Homespun (11 page)

“I saw you talking to Aunt Lucy,” Kerry said.

Homespun |
Layla M. Wier

87

“I like her,” Owen said.

Kerry smiled. “Lucy is solid. She’s good people, as they used to say. I regret losing touch with her.”

“I wouldn’t mind having her over to the farm sometime.”

Kerry lost his smile. “Owen….”

“I realized something today,” Owen said, and now Kerry looked even more nervous. “I’m in the closet, aren’t I?”

Kerry stared at him and then he laughed, a warm,

genuine laugh, the first Owen had heard from him in a long time. “Ah, honey, I wasn’t going to
say
anything….”

“I never thought about it that way,” Owen said,

genuinely distressed. He was an honest guy, a straight shooter; or at least, all this time, he’d always believed that about himself. Now it felt as if the solid ground under his feet had turned to quicksand. “I never
hid
it—can you believe me? I never hid
you
. I never meant to, anyway. I never even thought about it. I was only trying to give you space.”

“I know.” Kerry heaved a sigh. “I mean, I really did figure that out, over the years.”

“I always thought I was doing you a favor. Not flaunting it. Not making you feel weighed down by my expectations.”

But, he thought, how much of it wasn’t concern for Kerry at all, but worry about what the neighbors would think? He might claim it was just his general dislike of public displays of affection, his restrictive Lutheran upbringing. But it was also the part of him that hated to make a fuss and knew, deep down, that bringing Kerry around to meet his neighbors and family as his boyfriend—saying “I think I’m bisexual, maybe gay” to the people he’d grown up around—would be nothing
but
fuss. Hiding, versus being discreet… it was a fine line, sometimes.

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Layla M. Wier

88

But Kerry had never hidden. Who he was,
what
he was—he wore it on his skin. No wonder he was so volatile, so easily hurt. He put everything he was out there, with no armor but his art to shield him from a world that frequently lashed out.

“I expect most of that lot in there are hiding something,”

Kerry said. “Or some
one
. You know how many ‘straight’ men frequent bathhouses? Let me tell you, the number isn’t anywhere close to zero. But even beyond that… how many of those nice churchgoing women like to tie up their husbands and flog them? How many of those nice churchgoing men have a porn collection to rival a big-city bookstore? There are a lot of ways to be queer. In a crowd like that, everyone writhes in shame about their own kinks and fantasies, and judges everyone else’s twice as hard.”

He looked cold, Owen thought. Kerry hardly had any flesh on him to protect him from the chill in the air, and he was huddled in his black sweater. Owen thought about offering his own jacket, then wondered if it might be taken the wrong way and instead put his arm out, very cautiously, and wrapped it around Kerry’s shoulders.

Kerry stiffened, then, ever so slowly, leaned into the touch.

It did feel exposed. On the farm, Owen wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Here, where anyone could see them, and think….

And think what?
Owen thought, with a sudden fierce anger.
They should think this man is better than the best of
them. And I love him and I want the whole world to know
that.

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Layla M. Wier

89

“Hey,” he said, and Kerry looked up at him. Sharp face.

Sharp tongue. Soft heart. Owen grinned at him. “Kiss me,”

he said, and waited until Kerry’s lips closed over his own—

tentative at first, then hard, hungry, wanting.

The hiss of hydraulic brakes made them both jump.

They both waved the bus off until the driver got the message and pulled away from the curb. “Sorry, wrong number,”

Kerry said, and for some reason they both found it funny enough to collapse in helpless giggling. Eventually the laughter died away and left them leaning into each other, temple to temple.

“If it would make a difference to you,” Owen said, “I’d walk right back in there and announce to the whole gathered bunch of them that you’re my fiancé. Except… that’s still off the table, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather just get another cheap motel room, tear all your clothes off, and enjoy some more nice, life-affirming sex,” Kerry said, and Owen grinned, though the tacit “no”

still twisted in his heart. Sobering, Kerry went on, “I don’t really give a damn what they think. They all know you’re with me anyway—
with
me, I mean—and nice as it would be to rub their noses in it, I’m sure they’d all remember it as the day that Kerry ruined his father’s funeral for attention.”

“Not your Aunt Lucy.”

“No. Aunt Lucy would think it was the best thing she’d ever seen. I’m sure Laura would too.”

“Oh hey, speak of the devil.” Owen gestured down the street. Laura had appeared on the sidewalk, and they both waved to her, getting her attention.

“It’s chilly out here,” Laura said when she was close enough to speak without shouting. “Are you catching a bus?”

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Layla M. Wier

90

“We’re just borrowing the bench.” Owen shuffled them both over to make room for her; she opted to sit by Kerry, leaning her shoulder against his and giving him a playful smile.

“I don’t know, Uncle Kerry; I’m not sure if I’ve forgiven you and Daddy for abandoning me to the in-laws yet. Which is not to say that I don’t like your relatives, Uncle Kerry.” She backpedaled hastily.

“
I
don’t like them, so you’re more than welcome not to.”

“Your Aunt Lucy is pretty cool, though. I swapped

numbers with her.”

Kerry laughed, and Owen said, “We were just talking about her. I thought you two might get along.”

“You can’t pick your family, but you can pick which ones you spend time with.” Laura yawned, smothering it with a hand.

Owen reached across Kerry’s lap to squeeze her small hand. “Long day for you, honey.”

“Gonna be even longer if we head home tonight.” She rested her head on Kerry’s shoulder. “Er,
are
we heading back tonight? I don’t want to drag you off, Uncle Kerry….”

“There’s nothing else that I need to do here,” Kerry said quietly.

Laura yawned again. “I think people are starting to drift off anyway. No one’s going to notice if we disappear. We’ve all just eaten, so we shouldn’t have to stop for a while. We can caravan.”

Owen could feel, as always, the farm tugging at his heartstrings, drawing him back. Still…. “No one’s rushing you,” he told Kerry. “We can stay here as long as you need to stay.”

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Layla M. Wier

91

Kerry ran a hand through his slicked-down hair,

perking it back up—perhaps by accident, perhaps by design.

“No, I’d honestly like to just get in the car and drive. We can be home by midnight if we hit the road now.”

It wasn’t until they’d walked back to the car, hand in hand in hand, that Owen realized Kerry had said “home.”

IN THE crystalline stillness of a hard autumn frost, with a silver crescent moon riding the sky, Kerry Ruehling came back to Blue Thistle Farm… again.

Lampblack and cobalt and titanium white, he thought as he stepped out of the car, looking up at the subtle shading around the moon’s slender shell. His fingers itched to paint it. Perhaps that was exactly what the unfinished mural on the milking barn needed—he could see it in his mind’s eye, the Manhattan cityscape he’d begun to paint years ago merging with an upstate autumnscape as seen by night. Daylight on the Manhattan side, moonlight on the farms and fields as the mural wrapped around the barn….

“Gonna be a cold one,” Owen commented, hooking his thumbs in his belt and looking up at the moon, too.

The farm truck rattled noisily into the driveway behind them. The engine died with a few final coughs. “I don’t know how many highway trips the poor baby has left in her,”

Laura said, hopping down.

“She’s in decent shape,” Owen said. “I just replaced most of her belts and hoses this spring and gave her a good lube job.”

Kerry snorted, and Laura covered her mouth with her hand.

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Layla M. Wier

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“What?” Owen asked, staring blankly back and forth between the two of them.

Laura patted his arm. “I’ll go see if the Walker girls left us anything to eat.”

She ran into the house. Kerry turned to follow, then realized Owen wasn’t with him, and turned back.

“I’m gonna check on the stock before turning in,” Owen said gruffly.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No need.”

“I want to,” Kerry said.

They held hands as Kerry tagged along on Owen’s

nightly rounds. The fingernail of moon cast little light, but even in the inky shadows where the harsh white glare of the yard lights didn’t reach, Owen never stumbled. His feet knew the way.

Owen was part of this place, body and soul. And the thing Kerry couldn’t explain to him was that marrying Owen wasn’t just marrying Owen. It was marrying the farm, and Laura, and all of it. Tying himself to a small upstate town.

Putting down roots in a place he didn’t particularly want to be, among people like the ones he’d grown up with—people who wouldn’t like him, or accept him.

Still, on a night like this….

The two of them paused to look out across the silver-tipped pasture. They had their backs to the floodlights, their shadows stretching long and impenetrable toward the dark and distant trees. Kerry’s right hand was warm in Owen’s; his left dipped into his pocket to touch the little strand of homemade yarn curled there. He’d given the hank of wool Homespun |
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back to Owen, but kept the little twist they had made. He thought he might keep it always.

“Peaceful out here,” Owen said.

Kerry had been thinking something more along the lines that it was too damn cold and too damn quiet. He grinned ruefully, and then felt his smile fall away.

“Owen… love… I couldn’t live all day, every day in Mayberry. I’d go insane. I need the city lights; I need people to talk to about my work…. I need to go out to dinner in a town that has more than two restaurants.”

Owen’s broad, open face took on a frozen cast, and his thumb stopped its slow stroking of the back of Kerry’s hand.

Kerry spoke faster, trying to be honest, pouring his heart out even as he could sense Owen pulling back.

“So please tell me you’re not going to ask me to. Please tell me that it’s
okay
to have my own life, that it’s
okay
to go for a while and come back, whether we’re married or not.”

Owen wet his lips and said nothing. Kerry couldn’t read his expression by the moon’s wan light.

“You have the biggest piece of my heart, Owen, you always will. You and Laura. But the Big Apple, that sleazy sweetheart, has a piece too.”

A hint of a smile touched Owen’s wide, generous mouth.

Just a hint. But Kerry’s heart warmed a little, seeing that.

“The biggest piece, huh?”

“The biggest by far,” Kerry said. “I wouldn’t ask you to give up the farm and move down to the city. It’d kill you and we both know it. But—”

“You need the city like I need the farm.”

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Layla M. Wier

94

They both moved forward at once, almost colliding nose-to-forehead before ending up in each other’s arms.

“I said ‘Marry me’, and you heard ‘Give up everything’,”

Owen said into Kerry’s neck. “It’s not like that. It never would be like that. I want every part of you, the whole package, the parts that don’t fit and the parts that do. And I don’t want to sand down a single rough edge.”

Kerry laughed; it came out shaky. “Oh, yeah you do, baby; don’t lie.”

Owen took a moment to respond. Though it was just the two of them in the night, there was something else as well: the sharp edge of a truth no thicker than the skin and clothing between them.

“I only want
you
,” Owen said at last. “The rest—I don’t give a damn about the rest. I wouldn’t ask you to be anything other than what you are. Never.”

He did every day, in a thousand small ways, but Kerry let that go. There were ways and more ways to learn how to bend. And when Kerry kissed him and whispered, “I know,”

into Owen’s mouth, what he meant wasn’t
I know you won’t
change me
. He meant, rather,
I know you don’t mean to
. And it was, in its way, all right.

When they separated, a sudden whimsy hit Kerry. He took the little twist of yarn from his pocket and snapped it in half. He had to bite it; the wool was unexpectedly strong.

Owen watched—amused, fond, and bemused all at once—as Kerry tied half the bit of thread around Owen’s sturdy left ring finger. He fumbled with his own half, finding it difficult to do one-handed. Owen helped him tie it.

“We used to do this in middle school,” Owen said,

laughing. “Actually, I think it was dandelion stems—”

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Layla M. Wier

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He broke off abruptly.

“You and Nancy?” Kerry asked, and Owen nodded.

“You loved her. You still do.” It hurt less than he’d expected to say it aloud, especially when he added his own small truth: “I have a history too, sweetheart.”

They kissed, sweet and slow. “So what does this mean?”

Owen asked, rubbing his thumb over the yarn on his finger, with a low note of hope rising in his voice.

“What did it mean in middle school?” When Owen

hesitated, Kerry prompted him, “What did it mean for you and Nancy?”

“That we weren’t going to see other people,” Owen said.

“That we wanted to spend our lives together. But….”

“But you were twelve. You weren’t ready to get engaged yet.”

From the look on Owen’s face, Kerry knew he got it, now. Finally.

“I waited for her,” Owen said. “Till she was ready—till
we
were ready. If it’s what you want, I’ll always wait for you.”