What October Brings

The Old Man Down the Road Arinn Dembo

The night before they left for Tennessee, they slept in a double bed on Striver’s Row. Traffic slashed through the autumn rain below as they wrestled in the sheets, chasing away anxiety with love-making. James drifted off with sweat drying on his belly, his lover’s breath blowing warm on his shoulder.

Hours later he woke alone in the cold bed, his bare feet curled back to find shins that weren’t there. For a panic-stricken, half-asleep moment he found himself thinking he’s gone.

He sat up, white sheets pooling over dark thighs, and saw Tommy standing by the window. The rippling sodium light flowed down his pale skin like molten copper.

James reached for his glasses on the night table. Even in this surreal moment of broken sleep, he still could drink in the sight of his lover’s body.

Thomas Newcombe Baird. The only white man he had ever seen naked, outside of a medical textbook or a muscle magazine. The curve of head and neck as Tommy stared down past the fire escape. His shoulder-length shag had been clipped just this morning; the fat man with the trimmer laughed about giving White Jesus a haircut. Tommy’s shy little smile, eyes downcast as the brown silk fell like feathers from his Teutonic skull.

The angelic spread of his shoulders. The long, liquid muscles of his back and legs. The way his chin and chest lifted as he ran down the gravel paths in the park, stride extending into effortless thoroughbred speed. The sculpted line of his spine, the dimples just below his lean waist.

Tommy turned his head, a skull with two eye-pits of shadow. “You should sleep.” He spoke softly. “It’s hours ‘til dawn.”

“Me? You’re the one who has to drive.”

Tommy turned and pointed his chin at the storm sweeping the gutters below. “He’s back again.”

James felt a chill. “At this hour?” He stood up, wrapping the sheets around his waist and throwing the tail over his shoulder like a toga. He went to the window and saw the ominous figure on the corner, water streaming down the dome of a black umbrella. “Is it the same guy…?”

“Hard to tell, with the coat and hat. I reckon they dress that way so you can’t tell ‘em apart.”

James hugged himself with a shiver. “I’ve never been ‘staked out’ before. I don’t like it.”

Tommy put a bare arm around his shoulders and drew him close. As always, his skin seemed to radiate an envelope of seductive heat; James leaned into him like a sparrow huddled in the glow of a street lamp.

“You must be important.” Tommy’s voice was low, half-amused. “The FBI doesn’t follow nobodies, right?”

“They follow nobodies just fine,” James replied acidly. “The somebodies get shot.”

He felt the silent wave that passed through Tommy, the quickening of the heart, the tightening of the arm around his shoulder. “They’re going to have to go through me first. That’s all I can say.”

James shook his head sadly. “Is that why you’re coming on this trip? Because you think they won’t ‘go through you’?”

“No.” The arm was tighter now. “I grew up down there, hon. Ran away from that place a long time ago. I know what happens to folk who get in the way.”

James turned, letting his chest and belly flatten against Tommy, reaching up to touch his cheek with a cupped hand. “You know I have to go. Lena and Walt are counting on me to help with voter registration. They’re covering three counties this year. There’s no way they can do it on their own—and they’re my friends. I can’t let them down.”

Tommy closed his eyes, tilting his head to let his cheek lie in the palm of his lover’s hand.

“But really, Tom…there’s no reason you have to come.” He spoke as gently as he could as he dropped his hand. “I know you don’t want to go back.”

Tommy shivered. “I might still have….family, down in Carolina. Looking for me.”

James nodded. “Abel and I can manage.”

Tommy snorted. “Abel and you will do what, exactly? Hitch-hike to Tennessee?”

James drew in a long breath. “We could get bus tickets. I can afford it.”

“Money can’t always buy safe passage, hon.”

James rolled his eyes. “We wouldn’t even have to sit together. We could ride down quietly and pretend not to know each other. Like perfectly respectable folks.”

It was Tommy’s turn to unsheathe the edge of his tongue. “With you sitting in the back of the bus? Like ‘respectable folks’?”

James stiffened. “If need be. Yes.” He raised his chin defiantly. “I choose my battles. You know that.”

“I do.” Tommy shook his head. “I’m sorry, James. I don’t want to go down South. I’d do anything if you’d stay with me. But if you’re going…I just…can’t let you leave me behind.”

“I wasn’t! Tom, I would never—”

“You would. You were going to try.” The words shook as he spoke. “And I cannot bear it, James.” Tommy opened his arms, still perfectly nude, palms open. A gesture of surrender. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”

James looked up and saw light follow the tracks of silent tears. “Tom… come on, now…” He was moving forward, the sheets forgotten and tangling around his legs.

Tommy’s arms closed around him. The bigger man was shaking now, crushing him close. “I’m scared.” A high boyish whisper. “What if something happens down there?”

James swallowed twice before he could speak. “If something happens…? Then you’d be safe. Tom…”

“No. You can’t leave me, James. If anything happens to you…it has to happen to me. It has to.” His voice broke. “I cannot live if you’re gone.”

“Tom. Tommy.” He murmured the name over and over again, stroking the smooth back and shoulders, punctuating his caresses with “It’s all right” as if the words were a mantra.

I know you love me. I love you back, he wanted to say. I won’t ever leave you. But those words would not come.

In two years, he had never said anything like that aloud.

He opened the door at dawn to find Abel Feinman standing on the front step with his suitcase. Feinman was wearing Moroccan brown slacks and a green Paisley shirt…and still hadn’t cut his hair.

James looked him up and down, silently disapproving of his rabbinical beard and luxuriant mane of oily black curls. He held the silence so long that Abel pushed up the bridge of his glasses and cracked a nervous smile. “What, am I at the wrong house or something? Let me in already.”

James invited him in with a sarcastic wave of his hand. “You couldn’t find a barber, man?”

Abel set down the suitcase in the foyer. “Sorry, James. Couldn’t go through with it.”

James rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I bet. What did Joanie say, exactly?”

Abel had the grace to look down at his loafers. “Aaaaah…she said something about Samson and Delilah. And told me I was going to look like a baby-faced narc….”

“Who’s a narc, now?” Tommy came around the bend of the curving stairs, a suitcase in each hand. He was already wearing his Sherpa jacket and aviator glasses. “Better not be talking about me.”

Abel looked up and laughed out loud. “Jesus, Tom. What’d you do, enlist?”

Tommy smiled and stepped out the open door. “I’ll just bring the car around.”

James gave Abel another look over the golden rims of his glasses. When he had full eye contact, he deliberately dropped his gaze to the avocado-green suitcase on the floor. Then back up into Abel’s eyes, lips pursed.

“Anything I need to worry about in there?”

The beatnik could read his mind. “Aawww, c’mon James…”

“C’mon my ass. You already proved you can’t listen to instructions. I told you to clean yourself up.”

“I did!” Abel flapped a hand defensively up and down, indicating his new JC Penney ensemble. “This is all brand new! Everything in my suitcase too! I spent twenty dollars, man!”

“That’s not what I meant. And you damn well know it.” James cocked a fist on one hip, and put out the other hand palm up, making a “gimme” gesture. “You look like Phineas Freak, Abel. Nothing I can do about that now, but I’ll be damned if I’m riding with your dope.”

Feinman rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake…”

“Don’t you go bringing Him into this. Hand it over now, before I get mad.”

Abel gave a long-suffering groan and opened his suitcase. The marijuana was “cleverly” hidden in a pair of socks—and if those socks were brand new, James was Nancy Sinatra. Abel handed the dime bag over with a show of reluctance, and James shook his head in disgust.

“Mmm-hmm. Now give me the other one.”

Feinman looked up into his eyes, startled. James gave his head a long, slow shake.

“Do. Not. Even. Try.” He made the “gimme” gesture again. “I am not playing with you.”

Abel hesitated, and James saw a flicker behind his eyes—try to bluff? But it was gone just as quickly, and without another word he reached into the Samsonite bag again and pulled out a Gideon Bible. Inside the book, a hole had been cut through a hundred pages of onionskin paper to make a nest for a meerschaum pipe and another bag of green herb.

“Yeah. Real smart.” James shook his head, turned on his heel, went to the credenza in the foyer, and unlocked the top drawer. He dropped Abel’s things into it, re-locked the drawer firmly, and then made a show of leaving the key on the moulding above the front door. “It’ll be right here for you when we get back. You can do without that stuff for a few days.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man.”

Tommy appeared at the doorway, his smile a little uncertain. Over his shoulder, James could see the brown Chevy Bel-Air double-parked in the street. “Y’all ready?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be.” As the two white boys clattered down his steps, James locked his front door behind him and spared a final glance at the man who sat at the bus stop, watching them over the top of his morning paper.

James raised a hand and waved.

The man did not wave back.

Tommy took the George Washington Bridge out of the city and followed the New Jersey Turnpike to connect to I-95. The freeway led them south through Pennsylvania, the motorway ablaze with autumn color in late October. It was a pleasant ride, and James kept the Negro Motorist Green Book in his lap, guiding them unerringly to safe gas stations and diners. At nearly every stop, Abel had to find a lavatory or a pay phone, but he was equally quick about calls of nature and calls to his mother.

That night they arrived in Richmond late and rented rooms at Slaughter’s Hotel. They ordered sandwiches and ginger ale from room service and ate in Tommy’s room, watching Bonanza on the black-and-white television.

Despite the pleasant weather and the ease of travel, there was an unspoken tension in the air, and Abel seemed to pick up on it with fine-tuned antennae. He kept silent for most of the trip, reading the books he’d brought in his suitcase, rolling and smoking tobacco cigarettes or folding his arms over his beard for a cat nap when he was bored. Tommy didn’t try to make conversation. Instead he spun the dial on the radio back and forth as he drove, occasionally picking up a snatch of Paul Harvey or hillbilly country songs, dialing it in more slowly when he found black music or a black DJ speaking. He’d looked over at James for a nod of approval when the signal finally came in clear, and sometimes, if Abel’s eyes were closed, James would answer by reaching out to lay a hand on his blue-jeaned thigh.

On the last night of the trip they listened to Chattie Hattie from WGIV, following a narrow strip of highway up into the Blue Ridge mountains. Solomon Burke sang about sweet lips coming closer to a phone, his mellow croon dissolving more and more frequently into bursts of static with every curve of the road.

Just as the last of the radio signal was lost, a siren whooped behind them, and the cherry lights of a police car started to flash in the rearview mirror.

Tommy stiffened and cringed, hands locked on the wheel. He looked down at the speedometer, guilty—no, he had not been speeding—and then gave James a pained look. The Adam’s apple jumped in his throat like a frog on a string as he hit the blinker and pulled over at the side of the road.

The silence when the engine cut out was deafening. James kept still, his shoulders hunched in the passenger seat, as the doors of the sedan behind them opened and slammed. The crunch of approaching boots was slow and ominous.

“Get out the car.”

The highway patrolman stood in the middle of the road, already in a firing position—his pistol drawn, both hands on the grip. James shivered at the sound of that voice, already shaking on the verge of panic.

White.

Southern.

Angry.

The man raised his voice. Louder now. “Get out the car, boy! Ain’t going to tell you again!”

Tommy Baird turned in slow motion toward the open window. The black unblinking eye of a .38 met his blue gaze.

“Whatever you say, Officer.” Tommy’s tone was mild as milk. “We don’t want any trouble.” His hands were parked on the steering wheel at ten and two; now they rose into the air like moths and fluttered gently to the handle of the door. He opened it with exaggerated care and stepped out into the night air. Those same long-fingered hands rose to chest height, offering open palms to the gun.

James glanced over his shoulder. The second cop was an armed silhouette in the headlights, also holding a pistol—the weapon was pointed down at his side, not at Tommy.

Abel Feinman slid lower in the back seat, eyes floating behind his thick lenses like pickled eggs. His acne-scarred cheeks were pale as the moon in the strobing blue light. “This is it,” he muttered. “This is it.”

“This is nothing,” James hissed back. “Hush up.”

“Turn around and bend over. Right now.”

“Yes sir.” Tommy was working with the script he’d been given—he and James had rehearsed it a hundred times. He turned slowly, hands in the air. “May I ask what this is about?” His intonation stayed calm and slow, but James could read the fear in his knotted jaw, the set of his shoulders, the way he breathed.

Fast movement in the dark. Tommy’s torso slammed into the hood, a reverberating boom of meat and bone on Detroit steel. Despite himself he cried out in surprise, and James felt the pain in his chest, as if that cry had pierced him through.

You can’t protect him. He can’t protect you either.

“Shut up.” The cop snapped Tommy’s wrists into handcuffs. “Y’all think you can just come down here and—”

“Careful, Andrew. You are not to damage him.” The second policeman spoke, cutting through his partner’s snarl like a scalpel. It was a very different voice—cool, aristocratic, commanding. A Southern gentleman. The ring of it sent the skin crawling over James in a wave.

Tommy reacted immediately as well, standing bolt upright, his hands pinioned behind his back.

“No.” His eyes were wide with horror as he turned toward the glare of the headlights behind them, the shape of the second policeman. “No!”

Officer Andrew turned his head and nodded. James saw the gun spin and swing back.

“Tommy—!” He started to cry a warning, but butt of the pistol struck Tommy’s head with a heavy thud. Tommy crumpled into the gravel.

The gun was pointed at him now.

“Your turn, nigger. Get out the car.”

James froze. He moved slowly, as Tommy had, eyes on the cop, hands inching toward the door handle.

At the last minute he tore his eyes away from the gun and turned to look out the window. It was after midnight. Tommy’s Bel Air was parked on the side of a lonely mountain road, somewhere in the thick woods between Tennessee and North Carolina. If they’d been coming the other way, back toward New York… the passenger side door would have opened onto the guard rail and the depths of a steep gorge.

Then he might have made a break for it.

He could see it in his mind. Throw himself out the door. Pray the cop would miss a clear shot at his back. Jump the rail. Throw himself into the abyss below.

But the passenger door opened onto a wall of solid Appalachian rock, slick with October dew. There was nowhere to run. He stood up, turning back toward the road like a man facing a firing squad, raising his hands up to his chest.

“Come around. Nice and slow.”

James walked. His mind had gone numb. Someone pushed him face down onto the Chevy. The heat of the engine soaked through his shirt as the cop wrestled his wrists into the cuffs. He thought wildly of Tommy’s radiant warmth in the moment before he was slammed to his knees in the road.

Tommy was lying beside him. He rolled his face up toward the stars and for a moment their eyes met, but Tommy’s gaze slid away, unfocused and confused. Possible concussion.

“The third gentleman too, Deputy. If you please.”

James heard rather than saw Abel pulled out of the back seat. “You can’t do this!” he brayed. There was a hollow thump as he was thrown back against the door. “We’re human beings! We have rights!”

“Shut up.” The cop turned to his partner. “What now? We all done here?”

There was silence for a moment, and then a chilling chuckle from Officer Shadow. “Yes, I do believe our business is almost concluded.”

“Good. What you want to do with these other two?”

“An excellent question.” The man in the shadows paused in deliberation. “A Negro is always useful, of course. If only for brute labor. But I have no use for a Jew. Especially one with poor vision.”

The pistol cracked in the cold mountain air. Tommy rolled himself up and screamed. And his scream went on, cracking up into sobs as he floundered forward on his belly and knees, arms still buckled behind his back, across the broken asphalt to Abel.

James was moving forward himself, dragging his knees over the rocks, until he felt a stinging pain in his shoulder. He turned his head and saw a needle flicker away like a sliver of blue light, quick as a dragonfly.

He looked up directly into the cop’s sallow face in the blazing headlights of the police car. A lumpy white man in his forties, cheeks and jowls decked with stubble, blue eyes rimmed with red.

“Your name is Andrew,” James told him solemnly. He looked back toward his friends, his vision swimming. Tommy was still crying. Abel Feinman stared up into Appalachian night, his glasses askew and speckled with red. His last three breaths came in tiny quick pants, and the rich bloom of ruptured bowels and blood filled the air.

James Aaron Locke toppled forward into blackness, listening for a fourth breath that never came.

He woke again to voices raised in an adjoining room.

“You said you’d let him go.”

James breathed in the thick smell of disinfectant and rubber. His throat hurt. He tried to rise, but there was a tremendous weight bearing down on him. Paper crackled under his back.

I’m naked.

He opened his eyes in a pitch black room. His head was pounding, his mouth cotton-dry.

“I done everything you said.” He recognized Officer Andrew. There a sulky note of protest when he spoke—a boy complaining that adults were unfair. “You told me you’d leave him be if I—”

“And indeed I shall, Deputy. But your Sheriff weighs over two hundred pounds, and you’re in no condition to carry him far. We wouldn’t want to aggravate that hernia, would we?” Officer Shadow sounded playful—enjoying himself cruelly, a cat toying with a bird.

“No sir.”

“I’ll walk him to your car, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Yes sir.”

James swallowed and felt a spasm of agony in his throat. He winced and listened to the heavy boots moving away, the whine and wheeze of a door opening and then slowly swinging shut. The rattle of iron and the moan of a hydraulic lift soon followed.

He tried to sit up again, fighting back a surge of nausea and disorientation, but he was held fast. There was a leather strap across his forehead. Another pulled tight and buckled across his chest. When he tried to flex his hands, he could feel the soft cuffs on his bare wrists and arms as well. More straps and cuffs below, when he tried to kick his feet.

“Help.” The attempt to use his vocal chords was agony, and the word came out a ragged whisper. Somewhere to his right, he heard a gasp.

“Aaaaezz…?” Tommy’s questioning voice, broken and shapeless, followed by a wet, gagging cough. He heard Tommy panting for breath and another crackle of paper. “Aaaeez…? Iiizh aa ooo…?”

“Tommy.” Something was wrong with Tommy’s mouth. Something was wrong with his own throat as well—it hurt terribly, and now he tasted a little blood. He twisted his head toward the right. Tommy was across the room on a long table, naked and strapped down with medical restraints. James could see the glitter of steel, the shine of wet teeth.

Tommy tried to speak again, tongue flapping helplessly in his gaping mouth. There was machinery holding his jaws open--a dental gag strapped around the back of his head. “Aaez, ai eeeah…”

“I understand.” He rasped the words out painfully, trying not to swallow too much. Oddly enough, he did understand. He was the son of Aaron Medgers Locke, the finest dentist in Harlem, and he had earned his allowance for years mopping the floor and replacing the lollipops in his father’s office. It was no trouble at all to understand English spoken by someone who couldn’t close his mouth.

James? Is that you?

James, I’m here…

He tried to turn his head the other way. “Where are we…?”

For answer, Tommy started to cry.

“Ai oh awe ee…Aaez…” I’m so sorry…James…

“Don’t be a fool.” James wheezed the words out angrily, despite the pain. “These people are crazy. We have to get out of here.”

There was a sudden noise in the next room, a wet gurgling like a sink full of sludge pouring down a narrow drain. It was followed by a spastic thump, rattle and squeak—like an animal struggling in a cage, or someone having a three-second seizure.

A moment of silence.

The unmistakable noise of someone passing wind, long and slow.

A scuffle and scratch. Wheels creaked. To his left, beyond his field of vision, a door opened, and a shaft of light sliced across his torso. Someone had thrown an ivory sheet over him like a shroud.

Tommy huffed silent tears beside him. “—Oooh…” he moaned softly.

No.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

James jumped. The tone, the accent was unmistakable—it was Officer Shadow. But the vocal chords were no longer those of a strong, middle-aged man. This vocalization came from a much older person--someone whose throat creaked with age, lungs rattling with every breath.

“Thomas, since you are unable to make a proper introduction, I will have to do the honors myself.” The wheels rolled forward, and fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed and blazed into blinding light.

James clenched his eyes shut, stabbed with twin spears of new pain. When he could open them a crack, he found himself looking up at a mummy—a human head wrapped in brittle crepe, bald pate sporting a few random strands of grey. The old man had a pug nose, swollen to a red carbuncle with two ugly nostril slits. The eye sockets were mottled with brown bruises, the skin covered with liver spots and lesions. The eyes were milky blue and veined with blood.

The skull smiled at him, chapped lips peeling back over yellow tusks.

“How d’you do, Mister Locke?”

James kept his mouth clamped shut. He stripped us buck naked. Of course he’s seen our wallets and all the cards…

“My name is Ezekiel Baird.” The skull was speaking in that aristocratic drawl, the one that made his stomach clench. “Ezekiel Abadiah Baird. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The skull made a show of waiting for his reply, mock-listening for words that did not come. The old man cackled merrily. “Cat’s got your tongue, I see! Understandable. You’ve come such a long way. I will confess, it has been many years since I visited New Amsterdam—I hear it is much changed. Harlem Village is now home to the cream of Negro society!” Another chuckle. “I’ve never met a Harlemite of such substantial means before. You must forgive us, Mister Locke, if our country manners here in Carolina seem rough and quaint by comparison.”

The wheelchair squealed and the skull retreated from view, moving along the length of the table.

“Where are we?” James grated out the words as the old mummy rolled away, teeth clenched with pain. “Where have you taken us?”

“Why, this is my home, Mister Locke!” The wheels rolled on toward Tommy. “You may not know it, but the Baird family has run the finest funeral home in Buncombe County since before the Civil War.”

James turned his head, trying to look over to Tommy. The Baird family? Is this person related to you?

“This old place was once my residence and my place of business. I have not practiced the mortuary arts since the turn of the century, of course, but… these old rooms still have their uses!”

Tommy tried to speak. “Eeaz, zuh. Eeeaz zeh ick oh.” Please sir. Please let him go.

The old man laughed again. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, young Thomas! But I’ll tell you what. If you’re fond of this one, we’ll keep him. You’ll need a place to stay, after all, when you take me in!”

Tommy gagged in a deep breath and wailed in denial, flexing and twisting on the table. There was something crazed and mindless about his struggle, like a fish flopping in the dry leaves.

“Wait,” James rasped, trying to distract the old man. He knew instinctively that whatever he was about to do to Tommy would be horrible. “My family has money. I’ll pay you.” He coughed blood, swallowed it grimly, and tried again. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to let us go.”

“Will you now?” The skull wheeled about, leering over the humped shoulder like a Halloween mask. “Is that what your life is worth, Mister Locke? Your body, your soul? Ransomed for a few portraits of Benjamin Franklin on cheap green paper?”

Confused, he tried again. “What do you want? Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you.”

The skull grinned. “Why, yes. I believe you will, Mister Locke. Young Thomas certainly gave me everything I asked, and more! I’ve missed him since he ran away, more than I can say.”

The old man turned back toward Tommy’s table. “I cannot thank you enough for returning my beloved nephew to the fold, Mister Locke. If not for you, I don’t believe he would have come within a hundred miles of here. Why, without your very special relationship… I might well have died.”

A withered hand reached out toward Tommy’s face. The old man ran a palsied fingertip over the drool-slick chin and trailed it along Tommy’s lower lip. He bent forward, bringing his face in close to Tommy’s, shoulders hunched.

“Stop it! Don’t touch him.” James felt his mouth fill with red copper as he struggled against the straps, trying to work his arms free.

The old man ignored him. “Now then,” he crooned to Tommy. “Let’s get reacquainted, shall we?”

Tommy shuddered and squirmed at every touch, desperately trying to prevent contact with his skin, but it was no use. One gaunt hand closed around his throat, the other stroked his sweating, weeping face tenderly. “There’s a lad.” He sounded almost gentle. “You remember. Breathing in… breathing out.”

Tommy’s eyes rolled up into his head, the whites showing stark as his muscles locked into rigor and began to shake. His whole body trembled, an earthquake ripping through muscle and bone. His breath roared in and out of his chest in huge gusts, like a bellows.

“Stop it!” His shout was an agonized gasp. He was crying now himself. “You’re killing him!”

Tommy lay flat on his back on the table, his chest rising and falling, the blood visibly pounding in his temples. The old man unbuckled one of his wrists and tilted his head back, like a doctor trying to clear the airway of a patient having a fit.

The horrible liquid gurgling sound began, coming now from Tommy’s open mouth, as if some invisible thick slime was pouring down his throat. His tremors increased in strength one last time, his heels drumming the table top like fists on a tin roof. Then he was quiet—his breath had stopped.

James held his own breath, paralyzed with horror, until Tommy’s lungs filled with a sudden clear whoop of air. The old man slumped back in his wheelchair as Tommy breathed in deep.

“Tommy?” James whispered. “Are you… okay…?”

Tommy answered with a low, deep groan of pleasure.

One hand had been unbuckled from the leather cuff. He reached up now with that free hand, slipped the retaining band of the dental gag up over the back of his head, and carefully removed the appliance from his face. When he had teased it out of his mouth, he tossed it casually on the metal tray beside the table.

“Woo! God Almighty, what a thrill. It never pales.”

James felt his breath catch in his throat, going shallow and rough. Tommy always had a Southern accent. He’s playing with you. Doing an impression.

Tommy’s movements were swift and sure as he unbuckled the strap around his chest, then rolled to free his right hand, and sat up to unbuckle his legs.

He tried again. “Tommy?”

Tommy looked over at him, his eyes blazing brilliant blue as he swung his bare legs off the side of the table. “Never fear, Mister Locke! Tommy Baird is right as rain.” He ran his hands over his naked anatomy with almost gluttonous delight. “Tommy Baird…will do very nicely indeed.”

He hopped down lightly, stood on his tiptoes, and threw up his arms in a long, balletic stretch. At the peak of the movement he laughed out loud, so full of triumph and joy that James almost wanted to smile with him—he had never seen Tommy this happy before.

“Tom…” James hesitated. “Can you help me with these cuffs?”

Tommy dropped his arms to his sides and smirked. “No…I’m afraid you’ll have to sit tight for a bit longer, Mister Locke. I have some business to attend to.”

“What…?” James flexed his hands into fists. “Are you kidding? Let me out of these straps, Tom!”

Tommy chuckled. “Might do, yes.” He spoke lightly. “Eventually. But not before I’ve applied myself to a fine steak, a bottle of brandy, a pitcher of good cream and a nice, big slice of pecan pie.” He licked his lips and smiled. “One must have priorities!”

He strode to the door, confident and careless in his nudity as a Greek statue. “Be a peach and wait patiently, won’t you?” He turned to look back over his shoulder. “If you need something to occupy your mind, Mister Locke, I’ll tell you a secret. The rats in this basement get mighty bold, when the lights are out. Back in my undertaker days, I used to keep a nigger down here at night to guard the bodies. Keep them from chewing on my clientele.” His eyes danced with humor. “Those coloured boys carried a broom and a coal shovel, but they were always getting bit.”

Then he flipped the light switch and closed the door, leaving James in darkness.

He waited a full minute before he closed his eyes, and let the tears of rage flow freely. Even in the midst of those tears he struggled for control, breath hissing between his teeth, trying to calm himself and think, damnit. Think.

Tommy is gone.

It was a barbed thought, a crown of thorns laced around the inside of his skull. Every time he tried to touch the idea, it hurt, and he could feel himself tearing inside. It was the mental equivalent of trying to swallow with his torn throat.

Some part of him was being ripped to shreds--maybe the part that believed the world made any kind of sense.

One half of him knew the truth: that Tommy Baird, the man he loved, had gotten up off the examination table, laughed in his face, and left him here to die.

The other side of him knew another truth: that the man who walked out that door was no more Tommy Baird than the Man in the Moon. He was someone else entirely, looking out of Tommy’s eyes, talking out of Tommy’s mouth, and joy-riding in Tommy Baird’s beautiful body like a thief in a stolen car.

James clenched his fists and rotated his feet in their cuffs, listening to the clink of the chains that secured his ankles and wrists to the table. He could keep working them, but the odds of breaking free of medical restraints were low. They were designed to hold violent patients in place for many hours.

Tommy—or whoever it was passing for Tommy—had left him alone. That would normally be a foolish thing to do, if a person could scream and call for help. But he felt a cold certainty that his power of speech was gone for a reason. They had done something to him, while he was unconscious.

Will I ever be able to speak again?

No. Not a good thought. Think something else.

As it stood, he was likely to remain alone down in this basement until Tommy (Ezekiel… his name was Ezekiel) came back.

Alone except for the rats.

And the old man in the wheelchair.

Speaking of the old man…was he still breathing?

James tried to be still, to slow down his own shaking breath, to quiet the heartbeat that pounded like thunder in his ears. The wheelchair should be off to his right, next to the table where Tommy was strapped down. Was it still there?

Had he heard the creak of a wheel? A wheeze of labored breath?

Something soft, wet and cold touched his hand in the dark, and he jerked away, moving so fast and hard that the chain rang against the table like a bell. He began thrashing and fighting with all his might, hoping to frighten away whatever had come nosing around looking for a mouthful of meat.

“James.” The sound was like a rusty hinge. “Be still, hon. I’ll try to get you loose.”

Tears once again flooded his eyes. “Tom.” The instrument was wrong, weak and reedy, but there was no mistaking the music. He would know that voice anywhere.

“I’m here.” James heard the trembling hiss and felt the cold wet touch again, this time on his wrist. Chilly fingers fumbled with the buckles of his cuff. “Try not to move. These hands don’t work so good.”

“How…?” His questions swarmed up into his mouth, all of them too crazy to ask. Finally he settled on, “How did this happen…?”

“I can’t explain what he does, James. He’s always done it.” The shaking hands finally seemed to conquer one buckle. They crawled on, reaching for the next one. “There’s a trick to it—some of him has to be inside you. I saw him take a man once by spitting in his eye. That wasn’t the way he took my father, though. Or my mother. Or me.”

James swallowed hard, grimacing as he did. “Your father…?”

The fingers shook as they worked, cold and clumsy. “Yes. After the War. I told you once that he shot himself… I didn’t tell you why.” The tongue of the buckle resisted, and Tommy cursed it quietly.

“What happened to him?”

“There was a lynching, down in Hendersonville.” The hands went still for a moment, then back to work more slowly. “My Daddy didn’t hold with the Klan, especially after he come back from France, but someone slipped an envelope under the door of his office in town. It was a picture of the necktie party, with the two black boys hanging from a pole. And somehow my father was there in the photograph, standing in the front row looking right at the camera with a big ol’ grin on his face.” A deep breath. “I found him in the parlor that night, just sitting with that picture in his lap and crying.” Another moment of silence, broken only by the whistle of bad lungs. “The next day he drove over to my Uncle Ezekiel’s house and rang his door bell. When the old man answered the door, he blew his brains out right then and there.”

The second buckle gave way, and James felt the cuff on his wrist relax.

“I wish I had done the same,” Tommy said quietly. “I wish you had never met me, James.”

James wriggled out of the cuff, flexing his free hand…and then reached toward the hand that freed him. It was a gnarled, elderly claw, every joint a swollen and misshapen knob of bone. The owner of that hand could only be in constant pain—he had seen rheumatoid arthritis before.

The hand pulled away from him after a moment, trembling, and he heard a strangled hitch of breath. “I’m sorry…” The squeaky old hinge wheezed laughter. “I’m afraid I’m not myself right now.”

James reached up to the strap across his forehead. His own fingers were still nimble and swift, and he was almost free by the time Tommy could roll the chair across the room and find the light switch.

“Cover your eyes, hon.”

James lowered his head and closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. He was in a room with a floor of stained tile, sitting on a high table of cold steel. There were glass fronted cabinets and trays of instruments along the wall. A room for the preparation of bodies.

He put a shaking hand to his throat, found the bandage and gauze that covered it. He took a deep breath and slid off the table carefully, extending his foot to catch himself—it was a long drop to the floor.

He crept to the door, holding his genitals cupped in a protective hand. Outside there was a wide silent hall, leading to an old-fashioned Otis freight elevator. The room next door was a wood-paneled office, lit with banker’s lamps of brass and green glass. Through the open door he could see the bent figure in the wheelchair.

“Tommy?” He put a hand to his throat and winced, moving into the room.

The figure in the chair cringed lower, and did not face him. “Just trying to find your clothes. He’ll have them in a gunny sack somewhere. Ready to dress you again, if need be. Or to throw into the furnace, if…”

He didn’t seem able to finish the thought. Instead he put his hands to the wheels and struggled forward a few more inches. “Soon as we find your clothes, you can slip out the old coal chute in the back. If you listen for the sound of water you’ll find Smith Mill Creek. And if you follow the stream downhill, it’ll take you all the way to the French Broad River. The black folks live around Burton Street. I reckon you’ll know it when you see it.”

He would have continued rolling toward the wardrobe in the corner, but James stepped up around the chair, planted his hands on the armrests to stop it, and crouched low to look directly into his lover’s eyes.

The man in the chair was not just old. He was ancient. James looked him up and down slowly. The ruined head was resting atop a scrawny chicken neck, all bone and wattled folds of leather. The starved frame was only loosely dressed, a thin robe belted at the waist and open to reveal slotted ribs and a shrunken belly. The skin was scaly grey and sick, covered with vivid purple spots and red, raw sores.

He looked up into blue eyes milky with cataracts, and saw Tommy Baird looking back at him.

“I used to love the way you looked at me,” the old man said. “Like I was everything good in the world.” He raised his gnarled hands to cover his face, bending his head to avoid his lover’s gaze. “I did wonder sometimes…‘Could he keep looking at me like that? When I’m old and grey?’” The chest hitched with something like laughter or tears. “Could anyone look at me like that forever?” He sucked in a hissing breath. “I guess now I know.”

James reached out and pulled the tortured hands away from the old man’s face. The fingers were freezing cold, still damp, swollen with ague. Even touching them made Tommy’s face twist with pain.

Slowly, holding the Tommy’s eyes with his own, James raised those hands to his mouth and kissed them.

“I still see you.” His whisper was hoarse and painful. “You still hear me?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Tommy shook his head. “Damn. I can’t even cry. The old bastard’s got no tears--he’s dry as a popcorn fart.” He looked away. “Get dressed, hon.”

James went to the wardrobe. He found his clothing, wallet, watch and glasses in a burlap sack, along with the Green Book and the notebook and pencil he’d been keeping in his coat pocket. The socks and shirt were missing, but he put on his coat and stuffed his bare feet into his shoes with a grimace.

There was a cracked mirror on the inside of the door, and he looked into it warily. A short, muscular black man with gold-rimmed glasses, his throat wrapped in cotton bandages showing a tell-tale splotch of red. He buttoned up the coat as high as it would go, hoping it would look more as if he was wearing a turtleneck sweater, and then turned toward the door.

Tommy sat in the wheelchair, a massive pistol in his lap.

“I’m ready. Just push me into the hall before you go. When he comes back down the elevator…I’ll be waiting.”

James froze. “What?”

“I’ll take care of him.” Tommy patted the gun. “Like my Daddy should have done.”

“No.” James shook his head in slow disbelief. “You can’t…”

“I’m dying, hon.” He put his free hand to his sunken chest. “I can feel it. This body…it’s so weak I have to think to keep the heart beating. And the only reason I’m not already dead is money, most likely. He probably needs a lawyer to sign papers, make sure he keeps his property.”

James stepped forward. “Come with me. Forget him. Forget this.”

Tommy smiled with genuine tenderness. “Tried that before, hon. And look where that got us.” He shook his head. “Just go. Leave me here. Let me do…what I have left to do.”

James clenched his teeth and shook his head stubbornly.

“I love you.” The words were painful, and tasted of blood. “I won’t ever leave you.”

In the end, they waited in the dark for three hours before the Otis elevator returned to the basement. Dawn was just starting to break, the first lark singing in the woods behind the house, when the door swung open.

The report of the pistol was thunderous in the enclosed space. James held his head in his hands as it crashed three times, four…and looked up through the smoke to see a bleeding form still crawling in the hallway, dragging itself with a shattered spine toward the open lift door.

He took the pistol from Tommy’s shaking hand and walked into the hall, aimed the gun at the back of a familiar head, and pulled the trigger twice more. The spray of blood and bone formed a halo around the ruined skull—he pulled the trigger again to be sure, but there was no more thunder. Only a dry click.

James threw the gun away, turned his back on the mess, and walked back to Tommy’s side. The azure eyes looked up at him, warm and alive.

“I love you,” Tommy whispered.

James bent and gathered the frail limbs in his arms. He carried Tommy over the mess and into the study, settled him into the old wheelchair as gently as he could, and wrapped a sheet around his shoulders. Then he rolled the chair down the hall without looking back. He held the Dead Man’s switch as they rode up in the freight elevator to the ground floor, pushed Tommy out onto the front porch and down the ramp to the driveway.

Tommy’s Bel Air was parked in the grass behind the house, the keys still in the ignition. James opened the passenger door and settled Tommy unto the seat, got behind the wheel, and mouthed a silent prayer as he turned the key.

The car roared to life without hesitation. He put it in gear and drove through the grass and out into a rutted country road.

“Which way?” he asked.

“There.” Crushed by exhaustion, the bony hand twitched toward the left. James put an arm around Tommy’s shoulders and drew him close, pulling him into the warmth of his side as he drove.

He went as fast as he could without bottoming out the car, following the lane as it turned from dirt to gravel. The pink glow of sunrise in the east was getting stronger, filtering through pines and the golden beech that crowded the lane on either side. Around a final curve, James saw an intersection with a paved road. He looked down at Tommy for further directions, but the head was nodding now, the rheumy eyes closed.

“Tommy?” He squeezed a bit tighter. “Which way do we…?”

The sudden shriek of rubber was his only warning. He looked up at the last moment, in time to see the grille of the police car bearing down on them, coming at impossible speed down the highway. He reached for the gearshift just before impact, the crash and crunch and scream of two cars shattering.

Just a few feet away, through the storm of exploding glass, he saw the blazing blue gaze of the man in the uniform. His red face was lit up like a Jack-o’-lantern in the early morning light, on fire with a familiar madness, the mouth wide open and twisted ugly with rage.

James closed his eyes and turned his face away from his enemy as the car tumbled, clutching the man in his arms with all his strength.

Until the very last moment, he held love close.