Wild Raspberries (10 page)

This is a mess.” Dan didn’t know why he said it; Tyler could see for himself that his garden was trashed. Maybe it was because Tyler’s silence was leaving a hole that needed to be filled.

Tyler grunted and turned his head away. Well, that was responsive… but Tyler had been like this all day. They’d spent the morning in town, where the doctor had apparently taken one look at Tyler’s ankle and lost her cool completely.

Dan had been in the waiting room, reading a magazine aimed at teenage girls because it was the only thing there, and it was that or field the receptionist’s questions. Betty scared him. She’d hooked his name out of him within moments, and he had no doubt that if he hadn’t picked up the magazine she’d have known more about him than Tyler did by the time the doctor had finished Tyler’s check-up.

Tyler had come out of the examination room looking infuriated and abashed at the same time, his mouth set in a tight, straight line. After tiptoeing around him for a while, Dan had changed tactics and asked him how hard it was sitting down after the doc had ripped him a new one. Tyler’s mouth had thinned to nothing and then twitched in an unexpected grin.

Which didn’t mean all was sweetness and light again. The garden looked as if it had been trampled by a giant toddler having a tantrum. The vegetables that had been tied to canes and trellises lay on the ground, mud-splashed and broken, with their supports snapped or wind-tossed. Tyler was acting like it was a major disaster, though, which it wasn’t. Just one hell of a lot of work tidying, that was all.

Dan shrugged with the philosophical acceptance any farmer learned early or got ulcers, and turned to Tyler. “Which section do you want me to start re-staking first?”

“Why bother?” Tyler smacked the end of his cane against a mud-mottled green pepper, under-ripe and destined to stay that way, and split it, flat seeds exposed to the sun beating down from a dazzle of sky. “Just dig it over.”

“What?” Dan shook his head. “No way. You can salvage a lot of this, man. It was just one storm, and you can see how the rain perked things up.”

“Dig it over, or leave it the hell alone. I’m done with it.” Tyler sounded dispirited, which make no sense at all. The doc had been annoyed with him for going walkabout in the woods, but she hadn’t threatened to put him on bed rest or anything; she’d just told him if he did it again, she’d tear his foot off with her bare hands. She wasn’t much like any doctor Dan had ever had, but he’d gotten the idea that Tyler and Anne were friends, which made a difference.

“I can fix it,” Dan insisted. “You can’t waste all this food and all the work you put into it.”

“I can do what I like, boy.”

“What has gotten into you today?” Dan said, his voice cracking with the effort to keep from shouting. “Why are you so pissed off? You grow stuff and sometimes the pests eat it, or the drought withers it, or the rain mildews it, or it’s spinach to start with and who the hell wants to eat that, anyway, but that’s what happens. It was just some wind and rain. Nothing here I can’t clean up. Honest.”

He walked closer to Tyler than he had all morning, apart from when he’d been helping the man get in and out of the truck — trying to help, anyway, as Tyler had glared at him until he stepped back, his hand dropping to his side. Close enough to see the tiredness etched around Tyler’s eyes and to be able to get a good look at the mouth he was starting to get a fondness for. Even if he did suspect that kissing it right now would lead to him getting frostbite. “Let me,” he said in his softest, most persuasive voice, the one he’d used to get Luke to touch him, kiss him, fuck him, though Luke hadn’t needed much persuading. Not that it eased the guilt Dan felt at costing the man his job. “Come on, Tyler. Or you can listen to me being bored again.”

“Or you could get the hell out of here and then I wouldn’t have to listen to anything but peace and quiet.”

That dig hurt after a night spent breathing in each other’s air and waking tangled around each other, both half-hard, though they hadn’t done anything about it, not with the way Tyler looked like it was hurting him to even blink.

“If you really want me gone before you’re healed up enough to cope alone, just say, and I’ll be that swirl of dust on the horizon.”

“I always could cope alone,” Tyler told him, but there was no rancor in his voice. “Truth be told, I asked you to stay mostly to get Anne off my back and partly because you just — you looked like you needed a breathing space.”

“Yeah, I did, but there were probably places in town you could’ve sent me to that would’ve given me that. I don’t suppose you’ve got a soup kitchen, but there’s usually somewhere to get a meal and a bed as long as you’re on your way the next day.” Dan put his hands in his pockets before he reached out to touch Tyler the way he wanted to. Tyler was projecting enough hands-off vibes to make him wary at the same time as he was tempted. With every hour they spent together, it was getting more difficult to remember that he wasn’t anything to Tyler but a pity-fuck, a charity case. “You didn’t need to make me your responsibility. You don’t owe me anything; I’m just the trespasser you caught stealing.”

“No, you’re the kid I almost shot.”

That admission sent a shiver through Dan. Tyler pointing his rifle at him was one of the sharper memories of that day, fogged over with hunger as it was. Cold gray eyes and a finger ready to squeeze a trigger… But he hadn’t really thought Tyler would do it. Discovering that Tyler had seen it as a close call made the memory something to cringe away from.

“You wouldn’t have done that.” He tried to sound confident.

“Boy, you have no idea how close I came.” Tyler hunched up his shoulder. “I’d better go in. Anne said I wasn’t supposed to be standing for long.”

“Then sit down,” Dan snapped. “There’s a bench over there.” It was a rustic one, made of oddly twisted branches and mismatched planks. Dan had tested it out and found that it was surprisingly comfortable.

Tyler shook his head and turned to walk away.

“You wouldn’t have done it,” Dan said again. He needed to hear Tyler admit it. “People don’t shoot other people. Well, not in broad daylight for no reason, anyway. Not people like you. You’d have to be crazy.”

“You think I wouldn’t shoot someone?” Mild and cool, Tyler’s voice sent a shiver over Dan. “Boy, I’ve shot more people than you’ve had birthdays.” His mouth quirked up in a sour smile. “And, no, that’s not an exaggeration.”

“You — when you were in the army, you mean?” Had to be. Tyler wasn’t a murderer. Not that it made it right…

“Well, yeah.”

“My friend’s dad was in the navy for twenty years and never killed anyone,” Dan said. “You must have been somewhere dangerous.”

“There’s always a war somewhere,” Tyler told him. “Look, are we —?”

“How many?” The question was blurted out before his mind could censor it. Or maybe he just really wanted to know.

He didn’t think Tyler would tell him, but he did. “Twenty-three.”

Memories of dozens of war movies flooded his brain. “How can you be so sure? I mean, you fire, but you don’t know for sure — it gets pretty chaotic, bombs going off and all that…”

“You think they sent me out to fight on the front lines like that? Risked me getting hit by friendly fire or being the victim of some idiot officer wanting to make the six-o’clock news?” Tyler chuckled, the sound raw and painful. “I was kept safe until they needed me, boy. Then they took me out, dusted me off, and pointed me at a target. I could kill from so far away I was in another fucking time zone.” He pursed his lips. “That’s not an exaggeration, either. There was this one time in Lebanon — oh, but if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

The last words were hollow, empty, all emotion carved out of the cliché. There was a small part of Dan that still didn’t quite believe, but most of him did.

Tyler raised his cane, the muddied tip of it pointed directly at Dan’s head. “Bang,” Tyler murmured. “You’re dead, boy. You’re so fucking dead.”

Then Tyler’s hand started to shake, the tremors spreading, and he slammed the end of the cane down against the ground, pivoted on it, and walked away. Dan waited until he heard the door slam and then let himself react, which consisted mostly of muttering “Fuck” under his breath and chewing at a ragged fingernail until he’d reduced it to a thin crescent of white and his finger was sore.

That had been scary. No, that had been fucking terrifying. Dan touched his hand to his face and took it away damp with sweat that had nothing to do with the warmth of the sun.

Okay, he could go. Leave. Get as far away as he could and trust that Tyler wouldn’t follow him this time. Except the only reason for doing that would be because he thought that Tyler really was dangerous, which was ridiculous. Tyler had fed him and brought him in from the cold, which might make him feel like a stray kitten but didn’t make him feel at risk.

Still, there was no getting away from it; the guy had issues. Post-traumatic stress? Maybe. Probably. Though Tyler obviously wasn’t bothered by using a rifle; anyone who took a weapon with him to pick berries, close to his own home in an area not exactly known for having many bears, wasn’t freaked out by guns. More like he felt safer with one close by.

Dan chewed his lip. Was anyone after Tyler, maybe? If he’d killed a bunch of people, he could’ve made enemies, even if it had all been government approved. Which he only had Tyler’s word for… Tyler, who’d admitted cheerfully that he’d lie without blinking if it suited him.

Dan moaned. Too confusing. Just too many fucking ifs and maybes. He looked at the vegetable patch and felt a measure of calm return, because no matter what Tyler said now, that mess needed clearing up. The vegetables lying on the ground would rot if they weren’t re-staked soon, and the debris needed to be tidied away. Work didn’t scare him. Never had.

He didn’t bother stopping for lunch. Tyler and he had breakfasted in town at a shabby diner whose breakfast special cost three dollars and left Dan feeling too full to move. Grease, salt, ketchup, and lots of coffee. He was sweating it out of his system now, though. Grit built up under his fingernails, and he was sure his face was streaked with it, too, because he kept wiping the wetness from his forehead with a filthy hand. Tyler would have to turn the hose on him when the day was done, because if he took a bath muddied up like this, he’d clog the drain.

He pictured that; him standing naked out here in the garden with Tyler playing a cool spray of water over him, his gray eyes warm with appreciation because Dan knew he’d be giving Tyler plenty to look at. He could feel his skin tingle just imagining it. Tyler’s hands would feel so hot on him after the soaking, moving over his skin, the water on Dan’s body absorbed by Tyler’s clothes as Tyler got in close, making them cling to all those muscles.

Fuck. Squatting down to ease tomatoes free from the dried mud encasing them wasn’t all that comfortable when your dick was hard and getting harder with every lustful thought. Dan rocked back onto his heels and adjusted himself, which left even more dirt smeared on him. Maybe there was a river he could jump into…

By three o’clock, he’d gone from full to empty, his belly growling softly at him and his head light. He snacked on some tomatoes and a few peapods, popping them open and extracting the peas with a dexterous skim of his finger. Raw peas always tasted better than cooked ones, but they’d probably give him a stomachache. There had been no sign of Tyler, who hadn’t come out to see what he was doing or chase him away. Dan supposed that was a good sign, but he would’ve appreciated a cool drink and a few words of thanks. He got a drink from the outside tap, using it to rinse his hands clean, the cool shock of the water welcome, and then slurping at the clear stream, thirst making him appreciate it, even with the rusty aftertaste. He’d drunk from worse since he hit the road.

He straightened, one hand in the small of his back, where the ache was worst, and felt like the Tin Woodman before the oilcan loosened him up. He was used to working, sure, but this kind of cramped, fiddly work, well, not so much. Riding a tractor was starting to look good.

“I can’t look at you without hating you. What have you turned into? What happened to my son, my Daniel? I used to be proud of you —”

Dan turned in the direction of home and spat on the ground, needing some way to express his feelings. A year ago, he might have punched a wall, but he’d learned the hard way that gestures like that were guaranteed to leave him feeling worse, not better. Swollen, bruised knuckles weren’t much fun to live with. “Like you had to stop loving me just because of that?” The words sounded disconsolate, not hate-filled. He’d given up hating his father somewhere around the fifth day on the road; he needed some space to loathe the men who were using him like he didn’t matter, like they’d earned the rights to his mouth by doing no more than letting him ride along with them for an hour or so.

What his daddy had done hadn’t been a shock; Dan had known how he’d react, after all. Couldn’t hate him too much for the way he’d been raised.

Which didn’t mean that he ever wanted to set eyes on the small-minded, bitter son of a bitch again. Dan bent, scooped up a tomato, ripe, seeds spilling, and lobbed it in the direction of home, watching it fly up, a red streak against the blue sky. It fell short of the trees and landed with an unheard splat in the grass.

“You about done having fun out here, boy?”

Tomato juice seeped into the raw skin under a popped blister on his palm and stung just enough to put an edge on his reply. He’d worked without a break for four hours or more and what did he get? Tyler, looking cool and rested, in clean jeans and a white shirt, hanging open to expose his bare chest, mottled with bruises over his ribs.

“Fun?” He wished he had another tomato. Be kind of funny to see that white shirt get a crazy pattern on it. His gaze slid sideways to the vegetable patch. He could wander over there, casual and slow… “Oh, yeah. It’s been a blast. Drinking beer, catching some rays… like a genuine vacation.”

“I don’t grow them for you to throw them.” There was enough of a warning in Tyler’s voice for Dan to know Tyler had read his intentions as easily as if they’d been printed up on a board in big, clear letters.