SCENE: Editor Frank’s view of Reporter Jake’s perfect life,
imagined prior to his setting foot in the Big South Big City
(but Veronica quick attaching, attending full on, godspeed)

Legacy of Doc, lately a dream:

            Old friend Ian slept, drooling in the other room cooling, a stentorious whimsy of stalwart white black red men all about, starry-eyed tradesmen come and gone the second shift, electricians’ electricals hanging draping taut, taunting plumbers screwing, heating and air their weathered wires and ducts taped gathering, carpenters sawing slamming and hammering, hitting him near to naked under the light sheet, form of physique concave curve natal crevice arching visible in the haze of goldenrod, ragweed sneezing, settling. Frank to Dr. Hutch: “Weeds pollinate autumn? Thought grasses come spring. I should’ve studied more, the science of life, like you.” Dark roast filtered the late-autumn’s morning air, new musk and vapid dank invading again the sanctuary, sacred this old house but moldy, due for a fine cleanin’ mo’. One of them bros had left open a window, recently repainted. Receipt detailed, by the best of Protestant old-money standards. Forever the reuse. “Aren’t weeds grasses or grasses weeds, dear Frank?” the PhD of archæology outside his dang domain answered, rousing from heaven to descend a bit and held his own sibling’s ligament in limbo. “In some yards, a slip of caprice, touchdowns academic for the faint-o’-heart physical, untoward buddy but welcoming the soul and always rewarded in kind spiritual the very least, species of civilization. You remember that, Frank.” A kiss. A lick, gentlemanly as in every day of life out of respect.

            Achew. It was Hank’s allergies on the way out. Jam, sill silly sash, and Sam. “Can’t believe the cost of one silly window, Mister Sam down at the hardware. The cost of good wood today, for a window, what would Daddy make?” One of the boys misremembered the pharmacy stop the afternoon before. Achew.

Wiping forgotten snot sleepy, Frank adjoined the pillow, cradling better his rectus capitis anterior. Frank’s favorite part. After all those hours at the desk, print-set typist paste-up.

            It was Hank’s mortgage only one and that for tax reasons only, they had money, but two names on the document out of their love of his beau. Who knew how the bills got paid.

            “Cream and sugar, right?” Bo swang a gamecock mug to the tiger-padded counter, no cork coaster in sight, all the other stadium memorabilia in the three-car. Hank gone. Ian howled long down the hallway, a caterwaul cut across Bo’s blowing from vacuum:

Two yard completion, cheerleader on the play.

            Bo slammed the window shut. “Why’d you go and do that?” he heard from the mower outside, now dimly. “Why’d you go and….” From the mower outside attached to Hank’s fists fast resting, his thighs bulging in bluejean cutoffs sweaty and his brow mopped clean by dusty rags from back pockets holey. All dripping by then. “Why….”

            “Who left this coffee?” Ian said. “Coffee and sugar like in college?” Ian not awake but neither muted, standing, sauntering a salute ↑

            “You talkin’ to me or that hammer in ya boxers?” Bo busied himself in the kitchen, bath, back to the porch, sun room, then kitchen, closet. Library, billiards, above-ground basement, attic, another bedroom on another floor and he slid, could’ve been wallpapers away. The room-wide pine, the longleaf the run of the house, guns oiled like boards, stuffy oak in another room. Boards bouncing. Mahogany dining, ceiling fans forgetting the silence.

Bamming, not like sex, but hard, and with meaning

            They shouted from opposite ends of the sprawling structure, its sheltered, creaky acoustics offset by thick, worn rugs formerly of Hank’s grandparents, the antebellum pre-Revolution manse and all circa 1900 taxidermy of deer, quail, ‘gator, fox, Carolina panther– from pining parents themselves long covering in Lowcountry flannel of loamy dirt today not even of their own age’s moss, but squared off, pink-tapered tape, the land drooping and yarded, nearly all sediment siphoned off by younger cousins’ thirsty kids, all of America clammerin’ at far-flung future price for purlieu, their own Sun Belt parcels of McMansions galore, guesthouse-greenhouse-funhouse-fun, swimming pools and social-media stars careening, click-click, boat dock sail, green-green-chemicaled green grass non-native needy their seed for centuries on.

            “The fuck it’s cold in here.” Hank and Bo, both admonishing their guest from inside and out-. “Do people in Atlanta not have a furnace?” from Ian. “Didn’t y’all get used to that when you lived there?” Hank hauled out the family Bible. “Did y’all skimp on your gas bill last month?” Bo flipped to Psalm 4:5. “This, not how, he do, such here.” Good book thrown clear ‘cross the  unkempt kitchen and on the road to rack and ruin. Wily.

“The rune. What does this all mean?” Frank to self.

            “Tip jar, here in the kitchen,” Bo said with a straight face, caffeinated. “Tip jar! Tip jar!”

            No retort.

            “Oh wait, let me look, yes it’s empty. Big surprise there. How much are you payin’ to live here, Ian? Oh right. Nothin’. Nothin’. Nothin’. In the tip jar. Yet another compliment to Hank. Thank you, Hank…’s family, thank you. Wherever y’all at today?”

            “Everything run electric ’round here,” Hank back in the house. Said in between watering ferns in the windows of the dining room, the sun room, and flipping only sports channels with a remote, what time the game on, which game, which quarter, which quarterback caught your eye, eyeing huckleberry-compote pancakes somehow, Bo about to burn breakfast in the prior-quarter’s kitchen of antiquated cast-iron and fully functioning copper barely broke in by servants.

            He eyed Hank’s hairy glutes, Bo’s fair chin bending low and stretching high to nourish in trantric tandem with the tight cutoffs, their cadence like a rah-rah on the TV darling. The man could not cease to amaze, Hank’s energy a-go-go-go, and all the world admirin’ some, not only a pocketbook back there or up front, them jeans about to burst with jewels aplenty the gift. Hank’s tummy growled. “Stop,” he said to Ian and to Bo.

Soiling himself good here, Frank breathed heavy and reached for Hutch.

            A door opened and wanted to close. A look. No see.

            “No more workers here yet. All on break, siesta.”

Neighbors loud, he clutched air feather, flannel pillow, and did not smell any scent but his own.

            “Smells good, but ’bout to be toast.” Ian. sipped his coffee. dry.

            “No thanks?”

            “Thanks for the coffee,” Ian said. “Not bad.”

            “That new mower don’t cut like the old one. I might take it back to town this afternoon and get a regular one.”

            “Gas-powered?” Ian said.

            “What other kind is there?” said Bo.

            “I’m not cleaning up that.” Ian pointed.

            “Sorry,” Hank said and kissed; back out he went, returning to his fun through the back door. Two trails of papered leaves and clotted soil.

A bathroom fan,

            “He’s leaving the lawn mower in the front yard. In this neighborhood, it’ll be MIA in ten minutes. Gone with the….”

            Ten and two, 4:21, the make the make, hayseed hassle hasty the shuffle, three-legged dog for two-timin’ shindig, hoist! noise! nose-noise horse-hose and rumble, rumble.

Coffee to counter horror of hangover, more running water, bladder’s pull,

            “The coffee’s good. It’s gettin’ cold,” Ian said from the couch in the library. Feet up, ankles danglin’. He could not find a pillow that fit his back.

            “Could pour yourself more. No Howard Johnson’s here,” said Bo, from back in the kitchen, flipping finally the cakes on a new frying pan. “First cup on the house.”

            “What’s that?”

            Hank hollered back from outside. “I was talkin’ to Ian!” Bo said.

            “Is HoJo even a thing anymore? I remember when that one in Times Square closed. Every-damn-body up there in a revolt.” He tapped the mug with his front teeth. “I never understood the big deal about it.”
            “Can’t hear you! Can’t hear you! Cakes ‘most ready.” Bo, smokin’. The stove’s overhead exhaust fan clanged. “Ian, come open a window. I can’t cook and babysit you.”

Did Jake really think he was babysitting me.
Veronica wouldn’t make that up. Unless…
She were jealous of all the minutes her man spent with–
Me. At the office, the office, every day a newspaper to make.
Anew. MUST GO OUT. How else

            Breakfast chores begun. “Thank you, Ian,” said Hank. Bo drudged back up the bridled, steep steps the regular height of a modern house, an old bias to build by, ways of former days’ architecture, protective of reptile, tomahawk, more, Crown’s subjects the abode colonial, the inhabitants then enclosed in their owners’ keep, shut up and yet screamin’ out. “Would one of you guys…” from the deck outside the kitchen, beside the screened porch; a praise, a clap, a curse, then swept his booming voice “…help, for God’s sake, hel-

            “That place closed,” Hank said. “Thanks for doing the yard after me.” Thanking himself, he kissed Bo, who shook off the attention that he wanted more of, and Mr. Hank A.B.C. Huger VIII said, “I remember last fall when we visited you–

            “What closed? What last fall, visited where?” Bo said, in between head poking in and out of cabinets.

            “That’s what I said, it closed.”

            “What closed?” Bo said. He took off his work shoes

Ka-plop the pair, heavy the heifer. Ka-plop.

and placed them atop a soiled mat beside the back door. He looked out, what left to do, a gorgeous first of pleasant Saturdays, the many years they’d enjoyed together felt like a pretend memory. What would his grandparents think

Lack of snore frightened, empty other side of bed enraging. No Hutch.

“…that Off-Broadway…Persian restaurant…exhibit at the Met or….”

            The light through the oak tree shone on Bo’s grime, not wiped his face. He felt the dried mix (from Hank) of grease, saliva, and sweat as he smeared more into place. “Feels like only yesterday,” he muttered. “New York, New York, baby!” Singing out. He hated show tunes.

Frank to Dr. Hutch, snuffling in his weight, wait, wake, touching, hush-hutch-hush-the-snore:
Who could hate show tunes? Of all music, what ever they done did to nobody straight.

“…Johnson’s closed. Times Square, don’t you recall?” Hank shoved a whopping plate of whipped butter atop burnt batter half-cooked, none of it disguised. The strawberries and raspberries hid the disaster without aplomb. No cherry either.

            “Where my blueberries at?” Bo said.

            “At Howard Johnson’s!”

            “Hey hey, they had their own special way, maybe trademarked or whatever ya call it, copyrighted, the squirrel, I mean the swipe of the goo, swirl. Yum delish delight.”

            “I love the words you make up.”

            “I’m usin’ words that grew up with me.”

            “At least they talked in his family.”

Frank shed a tear. Hutch too. His cologne in the sheet, come, then gone.

            “Unlike Hank here, to the ghosts in his family.”

            “You, don’t talk with your mouth full of, words or pancakes or. And you, you over there, don’t you rub me the wr—, kiss me you fool.”

Frank and Hutch listened, their jocks hangin’ out to dry. For a rest. Nightmare, dream, hallucination. Lust, love, and trust once more, holding hands, a walk in the vacant park, a couple of men that age must be–

            Hank pointed to Bo’s face, handing him a clean brown towel from the dirty counter.

            “How long y’all been together?” Ian said. “I mean, I should know, I do know, but I don’t want to say it wrong, the number, what’s the number, jus’ tell me, how many years of football, season football tickets with the gamecocks?”

Hut, two, two, two. An LP, broke, lame.
Hutch singing by the record player.
Dancing. Unafraid. But in the dark.

            Ian stood slopping the comfort food in, forcing forksful across his plate and motioning for seconds and thirds and–

4, 5, 6, et cetera. Keepin’ time, pace with the best, a fool. Not a couple, brothers

            “No it didn’t close. We talkin’ ’bout Howard Johnson’s, it’s-cotta-be-’round. Maybe they moved. I know what I read. Cost a real estate everywhere, but they did have good sandwiches. Swell mayo.” Smacking, it was a jumble of commentary in between his swipes ‘n’ wipes, grunts ‘n’ grabs, the chocolate lab lickin’ ‘n’ sniffin’ every square foot of black tile beneath, canine tongue encirclin’ the three men’s bare feet, pedicure compleat on to the mani-

            “Did y’all date in college? There were rumors back in those days, but so on the DL. God, that was ages ago. I said I didn’t believe it.” He paused to gulp and tried chewing once more of what, half-swallowed.

Fantasy of old Queer ol’ man stumblin’ in a land of gay
…marriage, rainbows? legal. Frank’s forearm froze fresh from fancy.
When are we convinced we have lived too much too

            “More milk? Coffee?” someone asked someone, before pointing to frig, next pot. “Not a Howard Johnson’s here either, no mo’ HoJo, how we got on the topic.”

            “Coach actually asked me one day late after practice. Old man nervous like never said, ‘Not that nothin’s like, wrong with it son or anything, the youngins as of late, you know how he liked to say ‘as of late,’ …”

            Bo and Hank said yeah, he did.

            “…but everybody entitled to their opinion, rife as the gun’s not loaded and pointed….’ When he began so, I knew where the ol’ man headin’.”

Two yards completion, cheerleader on the play, the make the make, hasty the shuffle, three-legged dog for two-timin’ shindig, hoise hoist noise and rumble.

            “Rife, wtf?”

In his dead world, he smiled and upon Frank, he caressed. And entered.

            “Always thought Coach a little nelly,” Bo said. “No man back there, what with three good-looking ex-wives and no kids, jus’ sayin’.” Hank crunched and smacked on bacon, biting it hard and grimacing gratitude at Ian, pork his specialty.

I am, I am, I am. Complete with you.

            “What did you say?” Hank said.

            “Aren’t ya eatin’?”

            “He eats whilst he cooks. Don’t you worry ’bout him goin’ for no lack of man,” Bo said. “The food, the fool.”

            “Told Coach he best to ask y’all himself, guessin’ he did not, sounds like it news to you both.”

            Bo looked at Ian, his head in the frig, searchin’.

A fig, I didn’t eat the last one, promise Mama promise, Mama I promise you, yes ma’am.

            “Ian?”

            “No mo’ blueberries. We’ll have to get from farmer’s market later if y’all up for going. I’m not shoppin’ by myself anymore this week. You guys eat too much.”

Push push pull and squat. Relax, release, say aaaah. Ease up for victuals.

            “Ian?”

            “Ian, what?”

            “Coach? The story, college rugger, Ian’s story. That coach, not foot?”

Another forty-five pounds to rack. Sweet sweat and tea to please, iced. No mint for sissies here. On pigskin. Frank smelled barbecue in mustard sauce. Tangy. Hutch teasin’

            “I have no idea-rrr.”

            “You have no idea-ahh,” Ian began, “if Coach asked, if you–”

            “If we two were gay.” Bo finished. Hank shrugged.

Was were, was were, was where, is is forever after, and AMEN.

            With fingers, Ian ate his own bacon wrapped in a pancake, put dishes in the washer, threw a hand towel ‘cross his bulbous forearm hairless, and said like an emotionless maître d’, “Have no idea, sirs. Good gentlemen of the pitchy paddock, this no field, that was a mite day ago.” He popped the towel at Hank’s chest, his once-white T-shirt in his calloused hands, the head of the house begging to shower, an excuse out of the nonsense. “Are we back to the Howard Johnson’s yet? I’m starvin’.” The couple’s bud talked over himself when he reckoned about to be trapped in his made-up gibberish, but they knew, they had heard, Coach had asked directly. In fact.

            “I let the cheerleader make the first move on me. That settled it with most people. She was the biggest gossip.” Someone said.

Whisper whimper, tattle-tale me.

            “With the magic in your jock back boyhood, I’m sure she couldn’t wait to tattle.” Another replied.

            “Or exaggerate as much as the beast himself.” That one roared.

            “Weren’t called three-logged dog for my speed on the field.”

            “Ya don’t say?”

What no man…asunder…join herewith…until the end of times for all. No.

It was all the dream of the boss-man. Editor Frank at the paper. Frank’s dream, frankly.
            He wet himself again and again, and it was all his view of Jake’s life, imagined in luscious lyricism, but neither of ridicule nor exaggeration. It was his hope. That someone might’ve fared better than he. Must’ve been with a Diddy, father of Coach football Cavs, the names all blurring their opponents sacked, young men eager to please paternal. No matter, every other team a loser. The boys never menning ’til time, time. Children at play with balls of every size. ‘Til hour to rear their own, another type of hell to raise before Sunday. Time out.

            Frank tossed and groaned, hugged white and raw the linens. Where was Hutch, Dr. Hutchinson, dead too soon, forgotten by family, state, medicine, state. Republicans’ Reagan. Democratsss-crazy. The silent majority too numerous, nubile. Another pandemic the Eighties. Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans. All feared better dead to be left alone, alive? Where, folks, does it say, let mortals buy and bury the corpse close, the livin’ shall have their due– A snore, thanks for the big-boy pill.

When Jake awakened, Veronica held him. The word Diddy done them both in, no sleep or slumber all the dark of night. He horse-nail shouted since dusk, tuckered out, the anniversary of his father’s demise, not his funeral, but a year ago to day received, a phone call received, taped digital on VM voicemail harsh and low some postage to collect, asexual, ageless and disguised the hiss. “You think you know your father.” It said. Three times, no charm, all harm. To induce doubt for a first time.

            J breathed heavy upon V, chest, milking her ocean-breasts and she swept back the sandy hair across his brow, ear, nape, stroking and kissing him and all. Their numbers right, their proportions of divine muses, she moaned. Jake envied their peers of children. Honeycrisp apples, land of milk and honey, beyond the river, where idols, false gods put away, witnesses attending themselves, pledging allegiance to their kind. Gonna be OK, honey. I’m gonna make daddy right, all right, you watch and see it made right.

“Good mornin’, Frank,” Jake said that Wednesday before heading into their weekly staff meeting. “Mornin’, Jake, morn-ing. Hope you slept well.” Nothing important come out of the meeting. Jokes and ass-bookings, collegial and fraternal, a touch without meaning. The sole item on the agenda, marked for closed-door leadership discussion afterwards among the senior elite of the group, like the works of all best business acumen, incensed in alchemic metaphor, journalistic lingo for dollars a word, you must know the hidden language of elders’ wisdom to impart to, to play this game, like football, the old instructing the young, another adult sport of men for men by and by in common (mis)understanding?

            “They won’t have it any other way,” Frank said to the other three. Jake now watching from his cubicle afar. “The powers that be know what a pass is, what a throw is, how much a deflated football will ruin the allure of this paper’s brand, man I hate to put this way, but we can’t have a scandal, even with your pedigree, eccentric one a renegade, but scuppers? Not a weirdo. Dismissed.” On account of…better left unsaid.

            The man waited ’til the secretary reopened. The door, upon Frank’s signaling for more pastries and iced water. The plate still full. No one had touched the plum or fig offerings. The dark roast cooled, undrunk. The guy, the secretary, bent over to plug back in the hot plate– A fancied whimsy stopped. Frank caught himself, pretending to look down at a pointless pencil left by his scuffed loafer.

            “A penny,” he said. “We used to wear these in our shoes. Do you remember?”

            The man left. The secretary, too. Frank’s eyes nearly.

            “That was before my era,” one of the remainders said.

            “Mine too, I’m afraid,” from the other.

Frank’s mind followed the secretary, whose brawn packed in thin wool resembled Hutch’s might before he first coughed, no allergy pills of any effect, and spun out before men started dropping like crawdads off into a ditch behind the old Howard Johnson’s off the interstate out from Savannah, the good-time house of his youth or so the talk was. Hutch had no shame, in the right way of being a man.

            Frank wiped drool off his chin, the room hot all a sudden. The tear hidden.

“Hutch!” he called, before uncrossing his legs, adjusting his crotch, and adding in spits missing the waste, “hush y’all’s fellas’ mouths,” a mush of apostrophes trophic in his own labia, between, referring to the walking men who turned to referee umpire and delight, “Bulldogs ain’t gonna make them playoffs, that fool quarterback queer, not the right….”

            The secretary sat outside his office, screwing back on a ballpoint’s head.

            “The best cheerleaders in the whole region, oughta let them on the field, not jus’ in the locker room,” the last of the small talk fading after a hearty har-har. And slap.

            Frank pounded his door and saw again the flowers fetid, their anniversary unfêted, Hutch’s grave the beautiful man in repose, the leaves finely raked into a bed ‘most proper, proud unicorns leapin’ and prancin’, scared but for their own good soon, when another dawn and even for them might commence a better sport, their jumpy ways deemed rightful by more than a handful.

R. P. Singletary is a native of the rural southeastern United States, with recent fiction, poetry, and drama in Literally Stories, Litro, BULL, Screen Door Review, The Taborian, and elsewhere. Website.