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What You Ought, What You Need
1984
Football practice was long over, but Jim still sat in the shelter of the bleachers, watching the sky turn red as the day rolled on to sunset. Maybe, he thought, staring up at the sky and the moving clouds, if he just sat still enough he might feel the earth rolling, revolving around its way.
Bullshit, Jimmy. Always full of bullshit. That was his step-father's voice, still viciously resonant inside his head, even though his mom had kicked that bastard out years ago, all the hope in their wedding picture washed away in booze and disappointment. God, she knew how to pick them. First that tightwad dickwad that was his father, and then Al Pawlak, good old Al. Jim shut his eyes and leaned his head back, the pole hard against his skull, and listened to the sound of footsteps on the grass.
"Hey."
Jim smiled. "Hey."
There was a tiny tremor in the ground underneath his ass, the bloodwarmth of someone's body, a shoulder leaning companionably against his.
"The mighty quarterback rests from his labours, huh?"
"Shut up, Sandburg." Jim opened his eyes and there he was. Skinny, dorky Blair, with his wild hair and his smart-ass mouth, and his girlie name which made it imperative that Jim call him Sandburg, whether he liked it or not. Blair never complained, so Jim assumed that it was no problem. If Blair had a problem, or a suggestion, or an idea, you knew about it.
Suggestions, now. "Got the corsage picked out? It had better be impressive, man. If you want to get some of that Homecoming poontang you have to supply the goods."
"You're a crude little shit," Jim declared, with no heat at all.
"I'm living vicariously. It's not like I'm ever going to bag a Homecoming queen."
"It's not hunting season."
"And that, my friend, is where you're wrong." Blair made some ridiculous hand gesture, which Jim ignored.
"You don't ever stop thinking about sex, do you?"
"It's a completely normal stage of development. I have to be inside the curve for something." Blair stretched out his legs. There were grass stains on the faded jeans he wore, stains that Jim was pretty sure hadn't been there when school ended that afternoon. He turned his head and checked Blair more thoroughly, taking in the flushed cheeks, and the way that Blair's hand was wrapped around the tatty strap of his backpack, like he was worried that someone was going to take it away.
"I thought I told you to tell me if Paulie was hassling you again."
"Paulie didn't do anything."
"Sandburg...." It was as threatening as he could make it. He'd scared off guys bigger than himself, before. Score one lesson that step-daddy taught him, although it never did work with Blair.
"I wanted to run, and I slipped. That's all."
Jim turned properly, and glared at Blair. "So, why did you want to run? There's a track over there." He waved a hand.
"Working off nervous energy. Have to do it somehow since I'm never going to get any."
"You're not even sixteen yet."
"The senior can do math. Bless the education system of the good ol' US of A." Blair swallowed, the adam's apple dipping and rising in his scrawny throat. His voice had broken not so long ago, just like a tree branch snapping, and Jim wasn't quite used to it yet.
"What is it with you? I'd have thought you'd be happy. I..." Jim paused.
"Used the super-hearing again? I can't blame you. I would, too."
"You got a scholarship. They were practically wetting their pants in the teacher's lounge because you make this place look good."
"Well, it's good to know that something can make this place look good, because I'm going to be looking at it for a while."
Jim couldn't quite take that in, and sat in stunned silence before he exclaimed, "You have to be kidding me."
"Nope."
"But why?"
"Alice has cancer."
There was nothing to say to that, and so there was a silence for a while, broken only by some bird settling for the night.
Jim spoke first. "So why do you have to stay?" It came out aggressive, angry. Blair's problem was that he never got angry when he should.
"Because Gray has to work. It's going to be bad enough as it is. If he doesn't work, then there'll be no fucking money at all, and how will they pay for chemo and morphine? Someone has to look after her, and drive her to the doctor." It came out steady in Blair's new voice, a man's sentiments coming out of this skinny kid, and Jim's anger turned scorching.
"That doesn't have to be you! What about that church that Alice and Gray go to? Huh? I bet that someone there could drive Alice to the doctor's." He took a deep, indignant breath. "It's not like..." He strangled the sentence, but too late.
Sandburg stood up, but before he walked away he said, "It's not what, Jim? It's not like Alice is my mother? Yeah, well, thank god for that, that's all I can say to that."
Jim scrambled to his own feet, and grabbed a hand around Sandburg's arm, felt the warmth under the coarse press of the jacket weave against his palm. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. But what about Naomi? She must have money. Couldn't she help out?" He'd met Naomi once. She'd floated into the room like a princess out of a fairy story, with her gauzy clothes and sweet scent, and she'd embraced him and looked him up and down and cooed that he was going to be a handsome man. He'd been gratified and mortified in about equal measure. Blair had been one mass of mortification, especially when his mother told him that he looked 'so beautiful, sweetheart'.
"We'd have to find her first. You know what Naomi's like."
"Alice and Gray – they can't want you to turn this down, no matter how sick Alice is."
Sandburg shrugged. "What are they going to do? Drag me to college by my hair? I don't think so."
"You're being stupid!" It was a whine, like he was the kid, and not gasping for the man's future that was coming after school. How could he be a soldier if he whined like a little kid?
"Then I'll be stupid." Blair's voice didn't sound so grown-up all of a sudden, and Jim couldn't bear it. He pulled Blair in for a hug reinforced by an athlete's muscles, and held him hard. There was a hurt, salt scent in the air that made his throat sore.
"Fuck but you're stupid."
Blair dragged himself out of the hold and wiped his hand across his eyes, across his nose.
"Takes one to know one, army grunt." But he smiled, even though it was uncertain, and checked his watch. "God, Alice will kill me." He took off at a run, but he yelled over his shoulder as he went, "Remember, Jim. A really great corsage, or she won't put out."
Jim flipped his finger at the departing figure, but Blair didn't see it. Somehow, the idea of getting into Stacey Wilson's pants just didn't have the same appeal any more. Leaving Blair behind was bearable because he'd thought that Blair was going, too. They were both going to leave this little shit town behind them and go on to greater things. That was meant to be the plan. Plans didn't always work out, but it wasn't right. It wasn't.
1989
He had a headache. What else was new, Jim thought bitterly, watching old familiar landmarks come into sight. The old cheese factory. They'd painted the memorial bridge recently – it was a blinding white as the bus slowed down just a little to safely cross. Here we are, he thought, the main street of Shitville, USA, as the bus jerked to a stop, and the driver got out to unload the bags from the back.
Jim stood to get out and then halted in mid-movement. That was Blair out there, which was all he needed; Blair there to watch him creep back like the loser that he was. His steps dragged but he still had to get off the damn bus.
"Hey," Blair said, his face bright, and pleased, and what the hell did he have to be pleased about? "Welcome home."
"Complete with welcoming committee. Joy." Jim snagged his bags, and hauled the duffle over his shoulder. "What are you doing here?"
Sandburg was persisting in being cheerful, although Jim could see the wariness underneath it. "Like you said, man. Welcoming committee."
"How the hell did you know which bus I was on?"
"Grace told me you were coming back. There's only so many buses. I guessed; since you didn't bother to write me with the details, or your mom or anyone else."
"I'm a big boy. I can make it home on my own."
"What about your leg?"
"The leg's fine."
"Put your gear in the back of the truck." It was a battered old pickup, but roomy.
"How old is that piece of shit?"
"Same age as me. 1969. It was a good year."
"If you say so."
"Just get in the fucking truck, Jim."
"Pissy, aren't you."
Blair rolled his eyes, and slammed the door on his side of the truck with a strength that confirmed the 'pissy' description. Jim stared straight ahead, unreasonably irritated by the tiny dreamcatcher that hung from the mirror
"Ungrateful bastard," Blair muttered, as the truck pulled away.
"Yeah, well excuse me if I'm not delighted to be back here."
Blair hauled the truck around the right hand corner, not the left, past the last of the houses and heading for the level crossing with the weeds growing up through cracks in the asphalt. "My mom's house is thataway, Sandburg," Jim said, jerking his thumb in the right direction.
"I know, but if I take you back there you'll poison her in this mood. We'll go up to the lookout and I'll open up the cab to the breezes and we'll wait for you to turn into a human being again."
"Christ," was all Jim could say. But he leaned back, and shifted his left leg up as far as it could go.
"So it does hurt."
"It has a plate in it. It gets tender, but that doesn't mean that it won't get better. Or that I couldn't have walked."
The truck had some grunt to it, despite Jim's snarking at its age. Twenty minutes saw them pulled in at the top of the Thomas Garner Lookout and Picnic Area. Jim got out and left the door open. "There. You can purify your sacred space now."
"Delighted," Blair shot back, but he followed Jim to the edge of the lookout, with its view over the woods and the town.
"What do you see, Superman?"
"You can cut that bullshit out, too."
"What do you see?" It came out equal amounts wistful and demanding. Blair always had been impressed by what Jim could do. It didn't impress Jim so much. It certainly hadn't impressed William Ellison; Jim had overheard too many conversations that he shouldn't have been able to when he was a kid, before his mother got out from under and took the defective son with her.
"I see the same hick town I always saw." I can see my house from here. Mordant humour. "What did you expect?"
"Why come back then?"
"Had to go somewhere." And his mother wasn't getting any younger, or any more sensible about her men. (And Blair is still here, a very quiet voice whispered, from a place usually ignored.) "Had to go somewhere."
"What went wrong, Jim?"
"I have a plate in my leg." Jim shrugged.
"But you could have transferred to something non-combat. That would have been possible, wouldn't it?"
Jim stared out over the view. The old Henderson place had been painted a horrible blue. The Country Bar and Steakhouse had a new sign. And the old, familiar noises rose like vapour into the air; people, animals, machinery, the swirl of the wind and the leaves.
"Maybe. But I had a seizure in the hospital. Weird reactions to some drugs. I got pretty sick, even without the damn leg." And they assessed him and he got given his marching orders. Too much of a liability. Too likely to react badly to the vaccinations and drugs he'd need for overseas service. Too much attitude as he saw what he'd wanted slipping away from him.
"I'm sorry."
Jim turned to look at Blair then. He'd seen one picture since he went away, Blair standing in front of the semi he was driving for a living, and he'd still been one scrawny looking kid. He'd filled out since then; the shoulders had broadened, and he walked like a man sure of his own strength. He'd grown sideburns, Jim saw. They didn't look so bad on him.
"Yeah, I know. But shit happens. Karma. All that stuff."
"All that stuff...." Blair shook his head. "Philosophical to the last."
"You're the professor."
"Nah. Roads scholar." It was an old joke now. There had been books scattered in the cab of the pickup, Jim realised. He hadn't paid any attention before, but now he found himself curious as to titles, subjects, what was taking Blair's attention these days.
Jim took a deep breath. It smelled good up here. The smell of good earth, the trees, his friend standing patiently beside him.
"I think I'm human again."
Blair grinned. "Good to know. Come on, man. Your mom promised us a home-cooked meal."
"I knew this wasn't altruism," Jim said, in tones of deep but mock offense. He took a half-hearted swipe at the back of Blair's head, which Blair ducked easily. "I don't think so," Jim said, and lunged, and grabbed, and noogied Blair's scalp like they were both still teenagers.
"Fucker!" Blair yelped, squirming, but not too hard.
"Gotta take your medicine if you're going to mooch off my mom, Junior."
Blair escaped, strands of his hair loose over his face where it had dragged free from its tail.
"I'm going to mooch to a purpose. Peach pie, Jim. She told me peach pie."
"Better get going, then."
So Blair drove them back down the hill, and Jim tried to think about peach pie, and that he'd be able to see Blair all the time again. Nothing else. Nothing else at all.
1992
It was, Jim guessed, kind of ironic that Gray had died rather than Alice, way back when Jim still thought he was going to be the big career soldier. Blair had sent him a letter, and Jim had sent some awkward words back, and wished that he could be there. He didn't know what he could have done, but still. Being there was what would have counted.
He knew that then, and he knew that now, while JJ's tiny coffin disappeared behind the curtain. Jim hardly heard it – he'd made himself deaf, almost truly deaf, because he'd been scared shitless of what he might hear when the coffin was out of sight, out of mind. Not for him, not unless he shut down hard, which he did, his arm around Carolyn's shoulder while she sobbed helplessly, and her mother stood by, silent, but trembling, and Carolyn's father stood still as a stone except for sporadic efforts to wipe his face with a very white handkerchief.
Grace wasn't there. She'd found some guy to take her away from all of this, and Jim wished her luck. But Blair was there, standing away from the family group, a respectful friend. More respectful than Carolyn's sister, who Jim had heard muttering about that goddam hippie, and that might have turned unseemly, except for a look from Carolyn, pleading and miserable. Jim had locked up the words in his chest, instead, along with everything else, and now he looked down at Carolyn's pretty red-brown hair, and didn't think about how his little boy was so still and on his way to being dust and ashes.
They went back to Carolyn's parents' house, and they ate, and some of the men drank too much beer, and Jim tried to be attentive to the people offering their condolences, but it was too hard. Everything kept slipping away from him, and it was Blair who took off his shoes and his good jacket and laid a comforter over him in the bedroom. Blair took away the empty crib too, after a whispered downstairs conference with Carolyn's mother that Jim heard every syllable of. Valerie wasn't so bad. Jim had knocked up her little girl, but he'd married her too, that was what you did, wasn't it? Took the consequences of your actions.
He slept it off, like it was a drunk instead of grief, and woke early the next morning. Carolyn was there, his wife, her face smoothly young against the pattern of the pillowcase. Just a baby, like JJ. What did anybody know? Jim got out of bed as carefully as he could, not wanting to wake her, not wanting to talk to her either, and pulled on some clothes and slipped out of the house. There were a few other early risers about, men and women on their way to work, and here was Jim playing hooky.
Alice's house was on a corner, facing the streets four square. The house was quiet, but Jim could hear the sound of movement in the big shed that served as a garage, and stuck his head around the door into a bare-bulb lit light quite different from the dawn outside.
"You're up early."
"Never went to bed. You know me, sometimes I just want to keep on going." The shadows on Blair's face suggested that he wouldn't keep going much longer. He looked drawn and pale, except for his hands which were dirty with grease.
"She looks good." The bike stood gleaming under the light.
"Yeah." Blair dipped his hands in the chemical cleaner and then turned on the faucet over the steel tub in the corner. His hands clean, more or less, he wiped them on a towel. "How are you going?"
"About as good as you'd expect."
Blair stepped up and enveloped Jim. It felt just like that, even though Blair was shorter, a blanket cutting the chill memory of yesterday and all the other days, especially the one when Carolyn found JJ small and cold and silent in his crib.
"Hell, Jim."
Jim didn't say anything, just stood there inside Blair's arms.
"I am so sorry," Blair said.
"It's not like it was your fault, Sandburg." Jim eased out from Blair's hug, suddenly too aware of how it would look to anyone else walking in the door. It would only be Alice, but he didn't want Alice to see. She had a speculative look on her face sometimes when Jim visited, and it bugged the shit out of him . He didn't want to know whatever it was that Alice thought she had figured out.
"It's freakishly tidy in here," Jim said instead of anything else.
"Yeah, it is. I've been cleaning it out. Alice is going to live with her sister. You met Janis, that time they visited."
Jim felt the cold go right through him. "What about the truck? The business?"
"Alice is going to sell that, get herself a nest egg."
"What about you?"
"Well, I guess that I'm going to be made redundant." He was smiling, damn him.
"Not much of a reward given what you gave up for her."
Blair cocked an eyebrow. "Who owed who here, Jim? I got paid good wages before Gray died, and after. Rewards don't come into it."
"And you're going to leave this burg at last. Congratulations," Jim said, and swung on his heel and out into the early morning air, where he still couldn't get enough breath in his lungs.
"Jim! Hey! Wait up!" Blair ran up behind him "What is your problem?" Then he flinched, remembering some of Jim's problem, at least. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But, man...over-reaction much. Yeah, I'll be moving on, but not this minute."
"You're still going. Good for you. Go for the brass ring." Jim was walking fast, and Blair had to walk faster to keep up with him.
"Come back and have some coffee, Jim."
"I can have coffee at home, Sandburg."
"You could, but you don't want to be there. Bad memories, bad vibes, bad everything." Blair looked up at him; encouraging. Hopeful. Hopeful for what? But Jim followed him into Alice's kitchen instead. There were gaps on the counters, a box in the corner, an air of vague disorder through it all, but the coffee smelled good. Alice was upstairs, showering. Jim's freaky hearing heard it all, before he concentrated on the bubble of the coffee and the thunder of it pouring into the cups. Maybe he didn't want to know what Alice thought when she saw him watching Blair like this because he already knew. Fag. Homo. The turn of Blair's wrist as he poured out the milk and put the mugs on the table, the way that a strand of hair lay loose over his ear...
"Jim? You're spacing out there."
"Sorry."
"It's okay. Hard week." Blair gestured. "Drink up."
"Where will you go?"
"No more roads scholar, I'm going to be the real thing. I'm going to college."
"Congratulations." Jim tried to make it genuine, ashamed of his anger in the garage, ashamed of what it said about him.
"Yeah. Rainier has scholarships, and I haven't missed so much really. If I'd started when I was sixteen I would have been a fish out of water, socially for sure." Blair smiled. "You remember what an annoying little jerk I was when I was a kid?"
"You're still a kid." Which was a lie, because Blair was one of the most grown-up people Jim knew. Time to live up to the example that Blair had set him. "Hey. Seriously. I'm glad for you, you know?"
"Yeah, I know." Blair gulped down his coffee, like it was a shot at a bar. "Come with me?"'
"What?"
"You heard me."
"How the hell can I come with you, Sandburg? I'm married. You remember Carolyn? I'm a – " Jim stopped short. He wasn't a father, hadn't been a father for six agonising days, had he?
"Jim." Blair was looking at his hands, which were twisted together around the coffee cup. "I'm not saying that Carolyn's not a really nice person. Because she is. But the only reason you married her was because of JJ, to give him a dad. And that was a really good thing that you did. But JJ's gone. And I know that you don't love Carolyn, not like that."
Jim sat up straight, and he stared at Blair like he'd never seen him before. "You know, Sandburg, there are people who might question your timing here."
"Yeah, I'm taking advantage of you, if that's what you mean. I don't want to watch you doing what you think you ought to rather than what you need to do."
"And you didn't do what you thought you ought to do?" Jim snarled, his hand waving to encompass Alice and Alice's house and the chance given up eight years ago.
Blair shook his head, perfectly calm – on the surface at least. "I did what I needed to do. What I needed to do, not what I thought I ought to do. And what I need to do now is ask you, Jim. So I'm asking. Come with me."
"I can't do that, Sandburg." Jim stood. "I can't do that."
"Maybe you could, if you just think about it. I can do that. I can let you think about it."
Jim shook his head. Blair was crazy, that was all there was to it.
Blair was standing in front of him, somehow. "Come on, I'll give you a ride home. On the bike. I'm selling it anyway. Might as well enjoy it while I can."
Jim felt his jaw drop. Why for that than for any other of the morning's shocks, he couldn't have said. "Why are you selling it? It'd make you the cool guy on campus, a beautiful ride like that."
"I'll need the money. And the insurance would be a killer. Besides, I won't need it. I'll have another dream instead." Blair had that determined look on his face; martyr's holy fire.
"I can walk home."
"I'll give you a ride, man."
"You're a shit. And not very subtle."
"How long have you known me, now?" Blair looked almost cheerful. "No surprises there. Come on."
It was a mistake, Jim knew it, but he got on the back of the bike, and folded his arms around Blair's strong, solid body and Blair sedately drove him back to his grieving house.
"Like I said. It's okay to think about it, and decide what you need to do." Blair looked at him, blue eyes lit with more than the slanting morning sun. "I want you to be happy, Jim. Always did."
"And you think that you can do that. Make me happy?" It was a taunt, but Blair didn't back down from the venom.
"Yeah, I think I can. When you know what you think, you tell me."
Jim turned his back and walked up the path. They were all awake now, and wondering where the hell he was. He opened the door, and uneasily stepped inside.
He could still hear the purr of the bike.