharged. We moved to a little town called Barnum.
Ever hear of it? It’s really not much of a town, just a four-way
stop and a wide spot in the road. I started high school there and
that’s when I first knew that I was different. I dated some girls.
Went to prom, shit like that, but I was only doing it because
they’d asked
me
out. So I went along, mostly to hang out
with the other guys and their dates. Our school was small. I
graduated in a class of forty-six.”

“That
is
small,” said Jimmy, turning
onto the highway.

“Well, I had my own computer and eventually I
discovered there were other people out there, just like me. I knew
who I was and that I wasn’t alone. I was a senior and it was
February and I told my closest friend the truth. We had a little
over three months of school before graduation. Well, it didn’t take
long before everyone in the school found out. I didn’t know how
they’d react. I didn’t care. Most of my guy friends quit talking to
me; they just stopped. I had some girl friends who hung with me and
we still talk every now and then. Still, that was a long three
months. My folks found out, of course. You know how dirty laundry
hangs in a small town. Out in the open for everyone to see? My old
man went bonkers. He cooled down after a while and tried not to
show it. He died three weeks before I graduated. He was working
under my Mom’s car and the jack slipped. I found him there when I
got off the bus. That was pretty bad.”

Jimmy nodded. He knew all too well what Jon
had been through.

“We buried him down at Fort Snelling. They
gave him a full military service. I remember sitting there,
watching these guys and thinking that I wanted to be one of them. I
wanted to get out of Barnum, to get out of Minnesota and see the
world. And I wanted to honor the memory of my dad. He was strict
and wasn’t the most open-minded person, but he had loved me. Well,
I got back to school and that very first day, I nearly ran into an
Army Recruiter who was visiting the school. I signed up the next
day.”

“What about… you know? How you felt about
men?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, I never told a soul.
I didn’t just join the Army; I wanted to be the best soldier in it.
My dad had taught me to fire a weapon and I was already a crack
shot. I hit the weight room and got myself built up. When the other
guys went into town, I stayed behind. I wanted to know everything
there was to know about being a soldier. I studied every book and
manual that I could get my hands on. I got promoted quickly. One
day my CO sent an MP down to fetch me to his office. I didn’t know
what to expect. He sat me down and asked me what I knew about the
Green Berets and Special Forces. I couldn’t believe it. I dreamed
about becoming part of that group. The next day I was on a
plane.

“Impressive, said Jimmy, who could now see
the driveway on the horizon.

“Thanks. I put in a lot of hard work to get
there, but I still had to prove myself. Not many guys have what it
takes to make it. I gave it all that I had and somehow, I got in.
We trained for months in some of the worst conditions that you can
imagine. Then we were flown into Iraq.”

“Nice,” said Jimmy.

“I thought so. That was what I had trained
for. We did a lot of street-to-street, house-to-house fighting. I
saw a lot of action. I was in a Hummer when we hit a roadside bomb.
I was the only one to survive. Somehow I was thrown clear and only
broke my arm and caught some minor shrapnel. I got a Purple Heart
for that. I recovered in a hospital in Germany. I wanted to get
back and repay those bastards for what they’d done to my buddies.
Three months later, I was back in the shit. I did three tours over
there. I took home a lot of medals. I gave them to my mom. She hung
them in a case on the mantle, right next to my old man’s flag.

Jimmy stopped at the driveway and took out a
cigarette. “How did you end up in Crown?” he asked, lighting the
cigarette.

Jon laughed, walking next to Jimmy down the
rutted driveway. “My mom lived there. I’d spent eight years in the
Army and knew it was time to get out. I had nowhere else to go, so
I moved in with her. I’d saved a pile of money and there she was,
struggling to get by on my old man’s military pension. I wanted to
do something completely different, so I enrolled in a cosmetology
school in Minneapolis. Now there’s a place where a gay guy can be a
gay guy. Those were great times and I met a lot of cool people. I
had just graduated from the beauty academy when my mom up and dies
of a heart attack. We buried her and I was stuck with the house. My
sister wanted nothing to do with any of it. She had a family of her
own and they were living in Seattle. Well, money was starting to
get tight and I took a job at the Cut ‘n Curl in town. I’m still
there and love my job. I run down to Minneapolis on the weekends
and hang out with my friends, then I come back home. I’ve got a
pretty good life.”

“You
had
a pretty good life,”
corrected Jimmy as they walked up to the truck.

“No, you’re wrong, Jimmy. “I’m going
back
to that life. That’s what keeps me going. Don’t you
ever try to tell me that I’m not. We’re all going back. You’ll see.
We’ll rebuild, maybe move around a little, but we’re all going back
to what we left behind. I’ll fight for that right. I’m not getting
chucked into any relocation camp, not while I can still hold a gun.
And I’m not letting assholes like those bikers do whatever the hell
they want. I’m going to make them pay for their crimes.” Jon paused
and rubbed his jaw. “Listen. I know you didn’t have the stomach for
what had to be done. That’s fine. I don’t care. I did have the
stomach for it, and so did Burt. If we had let any of those guys
go, they’d be coming after us in a heartbeat. They’d kill again.
Maybe they’d find us and kill some of our own people. We’re not
risking that. We’ve got to become the judges, juries, and the
executioners, if necessary. Think about it.”

Jon hopped up into the passenger side and
closed the door behind him. Jimmy walked around the front of the
truck, careful to avoid a cluster of bees that buzzed around the
grill. He climbed in and started the engine. “I understand,” he
said. “You guys did what you had to do. I just couldn’t do it.”

“No problem,” said Jon. “We don’t need to
talk about that. When we get back to camp, don’t tell anybody about
what happened there at the end, all right?”

“I won’t,” said Jimmy, slapping the gearshift
into second and easing his foot off the clutch. “I’ll never talk
about that again. It never happened.”

“Right,” said Jon.

“Hey,” said Jimmy as they rumbled down the
driveway. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Thanks for telling me your story. Friends
should know something about each other. My life has sure been an
open book.”

Jon smiled. “No problem,” he said. “You, my
friend, have to start writing another chapter and you have to do it
soon.”

“Hey, that subject’s off limits,
remember?”

“All right, sorry, man. You’d better choose
Julie, though. She’s awesome!”

“Jon!”

Jon laughed and soon Jimmy joined him. Jon
was right about that—he
was
going to have to make his
decision. He wheeled the truck onto the asphalt and headed up the
hill toward town. The sun was just starting to dip below the trees
and the highway was covered in warm shadows. Jimmy coaxed the truck
into town at an even thirty miles per hour. He had no idea why he
was obeying the speed limit. They certainly weren’t going to run
into any speed traps.

Burt sat on a bench on the far side of the
park and he wasn’t alone. Sitting next to him were two men and a
woman. Jimmy averted his eyes from the park and concentrated on
Burt and the road ahead. He pulled the truck to the curb and killed
the engine. He and Jon jumped out of the truck and joined the
others at the bench.

Burt stood up. “Guys, I’d like to introduce
you to the Hills. This is Alex and his brother Joe. This is Joe’s
wife, Amanda. This is Jimmy and Jon. I think you’ve met Jon.”

They exchanged somber greetings and Burt
continued: “They’re coming back to the camp with us.”

“No problem,” said Jimmy.

“I didn’t think there’d be,” said Burt,
walking to the back of the truck and throwing open the roll-up
door. “Let’s get those guns. Come on, people. We’ve got work to
do.”

Burt motioned to the grass. Jimmy turned his
head to see what looked like a small arsenal laid out on the shaggy
lawn. They began grabbing handfuls of guns and ammunition. They
handed them up to Burt and he stowed them away. When they finished,
Burt picked up his M-16 and sat down on the back of the truck.

“Alex,” Burt said. “You ride up front with
Jimmy. Everyone else hop on. Alex has a little surprise for us.
Don’t tell these guys. They’ll find out soon enough.”

Jimmy and Jon exchanged looks of confusion.
Burt merely smiled.

With Alex pointing the way, Jimmy rumbled
through the narrow streets of Ely. He drove slowly, mindful of how
rough the ride on the back of the truck would be. Alex pointed to
the front of a long group of stores. Jimmy stopped the truck. Most
of the buildings appeared to have been looted, their windows
smashed into pieces. Fallen goodies were lying in the broken glass.
Burt met them on the sidewalk and leaned over and picked up a candy
bar. He brushed off the wrapper and tore it open.