14. Wolfe
wolfe
The last time I had anyone in my bed, it had been in prison. A guy named Vinnie Otto had been assigned to my cell prior to his release. Sometimes guys on the night before they walked would get jumped, possibly shivved, which might delay their release or postpone it altogether if they fought back.
Maybe I was known as safe, the guy who wouldn’t jump you or try to kill you just because you were getting out. Still, Vinnie didn’t sleep all night. How do I know? He had the lower bunk, and he sat there, feet on the floor, hands on his knees, watching.
“A few hours, man,” I said to him, in that small space of time between midnight and lights on. A time that felt safe, because even murderers and rapists had to sleep. I was neither. “Come on up. I’ll keep watch.”
I guess he trusted me by that point because he crawled into my bunk and into my arms, and I watched over him while he got a few hours of rest, eyes closed, his breathing deep and even.
He was wiry and skinny and smelled like old hay.
No ramen noodles changed hands; no deals over bars of chocolate were made.
He slept, and I deepened my reputation as a good guy.
When the doors opened and we all walked to the dining hall, he got yanked out of line by the guards.
I never saw him again, though I’d like to think he made his way home.
That’s almost how it felt with Blue in my bed. It was cold, so it only made sense that we would share. But it was more than that, at least to me.
Maybe he thought of me as a good guy, though I didn’t feel like one, especially not after I caught him watching through the half-open bathroom door as I washed for bed. As I wanted what I wanted, illicit thoughts of him joining me. Of sharing the bed, our bodies connecting in the dark.
Still, I behaved like a good guy. When he pushed up against me, I turned the other way and we slept like that, our spines pressed together for warmth. I could feel him breathing.
The night outside was so quiet and still. Below-zero temperatures and no wind. No cloud cover. Just cold air coming down from the north and the feel of his body, slender. Shifting to find a comfortable spot.
If I looked over my shoulder, I knew I could see his fair hair limned in starlight. I didn’t look. We slept.
In the morning, the brightness was blinding as I opened the front door and looked out. The world was white on white, rolling away to the south beneath the gold-silver sunshine and the deep hue of the sky.
Blinking, I turned back and shut the door to find Blue standing there. We had a moment of me watching him watching me, like two animals in a comfortable cage.
I questioned my decision not to tell him who he was. Wondered what he’d think if he knew, if he’d be angry I’d kept it from him. Then he turned his head, a flush to his cheeks, curls and tangles behind his ears. I wanted to comb his hair for him.
In prison, we shaved with safety razors and trimmed each other’s hair with those, too. One time, a guy arrived with a pair of scissors he’d smuggled in. Actual scissors. They were good ones. Sharp.
The man might have been a tailor in a previous life. Or maybe he used the scissors to cut cocaine and kill people. But he gave haircuts, traded for the usual things, and did a pretty good job. He had a line of men waiting all the time. Then one day he was gone.
“You okay?” Blue asked.
I’d been standing there for a good long moment, memories flickering of him watching me through the open bathroom door, way after I should have realized it was open. Every part of my body remembered his gaze and how he hadn’t looked away. How he’d not mentioned it afterwards.
I made sure to shut the door when he went into the bathroom to wash. I’d seen him naked, but this would be different: him awake and aware that I was looking. A temptation I didn’t need. Ogling he didn’t deserve.
“Breakfast?” I asked, instead of saying anything else I wanted to say. Or do.
“Yes, please.”
On such a cold, bright morning, a hearty breakfast was in order, so I made it happen.
We had plenty of everything, so no need to count drops of milk or spoons of sugar.
I made bacon, fried eggs in bacon grease, made toast, which Blue buttered.
The table was groaning as we sat down, silence presiding while we made pigs of ourselves.
Blue had flecks of crumbs in his hair as he finished off his third cup of tea, and I didn’t stop myself from reaching over to ease them out, rubbing my fingers over my plate so I wouldn’t have to sweep those crumbs up later.
“Thank you,” he said. “I guess I should comb it.”
He meant his hair, flaxen tresses that reminded me of something out of a fairy tale. My mouth opened to offer, but I stopped to think for a moment.
In prison, we’d groomed each other like half-feral monkeys; the touching, the slight intimacy, a way of building trust, of a sort.
In the cabin, such a gesture would produce the same effect.
Trust. Intimacy. A way for me to put my hands on him, gently.
Without intent. Only so that I could look at him and remember, one day after he was gone, what it felt like, his silken hair in my hands.
“I could do it,” I said, helpless as the words escaped me.
“Okay,” Blue said, a softness around his eyes as he said the single word.
We cleared the table and washed and dried, and Blue sat down in a kitchen chair facing the back door.
The blue sky gleamed as though it’d been polished.
I focused on Blue. Stood behind him and used the comb to ease through the tangles, using my fingers sometimes to hold the hair so it wouldn’t tug and hurt him.
Blue bowed his head so I could get at the back of his neck, winced with a small sound when I worked an especially tight knot. I eased through the tangles. Blue sighed as I drew the comb over his head, down the long length of his beautiful hair.
My hair was short. Scruffy, like a dog’s. A dark, muddy brown. Nothing special. Certainly nothing anyone would want to comb, let alone touch. I wanted to see Blue’s hair spilled across a white pillowcase. It was nothing I could ever ask for.
My hands shook as I went into the bathroom to put away the comb. When I came out, Blue was still sitting there. Hands in his lap, as if he’d waited all morning for me and would continue to wait until I continued combing his hair.
“All done,” I said.
“Oh.” Blue sounded disappointed, but I had to draw the line. Didn’t I?
We got dressed and ready for the day. I stood in the bedroom, and Blue was in the living room. No doors were closed. I kept my eyes to myself, licked at a bit of honey in the corner of my mouth, laced up my boots, and led the way to the workshop. Which was damn cold.
I turned both space heaters on low and sat down, spreading my hands over my notes and the few tools I’d left out. Blue joined me, pulling his chair close to mine.
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up a printed catalog, its pages folded open, a circle around a single item. “A lace master?”
“Cuts rawhide into strips,” I said. “Can make fine leather threads out of even moose hide. My hands are steady, but this would make a more even cut all the way to the end.”
“This machine is a thousand dollars,” he said.
“I’m saving up,” I said. I had hand tools, sure, but nothing like that cutter.
The look on his face told me he thought I should just buy it on credit. An imperious expression, haughty, his half-hooded eyes almost looking down on me. Then the expression vanished.
A kid from a rich family could afford anything he liked, and perhaps he was remembering that. The memory mixed with that of a young man who had measured slices of banana and mourned the lack of milk in his tea. Two different young men now.
I wondered who he’d be once he got his memory back. Whether he’d be embarrassed having known someone so poor.
I prepped collections of gimp for each lanyard design, and Blue started weaving, tightening the strands with his fingers, leaving a tassel at the end.
I thought about moose hide and how much softer it would be to work with, tough and soft at the same time.
And how Blue’s fingers would look, weaving those supple strands.
Real leather lanyards out of moose hide, goat leather, bison, would go for a lot more than ones made out of gimp, but I couldn’t afford the outlay, at least not yet.
Then I joined him. I had thicker fingers than he did, and the work went slower for me, which might have been why I’d been putting the project off.
After two hours, I’d only made two lanyards, and one was so lumpy, Blue would have to redo it.
So I turned to sketches of key rings, round loops of ordinary cowhide, which would have a leather flap through which a key ring could go.
The key rings themselves would have a design, only I’d not decided yet.
My mind was distracted, and the warmth in my gut made it extra hard, extra important, to focus on the work and not the pretty young man, face flushed, bent over his work as though his life depended on it. It did not. We had two months before the Christmas bazaar. Ages.
“What are we going to do with those?” he asked, pausing, his hands in his lap, fingers tangled in gimp.
“Punch in designs,” I said. I pointed to a few of the punches I’d come up with: circles, stars, designs I could make with the punches I already had. Nothing fancy. “Then we stain. Deeper stains in the punch, lighter all around.”
“Could you do trees?” he asked. “Like Christmas trees?”
“I could,” I said. “Make a drawing, send it in. Get a custom punch.”
“Bet that would help you make enough money to buy a lace master.”
I could. The idea was not new to me: that expanding the production line, doing custom punches for Christmas, would help me make more key rings.
Help me make more money to buy a tool I wanted.
But the idea of focusing on that production line and abandoning custom work made my skin itch.
Art versus money, it always came down to this point.
Blue took the clipboard and pencil from me and quickly drew a Christmas tree.
It was sweet, as though it had come from the mind of a third-grader with a very dab hand.
A treetop with a simple star, three evenly spaced boughs on either side, a single, criss-crossing loop of garland, five round balls that were meant to be ornaments.
“Punch it in,” he said, handing the clipboard back to me. “Then stain and hand-paint the details. Can you hand-paint leather?”
“You can,” I said.
“You could do a tree, one with a wreath, one with a present on it. Stockings. A snowman. All Christmas stuff. To match the lanyards, sort of.”
Really good custom punches were a hundred bucks, or thereabouts.
I could get cheap ones for fifty. They’d last me a season.
Normally they wouldn’t be worth it, but did I have enough money in the bank for the good stuff?
I did the sums on the clipboard and came out with an amount I could afford, enough to buy five good stamps or ten shitty ones.
“Tree,” said Blue, counting on his fingers. “Wreath. Snowman. Present. Candy cane. That’s five.”
“Can you draw me some nice designs?” I asked. “Clean lines, strong lines. Then I can send in the order.”
Blue took the clipboard from me and leaned back, curling his spine into the chair. His feet went up on the desk as he started to draw.
I believed I was seeing a gesture from his previous life. He looked like he’d been an indoor kid, one who lived wintery all year round, indoors, bundled up. Cups of hot chocolate on tap. Buds in his ears so he could listen to something jazzy and organic.
I didn’t make him take his feet off the desk, even though he was wearing boots. Instead, I thought about leather punches and leather paint, and how pleased Mabel would be to get unique key rings for the bazaar rather than the simple ones I’d been planning.
While Blue sketched, I made myself not stare. Made myself take another stab at a lanyard made of plastic gimp, when what I wanted was to order a nice comb or a hairbrush, one of those fancy ones from England. If Blue was still here at Christmas, which was very doubtful, I’d give it to him.