The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (3 page)

Chapter 3
Loose Ends

“Did you feed all your critters?” Crawford asked as the truck heaved its way down the road. It was an old Chevy half-ton with a primer-spot paint job and an engine that could haul a herd of cattle, if the trailer hitch didn’t fall off first. It purred like a kitten, but it also rattled your brain around in your skull because the suspension sucked wind. Crawford was going to have to do something about that.

“Ye-eah.” Ben’s voice rose and fell as they hit a pothole, and he clenched the help-me-Jesus bar above the window. “Thanks for the instructions, by the way—I take it you were the one who fed them all after Gertie passed?”

Crawford grunted. Not that Gertie’s relatives had noticed.

“Well,” Ben said, taking the grunt for what it was, “that was really nice of you. That sheep is scary—she thinks she’s the kitten, but she’s the size of a horse!”

Crawford grunted again, because that was about the size of it. “We’ll shear her in the spring, if you want. We did for Gertie, gave her cash for the fleece.”

“Oh, sure—was that why Gertie kept her?”

Craw shook his head. “She was supposed to be lamb chops. Gertie couldn’t do it.” Poor old gal had been broken up about it, too—she had a fixed income, and she really couldn’t afford one more critter after the dogs. The sheep had been a stray off a nearby ranch, and it had seemed like a windfall until the slaughter-man had arrived. Craw had stepped in, and Gertie had loved the damned animal almost as much as her dog ever since.

Ben was looking at him like he knew there was more to it than that. “She nibbles,” was what Ben said. He held up a sleeve that was a little sodden and had bits of grass on it. “Do the other things, the llamas—”

“Alpacas.”

“Yeah, do they nibble like sheep?”

Craw frowned. “No. The girls will spit if they don’t want to be mated, but then, wouldn’t blame them.”

Ben blinked and then opened his eyes
really
wide. “I don’t… God. Don’t tell me what that looks like.”

Craw thought about it, his eyes moving restlessly on the road as he tried to figure out if there was any other way for the long-necked, long-legged critters to go. “It looks like two alpacas fucking, mostly,” he said apologetically. “Of course, sometimes, the boy can’t get his boy parts past the girl’s furry ass, and he needs a little help, so then it looks like two alpacas fucking while their handler’s giving the one on top a handjob.”

He looked sideways as Ben’s giggles took over the car. “Well, I didn’t say it was a picnic for the
handlers
.”

And that was it. Ben, the pretty man he’d been trying to impress, was leaning back in the seat of his truck, poinging like popcorn in an old metal pan and laughing so hard there were tears tracking down the beginning creases at the corners of his eyes.

Apparently the alpacas weren’t the only ones who had made a fucking impression.

Given that, Craw was surprised when Ben offered to buy him coffee. Crawford took him up on it, and Ben asked him if he liked anything special. Trying not to blush like a weenie, Craw asked for one of the lattes with pumpkin spice, and Ben’s grin was comforting and infectious.

“I love the dessert-tasting ones. I’ll get one, too, extra whipped cream!”

Ben ran into the coffee shop while Crawford sat in the truck and watched him. He smiled at the people in line, chatted with the girl at the counter, and sallied some sort of farewell as he backed out of the glass doors, coffee in hand. Oh Jebus—there was the counter girl, running up to him with a pastry bag and smiling prettily into his face. Craw knew her, too—her mom had come into his shop for her yarn since he’d started the mill—and she waved at him as he sat in the truck. Craw waved back, dumbstruck, and stared at Ben as he fumbled the door open and clambered in, two cups of coffee, pastry bag, and all.

“What?” Ben said, handing him a large-sized something that smelled sweet, syrupy, and like dessert.

Craw backed the truck out of the parking lot and then took the coffee, shaking his head. “People
like
you,” he said, and then could have kicked himself when he sounded wistful.

Ben didn’t seem to hear it, though. He grinned, sipped his coffee appreciatively, and sighed in bliss. “I’d talk to the devil if he was the only one in the room,” Ben agreed.

“Why’s that?”

Ben smiled, shrugged, took another sip.

Crawford took one while he was waiting for an answer and almost closed his eyes too. Something about Ben’s infectious smile seemed to make the coffee better. Maybe the girl had made it better
for
Ben, Crawford thought, and then took another sip. Nope—couldn’t figure it out.

“My mom and I moved around a lot when I was little,” Ben said into Craw’s coffee meditation.

He startled and spilled a little on his lips. Well shit, here was the hardware store—this conversation was about to be history, right when it was about to get good! But Ben didn’t stop talking, and Craw was grateful.

“I was left with different babysitters while she was trying to find jobs. I guess I just got good at making friends and fitting in.”

Craw sighed. “Me too,” he muttered, then grimaced. “The single mother part. That other shit I just couldn’t do at all.”

Ben made a hissing sound, and Craw looked at him in concern. “You okay?”

Ben’s eyes were suspiciously bright and shiny when he looked back. “Peachy,” he answered, something tight about his face letting Craw know that he was trying to restrain himself. The boy had a face a baby could read, but he apparently decided not to share with the playpen. “Should we go in?”

Craw didn’t bother to answer but got out of the truck instead, and he heard the answering slam as Ben closed his door too. As they were walking, Ben jerked his head around to look at the truck and then shook it like he was laughing at something.

“What?”

“I’m just not used to not hearing an alarm being set, that’s all.” Ben made the time-honored clicking-an-electronic-device motion with his thumb and finger and then made a “poit-poit!” kind of whistle.

Craw cracked a smile. “You saw the inside of it. Would
you
steal it?”

It was true—the half-ton was old enough to have bench seats, and the upholstery was so bad it was covered by a sheet so the springs and worn padding didn’t poke through or stick to your clothes. Behind the seat was about everything a man needed—a car-repair tool set, a fence-repair tool set, around 250 feet of rope, first aid kit, solar blanket, blah, blah, blah, blah—but most people didn’t look past the crusty interior design to see that other shit, and Craw was glad. He didn’t have to guard the damned thing with electronics that made “poit-poit” sounds.

Ben pulled up one side of his mouth and shook his head. “Guess not.”

Craw had scoped out Gertie’s little house already. He took the list of things Ben would need if he was going to survive the winter with any comfort whatsoever out of his pocket and gave it to a disbelieving Ben.

“Insulation in the ceiling? Are you sure?” Ben looked at the list dubiously. “Wouldn’t she have had that?”

“Not an inch of it,” Craw growled. “It was cold enough to freeze off an alpaca’s balls—and they’re covered in alpaca’s
fur
, and that’s about the warmest shit you can find on the planet. I have no idea how she lived so long in there.”

Ben’s eyes got big, and he nodded obediently, putting in the order with the guy behind the counter in the insulation department. The guy was somewhere near Crawford’s age—Craw had seen him in one of the town’s three bars, where Craw hung out on the odd evening he couldn’t stand his own company anymore. (He still had to stand it—there wasn’t a gay bar between Granby and Boulder, but at least in a regular bar, he could hear male voices arguing over game scores.) He had a forehead that sloped to his nose and a nose that sloped to his chin, he helped to coach the high school baseball team, and he seemed to think he was God’s gift to the world of athletics and home repair.

“So I hear you’re staying in Gertie’s place?” he asked, writing the specs for the insulation as well as the day Ben had set aside to come get it. “And that you’re queer like Craw here.” The clerk looked up at the two of them and smirked. “Lucky you two, a chance to get you some right down the street.”

Craw
wanted
to grab the guy by the shirtfront and slam his head down on the counter, but he restrained himself. “Just ’cause you put a mating pair in a pen doesn’t mean one of ’em’s gonna go ass-up,” he snapped. “We’re just guys getting some fucking insulation, you mind?”

The guy turned red and mumbled something apologetic, and Ben grimaced at Crawford and rolled his eyes like a mother reprimanding a teenage daughter.

“Don’t mind Crawford,” he said, smiling that charming smile at the guy. “He just likes to take the happy out of gay, that’s all.”

The clerk brightened, and they eventually got out of
that
department and started moving down to the lumberyard before they looked for emergency supplies.

“Jesus, Crawford.” Ben said with a smirk as they walked away. “Way to embarrass the guy—he was just trying to be friendly.”

“He was being an asshole,” Crawford muttered.

“Well, it was nice of you to compare us to mating animals,” Ben said, and Crawford’s eyes went big, because that hadn’t been his intention at all. “Because, you know, that doesn’t set back the GLBT public image fifty years at
all.
”

Well, shit. That hadn’t been his intention. How had that come across all wrong? “I was just saying….” Crawford hunched his shoulders and shoved his hands in the pockets of his fleece-lined denim jacket and tried to come up with words. “I just meant that I can get ass if I need it. If I come poking at ya, it’s not because we’re in the same pen.”

Ben stopped, and Crawford didn’t notice until he’d gone forward about half an aisle. He turned around and realized that Ben had the same look of shocked horror on his face that Ariadne had shown the night before. Oh crap, he’d done it again. Still. “What?”

Ben stopped and laughed, like there was no other way for him to respond. “Nothing, Crawford. I just don’t know how anybody could get a mixed signal with you, one way or another.”

That cheered Crawford up, actually. Good. Because Ben was still pretty, and Crawford was starting to think about giving him a nudge to see if he’d maybe not spit if they were put in the same pen. “Call me Rance,” he said cheerfully, and the expression on Ben’s face was as though something had dawned on him that maybe he’d not thought about before.

“Okay… uhm… Rance.”

“It was my grandfather’s name,” Crawford told him. “C’mon, firewood next.”

They got firewood, and then they got window insulation, because if there was a blizzard, then the double paning wouldn’t be enough. Ben had also made a list of the things he’d need to improve the outlet situation in the little house. The electric lines and Internet access to the area had been recently updated. Ben just needed the equipment to make sure his computers could work in the house itself.

“You can install all that?” Crawford asked, impressed. He was handy with a hammer and could work magic on the equipment in the mill, but he’d had to hire someone to run out the industrial-level generator and fuse box that he needed to run the mill itself.

“Yeah,” Ben said, his customary smile in place. “You sort of have to know how to do that shit. I mean, maybe not
have
to. I know lots of software engineers in the computer business who haven’t even cracked open the top of their own hard drive towers, but I like looking at the way things are put together, knowing the thing behind the thing, you know?”

Crawford raised his eyebrows. “Like the critter behind the fleece behind the yarn behind the hat?”

Ben’s smile widened, and his hand went up to the sea-foam green understated masterpiece on the top of his head. “Like exactly,” he said with a nod. “The Discovery Channel—one of my favorite places to be.”

Craw thought about it. “Yeah—I’m not too crazy about Shark Week, though.”

Ben shuddered. “Me neither. It’s why I stayed away from Southern Cali.” They both nodded in complete agreement and then moved on to their next department.

After an hour they had spent a lot of money, but Ben seemed to think that was par for the course, so Crawford didn’t worry about it for him. They had also held a conversation that had not gone awkward, and Ben had listened to every bit of Craw’s advice about living through the cold.

Ben had also offered some of his own resources in terms of movies, Internet, and basic entertainment, because on those days when getting out to tend to the livestock was as far as you or anyone else was going to get because of the snow, boredom got to be a real factor in Granby.

As they were loading supplies into the back of the truck, Crawford started to wonder about maybe giving the boy more than a hat and maybe offering to give him a little poke in the pen, and then Ben smiled that guileless child’s smile and Crawford thought maybe not. Maybe all that sweetness was too gentle for the likes of Rance Crawford, and he’d be better off with knitwear.

Maybe.

But still, after dropping Ben off and tending to the alpacas and sheep, he walked into the mill to see if the twins needed help setting up the spinners. It was an intricate job, and they always welcomed the help, but they weren’t just welcoming Craw for the help.

They wanted to know about his date.

“Wasn’t a date,” he snapped, and Aiden grinned, the expression pleasing in his all-American-boy face. Aiden probably should have gone away to school, but he was that rare fish, the kid who grew up in a small town and loved it and had no dreams of escaping, ever. (Sort of like Craw had been, after school.) Aiden loved working in the mill and really loved the nitty-gritty end of fiber production and working for a small company. He got to create his own colorways and help plan some of the new fibers they would spin. For a kid whose best classes had been art and auto shop, working for Craw was like a dream job, and Craw paid him the best he could.

Jeremy was a few years older, an ex-con who had served two years for check fraud. He still had the pretty, slicked-back looks of a good con man, but Craw had given him a job because Aiden had needed help and Jeremy had been panhandling in Boulder. After buying the guy lunch and enjoying the hell out of Jeremy’s schtick (but only believing about a quarter of what he said), Craw had asked him if he’d ever done an honest day’s work in his life.