The City of Lovely Brothers (21 page)

"Of course I can't mount a horse by myself, Nick, you know that — push off on my right leg with my left in the stirrup. Anyway, Doctor Brewster, I was afraid to try it, but he talked me into it and took me out riding on the range. That's how we became friends."

"It's obvious what a kind and considerate person your friend is. You don't find many like him here on the frontier," Mrs. Allen said.

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," Caliban told her.

"People mean well. We all help one another, don't we? But life is a struggle, and they have to give thought to 26themselves. It isn't quite the dog-eat-dog law of the jungle, but we lead rough lives. I agree with you about Nick, though. He's one in a million. I'm lucky to have him for a friend. But I wanted to ask what we should see while we're in Billings. It's so big I don't know where to begin."

"You absolutely must see our new refinery."

"Refinery?"

"A sugar refinery," the doctor explained, "for the sugar beets. We grow a lot of that around here since they put in the irrigation. But there is no refinery to see. They've barely started working on it. There's nothing there but the beginnings of a foundation. But they've put up a shack next to it where people can go and see the plans and drawings of what it will look like, and read explanations of the refining process and see photographs of the machinery in other refineries. It's very interesting."

"And we have a picture show! They set it up a day or two ago, and it's staying in town two whole weeks," Mrs.

Allen exclaimed enthusiastically.

"We'd like to see that. Wouldn't we, Nick? I want to buy gifts for my brothers' children, too. Can recommend you a good store for that?"

"How old are they?"

The youngest is two, the oldest twenty-three."

"Boys or girls?" "All boys except Hester, who's twelve."

"You'll have to go to more than one store to please all of them."

"I don't see how we can possibly see everything we want and at the same time manage to buy everything on my brother's list."

"Maybe we'll just hafta stay on longer." Nick smiled.

"Stay as long as you like," the doctor said.

* * * *

They nearly polished off the pie and rose from the table stuffed, so they ate a late supper, and a light one.

Then the doctor led Caliban and Nick to his examination room. Caliban took off his pants and skivvies, and hoisted his shirt up to give the doctor a good view of the hip.

Doctor Brewster had Caliban bend this way and that, lift the leg as high as it would go, spread his legs as far as he could and then twist and bend again, asking if it hurt in this position or in that, and all the time he prodded and palpated and poked and percussed, and asked if that hurt too.

Caliban told him, "It doesn't hurt, but my legs are getting very tired."

Doctor Brewster had him lie on the examination table, palpated and percussed some more, and then called Nick over and told him to feel this muscle and that muscle, and this tendon and that, explaining what he was supposed to feel there. With Nick touching him so close to his groin, Caliban worried he might get hard, but after a minute the doctor had him stand and hold his shirt chest high and walk around the room, forward and backward and sideways.

Then he told Caliban to lie on the table again and massaged the hip, demonstrated to Nick how to do it, and had him try it a little. The massage was very soothing, and Caliban thought it felt better with Nick doing it, though Doctor Brewster kept correcting him and said, "Not like that. Like this."

By the time they had finished, they had spent three-quarters of an hour in the examining room, and Caliban was exhausted. "I want you to do that massage on me every night until we leave," he said to Nick.

"After you leave is more important," the doctor said. "On your way back to the ranch, sitting in the wagon all day. And before you leave I'll write down a set of exercises for you to do every morning, with pictures, although I don't draw very well, and show you how to do them. Nick, too, because you won't be able to see yourself doing them, but he can compare you with the pictures to see if you're doing them right. They'll give you five, maybe 26ten years of walking more than you'd have otherwise. Now go to bed. You've both had a busy day."

"Five or ten years more. How long would I have otherwise, then?"

"I couldn't say."

While they were getting into their beds, Caliban said to Nick, "You're right. Doctor Brewster talks a lot more than I remembered. Maybe it's old age."

"Our room got two beds, but we're sleeping in one o' them, right?"

"I assumed we would. We'll just have to mess up the other in the morning."

Nick asked what Caliban had liked most about their day, and what he had liked least.

"That's easy. What I enjoyed most was seeing Doctor Brewster again."

"And least? I bet it was all that poking around your hip he done."

"You're forgetting the hanging," Caliban said.

* * * *

They had an early dinner with June and her husband the next evening so the boys could eat with them, and after that they went with Doctor Brewster to the picture show. Caliban did not care for June's husband. "I hear June ran into you at the hanging," he said. "I'd have liked to have gone, but a representative from the bank came for a meeting, and I couldn't talk him into going. I wish I had been there to see him swing. People like that are lower than vermin."

"I'd never seen a hanging before," Caliban said.

"I think everyone needs to see a few hangings. One at least. They teach a valuable lesson. It wouldn't have hurt that man they hanged if he'd seen one or two. And when I think of what he did to that little boy! Who knows if he won't grow up liking it! We don't need any more of that kind around!"

"For Heaven's sake, Jerome!" Julia hissed. "The children!"

* * * *

Caliban and Nick were kept busy amusing

themselves all week, and they had to rush to find everything Calvin wanted. One or two items they couldn't find. Nick said he was looking forward to the trip back. He wanted to make love again. "Well, at least we've been able to do those massages," Caliban said.

As a thank you gift, they gave Doctor Brewster a 27book of poetry and a history of the Montana Territory.

Caliban bought a wooden toy horse for Brandon and light blue frock with a pattern of tiny pink flowers for Hester. He found one gift that would do for Clay, Jared and Zeke — a tin mess kit, with a frying pan and soup pot that screwed together with a wing nut to form a case that held three tin mugs, three plates, and three forks and spoons. He got Jake an expensive anatomy textbook illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

Nick wasn't sure it was appropriate for a nine-year-old boy. "It's got pictures of naked women in it," he said.

"And naked men, too. We can look at them on the way home, but don't get it dirty."

"It's dirty already, if you take my meaning."

They also bought themselves a toy, a double dildo like a prick with a head on both ends, to fuck each other with at the same time.

It wasn't easy fitting everything Calvin had asked for into two wagons. They secured the lumber for the shelving with thick cord and piled it on one side of one of the wagons so they would have a space to sleep in, but it made the load uneven and the trip home a lot slower.

They tried out the dildo their first night on the road.

On Friday morning, March 2, 1906, with only Caleb to help her, Amanda gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

Both babies were healthy. Caleb rode his horse eight miles through three-foot-high snow the next morning to tell Caliban and Nick the good news. "We're gonna name 'em Logan and Lettie," he said. "Twins oughtta have matching names."

He stayed only an hour, longer than he wanted to, Amanda just having given birth and at home alone with two newborns and a boy just turned three, but he had to get some warmth back in his body first. They made him coffee, and he drank three shots of whisky —one each for the babies and one for Amanda, he said— and Caliban and Nick each took three swallows to toast them, but only emptied one small quarter-full glass apiece. They lent him Caliban's sled to go home in.

"It seems we're both winners," Caliban said after they had seen him off. "We both suck and get sucked for three hours."

"But not all on the same night," Nick reminded him.

"Of course not, or we wouldn't get any sleep. And if I remember correctly, I get to suck twice, because Darcie 27didn't have her baby on the same day. Unless she did, and we don't know about it yet."

"With the snow this deep, we ain't gonna hear till sometime next week."

"Let's just hope she doesn't have twins too."

"Or triplets, or we're still gonna be paying each other back in spring. But I wanna add another bet."

"What's that?"

"That if her baby comes before the week's out, we throw a fuck in with the sucking. Two fucks, because every time we fuck each other."

"A three-hour suck followed by two three-hour fucks? We'll drop dead!"

"No. Whoever's fucking does it until he can't fuck no more, then the other takes his turn. The sucks come first, o' course."

"Okay then, it's a bet. But tonight is just one three-hour suck. The next comes next Friday, right?"

"Yep, and by then we'll know if we get to add the fucks."

"And if we don't, we can always throw them in later."

"We do that anyway. Anyways it works out, it don't look like we'll be using our toys for a spell. Who sucks first?" "Which was born first? The girl or the boy?"

"Shit! We forgot to ask 'im. Guess we gotta flip for it. Heads you suck, tails I do."

The coin landed face down.

"How much are you willing to bet that before the three hours are up you have no more spit left and your jaw is aching?" Caliban asked.

"No more bets. You're just gonna hafta squirt every half hour or so to keep my mouth from getting dry. How much you willing to bet that when them three hours're up your
balls
are gonna ache more'n my jaw?"

"You said no more bets. And if you want me to squirt that much, you'll have to stick a finger up my ass."

"Don't I do that all the time? And we got that dildo, too, if we can remember where we put it."

They had always approached their lovemaking

lightly and with a good dose of silliness, but once they were doing it, it consumed them utterly. The house was freezing, so they threw another couple of logs in the stove and waited impatiently an hour for them to burn down so they could bring a pail of hot charcoal into the blowjob room.

Even with the charcoal Nick would have to wrap himself in a quilt and they would need another to cover Caliban from the waist up. His legs would have to remain exposed because Nick would suffocate if he had to stay with his 27head buried under a quilt for three hours.

They hung Nick's watch next to the bed and left a candle burning so they could see how long they were taking. Caliban began taking off his clothes, but Nick said no: he would take his clothes off for him and eat his way down to his prick. It was all part of the suck. "You ain't gonna have a lick more fun 'n I do," he said.

Caliban stood by the bed while Nick kissed and

licked his lips and ears and a sensitive spot on his neck right under the chin that felt so exquisite it made him gasp and sent shivers up and down his spine. It set him trembling, and he would have lost his balance if Nick had not been holding him firmly by the buttocks. Then Nick undid the top two buttons of Caliban's shirt and the top button of his long johns and kissed the soft spot over of his breast bone, and then another shirt button and then one on his long johns, gradually peeling them down over Caliban's shoulders as he opened them one by one. He licked and nibbled at his nipples for a long time after he had exposed them.

Caliban could not remain in a standing position too long, so Nick sat him on the bed, pulled off his boots and socks, and sucked on his toes. Then he went back to unbuttoning and licking him until he had peeled off the shirt and tossed it to the side and left the long johns 27hanging over his jeans, so Caliban was naked from the waist up.

"Don't take too long at this," Caliban said. "It's cold in here."

"Like I couldn't 'a figured that out by myself."

Nick unhitched Caliban's belt and opened the

buttons on his denims, and Caliban lifted his rear high enough for Nick to pull the dungarees and long johns halfway down his thighs. "Why ain't you hard yet?" Nick complained.

"Because I'm cold."

"Well, I'll warm it up for you, but I ain't letting the rest o' you warm up till it's nice and hard."

Even soft, Caliban had a lot of cock hanging

between his legs, more than enough to keep Nick busy and amused. Nick blew on it, then he slipped his tongue under the foreskin and ran it in circles around the head, peeled it back and tongued the flap of skin below Caliban's pee slit.

When Caliban's had swollen to three-quarters full and had started leaking, Nick sucked the shaft into his mouth.

Caliban couldn't tell if it was the cold or Nick that was giving him goose bumps.

Nick sucked greedily until Caliban's cock was as big as it got and was lodged a good inch down his throat.

Then he pulled his dungarees and long johns to his knees so 27he could get at his balls.

After Nick had spent a few minutes on his balls, Caliban complained, "How long are you going to make me freeze like this?"

Nick looked at the watch. "We still got a little more'n two and a half hours."

"I'll catch pneumonia."

Nick lifted Caliban's legs, laid him back on the bed, and covered him with a quilt from the belly button up, including his head. Then he took off his dungarees and long johns. "Don't you peek, now," he said. "I'm taking off my clothes. First my shirt… next my boots… now my pants…

You're right, it is goddamn cold." He wrapped a quilt around himself and knelt between Caliban's legs, throwing the ends of the quilt over his lover's calves and feet.

"There! Now you're all covered up. Well, almost all. The parts that ain't it's up to me to keep warm. Just let me grab that other pillow so's I can stick it under your ass and get at your tight and tasty little puckery hole."