Page 106 of Bobby Green
“Bobby and I used to pet these guys all the time, after we baled hay for my daddy.” The guy—dressed like Bobby dressed, in a denim jacket over a hooded sweatshirt, with work gloves and a baseball hat—reached out and casually patted the animal Reg had been feeding.
His motions with the horse were so gentle, for a moment Reg didn’t put two and two together.
“Wait,” Reg said, unable to keep the information to himself. “That would make you Keith Gilmore, right?”
Keith stopped patting the horse. “What has he told you about me?”
Reg swallowed and glared at him. “He told me everything,” he said angrily. “He won’t do that for you no more.”
Keith took a step back; then his handsome, full-lipped face contorted, and he reversed that. “And who’s gonna stop him? You? You think you’re enough to keep him from doing that? I gotta tell you, your boy craves cock, right? He’ll ditch you in a fast minute to take me down his throat—he just forgot how good it was—”
Reg laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh—it sounded like V’s laugh when she was angry and off her medication. “That wasn’t good. You think what he gave you was good? I can tell you right now, if he didn’t want to, it was the worst blowjob in history. You’re just too dumb to know it.”
“I’m dumb?” Keith gaped at Reg like nobody had ever said this to him before. Well, lucky Keith Gilmore—Reg was going to hear it for the rest of his life.
“You can’t make someone love you,” Reg cried out. “You certainly can’t do it by shoving your dick down their thro—”
He ducked the first punch because his body was a well-oiled machine. He dodged the curious horse and walked right into the next punch because he wasn’t used to horses and had never been in a fistfight in his life.
The third punch hit him square in the face, and his knees buckled. He went down onto the frosty ground, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms over his head and hoping it would be over soon.
Keith got a kick in to his ribs, and one to his back, and that was when Reg heard Bobby roar.
“Get your damned hands off of him!”
The flurry of kicks stopped, and Reg pushed up to his hands and his knees in time to see Bobby level a haymaker at Keith Gilmore that had him crumpling to the ground—or would have, if Bobby had let him. He grabbed Keith by the lapels with both hands, threw him back against the fence post, and slugged him hard and fast, in the jaw, in the stomach, in the side of the face. Keith tried to block, but Reg had been watching over the past months as Bobby went from stringy country kid to well-built human powerhouse, andthatwas the Bobby who was working his friend over.
Reg had to stop him.
“Bobby!” he screamed, grabbing hold of his left hand and hoping he weighed enough to slow Bobby down. “Bobby—stop it! Stop it! You’re gonna fucking kill him!”
“He touched you!” Bobby screamed, face contorted with rage. “He fucking touched you! It’s bad enough, what he done to me, but hetouched you!”
“I’m fine!” Reg shouted back. He hurt. His face hurt, his stomach, and his back where he’d been kicked, but Bobby hurt inside, and this wasn’t going to make it any better. “I’m fine! He’ll leave us the fuck alone now!”
“He touched you,” Bobby half sobbed. He reached out to touch Reg’s cheek, and his thumb came back with Reg’s blood, mingling with Keith Gilmore’s. “He hurt you.”
“You fucking faggots!” Keith mumbled, sagging against the fence. “I’m gonna tell my dad you’re a faggot, Bobby, and he’s gonna evict your mama, and you’re gonna be fucked.”
Bobby turned to him, such cold fury on his face that Reg was afraid for a minute. But Bobby didn’t hit him again—didn’t touch him, not even when he stumbled to the ground.
“My mom knows who I am,” Bobby said through his teeth. “I’m not afraid of what you can tell her. She knows. She knows about me, she knows about you—and the only way she says something to another living soul is if you raise a finger to anyone I fucking love. You think about that, Keith. You tell your daddy to evict her, and it’s out. You, me, the goddamned barn, your filthy uncle and his rancid cock cheese—I’m tellingeverybody, including Carla. You want to live in this town, fine. But unless you leave my mother the hell alone, you’re going to wish you were dead here, just like I did.”
Keith spat blood onto the ground next to him and let out a sound suspiciously like a sob. “You… you’re just gonna… gonna go? I didn’t mean anything to you at all?”
Bobby shook his head and wiped his eyes with his bloody fist. “Yeah. Sure. When we first started, I thought you were great. But you took away my choice, man. And all that great turned to horseshit, and you didn’t see it.”
Keith let out a broken sob. “You think I got any choice?” he asked. “You think my daddy wouldn’t fuckin’ kill me if he knew what we did?”
Bobby shook his head, and Reg wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “C’mon, Bobby,” he said gently. He hurt. Bobby’s knuckles were bleeding. They needed Bobby’s mom. They just did. In ways Reg couldn’t even fathom, they needed that nice woman who served them weird pizza.
“Get out of here, Keith,” Bobby called over his shoulder. “This place turned what we had to shit. It’ll keep eating another piece of you, and more, and more, until there’s nothing left.”
Reg urged him a couple more steps then. And a couple more. And some more. And by the time they were halfway across the meadow, Reg looked back and saw Keith had pulled himself up. He was standing, arms around that sweet brown-and-white horse’s neck, sobbing.
“He gonna be okay?” Reg asked between sobs, forgetting for a minute that this was the guy who had just kicked at him as he huddled on the ground.
“No,” Bobby said bluntly. “He hasn’t been okay for maybe his whole life.” He looked back and then shook his head, wrapping his arm tighter around Reg’s shoulders until Reg winced. “Areyougoing to be okay?” he asked.
