Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:53:11 -0700 From: Tim Stillman Subject: "Ago" gay male/historical/young friends "Ago" by Timothy Stillman Keri was running. His musculature was tight and he was strong; his legs pistoned; his feet hit hard on the forest floor; the trees scaled round him, as though they were moving past him, while he was immobile. His breath came in and out, hard; his lungs felt scalded. His arms worked up and down; his eyes were wide and black, in the Fall foliage round him. Sureties, purchase. And memories of this morning--Coming to town on a cold and bitter day, to pick up supplies. The first time his father had allowed Keri to come into town, on the buckboard, alone. The day had been shivery; the sky had been cones of winter whisking around him. The world seemed cold and hard and distant and too up close. Keri the half breed. Keri the sod farmer's son. Keri the outcast. Keri the lovelorn. He was naked save for his leather pouch that protected his penis and balls; his butt was not covered by the leather; his hair was long and thick and dark as if midnight had woven and weaned it. He was 14 and in Indian terms he would have already been a man. In white man terms he was a boy, worse than that; a squaw boy; for he had been with his love and had been caught in the falling down barn distant/near to his father's sod hut. Kerry was beautiful; his flesh was the color of ripe berries; the molding of his face was sharp and definite; his nose was a hawk nose, a proud one; his cheekbones were so high they almost tilted upward. His eyes were wide and saw everything, but like the Indian he was (no half breed in his own conception of himself), those eyes commented on nothing that he saw. Things were. People were. As nature. As the Great Father. And there was no need to discuss it, even with himself. While of course his quicksilver mind betrayed him always in doing exactly that. Lance was a farm boy, as poor as Keri and his father. Lance was shy and not pleasant to look at; Lance was two years older than Keri. Both boys had fallen in love with each other over a small period of time; Lance considered Keri to be charitable; Lance considered Keri to be a boy of principals, and since the Indian boy was an outcast, surely he would be drawn himself to outcasts; even to a boy who was painfully thin, who had too many bumps on his face; the left side of that flat unremarkable face scalded pink from the fire the boy had been in and had barely escaped from. Lance, Keri knew, was beautiful, something Keri could not understand Lance could not see. They had proceeded to kissing. In their sacred rotted wood humus smelling barn. Up in the loft where there were sometimes sunshine splinters. For there was no where else to go to be like this. Occasionally, crows flew round inside it. Sometimes there were spiderwebs about, and tossing gently, where they lay. There was always dirt and a vague sense of poor history. Sometimes there was the occasional mouse. The boys noticed none of these things. They had proceeded. To holding each other in the barn of rents and gaps and cold winds slicing through. They had held and felt comfort in each other; the each finding the other his home; Keri knowing it; and Lance not; Lance always ready for the real boy, the right boy for Keri, the one Keri truly dreamed about, to take his own place; for he could never be worthy of this boy of the tightly compacted muscles; of the long strong back of curve and serenity; of the stomach that was like iron; of the wild unkempt winter fields of Keri's ancestors; and the secret things behind the pouch Keri wore. The masculine things that smelled of boy and wilderness and just starting out, looking down from their pawing eager Indian ponies (they imagined) to the land below them, and they on the cliff, and how the world was a winter hawk gliding in the blue as teal sky that went to forever and had more where that came from, and then the rush of the pawing ponies beneath their tight butts and thighs, the feel, the knowledge of the attack and the sudden sure fire victory, the anger, the controlled blood lust, the need for revenge and retribution that massed the braves' muscles and set their bodies a little bit stronger than man had ever been before; the legion of boy brave blood curdling howls, the feathered arrows in the quivers on their backs, the bows easy to get at; the feel of the huffing sides of the ponies ready to run; to run off the cliff; to arch into the sky; and to fly into the screaming wind of history, to go up to all those gods up there the Christians brand as pagans in their lies, and set them right about the dignity of one's heritage. They had proceeded to taking off their clothes; the Indian boy wore white man shirt and trousers, because his father (ashamed of Keri's mother dead so many years, Keri could not remember her, thirsted to know of her, but his father would never even mention her name, so ashamed) told him he had to assimilate in the white man's world, like it or not; his father had told him that long rifle could defeat him and any Indian any time; it was numbers now, just numbers-- --those days were over, when a boy could ride across a vast unsettled pristine plain and could see up close and with awe, the buffalo like shining black thunder rushing proudly and ominously onward in the night train of nature, before the white man trains came, and the white men with their thunder rifles, on their mission to prove somehow their manhood, to destroy and destroy some more. But underneath Keri's trousers, he wore his pouch, that he had secretly made, himself; the secret Indian reserve beneath the hollow lie of dingy torn brown cloth. They had stripped, and finally finally--looked--Keri with needed pleasure--Lance with needed humiliation--Keri and Lance. Keri, somehow always of the melancholy known as the past, human token of the limitless freedom and intense wisdom, that had been the steel blue and gray sun set far too gracelessly and not of their making. Lance, smelling of poverty, of the pigs his father raised for market. And the groveling both boys and their fathers had to do to whites who did not consider Lance and his father white either. White is everything. There is nothing more. Period. Both boys poor, but one boy dying of it, one boy ascending from it. Neither able to see which was which. And in the cold eddies of last Saturday, the black eye, somehow omniscient, omnipotent, seemingly furry like the fur of a tarantula, peering through the knot hole, into the barn, and up to the loft, as the boys saw each other naked for the first time. A season had begun with that; a season neither boy had imagined could happen before it. And a season had ended with it. For good. The Indian boy with his long shoulder length night, and the pale white farm boy with the bowl haircut and the pimples on his chest and the little whistle of pubic hair, and the penis that seemed too short, too heavy, the balls that were nests of robin's eggs grown far too large for the shoot above them; all clumsy, all awkward, was Lance; all stupid feeling, and shame; standing in front of Keri in the dark barn shadowfall, who had no shame at all as he exhibited himself naked in front of his friend who tried to avert his eyes from Keri, but could not. Keri, with his flawless face and neck and chest and abdomen and groin, all smooth and of a piece, one with the other, with no whiteness at all showing; from which Lance once more began to turn away, had indeed already picked up his baggy far too patched trousers from the heap, to put them on again; so he could slink from the barn and be alone once more and consider the recent past and the distant past and which hurt the most. When the warm delicate, tapered long fingers of Keri touched the arm of Lance, the arm of goosebumps and lack of feeling for knowing early on feeling would not be allowed for him. When the voice of Keri in its sweet huskiness said, "Stay." And Keri came close to the boy there in the hay loft empty of hay, only the cold dangerously creaking wood boards, only the smell of such small human frames and knock- about human habitations, and the great western plains on all sides of them, with the reach of all of time up there in the sky that seemed to go on to a million years and then breathlessly reach out for a million years more on the horizon, easy at the pink beginning of memories of summer new day, sure of itself and always to be. Pink, said Keri, like your body is, pink and lovely and full of bones and full of spirit, and full of love that you don't know how to give, and then he said some words as an incantation in his native tongue, his only real language, though the words were made up nonsense, since he had no idea what tribe he was, or what his language was--school was for rewriting and ignoring who was to be taught-- --and he turned Lance to him, this baleful passed over seemingly mismatched boy, and held his smaller Keri body close to the taller one and put a hand to Lance's rising penis and stroked it. The boys shivered in love as their arms went round each other's chest and hands meeting at the back. And someone saw. A silent cough. A shadow in this barn of shadows and burgeoning first contact with what they were. A memory. Keri saw the eye as big as a bullseye painted in a sky they could not see. Keri stood straighter. A lance of fear went through him. Lance did not see. Keri would make sure, if he could, Lance never would. The eye, though. A future pain that went straight to Keri's willful heart that counted footsteps where there were none, but eye shadows fell on his soul easily, he had felt enough on him on his back as he walked away from his betters, as he looked around Lance and his eyes went down to the wall at the front of the old horse stall, and saw the black evil eye out of all context, out of a devising in a human face to observe with. A thing that was totally and completely itself without being connected to a single other human thing. Remembering all this-- --Keri ran through the forest now. He ran to forget. He ran to escape the eyes of the townspeople this December 1st, the morning of this day when he went into town, by himself, time for a father to trust his son even when he does not; time for a father not to fear for what might happen to his boy alone; when Kerry had driven the buckboard into the place of rattletrap buildings, some canting left or right, the taste and feel of dust on him. Kerri had given his horses some sugar, after he tied them to the rail post. The town bustling with that gingham and leather and that unmistakable free for the whole day feeling with forever yawning round them. In their Sunday best. As best they could. Straining on the leash--free to fly into the sky and never say a word, but to be noble and never tied to the earth one more time, or to people or to growing crops or raising pigs, or slaughtering them; sweating and dying in the summer sun and freezing in the winter frost; when flesh would be invincible and clothing would be a part of a person that would be finery and they would never have to stoop again to the earth to beg and plead and harvest and dig and work their sustenance from it. --It was the children mainly, and from the adults, through their children, Kerri felt this coming from, radiating out of. Children with their ma's and pa's; begging at the dry goods store for lots and lots of candy; running boys and girls who shied away from each other and then, in standing still, in front of or to the side of each other, ran a little more; eyes plaintive and hurtful and happy; accompanied by a piano in the saloon hall, playing loudly and tinkly, and the slaps of hobnailed boots of Saturday men, dancing with ladies on golden slippered feet, and shouts and men in the dark there, round the coal stove, getting logy and sleepy and confused and pixilated and drunk and the dance hall girls seeing to it they got even drunker. And Keri, silent, still, observing, not part of the kids running down the wood sidewalks, eating their licorice or stuffing candy balls from big glass jars into their mouths, not begging for someone to pay him attention, not feeling he had a right to this world, not wanting a right to this world, so white, so mean spirited. Keri standing in the dust, watching his betters roam the plank sidewalks and not guessing for a moment perhaps once they had not been entitled either. The inculcation of sounds: The pounding of hammer on horse shoes, at the livery stable, alive with sounds of the men betting on cards, slapping each other on the back, describing this harder than ever week that they half came through alive, and maybe a stage to St. Louis was in order cause me and the missus and the children can't take much more of this crap, this kill you dead labor, and most often for naught. Keri, fish a long way from water, standing by the buckboard, watching the ladies in their crude or fine winter clothing, cloaks and jackets over them, their parasols up and shading and shadowing them from no sun at all, the habit of parasols, and finery from the dry goods store, the ones who could go in debt for it, for that was all that was keeping them from being swallowed up by the wilderness all around them, ready to crush them, to rush into this little scallop of civilization and turn it into a fondly remembered dream of dust one more time. The wilderness waited patiently, Keri thought, until man had raped it one too many times or the first of too many times. Then the waiting would be over. You dig your own graves, do you not see? Keri thought, trembling at being in a white man's snake pit. As dogs fought with each other and dusted dancy down the street of this very small moment in time. Keri pulled his fringed (his father allowed him, knowingly, one concession to what his son was) jacket tighter around him. He pulled his father's lists out of his back trousers' pocket. the wind cold bit and pulsed round him. He decided to go to the dry goods store first, it being the closest and then work his way down one side of the street, then down the other, and when finished going into the ramshackle little wood buildings that had the audacity to call itself a town, store his goods in the wagon, untie the horses, and be on his way, thinking if no one challenged him to a fist fight, if no one pushed him down, if no one spat on him, or yelled at him, or knew about him and Lance--don't think about it, now--don't--he ordered himself-did he want to know who had stared at him and Lance last Saturday in the barn? Did he want to know who had been told? His father being told? No. That was unbelievable evermore. Keri was a boy of imagination; it rode impatiently and heavily on his flint sharp edged thin shoulders. He looked at the townspeople filling the sidewalks and the manure strewn street of dust and clay, and people began noticing him; like you'd notice a bug on a carriage isinglass curtain; and they momentarily stopped being lost in free Saturday talk where the sun rose early and set late and Sunday was miles and miles away; Monday too far down the road to even be contemplated; forgetting, in their baleful stares at him, that now was for just being, bone stretching, lollygaging at store windows, the lust to buy grand stuff they could not afford; it was like a stream freezing up, as the townspeople looked at Keri, alone in town for the first time in his life. They expected if they stared hard enough at him, he would vanish. He wished he could oblige them. It angered him; it cut to the bone. They would not stop him if he was riding his sorrel pony and had other braves with him; braves birthed from sunlight and prairie fire; braves of mettle and integrity and cunning; braves who had seen so many things done to their people and the getting away with it; the constant theft of land unhelmed by the school master in the white eye school, that his weak and weary and defeated father made him attend every week day; the lies the teacher told; the utter contempt Keri had for all whites; and that all whites had for Indians; save for Lance; save for Lance who had lay naked with him on the piny boards in the old deserted barn last Saturday, during which someone watched them; at least for a time, till the eye was out of Keri's sight. Keri behaving much as an animal closing his eyes--if he could not see, he could not be seen. The spying, which fired Keri's bones; which did not allow him to tell Lance someone was watching; for then, Lance would leave; Lance would be frightened and would dress hurriedly and half fall down when trying to put on his trousers-- --and tumble down the horribly unstable ladder from the loft a moment after; it would make a bad joke of Lance and Keri; it would make both of them ashamed; so instead, Keri put his face next to Lance's and smelled the boy's sour breath, while Lance smelled Keri's wind cold breath. And both boys thought it fine indeed. Losing themselves in each other. Being more themselves than they had ever been before. Especially Lance. And Keri's face was so handsome, his mouth open, the tip of the tongue tickling his front teeth, his eyes full of happiness and bedazzlement and wonder, as he joyed with Lance, as they pushed each other back and forth-- Keri hair cuddling the back of his head and one of his perfect cheeks, his body of hope, his body of perfectly formed together mirages that were not mirages at all, each inch of study of it more thrilling than the studying of the inch before, but exquisite reality; his face strained and filled with all the emotions that Lance also was finally feeling, allowing himself to feel, as Lance turned his face so bravely to Keri and they kissed each other's lips, long and deep, like a hummingbird at prayer in a beautiful summer flower, the delicacy of the thing, the impossibility of the possible; and the blue ropy veins in Lance's face shimmered like glow worms turned to butterflies under a pure and clear sun that did not pass judgment, but was intrinsic in what it wanted, regardless whether or not anyone else could see the perfect transcendence of this particular pool of blue sky or not. And they giggled and cuddled and entwined and held and rolled on top of each other and laughed, and Keri knew the eye was still watching; knew the shadow of the eye lay heavily on both of them, but mostly on Lance. Keri was expected to be a hellion after all. They could only kill him. But to Lance they could do a great deal worse. Lance was one of them in other words. It is frightfully difficult to stop being one of them. Keri, through dent of closed eyes, open only to Lance, put the shame, the remorse from him until their sexy time was over-- --until both had rubbed themselves to hardness and over the brink, and had examined each other's bodies as minutely and reverently as they could. And put hands to pallid and the summer sunset dusk. After they had dressed and holding hands once more, then so unwillingly leaving each other, until next weekend, the weekend that had not come for them, they ran to their own homes. Keri afraid the owner of the evil eye had run after Lance. And that he would then run after Keri. But mostly after Keri. And Keri was sore ashamed. He had been taught too well, he believed, white man cowardice. And now-- --Keri ran in his breechcloth through the woods. He had run so long in the burning cold that he was perspiring as though it was mid summer and he was sick with a fever in a sun doused medicine teepee, all coagulated with smoke and sweat and sickness in the brain, that he could not seem to get out of, that evil spirits possessed him, that they goaded him in his flesh, because this morning, before he drove to town, he had gone to the barn and waited for Lance at the appointed time, but Lance had not shone up. Lance had not been at school all week. The teacher said Lance's father was keeping him home--touch of the colic or something. Keri had not the gumption to go to Lance's house. Lance's father did not know he and the Indian ever spoke to each other. Keri was afraid Lance's father had been the tarantula eye. Was afraid Lance was hurt, beaten. For Lance's father did on more than a few occasions, according to the boy, who showed the stripes to prove it, "beat the devil out of him." Keri had tried to believe that Lance was only sick. Had tried not to think about any alternatives. And on awakening this morning, had been delighted he was going to ride up in his buckboard to the barn, and impress Lance, who did not know Keri's father was to allow this, with his journey to town today. A journey that Lance was going to take with him, sitting nobly by the redskin on the seat, and they would bravely face the demons extant together. And Keri this morning, knowing then that Lance was dead, that his father had seen, and had killed him. Keri, not having alerted his friend, had been a part of that crime that had been committed and he was complicit in that crime, but here was a week's reprieve, the circuit judge would not be in town till the following Monday, his regular schedule, and Keri could breathe till then, could relax, but the dread came anyway; and the guilt as he waited at the empty soulless black eye of the barn as long as he dared. His life without Lance would be what it had been before him--he worked his father's little farm, he studied hard in the candle light in the small room of the sod hut at night. And then this morning, waiting on his friend, Keri had gotten angry--how dare Lance have used him last Saturday just for fun, and then had stood him up, had deserted him, and laughed at him all the week long, and in even more anger, Keri had slammed into the buckboard seat and had pulled the reins and had ridden away from the goddam barn, had pushed the wagon horses too fast for a mile or two, and then eased up, remembering it was not their fault. Keri found all the hateful arrogance when the people passed him by again, and in every store he went into; he had endured the same kind of curdled superiority his father had endured, though not as shameful as it had been for a boy to see his father cut down so mercilessly. He couldn't understand why his father wanted to fit into the white man's world with entities such as this, where the children beat Keri up often because his father told him, do not resist, do not fight back, they will get tired of you soon if you don't fight back, they will leave you alone. As in so much, his father had been wrong about this too. But the boy was too respectful of his father to tell him so or to not do what he was ordered. So this past week of fear and hiding from what might have happened to Lance, hiding from the very real possibility it had been Lance's father's eye lacquered on them; and Kerri, Lance's friend, who was remembering all this Indian nobility malarkey, while two miles distant, his friend was being murdered. Goddam me goddam me goddam me. --all fueled Keri's confusion, Keri's anger, Keri's shame; therefore he endured the snaky silent wrath of the people in the dry goods store while he selected a precious few things for his father and his farm, and had paid in sweaty pennies the clerk made him put on the counter and not into the white man's hands; then the feed and grain store, the same treatment; trundling things to the wagon; no fear they were to be stolen, because there was a strange kind of honor white men had, even to Indians, out West at least; then the livery, to see if he could afford now an old rebuilt harness for his dad's horse, a harness he had been saving up for as a surprise for his father--but the harness was gone; the store proprietor had said he would hold it back for Keri all those weeks ago; all serious and true, the white man was, till today, when he laughed; white men, Keri knew, do one thing exceedingly well--they lie, and take great pleasure in the doing of it. And they smile like weasels, if weasels could smile, when they have you in a trap, and Keri wanted to cut them all off at the knees. And all the while, Keri thinking, which of you saw us last Saturday? Which of you got his jolleys off by watching us? Watching us pull each other's penis? Watching as I kissed Lance in ripples down there. And he doing the same to me? Did you spill your seed on the ground, watching two naked hard penised boys make love? What kind of monstrosity are you to desecrate such a thing? And thinking this as he looked from person to person, each unmoving in his sepia toned sight, each fish eyed rocks, pegs like in a child's board game. You in your superiority, you look so stupid, in your fancy Dan clothes; ridiculous scarecrows that would scare not one crow away. Then thinking yet again, one of you saw us and what we did, and he found himself blushing. But there is one single good thing about being a redskin in this world of whiteys, no one can notice if you blush. It almost made him laugh in the crinkled and painful pinch of this journey into this wall hole of settlers who stole and killed and exterminated without thought, and then you sit in your holy little churches and dare to hear some fool go on about the prince of peace who you and your ancestors somehow think you resemble. What I have done could not possibly have been as bad as what you have done, or continue to do. Oh Lance, where are you? How I need you beside me. Forgive my selfishness. Forgive my cravenness. You must hate me. You must be alive so you can hate me. I caught your seed in my mouth, remember? You tried to pull me off of you, in your shame, but I had to taste the elixir of my love. And then you hungered for my own and we gave our essences to each other and we were one. The silence. The eyes avoiding him. Then penetrating his back bone. He had spent two pretty awful hours in town, had exhausted all his father's money, and had so very little to show for it. He had held himself together inside by thinking of Lance, by remembering how fun it was to lie with him last Saturday, feeling the boy's body's excitement when his penis the second time, the incipient pride in Lance's now show off eyes, came in Keri's almost girlishly sculpted so delicate china bone hand, and how Keri had lifted his bottom up again and again as he squirted on Lance's laughing face, a face that had not laughed often before, and as he looked then over, so deeply, at Keri, at the all of him, and rushed his long bony gangly arms round Keri's neck and brought him close, as they sucked on each other at a confusing and remarkable and more than confusing configuration, getting each other's cum on both their stomachs, and they pushed their penises and balls into each other, taking one to another the secret of pure unselfish love. They dwelt in this land of boy, this season of being accepted, this country of themselves that allowed for no outcasts ever again, a kind of finding of contentment. And then they had sat up on the boards of the loft, and they had spread their legs, while Keri pulled down his own foreskin, and began rubbing himself, then Lance's own not so shy not so awkward anymore hand coming of its own volition to Keri's penis, and rubbing it, while Keri showed Lance how he liked it the best, and the practice and the experiment and the right way and the wrong, no, like this, yes, you have it now, and then Keri's straining backward as the feeling hit him, as his penis felt molten and free and strong as the strongest tree, as his toes bent, and his muscles flexed; Keri's hands balanced on either side of him, his face again straining, his teeth biting the tip of his tongue, as Lance watched this gloriously beautiful and limitlessly kind boy being pleasured by Lance's hand, and then the climax, then the going over, then the whoosh of boy and the extreme excitement, as Keri collapsed in time in Lance's arms and they held each other for a long time, and both were shiny with Keri's own cum. As an unblinking gutless sneaking about eye watched and watched. With such extreme wrath and hatred. How monstrously loud was silence. As the gutless eyes of the people in town now watched Keri's back as he rode his buckboard out into the mid afternoon with winter in its iron tasting grip, and the grass long turned torn brown, and the dirt and grit swirling and whispering in the wind of a gray and leaden sky. On the creaky old weathered buckboard, with the sound of the harnesses jangling, and the sound of the horses neighing, and the clop clop of their hooves, and their turning their heads now and again, asking for release from this chore, Keri's shoulders slumped. His heart ached. His heart was not brave. There was nothing noble about him. He was a scaredy cat. No tribe would want him with them for even a minute. He would shame them. Yes, the thought Keri would not think, but that underlay all his thoughts--this time he admitted it full unalloyed entrance--what had been Lance's fate. Keri must go to the house of his one friend in the world. Keri must sneak in on midnight moccasins when the moon was cloud hidden. Keri must rescue the boy. But he could not. He felt cold chills at the thought of it. Not that he was too afraid of Lance' s father but that he knew what he would find in that shack, or buried behind it in a rude newly dug grave without even a marker to denote its occupancy. Death on the prairie was as raw and rude and ugly and quick and then gone in sullen canopy, as was life. Every second could be your last. And you might as well not have existed at all. The spaciousness of it all just gulped you up and you were not remembered from that second onward. So Keri kept his own gutless eyes on the horses, and on the trail and on the day that jostled by him and he found himself weeping, but made himself stop, because the weeping was for himself. And he was humiliated enough, without that also. There were Indian rites to be performed to usher a loved one into the happy hunting ground. And Keri had no idea what those rites were. So he could not help Lance, not even there. After he had delivered the goods to his house, he had run to the forest, really just a copse of woods, but still a forest to his own eyes, for it was a place he had always needed to hide in, to cover from the world in, and he needed it especially now. He had removed his phony white man clothes, dropped them eagerly, and now he ran, covered only with breechcloth, and his body was running from Lance; and the barn, where they had hidden and opened themselves to each other. It was now in front of him, even though Keri had not intended ever going that way again. He stopped. He bent over. His hands on his naked knees. The body shaking. His breath expelling and inhaling hard and deep. A climax of pain running all through him. He had not run this long for some time. He felt his muscles quivering. He stood upright and again looked at the barn, not wanting to, great father, not wanting to; there it was, though-- -- slanting, shuddering, a whistle bone of man's handiwork, the wind having its way with the wavering structure of it, the fateful barn so tiny and inconsequential and silly looking, and almost losing all its structural meaning for a moment in Keri's mind; the little nothing hovel still stupidly thinking it could hold the whole of the world up there all by itself, pride and folly of man; never knowing itself a joke against the vast panorama of endless gray sky that did not deign even notice it; and Keri felt his penis lengthening, hardening now, as he stood, quietly, bravely, watching it, and the thick black clouds passing over it. This marvel of mechanical engineering of the human boy body. He took off his pouch. His penis thrummed and stuck straight up, tight against his belly. In spite of himself, this erection happened, and it felt so marvelously good, for perhaps a multitude of reasons even he could not sort out; mostly it was just feeling snagged with the huge power of the world around and above and beneath him. Being a part of. Being alive. And aware of so much, from distant star to close up grain of sand, and thus knowing everything is important, if it came within his realm, and he said it so. Being alive when Lance was being dead. Horrible but admit it, there. Now, it seemed, everything then, to him, was of worth. Worthy of disdain was also being of worth. How much more this new revelation made of him than he had ever before considered, and how, once, he had thought he knew everything there was to know. What next would the earth and sky and the ghost of Lance teach him? Keri, poor student, willing to learn, at long last. No more Mister Know It All. . And then Keri looked up to the gray ceiling of sky and then down to the opening of the hayloft and in the shadows, in the cold, in the rushing forth of a high plains wintry afternoon of Saturday, a day that was always different from any other day of the week, stood a boy of long and tall and pale to the bone no matter how often he worked outside in the man killing summer sun, with his father-- --there stood Lance, quite naked, totally unashamed, hard dicked, stroking it, it's single eye and Lance's own friendly eyes looking right at Keri; Lance, standing with his long toes hanging off the edge of the board, as though he were about to take a dive into a lake, and he waved and stroked his hard on, and Keri waved back at him, and stroked his own hard on, and then Lance put hands round his mouth and shouted something or other. Keri with his acute hearing could not quite make it out, the wind surging and getting heavier, taking the voice away. And Keri ran hard and firm on callused soles of feet, to the barn, where, inside, it was night already, the smell of memory of hay and horses and the clutch of time passing for good; and a splinter stuck in Keri's left foot bottom; he stopping to pull it easily out, then he climbed to the ladder, and he was overwhelmed by the welcoming of Lance's outstretched arms as he embraced Keri and held him. And Keri joined him. Keri felt the pale cold but not so out of tune body against him. Lance felt the hot supple warm drink of boy body against him, and they kissed hello again. Keri could stand straight and sturdy in the little hayloft. Lance had to hold his head down a bit, to keep from hitting the ceiling. But it was okay to bend, now and again. It can be done for friendship as well, and that is only a good thing. If an eye looked, then it looked. If it enjoyed this, then so be it. Keri would tell Lance today, before they left for their homes. They would piece it all together. The would warily fight at each other's sides. As though they had snorting ponies underneath them, and the fort was veritably unmanned. Regardless of what all that was to be, they would survive. And with this, and more to follow, the sailors were home from the sea, making everything come right, as it should always be. And if the eye was evil--well--Keri concluded, as he lay with his friend and they reached for each other's manhood--evil eyes can just take eat their own selves to death, at least, for now. There must be time for love. Before the hunt and the struggles start one more time. And winter closes in.