THE DRIVE to the hospital seemed almost as long as the one from Terra’s Gate to Damview. Hells, longer than the one from Treasures of Terra to the health clinic to get tested—and had that only been days ago? It seemed like years. Wait! Only yesterday? How could that be?
Wyatt’s stomach was tied in such knots that he felt his favorite meal might come springing from his stomach like one of those trick snakes from a bogus can of mixed nuts.
He kept the meal down somehow.
Mountain Home had grown. There were all kinds of businesses that he didn’t remember being there before. The town seemed to have doubled in size. He didn’t remember the Home Depot or the Lowe’s, and there was actually a Petco. It seemed like civilization had arrived in this part of the world.
The hospital was beautiful. Things really had changed since he’d left, and he said so.
“No,” his mother told him. “This is how the hospital looked when you still were here.”
He guessed that he just hadn’t had the need to visit the hospital then. Thank goodness.
So they went through the big glass doors of the hospital, and Wyatt found he was breaking into a cold sweat and dinner really was dying to be tasted a second time. Yeah, right. And how would that look? “Hey, Dad,” after eleven years, followed by, “Blaarrggh!”
He might have laughed if he wasn’t actually ready to puke.
They made their way to the ICU—and it was all painted pink! He couldn’t help but think of the line from Steel Magnolias: “That sanctuary looks like it’s been hosed down with Pepto-Bismol.” They checked in with a nurse, and then before he even realized it, they were told they could go in.
Wyatt found he couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. A chubby Grecian statue. Medusa had turned him into stone. How was he supposed to go in there? How was he supposed to face his father?
“Come on, honey,” his mother said, reaching out and touching his arm. “He wants to see you.”
But somehow Wyatt wasn’t sure. It was something in her eyes. What was it? Was it what he was feeling? Was it fear in her eyes?
No, he didn’t want to go in.
But he did anyway.
At first he couldn’t quite take in what he was seeing. He gasped in shock. The man in the bed was huge. Bigger than his mother by at least a hundred pounds, and his father had always been thin. He was almost completely bald (which Wyatt imagined was possible as his father’s hair had been receding back in the day). But how could he have changed this much? It was deep shock that made him step back, unable to say a word.
“Honey?”
Wyatt jumped and spun around. It was his mother. “Come on,” she said and walked past the bed and beyond the curtain to the other side of the room.
Then it hit him. The man wasn’t his father.
Of course it wasn’t.
There was a second bed even though he hadn’t expected that in the ICU. And in that bed was his father. No doubt. He was sitting up in bed, and gods, the left side of his face had an actual noticeable sag. He was older, no doubt, grayer, his hair had receded (but not like the man in the other bed), and he still had the mustache (although it was now a silver color)—but it was him. Wyatt almost turned and ran.
The old man struggled to sit up straighter, and Wyatt’s mother rushed to help him. “Look, Charles… it’s—”
He swung his right arm to stop her, and she visibly flinched.
“Wyatt,” he said. “Is that you?”
Except it didn’t sound like that, and Wyatt wasn’t sure how he’d understood him. It was more like “Waaay-ah, ith tha ooo?”
“Y-yes, Charles,” said his mother. “It’s Wyatt. He came like you asked him.”
“Wayyy-ayt….”
Again Wyatt wanted to run. This was like something out of a horror movie. Somehow, he didn’t. “Daddy? I’m here….”
This time his father let his wife help him sit a little straighter, and then she used the control on the bed to raise him even more.
“Son?”
Wyatt trembled. He’d called him son?
“You’re here….”
“Yes, Daddy….” Tears. They wanted to come. And Wyatt wasn’t sure he could stop them. Son! His father had called him son!
“My son. It is you. You came. Thank the Lord God. You got here in time. I prayed, Wyatt. I prayed you would get here before it’s too late.” At least that’s what Wyatt thought he said.
Wyatt took a step.
“Wyatt (Way-at). Your sister tells me that you aren’t with that man anymore….”
Wyatt nodded. Took a step. “No, Daddy. I’m not.”
His father gave a single nod. “That’s good.” Thasth gud.
It wasn’t good, but at this point, why the fuck not? Wyatt took another step. “Yes, Daddy. I’m not with Howard anymore.”
His father seemed to hiss at the mere mention of Howard’s name. Then he took a deep shuddering breath and said, “Thank Jesus. I’ve prayed and prayed that you would escape that man…. For years I’ve prayed.”
Escape? How had his father known there had been any reason for him to escape? He’d never told Wendy about their problems. But hell, the old man was actually talking to him. Did it matter?
“Yes, Daddy,” he said. “I escaped.” If being kicked out was escaping. If he had wanted to “escape” or not.
His father motioned him toward the bed. Were those tears in his eyes? Wyatt took another step.
“And the Satan stuff?”
That one took Wyatt a little longer to figure out. The slurring of his father’s speech was hard enough to understand. It was horrifying as well. To see the big, strong man in this state. But stroke or no stroke, this one—Satan stuff—he couldn’t let go by.
“It’s not Satan stuff, Daddy. I don’t even believe in—”
This time his father did hiss, long and drawn out, cutting Wyatt off. “It is! That witchcraft stuff. Fortune-telling cards. Candles. All of it. Those people deceive you. Tell you it’s all nature. But where do you think they get their powers, son? It has to come from somewhere.”
Son. He’d called him son!
“They get their powers from Satan.”
“Daddy, it’s not—”
Wyatt’s mother turned and fixed him with a pleading stare. Please, those eyes said. Just let him say whatever he wants.
So Wyatt said nothing.
“I called you here to save you, son. Come to me. Before it’s too late.”
Wyatt did. He stood close enough that his father could reach out and grab his arm in his still-strong right hand. Wyatt winced at the clawlike grasp.
“Kneel, son. Ask for forgiveness.”
Wyatt started. Forgiveness? You want me to ask for forgiveness?
His father nodded. “Yes. Ask the Lord God Almighty. Ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Kneel and ask Jesus into your heart. Ask Him to be your savior.”
Wyatt could barely believe what he was hearing.
“Tell Him you want Him to save you from Satan. That you have turned your back on worshipping the cloven-hoofed one. We can be a family again.”
Wyatt’s eyes went wide. Cloven-hoofed one? This is why his father had wanted him to come? Not to condemn him. Or not—and Wyatt had only secretly hoped for this—to ask Wyatt’s forgiveness. But to ask him to become a Christian? His father thought he was a Satan worshipper? He didn’t even believe in Satan!
But his father wanted them to be a family again. It was almost too much to believe.
Could he do that for his father? At least tell him he’d turned away from Satan? After all, hadn’t he? It was years and years and years ago—when he stopped believing in the devil. But if it might help somehow? This was his father after all. And from what the nurse had said, there wasn’t much hope he would leave the hospital.
But then…
“Tell Him you are no longer a sodomite and fornicator. Tell Him you renounce your faggotry!”
And there was that word.
Faggotry.
Faggot.
Silly little faggot.
“FAGGOT” scratched into the red paint of the Mini Coop.
All the times he’d been called faggot by the kids at school.
By the boys he’d blown. By boys who had blown him! Eagerly sucked him.
His father shouting, “Two faggots can’t make a home. It takes a man and a woman.”
The word that had been hurled at him on the street, even in Kansas City.
The signs that had said God Hates Fags when Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist group had protested Gay Pride one year. A Baptist church. Baptist like his father!
And quite suddenly Wyatt couldn’t do it.
He shook his head.
“No, Daddy. I can’t. I can’t ask to be forgiven because I don’t have anything that I need to ask forgiveness for.”
His father’s eyes went wide, flashing.
“I don’t even believe in Satan!”
Wyatt’s mother turned to him again. “Wyatt!”
Wyatt shook his head again. “And just because I’m not with Howard anymore doesn’t mean that I’m not still a faggot! I am a faggot. I’ve always been a faggot, and I always will be a faggot, and I like being a faggot!”
“Wyatt!” his mother cried. “Please!”
He felt his sister at his side. “Please, Wyatt. Just do whatever he wants and—”
“No!” He looked at his sister in a way that made her step back. “I won’t.”
“Wyatt…,” she whispered. “He wants you back in the family.”
“I don’t care!” He spun back on the horrid old man in the bed. “I’ve been doing fine without you, old man!” The words flew from him and he wasn’t even sure from where. It started with the word faggotry and then seemed to explode from out of him. “I have family that loves me. Just the way I am. I’m gay, and I was born that way, and that means you helped. It was your gay sperm that made me this way.”
His father’s eyes flew wide. He began to shake. His face turned red.
“Enough!” And even though it came out as enuff, it was still with a power that stopped Wyatt’s words. “Enough. Get out, sinner! Get out, thou evil one! Never cast your shadow on me again. I turn my back on you! I dust off the dirt from my feet. I disown you!”
“Charles,” Wyatt’s mother cried. “Please!”
“Wh-what’s going on over there?” came a trembling voice from the other side of the curtain.
Wyatt’s father swung at his wife and caught the side of her face and sent her stumbling back, and the memory of Wyatt’s father hitting him that long-ago day, even the very copper taste of blood in his mouth, came back so strongly that now Wyatt’s eyes were blazing.
He leapt forward and shouted, “Listen, you old bastard! You touch her again and I don’t care that you’re on your fucking death bed, I’ll beat the shit out of you!”
“Nurse!” came the disembodied voice again. “Nurse!”
“You are a vile, evil old man! That lightning should have killed you. I wish it had!”
“Wyatt!” chorused his mother and sister.
His father drew back, a grimace on his face, threw up his arm in front of him. “Get out of here! I know you not! I have no son!”
A nurse ran in. “What’s going on?” she cried.
“Fine!” Wyatt growled. “And I have no father!”
Wyatt dashed out of the room, past the nurse, and into the hall. He crashed into a wall and bounced off of it and nearly fell. His mind and heart were a tornado of emotions, and for a moment he thought he would black out. But the anger rose again, and dammit—tears! No! He would not cry, and that very thought made him all the angrier. For eleven years he’d lived with the echo of the day his father had kicked him out of his home. For years he’d wondered if he would ever see his family again. And this was it? This was what finally happened?
Well fuck him! Wyatt’s mind screamed. “Fuck him!” he exclaimed.
“You,” squawked the nurse, now in the hall. “I’ve called security! Get out of here!”
“Yeah,” Wyatt shouted back. “And fuck you too.”
He turned and fled.
Love does have teeth, he thought. And all too often the wounds never close.
IT WASN’T until Wyatt got outside that he realized he had nowhere to go.
They’d come to the hospital in Wendy’s car.
He could take a cab back, he thought. It would cost more than he could afford, but…. Wait. He slapped his pockets. He didn’t have his keys! He had automatically, even after over a decade, put them on the little table next to the front door like everyone did in the Dolan household. So even if he took a taxi, how would he get in the house?
The extra key…. He was willing to bet anything that it was still under the little rock that said “Welcome” by the front door. Dolan traditions were deep and steady. Like hating faggots.
But what if the key wasn’t there?
He slumped against a car and then, sighing, looked for his sister’s. Sure enough, it was unlocked. Who from Damview locked their cars? Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if the house was unlocked. He opened the car door and sat down, legs outside, and waited.
It wasn’t a long wait.
The sound of a clearing throat caught him, and he looked up to see his mother and sister there, faces ashen. They nodded, and he pulled his legs inside. Then they joined him, and it wasn’t until they were halfway back to the house that they told him his father had been sedated.
He didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
“He didn’t mean it,” his mother said. “It’s the stroke. He isn’t right. You’re still his son. You will always be a part of this family.”
“Have I been a part of it for the past eleven years?” he snapped, and then (almost) regretted it.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, and as soon as they got there, as soon as they went inside—the door wasn’t locked, of course—he grabbed his suitcase and turned to leave.
“Wyatt, no!” His mother blocked his way. “Please. Please don’t go.” He saw she was about to cry, and that made him want to cry and he couldn’t. He couldn’t!
“He told me to go,” Wyatt said.
“And what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” his mother said.
“Wh-what?” he asked.
“I don’t care what he said. You’re home. I haven’t seen you in so long, baby. You can’t go. Please stay. I made Oreo ice-cream cake. Your favorite.”
He trembled. The tears threatened again. “Mamma,” he whispered.
And then he was in her arms again, and gods, Wendy’s too. And even little Joseph was barking and wanting to be a part of it.
So he let himself be led to the table, the dining room one this time, and he sat and his mother brought him a huge piece of her homemade ice-cream cake—layers of crumbled Oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream, topped with Cool Whip and chocolate syrup. There was no way he could eat it all.
But he did.
He did, and he pretended that all was well.
He told his mother about his friends. He told her about Sloan and how they’d met at the call center where he’d worked. He told her about Asher and how he was going to be a movie star and that he was making a movie with Spencer Morrison (but he didn’t tell her the name of the movie or that Spencer-fucking-Morrison had tried to show Asher his cock). And he told her about Scott and how Scott worked for a big law firm and that Scott didn’t used to believe in God or anything, but after going on a “men’s retreat” with Wyatt, he had changed his mind (and he didn’t tell her what kind of retreat it was or that her version of God wasn’t the one that Scott was starting to believe in). Finally he told her that he was the manager of a store that was respected all over the country, and she beamed with pride (and he didn’t tell her what kind of store).
In other words, he edited his life.
She made hot chocolate while he talked, real hot chocolate, not the instant kind.
And after a while, he saw it in her eyes. Saw it in those eyes that had always shone with her love, but were never, ever naïve. Saw that she knew he was leaving things out. She didn’t stop him, though. She really didn’t want to know.
Strangely, that was all right.
She told him she was sorry that Howard had kicked him out and that he had lost his house, but she was so happy he had such good friends to take care of him.
Sometime after that she was yawning, and so was he. He realized he was almost catastrophically exhausted and needed to go to bed. She told him he could stay in his old room, that she had it all ready for him. But after he kissed her good night, he saw that it wasn’t his room. Not anymore. There was nothing of him there. His poster of Cyan Carrington was gone. He would never have imagined as a boy that one day he would be friends with Cedar Carrington—her son! The poster of the dragon was gone too, and the one of Ian McKellen as Gandalf.
Instead there was the famous poster—in a tacky, cheap gold frame—with the poem “Footprints in the Sand” and the bare foot impressions on a beach.
And a painting of Jesus standing at the door and knocking.
Everything was moved around, and his bedspread, the dark blue one with stars all over it, was gone, and there was a gingham one instead. His desk was gone too, replaced by a sewing machine, and he saw there was a folded ironing board behind the door.
He had basically been erased.
Could he sleep here?
He didn’t know if he could.
But in the end, he did.
He lay in the bed and looked up at the ceiling, and he finally found something that was the same. The cracks. The one in the corner that reminded him of the head of a buffalo. The one that ran right through the middle and branched twice and had always made him think of a river. Maybe one he could take to get away from the tiny town of Damview.
He was looking at those cracks when he finally drifted off to sleep.
There were only a few nightmares.
HE LEFT, despite his mother’s protests, the next morning.
Wyatt couldn’t stay. He knew that.
Plus he was making his mother lie, and when she said she didn’t care, and that what Wyatt’s father didn’t know wasn’t a lie, Wyatt reminded her of the sin of omission.
“I have to go, Mamma.”
“Can’t you stay until Wendy gets here?”
“Will she have the kids?”
His mother’s silence answered his question. It also confirmed his suspicions. Norman, Wendy’s husband, wouldn’t allow it.
“He’s just like your father,” his mother whispered. And then it quite suddenly occurred to him that so was Howard. Big and bold and cruel.
Wow, Wendy, he thought. What they say is true. We grow up and marry our father, don’t we?
So he took his one bag, and he held his mother tight, and then he left. She made him take the leftover chicken-fried steak, along with gravy and mashed potatoes and the remains of the fried green tomatoes, even though they wouldn’t be nearly as good microwaved. She would have sent him with ice-cream cake too, but there would have been no way to keep it from melting on the long trip back home. His real home now.
He did have a piece before he left, even though she offered to make him a big breakfast with eggs and fried potatoes and pancakes.
No. He couldn’t. It might tempt him to stay.
And he couldn’t.
Not in this place where he had been erased.
She stood and watched him go, holding Joseph close. For security, Wyatt imagined.
He didn’t cry until he got to Ava.
He pulled over and he bawled. He cried and cried and cried until there were simply no tears left.
He thought of where he had been—not only in the last eleven or so hours, but the last eleven years. He thought of the man who had rescued him, only to hurt him over and over and over again—and why? Why had Howard done the things he’d done over the last five years or so? How could a man who had been so fundamentally good turn so… so evil? Or had he always been that way? Had he tricked Wyatt? Had he made him believe in some character that Howard had created and maintained for over five years?
(“The only reason you get laid is because of me. I tell them they have to have sex with you if they want me.”)
He thought of Howard walking into the store, eyes red and swollen, and telling him, “I’ve got it….” A day that seemed so long ago but in reality was only two. How he wasn’t even sure what had happened to Howard. Katherine was rushing him out the door and into her van, and he couldn’t remember if he’d said anything to Howard after that.
He thought of the day he came home from depositing his check at the bank and saw his father sitting at the kitchen table with Wyatt’s Scott Cunningham books and several of his tarot decks, his eyes blazing with fire. How his stomach had dropped, his heart stopped, and how he had literally nearly peed his pants.
About the slap.
Wiping away blood.
Driving and seeing his mother in his rearview mirror and wondering if he’d ever see her again.
The phone call where his father had told him that two men couldn’t make a nest. Two sodomites. Faggots.
He considered the long drive ahead of him and how surprised Katherine would be to see him returning to work…
…and wondering if it was Kitty or Melrose or one of his other coworkers who scratched the word “faggot” on his car door.
He thought of all that and more, for what else did he have to do, sitting in that parking lot in the tiny town of Ava?
Wyatt thought of those things and knew he just wasn’t ready to face the world. Face anything. Anyone.
Not even his best friends. His wonderful, well-meaning, loving friends—all of them with lovers and perfect little worlds of their own.
He had to get away.
Someplace safe.
And then he did something purely on impulse.
He called Camp Sanctuary.
Gryphon, one of the caretakers of the land, answered on the first ring. It surprised Wyatt until he realized that it was off-season and he probably didn’t have a lot to do this time of year.
“Hey, Gryphon. It’s Wyatt.”
“Hello, Wyatt,” he exclaimed, sounding as if Wyatt’s call had made not only his day but maybe even his month. “How are you?”
Those five words and already Wyatt knew this was right. “Well,” Wyatt replied. “That’s what I called you about. I guess I’m not doing too well.”
“What’s wrong?” came the question—fast and full of concern.
Someplace safe, Wyatt thought.
“I need to come to Camp. I know you’re probably closed… but, Gryphon… I need to get away. I need someplace safe. The world…. Oh, gods, Gryphon. It… I don’t know if you heard, but Howard left me. And my dad just had a stroke. And then he disowned me… again. And—”
“Say no more, Wyatt. You’re welcome.”
“I—I am?”
“Yes. I’ll put you down for North Three. The cabin with the wood-burning stove.”
“Th-that would be p-perfect,” Wyatt said, feeling a warm blanket of gratitude settling over him. “That would be wonderful. I just have to get away for a little while. Be alone. All alone. I won’t even bother you. You will hardly know I’m there.”
“I’ll make sure to have some wood ready for you.”
Wyatt’s mouth fell open. He thought he’d buy some firewood somewhere on the way. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Nonsense,” Gryphon said. “No problem for our favorite little bear.”
Favorite little bear?
“Especially with all you’ve done for Camp Sanctuary. Helping so much with the big Memorial Day celebration each year.” It was the weekend that was the big fund-raiser for the camp. Just last year the land mortgage had finally been paid off—and five years early.
“I really haven’t done that much,” Wyatt said. He’d only helped.
“When will you be here?”
“Well… tomorrow sometime?” It was pretty spontaneous, but the more he went with it, the more he knew it was right.
Someplace safe.
Because love can have teeth and right now it felt as if the wounds would never close.
He needed someplace healing.
What better place than Camp Sanctuary?
And the fact that Camp was basically closed would mean alone time.
“You got it. How long?”
How long? “A few days?” Wyatt said.
Would that give him time to stop home and pack? He would need food. And he wouldn’t necessarily want to do much cooking while he was there, even though there was a good cooking stove on the cabin’s front porch.
“However long you want, I just needed to know how much wood to have for you.”
“Gryphon, you don’t need to—”
“So you’re trying to talk me out of it?”
Wyatt shut his mouth. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?
“Thank you, Gryphon.”
“You shouldn’t need a lot,” Gryphon said by way of an answer. “I checked the forecast, and there’s a call for snow, but only a couple of inches.
Snow might be nice, he thought.
“Okay,” Wyatt said. “Thanks.”
“Then I’ll see you—tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Wyatt said. He grinned. Despite everything, suddenly he felt a sense of hope.
“All right! Now Saffron needs me.”
Saffron was his wife of untold years.
“Okay,” Wyatt said again. “See you soon.”
They hung up, and despite the fact that he had many miles to go before he was home, it was with just a little less sense of dread.
He popped his P!nk CD out and listened to the radio. He found a station that was playing songs he’d never heard of. Nice songs. Soothing ones for the most part, with only a few of them being sad. Each one seemed more amazing than the last. New Age songs, he thought. Songs his father would have called Satanic, probably. And right here in the middle of Bible country.
Who would have thought?
He was listening to one that suddenly grabbed his attention when the sound began to crackle out. Beautiful. But gods…. So tragic! A song about a son not being loved. The lyrics called to him.
When they stop fighting and turn out the lights
I pretend that I’m already sleeping
After the violence alone in the silence
Just me and the secret I’m keeping
My dad tells me I’m not worth anything
And I’ve almost admitted defeat…
Wyatt moaned. The radio crackled again. No! He didn’t want to lose the song! He had to hear the rest of it. It was about him. And his father. He had to hear where the song was going, and there was no place to pull over.
…but in my dreams I can fly
And I soar and my feet touch the sky
And it seems I can go
Anywhere if I try
And the world’s not so dark
When the clouds make it white
If there’s no hope, tell me why
In my dreams I can fly.
Wyatt sighed. Listened as the chorus repeated and then was lost in static.
That song….
The timing.
The lyrics hurt.
But somehow, they filled him with hope.
And he didn’t even know who the singer was.
But that’s what Google was for, right?
Wyatt smiled.
Somehow, he was feeling hope.
Somehow he was feeling he just might be ready to fly.