Today You Get Stand-In Story

There is no new Love Letters today. I hate that there isn't, I keep a schedule for a reason and this is twice in the last 5 weeks I've broken it, but I've gotta say these are some pretty extravagant extenuating circumstances.  I left you guys with a terrible cliffhanger, but then, we're kind of hanging onto a cliff ourselves right now.

I've spent my non-working time digging on my road, at the top of which rests my car, and at the bottom of which rests a collapsing culvert.  I figure I should still try to make the road usable, for whenever we manage to get a crew up here to help fix things.  My man and I are sharing a vehicle, and we've got neighbors to help who weren't as lucky as us.  Because we were truly, incredibly lucky with this storm.  Our home is fine, we're both mostly healthy (I'm a little screwed up, but what else is new?) and the cat is reassuringly ornery.  So, lucky!  But time isn't something we've had a lot of.  Time or clean water.  I'm boiling and bleaching my water again, it's like being back in Togo.  I risked a shower today--bring it, microbes!  No wait, don't.  Please don't bring it...

So, I'm going to do my best to have both Love Letters and the first entry for Cody's story--which I haven't titled yet, I need to--for you next week, as an apology.  Today, you get the first part of a story titled Dangerous Territory coming out next month in an SMP anthology.  This is just me givin' my darling something to go on, because I love you.  Read and enjoy, or don't and get your recompense next week.  

I hope you all are safe and happy.  Thanks for your lovely comments over the past week, I've really appreciated it and I'm sorry for delays in response--the power was iffy for awhile.

***

Dangerous Territory

By Cari Z

Carter Bly stared blankly at his father’s tombstone, so exhausted now that he couldn’t spare the energy to think about why he’d beaten his way out to the cemetery in the middle of a dust storm, too tired to think of anything except his own failure.  One month his pa had been in his grave.  One month was all it had taken for everything to go to hell.

The wind blew dry and hot this time of year across the Oklahoma Territories, stinging the skin with sand and filling every crevice of skin and cloth with dirt.  Carter was aware, absently, that he looked a damn fool out here, battered felt hat clenched in his fist, dust marking out the premature lines in his face, carved after decades of squinting into the sun.  He’d worked his whole life with his father on the ranch, worked to make it bigger and better.  More animals, better feed, the finest cattle west of the Mississippi.  Cattle that would command a great price at auction.  Cattle that would give him and his sister an easier life than their parents had had.

Carter’s eyes ached, red-rimmed and gritty from sleepless nights and never-ending frustration.  He ran a clumsy hand through his hair, felt the strands clump thick and greasy against his palm.  His mama would have switched him something fierce if she could see what he looked like right now. 

He glanced over at his mother’s tombstone, five feet away.  It was a little rounder about the edges than his pa’s, but the engraving was still clear.  Caroline Bly had been dead for five years, and Carter had never thought of that as something to be thankful for before now.  As it was, he was grateful she’d been spared the pain of seeing everything she’d worked for fall to pieces.

Well, not everything.  From one way of looking, Millie had done more than all right for herself.  Carter knew that was how his sister saw it; it was how she had to see it if she was going to live with herself.  Both Carter and Millie had taken after their father, and while in Carter’s case that made him a fairly handsome man, tall and long-legged and strong-featured, Millie had ended up a gangly, raw-boned and strong-featured woman, which no woman wanted to be called.  She’d been convinced she’d live and die a spinster before their little town had become a stopping point for barges heading downriver to the big trading cities.  Before Percy.

“Carter.”  A heavy hand clapped his shoulder, shaking him out of his reverie.  “Come on back to the big house now, son.”

His eyes prickled painfully at the word ‘son,’ but any moisture was soon swept away by the wind.  “I will not sleep in that house while he’s under the same roof.”

“Half of that roof is yours,” his company pointed out.  “You should claim it.”

“I can’t.”  Carter shook his head, the freshness of his misery finally resurfacing.  “I can’t, Keena.  I’ll punch the man in the face before he says two words, and then who knows what his fancy-pants lawyer will be able to bleed outta me?  I can’t go back there, not…”  Not broken.  Not like this.  Not while all I can think of is everything that I’ve lost.

“Then come home with me,” Keena said gently.  “Gertrude wants to get her hands on you anyway; she’s convinced you’ll starve to death without a cook around up there.”

“Percy has provided his own cook,” Carter sneered.  “Calls him a chef, actually.  Boy from the Loozy-Do who can’t even make biscuits without burnin’ ‘em.  Covers perfectly good steak with sauces, and he actually brought gator sausage with him.  Throws it into the grits and ruins the taste.  Gator.  Who in the hell eats gator?”

“Come home,” Keena repeated.  “You can get a bath, get some food, some sleep.  Tomorrow is soon enough to figure out the rest of it.”

Carter wanted to argue, wanted to say that there was nothing to figure out, he was pure and simple screwed, that was all, screwed out of his inheritance by his besotted sister and her snake-eyed husband, but he knew Keena didn’t want to hear that.  The old man had worked on this ranch since before Carter was born, and he was the closest thing to family that Carter had now outside of Millie.  Hell, he and his wife Gertrude might be Carter’s closest thing to family including Millie, what with how she’d behaved of late, like some prissy, weak-minded debutante who wouldn’t even breathe without asking for her husband’s permission first.  That wasn’t the sister he knew.  Nothing was familiar anymore, nothing except…

“C’mon now,” Keena coaxed him, and Carter let himself be led away from his father’s grave.  There was no comfort to be had there, anyway.

Keena and Gertrude had a small place about a half-mile from the big house, where they’d lived ever since they’d first married and Pa had put Keena in charge of the herd.  Carter used to run back and forth between the two homes on a daily basis, delivering food or gossip for the women, carrying plans and whiskey for the men.  Gertrude and Caroline had been friends their whole lives, and Caroline had been one of the only people not to shun Gertrude after she’d married Keena. 

Keena was half shifter, and that sort of intermarriage was still frowned upon by polite society.  Fierce shifter clans were a large part of the reason that early efforts to make this new land into one united country had failed so spectacularly; the newcomers might have had better guns, but they couldn’t track a hawk through the sky, or a wolf into the mountains.  

Many attempts at inroads into shifter territory had been made, but the cost was usually so high for whomever tried it that an uneasy peace had gradually settled over the land.  Shifters gave up territory they didn’t much care for to whomever could grab it first, and with no central government that made for a lot of small, insular communities. 

Apart from the original thirteen colonies back east, who had gotten their land in part by passing along illness before shifters got wise to it, the continent was a patchwork of claims.  Various shifter tribes, the Oklahoma Territories, the Dukedom of Louisiana, the People’s Republic of Texas…it was a wild place, this part of the world.  Hardscrabble lives made it difficult to trust outsiders, and Keena was shunned by both groups.  The Blys had provided him and his family with a sanctuary, and now even that might be taken away.

Keena pulled Carter to the small barn outside his home, opened up a rain barrel that had nearly gone dry and dampened a handkerchief, then passed it over.  “Better clean up some first, or Gertrude will take one look atcha and send you right back outside.”

Carter took the cloth and ran it numbly over his face, shutting his eyes for a moment and letting the cool water wash some of the grit away.  God, he was so tired…it was tempting to keep the thin cotton draped there, easing the harshness of his breaths and taking away some of the pain of reality for a while, but Carter knew he couldn’t hide from his troubles.  He had tonight, and only tonight, to figure out a plan that would keep him independent, or he’d have to give in to Percy’s demands.  There was too much at stake for him to be obstinate now.

Keena’s warm hand touched Carter’s elbow.  “C’mon now, son,” he murmured, turning them both toward the house.  “Come on.”

Inside that humble front door was the warmth and welcome that Carter had always received from Gertrude, in the form of a pair of work-weathered hands clasping his face and a brief, concerned cluck.  “What type of fool are ya, Carter, to go out into those dustups with nothing but a single layer, hmm?” she asked him with a sigh.  “Your mama didn’t raise you to be ignorin’ the weather.”  She pointed at one of the chairs—the widest one, the one she’d always given to his father before now—at the table.  “Go and sit down before you fall down and let me get some food into you.  Both of you,” she added, including her husband in her admonition.  He raised his hands peaceably and sat down.

They stayed mostly quiet while they ate, Keena and Gertrude exchanging soft, easy words and touches as the food made its way around the table.  It was a light evening meal, not the hearty dinner served earlier in the day, but there was bread and slices of cold, salted ham, and stewed apples flavored with cinnamon and a few precious cloves.  That bottle of cloves had been Caroline Bly’s last gift to Gertrude, and the experienced cook had made them last for half a decade so far.  Carter gulped down his lemon water, finally realizing how parched he was, and had seconds under Gertrude’s watchful eye until he could eat no more.  While she cleared the plates, Keena took out a bottle of whiskey and poured them all a dram.

“Now, before we let ourselves go, why don’t you tell me what happened up at the big house today?” Keena asked gently.  “Sharing your burden might help ease it.”

Carter chuckled bitterly.  “I was going to have to talk to you about it anyway.  It’s got to do with the running of the ranch.”

Gertrude frowned as she sat back down.  “I thought that was settled,” she said.  “You and your sister split it equally, just like your father intended.”

“Only what’s left isn’t equal anymore,” Carter said with a sigh.

“What’s that mean, son?”

“It doesn’t take into account Millie’s dowry.”

Now Keena frowned.  “But the dowry was settled on before your father died.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t delivered,” Carter explained.  “It’s supposed to be ten percent of the total herd.  We didn’t have time to plan the ceremony while pa was so poorly, and since he’s been gone, well, there hasn’t been time for a wedding.”

“We knew about this,” Gertrude said.  “It’s all planned out now, isn’t it?  They’re going to marry next spring.”

“Can’t wait that long.  Millie’s pregnant.”

Gertrude’s hand flew to her mouth.  “Oh dear.  Oh, that poor dear.  Poor, stupid girl.”

“She’s not far enough along to show, not yet, but she was scared to death that Percy was going to change his mind and leave her, so she convinced him to marry her now.”  Carter snorted derisively.  “Didn’t take much convincing, honestly, that man would have had her the same day he met her if it meant getting a chance any sooner at our cattle and our land.  He’d already made himself comfortable in our home, and I let him, I let him have a hand in the running of my house because I thought it helped Millie, having him closer instead of in town.

“Apparently I kept him too close.  She married him today, at the courthouse.  She didn’t even bother to tell me until they got back.”  It hurt to think about, the look of nervous defiance on his sister’s face, her blank expression as Percy sat down in front of Carter and explained to him that, as 60 percent of the herd now belonged to him, and his sister had signed all of her authority over to her husband, and that by territory law Percy had control of the running of the ranch now.  And the first thing he would do, he said, was—

“—fire that wretched old shifter fellow who tends the beasts.”  Percy’s tone had been full of disdain, his modulated, educated words carelessly hateful.  He was dressed in his Sunday best coming back from the courthouse, a peacock next to his new wife’s drab peahen, for all that she’d tried.  Millie wouldn’t meet Carter’s eyes.  “I prefer to staff my own kind, not half-breeds or other raffle.”

“You can’t fire him,” Carter had replied, incensed and doing his best not to show it.  “He knows this land better than anyone, he keeps the snakes away from the animals, he knows which cows are about to drop, and he almost never loses a calf.  This ranch needs him.”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” Percy said with a sniff.  “And as I own controlling interest in this quaint little venture, I am the one who has the final say.”

Carter knew, then, that there was no way he could continue on here, in the house he’d been born and raised in, with this man and the sister he didn’t know anymore.  He’d grind his teeth to nothing holding back his rage, when all he wanted was to sock this dandy fop so hard in the jaw he couldn’t eat for a month.  He wanted to yell at his sister, to demand her support after everything they’d been through together, but he couldn’t do that to Millie.  No one should be made to choose between their husband and their family, so Carter would take that choice out of her hands.  He just had to figure out how to do it without impoverishing himself.

Keena and Gertrude were both silent, absorbing what Carter had shared.  Gertrude spoke first.  “That man doesn’t know the first thing about ranching,” she snapped.  “Keena’s worth the work of ten of his fancy cowboys.”

“I know it,” Carter agreed.  “I got Percy to agree to accept severance pay in exchange for me breakin’ off my share of the herd.”

“How much money?” Keena asked immediately.  “And when?”

“Another ten percent.  It’ll leave me with fewer than a thousand head, but we can build up from that.”  Carter blew out a frustrated breath.  “The thing is, I don’t have the money right now, and he won’t take the payment in more cattle.  Bastard’s already got his livestock booked on the first barges down to auction at the Big Top, and there’s no room for mine on board.  If he floods the market before I get there, I won’t get enough for my stock to make enough to pay him to sever with me.”

“And if you don’t sever now…”

“Then he has the running of the ranch for a year, while I scrape the money together,” Carter sighed.  “He’ll take this house.  He’s said as much, he wants it for his own men.”

Gertrude paled, and her eyes suddenly glistened in the lamp light.  “But…we’ve been here since we first got married, longer than you’ve been livin’.”  Her husband reached out and took her hand, stroking it gently.  She turned towards him and pressed her face into his shoulder.  Carter had never seen Gertrude cry before, not after her miscarriages, not even after his mama died.  To see it now made him feel strangely ashamed of himself.

Keena spoke up after a moment.  “You’ve got to get to auction before Percy.”

“I know,” Carter said, clenching his hands in his hair.  “I just don’t know how.  If the rains are late, real late, I could drive ‘em to auction and get there first, but that’s a long trip and I need you here, looking after the heifers and their calves.  It would be hard as hell by myself.”

“You could use Mason Canyon,” Keena said, and both Gertrude and Carter stared at him like he was crazy.

“That’s shifter territory,” Carter said at last. 

“The last time you went to speak to them, they tried to shoot you!” his wife exclaimed, wiping furiously at her eyes.

“The local tribe’s leadership has just changed.  I think their new chief might deal with me.”

Shifters willing to deal?  That didn’t happen in the Oklahoma Territories.  You carved out what you could hold and prayed no one saw fit to fight you for it.  Carter tried another tack.  “Mason Canyon’s full of snakes--they’d decimate my herd.”

“These shifters can handle any snake,” Keena said calmly.  “Mason Canyon is almost a straight shot right down to the Big Top.  You’d get there in under two weeks, and your guide could help you handle the cattle.”

God damn, but that was mighty tempting… Carter strained to hold on to his objectivity.  “If the rains come early,” he murmured, “the canyon will flood.  I could lose everything.”

“If you don’t try,” Keena told him bluntly, “you’ll lose everything anyway.  And so will we.”  He leaned forward a little, his plain, wide face earnest.  “Let me try to strike a deal.  If this works, you could make enough to pay off your debts and have enough to start over, build your own place, claim your own land.  I will help you.”

“We both will,” Gertrude said, then threw up her hands in exasperation.  “Assuming that this old fool doesn’t go off and get himself killed tonight dealing with those ruffians.”

Carter swallowed hard.  “You think it could work?”

Keena nodded slowly.  “I think it has to work.”  He pushed his chair back and stood up.  “This tribe is more active at night.  I should go before the moon is too high, though.”

“Are you sure you don’t—”

“Don’t you even think about going with him,” Gertrude interrupted.  “You need to sleep.  You’re dead on your feet.  I’ve got the spare bed all made up.”

“If you’re sure…”

“Of course I’m sure.  Go on, there’s more water in the room, and a kit for shaving in the morning.” 

“Get some sleep,” Keena reiterated.  “You’ll need it for the journey you’ve got ahead of you.”

A journey down Mason Canyon…the result was either going to be utterly brilliant or the worst mistake of his life.  Right now Carter was too tired to care.  He levered himself out of his chair, biting back a groan at the stiffness in his arms, and headed for the second bedroom.

The room was small, with hardly enough room for the slender bed, rough wooden nightstand with mirror, kit and lamp upon it, but it was homey and familiar.  Carter had slept in that bed more times than he could remember over the course of his life.  It was too short for him now, but he still found it more comfortable than anything he’d be sleeping in back in the Big House.  At least here, he could breathe.

He shucked off his dirty clothes and hung them over the rail at the foot of the bed, used the wet rag in the basin to wipe the worst of the sweat and dirt away, then slipped under the cool, stiff covers.  Carter was so wound up he honestly didn’t think he’d sleep, but the days of toil had taken their toll, and the moment his body actually began to relax, he was dead to the world.

***

Updated: It's Flooding Here...

Update: The rain has stopped for now and the water is going down, but it's still a bloody mess at my place.  My car is trapped at the top of the hill and getting it down will be perilous, there's a weakened culvert that could collapse at any time on the road below us, and I also brilliantly took out my own knee somehow, so now I'm limping around and not much good at the manual labor required to start getting past this.  I don't often need to take time outs to reassemble my life and pull myself back together, but now is looking like one of those time.  I'm sorry in advance if there's a delay with the next update for Love Letters, and while I've started the Cody story, there isn't enough of it to publish for you yet.  If I can't get a decent post together by Tuesday I'll give you a sneak peek at a story getting published next month in the Forgotten Menagerie anthology with Storm Moon Press.  Sorry, guys.  Life is weird.


Boulder County has gotten almost 7 inches in the past 24 hours, and that means flash floods.  The student housing next to the central creek in Boulder has been evacuated, and so has the place where I would normally work today, a senior living community with a large and complicated population.

Flooding pic from on campus last night

My man and I live up in the mountains, where you'd think there'd be less of a problem because of higher ground.  Hah!  No.  Let me share the wonders of this torrential rain with you.

This is our road.

This is the waterfall coming around the retaining wall, diverting water down our road so that it doesn't go straight into the house.

There's me standing next to where the other side of the retaining wall is failing, and the little sinkhole that's getting a little bigger every hour.

How Exciting!

Actually both exciting and scary.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, please.  We're pretty much trapped at home because the canyon leading to our road is having rockfall issues, and going into town wouldn't do much good anyway since the roads are a mess, so.  Hell, at least I'm not at work today.  Which, oh yeah, evacuated, so!  Holy crap!  I hope you all are doing great!

Love Letters Post #31

 

Notes:  Ugh, and here we have boys behaving badly.  I hate verbal confrontations, both in person and on the written page, and my skin literally crawled writing some of this.  But it had to happen.  This is that time in the story where nothing is sunshine and roses and no one is perfectly right or perfectly wrong.  But there will be a light at the end of this tunnel eventually.

Title: Love Letters

 

Part Thirty-One: Spoke Up, Got Out

 

***

 

 

Uncle Bill’s departure was officially the end of the Maydays celebration.  DeeDee, paler and more wan than Ben had ever seen her, put a hand to her head and walked inside without saying a word to anyone.  Ryan was right behind her, after giving Ben a look that was somewhere between frightened and aghast.  Family members milled about and muttered to one another behind their cake forks.  Surprisingly, Cheryl was the one to start organizing everyone.

“I think we’ll call it a day!” she said, managing a brightness in her voice that was completely fake, yet everyone seemed to want to believe it.  “Joey, go with your sister back inside, okay?  Aunt Sissy, if you could grab some Tupperware in the kitchen and help package up the cake for the birthday folks, that would be lovely.  If everyone else could make sure the lawn is cleaned up and take care of their trash, we’d all certainly appreciate it.  Happy Maydays, everyone!”  With that, she started picking up the extra food and carrying it back inside.  Ben helped her, because it seemed like a better thing to do than stand around getting stared at by the rest of the clan.

Of course there were the dawdlers.  Cousin Matthew tried to chat Ben up again, to give him a “way to be a real man!” back slap and share a guffaw at Bill’s expense, but Ben swiftly sidestepped him and put the rest of the chocolate cake in the fridge.  Aunt Sissy and several of the other women offered to help with the dishes, their eyes brightly lit with the excitement of an impending gossip session, but Cheryl politely pointed out that since everyone had used paper plates and plastic cups, there were hardly any dishes left to do.

“Thank you so much for coming, though,” she said as she ushered people out the front door.  “Yes, I’m sure we’ll call you as soon as we can.  Of course we’re due for a chat, Linda.  Yes, I’ll make sure to pass along DeeDee’s fried chicken recipe, Harley, don’t worry.  Bye now.  Bye!”  She shut the door on the last of them, turned her back to it and sighed.  “Vultures,” she muttered.  She looked over at Ben, who stood uncertainly in the hallway, and gave him a little smile.  “You sure know how to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“I hadn’t planned to do that,” Ben said, still feeling a little numb.

“I’m sure you didn’t.  Ryan gave you the talk, right?”  Cheryl pushed off the door and headed back into the kitchen.  Ben followed her.  “The one about not sayin’ anything to upset Uncle Bill?”

“He did, yes.”

Cheryl turned back to face Ben, resting her hips against one of the long countertops.  “So why did you, then?”

“I’m not really sure,” Ben said honestly.  “I was prepared for the homophobic comments and the general jackassery, but I didn’t expect him to go after Joey.”

“He never used to,” Cheryl said.  “Not like that.  Brody wouldn’t take it, and he was always Bill’s favorite nephew.  Bill used to say that if only Brody had been raised right, he could have been the president someday.  Bill and Joseph both wanted to groom him for public office.  Before Joseph died he was trying to convince Brody to go to law school instead of staying on as a cop.  It’s one of the few things that man and I ever agreed on,” she added with a bitter smile.

“Brody would never have done it,” Ben said.  “He wasn’t never all that crazy about school.  He liked to be part of the action.”

“So I learned, over the years.”  Cheryl picked up a random glass of wine with her good hand and drained it.  “You know he was scouted for the pros?  He had a chance to get picked up in the draft, to be a real quarterback for a pro team, and he didn’t take it.”  She stared at the empty glass in her hands as though wishing hard enough would fill it up again.  “He went into the army instead.”

“I know, Cheryl.”

“I know you know.”  She laughed.  “It always bothered me, how much you knew.”

“Frankly, it’s always bothered me how much you didn’t care to know,” Ben said sharply, tired of playing around.  If he was going to be in the doghouse after today, he might as well go all the way.  “Brody had wanted to join the military since he was eleven; that was always his goal.  The police force was a natural progression after he came home.  He wanted to help people with his life, not just play football because he was good at it and it would make him a lot of money.  I think growing up in this household there was always plenty of money, but a hell of a shortage when it came to love.  I know there was for Ryan, at least.”

Cheryl pursed her lips.  It looked like she was trying not to cry.  “You stood up for me.  Why?”

“Because your children don’t need to hear anyone say those things about their mother,” Ben replied.  “Even if some of it’s true.”  They glared at each other, a brittle stand-off.  It was broken by Ryan, who appeared in the entryway to the kitchen.  He looked unhappy.  And angry.

“Cheryl, could I have a minute with Ben?”

“Take all the time you want,” she said, pushing off the counter and walking out without another word.  Ben waited for her footsteps to fade before starting.  “Ryan—”

“Ben, what the hell?” Ryan exclaimed.  “Why did you do that?”

“Were you listening to him?” Ben demanded, feeling his own anger start to surface now.  He didn’t have anything to be guilty about, damn it.  “Did you even hear what that man was saying to you, or have you heard it so often that it just doesn’t register anymore?”

“I told you he was a son of a bitch!” Ryan shouted.  “I told you he’d be that way, and I also asked you—Ben, we talked about this—I asked you not to say anything.  And you told me you wouldn’t!”

“I didn’t say anything when he was calling you a godless queer, I didn’t say anything when he told your mother that the best thing about her was her cooking, and I didn’t even say anything when he started in on Brody’s death and the fact that none of the rest of you could ever be good enough!  But I couldn’t stand there and let him talk about Cheryl that way, not in front of her own children,” Ben yelled back.  “It was tearing them up, how did you not see that?  You think your brother would have wanted his wife to be degraded like that in front of your entire family?  In front of their kids?  Jesus, it’s no wonder Cheryl is an alcoholic when she’s treated that way.  Would Brody have put up with that?”

“You’re not Brody!” Ryan said viciously.  “You’re not her husband, you’re not their father, you’re not even family.  You don’t understand what’s really going on here, Ben.”

“Because you haven’t bothered to explain it to me,” Ben said, trying to ignore the sharp pang in his chest from Ryan’s words.

“Because I didn’t want to air all my family’s dirty laundry in front of you!” Ryan snapped.  “Because I wanted you to enjoy yourself and not worry and have a good time here, not be thinking about how my mother’s finances are hanging by a fucking thread and Cheryl’s a drink away from killing herself and the kids are so sick with missing their dad that just watching them makes me want to fucking cry!  Because I’m not Brody either, Ben, and I can’t even come close: not for Cheryl, not for my mother, not for the kids.  All I can do is be here and try to glue the fucking pieces back together as best as I can, which isn’t very well.”  His shoulders slumped a little. 

“My mother never worked outside the home, she’s living off my dad’s social security payment and an annuity from my father’s investments.  Bill handles the annuity, my dad passed stewardship of it to him in his will.  He regulates how much my mother gets; he has his fingers in all of the family finances.  My mom’s been trying to get extra money out of it to send Cheryl to a decent rehab center, and Bill’s been playing hard to get, but he was going to do it!  And now there’s no fucking way he’s going to hand over the money for that, and there isn’t enough left in savings to take care of it!”

“That…doesn’t seem legal,” Ben said slowly.  “Your mother is the primary beneficiary of the annuity; she should have the final say on how it gets disbursed.”

“Bill says it doesn’t work that way.  It’s like a trust; the money is given out according to the original directive, and the terms can’t be changed by the beneficiary.  The only one who can change the terms is Bill.”

“That definitely doesn’t seem legal,” Ben insisted.  “You should hire another lawyer to take a look, there has to be a way—”

“Hire a lawyer with what?” Ryan snapped.  “With all the money I make as an artist?  With the money Cheryl gets from her own parents, which is zero?”

“You have an enormous family, there must be someone within it who could help you out,” Ben said.

“Everyone in the family has some kind of business with Bill, and none of them want it getting out.  You heard how he was to Cousin Matthew.  Bill knows where all the bodies are buried and he’s got some very powerful friends.  There’s no fight here, Ben, that fight was over before it even got started.  Everyone toes the line, even me.”  Ryan let his head hang for a moment.  “I hate hearing Bill say those things.  I’ve wanted to punch that man in the face ever since I was fourteen, but I don’t because my feelings aren’t the most important thing at stake here.  Molly and Joey are the most important things and they need their mother to be healthy, and the best way to do that is to get her into a rehab program.  And I have no idea how that’s going to happen now.”  He sighed deeply.  “This was a bad idea.  Fuck, this was such a bad idea.”

“Which part?” Ben asked sarcastically, because he had had it, really, finally had it, with being made into a villain just for doing the right thing.  “The part where you invited me to a party that you knew would be fouled by a bigoted piece of shit, or the part where your family let him feel he could take that kind of control in the first place?  Or is it me, is it me in general that’s a bad idea?”

Ryan stared at Ben silently for a long moment.  “I really can’t look at you right now,” he said at last.  “Please leave this house.”

“Fine.”  Ben brushed by Ryan and walked quickly to the front door, anger and hurt driving his footsteps.  He stalked down the porch and threw his car door open, and peeled out of the driveway with a screech of rubber on gravel.  Fuck this place, fuck the Kuzniars and their twisted family politics, fuck putting up with that bullshit.  And fuck Ryan for asking him to.

By the time he got back to his hotel, Ben had cooled off a little.  Enough that he could pick up his phone and contemplate calling Ryan.  Calling him and saying…what?

Ben stared at Ryan’s icon in his contact list, his finger hovering over it.  He honestly didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t just be a rehash of their fight.  He didn’t feel like he had done anything that he needed to apologize for, frankly, and he wasn’t sure that Ryan would accept a call, containing an apology or not, from Ben right now anyway.  The longer he stared at the phone, the more uncertain Ben felt.

Fucked.  Ben was royally fucked.  And while he felt that he’d done the right thing, there was still the fact that for DeeDee, and for Cheryl, it might have been the wrong thing.  But how could he have known?  Because Ryan told you, idiot.  Only he hadn’t told Ben enough, because…well, Ben wasn’t sure why.  Because he was ashamed?  Because he didn’t trust Ben to keep a secret?

Eventually Ben put the phone down.  He felt antsy, and sick to his stomach, and just wrong.  He’d never been the kind of person who thrived on conflict, and especially not with Ryan.  Fuck, he’d barely had any time with Ryan at all, and Ben was absolutely certain that there would be no more, at least not on this trip.  Maybe not at all.

Ben couldn’t stay here.  Not in this hotel, not in this city, not in this goddamn state.  He had to leave.  He’d change his flight, or just pay for a new one if he had to.  He shoved his clothes and toiletries back into his suitcase, not taking the sort of care that he normally did with his things, just getting them packed as fast as he could.  He checked out of the hotel, got into his car, turned the key and froze.

Ben couldn’t leave things like this, but he knew he couldn’t fix them.  But maybe he knew someone who could.  He dialed the number he’d added but left unused in his phone since his trip to Boston. 

She picked up on the fourth ring.  “Ben?”

“Jasmine.”

Football, Movies and Novels-To-Be

Hi guys!

Time for a post on something other than serials.  I know, why bother, and yet I must.  Hmm, what have I been up to?

Well, on the advice of a dear friend I found a way to watch the Broncos/Ravens game earlier this week, which, for those of you who don't care about American football and/or have no interest in either team, probably doesn't mean much.  If that's the case, just skip this paragraph.  I'm not a huge football fan (a sin here in Colorado) so all of this wouldn't normally mean all that much for me either, but the game was actually really exciting, what with the rapidly-developing rivalry between the teams, high scores that kept things interesting, and some moments of cocky, jackass stupidity that you had to see to believe.  Oh, Danny Trevathan.  Here's how not to be yelled at by your coach, quarterback and the entire freaking stadium's worth of fans--don't drop the ball at the one-yard line, then prance into the end zone like you've just scored a touchdown. Because you haven't.

Whoops!

Moving on, My man and I went to go see Elysium last week.  It's the new sci-fi movie starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, directed by the guy who's first movie was District 9.  District 9 was an awesome movie, with a great story, well-developed characters and wonderful effects, and I had high hopes for Elysium.

Elysium is no District 9.  Even the cast couldn't save it, and frankly it didn't really seem like they tried that hard.  The setting was great, the special effects were cool and some of the supporting characters were very nearly intriguing.  Far more interesting, actually, than the main characters, who were underdeveloped, with ham-handed backstories replete with overdone symbolism and reasons for doing what they did that either left me rolling my eyes or just not caring.  Nothing gets solved in Elysium.  Not if you stop to think about the way things happen once the credits roll.  Also, the exo-skeleton that seems so important to the story, judging from the promo posters, is really just an excuse for a battle of the semi-superhumans at the end, which I also didn't care about.  I wanted to care.  I just couldn't bring myself to do so.

Last thing: I'm over 40k on the novel that I'm trying to have done by the end of September.  That's 40k in about 13 days.  Why the hell don't I write this fast all the time?  I have no idea, this story is just working out that way.  Hopefully it's not complete dross.  Beta readers, I'm probably going to have to give you this puppy in sections if we want a chance in hell of it all coming together before the due date; expect me to message you soon.

Well, that's that, I think.  I've got writing to do, my man has homework, we had a lovely morning full of controlled violence...blissful!

Happy weekend, darlins.

Love Letters Post #30

Notes:  Some of you may read this and think to yourselves, “Oh, she's just cooking up an over-the-top homophobe for us now.”  But the person I’m basing a certain uncle on is actually a real person to whom I have the great displeasure of being related.  While he’s not as well-off as I portray this character, he is ultra-conservative, so controlling and abusive neither of his children want anything to do with him, and almost got into a fistfight with my father at my grandmother’s funeral because of what he said about my mom, who is his sister.  So yes, the misanthrope is real, guys.  Have a nice confrontation!

Title: Love Letters

Part Thirty: Speak Up or Get Out

***

In the end, it wasn’t for Ryan or even for himself that Ben rocked the boat.  It was for Cheryl, and in retrospect he was just as shocked about it as everyone else seemed to be.

On Sunday the Kuzniar house was filled with people, nearly thirty of them to be exact.  The adults milled around eating, drinking wine—so much wine, too much wine, it didn’t take much imagination to see how someone could become an alcoholic in this environment—and telling stories, while the kids went outside and played croquet, or actually played something more along the lines of “take shots at each other with balls and mallets and run around screaming,” which looked like a lot more fun to Ben.  The teenagers secreted themselves away in the rec room after swiping half the food, and for a while Ben thought this was as rough as it would get.  There were plenty of snarky, falsely-sympathetic endearments directed toward Cheryl, Ryan, DeeDee and the kids, but more of the family seemed to be genuinely sympathetic, and only a few people had batted an eye when Ryan introduced Ben around, so that was good.  No one seemed to want to hang onto his company for too long either, so Ben could drift around the periphery from group to group when Ryan was called away to help his mom or, more often, handle something with Joey.  He learned a lot about the Kuzniar clan in general that way.

They tended toward white collar jobs—plenty of lawyers, a few doctors and several accountants.  Most of the women went lovely but conservative with their appearances: floral dresses, high heels, tasteful jewelry and only one piercing in each ear.  The men wore slacks and polo shirts, or rarely, a sports jersey that got them some ribbing but was generally acceptable.  Ben saw no tattoos anywhere; Ryan seemed to have the monopoly on those, and he was wearing a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt despite the heat that covered most of them.  The part of Ben that hated this wanted to rip the shirt off of his boyfriend and show everyone here just how gorgeous he looked, but that wasn’t possible.  It was a little disconcerting to Ben to realize that in some ways, he blended in with this crowd perfectly.  Professionals, nice but unimaginative dressers, adept at keeping their distance while maintaining a veneer of politeness.  It must have been absolute hell on Ryan to grow up in a place like this, when his passions took him in such a dramatically different direction.

What the Kuzniar’s didn’t say was almost as interesting as what they did.  After half an hour of wandering, Ben learned that Brody was still something of a taboo subject among the family while Cheryl was fair game.  There were plenty of stilted conversations about “Cousin Billy,” who after a few minutes Ben learned was Uncle Bill’s only son, and apparently back in jail after another “incident.”  “Thank goodness he has Cathy and her husband,” people would say over and over again.  Cathy was Bill’s daughter and little Grace’s mother, and no one seemed to remember her poor husband’s name.  People tried to talk about Joey, but it was clear that they were mostly just ignorant about him, and spoke in hushed tones about how “sad it was that he was so slow,” and “poor little Molly, havin’ to live with such a family.”  Then they’d notice Ben and reassure him that they thought Ryan was “doing a wonderful job trying to step in and set things right, he always comes when his mama calls!”

“His brother would be proud of his efforts,” one heavy-handed man said as he clapped Ben on the shoulder.  “At least the kid’s givin’ it a shot.  What is it you do again, young man?”

I’m a New York Times bestselling author, you condescending piece of shit, Ben wanted to say, but he didn’t.  Saying that was the sort of thing that made people want to prolong the conversation, and that was the last thing he wanted right now.  “I’m a freelance writer.”

“Oh.”  Ben escaped a moment later with a sense of grim satisfaction, and Ryan found him a few minutes later out in front of the house, seriously considering throwing the long-stemmed wine glass he’d been carrying as far as he could fucking chuck it.

“You okay?” Ryan asked, wrapping his arms around Ben’s waist and kissing the back of his neck.

“I’m fine,” Ben told him, setting the glass down on the rail so he could turn and kiss Ryan properly.  “Just working on my zen,” he said between pecks against Ryan’s mouth that just made him want more.  “How much longer is this supposed to last?”

“Mmm, I think Mama’s going to start cutting the cakes in half an hour or so,” Ryan replied, closing his eyes and soaking up the affection like he was starved for it.  Fuck it, he probably was.  “After that we’re in the final count.”

“Thank god.”  Ryan pulled Ben close again and they lost themselves in kissing, not even noticing the champagne-colored Lincoln Towncar that pulled up right in front of the house and parked in such a way that no one would be able to get their own cars past it.  Two men and a woman got out of it, the woman holding a wiggling toddler in a frothy white dress, and headed for the front steps.  Ben didn’t pay them much heed until one of them spoke, in a stentorian voice that the people behind the house could probably hear.

“For the love of Jesus, don’t put your queerness on display, Ryan,” he boomed.  Ryan jumped back with a start and Ben got a good look at the speaker.  “There are impressionable young minds here, and I don’t want any of them tempted to turn their backs on God and go down your path.”

The man was about Ben’s height, wearing a well-tailored linen suit and a white shirt that matched his perfectly-coiffed white hair.  He had a thick grey mustache and wore a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that accentuated the lines beneath his pale grey eyes, but instead of making him look old it just made him look powerful.  By comparison, the young man with the receding hairline and deep worry lines beside his mouth was positively washed out, and the woman didn’t fare much better, her pale pink lips thin and disapproving.  The only other person in the group with any sense of liveliness was the baby, and Ben had no doubt that would be scolded out of her as soon as she was old enough to acquire a sense of shame.

“Uncle Bill,” Ryan said quietly, cementing Ben’s instant dislike into hatred with the apprehension in his voice.  Bill didn’t say anything else, just turned and entered the house like he owned it, completely disregarding the “Please ring the doorbell” sign that they’d hung there this morning to keep Joey from going mad trying to count everyone who came inside.  Ryan let out a quiet groan and followed him inside, and Ben trailed after them, feeling like he was watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.

Uncle Bill apparently had a word for everyone, and none of them were nice.  “Cousin Sissy,” he greeted DeeDee’s sister, “you’re looking positively jaundiced in that color, my dear.  I would’ve gone with something other than yellow considering your complexion.”

“Matthew,” he said to the hearty man who’d tried to interrogate Ben earlier.  “I see you’re still buying your suits at Men’s Warehouse.  Your firm’s not doing well enough to let you afford something properly bespoke?”

“I, uh…actually, we just closed a case against the state for—”

“For a piddling, piss-poor amount,” Bill cut off.  “Oh, I know all the details of it; the attorney general and I had a good laugh over it the other day.”  Bill shook his head.  “If you’re going to do something stupid like take on a class-action lawsuit for some whiny little fishermen complaining about pollution, then you should have had the balls to go for the throat, boy.  The government can be a gold mine if you squeeze them the right way.”

“I…uh…”

“Precisely,” Bill said with a sneer before moving on to the kitchen.  People seemed to melt out of existence as he came close, and Ben could see why.

DeeDee was in the kitchen, putting the newest batch of her fried chicken out on the platter.  “DeeDee,” Bill announced, making her jump up and almost spill the chicken.

“Oh, William!”  She put the food down, wiped her hands on her apron and reached out to pull him into a hug.  “Welcome!”

“I’d rather you didn’t touch me until you’ve properly washed up, DeeDee,” Bill said, forestalling her with a raised hand.  “I don’t care to allow my suit to be soiled if I can help it.”

“Oh.  Of course.”  They exchanged a little cheek kiss instead.  “And Robert, Cathy!  It’s so lovely to see you both.”

“Thank you, Aunt DeeDee,” Cathy said, shifting her kicking toddler in her arms.

“And there’s the pretty little birthday girl!” DeeDee added, beaming.  “Hi, Gracie!  You can just let her down if you’d like, Cathy honey, she won’t be able to grab anything in here that might get her into trouble.”

“I’d rather not,” Cathy said.  Grace squealed and Cathy blushed uncomfortably.

“Well then, at least let me make you up a plate of food to take outside,” DeeDee tried again, her constant smile finally beginning to falter.  “I’ve got some fresh chicken, and there’s potato salad and hush puppies and corn on the cob, and I’m about to do some okra.”

At this Bill actually chuckled and shook his head.  “DeeDee, every time I wondered why my brother had bothered to marry you, a taste of your cooking would remind me.  But no, we’ve already eaten.  I’d prefer it if we could simply cut the cakes and eat them now so as to spend as little time as possible out in the sun and the heat.  Too much sunshine is bad for Cathy’s complexion; she inherited her mother’s tendency to turn into a tomato when she goes outside.”

“Of course,” DeeDee said, now just resigned.  “Boys, could you help me take the cakes outside to the dessert table?” she asked Ryan and Ben.

“Sure, mom,” Ryan said, grabbing the pineapple upside down and Joey’s three-tiered chocolate monstrosity.  Ben got Grace’s and a red velvet that said Happy Birthday Sissy! and DeeDee managed the last three by herself.  Neither Bill nor his daughter and son in law offered to help.

Outside things were much less tense; some of the kids had started a water-balloon game, and a lot of the adults had moved from wine to beer.  Belts had been loosened, heels had been left on the porch in favor of wandering barefoot through the grass, and as soon as people saw the cakes coming out they mobbed them.

The happy birthday song, as sung by three dozen semi-inebriated people trying to remember seven different names at the end of it, was pretty hilarious.  DeeDee took care of the cutting and made sure everyone celebrating a birthday got a piece of their cake first, then let the rest of the family have at them.  Soon everyone was chewing on a slice of cake, and Ben hoped that everyone’s mouths would be too full to make conversation.

Unfortunately, there was no stopping some people from being assholes.

“Ryan,” Joey said softly, tugging on his uncle’s arm as he looked at the late arrivals.  He had chocolate smeared over his mouth, and he shied away when Ryan went to wipe it clean.  “Ryan, plus four?  Four?”

“Yes, plus four,” Ryan said patiently as he finally got the worst of the frosting off with the wet napkin he held.

“Plus four what?” Bill demanded, rolling his eyes as he looked at Joey.  “Lord above, is he still doing that ridiculous counting?  It’s a sick compulsion, that sort of thing.  Now that his father is gone, I don’t hold out much hope for your grandson ever being able to live in society like a normal human being, DeeDee,” he said, completely ignoring Joey’s glare.  “Brody can never be replaced, you know, not with your queer exhibitionist of a youngest son and certainly not with whatever trash Cheryl is associating with these days.”  Cheryl, standing not ten feet away quietly chatting with one of the cousins, shut her eyes tight before downing the rest of the wine she was holding.

“William,” DeeDee began, trying to calm things down, but some men were made for the soapbox.  He reminded Ben of some of the politicians he’d met at fundraising events: quick with an opinion and not really interested in anything anyone else had to say.

“I’m afraid the best of your brood is gone now,” Bill continued in full voice.  “My brother Joseph would be rolling over in his grave to see how they’d turned out.  Pamela is carrying far too much weight, and of course, your youngest,” he added with a sneer, “is hardly fit for polite company, especially not with that man accompanying him.  No, Brody was the best.  If only he’d had the sense to marry better, he might have really made something of himself.”

“Minus one!” Joey suddenly shouted at Bill, surprising everyone.  “Minus one!  Minus one!”

“What in God’s name are you tryin’ to say, boy?” Bill demanded.

“I think he’s telling you to leave,” Ryan said, his voice totally flat.

“Well, lucky for me I don’t have to listen to the ramblings of a special child,” Bill said with finality, but Joey just kept yelling.  Molly came out of the house and tried to help Ryan calm him down, but Joey was red-faced and just a few breaths away from screaming now.  “For the love of God, shut your boy up!” Bill yelled at Cheryl, who broke out of her frozen stupor and went to Joey’s side, pulling him close and whispering in his ear. He calmed down marginally with his mother’s presence, no longer yelling, but he was still breathing in heavy, angry gasps and giving Bill a look that should have struck him dead.

“You can’t even control your own children,” Bill said with a sneer.  “It’s a failing on this side of the family, I’ve noticed.  Did you drink when you were pregnant with him the way you do now?  Or was he a lesson for you from God, for not heeding His word?”

“You’re a fine one to talk about controlling his kids,” Ben said.  In that moment, you could have heard a twig snap out on the lawn.  Bill looked like he couldn’t quite believe some nonentity was speaking to him, and the rest of the family looked on with a combination of dread and anticipation. 

“And who are you, to address me in such a manner?” Bill said, his voice cold and dismissive.  “Just another God-forsaken faggot.”

“I might be gay, but at least I’m not in jail,” Ben replied.  “Which is where your namesake is, if I recall correctly.  For…what was it?  Oh right, armed robbery, assault and battery and illegal possession of firearms.  Thanks for all the details,” he added in Cousin Matthew’s direction.  The other man looked like he wanted to sink right into the lawn.  “Hardly an upstanding citizen you produced there.”

“I have long since disowned that bad seed,” Bill told Ben coldly.  “And if I recall correctly, you’re not a part of this family.  You’re not even on the periphery of it, and you never will be.  Queers can’t get married in North Carolina, praise God.”

“No, but we can have civil partnerships in Denver, which is where I’m from,” Ben returned.  “And we can file tax returns together and serve openly in the military and pretty much do everything you can do, except spout amoral bullshit with a straight face.”  There was a collective gasp.  “I just think you should examine your own job at parenting a little closer before forcing your opinion of other people’s on everyone in hearing distance.”

Bill looked dumbfounded.  Ben had no doubt that this was the first time in a long, long time that anyone had spoken back to this man, and he just didn’t’ know how to handle it.  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Bill snapped at last, pulling himself together.  “I don’t have to listen to the words coming out of your perverted mouth, and neither does my family. 

“DeeDee,” he turned to Ryan’s mother, who was white as a ghost, “we will be discussing the annuity after this, mark my words.  And the rest of you speechless bastards,” he rounded on the crowd with a roar, “can all just go to Hell!”  He dropped his cake plate on the ground, turned and stalked off inside.  His immediate family followed him, little Grace actively wailing now that she still hadn’t been allowed to set her white patent shoes on the ground.

“Minus four,” Joey said with satisfaction.