I Loved You More (33 page)

When dinner is finally served, my big white plate full of
tamales, cheese, red beans, salsa, and rice disappears in a heartbeat. Then a second. On the table, the green bowl of salsa is empty first, then the bowl of rice, then the bowl of beans. Hank goes for the last tamale. One more round of beers.

Outside the windows it is night. No stars. No moon. Only light rain. Inside it's a steamy room, cozy, warm, Christmas light on a room full of dirty dishes, pots and pans. On the back porch, I put on my socks and shoes, then fill the big kettle with water from the hose. Simple actions like these, my body moving through them, are full of enjoyment and wonder. When I set the kettle on the wrought iron of the Majestic stove, there's a high snap and sizzle.

Reuben pulls out a pack of Nat Shermans. I can't resist.

I inhale on the cigarette so deep I inhale every aspect of the night, the place, that moment: the kerosene light, the heat from the stove, the draft from the back door, the drizzle of rain on the tin roof, the smell of the rain and the smell of tamales and boiled beans, the smack of hot sauce on my tongue, the tang of beer.
Close the door, light the light
on the transistor. Sal with his Levi ass and white shirt-back to us, scraping plates into the compost bucket, singing along,
you don't have to worry anymore
. Gary, kerosene lamplight on his shaved head, just in his OshKosh overalls, the straps against the freckles of his shoulders. He's taking a long pull on his beer. Reuben's finally sitting down, his legs crossed, his zip-up black Prada boots, one arm hooked at the elbow on the back of the high chair, exhaling from his Sherman. Hank, his hair pulled back from his face, Hank's beautiful face in the kerosene light, his black eyes still the psilocybin twinkle – all of it, everything.

“All we need now,” Hank says, “Is a chocolate cake.”

Sal stops scraping plates, washes his hands in the pot of hot water on the stove, wipes his hands. He steps across Gary and me, walks down the hallway that Hank's got his back to. Nobody thinks much about Sal leaving. Minutes later, though, Sal walks in with a pink box and stands behind Hank. Reuben picks up
Hank's plate. Out of the pink box, Sal pulls out the biggest chocolate cake I've ever seen. Sets it down in front of Hank. The look on Hank's face, my God, it is Christmas and Hank's a four-year-old.

“Bye bye, Mr. Chocolate Cake,” Reuben says.

And the day ends. The way it began. Laughing.

AFTER THE ASSEMBLY
line of washing and drying is finished and every knife and fork and spoon is put away into drawers. After every plate and cup and glass is back into the cupboard. The counters, the table wiped down. When the fire in the Majestic is only coals, after Gary turns the damper down. When there is only the one flame of the fancy kerosene lamp on the table, and the room is back to shadows, to spirits. We all embrace and thank each other for the day.

It was a great day, a day like no other, and I look into Gary's eyes, Reuben's, and Sal's, hold onto their hands as I tell them goodnight. They listen as I touch them and praise the day, the marvels of it, the deep understanding, the importance of their friendship. But the more I talk the more they laugh. How I'm still way stoned.

I
am
still stoned. When I open the wine-velvet curtains and walk down the three steep steps into the bedroom, Hank is standing in the middle of the room holding up a kerosene lamp, just in his undershorts. Next to his feet, Gary's bucket is catching the drips of rain through the hole in the roof. The wedding ring bed right there. The way George Washington looks at me, the way Hank looks at me, I know I am, I know Hank is, still way stoned.

Hank moves the kerosene lamp so we can see inside the bucket. The drips from the roof are constant and fast, almost a steady stream. There's maybe two inches of water in the bucket. Hank and I stand and stare at the water in the bucket, stare up at the roof for a long time and listen to the sound of the drips. It's something so odd we just have to witness it.

A big gust of wind. In the corners on each side of the room
at the ceiling, the triangular chinks in the wall, the wood is dark brown wet and dripping down water. Hank and I feel it about the same time. It's fucking cold.

I open up the steamer trunk, pull out extra blankets, lay them on the bed. In no time at all, I've got my clothes off, keep my shorts and socks on, and I'm under the covers. Hank blows out the flame in the kerosene lamp. The springs bounce and creak when he gets in bed. For the longest time we lie there with the covers pulled up, shivering. It is so dark. I'm still high all right, the way my head floats on the pillow. I want to talk and talk and catch up with Hank. So much to say, but I keep quiet. I think probably I've said enough that day. When I start to warm up, I just can't help it. I keep my voice low when I speak.

“Is that door closed tight?” I ask.

“Yeah I checked it,” Hank's voice is a whisper.

“Bears,” I say.

“Wolves,” Hank says.

Hank says, “Gruney, holy fuck!”

“I know! I know!” I say, “Holy fuck!”

“What is this place?” Hank says.

“Fucking psilocybin mushrooms!” I say.

“A ghost town,” Hank says.

“Have you ever been in a place so pitch dark?” I say.

“What a journey!” Hank says. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Alturas Bar,” I say. “The hot springs.”

“The chocolate cake,” Hanks says.

“The rain dripping in the fucking bucket,” I say.

“Fuckin A,” I say.

“Fuck!” Hanks says.

“The wedding ring bed,” I say.

Hank lets go one of his farts. It's so loud. Through the heavy wine-velvet curtains, on the other side of the solid wood wall we hear Reuben say:

“He gambled and he lost.”

Way across the house, Gary says: “She was a poor dog, but a good one.”

Christ the way we laugh. I plug my nose and laugh and laugh and laugh until I am asleep.

WHEN I OPEN
my eyes, the drip from the rough cut boards of the roof is an icicle about a foot long. The triangular chinks in the wall in the corners at the ceiling are knuckles of ice. Now and then, little drifts of snow are spirits across the room. In the oval mirror, I can see that outside it is snowing. Hank's curly head is on my chest, my chin on his head. His body right next to mine, not an inch of space between. Our arms and legs, I'm still getting them confused. As far as I can figure, his legs straddle my right leg and my left leg is over his leg. Only an inch out away from our bodies, the bedsheets are freezing. It takes me a while to figure it out that the hard thing against my thigh is too high for a knee and his other hand is on my ribs. And a very strange miraculous feeling. My cock is hard too. The full hopeful feeling of that. But it's the one part of me, besides the top of my head and back, that's not touching Hank.

One big deep breath jumps into my lungs when I realize where I am, where Hank is, how close we are. After a while and some real concentration, my breath goes back to something like normal. The light through the mirror from the window is snow bright and barely morning. I don't try and move away, or act startled, or worry about Hank when he wakes up. That he'll think I planned this, or that it's my fault we're lying this way.

My God, so this is what it feels like to be touched. I must still be high, I think. So content. Natural comfort. Perfectly in the place I've always wanted to be.

Hank moves his hand a little across my chest before he speaks. His voice is as if in a dream and so low I can barely hear him.

“In the basement of the Strand Book Store,” Hank says. “My God, how long ago was that?”

“All those months we didn't talk,” I say. “What happened to you that night at the Spike?”

Only our breath, the wind and the snow outside. I let my hand move on the skin of Hank's shoulder.

“We could've frozen to death last night,” Hank says.

“It's still last night,” I say. “I'm still so high. Are you still high?”

“I'd better be,” Hank says. “I've never been this close to a guy's nipple before.”

“Three months we didn't talk,” I say.

“I'm not sure if I remember why,” Hank says.

“Sure you do.”

Hank's ribs fill with air and stay full. When the air comes out his mouth, I expect bad breath, but Hank just smells like Hank.

“It was getting fucked in the ass,” Hank says. “You said you liked it and it freaked me out. I'd been thinking about
Kiss of the Spider Woman
and how Raul Julia is a friend to William Hurt and so he fucks him and maybe that's what you and I should do, only I couldn't imagine it.”

A gust of wind hits the house, everything shakes and rattles. A piece of tin on the roof makes a racket. Suddenly inside me the lightbulb in my chest. The flickering filament and I want out of there. Hank's way too close and there is no breath. But I'm high and I've traveled far and learned too much. My thumb the day before, how it made the fear come and go away.

So long ago, the day I'd cut my finger and my uncle Bob chased the Running Boy all over the farm.

Lying there in bed with Hank that morning, it was a great big revelation that there had never been a place that was safe for me. And yet there I was. With a hard-on and finally safe. In the wedding ring bed in an old house in a snowstorm in the Sawtooths, embracing Hank. Whatever had got me to that place, I had to trust. Besides, really there was no place to go. Outside the bed I'd freeze to death.

“How do you do that? I say. “Just go away like that?”

“It's something you learn,” Hank says.

“What's to learn?”

“Never show fear.”

“What's the trick?” I ask.

“You shut it all down,” Hank says. “Screw it down hard. Make it so nothing can touch you.”

“How do you do that?” I ask.

“You just do it,” Hank says.

Through the triangular chinks at the ceiling, a swirl of snow high up across the room from one wall to the other. I look down and see there's a dusting of snow on the quilt. I go to kick the snow off but don't. I'm afraid to move. Afraid the embrace, the magic, will end.

“Was this what the whole Idaho Book Tour was about?” Hank says. “Getting me into bed?”

“You got in this bed all by yourself,” I say.

“But say it,” Hank says. “You've been wanting this all along haven't you – me,” Hank says, “sex with me.”

“And now all my dreams have come true!” I say.

“We're not having sex,” Hank says.

“We are to me.”

“Then this is enough?”

“I've had a fucking apparition after me since Pocatello,” I say.

Hank's hand moves across my heart and holds on to that side of my ribs. The Running Boy again, but I move my thumb and it's all so ridiculous, it's only an idea, something I've learned, to live my life in fear.

“Fuck, you cried so hard in the car,” Hank says. “You and your sister. That's some heavy shit.”

“There was this drawing in the
Baltimore Catechism
,” I say, “of hell and there's this guy in hell, at the very bottom. He's naked and he doesn't have a dick and his face is terrifying.”

“When we were in the sweat lodge,” Hank says, “I saw my father.”

“He tried to kill me,” Hank says. “My pops held me under the water and I really fucking believe he was trying to kill me.”

“That sweat lodge was so fucking hot. I was in hell too,” I say. “Remember you reached out and grabbed my hand?”

“Ever since my father,” Hank says, “that's how I've treated men. That bullshit about male love being back to back is bullshit. The only way I really know how to treat a man is to kill him before he kills me.”

“Was that the place you meant that you'd never been before?”

“Yeah,” Hank says. “Before the sweat lodge, before yesterday and getting stoned on shrooms.”

“Before you,” Hank says, “front to front with a man was death.”

“God, that night at Ursula Crohn's,” Hank says. “Your voice. I'd never heard anything so vulnerable and so clear.”

“So maybe it's been you along,” I say, “trying to get
me
in bed.”

“Wish that was the case,” Hank says, “but it ain't.”

“But you're hard,” I say. “I can feel your cock against my thigh.”

“I'm hard every morning,” Hank says. “Besides, you're cute.”

“
Every
morning?” I say. “You ever not get hard when you wanted to be?”

“Been times,” Hank says. “I'm no different from any other guy.”

“
That's
no different?” I say. “Erectile dysfunction is not different?”

“Come on, man,” Hank says, “I'm a man, not a machine.”