Page 3 of Flesh and Bone

Marshall was quiet for a minute, keeping his head down as he focussed on his ministrations. They both knew exactly what Everett meant. “Do we need to?”

“Don’t see a better time for it.” Everett kept his eyes shut. Keeping them open was disorienting, what with those catfish, and he couldn’t raise the subject open-eyed anyhow.

“We ain’t talked about it these four weeks, and you want to unearth that shit now?”

“Drunk enough that I’ll barely remember, come morning. If I even make it through the night.” Drunk enough that he wanted to talk about it. Drunk enough that his self-loathing over thewhole thing wanted a voice, and he was far enough gone to think it was a good idea to give it one.

“You’ll make it through fine. I just don’t see what there is to talk about.”

“You don’t think having this thing on our tails changes anything?”

“You think we got the devil after us because of what we did?” Marshall shook his head and kept cleaning the wound. His hands were shaking; Everett could feel that much. They hadn’t been shaking when he’d been working them down the front of Everett’s jeans. “This thing’s flesh and bone, same as any other animal. This one’s just sick or something. It’s got a fever in its blood hot enough to boil its brain and drive it crazy, that’s all.”

Everett swallowed. It tasted grimy, like copper and iron. He brought the flask to his mouth again, hoping to taste Marshall’s lips on it. He didn’t. “Whatever it’s got, you think it’s catching?”

“You’re already crazy.”

“Marshall.”

“What do you want me to say?” Marshall snapped, pausing his work to glare at him. “I’ve been taking my cues from you ever since that night. When to get close to you, where to touch you, for how long. Where to bunk down, where to look. I didn’t make the first move, so I ain’t apologizing for shit. You said it wouldn’t happen again and it hasn’t, so what’s there to talk about that we ain’t already covered?”

“I just want to clear the air.”

“Air’s already clear,” Marshall returned churlishly. “And quit acting like you’re on your goddamn deathbed. I ain’t a priest and I ain’t taking your last confession.”

He worked in silence for another minute, winding the bandages tight. Everett watched the crown of his head, the bunch of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, to avoid looking at Marshall’s hands or the blood on them. Looking was what had set them on this path in the first place, but the damage was already done.

Something hungry in Everett, unfamiliar in its recklessness, wanted to make it worse.

“I like it,” Everett confessed around the mouth of Marshall’s flask. “The attention. Knowing you want me like that.”

Marshall’s breath gusted out, the rhythm of his hands stuttering. “Jesus Christ, Everett.”

Everett’s drunken tongue wouldn’t quiet. “Don’t know what that makes me. Selfish, I guess. I just want you to know that I always liked you looking. Wanting. All of it.”

“Looking and wanting ain’t doing.”

Everett knew that, but the drink blurred the lines between the three. He looked, and he wanted, and he might have done again. But his body was something else now, an empty, mangled thing that didn’t listen to what he told it. Then again, it had always been a traitor. Always wanting things it wasn’t meant to have.

“Look,” he managed, “I’m not proud of stringing you along like I did.”

“I know you’re not proud,” Marshall retorted. “Fuck, you got enough shame in you it must feel like dragging around a dead horse.”

The drink urged Everett forward, begging him to reach out, touch, hold, his inhibition shaved down to shivering bare bones. The blood loss kept him seated. Guilt made him heavy.

???

“Don’t say anything,”Everett implored.

He couldn’t look Marshall in the eye. He’d got the impression over the years that Marshall was bent that way, even though the man was careful. He might hit Everett for asking, but Everett didn’t figure that was too likely, and even if he did, that would be the end of it. They’d still be friends. But more likely, Everett thought, Marshall would take him up on his offer.

Everett wanted so badly to know what it was like, not just with Marshall but with any man, and he was finally drunk enough and it was dark enough for him to admit it. They had no light that night but the moon; even so, Everett waited until a cloud passed in front of it before making his move. Unsteadily dropping to his knees in front of Marshall where he sat on his rock, one hand on Marshall’s thigh, as clear as anybody could get about his intention.

“Just say yes or no.”

“Yeah?” Marshall said carefully. Hopefully.

But when Marshall reached for Everett’s face, one rough hand cupping his jaw to draw him up, Everett jerked back. Turned his head, resolute. Drunk heart hammering, on the verge of panic.

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