The City of Lovely Brothers (16 page)

"It ain't your fault. I don't hold it against your sister, neither. Callie's being real understanding."

They got into bed. "We can't do what I thought we were going to on our first night living together," Caliban said, "not with Callie in the next room." "I know. It's enough sleeping all night naked in the same bed next to you. We never done that before. Thing is, what're we gonna do instead? And I don't mean instead o'

sleep."

"We can talk. Get to know each other."

"Don't we know each other already?"

"I don't know much about you. You've never told me about your family. I want to know, since we'll be living together as man and wife."

"Man and wife? Which is which?"

"We're both both. I said 'man and wife' because I don't know what else to call it." He nuzzled into Nick's armpit and put his hand on his penis. "You're hard as iron.

Me too."

"You don't hafta tell me. I feel you on my leg. We'll be ready to explode by the time Callie leaves."

"Are you going to tell me about yourself? I know you grew up on a ranch. Did your folks own it?"

Nick's father had worked for the owner of a large ranch in southwest Nebraska. There were more ranch hands than at Caladelphia, but it didn't have the amenities Calvin had built. Only a couple of the men who worked there were married, and they all lived in a three-story bunkhouse with a large dormitory on each floor. Nick and his parents lived in a shack built onto the bunkhouse. His mother did the 20cooking for the workers, who considered themselves lucky to have a woman to cook for them. He also had two younger sisters.

"Have you heard from any of them since you left?"

"No, I just left. Got on my horse one night and went away forever. Didn't tell them I was going. I run away at fifteen."

"Why?"

"'Cause I knew my pa would find out about me soon, and he'd kill me when he did. I hadn't done nothing yet, but he was bound to find out sooner or later. I don't mean beat me bloody, neither. First he'd 'a beat me bloody, and then he'd 'a put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger."

Nick's father used to come home drunk and lay into Nick almost every night. He never raised a hand to his wife or the girls, only Nick. "I think he musta known, even before I did. Musta had this feeling I was gonna be a faggot when I growed up. Sometimes he'd go on beating me until the men came and took me away from him and put me in bed with one of 'em in the bunkhouse. I slept with alot o'

them guys when I was a little kid. I think that's how I come to realize I liked men, but I can't say when it first hit me.

Anyways, we never did nothing. The guy whose bed I was in just held me till I stopped crying, and then we went to 20sleep. And when I got bigger and didn't cry no more, we just went to sleep."

"Did he beat you bad the night you ran away? Is that why you left home?"

"No. He was drunk that night, but it'd been a couple o' weeks since my last beating."

Nick's father had gone drinking in town with three or four other hands, and they had beaten up a guy they thought was acting effeminate. They waited for him outside the saloon and punched him until he curled up in a ball on the ground, then kicked him for a while and left him there.

When they got back, they told what they had done and laughed about it. They said Nick's father had kicked the hardest, and they had had to drag him away when the rest of them got bored beating the guy up. Around three or four in the morning, when everyone was sleeping, Nick quietly got some clothes together, stuffed them into his saddle bags, saddled his horse, and rode away.

"I fell in with an outta work cowpoke a couple o'

days later, and we camped together for about a week. I done it with him for the first time. He'd fuck me, and then he'd suck me off. Then I found work and he didn't, and we split up. After that I used to have sex with guys when they come on to me if I thought it was safe. I never come on to them first till I was older, but I was just a kid then, so they 20come on to me alot. I had lots of experience that way before I come here to the ranch."

"You weren't shy in coming on to me."

"I was plenty shy. How long was it before I come on to you? And I wanted to have sex with you the first time I laid eyes on you, when I come looking for a job and you asked me all them questions before you took me on. I didn't know for sure till I took you riding, and after that I still waited."

"The other men you had sex with, did you write about them in your diary?"

"Yeah, I wrote about 'em, but I didn't start keeping a diary till two years after I run away. Don't know what made me start it."

"Will you read me what you wrote about them sometime?"

"You jealous? If I showed you my diary you

wouldn't be. I wrote maybe one or two lines after the sex; then when we get to my first time with you, I go on for more'n a page. There wasn't much to write about with the others. We'd squirt, and that'd be it, not like with us. Not that we got to do it all that often. Remember—"

"I don't want to remember, and I don't want to hear what you wrote about me. I didn't know what I was doing and probably made a fool of myself. The clumsy kind of 20fool."

"I was gonna say, 'Remember how we rode back to your place after?' But you weren't none too clumsy then, and you sure as hell ain't clumsy now. All you're doing is holding my prick in one hand and stroking your thumb on it, and I'm about ready to pop."

"You go ahead and pop. Callie won't know."

Callie left the morning after the wedding. Caliban drove her in the shay to meet the stagecoach, and Nick followed in the wagon with Jaggers Jr. to bring Caliban home.

Callie gave her brother a goodbye hug and kiss.

Then to Nick's surprise, she hugged him, too, and whispered, "You remember what I said, now, and be careful."

"You don't gotta remind me, Callie. I been careful since I was a kid."

Callie felt relieved he had acknowledged it without anyone having to say it. Yet she worried that she had caught on to them so quickly. This was no easy-to-hide dirty little secret; they were in love. How long could they go on before people suspected there was more between them than just friendship?

* * * *

When they got to the house, Nick said, "Okay, Cal, now I do what I planned on doing a week ago. I carry you over the threshold, like Caleb done with Amanda." And he 20picked him up and carried him inside.

First they gave each other their presents. Blushing, Caliban got what he had bought for Nick out of the drawer where he had hidden it. "What is it?" Nick asked. It looked like some kind of necklace — seven heavy glass spheres, like marbles, on a string with a little knot next to each of them to keep them apart.

"I found it in Laramie. They're called Chinese love beads. You put them in your ass when you have sex and pull them out slowly one at a time. It's supposed to feel good."

"They sell things for men to stick up their ass?"

"They're supposed to be for women to put in their cunts, but I hear men like it better."

"Who told you that?"

"The guy I bought it from. He thought it was a big joke, but that's what made me buy it. I didn't let on it was for a guy."

"Have you tried 'em out?"

"I bought it for you, didn't I? Well, okay, for us. But it's your present, so it's only fitting I try them in you first."

"Fitting, huh? Yeah, it looks like they'll fit. You gonna stick 'em in now?"

"You make it sound as if you can't wait. Let's see what you got for me." "Open it."

It was a pair of dark blue silk skivvies. "To suck you through your underwear," Nick explained.

"It seems we had the same thing in mind when we went looking for gifts. Where on earth did you get them?"

"I saw 'em in a catalogue o' frilly ladies' underwear one o' the stable hands got in the mail. These ain't for ladies, though. See how they're cut. I had to go all the way to Billings for 'em. Got me a pair, too. Now you go in the other room and put 'em on and get dressed again so I can take off your clothes real slow and find the skivvies."

"Will you put yours on, too?"

"I was gonna, but since you're gonna use them beads on me I'm gonna wait on that so it's just the gifts we bought each other we play with."

Although they had both bought the gifts to be silly, they proved ideal presents for two lovers who had only made love together a couple of times in the last two years and a handful of times before that. Caliban said that wearing silk skivvies felt like not wearing any without feeling the roughness of denim on his prick. Nick undressed his lover with almost unbearable slowness, removing each article lovingly one at a time, admiring his beauty in wonderment as though he were seeing it for the first time, until Caliban had nothing on him but the silk 20skivvies, which hugged his waist and clung to his body, clearly outlining his buttocks and erection. Nick mouthed his hard cock and his scrotum through the silk and licked around the edge of the skivvies, slipping his tongue between Caliban's skin and the material where they fitted tightly along the seam where his thighs and torso came together. "How does it feel through silk?" he wanted to know.

"Wonderful. They make a great gift."

Nick peeled off the skivvies and pulled them down to Caliban's knees. "You're more beautiful than I remembered," he said as he was about to take him in his mouth.

"You have a short memory. You saw me last night."

Nick sucked him for a long time. Then it was

Caliban's turn. He slipped off Nick's open shirt, pulled his undershirt over his head, tugged his dungarees down from his knees and over his feet, and peeled off the only thing that was left. Nick lay on his back with knees bent and his legs spread. Caliban knelt between them and gave Nick's cock a cursory taste and his asshole a thorough slobbering.

Then, one by one, he slowly pushed the beads up into his ass. "How's it feel? A little uncomfortable?" he asked.

"Not uncomfortable. Kinda filling. And heavy, real heavy. Different. You'll find out for yourself tomorrow." Caliban licked and mouthed Nick's shaft and the

head of his cock until it was thickly coated with his saliva, then he slowly and firmly pulled out the first bead. Nick gasped, his body stiffened and his back arched, and then suddenly relaxed and went limp.

"Wow! That guy wasn't kidding when he said men like it. You think he ever tried 'em on himself?"

"It's possible. Shall I pull out the next?"

"Yeah, I wanna feel that again. But don't pull 'em out all at once. Go on licking me, and surprise me when you pull one out."

When the fourth bead popped out, Nick shot his

load all over Caliban's face. He lay quivering on his back for close to half a minute. Caliban felt let down. "Why didn't you let me know it was coming so you'd squirt in my mouth?"

Nick couldn't answer right away. "I didn't know it was. Took me by surprise."

Caliban wiped the jism off his cheeks and into his mouth. "How're you going to fuck me now? You must have shot half a pint of cream onto my face."

"Not quite that much! You just take your time fucking me first, and I'll build up another load for you. Lie on top of me. I want to feel your weight pressing down on me." "Not just yet. There are still three beads left in your ass."

Caliban pulled them out suddenly with a single tug.

Nick gasped, and his cock, which had gone soft, rose halfway, and a small amount of milky white liquid trickled out of his slit. Caliban sucked it off before it had dribbled halfway down his shaft. "Did it hurt, pulling them out all at once?" he asked.

"It didn't hurt. It just felt so goddamn intense my lungs pushed the breath clear out of my body. They're some invention, them Chinese beads. They got other toys like that? Maybe we oughtta go to Billings sometime and have a look around."

It would be another three years before they went to Billings.

By my calculations, they must have built the public lavatory in Victory Park more or less on the site of the stable where Caliban and Nick made love for the first time.

There is a kind of poetic justice here, because when I returned to Caladelphia to research this history, it did not take me long to see that it had become a gay cruising ground. I did not cruise it myself. I could tell by the graffiti —"For good head be here at…" etc.— and cum stains on the walls of the stalls, and also the glory hole. I am quite certain the lavatory was not used for sex when I lived there.

I left Caladelphia so I could live openly as a gay man.

The city had changed in other ways, too. There

were more houses, the apartment complexes were new, there was a new shopping mall and a new elementary school, and the number of fast-food places had doubled.

They even had a Chinese take-out. But it was recognizable as the same town, and the city limits were exactly the same.

Beyond the story of how the city got its name,

which gets a paragraph in that Chamber of Commerce brochure no one ever reads, I did not find much useful information in Caladelphia. I found out twice as much by writing the courthouse in Helena, including a map of the ranch some dozen years before it became a town, and ten times more in the Montana State University archives in Bozeman. The archive is where I found the photographs of 21Caliban, of Calvin and Darcie, and of Julia with her boys, and also the microfilm of the
Rosebud County Record
with Caleb's obituary. I also came across floor plans of the Johnson house (there is even an exterior photograph of it, which I did not need since it is still standing) and of the old Caldwell ranch house with the additions they proposed to make. I based my description of the house on them, assuming they followed those plans. For Caliban's house I used the sketches Nick made in his diary of the floor plan and layout of the grounds. As for the book with Calhoun's photo, it was called to my attention by a curator of the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, who had learned of my interest in the Caldwell family from a colleague, a history professor at Bozeman whom he met at a conference.