The City of Lovely Brothers (17 page)

The bulk of my information comes from Nick's

diary, which I came by serendipitously. One of my old lovers, who has remained a friend, collects memorabilia, which he picks up from junk vendors in the cities he visits on vacation and at estate sales. He bought an old steamer trunk full of old letters, mementos, knickknacks, personal papers, and the like. In it were the eight thick notebooks in which Nick kept his diary. At least one notebook is missing, perhaps more, as the eighth may not have been the last. He sent it to me to ask if it was publishable, and stuck 21post-it notes to the pages with the more explicit passages, which he thought I would enjoy and would have been a reason for publishers to refuse the manuscript.

I had read nearly all of them, in random order, and several other passages as well, before I realized that the Cal of the diary was the Caliban Caldwell who was supposedly one of the founding fathers of the city where I had been born. I say "supposedly" because the diary makes abundantly clear he was not. I immediately proceeded to read the entire diary from beginning to end. Then I phoned my friend and told him that in my opinion Nick's diary told a run-of-the-mill love story. "He says so himself," I said, and read him this sentence: "I fell in love with a cripple and lived happily ever after." Instead, I proposed using it to reconstruct Caliban's life and the history of the ranch, which I felt would make a better book. (My friend thought I was talking about Shakespeare's
Tempest
until I explained that Cal was Caliban.) I asked if I could keep the notebooks while I was working on the project. He made me a present of them.

I asked if he had found anything else in the trunk that might have some bearing on the diary. He said there was an old photograph and hundreds of letters.

"What's in the photo?"

"It's a photo of a middle-aged man. Very good 21looking, too. A real hunk. He looks older than what I generally go for, but I wouldn't mind—"

"But you can't. He's been dead three-quarters of a century, so you'd have to find out where he's buried and dig him up, which you go for even less. Just send me the photo, and go through the letters and send me all that are addressed to Caliban or signed by him. I'll read the rest when I come to visit and see if there are any others that mention him."

The man in the photo more or less matched the

description of Caliban in Nick's diary, but more than that, he was so stunning I was sure he had to be him, and I was right. It was another copy of the photo I found in the archives at Bozeman a few months later.

My friend forwarded me hundreds of letters, and a small jeweler's box with a lock of a man's hair inside —

iron grey with black strands, and tied with a piece of orange yarn. The letters he sent apparently include all the letters Nick and Caliban sent each other during Caliban's two years in Laramie. I had thought the trunk would contain only Caliban's letters to Nick. There are others, too, among them some of his correspondence with Caleb. He must have taken Caleb's letters with him when he left the ranch, and those he had written to Caleb Amanda may have sent after Caleb's death. We also have Jake's letters to Caliban after 21Caliban moved east, but none from before, and three letters from Darcie. To make sense of the letters, though, one has to read the diary.

We know the name of Caliban's lover from the

letters he wrote and received, and from the words NICK'S

DIARY, centered on top of the first page of the first notebook in block capitals. In the diary he never refers to himself except by first person pronouns.

Nick's diary begins a year and a half before Caliban hired him as a stable hand, by which time he had filled about a sixth of the first notebook. His first entries are brief and factual, and seldom longer than ten sentences. He mentions having sex eight times, and twice gives the name of his partner, one of which may not refer to a sexual act: "Fucked Mike." He may, of course, have had sex more often. He says that he and Caliban had sex almost every day and never missed a Friday night, but he does not record all of them.

Those first pages reveal only two emotions:

boredom and enthusiasm. After he meets Caliban, he becomes more detailed and expansive. His first substantial entry tells how he took Caliban riding with him. They become short again while Caliban is in Laramie studying for his certificate: "Got a letter from Cal. He is well and says he misses me." and the surprisingly succinct "Caleb's 21getting married and I'm going to live with Cal. Hot damn!"

Much of our story took place before he came to the ranch, but Caliban evidently liked talking about his past, and Nick put some of the stories into his diary. Caliban told these stories after they had started living together, and they pop up here and there in no particular order. It gives, very briefly, the details of Caliban's accident and operation, and a two-page account of his conversation in bed with Caleb at Mrs. Allen's. Moreover, along with Nick's descriptions of Caliban, we have descriptions of people at the ranch and insights into their motivations.

Where I quote from it, I have corrected the spelling, but not to the extent that it disguises how Nick spoke, which one can infer from how he writes. We may assume that the others spoke like him, except Caliban, who spoke properly after two years of teacher training. I model the dialogues on Nick's writing, but the words I have my characters speak are my own invention, and when and where those conversations took place is largely guesswork.

Their thoughts, facial expressions, tone of voice, whether they were standing or sitting, etc., are how I imagine them.

Like every reconstruction of historical fact, this book is in large part a work of fiction.

We find in the diary only one paragraph about

Nick's childhood. The first sentence reads, "Cal wanted me 22to put this in here." But he wrote many long passages about Caliban. He tells us how he tasted and smelled, what he liked to do in bed and his talent for doing it —he was convinced Caliban gave the world's greatest blowjob— and he gives several descriptions of his backside and penis, of which we have photographs, so we know they are accurate.

He mentions the withered hip mostly to explain how it limited the positions they could have sex in.

On the whole, the diary gives a factual and, for the most part, objective account of his life with Caliban: what they did, where they went, what they saw, what happened to them. The eight notebooks outnumber the instances where he uses the word love, and in most of those instances it does not pertain to them as a couple. For example, we read: "Caliban really loved riding that horse." We find no outpourings of emotion that come close to the letter he wrote to Caliban in Laramie. Yet if you, like me, are a gay man, you understand at once that his words are caressing a male body of singular beauty. Your hands caress it with them, and it comes to life under your hands.

He is better with words than with pictures. His

sketches of Caliban may have been done with a loving hand, but they are not the work of a talented artist. They do not do justice to his beauty, and without the labels "Cal 1907" I could not say for certain they are him. In one you 22see him head on from the chest up, sitting behind a table with his arms resting on it. The perspective is handled crudely and creates an impression of foreshortened upper arms, overly long lower arms, and monstrously large hands.

He is wearing a plaid shirt and has grown a mustache (not mentioned in the diary), and his mouth is set in a serious, almost grim expression, I suspect due to the artist's incompetence. The other shows him from across the room, lying on a bed on his left side. He is wearing dungarees and the same plaid shirt, has an open book in his hand and seems absorbed in his reading. The artist's lack of skill makes his right leg half as big as his left. The right knee is bent, and his ankle is resting on his left calf.

The two sketches are on facing pages, and because they remained pressed together for nearly a century, some of the lines have bled onto the sketch across from them, and some have smudged. The drawing of the man's face which might be Nick's has picked up some writing from the pages it faces. If the portrait is his, there was nothing special about him. The head is somewhat round, and the features nondescript. But as I said, he did not draw well.

"Well, what do you think, Nick? Will it be a boy or a girl this time?"

"Whose? Darcie's or Amanda's?"

"Darcie's, of course. Caleb will be happy whatever it is so long as it's healthy, and they have a boy already. A regular little hellion, Brandon is. Now, Calvin, he's been dying for a son. Three girls, the last of them born thirteen years ago! It wouldn't surprise me if he told Darcie to put it back if it comes out a girl."

"Wanna bet on what it's gonna be?"

"For what stakes?"

"A three-hour blowjob."

"Giving or getting?"

"The winner gets. Let's bet on Amanda's, too, so's we both get a chance to get
and
give."

"I bet Darcie has a boy. What do you bet for Amanda?"

"No, you choose both."

"Then I'll say a boy for her, too."

"You know they both got a fifty-fifty chance."

"I know. I want to get
and
give, but I won't cry my eyes out if I have to get or give twice. Let's just hope they 22don't have them on the same day."

"We can bet on that, too, and flip a coin on what order we give and get in."

"I say they will, because the chances of it are almost nil, and I really think Darcie will have a boy, and I want to be sure I'll have a shot at giving. But that makes nine hours.

Aren't you afraid we'll wear ourselves out?"

"And each other! We can do it on Friday night, three weeks running."

Caliban and Nick had been living together for three years, and the sexual side of their relationship was as playful as it had been since Nick had set the tone for it the first time they made love in the loft. Caliban had followed Nick's teasing example the next time they had sex, and it set a pattern they were never to break. They were silly and made jokes, but without laughing, which would have interfered with their performance when they got down to business. At other times they could be, and often were, serious, but in bed they were like little boys, except after climax, which was their time for tenderness, as when they had ridden home together at dawn after the first time they made love.

"Let's do it now," Caliban said, "but not for three hours, and we'll both give and get."

"After we wash up. Together in the tub or naked at 22the pump?"

"Naked at the pump. It's a hot day."

They had just driven home from church in the

wagon on a dusty Sunday in July. They had sand in their hair, grit in their teeth, and a thin layer of fine yellow-white powder on their faces. There was to be no family lunch again that day because Darcie had been feeling unwell for three weeks, but Calvin had said he had an important announcement to make and everyone —meaning the family— should come into the house to hear it. "You too, Nick," he added. Since Nick had become Caliban's housemate, he had grudgingly accepted him as a
de facto
member of the family. Inside, they found the big kitchen table laid out with freshly baked cookies, ham and smoked turkey cut into cubes, radishes, carrot sticks and other vegetables, and a bottle of imported French champagne.

How he had come by it was a mystery. He poured a glass for the adults and teenagers and cider for the younger kids and said he wanted to make a toast. He paused to make sure everybody was listening. "Darcie's having a baby."

"Oh, Darcie, that's wonderful! I'm so happy for you," Amanda exclaimed, "even if it does spoil my news.

Tell 'em, Caleb."

"Amanda's pregnant too. We were gonna wait a bit yet before telling anybody, but it looks like you're finding 22out now. When's Darcie due?"

"First or second week in March," Calvin beamed.

"Same as Amanda. They'll be like twins."

Darcie was forty-seven; Amanda twenty-five.

"Now you know why Darcie ain't been feeling so good lately," Calvin said. "Julia made this spread, but we didn't tell her why we were having it. Darcie's cookies, though. Now, I have still another exciting piece of news, but first the toast." He raised his glass. "It's gonna be a boy this time, ain't it, Darcie?"

"I'm sure of it, Calvin. I feel it in my bones."

"To Calvin Jr., then!"

"To Calvin Jr.!" They clinked glasses and raised them to drink, but Darcie said, "Only half, now. We ain't got but one bottle, and we gotta toast Amanda, too."

They took a couple of swallows, and then toasted Amanda's baby. Everyone was in a good mood, and the two mothers-to-be were the center of attention.

"I wish Betsy and Tilda were here to hear the news with the rest o' you," Darcie said.

"They woulda been, but the ranch ain't good enough for 'em," Calvin sneered. "No reason to run off and set up in some town just 'cause they got married. They lived with

'em here two, three years as man and wife. I even built houses for 'em, and they only come to visit once." "Livingston's far away," Darcie said sadly.

Julia quickly changed the subject. "We gotta start having them Sunday lunches again. Each household can bring something. Caliban cooks good. Made me a cake for my birthday!"

"Nick can cook, too," Caliban said. "In fact, we take turns."

"But Caliban always gets breakfast, because he's better with eggs," Nick chimed in.

"You make something easy, Darcie," Calvin said.

"Don't want you overexerting yourself now!"

"I can do biscuits and gravy and make the coffee.

Don't seem like enough, though. But what's your other piece of news, Calvin? I have no idea, so you musta been keeping it secret from me."

"I'm gonna open a general store here on the ranch.

Dry goods, tobacco, matches and the like, some food items we can't grow for ourselves, like flour and sugar and corn oil, maybe even some hardware like kerosene lanterns."

"And soda pop?" one of the children asked.

"Why not? And candy too! Now before Calhoun says I'm turning this here ranch into a city, let me tell you what give me the idea. For one, where we used go into town once every two weeks, now I find we're going there twice every one, and with so many errands to run for 22everyone we come back with a full wagon or more. The other reason's my age. I'm getting too old to work the farm, but I can't be idle, it ain't in my nature. So I'm setting myself up as storekeeper.
Now
whattaya say to my idea, Calhoun?"