All American Boy (44 page)

He makes nine trips in all, hauling armfuls of wood down into the basement. He drops them in front of the stove, like offerings to some beneficent fire god. It's a big, squatting iron monster, the stove—twenty years old or more, with a large hatch on its side leading to its oven.

“Walter.” His mother's voice calls down the cellar steps. It's a calm, cool voice, so unlike the shrillness of just a few moments before.

He looks up. She stands silhouetted at the top of the stairs.

“Yes, Mother?” Wally calls back.

“Will you get the fire going for me? Save me a trip down the stairs?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you, Walter.”

Upstairs he can hear her teakettle starting to shriek.

He bends over, feeling a twinge of—what?—arthritis, this early?—in his hip. But he disregards the pain, taking hold of several pieces of firewood. He pulls down the iron handle of the stove, and with a hiss and a screech, opens the door, throwing in the wood.

It's a flash of color that he sees.

A flash of—something.

But whatever he saw in the stove before he threw in the wood, it's covered now.

He stares into the gaping hatch.

What
was
it?

What did he think he saw in there?

Nothing. It was nothing.

A sneaker.

No, it wasn't a sneaker. That's ridiculous. It wasn't a sneaker, and it certainly wasn't a
foot
—protruding from the ashes and woodchips and crumpled newspaper.

Now
whose mind is playing tricks?

Now
who's being susceptible to the power of suggestion?

Upstairs the teakettle is still shrieking on the stove.

So move the wood
, he tells himself,
if you want to be sure. Move the wood aside and see what's underneath
.

“Will you fire it up, Walter?” his mother calls again from the top of the stairs. Her voice is calm, careful, deliberate.

So move the wood
.

He can't budge from where he stands, can't even lift an arm.

“Yes, Mother,” he finally manages to call back. “I'll fire it up.”

But he just keeps staring at the stove, listening to the teakettle whistling upstairs.

Then, one by one, he loads the furnace with the rest of the wood, and sets it ablaze.

“All ready?” Dee asks.

“Yeah,” Wally says, sliding in behind the wheel. “All ready.”

Regina has come out onto the front porch.

“Wave to my mother,” Wally says.

“See ya later, Mrs. Day!” Dee calls from the window.

Regina waves back. Even blows them a kiss.

Above her, the chimney is beginning to puff dark gray smoke. The smoke drifts over the neighborhood, out from their little cul-de-sac toward Washington Avenue, down to Main Street, over the orchards, and into the swamps of Dogtown. Wally had loaded the furnace with enough wood to keep the fire burning, hot and ferocious, all day long, maybe well into the night. All that will be left when it's done will be soot and ashes. And Monday night, when he stops by again to talk with his mother, to have maybe the first real talk they've ever had in their lives, he'll load it up again, get that stove blazing hot once more. His mother's house will be warm and toasty when they sit down, with orange tea and graham crackers, and begin finding out who each other really are.

“So how long does it take to get to the city?” Dee asks, leaning up next to Wally's ear, startling him just a little.

“Oh, not long. It's a world away but not very far.”

Dee slides back over to the window, watching the buildings of Brown's Mill pass by. “Good-bye Dogtown! Good-bye Main Street! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!”

They pull onto the highway, leading up over the hill.

“So what are we going to do first when we get there?” Dee asks.

“Anything you want, babe. Anything at all. Sky's the limit.” Wally smiles, looking over at him. “This is going to be everything I've told you it'll be.”

He returns his eyes to the road heading out of town.

“It's going to be grand.”

Acknowledgments

As always, thanks to my indulgent and thoughtful editor, John Scognamiglio; my industrious agent, Malaga Baldi; my partner, soulmate, and husband, Timothy Huber; and—especially—my loyal readers. You can reach me at
www.williamjmann.com
.

About the Author

William J. Mann is best known for his studies of Hollywood and the American film industry, especially
Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn
, named a Notable Book of 2006 by the
New York Times
, and
Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand
, published in 2012. He is also the author of
Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines
, for which he won the Lambda Literary Award,
Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger
, and
How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
, which
Publishers Weekly
described as “like gorging on a chocolate sundae.” He is also the author of six novels.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Portions of this work first appeared, in slightly different versions, in the following anthologies:

His 2: Brilliant New Gay Fiction (eds. Robert Drake and Terry Wolverton), Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997.

Shadows of Love (ed. Charles Jurrist), Boston: Alyson Publications, 1988.

Shadows of the Night (ed. Greg Herren), New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.

Sons of Darkness (eds. Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche), San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1996.

Copyright © 2005 by William J. Mann

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

ISBN: 978-1-4976-6716-7

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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