Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 03:01:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: DJAkeeba@aol.com
Subject: Tragedy in the Blood, Chapters 16-17

This story is about male/male relationships and contains graphic
descriptions of sex.  You should not read this story if it is in any way
illegal due to your age or residence.

This is a work of pure fiction. This story is the sole property of its
author and may not be copied in whole or in part or posted on any website
without the permission of the author.

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-------------------------------

TRAGEDY IN THE BLOOD
by Steven H. Davis

Chapter 16

It was after 10:00 by the time I got home from Linda's house on Sunday
night.  Tynah had already gone to bed, and Rex was snoozing in front of the
TV with Foxy curled up by his side, so sound asleep that his ears didn't
even twitch as I entered through the patio door.

Linda and I had gotten some good rehearsal in, and she had promised to pick
me up the next morning so we could run through our Duet before school in
the auditorium.

Linda had become almost like a sister to me in the weeks that we had known
each other from practicing our Duet so often, and she sensed that I was not
my normal self.

"Is something wrong, Rick?" she asked, as we sat on her living room couch
in between run-throughs.

I looked down at the carpeted floor, where Linda's cat Cougar was eyeing me
suspiciously.  I wanted to tell her what was going on, I really did, but I
was afraid of what she would think.  Instead, I answered with the practiced
elision which every teen with a secret had mastered for centuries.

"I did something today," I said.  "Something that I had to do, and now I'm
worried it's going to backfire on me."

She nodded, concern plainly evident on her pretty face.  "Rick, if you had
to do it, and it's already done, there's no use worrying about it.  What's
going to happen will happen whether you worry about it or not."

I smiled wanly at her, getting to my feet before Cougar could gouge my hand
with his swiping claws.  Linda's cat loved one thing in life, and that was
scratching human hands.  The criss-crossing red lines all over the backs of
Linda's hands were evidence of that, and I had already picked up a couple
of battle scars myself from the grumpy feline.

"Let's run it again," I said, wanting to change the subject away from my
worry over Taine's reaction to the note I had slipped under his door.

So we rehearsed some more until Linda's mother came home from her
back-breaking shift at a downtown hospital, exhausted and obviously not in
the mood for company.

That's when I jumped on my bike and came home, slowing down as I passed the
Maxwell house, where I gazed longingly at the light in the second-floor
window which I knew was Taine's bedroom.

I couldn't see into the room, but I wondered if Taine was reading my
letter.  Whether he had already read it and was composing a reply.  Whether
he had read it, ripped it up into a million pieces and flushed it down the
toilet.  Or maybe he had ripped it up and flushed it *before* reading it.

I saw Sly's red Lambo turn onto the street and pedaled away quickly, having
no desire to see whether Ms. Ogretz was in the passenger seat and really
not wanting to see them go into the house together.

Now, back at home, I tiptoed past Rex and Foxy and made my way quietly to
my room, where I put on headphones and began listening to music on my bed,
waiting for sleep to overtake me.

	*I've been holding out so long/
	I've been sleeping all alone/
	Lord I miss you*

Maybe things would work out in the end.  Maybe I would have my Taine back,
one way or another, and maybe he even felt the way I did.  Maybe he was
just as scared and confused as I had been before mowing the lawn earlier
that day had strengthened my resolve.

Or maybe I was completely fooling myself, as I have the tendency to do, and
he was just utterly horrified and repulsed.

	*I've been hanging on the phone/
	I've been sleeping all alone/
	I want to kiss you*

But, I told myself, he had kissed me too.  I had kissed him, but the next
night -- in his own room -- *he* had kissed *me.* That had to mean
something.  Sure it did.  It meant that he was sad about his mom and that's
it.

"He's not in love with you," the voice in my head told me.  "Who could ever
love you?  Your own mother didn't even love you.  She couldn't wait to get
rid of you.  Just like everyone else.  Just like TAINE."

"Shut up," I mumbled to myself.  "Go to fucking sleep."

And so I did, and dreamed of him.

	*Well, I've been haunted in my sleep/
	You've been starring in my dreams/
	Lord I miss you*

-----------------------------

True to her word, Linda was waiting for me in the driveway early the next
morning.  I jumped into the passenger seat of her bright yellow Chevelle
and exclaimed, "Morning, sunshine!"

"Good morning, Rick," she said, a note of concern in her voice.  "Is
everything okay?  What you were worried about, I mean?"

I shrugged.  "Dunno.  I'll probably know by this afternoon, though."

Linda frowned and sighed, pulling her car back out onto the street and
heading toward school.  I already knew that sigh, and could tell that my
friend was going into maternal mode.  Here it comes, I thought, but what
she said next surprised me.

"Rick," Linda began, "I want to know that you can tell me anything, and I
will understand.  So is it Taine Maxwell?"

I started in my seat, and must have been staring at her in shock, because
she grinned, throwing me a warm sidelong glance as she kept her eyes on the
road.  I had no idea she even knew who Taine was, let alone that I knew him
too.

"I... what... how..." I stammered.

"Oh, Rick, Rick, Rick," she said, smiling indulgently.  "A Duet partner
knows things."

I laughed nervously, wondering if I should admit it or plead ignorance.  I
felt naked and exposed, as if I had been caught doing something shameful.
All of my lawn-mowing bravado from the previous day had withered on the
vine, replaced in an instant by the embarrassment which came from years of
societal disapproval and schoolyard insults.

"You don't have to say anything," she said, turning up Walzem Road.  "I see
how you look when you sit together at lunch, when you get off the bus
together, when you keep looking around in the hallways between classes.
You're looking for him."

I could only nod, fighting back tears.

"So what did you do, Rick?" Linda continued.  "Did you tell him you loved
him?"

That did it.  On went the waterworks.

"Sort of," I managed.  "I wrote him a note and slipped it under his door on
my way to your house last night."

Linda chuckled, reaching across my legs to open the glove compartment and
fish out a travel-pack of Kleenex for me.

"That was brave," she said.  "And now you're worried he's going to tell
everybody you're gay?"

"I'm not gay," I sniffled.  "But Taine's... "

"Different," she finished for me.  "I know he is.  He's in my Geometry
class.  He seems so, I don't know, apart from everyone else.  Like he knows
things and thinks things that he doesn't think we could understand."

I paused from my nose-wiping to stare at Linda again, genuinely surprised
by her insight.  I couldn't have put it better myself.

"And he's beautiful," she said, flicking on the radio.  "He's pretty enough
that if you made him up, he'd be the prettiest girl in school.  Except it's
more than that... he's somehow like he's not from this planet.  Like..."

"Like he's an angel," I finished for her.  "Yeah, I know.  I know."

	*In the days of my youth/
	I was told what it means to be a man*

"Don't worry, Rick," Linda said, patting my knee reassuringly as she pulled
into the school.  "It'll all work out."

	*Now I've reached that age/
	I've tried to do all those things the best I can*

I fell back against the seat as Linda circled the nearly empty
early-morning parking lot.  I wished I could believe her.  I wished that I
could, but I was filled with an existential dread at what the day would
bring.

	*No matter how I try/
	I find my way into the same old jam*

-------------------------------

Linda and I rehearsed in the auditorium for about an hour, me fretting and
she reassuring me between performances, and then the warning bell rang,
signaling that we had ten minutes to get to our first classes.  Linda raced
off to her Spanish class, and I went to my locker to store my bookbag and
grab my English books.

There, on top of my books, was an envelope that had been slipped into my
locker.  On the front of the envelope was written "RICK" in a careful,
cursive scrawl.  My heart began to thud inside my chest, and I even felt a
little ringing in my ears as I stared at the envelope... wanting to open
it, but not wanting to open it.  I tucked it into the inside pocket of my
denim jacket, intending to read it when I wasn't in a hurry.  I wanted to
carefully consider whatever was written inside, whether it was good or bad.

It was then that I noticed a commotion further down the hallway.  Students
had crowded around near the door to Mrs. Colby's classroom, shouting and
excited.  A few more students rushed past me, and I knew there was a fight
about to happen.  Voyeuristic as anyone when it came to school fights, I
hurriedly closed my locker and ran over to watch.

The first person I saw was Kevin Gorman.  Kevin was a tall, muscular junior
on the football team, and pretty much the biggest bully in school.  I
smirked, knowing that whoever was on the opposite side of the growing
circle of students was in really big trouble.  Kevin was a complete idiot,
and wore a perpetually slack-jawed look on his dumb potato face, but there
were two things he did quite well: sack quarterbacks and beat up
underclassmen.  It was clear that we were all to be treated to an example
of the latter.

"Kick his ass!" someone screamed, the crowd's bloodlust rising in delirous
arousal.

"Fuck him up!" another voice yelled.

I worked myself around to watch as Kevin moved in on his unfortunate prey.
That was when my amusement turned to horror, for Kevin's target this
morning was a very thin and scared-looking freshman named Taine Maxwell.

"Oh no," I whispered.

Taine had drawn fully inside himself, staring at the ground with his cap
pointing straight down.  His posture was deceptively relaxed, but the white
knuckled hand clutching his English book in front of his slender abdomen
told a different story.

With no warning, Kevin lunged toward Taine, causing him to flinch, then
pulled up short and slapped the book from Taine's hand with one thick,
meaty paw.

The book flew straight into Kirsten's sweater-covered tits, but did nothing
to erase the fierce, animal excitement in her eyes or the feral grin on her
thickly-glossed lips.  I had always kind of liked Kirsten, but in that
moment -- as the book fell to the ground and she pushed forward to be
closer to this savage humiliation -- I hated her.

Taine raised his hands weakly and attempted to move around the larger boy,
but Kevin faked a punch, making him flinch backward.

"Whatcha gonna do about it... TAINT?"

Someone kicked the book across the circle, then, and it bounced painfully
off the toe of my shoe.  I didn't care, because I was starting to see red.

I had been beaten and abused for much of my life, and one of the
side-effects of that was what could charitably be called "anger issues."

I had a pretty long fuse, but when I saw something like this, the
Incredible Hulk had nothing on me.

Taine was looking down at the floor again, and once more tried to charge
past Kevin.  The crowd was yelling and screaming wildly around me, but my
focus was on the love of my life.

He's mine!  my mind screamed.  You can't hurt him!

Kevin laughed cruelly and slapped the hat from Taine's head, revealing the
terrified face of my Taine, my angel, my Babes...

...And that was when I went berserk.

I don't remember what happened next, but a few minutes later, I was being
restrained by the strong arms of Vice-Principals Wells and Kregar, Taine
was looking at me in horrified awe, and the crowd of kids was hushed.

They were all staring at me too.

I didn't see Kevin.  What I did see was quite a few splatters of blood on
the floor, some of them smeared, one of them bearing part of a
sneaker-print.

Then I saw Taine's English book on the ground, or what was left of it.  One
corner had been flattened and looked as if someone had been using it to
hammer bricks into a wall.

It was also wet with blood.

"Go to class, everyone!" Mr. Wells barked, and the circle quickly
dispersed.

As it did so, I saw Kevin being taken out of the school on a gurney a long
way down the hall by some very concerned- looking EMTs.  There was a lot of
blood.

Mr. Wells had me by one arm and Mr. Kregar by the other as they
unceremoniously dragged me to the office.  As we passed Taine, he still
stood rooted to the spot, watching me being pulled away, his mouth hanging
open in mute amazement.

-------------------------

Chapter 17

	*I heard you on the wireless back in '52/
	Lying awake, intent on tuning in on you/
	If I was young, it didn't didn't stop you coming through*

Oh-a-oh, I thought glumly.  I was sitting in the La-Z-Boy in the living
room watching MTV and trying to stave off the sense of impending doom which
sat atop my chest, oppressive and stifling.  I still wasn't quite sure what
had happened in the hallway at Polk High that morning, but I knew that I
was in serious trouble.

Rex had come to get me and brought me home, only to return immediately to
the school for a very important conference.  He was about to call Tynah at
work because I had been pale, shaking and confused, but decided that would
only lead to hysterics and a lot of yelling.  So he left me alone while he
went back to deal with Mr. Towers, the vice-principals, and Kevin's father.

Kevin's mother and brother were at the hospital, as far as I knew, looking
after their hero.  Some hero.  Although I was sure I was facing
life-altering consequences for my freakout, I also knew that if I hadn't
stepped in, Kevin would have administered a serious beatdown to Taine, and
that was something I couldn't have lived with.  I would sooner have taken a
bullet.

That being said, I knew things were about to get pretty bad for me at Polk,
if... if... if I was ever allowed to return to school.  Kevin had a lot of
friends, and his father just happened to be better known as Coach Gorman,
the squat, powerfully-built defensive line coach of the Polk Destroyers
football team.  And that Friday was the big Homecoming Game against
Cartwright.

	*And now we meet in an abandoned studio/
	We hear the playback and it seems so long ago/
	And you remember the jingles used to go/
	Oh-a-oh, you were the first one/
	Oh-a-oh, you were the last one*

Friday... crap.  Friday was also the day of the Chamberlain Individual
Qualifying Tournament.  I had not only screwed myself, I had screwed Linda,
my sweet, caring, understanding Duet partner.  I had screwed Mr. McRory.  I
had screwed the speech team, the football team... oh, man.  And what about
Kevin?  How badly had I hurt him with that English book?

Nice temper I had.  Thanks, Mom.  I thought back to that scared little boy,
crouching behind a tree in the South Carolina woods behind the Little House
which Rex had built for me and the furious, raging woman screaming my name.
I had been pure, quivering fear for much of our time there, and somewhere
along the line, all that fear and sadness and helplessness had turned
into... well, whatever it was that happened at Polk this morning.  And
Taine had seen it all.

	*Video killed the radio star/
	Video killed the radio star/
	In my mind and in my car/
	We can't rewind, we've gone too far...*

An image of Taine flashed into my head.  He had been standing there, hair
askew from where Kevin had knocked his cap, his protective shield, his safe
place, from his head.  His eyes had been wide, his mouth hanging open as he
watched me being pulled away by Mr. Wells and Mr. Kregar.  He had seen The
Beast, and it had horrified him.  Even though it was for him, I knew that I
had shown him a side of myself that there was no reeling back.

Oh, Taine... oh, my Babes, what will you think of me now?

That was when I remembered the note.  In all the confusion, I had forgotten
the note!  I had slipped my own note under Taine's front door the previous
evening, and worried all night and all morning about whether I had said too
much, gone too far in my declarations of love and devotion to him.

And then I had gone to my locker, just before the fight, to find a sealed
envelope with "RICK" written on the outside in Taine's careful, cursive
script.  I had put it in the inside pocket of my denim jacket to read later
when I had time.  Then the fight had started, and "later" had never
arrived.

I flicked off the TV and practically ran to my bedroom, where the jacket
lay crumpled on my bed.  As I picked it up to reach the note, I noticed
droplets of blood on the sleeve and on the front.  Kevin's blood.  Oh, my
God.  Those aren't coming out, I thought crazily.  Oh, my God.

A wave of nausea and dizziness swept over me and I sat down heavily on the
bed, the jacket hanging limply from my fingers.  I closed my eyes and tried
to compose myself.  When the sick, awful feeling had passed, I reached for
the inside front pocket and removed the envelope.

I wanted to open it, needed to open it, but I dreaded what might be inside.
A rejection, I was sure.  I turned the envelope over in my hands idly,
wondering how badly Kevin was hurt, and whether I might be headed for jail.

JAIL!

"He got a reaaal purty mouth," the movie dialogue came to my mind.  I would
be popular in jail.

"Now let me hear you squeal. You know you can squeal like a pig.  Come on,
boy.  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeet!  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeet!"

Oh, God.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  I couldn't afford to think about
jail right now.  It was too much, too awful, too surreal.  I had to find
out what was in this envelope.

As I turned over the envelope to the back and slowly began to break the
seal, being careful not to let the envelope tear, I heard the automatic
garage door opener groan to life, then the sounds of Rex's car pulling into
the garage.

Oh, God.

My hand froze on the envelope.  Quickly, I rose from the bed and slipped
the letter -- still unopened -- into the top drawer of my dresser.  It was
time to face the music, and God only knew what that would entail.

Like a condemned man making that last walk down the Green Mile to the gas
chamber, I took a deep breath, threw my shoulders back, and marched toward
the kitchen to meet my fate.

--------------------

Rex came into the kitchen and closed the door to the garage.  He didn't
slam the door, and he didn't look angry, which I took as good signs.  But
then he turned to face me, and he had the strangest look on his face that I
had ever seen.  My heart sank.

This was going to be that bad after all.  It went beyond his prodigious
capability for anger and into Bizarro-land.

His lip curled as he pointed to my chair at the kitchen table.

I sat.

Rex walked over to the cabinet over the coffeepot, replaced his checkbook,
wallet and pen inside.  He withdrew a pack of cigarettes, then closed the
cabinet door and opened the pack, discarding the foil and cellophane in the
plastic trashcan.

With another weird, unreadable glance at me, he came back to the table,
returning his car keys on the hook above the radio and lighting a
cigarette.

I was trembling by this point, and he wordlessly slid the cigarette pack,
lighter and ashtray across the table toward me.

Gratefully, I took a cigarette and lit it, my eyes never leaving his face.
Even though, intellectually, I knew he wasn't going to hit me, my long-term
conditioning had kicked in, and I knew I must have been cowering as if
expecting the blows to start raining down.

With a deep sigh, he sat down at his chair opposite mine, took a long drag
off his cigarette, looking off into space.

Oh, God.

Finally, Rex flicked his cigarette in the ashtray and looked up at me.

"Welp," he said, "I guess you fucked up."

I sighed, and could only manage "Yeah" in a quavering whisper.

He sat back in his chair, looking down his long, oft-broken nose at me.  I
felt like his eyes were boring holes right through me to the fear and
incipient panic inside.

Finally, he did something I didn't expect.  He smiled slightly and
chuckled.

"Towers is a real piece of work," he said.  "He was sitting there between
all of us like a buck private caught in the crossfire."

I had already seen my principal looking that way after the lockerroom
incident with Coach Keith, and an image of his harried face came to my
mind.  I still dreaded what his decision would be.

"What happened?" I asked.  "How is Kevin?"

Rex gave a dismissive wave.  "Bumps and cuts.  He was treated and released,
but he's got a hell of a headache.  What the hell did you do to him?"

I felt a massive wave of relief pass through me.  Whatever else happened,
at least I wasn't a murderer.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully.

"Well, you're a lucky son of a bitch," Rex said.  "Coach Gorman wanted to
call the fuzz and string you up by the balls. Towers was too scared to say
'boo' to the cocksucker, and you came this close to having a felony assault
on your record."

I shuddered.

"You talked them out of it?" I asked.

Rex shook his head.

"Not me.  Your girlfriend's daddy."

My eyes widened.  "Sly was there?"

"I guess Taine called him.  He showed up halfway through the meeting with
steam coming from his ears.  Apparently you saved his kid's ass today, and
you'd done it before with some fucked-up coach?"

Rex looked at me quizzically, with what I was too scared at the time to
realize was just a hint of admiration.

"Oh, yeah," I said.  "Coach Keith was going crazy on him one day in the
lockerroom and I reported it to security.  Sly was going to sue the school
unless Taine got excused from gym class for the year and Coach Keith got
transferred to Central Office."

"Yeah," said Rex, dragging on his cigarette thoughtfully.  He stood up and
got a beer from the fridge, but rather than drinking it, he slid it across
the table to me.

"Drink this.  You look like shit."

I accepted the beer gratefully, very confused.  As I gulped the cold,
welcome brew, I looked at Rex expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

"Anyway," he went on, "Sly got in Towers' face, Gorman's face, he was
yelling and cussing and screaming... He threatened to sue Towers again, the
school district, Gorman.  Well, shit, 'sue'... he was ready to knock the
snot out of Gorman right there in the office."

"Wow," I said, my fear mostly forgotten.  My heart and soul were moved by
Sly's fierce, overwhelming devotion to his son. "He really is protective of
Taine."

"Not just Taine," said Rex.  "He saved your ass today.  The only way he
backed off of his lawsuit threat was if Towers and Gorman promised that the
police wouldn't be involved, you wouldn't be expelled, and that there would
be no retaliation by them, Kevin, or anyone else.  One thing about Sly
Maxwell, he knows how to get his way."

I just looked at Rex in awe, unable to speak.

"That's the good news," Rex said.  "The bad news is that you're suspended
for the rest of the week."

I nodded gravely, but inside I was giddy with joy, relief and happiness.
It must have somehow shown in my eyes, because Rex leaned forward, staring
into them with menace.

"There's worse news," he said quietly.  "Your mommy is coming home in
twenty minutes.  And she is going to go... absolutely... insane."

My relief was washed away with those words, and the dread returned.  Tynah
was usually a cheerful, loving mother to me, but when she got
angry... forget the suspension... my real punishment was yet to come.

I looked down at the table, finished my beer and cigarette quickly, and --
with one last, anxious look at Rex, which he ominously returned -- went out
to feed the birds.

-------------------------------

Thank you for reading Chapter 16 & 17.  To be continued...

"Miss You" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Performed by The Rolling
Stones. c 1978 by Rolling Stones Records.  "Good Times Bad Times" by John
Bonham, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page. Performed by Led Zeppelin. c 1969
by Atlantic Records.  "Video Killed the Radio Star" written by Trevor Horn,
Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley. Performed by The Buggles. c 1979 by Island
Records.  "Deliverance" screenplay by James Dickey and John Boorman. Based
on the novel by James Dickey. c 1972 by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Once again, I'm always happy to hear from readers at DJAkeeba@aol.com

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