Chapter Two

Things at home got into a pattern that wasn't great, but it was more or less manageable. Things at school got worse. Brad swears he never said anything to anyone, and I believe him, but to me it seemed clear that my status had changed from being someone who was a little odd but mostly okay to being someone to act oddly around. And suddenly Lou and Chuck were not just obnoxious. Suddenly they were obnoxious in a very specific way, calling me "faggot" every chance they got. This was about the time Brad chased the red monster and threw stones at it.

The week after our close encounter with Lou and Chuck, the second week of October, something happened that made me start a whole new career. Stalking.

If I think about how this got started, I have to say that it was at least a little inspired by how much I had pulled away from the kids I'd grown up with—gradually, over the course of a few months or so, but steadily. I was never one of those kids with scads of friends, so it wasn't like I had a whole lot of people to shed. But when I realized I was gay, knowing what my church had always said about that, believing that nobody else around me was gay, expecting the worst of the worst if anyone found out, a kind of fear set in. The more I dreamed about boys, the greater the fear was that someone would find out. It might have made sense to try and cover for this by dating girls, but I was terrified they'd figure it out because I wouldn't be able to act like other guys they'd been out with, or like they'd expect a guy to act. This meant that the only times I'd gone out were when girls had asked me, and it had been only because I'd been afraid of what they'd think if I'd turned them down.

So maybe it was this pulling away from what was most familiar to me that made me look in another direction. Maybe it seemed safer.

There's this community of people on the east side of the two-lane highway that heads south from town. All my life, I've heard it referred to as the village, and the people who live there have been called a variety of things, all of them ugly. Freaks has been the most common term, but there've been others: vampires; weirdoes; goblins; gremlins. These folks follow some weird kind of religion, and they don't go to our church. Their kids do go to our school; Himlen's a pretty small town, and the village isn't very big. Even so, the townie kids don't socialize with the village kids.

Mr. Holyoke and his family lived in the village. Aside from being afraid even to touch it, I hadn't been surprised at my Dad's reaction to that "heathen" thing he'd made Mr. Holyoke remove from his car. I mean, pretty much everyone I know who lives in the town would have a similar reaction to talk about goddesses and crones and the like, and it all goes along with the town's basic attitude about everyone in the village, like the Holyokes. They're terrified of something. I just don't know what.

And I've never known how the fear got started. I mean, they pretty much keep to themselves out there, and as far as I know they've never caused a problem in the town. Except for that woman last year who marched back and forth in front of the town hall at Christmas, protesting the use of her tax dollars to support churches and then rub her face in it when the government put up a manger scene. Sometimes she was joined by one or two other people from the village, or they were there instead of her to give her a break, but she was there on and off for a couple of weeks. After a while, town kids started throwing things like eggs and tomatoes and things like that at her. One kid, Roger Hastings, stood there for something like five minutes and threw rocks, but then she started throwing them back. That's when the police hauled her in, saying it was for her own protection. But they never did anything to Roger. And that lady was back again the next day, with four other villagers.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which side starts things like that, but I have to say I've never heard the villagers call the townies names. And as far as I know, they've never thrown the first rock.

But back to my stalking career. This one day at school, phys ed class had ended, showers were about over, and I was in a rush to swipe away enough water so I could get dressed and leave; the boys' locker room—a pressure cooker for males desperate to prove they're male—is not a safe place to be when the other guys know you're gay, or if they even suspect. Lou and Chuck weren't there at the time; they were a year older, seniors, and had a different period for phys ed. Even so, I was keeping my head down as usual while keeping an eye out for anyone approaching from any direction, and who should walk close by me but Griffin Holyoke.

I didn't have any reason to think he'd attack; nobody from the village had ever picked on me in any way. But as he passed by me, something about him—the way he walked maybe—made me go hard. I held the towel strategically while my eyes followed him.

I'd seen the tattoo he has on his back before, but never so clearly. It’s all in black. Just below his waist, tree roots begin. The trunk starts at his waist and follows up on either side of his spine, and the branches—no leaves—swell out across his shoulders with a few delicate tendrils disappearing into his dark hair, which he dyes black and wears a little below collar length. His skin is pale, so the ink stands out starkly. And he's pretty tall, so the thing is impressive.

For some reason he turned and looked right at me. His eyes were as green as leaves in spring. I still haven’t gotten that look out of my mind. Not that I want to.

After that, I began to notice everything Griffin did. Like, who he hung out with (Ronan Coulter, another village kid), where he sat in the classes we shared, where his locker was, what route he took to walk home, all that kind of thing. I even started to pay more attention to some of the other village kids. Ronan didn't interest me; he'd always seemed kind of aloof, like he thought he was superior or something. But I was encouraged to new efforts by a paper another one of the village kids read in English class.

We'd been assigned to write a five-hundred-word essay about Halloween, and some kids were chosen at random to read theirs. When the teacher called Silver Shaw's name, everyone turned to look at her. We all knew she was a freak, and she dressed the part: long, pale hair with no style to it, clothes almost like a born-again hippie—lots of cotton, or hemp, or whatever. Canvas shoes that she covered with galoshes in rain or snow. By all rights, she should have been painfully shy, or at least terrified of the townie kids who loved to make fun of her and her people. But she seemed almost oblivious to taunts, which made her kind of scary, despite her harmless demeanor. Or maybe it's that a lot of the townie kids were convinced she was a witch and they were afraid to cross her.

As she read, the first thing that caught my attention was that she described time as a great circle, with our lives going round and round it. She said that Halloween—which she referred to as Samhain—is the beginning and the end of each circular year, and as such it looks both backward at the past and forward to the future. And on that night, you can step out of time, and this gives you a view of the entire year. She also said that your costume—and from what she said, this meant everyone, not just kids—should be chosen carefully so that it gives you a chance, in that place out of time, to experience life as some other person, or some other creature. She said the best experiences are from taking on a persona that can teach you something about yourself. It lets you see yourself through different eyes.

This was going to be my last year dressing up for Halloween, and I’d chosen a kind of hip-hop outfit, just because I thought it looked cool. As Silver spoke, I remember thinking that was a pretty piss-poor choice. All it would do, at most, would be to make me feel cool for part of one evening. Would that teach me something about myself, other than the fact that I have to pretend to be someone else in order to feel cool?

It wasn't long after this that I was following Griffin, per usual, as he and Ronan left school. I liked driving my truck, but I lived close to the school, there's the cost of gas, and driving would have meant I couldn't follow Griffin, who was always on foot.

Ahead of Griffin and Ronan, I could see Lou Dwyer and Chuck Armstedt, poised like wrestlers about to do battle, but not with each other. They faced a solid wooded fence gate, set back from the road by maybe five feet and forming a U shape from the rest of the fence at street level. It’s where the people who own the house put their trash bins when they’re full. Lou had a large piece of burlap, maybe a potato bag or something. I was kind of surprised to see them there, on my walking route home from school. Lou’s red truck is their usual method of transport for any route, no matter how short.

Griffin and Ronan were about to cross the street so they could walk past without getting close, but whatever those jerks were focused on caught Griffin's attention, too. He stood behind them silently for a few seconds and then walked forward, startling the hell out of Lou and Chuck. That’s when I caught up with them and saw what everyone was looking at.

Trapped against the solid wood of the fence, on its toes, back arched and ears flat back on its head, was a black cat, warning all on-comers with an eerie, gravelly wail. Whatever came near it was going to catch hell. I knew immediately that Lou and Chuck were planning to capture it and use it in some gruesome seasonal prank. It’s no secret that anyone with a black cat should make sure to keep it inside around Halloween to save it from the horrors it would be subjected to if caught by someone like these guys, so you wonder about anyone who would let their black cat roam around right now.

All of us watched as Griffin approached the cat, slowly but fearlessly, kind of sideways, his eyes on the ground rather than the cat. He crouched down, waited maybe five or six seconds, and then just picked it up, calm as you please. It was one of those "Don't try this at home" moments. The cat looked wildly at everything, but it didn’t scratch or bite, didn’t try to get off of Griffin’s shoulder. And he walked right past those goons—and me—as though we weren’t even there. Ronan gave me a heavy stare for some reason, but I couldn’t think why; it isn’t like I had anything to do with this cat-napping attempt, or with Lou or Chuck either, for that matter.

Ordinarily I would have expected Lou and Chuck to jump on anyone who thwarted one of their evil plans. But there was something about Griffin at that moment, his fearless attitude or his self-confidence, that kept harm at bay. Ronan wouldn't have been much of a deterrent for these guys, so I doubt they felt outmatched.

Chuck mumbled, "Fucking freak. Bet he’s got something planned for that cat himself."

I barely heard Lou say, "Fucking vampires."

I ducked my head a little to avoid any perception of my own involvement one way or the other, and as I hurried along I noticed Lou’s red truck; it was parked a little way down the street. And then I heard Lou's voice once more.

"Fucking faggot."

And scene.

I couldn’t guess how long Griffin would carry the cat, or if he’d take it home; obviously it didn’t belong to anyone who cared about it enough to keep it safe. But I felt certain that thanks to Griffin, no one was going to torture that cat for Halloween.

 

 

On Halloween, a Friday, dressed in the hip-hop outfit that now made me feel kind of stupid, I went out trick-or-treating with Brad and his friend Phil Ahearn (who's also on the football team), but I faked feeling sick after about ten minutes. I went back, doing my best to avoid being seen by Lou and Chuck, who were cruising around in Lou's truck, no doubt looking for opportunities to perpetrate pranks as gruesome as possible on short notice.

I had a plan in line with my stalking career. I very much wanted to know what Griffin did on Halloween. In my mind, all the villagers dressed up like ghouls or something like that and danced around—what? A bonfire? A slaughtered black cat?

I knew driving right into the village was out of the question, so when I got near the left turn off the highway I slowed down and peered through the darkness at the sides of the road. Almost directly across from Woods Way, which is the street that leads into the village, I saw a pullout. When I turned onto it, I realized it was actually a narrow track that kept going past a small bit of woods and out toward fields that are part of a farm. I pulled my truck in between a couple of trees off to the side, killed the engine, pulled the key out of the ignition, and sat there. And sat there. I couldn't hear much of anything from inside the truck, and I couldn't see much, either, with no lights nearby. But I sure as hell could feel my skin crawling. It wasn't like there were bugs on me. It was more like they were crawling around just beneath the surface of my skin, where I couldn't see them. I started to wonder what they would look like, how gross they would be, whether they would bite, whether they were poisonous. In one swift motion I opened the door and jumped out, and without giving myself time to wonder what might be in the woods around me that might be gross or deadly, I practically ran across the highway and into the village.

There were no street lights or anything like that in the village. By the time I got close enough to see the houses, I had bats in my belly. I mean, how sure was I, really, that Griffin didn’t have something nasty planned for that cat? People talked about the freaks doing some pretty wild things, anything from eating hallucinogenic mushrooms to sacrificing aborted fetuses. Sometimes there was talk about sex orgies. So my plan, which was to figure out where they were all gathering and spy on them, could mean I would see all kinds of things, some of which might give me nightmares. And, of course, the more horrible the acts were, the more trouble I’d be in if I got caught. So I was practically shitting myself by the time I got near the houses.

I’d never been this close to where they live before, and I was amazed that the houses all looked so normal. I guess I’d been expecting something creepy, dark buildings with lots of gables and odd angles, sagging porches, that sort of thing. But it was just houses on a long, narrow, curved street winding around a sort of town green in the center. And in the middle of that town green was a building lit up like there was a party going on.

Glancing fearfully over my shoulder, I crept around to the side of this building the least visible from any other structure. The windows were just a tiny bit too high for me to peer in comfortably, so I scrounged around until I found a rock I could stand on. It was heavy, and I had to heave and roll it to get it into position, and then of course it was a little wobbly. But it worked.

Inside, there were maybe forty or fifty people—hard to tell for sure—adults and kids. The place was lit by candlelight and lanterns, so details were hard to make out.

My expectation that they would be dressed as witches or ghosts or creatures of the night turned out to be totally off-base. At first it looked like they were all just people. But then I began to notice that something was off, and the first solid clue was that for the most part, the women were taller than the men. Then I noticed that the women seemed awkward in their motions. And finally it dawned on me that the "women" were really men dressed as women, and vice versa. I pulled sharply away from the window, fell off my rock, and hit the ground hard. When I stood I had another shock; there was a tall girl standing a few feet away, staring at me.

"Jesse."

It wasn’t a girl. And, obviously, it was someone who knew me. He wore a wig of long, blonde hair, and he had makeup on, not a lot but enough that I could see it in the light from the window. I just stood there, mouth open as though waiting for flies to walk in.

"It’s Griffin." OMG. The fly trap opened wider. "Do you want to come in? I, uh, see that you’re in costume."

Was he making fun of me? His tone of voice was so close to facetious. But then he said, "You know, you could have dressed as Rob Lowe, or maybe James Dean. You kind of look like a young version of a combination of them. Join us?"

Finally I found my own voice. "No! I mean, no, thanks. No, I, uh…" There was no way to pretend I was there to do anything other than spy.

Griffin smiled. "We’re pretty harmless. Honest."

"Why… why are you dressed like that?"

"It’s like Silver said. We’re experiencing what it’s like to be seen as something other than what we are. And maybe see out of our own eyes in a new way." He watched me flap my mouth open and closed a few times. "You could come in as you are, you know. You don’t have to cross-dress. It’s just a party. And you already know some of the other kids."

I shook my head and repeated, "No, thanks. Um, thanks anyway. Uh, have fun." I turned quickly to get away and tripped right over that rock I’d rolled over to the window, and the scrape on my chin from where I hit the ground was with me for a couple of weeks afterward. Stumbling to my feet, I threw one more glance at Griffin. He stood where he was, and I could tell he wasn’t laughing at me. He was smiling, but that was all.

My truck was to the west, but instead of turning left from the meeting house I went straight, maybe because the edge of the woods on the north side of the clearing where the houses were would provide some cover. Once I was safely behind a tree, I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Seeing Griffin dressed like that, made up like a girl, had shocked me at first. But as the image lingered—and it lingered, all right—the shocked feeling morphed into something more like fascination. Still a little creepy, but I felt a tension, almost a quivering feeling. It was not altogether unpleasant.

I rubbed my chin and felt for moisture; not much blood, I decided, just a bad scrape.

Calmer now, I reasoned that if practically everyone was at the party, there wouldn’t be a lot of people in the houses. I decided to walk around a little in the dark and get more of a sense of the place. I’d looked at it from Google Earth, and all-told there were about fifteen houses, different shapes and sizes. Now that I was here in person, I could see that lots of them had the dead and dying remnants of what must have been vegetable or flower gardens where townies would have had a front lawn or a back yard.

By the time I’d made a full circuit of the area, I’d discovered that on the far side of where the houses were, opposite the entrance from the highway, there was a huge field. Part of it had been planted, evidently with corn, but there was a large area in the northwest corner near where I'd hidden that was open. And in the middle of this was an unlit bonfire, dead cornstalks all leaning into a peak. From where I stood, I could hear slight rattling as a light breeze toyed with the tattered, dried leaves of the cornstalks.

I sat on the ground, leaned against a tree, and let my mind wander. What, exactly, did I think I was doing here? Why had I come? True, I'd been haunted by Griffin's image, by the very idea of Griffin, ever since that day in the showers. I had no way of knowing whether Griffin might feel about me the way I felt about him, though after that Rob Lowe/James Dean comment, maybe it would be reasonable to feel encouraged. And he might have started to cotton to the fact that I was kind of fixated on him. I just wasn’t sure why my fascination had started. I’d known Griffin most of my life, or had at least been aware of him. But it was only recently that I’d begun to dream about him.

My favorite dream, which I’d tried to reconstruct (without success) as I’d fallen asleep almost every night since I’d had it, was climbing the boughs of that tree on Griffin’s back. In the dream, he was even taller, and strong, and I believed he had the answers to questions everyone else was struggling even to frame: Who am I, why am I, what am I doing here, what should I do with my life, what happens when it’s over? I climbed the branches, and the tree that was Griffin seemed to go on and on. I didn’t tire, climbing, but I did begin to feel more and more driven, as though the tree were growing at a rate barely faster than I was climbing. But finally I reached his neck.

I could make out in stark detail the silver metal bits he wears poked through holes all up his left ear, from the spider on the lobe (which seemed alive in the dream) to the tiny feather, to the skull, and finally, close to the top, a silver spiral that pierced the ear in three places. I bit into his neck, just a little, and his head arched back, mouth open, eyes shut, a kind of ecstasy apparent on his face. He turned toward me and opened his green eyes. My hands gripped his hair, and our mouths clamped onto each other, desperate, seeking.

And then I was awake, a wet mess in my pajamas and tears in my eyes.

I swore into my pillow, mourning the end of the dream, wanting more than anything else to get back into it again, to a place where Griffin’s body and mine could merge in some magical way I didn’t understand but very much wanted to experience. Rolling onto my side, I pacified my cheated dick with my hand. There was no way to pacify how I felt.

 

 

Suddenly the party noise grew louder, and I realized that the door had opened, and people were pouring out through it. From here, I couldn’t pick Griffin out, or Silver Shaw or Ronan Coulter, but it almost looked like a perfectly normal crowd—small clusters forming and reforming as different conversations started up. Several people carried a small pumpkin or a gourd, carved with different versions of a grimacing face, each with a burning candle inside.

I hid behind my tree and watched as the crowd moved away from the meeting area and toward the bonfire waiting to be lit, and they formed a large circle all around it. Then they began chanting something, I don’t know what, in relative unison. Sounded like nonsense words. It left me feeling totally creepy, and the bugs were back under my skin again. After a couple of minutes, the people holding the pumpkins approached the teepee of cornstalks and gently tossed the burning faces into the center, and within seconds fire nearly erupted from inside. Everyone stood, silent, watching the fire grow. After a few minutes, they joined hands and began to walk slowly around the fire, and chanting began again, in English this time. I caught only a few phrases:

Welcome, Samhain, dark twin of Beltane… Summer’s end… Death of the old year… Chaos … Doorway for the dead.

Then a low, tuneless humming began. The villagers walked and hummed and walked and hummed, trance-like, for a long time. My gaze followed the smoke as it rose above the fire. Once my eyes adjusted from the glare of the fire I could see the dark bowl of the night sky, stars twinkling across it, like some kind of blue-black velvet cloak decorated with diamonds.

When I looked down again I saw the villagers embracing each other, two at a time. Suddenly they weren't just costumed party-goers. Something told me that what I was seeing was an exchange of real warmth, maybe even love. Now there were no more bugs, and no more worry about danger. Now there was no more fear. Instead, there was a sadness that felt really deep. I felt painfully isolated, like that warmth was not something I had access to, a sense of belonging that I don't have anywhere—not here, not at home, and certainly not in the church I go to every Sunday with my supposed family. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Eventually all but three people left the fire, and they took up positions beside it with buckets, full of something that was probably water. I stayed for several more minutes, watching the silent sentinels who stood by the dying fire. It seemed likely that nothing much more was gonna happen tonight, so I headed home.

The next day, someone found the mutilated body of a black cat beside the high school's main entrance. On the other side of the door was a crude face with huge vampire teeth, drawn in blood. And under it—also in blood—were the initials GH.

 

 

My clandestine visit to the village haunted me as strongly as my dreams about Griffin. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he'd been responsible for the dead cat. After all, I hadn't seen anything like that, not even remotely, when I'd spied on the villagers' Halloween celebrations. Maybe some of what I'd seen had made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't exactly say it was in a bad way. Plus, if Griffin had killed that cat, why on earth would he draw vampire teeth on that face or sign "GH" on it? One thing was certain: I wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid of the village, or the people in it, or what they did when townies weren't looking. I wasn't afraid.

Put all this together and it was probably unavoidable that I'd go from being fixated on Griffin to being obsessed by him. Any time there was a school function, I looked for him. I even scoured the crowds in the bleachers at the football game on Thanksgiving, not really expecting to see him; the village kids didn't participate in the school’s extra curricular activities.

Dad and Stu, of course, were thrilled that it was a home game. Stu went to Himlen High, like me. He was even on the football team—which I’m certainly not—though I don’t recall that his performance was more than average. As far as I know, he’s not planning to leave Himlen to go anyplace; if he and Patty do end up getting married, someday their kids will go here. So he’s still kind of invested in his alma mater.

It was not my choice to go with Stu and Dad to the game. I’d have preferred to stay home and work on Thanksgiving dinner. But the event is seen as just this side of some kind of rite of passage, even for those not on the field. And I suspect that in Stu's mind, if he could get me to take football seriously, there was some hope of getting me to be a real man after all. It would have done me no good to list the football players and other athletic professionals who'd come out as gay in the past couple of years.

Dad had pretty much given up by this point, I think. Not Stu. I saw him cringe any time I did or said something he considered "too gay." Like, cooking. He thinks guys shouldn't cook, evidently. I'd made pies the night before the game, and that probably gave him the creeps, so he made a big fuss about my going to the game. Sometimes it's just easier to go along.

I got bored somewhere in the middle of the first half and told Dad I was gonna go talk to some kids in my class (a lie; not many kids in my class talk to me these days, or maybe it's me who doesn't talk to them, and Brad was on the field). Telling myself that I wasn't lonely and that I actually enjoyed this marginalization (another lie), I wandered around the uninhabited top rows of the bleachers for a bit, examined the overcast sky in vain for rain, examined the crowd in vain for a sign of any Holyoke, and eventually I worked my way down to the ground and under the bleachers.

Had I known about the show down there, I would have descended sooner. There were three couples, all boy-girl (of course), in different corners from where I was, making out big-time. A few articles of clothing had body parts more on them than in them. At first, this carnality captured all my attention. But then I noticed there was someone across from me, sitting on the ground at the other end of the bleachers, also watching the show. Griffin Holyoke.

He saw me looking at him and grinned. As I watched in disbelief, he got up and came around the edge of the space toward me, careful not to call attention to himself or disturb any of the activity. He leaned against the other side of the support post I was leaning on, and although we both looked at the show, all my attention was on him.

Maybe five minutes went by, and one couple was—I swear—very close to ultimate consummation, when I heard Griffin’s voice, low and silky. "It’s amazing how fascinating something so repetitive can be. Don’t you think?" And he turned to look at me.

My eyes caught on the silver ring pierced through his right eyebrow. Not having a clue how to respond, I just shrugged.

He said, "Not a big sports fan?" I shook my head. "Me neither. I just come for this show."

"You what?"

He smiled and jerked his chin toward the couples. "Never miss a game." He watched my face as I tried to keep my eyes from widening too obviously. "You had enough yet? Wanna go someplace we can talk?"

Did I ever. We sat on the ground behind the bleachers, the sounds of the game present but not front-and-center, and shredded grass blades. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and my pile grew faster than his. Finally he leaned back, elbows supporting him from behind.

"I don’t want you to think it’s a problem or anything," he told me, looking around at nothing in particular, "but I know you hung around on Samhain, after I saw you."

"Samhain? Oh, right. Halloween." He didn't sound mad...

"You can ask me about it if you want. I don’t mind that you’re curious."

I was more curious how he knew I had hung around, but I decided against going there. I thought back to that night and my thoughts landed on the fire. It wasn't especially odd that someone would have a bonfire on Halloween, but what I'd seen had been more than a bunch of people having a fun fire. I didn't know how to ask about the feelings that had caused me so much pain, so I asked, "What was that chanting about, at the fire?"

"Fire is transformative. It changes one kind of matter into another through energy. Samhain is the border between one thing and another, so the fire represents the transformation. And, of course, it’s the end of harvest season, when the old corn stalks have done their job, and cold weather is coming on. Now that we have corn, what we need is warmth. So fire transforms food production into heat. We were expressing gratitude to corn, and to fire."

I was actually a little surprised that he was prepared to be so specific about this stuff. So I asked another question. "But I heard something about chaos, and a doorway for the dead."

He nodded. "It’s like the Christian tradition, All Saints Day. Only the church changed it from All Souls Day, which is what it used to be. It’s a brief time, a few hours, between what was and what will be, for the dead to walk with the living."

Okay, creepy. "And the chaos?"

He laughed. "Well, it’s a pretty chaotic picture, don’t you think? Dead people walking around with the living? And when the time is up, things have to go back to normal again."

I was almost afraid to ask this, but it seemed unavoidable. "Do you know who killed that black cat on Halloween? The one they found at the school?"

"As a matter of fact, I have my suspicions. But I don't know for sure. All I know is it wasn't me."

That was a relief, even if I hadn't believed he'd done it. But there was a related question I needed an answer to. "And, do you, like, worship the devil, or anything?"

He scowled. "Shit, Jesse, you saw everything we did on your Halloween. That would have been the time for that kind of ridiculousness. Did you see or hear anything about a devil or a demon, anything like that?"

"Well… no."

"Exactly. Pagans don’t even acknowledge this concept you refer to as ‘the devil.’"

"So, but—are you Christian?"

"No. Pagan. Paganism predates Christianity. And Christianity stole a lot of the Pagan traditions and rituals when it was busy trying to convert everyone in Europe. The whole evergreen thing? The Yule log? Giving presents and singing carols and picking bright red holly berries? Those are all Pagan traditions. Christians stole them." He sounded almost like there was anger in there someplace. I didn’t think it was directed at me, exactly, but I didn’t want him to be angry.

I went back to Samhain and did my best to sound like I had taken what he'd said seriously. "So, have you ever seen any of the souls who came through the doorway?"

He relaxed again. "Not me, no. Not yet, anyway. But my sister did. Last year, Gramma came to her. Selena—that’s my sister—was thinking of moving to San Francisco. She'd fallen in love with Parker Harrison, and Parker’s parents had kicked him out when he came out to them. He moved to California, and he asked Selena to go with him. Gramma told Selena she should follow her heart. So she did."

This made no sense to me. "I thought Parker Harrison was a girl."

"Parker identifies as gender queer. He grew up as a girl, but he transitioned in his late teens. Now, people who meet him for the first time see him as a man."

"Transitioned? Like, sex change?"

Griffin shook his head. "No; just started living life as a man lives life. Clothing, typical actions, haircut, that sort of thing."

I still wasn't able to make a lot of sense out of this. "How does Selena see him?"

"As Parker." I thought he'd say more, but he didn't.

"I don’t know what that means. Is Selena gay or not?"

Griffin's smile was cryptic. "She's bisexual. As she puts it, 'I fell in love with the person, not the plumbing.'"

Wow. Like, wow. And I thought my situation was uncommon. My idea of bisexuals was that they want everything, so one person would never quite be enough for them. Maybe this made sense for Selena, then; Parker was kind of both. "Your folks don’t mind?"

"Mind what? That she moved away?"

"About her being bisexual."

One side of his mouth curled up in a half-smile. "You Christians. You get upset over the silliest things."

I could feel my heart beating faster. If Pagans were so open about this, and if Griffin was gay, there was hope for me with him. But even if the townie kids knew about me, that didn't mean the village kids would know, what with that line of demarcation between our respective groups being so sharp. In fact, saying something about me seemed like the best way to find out about him. It was an opening, and all I had to do is say, You know I’m gay, right? But I hesitated too long, and it got awkward.

My next thoughts were to wonder whether the Harrisons were more upset that Parker was gender queer or that "he" had taken up with a freak. Because even if Griffin were a girl I know my folks would not want me to get involved with him, because he’s a freak. But instead I moved to a related but safer subject. "So, under the bleachers there. You, uh, you come here a lot?"

He laughed at my facetious use of the cliché, and I relaxed a little. "Sure. Sex is great. I’m still trying to understand why it’s so fascinating, and how the spiritual aspects come into it. Dad says I’m still too testosterone-poisoned to see through the fog of cum, and it will be a while before I can balance things out."

Wow. His dad talks to him like that? Really? I set that aside in favor of something he'd said about sex that puzzled me. "Okay, you’ll have to explain that to me. I mean, I get the idea of being with someone you love, but—spiritual?"

"Sure. It’s like… well, my dad says it’s like being so close, not just physically but also spiritually, that during the physical act, there’s this compelling desire to actually become one being. And, I mean, as Pagans, we see the diversity around us, but really we see it all as only part of the picture. Because we’re all one with the Goddess, ultimately. Well, in my kind of Paganism, anyway; not all Pagan practices revolve around a goddess figure. But anyway, the spiritual part of sex is like having a taste of that feeling—of being one with everything—but with one person at a time."

That feeling I'd had in the dream, when Griffin and I had kissed, washed over me in a huge wave. Maybe that was the spiritual aspect. But I wasn't about to bring that up, and I wasn’t prepared to discuss goddesses, either. So I stayed with what I could connect with.

"Man, I can’t believe you and your dad talk about it like that. Or at all. I mean, when my dad told me about, you know, the birds and the bees, he didn’t go into a lot of detail, and he didn’t talk about anything spiritual. I think he mentioned love, but that was it."

"What a weird expression. ‘The birds and the bees.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? It’s just avoiding saying what you’re really talking about. Sex is good, Jesse. Sex is something you should want. Something you should enjoy."

I had to ask. "Have you ever done it?"

"Only with myself, so far. But when I’m eighteen, my dad says he'll to talk to me about what my mom taught him."

This blew my mind on so many levels I wasn’t sure which one to focus on. I landed on the angle that seemed to spell disaster for my hopes. "You mean, about sex with a woman?"

"Of course. Well, of course, for me, that is. Interesting that you would ask. Are you—are you more interested in sex with a man?"

So he didn't know. Do it fast, Jesse. Just rip off the Band-Aid. "Yes."

He nodded. "Good to know."

It seemed like he genuinely hadn't been aware before I'd told him. This didn't say much about what the other kids knew, though; Griffin didn't exactly hang with the townie kids. "And… you don’t mind?"

He laughed again, and I was beginning to really love that sound, even if he was interested in women, not men. Not me. "Not as long as you don’t try and make out with me, no. In fact, it lessens the competition. Every guy who’s gay is one less guy I have to compete with for straight girls."

At this point the sounds of the half-time show—the school band sounding vague about the actual notes—registered in my brain. And, evidently, in Griffin’s, too.

He clambered to his feet. "Think I’ll head home. Mom could use some help getting ready for dinner. You?"

I shrugged. "I’d rather do that, actually." Hell, maybe I just would, game or no game. I stood as well. "Yeah. Think I'll head home. I love cooking."

"I can give you a lift. I drove myself over. Got my intermediate last week."

"Great! Yeah. Thanks. My brother made me ride over with him and my dad. Is it your own car?"

He nodded, and I pulled out my phone and texted Dad to tell him I’d meet them at home; I figured he’d put up less of a stink than Stu at my abandoning this sacred ground prematurely.

Griffin and I walked together to his car, a blue Toyota sedan that had seen better days, and it seemed like my feet weren’t quite touching ground. Maybe we’d never be, you know, lovers or whatever it’s called, but we could be friends. Hell, we were well on our way to being friends. I couldn't have said why that should matter, now that I knew he'd never feel about me the way I felt about him, but it did. Part of it might have been that the Pagans accept gay people. But part of it was that I'd felt haunted by that bonfire I'd witnessed, and by that feeling of belonging that they all seemed to have. A feeling I've never had. A feeling I never expected to have.

I did feel a little guilty about walking out on a game Brad was playing in, but he could give me a blow-by-blow account of it later. I didn’t usually go to games anyway.

On the short drive to my house, Griffin chatted easily about having Selena and Parker come for the holiday. "Parker will probably feel kinda weird, being back in his home town and not able to see his folks, but I think being with us will be better than not coming at all. And we’re his family now."

The idea that the Holyokes would circle the wagons around their daughter’s gender queer partner so protectively stunned me. And there didn't seem to be any tension at all among the villagers around the fact that Selena had taken up with a townie.

I asked, "What will you do to help your mom? Do you cook?"

"Ha. She won’t let me near the stove. I’ve ruined more pans… Don’t know why I’m so bad at it. I get distracted, I guess, and things get away from me. She has me wash pans and utensils when she's done with them, set the table, that kind of thing. You cook, you said?"

"Yeah. Better than my mom. I like to, you know, just throw things together and see if they work."

"Really. And your mom didn’t teach you to do that?"

"No way! ‘Season to taste’ sends her into a tizzy." He laughed, and then there was silence. So I said, "Last night I made two pies. Pumpkin and apple."

"Well, I couldn't do that, but it doesn’t seem like it would take an expert."

"Ah, but you haven’t tasted my lard crust. And I started with an actual pumpkin, not a can. And the pumpkin pie recipe is mine."

"Yours? What does that mean?"

What did that mean? I don’t really use a recipe; I just smell and taste and add stuff. To answer his question, I told him about my first pumpkin pie. "Whenever my mom was cooking, I’d always try to stick my finger into whatever she was making, and she’d always try to stop me. So this one time, when I was about nine years old, I got a taste of pumpkin pie batter from the bowl. Before she could yell, I told her it needed more spices."

I glanced at Griffin to be sure I hadn’t lost him. His eyes were on the road, but I could tell he was listening. "She said, ‘Fine. You just put in whatever you think it needs.’ Probably thought this would teach me some kind of lesson. And she stood back while I added some cinnamon, tasted, then some clove, tasted, more clove. Some nutmeg. She tried to draw the line when I reached for the cardamom. ‘I don’t even know where I got that stuff! You can’t put it in the pie!’ But I did. And it was really good. So instead of having the worst pumpkin pie ever, we had the best."

Griffin’s laugh was so real, so honest. That’s the best way to describe it. And I loved that I had brought it out of him. But he didn’t say anything else, and like some third grader desperate for Teacher’s attention, I told him more. I couldn’t stop myself, even though we were at my house.

"I made cranberry sauce last night, too. Started with raw berries. I used only half the sugar the recipe called for, and I added vanilla. My own idea."

He pulled up along the side of the road and grinned at me. My eyes caught on his and I almost didn't hear him say, "Get in there and have your way with the stuffing, then. Save it from the mediocrity of a recipe."

I was about to get out when I noticed something hanging from the rear view mirror, and my dad's angry rant about heathens and goddesses crashed into my brain. So this was the very car Dad had refurbished. I nodded toward the symbol, which looked like three pointed ovals overlapping, each pointing in a different direction, with a circle joining them together at the widest parts of the ovals.

"Griffin? What's that?"

"Depends on who answers." He stopped; I wanted him to go on.

"I'm asking you."

"Then it's virgin, mother, and crone. My Paganism sees the Goddess as representing life in all its aspects, from innocence through to wisdom."

"Your Paganism?"

"Remember I told you that not all Paganism is centered around the Goddess. Mine is."

"You mean, people in the village see it that way?"

He shook his head. "No. I mean me. We don't all have to worship the same. We're not like the rigid Judeo-Christian traditions. And, by the way, this symbol? We call it the triquetra. It was ours, first. Christianity adopted its mind-body-spirit symbolism and called it the trinity."

I didn't want that resentment I'd heard earlier about Christianity stealing Pagan traditions to creep in again. Stepping out of the car I said, "That makes sense, actually. Okay, well, see you Monday."

I pushed the car door closed and watched him drive off, praying that my need for his attention hadn’t seemed as obvious to him as it had to me. Praying also that he didn't hold me in any way responsible for the thefts Christianity seems to have committed.

 

 

Mom was surprised to see me. "Home team doing so badly you couldn’t bear to watch?"

I didn't tell her I had no idea what the score had been when I'd left. "Nah. I’m just not that fond of seeing guys run around in lumpy costumes bashing each other into a pulp over some ball that isn’t even a ball. It’s an oval. What’s with that, anyway?" I didn’t care about the ball being oval. I just wanted to distract her from thoughts about why a red-blooded Oklahoma boy wouldn’t love football. At least she appreciates my talents in the kitchen, and she's never discouraged me from using them.

I asked, "What can I help with?"

She was pulling things out of the fridge. "You can peel the potatoes and get them into some water." I lifted the top off a casserole dish on the counter. "Leave that alone, Jesse. It’s extra stuffing. It goes into the oven as soon as the bird comes out."

So of course I tasted it. "Needs more rosemary. And sage. And salt."

She grinned. "Up to your old tricks?"

"Let me try?"

She stopped what she was doing to look at me. "Jesse, do you understand how traditional this meal is? And how important it is to your whole family that it’s pretty much the same every year?"

"I get that, yeah. I don’t have anything radical in mind." And I didn't need reminding how important "traditional" ways of living are to everyone around me.

She took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, waved a hand in the air. "All right. But I’m warning you, your father will be bullcrap mad if you ruin it."

While I doctored the stuffing, Mom peeled the potatoes, telling me about this bottle of port Dad had bought. "I don’t know what he was thinking. He heard someplace that it was a great thing to have after Thanksgiving dinner. He’ll probably have half a glass, and so will I, and the rest of the bottle will go to waste. Stu won’t like it, and you’re not getting more than a taste."

Port. Interesting. Stuffing stuffed back into its casserole, I told Mom I’d be right back, and I went to where Dad keeps his bourbon. Beside it was a bottle of ruby port. I opened it and tipped just a tiny taste into my mouth. Rich, just slightly sweet. I took a larger sip. Heady. I’d had red table wine a few times, but this was altogether different. I went back into the kitchen, grabbed a small jar, back to the port, and poured maybe half a cup into the jar for an idea I had concerning our dinner. By the time Dad reached for the bottle later, we’d have finished eating already, and I would have explained where the missing port had gone.

The last thing I did before sitting down to dinner was to fetch a cobalt blue bowl, one of Mom's favorite pieces, and I put the whipped butternut squash into it. The deep blue, bright orange contrast was gorgeous.

Of course, everything was a success. Even Dad asked for seconds on the cranberry sauce. Then, as he poured gravy over his third helping of stuffing, he asked Mom, "Diane, what’s special about the gravy this year? It’s different. I like it a lot."

This pissed me off. Dad knows that whenever anything "special" happens to our meals, I'm the one who made it that way, not Mom. She's an adequate cook. I'm going to be a great cook, and he knows that already.

Instead of repeating anything from that horrible day when I'd come out, instead of saying, See? This is what I meant when I said you don't care what I'm interested in, I said, "Dad, why don't you ever ask me a question like that? Why won't you ever give me credit? You know damn well that I'm always making changes to our recipes, and you always like it."

Before Dad's glare or Stu's could turn into one of our full-on battles, Mom stepped in. "Jesse, language. And temper. Please."

All the male members of the family breathed audibly for several seconds, and then Mom said, "I'll give you credit, Jesse. Please tell us what you've done to change today's recipes."

I let out one more noisy breath and spoke to Mom rather than Dad. "You know that bottle of port Dad brought home? The one you’re worried will go to waste after tonight?"

Her eyes widened. "You didn’t."

"I put it in the gravy. Before I put the cornstarch in. Only about half a cup. I boiled it a few minutes so the alcohol would burn off."

"And what magic, pray tell, did you work on the cranberry sauce?"

She was amazed I’d halved the sugar; the vanilla made it taste sweeter than it was. I’m not even sure where all these ideas come from. I’ve wanted to try the cranberry sauce idea for a while. But port in the gravy? I hadn’t even known Dad had bought port until today. The only thing I could figure was that it felt sort of like I was trying to impress someone who wasn’t even there.