Snowed In: Goose and Patrick

Chapter 1 “It was a dark and stormy night.” Patrick’s words brought a shiver. Be it in the shine of an autumn sunrise in the woods, the glow of Christmas lights on my front porch in December, or like now, under the wattage of a couple dozen fluorescent bulbs inside the big box store where I worked overnight as a cleaner, his green eyes shimmered brightly whenever he smiled at me. “You remember?” he asked. “The first words you ever said to me? Of course, I do,” I told him. Wrapped in his arms, I snuggled into his bushy red beard as we stood there in all our winter gear at the huge front window that overlooked the snow-covered parking lot. “You said it to me and about thirty other men.” Patrick pulled me closer to kiss each of my dark, unkempt brows. The act left his glasses all crooked. “As far as I was concerned, it was only the two of us.” We’d met just three months prior, down in Tennessee at a Civil War reenactment. The days that followed had been strange. No. They’d been miraculous, in every sense. “It’s really coming down out there,” Patrick said, staring out at the blizzard. He held my hand. The only thing we’d removed was our gloves. Weathermen had named the nor’easter, but the one they’d come up with escaped me. Bruno, Bertha…It started with a B. We were expecting up to two feet of snow, at a rate of two inches per hour all night long, with wind and ice the next day to end just after noon. I was where I planned on being for at least the next ten hours or so. “You might get trapped here with me,” I warned, “if you don’t hit the road soon.” Patrick kissed me, long and lingering, with enough heat to melt the highest snowbank. “That wouldn’t be such a terrible thing,” he said. Wilbur, my little French bulldog yapped. “He wants a kiss, too.” I stole another first, causing Wilbur to yap again. Wilbur liked Patrick. “Come here, little guy.” Patrick scooped him up, then giggled when Wilbur wet his whole face with doggie smooches. Wilbur and I had arrived at work an hour before my shift was scheduled to start. I’d left the house two hours earlier than usual, to get on the road while the roads were still passable. Patrick’s appearance right behind me had come as a surprise. He’d texted me just before I’d headed out. Patrick: You going into work tonight? Goose: Yes. I’ll be leaving in a bit. Giving myself lots of extra time. Where are you? Patrick: Just closing up the pharmacy. You be careful. I worry. That’s what people do when someone wonderful and amazing comes into their life. Goose: I know. The same thing recently happened to me. You be careful, too. Patrick: I’ll text you when I get home. Goose: I’ll hit you up when I get to the store. I didn’t have time to hit him up. Before I could, he was there, his drive much faster, his sturdy vehicle no doubt better in the snow than mine. My normal shift was eleven to seven. Detailing the place top to bottom; dressing rooms, bathrooms, floors, shelves, the whole deal, was hard work, but earbuds and some good music on my iPod usually got me through. If I knew the night was going to be particularly nasty, severe thunderstorms or something like that, I’d bring Wilbur along for both our sakes. Figuring Bertha or Bruno might leave me stuck at the store well into the next day by the time the streets got cleared, I hadn’t wanted either of us to be alone that long. No one had ever told me I couldn’t make every day Bring Your Dog to Work Day, so I figured I wasn’t breaking any rules. Wilbur was a good boy. He’d follow me around a bit, and then fall asleep on the fleece throw we never left home without. “I don’t know how much work I’ll get done with you here,” I said, taking turns stroking Patrick’s red beard and Wilbur’s head, “but I wouldn’t mind the company.” “I’ll wait until it slows down a little, and then head out.” Patrick dropped by at the start of my shift several times a week. He lived about thirty minutes away and ran his own pharmacy. His workday was supposed to last from eight in the morning to seven at night, but as he’d said more than once, “Being your own boss isn’t an eight hour a day job.” After working the counter, he still had all the ordering, record keeping, inventory, plus what he referred to as “etcetera, etcetera” to do. Patrick was a people person. He enjoyed interacting with his customers, answering questions, and helping them in any way he could. That and the etcetera kept him at O’Hanlon’s Pharmacy way later than seven o’clock many nights. I was not a people person, not really. Working alone overnight in an empty superstore was the ideal profession for me. Sure, I’d named all the mannequins on the sales floor and talked to any bugs or rodents I occasionally came across in my duties. I’d recently started talking to ghosts as well. I found conversing with them quite easy. People, not so much. “It’s our first big snow as a couple.” “Is that a milestone?” I asked with a smirk. “Every moment with you is something worth marking.” Patrick and I texted a lot. I’d saved every one of them, from the shortest Good morning! to the longest one so far, in which he’d typed “The Little Engine That Could” in its entirety to me. Breaking copyright rules, no doubt, he’d sent it throughout one day in early November to support me. I’d agreed to a Skype interview about our fight the previous October to save an oak tree planted by two Civil War soldiers in love a hundred and fifty years prior. The on the spot Q&As during our protest had often been over before I’d had time to be nervous. This one had been different. We’d planned it days ahead, and each tick of the second hand on the clock, especially the morning of, had made me more of a wreck. Patrick: I know you can. Patrick: I know you can. Patrick: I know you can. He’d sent it every few minutes the entire time I’d been chatting with the Tennessee blogger. Then he’d sent another at the end, with a snapshot of his smiling face. Patrick: I knew you could, and you did. That was the epitome of my Patrick—a little bit of silly, an abundance of attentiveness, and a heart as big as his burly, sexy body and his soft, full beard. We also chatted on the phone several times per day. “O’Hanlon Pharmacy. I have a prescription ready for two kisses five times a day.” “I bet you say that to all your customers,” I’d tell him when he’d answer his phone in a corny, adorable way. “Only the short, sweet ones who talk to ghosts and are named after birds who fly south for the winter.” Finding opportunity to be in the same room wasn’t easy, though. It was probably easier than I was making it, but, still, it took some effort. We were together now, and though I was a little bit stressed, because of some leftover insecurities and fears from my last relationship, the sight of Patrick made me happy. The feel, the smell, and the taste of his mouth on mine when he’d greeted me made me feel better. I dug in the duffle bag I carried back and forth each night to retrieve my phone when it rang. Past an extra pair of gloves, Wilbur’s fuzzy blanket, leash, and a toy, plus my drawing pencils and sketchpad, which Patrick graciously took from me as I fumbled, finally, I found it. “Aww. It’s from my pharmacist.” Patrick: I don’t want to go. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “I don’t want you to.” “Are there any new pictures of Jefferson and Calvin in here?” Patrick somehow managed to flip through my latest drawings while still holding on to Wilbur and the phone he’d stealthily texted from. “Quite a few probably.” Once upon a time, not long ago, I’d fallen in love with a man who had died in 1863. Though I’d mostly gotten over any ridiculous notions of a romance between Civil War Union soldier Jefferson Eaves and myself, obsession still lingered. I spent a great deal of time sketching him and his lover, Calvin, whom I’d first read about in a diary held at the museum where I’d first been introduced to Patrick by my brother-in-law, Rip. I was certain Jefferson’s spirit had finally crossed over, once Patrick and I were successful in our fight to save their tree. A part of me couldn’t find peace now, however, not knowing what the rest of their life—their afterlife—was like. I sketched the two of them in their time and in ours. I had pictures of Jefferson and Calvin walking along the Seine in France, buying hot dogs from a vendor on the streets of NYC, and standing beside their tree, now twenty feet tall. My most recent was a rendering of the pair of them skinny dipping in the pond on the Eaves farm up in Massachusetts. I’d done dozens of sketches of the pair making love, in both the nineteenth and twenty-first century. “This one is extraordinary.” Patrick paused on one of those. It was explicit. The two lovers side by side, fully erect, Jefferson’s head was at Calvin’s hard d**k, while Calvin, facing the opposite direction while straddling him on top, stared intently at Jefferson’s ass, open with his legs spread wide. At least Calvin would have stared, had I been able to draw his face. “I still can’t get a handle on what they look like. If eyes truly are the windows to the soul, I haven’t fully captured them,” I said. “I think it’s beautiful.” “It bugs me.” It consumed me. “Oh. Wow.” I’d forgotten what I’d created on the next page. “It’s all four of us.” Holding Wilbur and the pad in one arm, his phone back in his puffy orange coat pocket, Patrick had a hand free to trace over my pencil lines, lingering on one feature in particular on my naked body. “Yes.” I took the pad away from him. The foursome sketch was more post-s*x than during, but every bit as graphic. I’d set it in the men’s underwear section right at the store, where several half mannequins with accentuated bulges flanked our nude bodies. Comingled, soft d***s spent, Jefferson, Calvin, Patrick, and I were covered in one another’s c*m. The mannequins had been hit with some as well, exaggerated globs of thick, drippy semen. Patrick’s identity and mine were quite obvious. We both had faces in the artwork. “It’s hot,” Patrick said with a gulp. I probably blushed a little. “Thank you.” When my text alert sounded again, I wondered how Patrick had managed to send another one without me seeing. It wasn’t from him, though. “Guess who’s got the night off.” I tilted the phone up toward his handsome face. “You.” He read it over my shoulder. “Yup. They’ve already closed for tomorrow.” Patrick had likely read that, too. Cost-Mart closing happened very rarely. This storm wasn’t a maybe. It was happening, and it wasn’t playing nice. At Patrick’s side, with Wilbur still in his arms, we all looked out the window. My car already blended in with everything out there—white—as far as the eye could see. “I don’t think I’m going to drive all the way home, though.” I kissed Wilbur’s head. “Not with such precious cargo on such lousy roads.” Patrick turned to me. “Maybe I could stay, too.” I looked up at his puppy dog face, so hopeful and sweet, and here I was, about to disappoint him again. “That would be nice, but…” He kissed me, and this time, I immediately tensed. “Goose. It’s okay. No stress. No worries. No expectations.” “I’m sorry.” “And no apologies,” he insisted. “I’ll stay. We’ll find something to do. I wasn’t talking about sex.” I hated myself. “Hey. Look at me.” I had to raise my head to do it. Patrick was quite a bit taller than I. “Maybe we can get Jefferson and Calvin to come by,” he said. I’d gotten a bit carried away with the whole ghost thing, according to my sister, Shelby. I’d had her set two extra places at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, just in case. She’d laid out the silverware, a napkin, a glass, and a plate for each, but refused to put food on them. I’d been joking about that part anyway. Sort of. As for the place settings, I liked to include Calvin and Jefferson now for every meal I ate at home. It was symbolic, I’d come to think, not only for them specifically, but for any spirit with unfinished business who might be unsettled and unsure. I finally had an excuse to use all four plates in my cupboard. Before I’d met Jefferson, once my ex was gone, with just me and Wilbur every night, service for four was two too many. “I thought they’d come for Christmas,” I said to Patrick, as I started to take off a couple layers of outerwear, beginning with my scarf. “Maybe they were busy.” Patrick took both of my hands. “They have a lot of together time to make up for. Let’s invite them now.” He spoke up into the metal rafters and crossbeams overhead. “Jefferson…Calvin…want to come spend a belated Christmas with us?” One section of the store was still decked out for the holiday. Everything was seventy-five percent off, picked over, and looking shabby, but there was still one tree with lights and some fake snow I could see way, way in back. Up front, we were ready for Valentine’s Day, about five weeks off. One of the seasonal aisles a little farther back had Easter at the ready, for those who couldn’t wait. I’d already picked up a carton of marshmallow eggs after work one morning. “Or an early Valentine’s.” I looked up, like Patrick was. “I’ll buy you two the biggest heart-shaped box of chocolates we carry.” I had a secret pen pal of sorts at the store. Her name was Carrie. One morning, on a whim, I’d grabbed a dog toy I couldn’t resist. After checking the schedule to see who’d be on that day, I’d chosen a friendly sounding name, found the same one written in pink on a strip of masking tape affixed to a locker door, and slipped the UPC code from the price tag and a five-dollar bill into its vent. I’d included a note that stated who I was and why I’d picked up what I had. That night, I’d found an envelope with change and a Post-it in my locker. Hope Wilbur liked his toy. Love, Carrie. Since then, I made at least one purchase a week. Carrie was off Tuesdays and Fridays. I never bought anything those days. “There,” Patrick said, his warm breath reacting with the great big cold window. “We put out the invite. Now, we wait for an RSVP.” “I thought speaking to Jefferson and Calvin would be easier,” I admitted. “Jefferson was very chatty when we first met.” Wilbur wanted me now, so Patrick passed him over. “We had actual conversations. I could hear his voice, eventually, anytime I wanted. Now, nothing.” Sure, once in a while, the lights would blink, something would be moved from a spot where I was certain I’d left it, and I would feel the brush of fingertips when no one else was there—no one living. It was him, I knew, but it wasn’t the same. “Is that normal when a spirit crosses over?” Patrick drew a small heart in the fog he’d left on the glass. He wrote JE +CG inside of it, Jefferson Eaves plus Calvin Goodacre. “Does communication usually cease once the spirit goes into the light?” He drew a pair of smiley faces next, one with glasses—me and him, I presumed—and added a bunch of hearts over them. “Maybe it’s harder from there.” I’d read about the subject quite fervently. Opinion varied greatly. Some said yes, claiming a spirit at rest is far less interested in things on this side than one who found himself trapped between realms. I didn’t want to believe that. “I don’t know.” “Yeah. I guess I’ve read the same information you have.” Patrick removed his hat. I almost laughed at the mess it made of his hair, all staticky and wild. “We can pretend, though,” he said. After adding my fleece pullover to the pile of clothing we’d shed, I tried to fix my own hair, and then my undershirt, so it covered my tummy again, like it was supposed to. Patrick scratched me there before I got it down. “Pretend?” I grimaced. “We’re grown men.” “Yeah.” Patrick turned to face the store instead of the parking lot a moment. His eyes got bigger. His face lit up when he looked down at me, crouching to tighten the strap on my boots. “Grown men trapped in a toy store during a blizzard.” “This isn’t a toy store.” I rose. “No.” He grabbed my wrists. “It’s an everything store. That’s even better. We have toys, and clothes, and food, and sports equipment, and kitchenware, and shoes. Maybe I have a fetish.” “For shoes?” There were still so many new things to learn about one another. “Do you?” I asked with a chuckle. “No. I can if you want me to, though.” “It’s fine. I only have three pair; sneakers, these boots,” I raised one up off the gray speckled tile, “and dress shoes I wore just once to my sister’s wedding.” “Those are some sexy snow boots.” “I don’t think the word sexy has ever been used to describe anything that fastens with Velcro.” “On you, the word fits. So, here’s something funny,” Patrick added with a tap to the tip of my nose. Patrick’s joy was contagious. I smiled, too. “When you imagine Jefferson,” he started walking and brought me along, “what’s he wearing?” “Well, you’ve seen my drawings. Often, he’s naked.” “It’s too cold to be naked all the time during winter in New York. I like the sketch where you have him dressed like he’s living with us now. Let’s pick out some clothes for them.” “What?” I laughed, because Patrick was silly and giddy and wonderful. “Come on.” We were headed toward Men’s Apparel. “It’s the perfect way to start our night, to have them join in. I’ll pick out something for Calvin, and you can pick out something for Jefferson. Let’s bring them into the twenty-first century, from the bottom up, socks to hats. We’ll do Calvin first.” We were in the underwear section. “Wait.” “Are you going to be a party pooper?” I set Wilbur down on the floor. “Not at all.” I’d had an idea. “I can do you one better. Follow me.” I took off at almost a run, with Wilbur hot on my heels and Patrick not far behind. “Where are we going?” he asked. “You’ll see.” I took Patrick down the center aisle of the store, way to the back. From there, holding his hand now, we went past the Employees Only section. “We’re being naughty, Goose Tucker.” “We’ve only just started, Patrick O’Hanlon. It’s like a snow day when we were kids, all rules are meant to be broken.” “You had way more fun on a snow day than I did, by the sounds of it,” Patrick lamented. We stopped just past a pair of orange swinging metal doors, where I turned to face him. “Don’t tell me this carefree, fun, and playful man who stands beside me now was the kind of kid who did homework on a snow day.” “Not at all. My homework was done the night before, when the assignment was given. On a snow day, I engaged in extra reading, something literary, or maybe going ahead in my text book.” “Extra reading! I barely read what I had to.” Wilbur, impatient with the conversation, slalomed in and out between our legs. “As for homework,” I continued, “anytime The Weather Channel was calling for winter precip, I didn’t do it out of hope. If my storm prayers came true, there was no way I was going to waste a bonus day off on school stuff, not when my father was out at work, and there was snow tubing, snowball fights, snow forts, and snowmen building to do. That meant I had to scribble out my book report in a rush the day after—unless that was a Saturday. Then, I did it Monday morning on the bus. Man, being a kid was awesome.” I was leaving quite a bit out. My sister, Shelby and I grew up in a home where being a kid wasn’t always awesome. Patrick gasped. “On the bus! I was a geek, a dweeb, a dork, and a nerd. That’s why I suggested we act like two over-grown ten-year-olds tonight. I have a lot of fun-free days to make up for.” “A nerd and a slacker…are we too different to make it work?” I looked down at the concrete floor. “Hey.” He brought me back to him by gently raising my chin. “I know you’re kidding. You better be kidding, because I feel like this is working just fine.” “Even if I can’t get over my past?” “We will get over it. Together. I’ll be by your side as long as it takes, wherever you go.” He took a beat. “So, where are you going?” I smiled. It was a little forced, but I meant it once I’d made it happen. “Okay. One more door. Close your eyes.” “The path ahead is unfamiliar.” “You’ll have to trust me, then.” Patrick covered his entire face with both hands. “Done.” “Give me one of those.” I reached for his shirt sleeve. “Unless you want me to get behind you and push.” Sweet Patrick figuratively bit his tongue, while literally biting his lip. “Come on.” In less than ten more steps, we’d reached our destination. “Ta-dah!” I flipped the light switch. “Whoa.” There were eighteen mannequins in the far corner of the huge storage room in back, ten were female. “I hope we can find two that look right. Jefferson has dark hair. He said in the diary his was the opposite of that flaxen jerk, Thomas.” Three of the fiberglass forms in the correct gender were also brunette. I waited for a sign as to which one I should choose. Patrick was looking over the three with the right skin tone to represent Calvin. He reached out, closed his eyes, and touched one’s hand. I watched intently as he did the same with the other two, and then went back to the first, to start the process again. “I wish I had paid more attention to what Jefferson looked like when I’d had the chance,” I said one more time, as I tried the same tactic. Somehow, that fateful autumn day, I’d been transported back in time to The Civil War. From a reenactment in 2018, I’d fought with Jefferson, side by side at the actual Cracker Line Battle along the Tennessee River in October a hundred and fifty-five years earlier. We’d sailed on pontoons and constructed a bridge to bring food and supplies to starving soldiers. I still had no idea how it had all come about. There’d been lightning. Had I been struck? Had the thunderstorm opened up some sort of passage through time? Months later, answers still eluded me. I knew I had been there, though, and wished with all my heart I could recall every feature of Jefferson Eaves’ face. I couldn’t, though. Maybe because it had been dark, or because we’d been dodging enemy bullets. I refused to believe my adventure hadn’t been real, even if that was the most likely explanation. “Are you getting anything?” I asked Patrick. “Not sure. I might—Whoa! Did you see that?”