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 9
Mike has his doubts; Ed takes a
detour; Ty makes a decision; and Marty gets some
news.
Mike still wasn’t sure this was a good
idea. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever done anything like this
before. His sex life had always been his own business, and if it involved
anybody else, it was never more than finding a partner for the night or—with
the right man, like Danny—for as long as he could make it last. He didn’t go
around giving out advice or telling other men how to live their lives.
But here he was, on his way to have a
talk with Marty. The only reason, he kept telling himself, was that his friend
Wade had asked him to, and a man does what he can for a friend.
It was Sunday afternoon, and the rain
still came down in a steady drizzle, blowing sometimes across the highway in
front of him and falling hard against the windshield. He was driving his truck,
and somewhere up ahead was Danny in his Camaro.
Usually Danny waited until after supper
on Sunday evenings, to spend all the time he could with Mike before returning
to his teaching job in
Most of all, he didn’t know where to
start with Marty. If he could get past that, he thought, the rest would come more easy. But if he thought about where he wanted the
discussion to end, he got even less sure of himself. It would be perfect if
Marty was ready to make amends with his father, after so many years of fighting
each other, but what was the chance of that? It could be a lot or damn little.
Though he was still a young man, Marty
seemed already very set in his ways. Maybe he needed to be like that just to
hold his own in the world. And if that was the case, he’d come by it honestly.
His dad was stubborn as they come.
But if Mike were having this conversation
with Danny, he knew Danny would be laughing and saying, “Listen to yourself. You’re as set in your ways as anybody.”
And he’d disagree for a while, all the
time knowing Danny was probably right. He might keep most of his opinions to
himself, but he certainly had his share of them.
Eventually, he came around to telling
himself that he’d made no promises to Wade. If Marty refused to play along, it
was out of Mike’s hands. He could always say, I tried.
But then again, Wade was counting on him, and that made just trying not good enough.
“Shit,” he muttered as he drove along. If
Marty didn’t give in a little, it was going to be tough going back empty
handed. And it would be a toss-up then between being disappointed in himself
and being more than a little pissed off at the boy.
— § —
When Ed got as far as
LeRoy was a good man—retired now from the rodeo and
running a liquor store. They had known each other for
years, and their friendship had defied the temper of the times. LeRoy was all country, having grown up in a small
LeRoy had been one helluva steer
wrestler, but even so, winning the prize money depended a lot on the whim of
white judges, who either saw him for the fine competitor he was or let their
prejudices get in the way. Hard to say which of them even
remembered that it was a black man, Bill Pickett, who had been the first great
champion bulldogger.
Some of the rodeo cowboys—and often even
the fans—recognized his ability. He could slide from a galloping horse onto a
running steer with the grace of a big cat and flip it onto its side. No wasted
effort, just a sequence of clean movements that made it all look
easy and simple. Men who competed even in other events would stop what they
were doing to watch him and just shake their heads at the wonder of it.
But as a black man in a white man’s
sport, he was still the exception. He was respected, but still always something
of an outsider. That Ed and LeRoy became friends may
have been out of the ordinary. But since Ed was nothing more than a
salesman—and not a cowboy at all—it didn’t really matter that much to anyone.
Which was OK, because their friendship,
in fact, was a cover for something no one knew about either of them—they both
liked men. And it hadn’t taken them long to find that out about each other.
Half way through a bottle of Jim Beam one night in Ed’s motel room, someone’s
hand had found its way to the other one’s crotch. And from there on their new
friendship was complete.
Alas, it hadn’t lasted. When enough
dislocated shoulders, torn muscles and ligaments had forced LeRoy
into retirement, he’d taken up with an old buddy who was looking for someone to
partner with him in his liquor store business.
The old buddy happened to be queer, too,
and they’d become a two-some, living together in a nice three-bedroom on a good
street in a mixed neighborhood, where two black men could pretty much do what
they liked as long as they kept the property up and the lawn mowed—which was
not a problem since LeRoy’s buddy and business
partner was all Better Homes and Gardens.
“Hell, yes. Come for as long as you
like,” LeRoy said when Ed stopped along the road at a
pay phone and gave him a call.
“Can’t stay long, I’m on my way to
“Well, we’ll see about that,” LeRoy said, like he was already making other plans for Ed.
Later in the afternoon, when Ed drove up
to the house, the sky was darker and the rain was still coming down. Now that
he’d been going east, he’d probably been driving right along with the storm.
The garage door began to lift open and LeRoy stood
there, calling out to Ed after he’d parked at the curb.
There was an empty space inside, next to
an old maroon Mercury. When he reached over to roll down the window, he could
hear LeRoy’s deep voice saying, “Park it in here, out
of the rain.”
So he drove the Cadillac onto the
driveway and into the garage. Before he could shut off the engine and open the
door LeRoy was standing there beside him, wearing a
black western shirt with pearl snaps and an old pair of levi’s,
starched and creased like he was on his way to a shindig.
He had gotten older and a little fatter,
with some gray showing in his dark, dark hair, but he was still a handsome man.
And he had a big smile on his face like a ten-year-old who’d just got a pony
for his birthday.
“You old son-of-a-gun,” he said as Ed got
out of the car. “It’s sure as hell good to see you.” And he gave him a long,
strong hug—pounding his back once or twice, but mostly just holding him in his
arms.
Ed heard the garage door come rolling and
rattling down, shutting out the sound of the falling rain on the concrete of
the driveway. And when it was all the way closed, LeRoy
took his face in both his hands and gave him a quick, hard kiss on his mouth.
It felt good this big, warm hulk of a man
embracing him with the strength he’d once used to wrestle steers down to the
arena dirt. And Ed’s body came alive with memories of nights together in cheap
motel rooms, damp with sweat because the air conditioner wasn’t working, the
bed springs complaining under them, and taking showers together afterwards,
scrubbing each other’s backs, their bodies slippery with soap as they pressed
together.
“Where’s your partner?” he finally said,
unable to remember the guy’s name.
“Cliff? He’s in
“You didn’t
go?”
“They’re still trying to get him married
off to some nice girl.”
“Don’t they know about you two?”
“Don’t wanna
know.”
“Shit.”
“It’s
They went inside, LeRoy
carrying Ed’s suitcase and with his other arm around Ed’s shoulder. The kitchen
was orderly and brightly lighted. Through an archway, he could see a living
room with beige carpet, upholstered furniture, magazines fanned out on a coffee
table, and sheer curtains and drapes in the picture windows. At first glance,
the place seemed to be more for looking at than living in.
“Nice place you got here,” Ed said.
“Cliff runs a tight ship,” LeRoy said, like he could read Ed’s mind. “He’s got
something you don’t find much of in an old rodeo cowboy like me.”
“What’s that?”
“He’d call it taste.”
“What would you call it?”
LeRoy just laughed. “I got my own room, and he let’s me do
what I want in there—long as I keep the door shut.”
LeRoy showed Ed around the house, dropping his suitcase in
the guest bedroom, which was furnished like it was waiting for royalty or a
head of state.
“What kind of bed is that?” Ed wanted to
know.
“Four poster. Count ’em.”
And then LeRoy
showed him his own room. There were framed photos from rodeos everywhere, a
rack of deer antlers on the wall, a braided rug on the floor, an Indian blanket
flung over the foot of the bed, and a little roll-top desk with shiny
championship belt buckles arranged in a row along the top. A cracked leather
chair took up one corner with a floor lamp.
“That chair used to be my grandpa’s,” LeRoy said.” I had to explain to Cliff that it goes
wherever I go.”
He took a faded snapshot in a small frame
from where it sat with several other photos on a chest of drawers. “This is
him, on the front porch with his shotgun. Taught me damn near everything I
know.”
He studied it thoughtfully for a moment
before carefully setting it down again.
“This is Ike, my nephew. Remember him?”
He pointed to a picture of a serious young man in a dark gown with a mortar
board on his head and holding a graduation diploma. “My pride
and joy. Went to law school.”
“And look at this,” he said. He pointed
to another one. There were two young men in the picture, leaning against a
corral fence and smiling for the camera.
“I never seen this before,” Ed said,
realizing it was of the two of them. “Who took it?”
“Some girl. One of the barrel racers.”
He held the picture now in his hands.
“I don’t remember it.”
“Little did they know,” LeRoy said, stroking the image with his thumb as he held
it. “You and me was fucking like rabbits whenever we
had the chance.”
Ed laughed. “Must be why we’re both grinnin’ like that.”
LeRoy set the photo back on the bureau. “I always loved that
picture.” Then he turned to Ed, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I sure as hell
am glad you’re here,” he said.
— § —
Ty had given up waiting for the phone to ring. There
was not going to be a call about Rich. He had lost his way somehow, and who
knows how long he was going to stay lost. Ty couldn’t
wait here for him forever. He needed to start thinking about what he was going
to do next and where he was going to go.
It seemed like something he should talk
over with Mike, and as the daylight dwindled in the windows of the doublewide,
he got to looking at the phone numbers penciled onto the wall around the
telephone, and he found one for a “MIKE” that he decided to try.
But when he dialed the number, the phone
rang and rang, and no one picked up. The same thing happened an hour later when
he tried again.
It was dark when a truck pulled up
outside, and when he looked through a panel of rain-streaked window glass
beside the door, he saw that it was Kirk, back from a day’s work on the ranch.
As soon as he got inside, he pulled off his slicker and coat and hung them with
his wet hat from a row of hooks on the wall. Then he tried taking off his
boots, but they were soaked tight to his feet.
“Gimme a hand
with these suckers,” he said, sitting down and getting Ty
to grab a boot between his legs while Kirk pushed against his backside with his
other foot. When it finally came off, they did the same thing with the other
one.
“How’s our patient?” he said, unbuckling
his belt and taking off his jeans, which were wet and streaked with mud from
the knees down to the frayed cuffs.
“Sleeping last I looked.”
“Ain’t he just
like a baby when he’s like that?” Kirk said, standing there now in his wrinkled
shirt and a pair of thermal underwear. “Makes him almost lovable.”
He took off the thermals and threw them with his jeans over the back of a chair; then he walked barefoot and bare-legged to the
kitchen.
“Any of that whiskey left, or did he
drink it all?”
“There’s still some.”
Kirk found the bottle, unscrewed the cap,
and poured himself some in a juice glass.
“We hear from Rich?”
Ty shook his head.
“Guess he decided to be a real shithead.”
“I dunno. He’s
got his troubles.”
They both fell silent. Whatever Kirk
might have been thinking, he wasn’t saying.
“I think I need to be getting home,” Ty said.
“Where’s that?”
“
And Ty found
himself talking about his mom and dad and his three brothers. He told of
growing up, working nights and weekends stocking shelves and bagging groceries
in his dad’s grocery store and learning to play the piano from his mother. And
he realized how much he missed sleeping in his own bed and waking every morning
to the sound of familiar voices in the house.
He had put off going back there because
he didn’t want to face his family’s disappointment when he was asked to leave
the church. But he thought he was beginning to find the courage to do that. His
brothers had always treated him like he was some kind of fool, so that was not
going to change. His mother loved him no matter what, and his father had never
cared much about his wanting to be a minister anyway.
What was different was their knowing now
the secret he’d always hidden from them and himself. His deepest yearning was
for someone to be his closest and dearest friend, and the two of them always
loving each other more than anybody else.
“That’s gonna be the hardest part,” he said. “They’re not going to
understand that.”
“But they got no choice,” Kirk said. “Do they.”
Ty looked at the set of Kirk’s jaw, his steady gaze,
the beginnings of a smile on his face and the purple bruise across his
cheekbone, where Rich had punched him. And he felt the determination that made
Kirk what he was, a man who believed in himself and stood his ground, no matter
what—because there was no other way for a man to be.
“You’re right,” Ty
said. “They have no choice.”
— § —
Marty went to the door when he heard
Mike’s knock, and when he opened it, there the man stood, in his jeans and a
fleece-lined coat, drops of rain water on his shoulders and the bill of his
cap. He stepped inside and waited while Marty got his jacket.
“Hey, Tiger,” he said when Virgil came
from the TV in the bedroom, and they shook hands as he gave Virgil a one-armed
hug.
Virgil, glad to see Mike, had this big
grin and was practically starry-eyed. Marty felt almost guilty that it was him
Mike had come to see instead.
Then they hurried through the misty night
out to Mike’s pickup that he’d parked in the street and climbed into the cab.
“Where to?” Mike said.
And Marty took him to a bar a few blocks
away, where there was a pool table in back, and after getting bottles of beer,
they took them to an empty booth that glowed in the colored lights from a juke
box.
“So what’s this all about?” Marty wanted
to know.
Mike glanced up at a TV that was on over
the bar, as if he might find the words he needed
there. “I’m gonna come right out and say it,” he
said, looking back at Marty. “Your dad wanted me to talk to you.”
“My dad?” Marty felt a surge of something go through him—like
brushing against the wire of an electric fence.
“He’s not exactly happy,” Mike said.
“He’s never been happy.”
“I mean with himself.
He thinks maybe he sorta screwed things up.”
“He told you to tell me that?”
“More or less.”
Marty didn’t know what to make of this.
Mike went on. “He’s thinking maybe he
could have been a different kind of father when you was
growin’ up.”
“Different how?”
“Maybe cut you a little more slack.”
“I don’t get it.”
Mike sighed, like this was the last kind
of conversation he wanted to be having right now.
“Well, you and him don’t get along so
good. And he figures maybe he’s the one to blame for that.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Marty said. “Why couldn’t he tell me that himself?”
“I think you and me both know why.”
“Yeah, because it would
kill him. He’s always been one
stubborn sonofabitch.”
Mike took a drink of his beer and then
set the bottle back on the table. “I won’t argue with that,” he said. “And if
you picked the right words to say it, he’d probably agree with you.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“He told me to tell you that he wants to
stop fighting with you. He wants another chance to be your dad.”
Marty rolled his hand into a fist and
brought it down on the table. “Well, you can tell him he’s a little too late
for that.”
Mike said nothing for a while and just
stared at his beer.
“I have a dad, too,” he finally said. “He
ain’t the best, either. He broke up with my mom, and
when I was your age he run off with another woman. Lives in
He looked up at Marty now.
“And that’s what your dad would say to
you,” Mike said. “If you’d let him.”
Marty felt his stomach begin to tighten
up, and when he started to speak, he was surprised that his voice was shaking.
“What—what does he know about me and
Virgil?” he said.
“I dunno. Maybe nothing. But for now I think he’s willing to let that
go.”
“He’d be singing a different tune if he
knew.”
“Yeah, but it would still sound a lot
like ‘You’re my son and you’re OK’.”
Marty pressed his hands to his face and
rubbed his eyes until he felt he could trust his voice again.
“I’d like to believe that,” he finally
said. “But I don’t.”
Mike took another drink from his beer,
his eyes fixed on something across the room. Then he looked again at Marty and
said, “One man to another, I think you’d be foolish not to give believin’ a try.”
Marty still wasn’t convinced, but he
didn’t want to hear himself say so. Here was Mike trying to get him to do what
he thought was right, and he was behaving like a mule.
“Tell me you’ll think about it,” Mike
said.
Marty sighed and his heart seemed to shift
in his chest, feeling light and then heavy. He had to catch his breath to say
the words. “All right. I’ll think about it.”
Mike gave him a little smile then. “Can I
tell him that?”
Marty considered this for a moment and
then slowly nodded.
“OK, then I’m leavin’ it up to you,” Mike said, starting to sound
relieved. “It’s all in your hands now.”
Marty, at a loss for words, raised his
bottle to his lips and drank the last of it.
“What do you say to another beer,” Mike
said. “I think we could both use one.” And he got up to go over to the bar.
— § —
LeRoy had started a fire in the fireplace, and the two of
them sat there on the couch, talking over old times and drinking shots from a
bottle of Wild Turkey. When they started getting hungry, LeRoy
took a pan of lasagna from the freezer and put it in the oven, following the
instructions Cliff had written and left on the inside of the plastic bag he’d
put it in. And as the house began to fill with the smell of tomato sauce and
spices, they’d got drunk together on bourbon and memories.
For a white man, Ed had always been a
little different from the rest. Like others, he had no idea what it meant to be
a black man always steering a careful course in the white man’s world, and he
didn’t know the first thing about the world LeRoy had
come from. He’d probably never been the only white man in a group of black men,
having to learn how they talked and what they meant by what they said.
But Ed seemed to have not an ounce of
judgment about LeRoy. He saw LeRoy
for what he was, first and last a man, no more and no less. And from the
beginning he’d always offered LeRoy the truest kind
of friendship. He’d do anything for LeRoy, without
question, and expect nothing in return. Being with him tonight reminded LeRoy of all that.
Once when he poured them a round, he had
lifted his glass and said, “To friendship.” And Ed had smiled and done the
same.
When the lasagna was ready to eat, he put
a loaf of garlic bread in the oven to warm, set the kitchen table for them, and
opened a bottle of red wine.
“I never knew you was
a cook,” Ed said, sitting down at the table, watching LeRoy
fill his wine glass. Ed took his napkin and for a moment didn’t seem sure what
to do with it. Then he tucked a corner of it into the open collar of his shirt.
“Cliff’s the cook around here. I just
follow orders.”
“Kinda like
being an old married couple?”
LeRoy served him a plate of the steaming pasta. “I
wouldn’t know much about that,” he said. “Never been
married.” He got the bread from the oven now and set it on the table.
“Looks that way to me,” Ed said, making a
gesture with his hand that took in the rest of the house. “All settled in
together.”
“Settled? I suppose so. Don’t mean I’m
not as glad to see you as I always was.”
This seemed to perplex Ed. He blew on a
forkful of lasagna before putting it in his mouth. Then he drank from the glass
of wine.
“I didn’t tell you,” Ed said. “I got
myself a buddy.”
“Yeah?”
Ed got up from the table and went back to
the guest room, where he’d left his suitcase. After a while, he came back with
a snapshot of a handsome young man standing at a painter’s easel. “This is
him,” he said. “I’m kinda his business manager.”
“Is that all?”
“We’ve been living together. I told him
when I left that I was gonna be true to him.” Ed
tried some more of the lasagna. “I never done that
before.”
“How’s it working out?”
“Good.”
“And he feels the same way about you?”
Ed didn’t answer right away, then seemed to remember something that amused him. “He says
he don’t believe I can do it.”
“What you told him. Was it a promise or
more like a bet?”
Ed began to look unsure. “Little of both,
I guess.”
“I wanna tell
you something,” LeRoy said, putting down his fork.
“And I’m not gonna beat around the bush. The two of
us have been friends for a long time—real close friends. And I’ve been planning
to be that way with you again tonight, just like we used to.”
Now Ed looked confused. He was searching LeRoy’s face for the answer to a question he couldn’t bring
himself to ask.
“You’re wonderin’
about Cliff?” LeRoy said. “Me and
him aren’t true to each other like that. Not like you and me have been.”
Ed had a mouthful of food and was just
looking at him from across the table.
“I’ll tell you something else,” LeRoy went on. “Cliff still has a couple women friends he
sees now and then. To prove what, I don’t know.”
He waited for all that to sink in for Ed.
“So you see things here ain’t all like they look. When I say you’ve been a true
friend to me, you know now what I mean.”
“Aw, hell,” Ed said. He put both elbows
on the table and stared at his plate. “Why didn’t I see this coming?”
LeRoy waited a while to say something more, and
afterwards, he wasn’t sure what it was. Mostly, he was aware of the hollow
feeling that grew in him, a kind of angry sadness, then
a wave of disappointment he resisted for a while until he was able to shake
free of it.
After all, he had no reason to expect Ed
to stay the same man he’d always been. A man has the right to be who and what he chooses. Friends are friends, but a man can
pick one friend to be true to more than all the rest.
And he thought again of the photo Ed
showed him—a white man. In spite of all Ed had seemed, maybe that made a
difference after all. He had finally meant more to LeRoy
than LeRoy had to him.
Finally he told himself he was a grown
man and had dealt with worse than this before. It was no different from a bad
ride at the rodeo. Win some, lose some. But it was hard forgetting that this
was losing a friend. The best friend he’d ever had.
As they talked, he kept the hurt to
himself, as he’d done so many times before in his life. He’d said what he had
to say, and it was just making Ed question a commitment he’d made. Which was not the right thing to do at all. You don’t make a
man go back on his word to someone else.
After a while, they changed the subject,
and when they’d finished with the meal, they sat for a while longer watching
the fire die in the fireplace, with a last nightcap or two, before turning in.
Ed, a little unsteady on his feet, gave LeRoy a big
hug and then went off to bed in the guest room.
LeRoy cleaned up the kitchen and put away what was left of
the bourbon. The house was silent, the rain all but stopped outside. An
ambulance siren wailed in the distance as he turned out the lights and went to
his room.
He undressed and got into his bed, lying
there in the darkness for a long time, tired but unable to sleep.
After a while, he heard the guest room
door quietly open. A minute or two went by, and there was a soft tapping on his
own door before it swung open and Ed stepped inside.
“Are you awake?” Ed whispered.
LeRoy lay still for a moment without answering, thinking
maybe the best thing was to pretend he was asleep. Then he heard himself saying
quietly, “Yes.”
Ed came over to him, his pale skin just
visible in the dark. He was bending now and pulling off his jockey shorts. Then
he climbed into bed with LeRoy, the sheets rustling
around him as he slipped under them.
“Everything you said is right,” he said
in a voice that almost trembled with emotion. “We’ve always been the best and
truest friends. I got no business making a promise to anyone else.”
Then he pressed himself against LeRoy with a sigh and held him tight in his arms.
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
© 2008 Rock Lane Cooper
rocklanecooper@yahoo.com