38. Tied-On Leather Pieces of Equipment #2
He would not panic. He would not panic. Connor’s mother looked just like him.
Her name was Jennifer, he must remember that.
Jennifer. She’d raised the nicest man in the world, and Connor had claimed she was excited to meet him, so Jennifer would be happy with this gift and find something to like in the basket. It would be fine.
They all collided somewhere on the pebble path to the front stairs and Connor made the semi-formal introductions.
“Oh, that’s beautiful!” She took the basket from Jonathan’s hands. She had Connor’s easy blushes as well as his smile and hair.
“Thank you for asking me to come visit.” The hanging flower baskets coordinated in bright orange and white flowers and vivid green foliage. Connor’s own coordinated house hadn’t sprung out of nowhere, Jonathan could tell.
“I need to be thanking you for making this drive. How was it? Was there traffic in Prineville?”
“All of it must have been at the Starbucks drive thru.”
Connor’s free hand alighted briefly on Jonathan’s shoulder to steer him around Ribby and a profusion of potted plants, but he dropped it to hold the door open.
Jonathan checked, and his breathing was even. And more importantly, he was managing without sarcasm. He was fine.
Until he saw the wall inside the door.
Now he was not fine.
In front of him, Connor’s mother stopped and turned when she realized Jonathan had barely moved. His feet couldn’t take another step.
The entry wall was a gallery display, sure, he had one of those over his couch, but this one wasn’t showcasing art and clever posters. This was four feet high and eight or more feet long, all framed photos of Connor and a girl who must be his sister, almost all of them people in full laughing mode.
Jonathan had to cover his mouth with his hand, or he would flat out yelp over each picture of young Connor. Connor in baseball outfits at every age. Connor on horseback, also at every age. Connor in a tiny suit, probably as a ring-bearer at a wedding.
“Wait, I don’t understand. What is Connor riding there? Is that a sheep?”
Jennifer laughed with her head thrown back and one arm extended toward him and Connor.
“Went to that one right away? It’s my favorite.
Mutton bustin’ at the fair. He won that year.
” She reached up to Connor’s curls. “Stayed on a full twelve seconds. My little tick. That sheep couldn’t shake you off. ”
He looked at Connor and thought about how those big arms would cling to him in the night, a full-body wrap that meant Jonathan didn’t need more than a sheet. “A little tick?”
“Mom.” Connor sounded like he was one careless fact away from requiring an urgent care visit.
“Earned his first buckle.” She leaned closer to Jonathan. She smelled like peaches and cinnamon. “His last, too. He loves horses but didn’t like to barrel race. Not like Jess, she was flat out trying for trophies and buckles her whole childhood.”
There was a display case in his mother’s study where he’d abandoned his plaques and trophies when he moved to Eugene, and he knew there were framed podium photos around his parents’ home, but he didn’t think there was a single displayed or framed photo of people laughing, not him, not his mother, not his father.
Laughing was too uncontrolled, too unpredictable for either of his parents. Too messy.
His new life could be like this. When he returned to Eugene, he could print and frame a photo—no, photos, plural—of him and Connor, and also that excellent one Connor had taken of Pawsley and Ribby, because homes should look like this place, bedazzled with smiling, laughing memories.
His grandma’s house had loved its occupants like that. He wasn’t going to adopt the geranium print wallpaper border Gammy had used, but he could create a photo display that included more than moody landscapes and movie posters.
Surely his father’s cloud photo storage would have an image of a similarly missing-tooth tiny Jonathan on skates, someone must have taken one. And he could frame it with a copy of a gap-toothed Connor for a matched set.
The next several hours were busy enough and crazy enough that Jonathan had to live in each moment and not think.
Or at least, not think much. He met Jess, who was a mix of Connor’s enthusiasm, a wickedly sharp sense of humor, and an absolutely obvious dash of ruthlessness with respect to protecting her brother.
“Want to gather eggs with me? You’ll like the chickens.” Her big cartoon-shark grin meant he undoubtedly would not, but he had no choice.
“Jess.” Connor stretched his sister’s name in warning. Jonathan shouldn’t like that voice quite as much as he did, at least not while standing in the yard.
“What?” She spread her hands and shrugged at her brother, and he couldn’t believe there were so many Connors in the world, in all shapes and genders, but this whole family was alike.
“I’m only going to point out your favorites, the fluffy silkies and the Polish crested.
Because he deserves to know exactly who he’s dating. ”
“Wear long sleeves and grab some boots from the back porch.” Connor’s voice held a warning note. “Some of the girls are ornery.”
He didn’t yet know these people well enough to lob the obvious replies about ornery girls, and Connor’s knowledge or lack thereof, but Jess went ahead and aimed that exact joke at her brother, and yes, they were going to absolutely gang up together on Connor.
But first, he had to survive the lair of the miniature feathered dinosaur descendants.
The silkie chickens that swarmed around his boots were small, poofy-headed creatures in need of hair ribbons, or at least a good salon visit, which he’d previously thought was only for dogs and sometimes cats.
Even without goofy bows, they were more adorable than he’d ever imagined chickens—an animal that he’d previously never imagined at all—could be.
Jonathan chose not to examine why these particular small, fancy, attention-hungry hens were Connor’s favorites.
The bigger ones, with their Velociraptor splayed-toe strides and very pointed beaks, chased away the Silkies, so the egg-gathering experience was a mixed bag of cutesy overload and nervous twitches.
“We do this every day.” Jess slid four eggs into the basket he carried.
He would be ecstatic if he never had to enter a hot, poopy chicken enclosure again in his life.
“Sometimes twice.”
He could do it. He’d become an Alpine farm girl herding mini-dinos, just gay and wearing jeans instead of a dirndl. And if Connor produced a cow and asked if he wanted to milk it, he would do that, too. It couldn’t be poopier than this coop.
“You can do this on your own tomorrow.”
Was she testing him? No one in their right mind would send him unsupervised into this melee. She must be testing him.
“Glad to help. Anything you want.” He was even talking with a television rancher’s clipped sentences and half the allotment of pronouns, although that was because he didn’t want to open his mouth. There were a lot of flies.
By Sunday he probably wouldn’t have any final Gs left in his vocabulary if this continued. And he might become vegan.
Whatever Jess was testing him on, he passed, probably not with an A, more likely a gentleman’s C, which meant he had room to improve. But he didn’t break any eggs or step on any chickens, and he didn’t flee, so he must have passed.
He met Connor’s father while he and Connor were leaning on a rail fence talking about the four horses idling in the shade cast by a sheet metal roof.
That’s when Jonathan realized the McMillans had carefully staggered the introductions instead of flooding him all at once, a tactic probably organized by Connor.
Connor’s father was quieter, but that was a given since he lived with Jennifer and Jess. Unlike Connor, he could stand without vibrating on the balls of his feet, so Jonathan made some conclusions about where Connor had inherited his energy level, too.
When Connor’s father walked away to clean up before dinner, he clapped Connor’s shoulder and nodded. Jonathan thought that was possibly cowboy language of approval.
Dinner was delicious. Platters heaped with breaded and fried trout, tiny new potatoes, a big salad and sliced tomatoes with chèvre and fresh herbs, circulated on the long oak table. Connor’s mother explained that they didn’t keep goats, a neighbor did, and they swapped wagyu for goat cheese.
Nice to know there was at least one form of biting domesticated animal he wouldn’t be required to touch.
The table was a lot of talking, a lot of peopling, more even than story hour in those chaotic moments before the librarian opened the book and the kids focused. This was like three-point-five Connors in one place and it was loud. Very loud.
“Jonathan’s had a long drive.” Connor pushed his chair back. “I think we’re gonna to go listen for owls.”
If Jess’s expression was an indication of what would happen in the next fifteen minutes, this was a new euphemism.
Retreating behind the barn to stargaze with Connor was an activity he assumed he could handle. Even a complete city boy could recognize the sound of an owl somewhere above them in the twilight.
He was happier when Connor admitted that yes, listening for owls was indeed meant to cover Jonathan pushing Connor against the weathered wood and reenacting key plot points from the night they’d met. Mostly clothed, though, and mostly (well, entirely) Connor, because…bugs.
The ground was more than dubious behind the barn, so he wasn’t going to his knees and forbade Connor from it as well.
Connor liked being firmly told no. It made the rest of their owl-listening proceed successfully despite the lack of owls.
In front of him, Connor became an amalgam assembled from kisses to the hollows of his neck, stroking hands hidden under clothing, and words whispered into the quiet. He built Connor with his hands and lips, formed a sweet and loveable man, and then wrecked his creation.