The City of Lovely Brothers (9 page)

Another source of Calvin's ill-will may have been that he unconsciously recognized that his wife had spoken the truth.

* * * *

While in Billings, Caliban had written to Caleb

every week, and once a month to his sister. When Caleb received his last letter, the prospect of having his brother home and the chance to see Billings seemed just about the best things he could remember happening to him. He sent Caliban a telegram saying he would set out the day after the spring roundup and asked if he thought Mrs. Allen would let him stay a week.

"A whole week!" Calvin exclaimed. "End o' spring's a busy time o' year. Who's gonna do your work for you?

You mean to take your pay and go on a holiday?"

Darcie reminded him that Caleb did not get paid; the ranch made money for him.

Caleb explained, "Well, it'll take me three or four days to get there and another three or back. Seems kinda 10stupid just to turn around and come home as soon as I get there. Gotta rest the horse."

"Like you said, the horse. Why should it take that long if you're gonna ride there?"

"Think," Darcie said. "Caliban can't ride yet. They'd be coming back in the wagon, with his horse tied to the back of it. They can't make the trip that quick."

"Why don't you take Callie's shay?"

"Can't be sure Caliban can sit for long, can we?"

Caleb argued. "He may hafta lay down. Besides, we'll need someplace for us to sleep if there ain't no ranch nearby."

* * * *

Caliban asked Mrs. Allen if his brother could stay with them for a week.

"You know I don't have a room for him," she said.

"He can sleep with me. Caleb's my favorite brother.

We share a room at home."

"Is he about your age then? A little older, I expect."

"Caleb's twenty-six."

"A grown man! I wouldn't board a man that old, me a woman all by myself, if he wasn't your brother."

"I'm sure you'll like him. He's Callie's twin."

"Now, isn't that nice? Does he look a lot like her?" Caliban grinned. "Hardly. Caleb has a beard."

* * * *

When Caleb arrived in Billings, the first thing

Caliban said to him after he gave him a hug was,

"Whatever you do, don't be going to the saloon and coming back drunk or all beat up from a fight. And if you're gonna be with a whore, do your business quick and come back early. Mrs. Allen won't like it. I don't want you smelling o'

whisky, neither. We'll be sleeping in the same bed."

"We will? I'm gonna like that. Give us a chance to get close again; make up for lost time."

"We gonna be in the same room back home?"

"Yeah. Darcie had another girl, like I wrote. Named her Hester. But Julia's pregnant again, and she's sure it'll be a girl, so they'll need that extra room for her. In the meantime, Miss Sachs got it."

"Miss Sachs?"

"The new schoolteacher. Didn't I tell you her name?"

* * * *

Zeke, Julia's third son was born in October, but 11Caleb and Caliban stayed together anyway. They said they wanted to.

Caleb did not go to a saloon his first night in

Billings. He had a whole week ahead of him to indulge his pleasures. (He did, too, but he was careful not to drink more than he could hold and didn't get in any fights.) He wouldn't have gone even if he had only had that one night.

His brother was more important to him than whores and whisky. Their first night together, he made Caliban undress, every stitch, so he could see that he had healed properly. Caliban, who, in his own opinion, had been ogled by a dozen people and posed nude for a photograph, did not think twice about taking his clothes off for a brother who must have seen him naked hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

Caleb looked him over thoroughly from head to toe and declared himself satisfied. "And just look at you!" he said. "A real heart-breaker, and just fourteen years old! In a year or so the ladies'll be swarming all over you like flies at the milk pail."

"You're thinking of June, ain't you?"

"Who's June?"

"Doctor Brewster's daughter."

"Has a crush on you, does she? Well, that ain't no 11surprise. How old is she?"

"Seventeen last month."

"And she prefers you over the grown men I'm sure must come courting her! Don't mean a thing to her that you're three years younger'n her and too young to fool around with."

"She was there when the doc operated on me, and she saw me naked."

"Well, that explains it, don't it? She knows she ain't gonna find anyone as well equipped to make a girl happy!"

"Cut it out. You're embarrassing me."

"You oughtta be proud of it. I wish I was as well hung as you."

"Stop it."

"I'm serious, Caliban, and I think it's about time I taught you a thing or two about sex. You may think you know it all, but you don't, and who better to teach ya than me? I ain't your dad, who oughtta done it if he was still alive, but I'm your best friend, and blood kin to boot, and I got plenty of experience."

"I know that."

"I won't teach you here, where Mrs. Allen might overhear us. But I can tell you all about it on the way home.

We'll have a good three-four days. That oughtta be enough."

* * * *

Instead of waiting as he said he would, Caleb

started Caliban's sexual education in bed that night, by giving intimate and unnecessarily graphic details of what he'd done with women. "Makes me hard just telling about it," he said. "You hard too?"

"A little."

Caleb put his hand on Caliban's pajama. He was

exactly what he had said: a little hard.

"You'll hafta do better'n that, baby!"

"Oh, I get alot bigger when I… Well, you know when."

"Then you know how it feels, or almost. It feels alot better inside a woman, and it gets you more excited when you can run your hands all over her body and squeeze her titties. But you know what? I think it feels better for them, though I don't think they like the idea of a man sticking his willie in 'em. If a man's ever in charge, it's when he's fucking. But there ain't no question but they like it. It's just the idea that bothers 'em. I think them good feelings just go all over their bodies, not like for us who feel it all down here." He gave his brother another pat. "Still, I'm glad I don't gotta open my legs for nobody. You know what I 11mean."

"You sure everyone feels it the same? I mean all guys the same, and all ladies?"

"Far as I know they do. Tell me how it feels to you when ya beat off, and I'll tell ya."

"Gosh, I don't know that I can describe it. Besides, it's embarrassing."

"If you're gonna be a man, you're gonna hafta learn how to talk about sex like it don't make no difference. It's almost as important as getting it right the first time you do it. Which you will, boy. I'll see to that."

"Well, it feels good, real good. I know that ain't saying much, but I don't know what else I can say."

"You think about anything when you're doing it?

Like being with someone else, or more'n just one?"

"Only with one. And I think about doing it to him."

"Him!"

"I meant about him doing it. I like to imagine some guy having sex."

"Can't say I think about that, but I hear alot o' guys do."

"Anyway, it gets better as I go on. I even make noises sometimes."

"I know. I heard ya doing it a couple of times. You breathe real heavy, and moan, and you grunt, too, but I bet 11that's when you're getting close to the end."

"I didn't know you was up and listening to me."

"And I wouldn't'a told you, except now it's for educational purposes. And if I heard you, it wasn't to spy on you or nothing. I expect you hear me doing it too sometimes. When your bed is right across the room, well, of course you're gonna hear."

"I'm hard now," Caliban said.

"Can I touch it? Through your pajama; I ain't gonna stick my hand inside. Just to see if the ladies'll be getting what I think they'll be getting."

"You can touch the bare skin, if you want."

"Nah. Men don't do that kinda thing. But I am curious to know how big you get. I'll squeeze it, too, if you'll let me. Just to know how hard it is."

"If you say another word, I'll get so hard it hurts."

"Oh, that
is
nice. The ladies're gonna love it. Okay, tell me how ya finish off."

"Well, it keeps feeling better and better, and then I feel like I can't stop myself, and start pumping it faster; and then it's like it can't stop
it
self, like I'm gonna squirt even if I don't touch it; and then I squirt, and the feelings are so intense it's like I'm seeing stars."

"That's called an orgasm."

"I know." "And women feel it all over inside. Can you imagine that? You do anything else besides pumping it up and down?"

"Sometimes I rub my balls and pinch my nipples."

"Well, except for them fantasies, it sounds like you do and feel exactly what I do and feel, so it must be the same for all us men, excepting the fantasies. I guess we're all different there. That's enough lessons for one night. Let's go to sleep."

After a few minutes, Caliban said, "Caleb, can you go to the privy for five or ten minutes? I can't stop thinking about… I gotta beat off."

"Sure, baby. Wouldn't do, you beating off with me right here in bed with you. But now I'm gonna hafta get into my pants."

Caleb got out of bed and went to get his pants.

Caliban could see the erection pushing out the front of his pajama. For a second he thought that as long as Caleb had a boner too, they might as well beat off together, but he was afraid of what Caleb would think and was pretty sure doing it alongside Caleb would bother him, too.

Caleb stayed away a good fifteen minutes. He

opened the door a crack and whispered, "Caliban? You done?"

A sleepy voice answered, "Yeah, all taken care of." Caleb climbed into bed. "What'd ya think about this time?"

"About you coming back any minute so I had to get it all over with quick, and that got in the way, so I forced myself to think of something else."

"Gonna tell me what else you thought about?"

"No, I told ya enough already. It's supposed to be you who's teaching me all about God's blessed birds and His blessed bees." He turned onto his left side, facing the wall. "Now let's get some sleep, huh?"

* * * *

Caleb gave his brother no further lessons at Mrs.

Allen's house except the night he came back late and told him about the whore he'd been with — what she looked like, what they did, and how much she enjoyed it.

On the way home, however, Caleb gave him an

earful. Sex was pretty much all he talked about. Every so often he would ask, "This making you randy? If you wanna beat off, you can lie down in the wagon while I go take a piss or something," or "I'll just go on driving and promise not to look back."

Caleb told him how a woman's vagina was put

together, and where her erogenous zones were, and how to 11find what he called her pleasure nugget, and about giving and getting oral sex, what to do so you wouldn't get them pregnant, and a lot more. By the time they reached the ranch, Caliban thought he must know more about sex than he did about history, a subject about which he knew pretty much everything.

It took close to a week to reach the ranch, because it hurt Caliban's hip every time they went over a big bump, and the road was muddy and rutted from the spring rains.

They stopped every two hours so Caliban could stretch and rub his leg. At night they slept in the wagon under the stars and stopped the wagon to shelter under the tarp when it rained.

When they got home, Caliban unhitched the wagon

by himself before going to greet the family, just to prove to them he wasn't helpless. All the children were excited to see him, and excited he had brought a dog home with him.

Jaggers reveled in their attention, and Caliban could see it liked being in the country instead of the city. Caliban preferred country life, too.

Betsy, Calvin's oldest, was talking a mile a minute.

She could hardly wait to tell Caliban about Miss Sachs. For the time being they had put her up in the extra bedroom, but Uncles Calvin and Calhoun had started working on the new house they were building for her half a mile up the hill. And she wanted to know if Caliban would be going to school with them.

"Caliban's had more schooling than the rest of us 12ignoramuses put together," Caleb said.

Calvin raised an eyebrow.

"You wouldn't believe all the things he taught himself just by reading," Caleb explained. "He's like a college professor now."

"Is that true, Caliban?" Darcie asked.

"Caleb's just talking big," he answered. "But, yes, I s'pose you could call me educated now."

After he had said to hello to everyone, Caliban went to lie down and slept for two hours. "Sleeping away the day, is 'e?" Calvin said. "Didn't I tell you there wouldn't be much he could do to help out?"

"He can do plenty," Caleb said. "On our way back here, he hitched the horses to the wagon all by himself every morning and unhitched 'em at night. Curried 'em, too.

He ain't forgot what he learned from Calhoun."

"We don't need some specialist to hitch up our wagons full time," Calvin grumbled.

Caliban woke up for supper and ate enough for four.

He had missed Darcie's cooking.

"Don't look like we'll have no leftovers tonight,"

Calvin remarked. He didn't sound like a man making a joke.

As usual, Darcie was the only one who understood that his tone of voice meant he wished Caliban had stayed 12in Billings, and as she often did, she countered it by saying something that at once contradicted him and sounded as though she were talking about something else. "We're all so glad to have you home," she told Caliban.

"And I'm glad to be here. Not just so I can be with you, but so all of us can be together."

That was exactly why Caliban had wanted more

than anything to come home. Instead, he found the ranch seething with grudges and suppressed resentments. He did not realize that some were directed against him. Caleb had known that Calvin was ill disposed toward him since he had made that fuss about Caliban's coming home, but he did not have the heart to tell Caliban, nor would Caliban at fourteen have believed it. He thought all the tension was between Calvin and Calhoun, and that it stemmed from their different ambitions for the ranch. It did not occur to him that Calhoun disliked Calvin's style of management even more.