JED KING SAT in his truck in the parking lot across the street, staring at the queers’ house. His idling truck rocked on its springs. Rain dappled the windshield. The windshield wipers swept. The rain dappled. Jed watched.
He powered down his truck window and fished the wad of tobacco out of his lower lip, flicked it off his fingers, spat to the pavement, and packed a new pinch in his lip, resting his arm on the window frame, the rain wetting his shirt sleeve.
He enjoyed the buzz as the nicotine spiked his blood and he stared at the pansies’ house.
The truck’s radio was set to an AM station, the volume low, as if the talk-show host and his guest were sharing secrets not meant to be overheard by just anyone.
“They want you to like them,” the host said. “They want your kids to like them, to see them as flawed but good people, just like you and me.”
“Amen,” said the guest.
“But they’re not just like you and me. Are they?”
“No,” King said.
“They want you to believe their issue is the same as that of blacks in the sixties. A human-rights issue. It is not. Being black is not a choice.”
King nodded, pounded a fist on the steering will.
“I have with me today Malcolm Johnson, an Afro-American minister who feels it’s an insult for homosexuals to relate their cause to that of the civil rights movement of Afro Americans.”
King turned up the volume.
The front door to the queens’ house opened.
A neighbor’s dog barked.
The screen door slammed.
Jed sat up, gripped the steering wheel.
The windshield wipers swept.
Rain dappled.
Jon Merryfield stepped from the house and pulled the collar of his jacket up against the rain then waved back toward someone King could not see.
How could a man defend such people? It made King sick.
Merryfield had always unnerved King in a remote way King couldn’t quite nail.
King had known Merryfield since Merryfield was a strange, lonely kid living with his grandparents.
He’d always been off.
Fey.
King wondered.
Merryfield jogged across the lot behind King’s truck. The guy was married, but that meant squat. Years ago, King used to spot Merryfield at Sarah’s Sawmill when Merryfield had just come back from some fancy-ass southern law school. He’d shoot pool in a polo shirt but try to act like he belonged among working men. He’d curse. Swill cheap draft beer. Dip tobacco. But his pool game betrayed him; it was all geometry. Dry. Calculated. No instinct. Just like a lawyer.
A guy who tried so hard to belong where he never would had a screw loose, if you asked King.
King watched Merryfield climb into his fucking Land Rover and rest his forehead on the steering wheel. Merryfield remained like that so long King thought he’d fallen asleep.
Finally, Merryfield stirred, stared out his windshield in a trance, then drove out of the lot.
King looked back at the entrance of the queers’ house, eyes squeezed to the slits.
The ginger-haired queer sauntered out of the house now, a black scarf tucked down the front neck of a buttoned suede coat as he swished down the sidewalk in his hurried fussy gait, as if he’d been born late and ever since had been trying to catch up to the person he was supposed to be. He had that lame old mutt on a leash with him. Not that the damn thing needed a leash. It could barely walk, and could barely squat now as it took a dump on the lawn and the queer scooped it up in one of those yuppie crap sacks. Why they didn’t show the damned dog mercy and put it down, King didn’t know. Selfish was what.
The queer brought the dog inside and came back out alone.
King grabbed a ball cap from the dash and got out of his truck.
The November wind raked his face. The air was raw and wet. He liked it.
A murder of crows swam overhead on the stiff winds, cawing raucously.
King set the ball cap on his head and squeezed the bill tight.
The queer disappeared around the corner.
King followed.
As the queer ventured into the Riverside Card Shop, King staged himself a couple doors down.
A few minutes later, the queer reappeared carrying a small bag.
King bent as if to tie his work boot as the queer entered Brew Ha Ha coffee shop one door down from King who spat tobacco juice on the sidewalk.
The queer walked back out, an enormous coffee in one hand, the bag in the other, headed toward King.
Here we go, King thought, and he came at the queen full stride, shoulders squared, and caught the queer hard in his shoulder.
Steaming coffee sloshed from the cup all over the queen’s suede jacket and hands.
“Fuck!” the queen shouted, dropping his coffee and the bag and gripping his burned hand with his good hand. He looked up at King.
King stared him cold. Into silence. The pussy.
“Careful,” King said and ambled back toward his truck, spinning his truck keys around a finger.