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  She spoke in a low voice, and yet it felt as if she were shouting at me. A loud buzzing started in my ears. It was the sound of blood rushing up past my eustachian tubes in a feeble attempt to block out what she had to say next.

  “Emma was there, Bil. She helped my mother hide the body.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the floodlights came on above the dugouts and six figures approached us from the opposite side of the field. One of them shielded his eyes with his hand, trying to make us out. Then he stopped.

  “Shit, Bil,” Tipper said. “I’m really sorry. We had some excitement at the festival, and we need to wind down. I thought we’d play a little softball, try to relax.”

  I stared at him stupidly, and he smiled.

  “Sylvie,” he said, holding out his hand. “So nice to see you again. These are my friends. Here, let me introduce you.”

  Chapter 12

  “This is Alan,” Tipper said, “and this is Tom.”

  Tom held out his hand. “How do you do?”

  Brian and Jeff stepped forward. Jeff winked at me, a gesture I was certain did not slip past Sylvie’s notice. “Don’t forget Suzy,” he said.

  Suzy was flopped down like a cow pie on the pitcher’s mound.

  “Suzy!” Tipper called. “Get up for God’s sake. Have some manners.”

  “It’s okay,” Sylvie began. “I don’t . . .”

  Suzy heaved himself up with visible effort and reeled over. “Charmed, I’m sure.” He threw an arm around her shoulders and leaned in conspiratorially. “I’ve had a few daiquiris, and Tipper is very annoyed with me. He’s a bit of a prude, you know.”

  “And you’re a bit of a drunk,” Tipper observed.

  “Well,” Suzy huffed, all wrists and hips, “that’s a fine how do you do. So I mentioned a few names—it’s not like we were at an AA meeting. It’s a very bad idea to be anonymous, you know. In fact, it’s downright dangerous.”

  “You’ve lost me,” I said. “What happened? You mentioned some excitement.”

  Tipper gazed at me sadly, his arms folded across his chest.

  “It’s late,” he said, “and I don’t know if I feel up to reciting the story. Are you and Sylvie staying out here tonight or are you on your way somewhere?” I gave him my that-was-beyond-the-pale look, and he explained quickly, “I was thinking that we could bat the ball around a bit and then retire to the house. There’s an empty . . . there’s plenty of space for everyone. We could make a night of it, music, old movies, and a strategy session for tomorrow’s booth.”

  “You’d better tell her,” Tom interrupted. “She’ll want to know.”

  I sighed. “What was the excitement this afternoon? Did Suzy do a striptease at the Proposition One booth?”

  “It was an outing,” Tipper replied. “That daiquiri queen over there outed someone he had no right to out.”

  I stared at Suzy, who examined his fingernails.

  “Who?”

  “He outed you, Bil.”

  “How could he out me?” I hadn’t told my family, but the gay community of Cowslip knew.

  “I’m sorry,” Tom cut in. “I’m afraid it was my fault. Tipper pointed your grandmother out to me. Later on, she was talking to the people at the Proposition One booth, and I pointed her out to Suzy. He’d been drinking daiquiris all day, ever since Fiesta Jack’s opened their tent flaps. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Granny,” I said slowly, turning my wrath on the lanky figure now lying flat on his back on the third base line. “You told my insane grandmother that I was a . . . that I’m . . .”

  “I told her you were a lesbian, darling,” Suzy said, drawling the words out. “Out, proud, and free! You’re here, you’re queer, and your sweet old granny had better get used to it.”

  Sylvie took my hand, and I gazed at her helplessly.

  “Do you want the details?” Tipper asked. “Or would you rather not know?”

  I thought about it for a moment or two. There was nothing I could do about it. I’d been shoved out of the closet, and Granny would make sure that the doors slammed shut behind me.

  “Give me the details,” I said finally.

  “Well,” Tipper said, “this big old drag queen, three sheets to the wind, marched up to your grandmother and the Prop One people and told them that they should be ashamed of themselves. Your grandmother has you, and one of the men working the booth, the Reverend James Jones, has a son who flunked out of Exodus International.”

  “Exodus?” I asked.

  Jeff spoke up. “It’s a fundamentalist Christian group that claims to cure homosexuals. They teach butch lesbians how to put on makeup and effeminate men how to play football. It’s crazy. Suzy and I met at an Exodus meeting. We’re what they call ex-ex-gays. The reverend’s son, Trevor, was in our group. He and Suzy were friends. We were all living in Renton, Washington, and Suzy was . . .”

  “I was married, honey,” Suzy said. “I was married and living in the suburbs. They called it a bedroom community. I saw a lot of bedrooms.” He giggled.

  “Anyhow,” Jeff continued, “Suzy and Trevor were close. He stayed in Exodus a lot longer than he should have.”

  “Who did, Suzy or Trevor?”

  “Either of us,” Suzy replied. “Both of us. We’re interchangeable Stepford fags. I was in Exodus for three years.” He staggered up and threw himself forward, until we were standing nose to nose. “Don’t be ashamed of who you are, Bil. I was ashamed. My father was a minister, just like Trevor’s daddy. Nothing I did was good enough. You know what they say about the preacher’s son, don’t you? It’s all true. I like drinking, dancing, and great big dicks.”

  I let go of Sylvie’s hand so I could push Suzy out of my face. I said to Tipper, “Are you sure he’s just drunk?”

  Tipper shrugged. “I think so. He does like a little hashish every now and again.”

  “At least I’m not pretending it’s peyote like your mother does,” Suzy shot back. He leaned towards me again, his breath so heavy with rum that I had to dig in my heels to keep from falling over backwards. “Bil, you’ll be just fine. Your grandmother didn’t even look surprised.”

  “How did she look?”

  He thought for a moment, and then smacked his lips. “Blank. But perhaps you should ask Carrie Nation,” he pointed at Tipper. “She was terrifyingly sober.”

  “Your grandmother wasn’t alone, Bil,” Tipper explained. “It was after the play. We were looking for you, but you’d already left. Some of the cast were with her at the booth.”

  “Who?”

  “Helen Merwin, Fairfax, Millicent . . .”

  I turned on Suzy. “You told everyone and his dog, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. What’s that? One, two, three,” he counted off on his fingers, “four people.”

  “The four biggest mouths in Cowslip,” I replied, slipping out from under him and turning to Tipper. “You know that my mother is the first person she’ll call.”

  “I’m sorry, Bil. If I could have, I’d have shut him up, I swear. Short of casting his head in cement, I don’t think it’s possible. What are you going to do now?”

  “I think,” I said at last, casting a pleading glance at Sylvie, “that we’ll take a walk up to the top of the ridge. I’d like to clear my head.”

  “I can’t say as I blame you. Here though,” Tipper grabbed Suzy by the arm and stripped him of his jacket. He smiled and handed it to Sylvie. “It’s cold up there, and you’ve got bare arms.”

  “What about me?” Suzy said. “I’ll freeze.”

  “You’ll also sober up. I don’t want you yakking up all over my carpet tonight.”

  Sylvie and I were silent as we hiked up the hill, as if we had nothing important to talk about. The fog had begun to dissipate, and patches of clear sky and stars were shining through the clouds. The big dipper seemed to be hanging just a few feet above the tall pines. We walked on and up for half a mile, until the Faeries’ shouting was a distant ech
o and the lights around the dugouts glowed far behind us.

  There was a clearing at the top of the ridge between Fort Sister and Kate Wood’s farm. It was made by the original homesteader, long before the railroad magnate bought the property. Once upon a time, there was a rumor that some of the women at Fort Sister had formed a coven and were using the clearing for their naked Sabbaths. Tipper said that was just wishful thinking. The remains of an old house lay just over the top, on the side facing Kate’s farm. To protect local kids, who were looking for a house in which to get laid or stoned or both, the Captain knocked down what was left of the walls several years ago. All that remained was the foundation, a rectangle of irregular, weatherworn stones.

  Sylvie and I paused near the top, stopping to listen to the wind rushing through the trees and to catch our breath. A few invisible creatures shuffled about in the underbrush, but otherwise it was quiet. We passed over the top and sat down on the edge of the ruined foundation, looking down on her mother’s property. A dog barked in the distance.

  Sylvie said, “That’s my mother’s dog, Elvis. Listen—Priscilla will start howling in a minute.”

  I listened. There were two or three more barks and then a long, low howling began. It was definitely dogs, rather than wolves or coyotes. I still shivered. “They’re so close to being wild, aren’t they? I mean, we’ve been breeding them for centuries, and at night, they still talk to each other in the same old way, a way that has nothing to do with us.”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I suppose so. What kind of dogs are they?”

  “Elvis is a mutt, a big Lab cross. Priscilla’s a Samoyed. I’ve had her for years.”

  “She doesn’t live with you in town?”

  “No. I’ve got a tiny apartment and a roommate. Even if I could find a place that would have her, I couldn’t take her away from Elvis. They’d both be too lonely. Besides, can you imagine the neighbors putting up with that racket?”

  The howling had begun with a high-pitched sound that gradually dropped through the register to a low moan. Priscilla did this once or twice, and, after a long pause, she was rewarded by a series of short yips.

  “Listen,” Sylvie said, putting her hand on my arm. “It’s a pack of coyotes. They’re not far from here.”

  The yipping intensified until the pack sounded as if they were only a few feet away. I knew it was only the echo coming up over the flat, but I sat very still, glad of Sylvie’s company. Finally, the yips subsided and moved away. I was tired. I leaned forward and rested my forearms on my knees. Sylvie shifted on the rocks, and I felt her hand touch my back. It moved in slow, tentative circles for a moment or two and then stopped, moving up to rest lightly on my shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Really, it’s nothing.”

  “Right, nothing at all,” she agreed.

  I smiled grimly. “Let’s see. Your mother’s a lesbian. My mother might or might not have had an affair with her. You don’t think so, but how can we know? It doesn’t matter anyway because your mother killed your father and my mother helped bury him in the backyard. But even that’s beside the point because the county prosecutor is going to charge my brother with killing him only last week.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “And, finally, a big-mouthed drag queen who looks like Carol Channing has just outed me to my grandmother and all of her friends. Conservatively, the entire town of Cowslip will know by sun-up. So many presents, I’m beginning to think it might be Christmas.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Her eyes met mine. I’m going to kiss you, I thought. Here in the ruins, with the coyotes singing in the distance, I’m going to kiss you, and we’ll forget about everything and everyone else. I’m going to kiss you, and we’ll stay up here on this hillside forever.

  Her hand rested on my back again, and I lost my nerve.

  I said, “My mother runs through my life like a bull through a china shop, and she drags Sam behind her. I haven’t come out to her because there’s no time for it. Where would I work it in, somewhere between my brother’s arrests and his chemotherapy? Perhaps I could find time while running interference between my mother and the sheriff’s department, my mother and Sam, and my mother and the rest of the normal, sane world.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  The stars were bright in the sky above us. Her eyes were dark and intense. She put her arms around me, and I rested my head on her shoulder. We sat without moving until the coyotes’ calling faded into the distance.

  “It’s all right,” I said at last, lifting my head reluctantly. “The reason I’m not out is that I feel too fucking sorry for myself. I want my mother to be interested in me, not in how I can further some agenda.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go on,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?”

  I stood up and stretched, hoping to clear my head. I looked down at Sylvie, who was still regarding me intently, and discarded the flip answer I’d been prepared to give.

  “I know I’m too hard on her. This thing with Sam—the cancer, the crazy shit he pulls—it’s like a vortex. Everyone else in the family has pulled out except for Emma and me. We just keep getting in deeper and deeper. Sam is now the sum total of the connection between us.”

  “Why don’t you talk to her?”

  “And say what? That I’m jealous of my terminally ill brother?”

  “I think,” she said, “that you’re even harder on yourself than you are on her.”

  I sat down again on the wall and faced her. “I don’t even talk to Tipper like I’m talking to you.” She smiled. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, I’m ready to listen now. Tell me everything.”

  “I don’t know for certain how he died. I remember my father renting the backhoe. He was doing a lot of landscaping that summer, digging out the hill behind our house, pulling up trees. My mother didn’t want him to do it—she wanted him to leave everything alone. The house and farm belonged to her, not to him. It’s the family homestead. The original one-room cabin her grandfather, my great-grandfather, built when he first came here was still standing then. My father knocked it down to put up a metal shed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he wanted to. He destroyed everything my mother cared about.”

  I realized then that she was crying. I put my arms around her and pulled her to me. She let me hold her for a minute or two, just as she’d held me. Then she sat up and pulled away.

  “No,” she said. “I’m okay. I’ve got to tell you this.” She wiped her eyes on Suzy’s jacket. “I hated my father. He yelled all the time—at me, at my mother. One of the things I remember most clearly about him is that he used to grab me by the back of the neck and pinch really tight. He picked me up like that once and dragged me down the hall to show me some mess I’d made.”

  I took her hand, holding it in both of mine.

  “I can still feel his fingers on the back of my neck. When I knew he was gone, Bil, really gone and not coming back, I was happy. It was the thing I’d prayed for as long as I could remember.”

  “Did he ever . . .” I wasn’t certain how to ask and was grateful that she guessed what I wanted to know.

  “He beat the hell out of my mother. Usually, he did it on the weekends. Sometimes it was during the week. My mother tried not to miss any work. She couldn’t always help it.”

  “Sylvie, I’m so sorry.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, and I put my arms around her again. This time, she didn’t pull away.

  “That night—I think it must have been the night he died—I heard my parents arguing in the kitchen. They were fighting about one of my mother’s dogs, an old mixed-breed named Jack. My father kicked him and broke one of his ribs. It punctured his lung, and my mother had to put the dog down. She shot him in the head with a hunting rifle. M
y father wouldn’t let her take him in to the vet.”

  “He was going out somewhere with Frank that night. Probably to a bar or something. Frank was over at our house all the time. Occasionally they spent the weekend together in Spokane, cruising the strip joints or something. That’s probably where the gay stuff came from. Anyhow, he came in the house to get ready, and my mother was sitting at the kitchen table, crying. The rifle was in the corner, leaning up against the wall. He told her to shut up about the stupid dog. She sent me up to my room.”

  “I don’t know what happened after that. There was a lot of yelling. I know I didn’t go to my own room because I remember lying on my mother’s bed with a pillow over my head. I fell asleep up there, I don’t know for how long. I woke up twice that night. Once, I thought I heard his motorcycle in the driveway. The second time, I heard a loud engine. That was the backhoe. I went downstairs and stood by the screen door in the kitchen. It was a bright night, the third of July. We went out the next morning and bought fireworks.”

  “Sylvie,” I said. “What exactly did you see?”

  She closed her eyes and leaned into me. I put a finger under her chin and lifted her head up until she looked at me. “You can trust me. I have no reason to tell anyone, and even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

  She took a deep breath. “My mother stood at the edge of a trench, the one my father had started on the hill behind our house. She had her back to me. At first, I couldn’t see who was driving the backhoe. They dug a tremendous hole. Then, the engine stopped and the driver climbed out. I ducked back behind the kitchen door because I was afraid she’d see me. It was a minute or so before I looked out again. I still didn’t recognize the other woman, but they were rolling something into the hole. It was a man, and he was naked. When they stood back up, the other woman, the driver, lit a cigarette. She held the flame in front of her face, and I recognized her. It was your mother, Bil. I don’t know who killed him—I’m guessing it was my mother—but Emma helped to hide the evidence.”