The Bond

Chapter 6: Adam Departing

Chapter 6: Adam DepartingOctober first—no, September thirtieth, before midnight—the wheel of the year turned.

Literally.

The ground shook.

People talked about it over coffee at breakfast.

“Feel that?”

“Just the train.”

“What train?”

They discussed it after work, drinking cheap beer.

“We’re due for a quake…”

“Yeah, but this ain’t California.”

News mentioned an unexplained tremor, then after a couple days, dropped it.

Tremors are tremors and people forget tremors. They remember earthquakes.

The tremor left me nervous, irritatingly cautious, and protective of the joy I’d experienced over the summer. Adam grew even more morose except when Antonia was in the room, but even then, his mood seemed subdued.

I spent the days staring at the farm’s almanacs, living diaries spreading over generations. I searched plans, plotting what worked, what didn’t work, soil tests and maps, seeking comfort in the diagrams and drawings, doodles, hopes and realities covering dirt-stained page after page, until my eyes blurred.

Getting the land ready for winter slumber was exhausting, and every year I traditionally turned to the almanac for ideas. What worked last winter or the winter my great-grandparents dealt with early frost—a rogue recipe for winter squash soup might lead to an idea for a cooking class taught inside one of the barns. Winter was a tricky time on the farm. Corporate and residential plowing contracts were lucrative, but inconsistent. Once Christmas trees, wreaths and poinsettias were done, the lean months took hold. That’s when resourcefulness became as important as the plow. My kid needed to eat.

The winter pop up dinners featuring local chefs Clara had coordinated were a huge success, with foodies and impressive people labeled influencers, but I lacked her social skills and being an introvert, social gatherings were a b***h to coordinate, despite how good I’d become at faking sociability. The farm remained just below the radar, a thriving business but still a local industry. Newcomers believed they’d stumbled upon a hidden gem, while long-time customers smiled at the delight of those passing through to some other destination.

I closed the book after staring at a diagram of the fields, tracing a long-ago-erased pencil scratch. Year after year new lines and plans were erased and added until the old diagrams became so grubby it was changed to a clean sheet of paper. Memories of my grandfather standing where I was now, pencil between his teeth, another in his hand, scratching out plans, drawing rows, brow furrowed, assailed me.

“Sometimes it don’t talk,” he’d said.

“What?”

“The land. It keeps secrets.”

He’d sighed, closed the books and gone to the sink where he’d washed his hands with cheap white soap.

He smelled of that white soap and dirt until the day he died. My grandmother smelled of flowers, herbs and dirt.

Always. Dirt.

“When it does,” he’d said, splashing me with foamy water, “listen.”

“Listen,” I’d repeated.

“You a good listener?”

I’d nodded, wanting to be whatever he wanted me to be. Most importantly, I wanted him to be proud.

A chill brought me back from the past. It’d been cold all day. I trudged across the driveway and went inside.

Dinner proved surreal. Sitting between Adam’s silence and Antonia’s vivacious chatter, I focused on the immaterial sounds of the heater rumbling and the house settling. Nodding at my daughter, I ignored Adam’s dissonance until every sound echoed like screams caught in a cave.

I couldn’t discern Antonia’s voice from Adam dragging his fork across my grandparents’ china. A scream welled in my chest. I swallowed wine and chewed a huge piece of meat to stifle it. By the time dinner ended, my head ached. How it had happened, the unreal sense of not belonging at my own table, I couldn’t say. Adam had fallen out of love as easy as a cat falls from a tree. He’d landed on his feet and acted as though nothing had happened. The whole thing, from start to finish, might have been a hallucination.

Antonia, declining dessert, disappeared upstairs, though I guessed, she’d sneaked something sugary before bed. I cleared dishes and left Adam sitting, staring at the gristle stuck to his plate. What remained were the inedible remains of something tender and juicy.

We’d had juicy s*x, and occasional tender moments between f*****g. s*x between men is a physical dealing between greed and need. It’s on another level. The playing field is upside down, composed of top and bottom, hard and soft, then hard again. My c**k stiffened, but my head pounded. Between a sick headache, the need to get off and the meat gristle, the situation had disintegrated into something indigestible.

In my heart I knew we’d f**k one last time. It would be the last thing we’d do.

We had to. Then it would be over. A silent treaty signed by neither party, but agreed upon based on several past events.

We’d come, he’d leave and it would be over.

One last f**k you.

I turned the faucets until the water steamed and fog covered the window above the sink.

Adam deposited his plate on the counter and stood, staring at me. I sank my hands into the scalding water. The pain meant something, though I couldn’t tell what.

He stood there until I finished the dishes. I smelled the beer on his breath and motorcycle grease on his pants. He rocked on his heels so we almost touched.

Those soap bubbles must have been the most studied in history.

Facing the empty sink, bubbles gone, I found my voice.

“Stay.”

I’d spoken too late. He’d gone.

* * * *

Everyone has a secret spot. You lose one another in well-known corners or the third bathroom no one uses. You can’t find each other. The farmhouse, ramshackle and always needing something, proved a perfect place to be lost, angry and weary. I didn’t see Adam until he was asleep in bed for one last good night’s sleep.

Fuck him.

I got into bed and stared at the ceiling, watching shadows drift across the walls. I followed them into oblivion.

I always believed that if you die in a dream, you die in real life.

Real life. The place where things became real.

Before I woke, I died.

There’d been voices and sounds…confusion…chaos…

I opened my eyes, struggled and tried focusing. Icy darkness wrapped me in its shadowy coffin-like embrace. The walls rippled and the ceiling pitched.

Nope. Not dead.

I gasped, massaged my chest, swallowed and tried putting thoughts together. I’d seen past my death in the dream. Past my death was where the nightmare began.

Steady breaths and Adam’s contented snoring eased the panic welling in my gut. I got out of bed and padded across the hardwood floor to the window. Streaks of midnight clung to fading stars and the moon hid behind slate-colored clouds. I blew on the glass and traced a shape. Childish habits died hard in real life.

I snatched my flannel coat off a nearby chair, and let time, second by second, strip me of my dreams. My body craved warmth. The bed and Adam’s heat were seductive. Outside, the desolate morning beckoned. I wiped the foggy shape with my sleeve. Shadows crept across the yard beyond the glass, gray as the sky, sinister as a death dream. My heart hammered in my ears until I forced myself not to listen.

Peering through the fog-smeared glass, the forms dissolved into coyotes prowling the yard.

Beggar-gaunt and fox-sly, the animals, haggard with hunger, resembled shadow ghosts.

Adam snored, coughed and turned in bed. A car roared past the house. The coyotes flinched.

The coyotes—three, possibly four—merging and spreading like ink, stopped their plodding hunt and became a collective mass of paw, tooth and glittering eye. They stared at the window.

I raked my hand through my hair and watched them vanish between the trees leading back to the fields across the street.

Adam mumbled.

The window grew foggier from my warm breath.

Faint pink edged the sky. Dawn was coming. I’d be alone, again. The promise of work gave me solace—pumpkins to harvest, endless leaves to rake, decorate the place for Halloween, throw another load of laundry into the dryer. Of course, there would be inevitable questions from friends and acquaintances, possible at a farm-to-table dinner, over bowls of mashed rutabagas.

“How’s Adam?” they would ask.

“Gone.” I mouthed the word, trying it out, adjusting my tongue around its width. “He bailed, jumped ship. You know rats jump first.”

“Why?”

“I got sick of his f*****g snoring and blanket hogging. He’s gone, but hey, I found a recipe for squash pie. I’m thinking of selling pie at the farm.”

I’d tell lies. It wouldn’t matter. Adam would bury me in his heart until the memories died in the bottom of a bourbon bottle. He’d f**k me out of his system in any variety of ways.

Whatever.

I didn’t care what people thought. Heart weary and tired, I admitted the thing I’d tried hard to ignore.

It wasn’t him I would miss but the part of myself I’d given him. I’d never be that person again.

I would never again be the self I was with Adam.

I’d seen this movie before, acted out the part, and here I was again in the shitty sequel. Everyone knows sequels are never better than the original.

A loud grunt came from the bed.

His laugh and his grease-stained work shirts thrown on top of my dirt-encrusted pants…The sound his lips made slurping hot coffee—extra light, extra sugar…I guess I would miss him and hate him.

Then there was Antonia. My love for her would ease the heartache. Antonia loved autumn. She loved pumpkins and delighted in all the colorful, warty and bizarre-shaped heirloom varieties we planted. Her eyes sparkled when we hauled out Halloween decorations. I reveled in her joyous nature. We’d play in the fields. She’d gather pumpkins—ghost pumpkins were her favorite—and gourds. The long-necked swan gourds would fall prey to hot glue and googly eyes and she would beg me to dig out the ragged scarecrow made years ago. She’d snuggle in my arms for hot chocolate with tons of marshmallows.

I rested my forehead against the frosty window. I resisted the aching between my legs and the pounding in my chest. I remained at the window, scanning the small mass of silver maples leading to the pumpkin patch. Tricks of the light made figure-like shadows slink beneath the trees. My skin bristled and a feathery touch made tiny neck hairs stand on end. I jumped, swatted my neck, revealing nothing but goose flesh. Terrified curiosity led my gaze back to the window. The stark morning landscape stared back, unchanged, indifferent.

The old bed squeaked. Adam was awake.

Wanting him made me vulnerable, and humiliated by this I tried to maintain my masculine pride, an aloof lion’s dignity.

Let him go! the lion roared.

But big cats cannot be trusted, and the need was bigger than a lion’s pride.

I closed my eyes. A strange green light pulsed with the rhythm of my heart. Startled, I opened them. The green light diminished in the morning gloom.

Adam’s breath on my neck made me tremble. I’d missed his movements, the other big cat, not a lion, but panther, moved unheard. I betrayed the lion and groaned, admitting my pleasure. His rough, callused hands were like those of a farmer. We often compared battle scars. His nails had grease under them, mine dirt, no matter how much we washed. It was as if our livelihoods resided under our skin.

Now, the roughness of his hands aroused a mixture of resentment and lust. Hangnails come back, calluses harden and tenderness gives way to desperate need. He squeezed my n*****s between his rough fingers, then pressed his body to mine. The solid hardness of his c**k told me he wanted what I wanted. His tongue found the side of my neck. He grunted and ground into me. Our lust for one another was cruel and selfish.

I held his head there, his teeth biting, lips sucking. I kicked my shorts off, turned and shoved him onto the bed. The old bed whined beneath our weight. His breathing was short and tense. Adam was operating in the most basic sense. His rough hands covered my mouth as he slid his finger between my lips. His warmth and the dirty taste of oil sparked memories of our first meeting. He’d rebuilt the engine of my grandfather’s truck and f****d me, pants at his ankles and me bent over the tailgate.

Adam pried my jaw open and shoved his finger deeper.

“You want me?” he asked.

He always asked.

I wanted it over and over again. I don’t think either of us expected to fall in love—or out of love. But it had happened and now we were back where we’d started, in lust without love.

We had s*x. Rough and coarse, the intensity of our time together culminated into primal grunts, the clumsy handling of our most private parts and total disregard for feelings. His climax was the last thing I’d get from him.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

The strange green light roared forth, blurring my vision, making my head buzz.

I went to the window.

Outside, the coyotes had returned. They paced in circles, sniffing the ground. One by one they sat and lifted their glittering eyes and howled.

Adam’s voice grew louder.

“You hear me?”

“Stop,” I said, unsure if I meant Adam or the coyotes. “I hear you.”

“Good,” Adam said, his voice normal.

The green haze lifted and the coyotes wandered away.

I grabbed my jeans from the floor and put them on. Downstairs in the grim morning light I put on my coat, not bothering with a shirt—the shearling-lined jean jacket would suffice—and got into my boots. Never one to tie and re-tie shoes, I’d stretched the boots into submission so they could be slid on and off.

“f**k him,” I muttered and went outside.

It was cold. The part of me that I’d given Adam lay bare to the chill, and no amount of layering would buffer the icy blast. When something is given, there is a space, and left unfilled, it remains to harden against ever being taken again.

Making my way across the driveway toward the barns, I cinched my coat, shielding my body from the cold. Once inside, I didn’t bother with lights. Every detail and task were ingrained in my head like the grain in wood. The old cast-iron wood-burning stove, a relic of generations past, sat like a squat sleeping beast. Lit daily during the cold months, it maintained an element of warmth, and the makings of the fire were always nearby. Squeaking with age and protest of yet another day’s work, the latch opened and I appreciated the familiar sounds.

“Let’s go, old man,” I said, loading in kindling and a bunch of dried herbs. After a couple of goes with some matches, the fire took.

Soon the place was suffused with warmth. The firelight danced behind the grates and the air smelled of rosemary, sage and apple wood. Breathing in the heady scent made me feel better, but I was tired.

Thinking of Adam sleeping in my bed irritated me.

“f**k him.” I repeated, but it was no healing mantra.

Soon he’d be gone. I didn’t need to see him leave.

I grabbed a piece of wood I’d been whittling—a skill I’d learned from my grandfather—and the knife I’d left beside it and sat before the fire on a much-loved bench. My woodcarvings sold well and for a decent price. The wood was warm, the knife familiar. It worked on its own accord.

I dozed, and dreamed.

Smell…Animal and fetid, a stench of rot, a wound left untreated, infection and dried blood.

Touch…Fur and teeth, matted, sharp and bumpy skin of something, oozing and scabbed flesh beneath the fur and rapid, wild heartbeat pounding like a savage drum. There were many heartbeats.

Hearing…Lips smacking, teeth—not human—clicking, gnashing over and over until it formed a language. Howls, guttural groans and hungry effusions emitted from steamy maws. The harder I tried not to hear, the more cognizant I became of every f*****g sound, the savage clicking and crunching…then the human screams.

Sight…In the silent darkness, a figure loomed behind the mess, half-hidden. Trees swayed to the screaming, replayed over the screeching of brakes, the sickening crash of metal and the body limp behind the wheel. Adam’s beautiful body, memories of his tender, plump bottom lip, the sensitive spot along his hipbone and the slight inward curve of his baby toe flashed like random scrapes of lightening across the horrid sight of what remained.

I stumbled to the vehicle, a black shadowy thing, indescribable except it held Adam’s body. His fingers clutching the steering wheel were wet with grease, confirming the terror. The lightning stopped. The memories faded.

Behind me, the mass of fur, golden eyes and clicking jaws loomed and tears stung my cheeks. The hidden figure vanished. Then the world went all green.

I wasn’t in the barn when I woke. I was outside, on the ground, staring into a dizzying web of branches, trying once again to crack the nightmare code of my dreams. The piece of wood I’d been whittling lay broken beside me.

The wind had winter on its mind, and scraping myself off the driveway, shivering, I lurched toward the house, the house, because I couldn’t be sure anything belonged to me. The porch door handle—generic, plastic and black, a real detail of the waking world—brought me back to my senses. One loose screw, the upper left bracket that I’d meant to tighten, brought me further from the nightmare.

My hands had blood smeared across the backs, like I’d spent the day picking and eating raspberries. They couldn’t be real, couldn’t be mine…

The slightest whisper of breath and the rustle of leaves dancing in autumnal wind sent a chill along my spine.

Several breaths passed before I dared turn.

Nothing. The driveway, the island of trees between the house and the parking lot and the pumpkin patch beyond, the greenhouses and one of the barns to my right, the street to the left. Across the street, the barren field revealed nothing but the dilapidated barn, whining in the cold.

Maybe I had cut my hands on something. I clung to the idea, liking the false comfort.

Something.

Inside, I washed my hands until the water ran clear.