- Hard Fall
Authors: James Buchanan
Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
MLR Press, LLC
www.mlrpress.com
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Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
CONTENTS
* * * *
Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
HARD FALL
James Buchanan
mlrpress
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Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2009 by James Buchanan
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Published by
MLR Press, LLC
3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.
Albion, NY 14411
Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet: www.mlrpress.com
Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz
Editing by Maura Anderson
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN# 978-1-934531-82-2
First Edition
2009
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Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
Lots of people helped me with this book. Laura, my publisher, I sincerely am grateful that you didn't bust my balls when I turned in a novel instead of a novella. Thanks Shari for helping me dot the I's and cross the Ts. Reb, I appreciate you twisting my shorts so I stayed on track with Joe. And Papi, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without you regularly kicking my ass on IM. Maura ... you'll make me actually sound like a writer.
Most of all, I adore you SG, for your love, understanding, sanity and the insights of a former missionary into the Church of Latter Day Saints. Thank you for not turning around and decking me when I asked "would a Mormon say..." for the fiftieth time in an evening. I know, I made you read the whole damn book and not just skim for the good parts ... you're a doll.
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Hard Fall
by James Buchanan
Why was I here, sweating through my shorts and staring down that wiry piece of muscle and lean rear end? I don't know why, 'cause maybe he's more trouble than he's worth.
Pretty boys, city boys, they don't do too well out here. The way he's tossing gear about, well, that's long work on a short task. Got more stumble than sense. Sometimes I wonder if he thinks he's fitting in. Expensive shades, cowboy hat and jeans that had to have cost at least a hundred bucks riding low on a set of hips just a hair on the wrong side of thin. His skin holds a warm shade of brown down deep. It ain't the kind you get from too much sun.
Everything I like all in one spit-start package. Not that I can afford to be all that picky; this is the high country after all.
My beat covers more territory than some states are wide.
All we got up here is cowboys and Mormons. If your family ain't been around for at least three generations, you're new to the area. Don't even get me started on the tourists.
My family, they walked outta Nauvoo, Illinois just ahead of the lynching parties and fled into Utah, pushing handcarts.
I'm born and bred local. And since I ain't a cowboy, that would mean I'm one of the Latter Day Saints ... at least in my heart I am. Some members of the Church, they might not see me so eye-to-eye on that if they knew.
While I don't drink, don't smoke, and don't cuss, the first guy to mistake me for a pacifist got himself into a world of 7
Hard Fall
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hurt. My badge, this star ... Garfield County Sheriff, one of the "Magnificent Seven." There's only seven deputies for this whole county. Been here since I left the Corrections Department where I worked the state pen in Cedar City. Got my first .22 when I was eight. Shot my first buck when I was twelve. I can handle myself along with the best.
Except, maybe, doing what I was doing here now. Just watching.
Heck, the first time I saw him is like right on the top of my mind. I'd stopped by Ruby's Inn to get a pop, standing along the porch, watching who's coming in and who's going out.
Outta old man Harding's truck swings this kid. Anybody who's got to ask how I knew it was old man Harding's truck ... they ain't never lived in a small town. Ruby's is officially a township, population 182 or thereabouts. Panguich, where the station is, hits around 1,600 with Tropic not quite a quarter of that. Both are on my beat. The biggest city 'round here is two hours and one county away. Cedar City, that's big enough for two high schools, a college campus and the state prison. Not hardly big enough to get lost in even if, like me, you sometimes wanted to.
Why did he catch my eye? First off, he screamed city, but not in that overfed, treadmill kinda manner. Naw, punk, in a way that sent all my cop senses running for the shotgun.
Then one of those weekend biker guys—all play bad-ass, with a twenty thousand dollar custom rod, who would dirty his drawers if the wrong guy said boo—drifted by. The punk's eyes focused in on the biker's leather-clad butt. He watched 8
Hard Fall
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the guy walk by, and then he licked his lips in that slow
I
wanna be tasting a bit of that
way.
Standing there watching him and swigging a root beer and I damn near spit it out. Man, oh man, I've got my sites on a prime slab of twenty-something pretty-boy in tight jeans.
Since it'd been nearly six months since I'd even managed to score a hand job in Vegas, everything went south real fast. I could have passed out from rapid blood loss then and there.
I know. I know. Gay and Mormon don't cohabit very well.
The Church has been wrong on other stuff, seen the light and changed their ways ... I'm hoping someday they'll see the light on this issue. Can't say I'm holding my breath, though.
Let's face it ... God made me this way. The same way he made me a blue-eyed blond with a receding hairline at twenty. Vanity ... that convinced me to shave my head and beat my body into submission in the gym. I don't have any choice in wanting another guy's meat.
If I coulda chose different, dear God I would have. I don't need the load of baggage trying to justify my faith with my body. A simple life with Molly-Mormon and a passel of kids would have been so much easier. At least I had the stones to suck it up and not take someone else down into miserable with me. I've kissed a few gals, never even got my pulse above a resting beat. The first guy who stuck his tongue down my throat, I blew in my shorts.
So I saw him and I wanted him. I don't think anyone can imagine how bad. And I stuck it in my pocket. No sense messing with something like that, and likely he was just 9
Hard Fall
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passing through anyhow. Then Jessie, she works Ruby's year-round, walks by and sees him.
Jessie smiled at me ... she always does, 'cause she's got a kid out of wedlock and I'm past thirty and ain't never married so there's potential there, she thinks. "Hey, Joe." That big smile held a ton of hope that made me cringe inside. "So, you keeping an eye on him?"
"What," I managed to choke out, sneezing the foam back outta my nose, "city boy?" Of course, we both knew we were talking about the new guy ... what else is there to talk about in a small town?
Grabbing a spot of wall right next to me, she starts in with the gossip. "Yeah, I was talking to Page and her momma, she says that Lena says he's done time." Then Jessie leaned real close and whispered, "Federal time. You know, hard," she winked, drawing out the word hard like she was anywhere near sophisticated, "time." I didn't rise to the bait, but then I ain't known around here for my sense of humor. Apparently the story was too good to let it go. She kept yakking in that same
somebody's died
tone. "He's Sandy Harding's family, from the Stewart part. You know her sister just went loopy in the sixties, off in California. Shacked up with this Indian guy
... like, from India." All three syllables got emphasis, guess so I'd know she didn't mean one of the local tribes ... all them are cowboys too. "Well, he's the grandson of that part of Sandy's tree. They say he don't got much family now, so they did God's work and took him in when he got out. Goes down to Cedar City once a month to check in with the Parole Board."
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Hard Fall
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Okay, I'm looking at the hottest thing outside of a GQ
model shoot. Everything I know says if he did hard time, it was on his back, as the
girl
for some dude with a nick-name like Killer and prison tats on every inch of skin. But honestly, I'm not getting that vibe. There is a coiled restlessness lurking in that body. He's a rattlesnake. All so pretty and calm. But he won't but give you two second's warning before he buries his fangs in your thigh.
I did not need that level of problem. Kept telling myself that, hoping I'd believe it through sheer repetition.
It took me damn near a month to figure out I was doing it.
Driving by, keeping an eye on him, and not in the cop kinda way. Instead of grabbing a sandwich at the little shop in Panguitch, I'd take the extra half-hour and drive on in to Tropic. I did a drop by at the Parole Board and talked with his officer ... you know, just to keep tabs on the element on my beat. That's what I told myself anyhow. I can lie to myself with the best of them.
Then I got the call. Call from Taylor Harding, the old man.
Noreen gave me the message. For fifteen minutes, my gut went cold. Finally, I steeled myself and rang him back.
Sandy'd answered with something bright and bubbly.
"Heya, Sandy, its Deputy Joseph Peterson. T called me."
People either called Taylor "Old Man Harding" or "T." Just depended on who you were talking to and how you knew him.
I worked his ranch in high school. A lot of us are cowboys too.
The divide is more of a function of which pew you park your rear in come Sunday morning and nobody really cares much 11
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until you start talking water rights and who's been here longer. "He around?"
"Naw, Joe, he's off at the back end of the ranch right now."
"Know when he'll be back?" I spun a pencil in my hand.
What I really wanted to ask was how their new hand was fairing and if he really liked guys or was it just a habit he developed behind bars. None of that went past my lips. "Do you know why he called?"
"Home past supper, but, yeah, I know what he wanted."
I waited for a bit, and then a bit more. "You gonna tell me or do I got to guess it?"
"Sorry," her laugh hit that nervous hiding something cord.
"I'm thinking how to put it. You know my sister's grandson is here."
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't make the rounds."
"Well, look, T and I got to go into Arizona for some business. Looking at maybe picking up a new bull. And, well, Kabe is gonna be around by himself. The hands are here, but nobody to really watch out for him." She pronounced his name like Gabe with a K ... I'd only seen his name written and had guessed wrong based on last name: Varghese. I'd probably bungle that one over my tongue, too. "You mind swinging by a few times and just keeping an eye on things?"