Read Online Contemporary Gay Romances by Felice Picano - Free Book Online Page A

asked.
    “Nine years, four months, and two days yesterday,” I replied. “I learned everything I know outta that series of books,” pointing to the encyclopedia that Granny-Mama had left to her by a cousin twice removed. “And online my I.Q. is one hundred and fifty-three.”
    They looked at each other awhile and at that moment I realized she had aborted his male fetus in the second trimester, one year and six months and fourteen days ago up at a clinic up outside Tallahassee, even though they never were married and in fact were supposedly happily married to other people.
    He sat down, she stood behind him, and he said, “Boy, draw me that map.”
    So I did, with magic markers on the plastic board hanging at my side.
    “That wide oval,” I explained, “is Lake Pishimere, that lil’ pond-like mostly dried-up thing about four miles down the route 208 from where Kevin lives.”
    “We’ve got people looking not far from there,” Sheryl Jamison said, and picked up her cell phone and speed dialed.
    “What are those three exes in a row?” Sheriff Longish asked me.
    “Those are beached and wrecked flat boats from ten-odd years ago.”
    “Hugh?” Sheryl spoke into the phone. “You at the dried-up lake, right? You see any wrecked boats there?”
    “He took Kevin on a path between the last boat and the blackberry bush in full bloom,” I said, drawing a line to show it.
    “Go as far as the blackberry bush,” Sheryl directed into the phone, “then turn north.”
    “He was assaulted on the flat rock there.” I drew it kind of smushed in. “He pulled down Kevin’s pants and did it to him three times.”
    “Oh, Jesus! Be my Savior now,” Sheriff Longish said in a plummy kind of praying voice, and Sheryl added, “Amen, Lord.”
    “He dragged him a little further up and strangled him there,” I said, dotting the line now, “using the elastic from the underwear he took off Kevin. He left him there, where the two old cypress trees are rotting away in still water.”
    “Lord, hear my prayer,” Sheriff Longish chanted.
    Sheryl Jamison amened that, then repeated my directions into the phone.
    Eight minutes and thirteen seconds later, she got a report that they had found the boy—just like I’d said.
    Granny-Mama brought the two of them beers from the icebox and they all gathered around me and kneeled for a prayer, holding hands all around and stuff.
    “He just knows things!” Granny-Mama explained to Sheryl Jamison over a piece of that morning’s fresh-baked cheddar corn bread. “You know. Where things is gone missing to. Who’s going to ring on the telephone. He predicts all the elections on the TV. He’s got A Gift, you see.”
    “It’s the Lord’s compensation,” Sheriff Longish said, still using his holy voice. That way he didn’t have to say anything pitying about my physical condition, all twisted up as I am, and in a wheelchair and barely able to do the normal stuff for myself that most anyone can do.
    It wasn’t until three days later that the sheriff came to visit again. This time he was alone. He asked, “You see it happen? That kid Kevin being…you know, and all? In your mind’s eye, I mean?”
    “I sorta did. Yes sir. And by the way, sir, as we are speaking, I’m seeing in my mind’s eye your eldest boy, Drew Longish, age sixteen years, four months, and twelve days,” I added, “at home, right now, smoking maryjane and sucking his best friend, Tommy Thorn’s, dick.”
    I thought Sheriff Longish was going to smack me hard, he got so red in the face, almost purple, and his fist just got all stony. But he just stormed off and tore hell out of the dirt in front of our house driving away—I guess in a hurry to get home and catch a look.
    Granny-Mama had been listening behind the door and she came out and we laughed at what I’d told him. We agree, Granny-Mama and me, on most things. All kinds of things we hear, and things I see. We don’t care what those folks are doing. But them