Hot Valley (33 page)

“Well, for starters,” he said, drawing me toward him, “you could take care of this.”

He was hard inside his pants. I touched it, felt its heat and size, but my fingers sprang away almost instantly.

“We can't. You're not well enough.”

“Jack, if you don't suck my dick right now, my balls are going to explode, and then I'll die anyway. So just do what I ask, for once, will you?”

And so he lay back in the hay, one massive arm behind his head, the other reaching down so he could caress my head, and I finally did what I had wanted to do ever since I first laid eyes on Aaron Johnson. I unbuttoned his fly, pushed his pants down to his thighs, and took him between my lips. Neither of us spoke or made much noise apart from the occasional sigh or soft moan. His cock fitted into my mouth and throat as if they had been cast from the same mold. I knew exactly how to touch him and where, and he responded exactly as I knew he would. Just as I began to think how much I wanted to taste his cum in my mouth, he started spewing load after load into me. I swallowed every drop. And then, as his cock grew soft in my mouth, he undid my pants, took my hard dick in his hand, and brought me off. I came all over his fingers, and he licked them clean.

It was not the wildest sex I had had, nor in a sense the most exciting—but this simple act in the dry shelter of an abandoned barn meant more to me than every crazy fuck of my life. I knew that I was his for life, and he mine.

 

When we had arrived at the barn, it seemed like fall, mild and damp. Suddenly, within a few hours of leaving the shelter, it turned to winter. A cold east wind blew up, carrying with it the promise of snow. We could not afford to go near settlements—they were still under attack from Rebel foragers, desperate to feed the starving scattered troops by taking whatever they could, at whatever cost. We could see, to the south, an enclosing ring of fire as Sheridan's troops brought their campaign of devastation further down into the valley.
Even that tiny green oasis where I had first dwelled with Aaron in the cave must now be reduced to ash.

We headed for the hills, knowing that the greatest danger up there was cold and starvation; those enemies we could at least face in a fair struggle. If we were caught in the valley by either army, we would surely die. And so we followed the high ground back north, into what was now Union territory; you could tell by the smoke rising from the scorched earth.

We trekked north for a week as the weather turned colder and colder. We had blankets and frequently found a cave or an abandoned building in which to sleep, but I could tell that this rough living was taking its toll on Aaron. He was still far from well, despite his protestations to the contrary, and he was visibly losing weight. He could march doggedly for hours at a time, but at a terrible cost. We skirted Richmond and headed toward Maryland, keeping to the high ground, avoiding human contact. Where exactly we were headed, neither of us really knew. Away from the fighting, that was the only way I could frame it in my mind. Away from the burning and the death. But toward what? Canada?

One night we rested in a half-burned house that must once have been home to a family; there were scattered items of clothing, and broken children's toys on the floor. Everything else of value had been taken or burned. It sufficed for us; the walls were standing, and there was a stretch of un-fallen roof, which would at least protect us from the wind and the frost that were now becoming a nightly feature. We made a bed from our blankets, and I lit a fire; this was our routine.

Aaron was sick and falling into a fever. I boiled water and tried to feed him cornmeal porridge, but he would not eat.

“Jack,” he said, his voice alarmingly weak. “If I die—”

“You're not going to die.”

“If I die, you must promise me that you'll head back home to Vermont.”

“There's no home for me there.”

“Promise me, Jack. Your parents love you. Your sisters need you.”

“There's no home for me without you, Aaron. You know that.”

“I love you, Jack. But I think our time came too late.” He started coughing; I had heard that cough before in hospital wards, and I didn't like it.

“Don't be silly,” I said, just as I had said to a hundred patients before. “You've just got a cold. You'll be fine.” I bustled around, preparing some food, like a bad-tempered housewife.

“Come here and hold me,” Aaron said. He was shivering, and his face looked gray.

I held him close and felt the bones through his skin. We had never made love again after that one morning in the barn, and I feared that I would never know his body as I had seen it and imagined it so many times before. Eventually he slept, and I sat awake, listening to every sound around us. His breathing was irregular, occasionally disturbed by a soft choking sound from the back of this throat. I could tell that his lungs were filling up with fluid. If I could not get him to a hospital soon, he would die.

I drifted off to sleep and dreamed a jumbled parade of images, some painfully happy, others horrific, all of them the dreary mental refuse of war, fear, and exhaustion. I suppose I must have been a little feverish myself, because when I awoke all my senses seemed supercharged. Aaron's breathing was as loud as cannon fire, the smell of soot and mold in the house was nauseating—and there was something else, something that should not have been there. I sat up, my mouth dry and my head aching, and listened as hard as I could. I heard beetles scuttling across the floor, I heard an owl screech in the woods—and I heard the sound of horse's hooves. Just one horse, I thought, but it was one too many.

I jumped up, threw the blanket over Aaron, and tiptoed to the glassless window. It was a moonlit night, and I could clearly see the silhouette of a horse peacefully champing the grass outside the house. Had the smoke of our fire been seen?

A twig snapped, and I swung around. There was a faint scratching at the door—hardly a door anymore, just a few broken planks of wood that I had secured with a boulder. It opened a little, and a gloved hand appeared around the frame.

It was then that the cold air hit me—I was only wearing my underclothes—and I started to shiver violently, from fear and fever as well as the temperature, I suppose. A spasm shook me from shoulders to hips, and I lost my head, leaped for the door with a cry just as a booted foot kicked it open. I threw myself on the figure that stood in the door, and we rolled on the floor, scratching, biting, and kicking each other.

I was hysterical, and I fought like a demon. My opponent was strong, but not strong enough to fend off a man who is about to lose everything—not just his life, but his love as well. I fought my way on top, pinned the flailing arms down with my knees, grabbed the head by the hair, and was about to pound it into the floor—when I realized that this was a woman.

I sat up in shock, and the moonlight hit her straight in the face. Our eyes met. It was Jenny Wallace.

I greeted her with joy.

 

When I awoke, it was light. I was under a blanket. I could smell something like cloves or cinnamon. I looked wildly around for Aaron and saw the figure of Jenny sitting over him, administering something to him in a cup. I lay back and must have passed out again.

How long I stayed in that state I do not know. I have fragmentary memories of light and dark, of dark figures passing around me, of strange tastes in my mouth and a terrible aching in my elbows and knees. There were times when I thought I was lying in water, other times when I seemed to be suffocating. I saw faces of dying men, the horrors of the hospital, my parents, Bennett Young, Captain Healey, Aaron…

And then I awoke in a room I did not recognize, with white walls, and light streaming through a window. I panicked for a moment, but then I was swept by a feeling of joy—the fever had gone, and I was alive. And there, slumbering in a chair by my beside, wrapped in a coat, was Aaron. I tried to speak, but my voice came out as a strange little whisper. My lips were cracked, and my tongue felt shriveled. I knew the symptoms, and I realized how close I had come to death. But I was alive, so was Aaron. We had survived hell.

I let him sleep, and fed my eyes on him. He looked well. His face had filled out again. There were deep lines where once his cheeks had been smooth, and some gray among the black of his hair, but that only made him more beautiful to me.

The door opened, and in came Jenny Wallace, dressed as I remembered her, in a blue dress with a white pinafore. She came to the bed, took my hand, and smiled.

“Well, look who's back.”

“Hi, Jenny.”

“We nearly lost you.”

“I know. I've been ill, haven't I?”

“Oh honey,” she chuckled, “you have no idea. Without him you'd have died a week ago.”

“What do you mean? Where am I?”

“You're in Richmond, in the hospital.”

“Richmond?” I must have looked and sounded very stupid. Jenny laughed a deep, throaty laugh.

“It's in Virginia, sweetheart, or were you playing hooky when they taught geography at school?”

“I know where it is, but how the hell did we get here?”

“He carried you most of the way. No wonder he's tired.”

“But he was sick…”

And so Jenny told me the whole story: how she'd found me and Aaron in the burned-out house, nursed us through four days of desperate fever, from which Aaron had recovered first. I had worsened, however, and could no longer survive the rigors of the outdoor life. They braved the last skirmishes of the war to get to Richmond, now in Union hands, where Jenny knew there was a hospital that had survived the burning and was now tending the sick and wounded of both sides.

“This war will come to an end soon enough, honey,” she said, “although we still have battles to fight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The likes of you and Aaron, and me for that matter, won't be welcome in these re-united States for a long time.”

“And how did you find us? Why were you there?”

“You were walking straight into a Yankee trap. They were patrolling through the woods and hills, looking for Rebel stragglers. There was a medical corps sent out but they didn't want us there, they lost us as quickly as they could, and most of them rode back north as soon as it was safe to do so. I couldn't do that, Jack. You know me. I always like to stick around if there's trouble.”

“You were up there on your own?”

“Yep.”

“Weren't you frightened?”

“Come on, honey, no soldier is going to come running when he sees this face, is he? I ain't exactly one of those pretty little Southern girls.”

“How did you get out of the hospital?”

“Don't ask me that, Jack.”

“Why not?”

“I'm ashamed. I ran away.”

“So did I.”

I took her hand, and we held each other in silence for a few minutes. Aaron shifted, snorted, and woke up. When he saw that I was conscious, he jumped from his chair and nearly fell over backward.

“Jack!”

“Yes, he's alive and he's awake. And I think I'd better leave you two lovebirds together.”

She withdrew from the room, and Aaron threw himself on me.

“Hey, careful! I'm still…oof!…weak!”

“Jack, oh God, Jack. You're alive. Oh, thank God.”

Aaron broke down and cried his heart out. I rested my hands on his head and let him weep. It did us both good.

He lay beside me (the bed was not made for two grown men, and creaked complainingly), his arm around my shoulders.

“As soon as you're well, we're going north, Jack.”

“Why?”

“So you can see your family.”

“I don't care about my family. I've got everything I need right here.”

“You may say that now, boy, but when you were in that fever you cried out for your mama and your daddy just like everyone else. So we're going up there together and you're going to tell them that you love them.”

“And what if they don't want to see me?”

“Take it from me, they will.”

“I don't want to go.”

“I know you don't. But I'll be beside you and we'll face them together. We'll face everything together from now on.”

A week later, Jenny said, reluctantly, that I was well enough to travel, so we took the train north from Richmond.
We were dressed in new clothes, with new boots on our feet; Aaron's savings from his days at the Alhambra had survived the war, and they amounted to a fair fortune. I was astonished by the splendor of the apparel that he secured, but he just said that there were a few businessmen in town who owed him a favor. I grimaced, thinking of all the men who had had him in the past.

“A good deal is a good deal, Jack. And don't you worry, there's only one ass that I'm interested in from now on.”

He stood at the mirror, admiring himself in his new tweed jacket. He looked very fine.

“And whose ass would that be, I wonder?”

“Well, it's a pretty little white ass that ain't a thousand miles from here.”

“It's yours whenever you want it, Aaron.”

“Soon, baby. It will be soon. When you can prove to me that you're well enough to run a mile, then you're well enough to be fucked.”

I knew he was right—and I was willing to wait. War had taught me one thing, and that was not to waste the good times. These strange days of recovery were the happiest of my life, and I did not need Aaron's cock up my ass to believe that he loved me. I wanted it, of course, but only when the time was right.