The City of Lovely Brothers (23 page)

Viewed from behind with Nick's generous ball sack hanging low in front of it, Caliban had to content himself pumping it gently with his left hand while he twisted the dildo in Nick's ass with his right. He let go of the dildo long enough to shove his friend gently to the right so they would both be lying on their left sides and he could get his mouth 29around that savory cock.

It was smaller than Caliban's, but more than a little bigger than average, with an upward bend and a tapering head sheathed in a tight-fitting foreskin. Caliban's organ was beautiful in its own right, and the body it hung from was beautiful. Nick's suited his flat stomach, muscular legs and perfectly rounded, dimpled backside to a tee and was, for Caliban, a source of endless fascination and awe because of the man attached to it. Both men were somewhat unique for late nineteenth and early twentieth-century cowboys in that they were naturally fastidious and would have kept their genitals squeaky clean even without the pleasure of bathing together. If one of them had been sweating profusely all day at work or in the heat or summer, or if the odor of horse had permeated through Nick's clothing to his skin, the other felt no compunction about mentioning it to him. They were always open about everything, so the musky man-scent of their crotches always had a fresh smell and their pricks never tasted rancid. A three-hour blowjob took its toll on their jaw muscles, but was otherwise, paradoxically, as relaxing and invigorating as a dip in the river, a ride across the prairie, or a nap in the noonday sun.

"Reach down and grab me that glass, will you, please," Caliban asked, "so I can take a sip." The cider was hot and steaming from sitting next to the pail of charcoal. Caliban filled his mouth and held the liquid there, then he slipped Nick's cock between his lips and sucked it into the hot bath for a new and startling sensation. The copious pre-cum oozing from Nick mingled its sweetness with the tart taste of apples. To milk a saltier taste into the mixture, Caliban pressed his hand deep into Nick's belly directly above his pelvic girdle and flicked his tongue on the underside of his shaft right beneath the glans.

Nick had come three times, just as Caliban had the week before. "You'll hafta fuck me first," he said. "My nuts're wrung out. I ain't got a drop o' juice left in me. And take your time. It'll be awhile before I can build some more up."

Nick's hole was gaping from the dildo's penetration, and Caliban was able to shove right in, the way Nick liked it when he was nice and loose. Nick exhaled suddenly and tightened his cheeks around Caliban's rod. "Whoa!" he said.

"Just hold it there a minute. There ain't no contest between a live cock and a dildo. The real thing wins every time. At least yours does."

Caliban wanted to make it last and last, but his hip was tired after three hours of sucking and he hadn't come yet, so his prick was quick on the draw— for him. Instead 29of lasting and lasting, it merely lasted. He lay with his face pressed against his lover's back and his right arm clutching him around the chest, panting heavily.

"That was terrific," Nick said. "I'm ready now. You ready?"

"Ready and eager. But I'm not stretched out. Be sure to go in slowly."

"You on your back with your knees over my

shoulders?"

"It's your fuck. You call the shots."

"Speaking of which, you shot yet?"

"Deep inside you. Couldn't you tell?"

"Well, you're gonna shoot again in about twenty minutes, and I'm gonna lick it all up offa your belly."

"Not allowed. It was my night to suck."

What to do with the ejaculate if the one who came was the one designated to suck that night was a thorny problem. They solved it by having Nick scoop it up with his fingers, feed it to Caliban, and then kiss him. It worked well the next two Fridays, too.

The Friday after they had both paid off all their bets was love night again. "What're we gonna do tonight?" Nick asked. "We done what we promised. We're free to do pretty much anything." "We've done pretty much
everything
, Nick. Maybe you should just read me what you've written in your diary over the past few weeks and we can call it a night."

Nick grinned. "By the time I finish reading all I wrote, we can call it a morning."

Nick opened his diary and read the story of their bet and its aftermath. Then he closed the notebook and said as if frustrated with himself, "I make it sound like all we got going for us is our mouths and pricks and assholes."

Caliban laughed. "It does, sort of."

"We ain't like that, are we, Cal? What I wrote here ain't half o' it, ain't even the tiniest fraction of a half."

Caliban smiled. "But it's the fun part."

"Something bothering you, Cal, or you just tired?"

They had cleared the supper table, and were standing side by side washing the dishes.

"Huh?"

"I asked if there's something bothering you."

"No. Do I look like there is?"

"It's just that I'm saying things and you keep going

'Uh-huh, uh-huh', like you ain't really listening. You got something on your mind?"

"Yeah, I suppose I do, but not in the sense that there's something I have to get off my chest. It's more something I can't stop thinking about, like a tune that keeps going through your head, and so my mind wanders. It's nothing important."

"Maybe the way to forget about it is to say it out loud. Why don't ya tell me what it is, and we can talk about it instead of the lot o' small talk I was yakking about?"

"It was just some stupid incident at school that looked as though it would turn ugly and then got straightened out, something I'd like to put behind me, and instead I find myself dwelling on it."

"Schoolteaching getting to you? D'ya wish you 29were back working the stables?" They had decided that Caliban would not go back to the stables in spring, after having been in charge of them for twelve years.

"I like being a schoolteacher, but it has its bad days like any other kind of work. Horses can be stubborn, and sometimes they're feisty, but they don't answer you back."

"I can guess who you mean. You could also say a kid won't buck up and throw you outta the saddle and break your hip."

Caliban had been conducting a reading lesson that morning for the younger children— Calvin Jr., Caleb's twins, and a small handful of hired hands' kids; Brandon was working on math problems with the other ten-to-twelve-year-olds; and Jake, now seventeen, was supervising one fourteen-and two thirteen-year-old boys on a science project in a far corner of the church-schoolroom. Usually children's education stopped at age twelve on the ranch, but Caliban had asked their parents to allow these three to continue their studies, and since he had said they were bright boys who might go on to study agronomy or even become engineers and there was little work for them to do in winter, they had given permission in spite of the cost. In addition to supplying three cords of wood to heat the school in winter, families paid a ten-dollar fee for every child they had in school, which furnished 29Caliban's none-too-generous salary. The slates and chalk they bought from the general store, and Calvin pocketed that money. When he became the schoolteacher, Caliban had, after much arguing, forced Calvin to buy schoolbooks, which the children shared. Some of these had begun to wear out, and he would soon have to get Calvin to replace them.

The other exception was Jake, Caliban's most

brilliant pupil, who had stayed in school until sixteen, studying under Caliban's supervision from books Caliban sent for on three-month loan from the public library in Billings. He had already succeeded in training the boy to speak correct English, though Jake only bothered to do so when speaking with his schoolteacher uncle or giving lessons. Jake had ambitions to become a doctor, and now that he was no longer a pupil, he rode to Nick and Caliban's every Tuesday and Thursday after school for private tutoring to prepare for college entrance exams and stayed for supper before riding home. To help his nephew earn the extra money he would need to attend medical school two or three years from then, halfway through the previous school year Caliban had asked him to be his assistant starting next winter to supplement what he earned on the ranch in spring and summer. Jake was especially gifted in science, not one of Caliban's strongest subjects. Finding the money to pay him had proved a

challenge. They could not ask the parents of the older boys to pay more. It had taken a good deal of convincing before they were willing to pay at all for a boy older than twelve.

Calvin said that since he was Caliban's assistant, Caliban ought to pay him out of his own salary, or to consider the evening tutoring sessions his payment. Calhoun said that no son of his would work for nothing at Calvin's school except over his dead body. Jake protested that it was Caliban's school, not Calvin's, but the fact remained that the main reason for him to help Caliban was to have the extra income.

It was Nick who found the solution. Until then only the workers' families had had to pay for their children's schooling; as co-owners of the ranch, the brothers did not.

If they, too, were charged, there would be forty dollars for Jake, ninety if they were charged retroactively for the year then in session. "But if you ask me, you should get them extra fifty, since Jake's still in school. Forty's good pay for a kid without no certificate."

Caliban thought it was fair to make the brothers pay, but starting the coming year. "It's asking a bit much of Caleb to come up with sixty dollars on the spur of the moment."

"But you admit that twenty bucks won't make a dent 29in Calv's pocket, and Houn'll be more than happy to pay ten for Jake's last year if it means Calv gotta pay every year until his brat's twelve or thirteen. How much'll that make?

Eighty? Ninety?"

"Eighty."

"And it ain't no question but you're underpaid.

Besides, Cleb'll only hafta cough up thirty now. He won't be paying the next thirty till fall, after the drive."

"I guess you're right on both counts."

"The trick is, you gotta get the money from Cleb and Hooner first, or Calv won't go along with it. Stick 'im with a… What's that fancy French word you use for it?"

"A
fait accompli
."

"Yeah. Stick 'im with one of those."

Calhoun and Caleb had agreed immediately and

handed him the money. "Now I'm going with you to Calv's,

'cause on your own you'd back down," Nick said.

"I'm taking you with me, but not for that. I'm taking you to show I won't."

To say Calvin would not go for the idea was an

understatement. "How come we gotta pay too all of a sudden?" he protested. "What good's it being an owner if you don't get special privileges?"

"We have plenty of special privileges, Calvin,"

Caliban said calmly. "I'd like to hear what Caleb and Calhoun say about it!"

"They've already paid."

That shut Calvin up, but not for long. "Don't it count for nothing that I let you have my church for a schoolhouse?"

"How is it your church? You're always saying it's everybody's church, not just yours."

"I paid for the lumber and paid the workers that built it."

"We all chipped in for the lumber, if I remember rightly—"

"You didn't."

"I wasn't eighteen yet. And if I had a kid I'd pay, too, though I'd be the one teaching him."

"Meaning you'd be paying yourself."

"And you didn't pay the workers extra for it. You made it part of their job."

"Took 'em away from what I was paying 'em for, didn't it?"

"What we all were paying them for, including me.

Their wages come out of the ranch's money, not out of your pocket."

"I pay for the preacher."

Darcie spoke up, "Two bits for every Sunday he 30comes out here. The rest comes outta the collection plate, which you put into same as everybody, if you ain't just pretending. Way I see it, if Caleb's paying for three, there ain't reason you shouldn't pay for one."

"But ten whole dollars!"

Nick spoke up for the first time. "From what I hear, your kid's worth twice as much. He's a real handful in that schoolroom, ain't he, Cal?"

"That's 'cause Calvin spoils the boy," Darcie said.

"You talking about my kid to strangers behind my back, Caliban?"

Darcie took over the conversation again. "Nick ain't no stranger, Calvin. He's been living with Caliban going on twelve years."

"Been that long? Ain't he thinking of marrying someday? You must be around forty by now, Nick."

"Nick'll be thirty-five later this winter. His birthday's a little before mine," Caliban said.

Darcie pointed out that Caleb had waited until

thirty-eight to get married. "And look at Calhoun's boys.

They ain't married, and Clay's thirty-two."

"Nick's just waiting for the right woman to show up," Caliban said, "but all the women here are already married, and we don't get off the ranch much."

"I think Hester's sweet on him," Darcie said. Calvin bristled at that. "Nick's almost twice her age.

Besides, I don't want my little girl marrying no ranch hand.

You seen what happened with Betsy and Tilda. Don't hardly never see 'em no more."

Caliban did not like hearing him call Nick a ranch hand.

"I couldn't marry Hester," Nick said. "I look on her as my cousin."

"Cousins marry, Nick," Darcie said.

"Not in this family they don't," Calvin muttered.

"But you're avoiding the question, Calvin," Darcie said. "Caliban come here to get ten dollars for Calvin Jr.'s schooling."

"Whose side you on anyway, Darcie?"

"On the side of what's fair. Ten dollars ain't gonna break us."

"I bought the schoolbooks."

"Which our Hester used, too."

Calvin clammed up, as if stonewalling would make Caliban and Nick go away and forget about it. After a couple of minutes of listening to his silence, Darcie said,

"No one likes a stingy man, Calvin."

"I ain't being stingy. I'm standing up for my rights."

"Caliban deserves more pay for what he does. You paid like everyone else for Miss Sachs." "Miss Sachs got three dollars a pupil; Caliban gets ten."