Shy (23 page)

Gently, I said, “That’s not what the doctor thinks, Frank. And if it’s in his lymph glands—”

Frank laid his head on my chest. “I know, Tom. I know. I was just hoping, I guess. All the chemo and stuff would probably just make him sicker. Maybe Pop is right.”

“I’m sure he is,” I said. “I don’t think I would do it either.”

Frank nodded. “I know. Neither would I. Poor Pop.”

Poor Pop indeed. We stumbled into bed that night, exhausted as usual, but heartsore on top of it. I held Frank long into the night. It was our first night together when we did not think of sex. When I finally fell asleep with Frank still in my arms, it was long past midnight. Frank was awake until morning. Not once did he leave my embrace.

The next day, for some obscure reason, and God knows he should have known better, Frank took it into his head to teach me how to milk. Until now, he had insisted he do it alone. Maybe he was bored with the job. Or maybe he thought it was something I might truly need to know. Or maybe after that long night of worrying about his dad, Frank just decided he needed a good hearty laugh. Who knows? Suffice it to say, I tackled the task with my usual ineptitude, which must have pleased him. I, in fact, used milking class as a backdrop for grilling Frank about Jeff Moody. In my mind, that subject still hung over our heads like a dangling saber.

Instead of being honest and straightforward and simply asking my questions outright, I thought I might reap better rewards by being devious and sneaking in the back door concerning Frank and his past relationship with Moody. I should have known better.

“Sure was nice of that Moody fellow to help your dad out that day we arrived, coming over here at dawn and everything to milk the cows for Joe.”

“Sure was,” Frank said with a chuckle. He knew what I was doing. Frank didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, as Joe was fond of saying. Whatever the hell that meant.

I repositioned my ass on the milking stool. I had repositioned it six times already, and still it didn’t feel right. Frank was next to me on another stool milking Betty Ann, a nice brindle cow with big soulful eyes. Frank’s bucket was half full already. My bucket was clean as a whistle. Not a drop of milk in it. That’s because I had Mary Lou. I didn’t like Mary Lou. For one thing, she had horns. Betty Ann just had ears. I didn’t like Mary Lou’s horns, and I didn’t trust her with them. She had a habit of flinging them around the barn like a drunken pirate with two swords. There was poop on the end of her tail too, so I was watching that tail pretty closely, don’t think I wasn’t. Didn’t want to get slapped in the face with that thing.

As far as the milking went, I was still trying to get the fingering right. It was funny. I could milk a dick until the cows came home, so to speak, but milking an udder was a totally different procedure, and I couldn’t get the knack of it. “Her nipples don’t want to squirt,” I griped. “She’s holding back. Maybe something’s plugged up.”

Frank giggled. He had his cheek resting against Betty Ann’s flank, and I could hear the milk squirting into his bucket. Squoosh. Squoosh. Squoosh. Squoosh. “Try it again,” Frank said. “Do it like I showed you.”

I tried again, but nothing was squooshing. “Yeah, that Jeff Moody is a really nice guy,” I said, once again clumsily pawing away at Mary Lou’s undercarriage. “Good looking too. Don’t you think so, Frank?”

“Naw,” Frank said. “He’s got a little bitty dick.”

“Really?” I chirped happily, and Frank laughed like a hyena. He was lying. At least I hoped he was lying.

Apparently Mary Lou didn’t like the sound of Frank’s laughter. Or maybe it was the way I was pulling at her tits. Her hoof came down on my foot like a sledgehammer. While my stool went rolling across the barn and I was screaming and cussing and trying to drag my foot out from under her hoof and the six hundred pounds on
top
of her hoof, I forgot to watch Mary Lou’s tail, and that’s when she nailed me with it. Right in the mouth.

Mary Lou could be a real bitch when she wanted to be.

Still, as much as I hated to admit it, I was actually becoming acclimated to poop. When you are around it as much as I was, you sort of have to. It hardly bothered me anymore. So I just spat the cow poop out of my mouth, finally managed to extricate my mangled foot, and kept on talking. “A little bitty dick, huh? Well that must have been disappointing. Especially because you seem like a guy who appreciates the more ample ones. You know, the
bigger
ones. Like say,
mine
, for example.”

Frank was still filling his bucket. (Squoosh. Squoosh. Squoosh.) And I still wasn’t. (Crickets.) It was disheartening. Plus now the toes on my right foot were numb. And I thought I may have lost a toenail on the big one, thanks to Mary Lou. The cow.

“You do have a nice pecker, Tom. I’ve never denied it,” Frank said. “So tell me, do
you
think Jeff is cute?”

“Naw,” I said. “Too blond. Too muscle-bound. And his jeans are too tight.”

This time Frank really laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Plus, he isn’t you.”

I could hear the smile in Frank’s voice even though a cow was blocking my view. “Now there’s an answer I like,” he said.

He set his milk bucket out of reach of Betty Ann’s hind legs and came and stood behind me where I was once again sitting on my little stool, trying to part Mary Lou from her milk. “Don’t worry about Jeff, Tom. I never loved him and as far as I know, he never loved me. We were just friends who used each other a few times to satisfy some urges that we couldn’t satisfy anywhere else. Okay? It’s you I love, not Jeff Moody. Remember that.”

Before I could answer, Frank leaned over my shoulder and covered my hands with his as I manipulated Mary Lou’s nipples, and suddenly they worked. Her nipples, I mean. Milk was shooting into the bucket like nobody’s business. Squoosh. Squoosh. Squoosh. Squoosh. Not that I cared. I was too busy enjoying the feel of Frank’s crotch pressing against the back of my head. The only thing I could think of that might feel better than Frank’s crotch pressing against the back of my head was Frank’s crotch pressing against the
front
of my head.

And now that I wasn’t worried about Jeff Moody any longer, I thought I might just spin around and put that crotch exactly where I wanted it, when an eerily familiar voice gave a sarcastic “tut tut” from the vicinity of the barn door.

“Well, isn’t this cozy.”

Frank and I both turned to see who it was, and trust me, it didn’t exactly make our day to see Stanley standing there, leaning on the doorjamb. Yep. Stanley. In the flesh. Remember him?

He looked like he had just stepped out of Abercrombie and Fitch. Khaki trousers, brown muscle tee, black canvas deck shoes with bright orange shoelaces. The bastard looked great, just like he always did. Handsome, buff, tanned. But that was just the outside. Inside, he was most assuredly still a dick. I wouldn’t have to book an ultrasound to figure that out. It was a given.

Frank was about as thrilled to see Stanley as I was. “What the hell are
you
doing here?” he asked, straightening up, leaving his hand resting possessively on my shoulder. “Come to take another stab at breaking Pop’s heart?”

Stanley looked around the barn, as if the memories he had of the place were just about as depressing as actually seeing it again. “Thought you might need a little help with the family crisis. Can’t leave it all up to my little brother now, can I?”

“Admirable,” Frank said. His fingers tightened on my shoulders. “You gonna say hi to Tom or are you just going to ignore him?”

Stanley smiled, never taking his eyes off Frank’s face. “I thought I’d ignore him,” he said, and turned and walked toward the house.

We watched him go.

“Still a sweetheart,” I said.

“I don’t like this,” Frank said, gathering up his milk bucket and kicking the stool out of the way so Betty Ann wouldn’t break a leg on it. “Pop has enough to contend with. This isn’t going to make his last few weeks any easier. You finish the milking, Tom. I want to be there when those two confront each other for the first time. I’ll be back.”

I looked down the row of cows, each one patiently chewing a mouthful of hay and waiting her turn to be milked. Jeez. If I couldn’t get milk out of Mary Lou, how was I supposed to get milk out of the rest of them? Now I remembered why I hated Stanley so much. Every time he did
anything
, he tossed a monkey wrench into the works for everybody else. And he got a kick out of tossing in those monkey wrenches too. That was the most annoying part.

I scooted my own bucket and stool out of the way. “Sorry, girls, you’ll just have to hang loose for a while. Don’t be gossiping while I’m gone and try not to fret. I shan’t be long.” Yes, I was talking to cows now. Life on a farm does that to you eventually. And cows are actually very sweet. Nicer than chickens, anyway. You just have to remember to stay out from under their feet. And away from their horns. And poopy tails.

Brushing myself off, I followed along behind Frank and Stanley. Frank and I punched Stanley’s lights out once. It was one of my fondest memories. Frank’s too, I think. With any luck, the day could take a turn for the better, and we might get a chance to do it again.

A
S
HE
almost always was these days, Joe was lying in his big four-poster bed when I walked into the room. He had three or four pillows stuffed under his head and an open book lying across his chest. It was a book about animal husbandry. There were a cow and a sheep and a horse on the cover. Frank was standing by the window nervously fiddling with the hem of the curtain. Stanley was at the foot of the bed looking down at his father. Pedro was curled up in the crook of Joe’s arm and growling at Stanley like a miniature Hound of the Baskervilles. Come to think of it, Joe and Frank were pretty much growling at Stanley too. They all ignored me like I was just another daisy in the wallpaper.

There were tears in Joe’s eyes, but I didn’t think they were
emotional
tears. I think he had just survived another fit of coughing in the moments before I walked through the door.

Stanley whirled on Frank. “Why the hell isn’t he in a hospital?”

I could tell by his stance that Frank was trying to stay calm. Probably for the sake of his dad. “He doesn’t want to go to a hospital. He wants to stay here.”

“Does the doctor come all the way out here? I thought house calls were a thing of the past.”

“They are,” Frank said. “There hasn’t been a doctor on the place.”

“What about hospice?” Stanley asked, and that word “hospice” hung in the air like a bad smell. Frank and I made it a point never to utter the word “hospice” within earshot of Joe. To Joe, hospice meant not only death. It meant far worse things. It meant strangers in the house and feeding tubes and loss of privacy. Everything, in fact, that Joe had told us he did not want.

Frank’s eye narrowed and his fists clenched. “Shut up, Stanley. Just shut up. If you have to talk about this, we’ll do it somewhere else. Not here.” He flicked his eyes at his dad, just long enough to make Stanley understand. Unfortunately, Joe understood that flickering glance too.

“I’ll not have you boys discussing my fate behind my back. In fact, I’d just as soon you didn’t discuss it
at all
, seeing as how it’s not really up to either one of you to be making any decisions here. I’ll make the decisions. It’s my life, and I’ll damn well see it end any way I see fit. It’s also my house, and I’ll decide who comes inside my door. Frank knows how I want things to be, Stanley. You just stay out of it, you hear? If you intend on staying for a while, don’t be making any waves while you’re here. Just let things be. Let ’em be. Please. I don’t have the energy to fight.”

Joe’s pale head fell back on the pillow. He closed his eyes, obviously exhausted. One trembling hand still clutched the book on his chest, while the other idly stroked Pedro’s ear. Stanley stood his ground at the foot of the bed, glowering down at Joe for all the world like a man looking down upon a total stranger. He gripped the high foot posts of Joe’s four-poster bed so tightly his knuckles were white. It was Frank who went to his dad’s side and wiped the sweat from his father’s brow with a corner of the sheet. It was Frank who then patted his dad’s hand and kissed him on the forehead, giving Pedro an idle pat in passing as well. And it was Frank who said, “Don’t worry, Pop. We’ll do it your way. I promise.”

At that, Stanley stormed out of the room. He shot me a look of pure hatred as he stomped past.

I glanced at Frank. We shared a look. And it was pretty obvious we were sharing the same thought as well.

What a dick,
we silently communicated to each other.

Joe had other thoughts on the matter, anatomically speaking.

“That boy sure turned out to be an asshole,” he muttered to no one in particular, eyes still closed and clucking his tongue like a disappointed schoolmarm. “And who in the hell ever heard of anybody wearing orange shoelaces?”

Then he opened his eyes up wide and the three of us grinned at each other while Pedro wagged his tail in agreement.

S
TANLEY
had a shiny new rental car squeezed in between my crippled Toyota and Joe’s old battered F-10 pickup out on the driveway in front of the house. We assumed he’d picked the rental up at the Indianapolis airport after flying in. Frank and I had left Joe to rest and we were in the kitchen making ourselves a sandwich before going back out to finish milking the cows. Pedro had tagged along in case there was any droppage of sandwich makings. Pedro was a big fan of droppage. We could hear Stanley tossing things around as he settled into his old childhood bedroom across the hall from the room where Frank and I slept.

All of a sudden Frank was looking almost as worn out as Joe did. “What the heck did Stanley have to come here for? He’s just going to make it hard on everybody, sulking around, starting arguments. Plus he’s another mouth to feed. It’s not like he’s going to chip in with the work or donate any grocery money or anything. He’s too selfish and too damn contrary and way too lazy to think of doing anything like that.”