Mike and Danny:
Restless Hearts
by Rock Lane Cooper
This is
a work of homoerotic fiction. If you are offended by such material or if you
are not allowed access to it under the laws where you live, please exit now.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be copied or distributed in
any form without the written permission of the author, who may be contacted at:
rocklanecooper@yahoo.com
Note that these stories, including this
one, are not an endorsement of unsafe sex. They take place many years before
the appearance of AIDS and before it was standard practice to use condoms to
reduce the risk of infection from sexually transmitted diseases. Remember
always: that was then, this is now. Sex is precious, and so are life and
health.
Chapter 15
Marty has a talk with his father; Mike
considers more than two sandwiches; Ted has a visitor from the past.
Marty found his father in the south
pasture where he was repairing an old windmill that had once been part of some
early settler’s homestead. It was on a quarter-section his dad had bought years
ago and turned into hayfields and pastures for his cattle. The farm buildings
were all gone, torn down or blown down after decades of
What would have been the original wooden
windmill was actually gone, too, replaced years ago with a metal one, its
aluminum blades making a musical sound overhead as they turned in the breeze.
As the water table stayed high here in the river bottom, the old well was deep
enough to continue filling a big round stock tank for his dad’s cows. Besides
this hole in the ground, there was nothing left of the old days.
A log barn, built to last for
generations, had been taken down and moved on a flatbed trailer one spring day
to the outdoor museum in
Marty parked the car—he’d borrowed
Virgil’s Plymouth Duster for the trip over from
Wade looked up when he saw Marty coming
but kept at what he was doing until Marty was standing there beside him.
“Hello, son,” he said, giving a bolt a
last twist with a wrench and then putting the wrench into a tool box that was
sitting open on the windmill platform.
“Dad,” Marty said.
He’d swapped a morning at the lumber
yard, taking another guy’s Saturday, so he could have a couple hours here at
home. Mike had made it seem like talking to his dad shouldn’t wait. Besides,
whatever it was that Wade had to tell him, there was also what Marty had come
to tell his dad.
“How you been?” Wade said, making it sound like he might really care—and maybe he
did.
“All right.”
“Everything working out
OK?”
“Yup.”
The morning was already warming under the
autumn sun. After the weather front that had brought rain over the weekend, it
looked like there might be a few more days of Indian summer. Marty opened his
jacket as he stood there, waiting for one of them to say something else.
“Mike came over the other night,” Marty
finally said. “We had us a little conversation.”
“You and Mike friends
now?”
“Dad, I know you sent him to come talk to me.” He was beginning to feel some of his old
impatience with his father, who could beat around the bush as easily as he
could tell you exactly what was on his mind when he felt like it.
Wade nodded. “I guess I did.”
“So you got something to say to me. What
is it?”
Wade took a while to collect his
thoughts.
“I’ve been thinkin’
is all,” he finally said. “Maybe I didn’t always say and do the right thing by
you.”
Maybe, Marty was thinking. Maybe.
“I always wanted you to grow up to be a
man you’d be proud of.”
“I am, Dad. So you can stop worrying
about that.”
But Wade didn’t seem to hear him.
“Could be it was more you wantin’ to be proud,” Marty said.
His father, hearing this, now gave him a
sharp look.
“Because I don’t think you are,” Marty
said. “And you haven’t been for a long time, if you ever were.”
“That’s not true, son.”
It irritated Marty that his father kept
calling him “son.” He hadn’t done that since he was a boy.
“Those ribbons you won showing your
steers at the fair, and that trophy you got for Freddie?” Freddie was a prize
Angus bull Marty had raised when he was in high school. He’d sold him for a lot
of money to a rancher in
“You could have showed it.”
“Well, I’m tellin’
you now—if it’s not too late.”
Marty stood unmoving—his thumbs stuck in
his back pockets and his weight on one leg—studying his father in the morning
sunshine.
“It’s not too late,” he said. Better late
than never, he wanted to add, but stopped with that. In the trees along the
river, he heard the surprised cry of a rooster pheasant.
“Before you say any more,” Marty said.
“There’s something else you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m queer, dad. Your son is queer.”
The words that came from him were a
simple statement of fact—a fact he had accepted about himself that made sense
of the life he’d lived all these years on this farm, in school, and running off
to
His heart swelled as all that these words
meant filled him with a new kind of courage. It was as if Virgil stood there
beside him, an arm around his shoulders, defying the whole damn world to
disapprove.
“Are you still proud of me?” Marty said.
He knew that if his father couldn’t accept this about him it would change
nothing. He’d always been just himself, in spite of his father, and this was no
different.
Wade looked at him grimly. “I can see
what you’re doing is getting back at me after all these years, and I probably
got it comin’.”
“I’m not getting back at you. I’m just
telling you the way things are.”
“If what you’re saying is true, your
mother’s going to be more disappointed than I am.”
“She already knows.”
“How does she know?”
“I just told her,” Marty said. “She took
it pretty well.”
Wade looked off across the pasture to
where his steers stood, grazing on the grass, flush with green from the last
rain.
“You don’t have to be proud of me, dad.
I’ve made it this far without that. I can make it the rest of the way.”
Wade gave him a fierce look now, his
anger suddenly rising. “No, it’s not going to be like that,” he said.
Marty, who’d been about
to walk back to the car, waited for his father to finish having the last word.
“I’m your father,” Wade said. “Whatever
you say is not going to change that fact.”
Marty just nodded. His dad could be
stubborn as a mule.
“And you’re my only son,” Wade said.
“Nothing’s going to change that either.”
“Well, that’s the way it’s always been
between you and me.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying.
You’re a grown man. What you do with your life is up to you. Just don’t leave
me and your mother out of it.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Marty said,
though to tell the truth, he knew he had no real plans—not yet anyway.
He pulled his thumbs from his pockets and
shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I gotta get goin’
back to
“I was hopin’
you’d stay a while.”
“I need to return that car to my friend.”
He nodded toward the Duster out on the road.
“When you comin’
back?”
Marty shrugged. “One of
these Sundays maybe.”
There was a pause, and Marty started to
leave. After a few steps he heard his father’s voice behind him. “Bring your
friend with you, OK?”
He turned but kept walking, backward
toward the car. His father still stood beside the windmill, watching him go.
“I’ll see if he wants to come along,”
Marty said.
Then he turned again and kept going. His
heart, he realized, was pounding.
— § —
Sometime after
“I’d have cooked you a proper meal, Mike,
but you’re kinda short on supplies,” she said,
indicating the refrigerator and opening a cupboard where there were only a
couple of cans and some breakfast cereal.
“
“Well, your friend in there is going to
need to eat whenever he gets up. We oughtta think
about him.”
Leave it to
“That young man,”
and she nodded with her head toward the bedroom, “he don’t look like he’s had a
bite of food in a week.”
She had checked on him, she said, every
hour like clockwork. He hadn’t moved a muscle, just managed to keep breathing.
She’d considered taking his pulse once to make sure he was still alive.
“And is there some reason he’s still got
all his clothes on?” She was putting mayonnaise and mustard on four slices of
bread. “Two sandwiches gonna be enough for you?” she
wanted to know, not waiting for an answer to the first question.
Mike wanted to tell her he could make his
own sandwiches—she didn’t have to go to the trouble—but there was no point in
that. She wouldn’t hear of it. In her mind, he’d probably do it all wrong.
“You got a picture of one man bare naked
on the wall,” she said—she’d seen the painting of Danny that had hung there in
the bedroom for years—“and another one goes to bed without getting undressed
first.”
She laughed and shook her head at the
wonder of it all. “That boy’s still got his boots on.”
Though she had probably never seen
another man naked besides Tully,
Half glad to have someone to talk to
about Rich—even if it was
“Combat fatigue,” she said. “I’ve heard
of it.”
“Maybe worse’n
that.”
She thought about this as she poured them
cups of coffee and then sat down at the table with Mike.
“Tully was in
Tully had been an MP, and he’d told Mike
a few stories about breaking up fights in off-limit bars and whorehouses. Nothing that couldn’t have happened at a stateside base.
“Did he ever talk to you?”
“Not really.”
“See what I mean?”
Again she shook her head at the folly of
men. “You train a man to kill—and he gets sent off somewhere and does that—and
then he’s supposed to come back and live like it never happened.” She took a
sip of her coffee. “Life ain’t no
John Wayne movie.”
Mike wondered how a farm wife like
He had a bite of the sandwich and then
took it with him to look in on Rich, who continued to lie just where he’d last
seen him, his face gray and unshaven, eyes sunken.
“He’s been cryin’,
the poor soul,”
They stood silently then for a while,
watching. From outside, there was the sound of sparrows in the bushes. Then
they went back to the kitchen.
“Best to let him sleep. Don’t go taking
his pulse,” Mike said, thinking of how startled Rich had been when he woke up
that morning. “He’s not so good with surprises.”
“Somehow I could tell that.”
Mike finished his sandwiches and let
“Maybe you should talk to Tully,” she
said. “He’ll know of something that would help.”
And she said this with the respect she
obviously felt for her husband. It was one thing to joke about men’s general
incompetence, but the tone of her voice said she could give a man credit for
what he might be good for—hard work, supporting a family,
and maybe even the company of his naked body in bed at night.
“I’ll tell Tully about your friend in
there,” she said. “See what he says.”
— § —
Ted had made good progress with his
paintings. At the rate he was going, he’d have enough finished for the show in
Omaha, and there’d been another phone call from the gallery letting him know
there was interest building in his work—some word of mouth already—and he could
expect to sell some.
That had been on Saturday, and then
Sunday there was this surprise when someone walked out of the past to show up
at his front door. Looking a few years older and like he’d seen something of
the world was the young man who’d been a friend of Danny’s when they were both
college boys. And Danny had brought him to meet Ted.
His name was Bobby. They’d spent that
weekend together, and several more after that. Then, after one thing and
another—Bobby so much younger than Ted and hardly ready to get attached to
anyone —they’d split up. More like Bobby had just stopped coming by the house.
Now, years later, he was standing again
on the porch steps, getting wet in the falling rain, and Ted had him come
inside, where a wood fire was burning and there was hot coffee on the stove.
Bobby was back in town, he said, for
homecoming at the college—it was seven years since he’d graduated—and the
memories had got the best of him. He’d been to the game and the dance on
Saturday, but Sunday he’d driven out to the farmhouse where he’d spent all
those times with Ted, thinking he’d just have a last look at the old place and
recollect what he could of the past.
The times with Ted—from the distance now
of several years—had taken on a kind of golden glow, of being held dear and
cherished by a good man. Ted hadn’t been the first man he ever loved, but he
was the first one who loved him back, and Bobby knew now that the caring and
the gentle affection Ted showed for him were something rare in the world.
After many tries, he’d never had that
again with another man. It had been hard enough to find a queer man of any
kind, but still a whole lot easier to find one who wanted him just for sex and
nothing more. He had hope still that the right man was out there somewhere, but
finding another one like Ted had begun to seem almost impossible.
Part of the ritual of homecoming each
year, he said, was this stopping by Ted’s old place in the country. Parked
along the road and gazing for a while at the empty house, he’d feel the
emptiness in his heart and soul and wish he could just let the memories go.
In fact, he’d promised himself that this
year he’d stay away—no homecoming, no visit to the house. But here he was
again, the feelings rising in his chest sharper than ever as he sat behind the
wheel of his car, looking through the trees, the branches wet with rain and
mostly bare now under the gray autumn sky.
Then—and he could hardly believe his
eyes—he saw Ted’s old station wagon there, parked at the front gate like it had
been years before. In a kind of daze he pulled into the long driveway and drove
to the house, where he knocked on the door, still not certain that the person
who opened it would be Ted.
Ted had stood there for a moment, finally
recognizing Bobby. He’d let his hair grow past his ears, and his face had lost
the cheerful boyish look he remembered, but as the delight at finding Ted
filled his eyes, he seemed to become more and more the college boy he’d once
been.
Ted waved him in and—because he had paint
all over his hands and clothes—apologized for turning down the excited hug
Bobby wanted to give him. Then after a while, having him again in the house,
interested in the paintings and wanting to see them, Ted felt the strangeness
of not being alone begin to wear off.
Bobby had taken a job with an engineering
contractor in
He stood now next to Ted as he painted,
holding a mug of coffee with both hands. He was wearing khaki pants and a dark
blue ski sweater. And he’d become a handsome man. When he turned and walked to
the kitchen for more coffee, Ted could see that he still had a handsome butt,
too.
“I’ve missed you,” Bobby said when he
came back.
“We had some good times together,” Ted
said, not sure what Bobby was trying to say.
“I was just a dumb kid and you put up
with me anyway.”
Ted smiled at him. “You weren’t all that
hard to like.”
The wind blew a burst of falling rain
against the windows.
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
“I can see that.”
“I’m chokin’ up
a little here because”—his voice wavered—“I’m ashamed of what I did.”
Ted looked at him for a moment and then
kept painting.
“You got nothing to be ashamed of,” he
said.
“I didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’re
seeing somebody for the last time.”
Bobby shook his head. “No, what I did was
pretty bad.”
“I got no reason to complain. I’ve done a
lot worse.”
Of all the times he’d like to do over
again—and do right—the one that came clearest to him now involved a boy he’d
known in high school. He was a little girlish and carried his books on his hip,
and in a small-town rural school, where boys were expected to be loud and
tough—if not downright mean—this one was way out of place.
One of the boys had promised to meet him
after school—it was supposed to be a walk along a creek, for some bird
watching. He’d showed up instead with a carload of his mates, including Ted,
and they’d made the boy get down behind the bushes and suck all of them. As
they left, laughing and jeering, he’d stood there, mud on the knees of his
school pants.
The forlorn look of betrayal on the boy’s
face had haunted Ted for years, and it came back unbidden at moments like this,
to remind him of how often his courage had failed him. He’d gone along to prove
his own shaky manhood, and what he’d proved instead was his capacity for being
heartless.
“I want us to be friends again,” Bobby
said. “I never met any man good to me as you.”
Ted was glad now for the paint on his
hands and shirt sleeves that kept him from putting his arms around Bobby, even
though that would have been easier than knowing what to say next.
“What happened to you, Bobby? I don’t
remember seeing you look so sad.”
“It’s never been easy being queer, but I
never thought it was going to be this hard.”
He thought of Ed and how the two of them
would never be having this conversation. Ed was so uncomplicated about
feelings, and what made him that way was his expecting no more from another man
than a good time. His heart was big enough for whoever he happened to be with.
He liked being loved, but it didn’t always have to be the same person.
Bobby, he could see, was different. He
was still that young, hopeful boy, expecting true love to show up in the form
of the perfect man. Now that experience had taught him otherwise, he was
reliving the past and persuading himself that his first love had really been
the best one all along.
“Can I stay the night?” Bobby said.
“You can stay as long as you like.”
“I can?”
“Just let me keep on painting.” He had
deadlines, he explained, and he needed to keep working.
Bobby didn’t care. He’d had some vacation
days coming and just being here under the same roof with Ted seemed to be
enough.
Not that they hadn’t relived the old
times. Bobby had made supper that first night—there was spaghetti and wine and
candles at the table in the darkened kitchen. He’d put a stack of LPs on the
stereo and said, “All we need is Mike and Danny.” He was trying to recreate the
first evening he’d been here, a college boy, hardly twenty, falling in love
with a handsome older man he’d just met.
“I had stars in my eyes,” he said with a
big grin.
“You got ’em
now,” Ted said, looking at his face in the flickering candlelight.
He found himself touched by Bobby’s
yearning innocence and the sorrow in him that life could not be what he dreamed
it would be. And maybe he was thinking of Mike and Danny, and how the two of
them had found each other despite the odds—odds that seemed to grow with each
passing year.
“How old are you now?” Ted asked him. “Twenty-five?”
“Almost twenty-nine.”
Ted wondered if he was trying to make
himself seem older than he was, to get closer to Ted by narrowing the gap of
years between them.
“Don’t wish your life away,” he said.
“Time goes by fast enough.” He’d happily be twenty-nine again, knowing what he
knew now. On the stereo, a James Taylor song was playing.
Close your eyes, you can close your eyes, it’s all right
And I can sing this song, and you can sing this song when I’m
gone . . .
They had washed up the dishes afterwards,
standing together at the kitchen sink—Bobby washing and Ted drying. The stereo
played through a last LP and in the silence that followed, filling the rooms of
the house, Ted had leaned over to Bobby and kissed him on the neck.
He hadn’t thought much beyond the impulse
itself and where it might lead. There was just this moment as a wave of
tenderness rose gently in him, and he wanted to press his lips against the soft
skin under Bobby’s ear. Then he had done it, and Bobby had turned and folded
into his arms.
They hadn’t finished the dishes.
Bobby had slept that night and the next
night in Ted’s bed, their naked bodies wrapped together after bouts of
passionate sex, Bobby hungry to grasp again the sweeping feelings of first love
and Ted content to relive those winter nights that had banished for a time his
own young man’s loneliness.
Come Tuesday night, they were going to
bed early because Bobby was heading back to
“I should answer that,” Ted said, and
slipped his flannel shirt on again, leaving his belt unbuckled as he left the
room.
When he picked up the phone, which hung
on the wall by the door, he heard Ed’s voice. He was talking over what sounded
like a TV in the background—a sitcom with a noisy laugh track.
“Where are you?” Ted said.
“I got to
“I was getting into bed.” He felt an awkwardness as he held back the rest of it—that he wasn’t
alone.
There was a pause while Ed put down the
phone to turn down the TV. When he was back, he took a deep breath that Ted
could hear clearly over the line and then began stumbling over his words like
he had something to say and couldn’t get it out.
“I—I have a confession to make,” he said,
finally able to put a sentence together. “You were right about something.”
“I think I know already.” He’d probably
found out how impossible it was to sell paintings with only Polaroid shots of
the painter.
“I found out I can’t be true to one man
after all.”
It was now Ted’s turn to find the right
words, but he didn’t have to say anything, because Ed had now found his voice
and kept talking.
“I’m sorry, but I have to tell you this,”
he was saying. “The last two nights, I got laid with two different guys. Not together, just one at a time.”
“It’s all right, Ed.”
“I wanted to be a better man, Ted. I
thought I could do it.”
“It’s OK.”
“And you wanna
know the worst part?”
“I don’t know if I do.”
“I love all three of you. How can a man
be so fucked up?”
“Ed, that’s not fucked up. It’s amazing
you can do that. Hell, I’m happy for you.”
“But I made you a promise. I wasn’t gonna be like that anymore.”
“How can I hold you to a promise like
that?”
“A man’s word is supposed to be his
word.”
“Ed, let me say something. Are you
listening?”
“Yeah, what?”
“The same thing happened to me. Somebody
showed up here after you left. He’s there in the bed now waiting for me.”
“He is?”
“Yes. Now do you feel a little better? Or
are you gonna keep kicking yourself?”
Ed was at a loss for words again. Or—and
this was just as likely—something on TV had caught his eye.
“You still there?” Ted said.
“Yeah, I’m thinkin’.
Who is this guy you got with you?”
“Someone I used to know, years ago.” And
he explained how Bobby had been in town for his homecoming at the college and
showed up at the door.
“Would I like him?” Ed asked.
Ted thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think
you would.”
“Is he there? Can I talk to him?”
Ed, who was usually predictable, had this
way of springing the most unexpected request on a person.
“I’ll go see,” Ted said and set the
receiver down on top of the phone.
He walked to the bedroom, where Bobby lay waiting.
“He wants to talk to you,” Ted said.
“Who does?”
“Friend of mine. He’s calling from
“What does he want to talk to me for?”
“You don’t have to.”
Bobby was thinking it over, then looked
at Ted and gave a shrug. “No, I’ll go.” He got out of the bed covers, his dick
full in his underwear, and left the room.
Ted sat on the edge of the bed and
listened to the sound of Bobby’s voice coming from the kitchen. He spoke only a
few times. Ed seemed to be doing most of the talking. Then Bobby was saying goodbye,
and after a moment he was back in the room.
“What did he have to say?” Ted asked.
“He said you are a good man, and we
should love each other with everything we got.”
Ted shook his head and laughed. He
reached to Bobby who stood in front of him now.
“Well, you got advice from an expert,” he
said and began to pull down Bobby’s briefs. “Let’s not disappoint the man.”
When he had them down to his ankles,
Bobby stepped out of them. His dick swung toward Ted, lifting and getting hard,
and Ted put his arms around him, caressing the small of his back and the smooth
skin on his butt and pulling him onto the bed.
Continued . . .
More stories. There are
links to all the Mike and Danny stories, plus a
conversation with the author, pictures of the characters, and some cowboy
poetry at the Rock Lane Cooper home page. Click here.
© 2008 Rock Lane Cooper
rocklanecooper@yahoo.com