Leonard got up, hurried to the window and snatched the curtains closed. “He’s not a psycho, he just has emotional problems. I asked you because I thought you might want to get out for a minute.”
“Gosh, I’m so sorry. I misunderstood. All these years I didn’t know searching the jungle for a psycho was a source of entertainment. Pardon my ignorance.”
“The sarcasm not helping here. Southeastern Arkansas is not a jungle.”
Victor turned, face red. “I’m not someone you picked up off the street. Why didn’t you ask before we got into bed?”
“Please! Just forget it. I regret I asked you.”
Victor grabbed his pants from the floor and put them on, forgetting his underwear. “Maybe I should go back to Chicago.” He pulled the zipper so hard Leonard was surprised it didn’t rip off. “Back to my mother.”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting? Okay, to be honest, I asked you to go because I’m afraid to go alone. I can see how you think I was using you. Wasn’t my intention. Honest.” Victor ignored him, put on a white Oxford shirt and buttoned it up. “If I’d known you’d throw a hissy fit, I most definitely would not have asked you.”
Victor stopped and stared at him. “It’s the money, isn’t it?”
“What money?”
“You know what money.”
“Don’t be childish.”
“Childish! I’m childish? The five years we’ve been together you’ve rarely mentioned the boondocks and your family. Now, suddenly, your family can’t continue life without you.”
Leonard tried to embrace him, but Victor pulled away. “My not calling you last night, isn’t that the real issue here? I apologize.”
“Why haven’t we discussed the money?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. The money, Leonard! The money you’re inheriting from your father. Why haven’t we talked about it?”
Leonard sat down in the chair. “What’s there to talk about?”
“How much we’re going to invest, how much we’re going to spend?”
Leonard stared at a cockroach navigating its way through the green shag carpet, then looked him in the eye.
“Victor…” He cleared his throat. “Victor, my dear, you’ve mistaken the possessive pronoun here. My father! My father, not your father, worked to get this money. If I choose to give you some of it, well, you know, that’s on me. You can’t speak in terms of we because we don’t share the same father. For you to think otherwise is demonstrably…” He searched in vain for a strong adjective. “…childish!”
Victor stared at him a long moment, mouth agape. Without a word he stepped into his loafers… and walked out.
An hour later, Leonard parked his car in Count Pulaski State Park. He studied the map his mother had drawn for him and wondered if she’d been out here herself.
Three trails led into the woods dense with oak, pine, poplar, spruce and dogwood trees. Leonard got out of the car and entered through Maumelle Trail, as his mother had instructed.
A canopy of branches blocked direct sunlight on the four-foot wide rocky rut someone foolishly labeled a trail. A slight breeze tingled the leaves, though did very little to reduce the humidity. Two squirrels chased each other from tree to tree. A turtle labored in the opposite direction.
Leonard didn’t notice any of this; his thoughts were on Victor. Is he gone forever?
He wished he’d phrased his words differently. Certainly he intended to share the money with Victor, but he didn’t need Victor or anyone else telling him what to do with his money. The trail inclined, and Leonard stopped to catch his breath. A crow cawed and he remembered his purpose for coming here.
To deliver a message to a psycho with a crossbow.
He pushed onward. At the end of the trail he came to a clearing. The temperature a tad cooler here. Amber knee-high grass bowed to the wind.
Two identical cabins constructed of hewed logs stood side by side in the middle of the clearing. A felled oak tree, obviously struck by lightning, split one of the cabins in half. Several buzzards circled below a clear blue sky.
“Shane?” Leonard shouted. His mother had said the boy wouldn’t shoot a relative, but Leonard wasn’t convinced. “Shane? It’s me, your uncle, a blood relative!” No response. “Kinfolk!”
Leonard stepped toward the intact cabin, wondering if the boy had him sighted in crosshairs, waiting for the perfect moment.
Wekeeeeee! Wekeeeeee!
Leonard whirled, looking for the origin of the sound. “What the hell was that? Shane?”
What the hell am I doing out here?
Well, one, sweating profusely, despite the cooler temperature. And two, needing only another strange noise to prompt a mad dash back to his car.
“Shane?”
He’d give it a few more minutes and then go home and tell his mother the boy couldn’t be found—and he wouldn’t come back.
“Shane?”
Nearing the cabin door, three boards nailed in a Z to eight two-by-fours, he caught whiff of an atrocious odor. Rotten meat? Or something dying? What if the boy lay inside hurt, moments from death? Would explain the buzzards hovering above. He knocked lightly on the door.
“Shane?” He pushed the door open. “Shane?” Silence.
He stuck his head inside. There was a wooden bed frame absent a mattress at the far wall, a worn-out orange-colored couch near the door, and a large stone fireplace to the left. A fey odor tickled his nostrils. No windows, no back door.
What a waste of time. He should’ve gone to the nearest bus stop and intercepted Victor, and told him he was sorry, told him—
Wekeeeeee! Wekeeeeeee!
The noise sounded directly behind him. He spun around and saw the arrow. Nothing but the arrow. Aimed at his chest. “Sh-sh-sh-shane!”
“What you want?” Shane asked.
Leonard stared into the boy’s dirty freckled face, slowly raised both hands and wondered why Shane was squinting, for they were standing in the shade of the cabin.
“I want you to stop aiming that thing at me. I’m your uncle, remember? Uncle Leonard? Your mother’s brother?”
Shane in desperate need of a haircut: light-brown hair extremely long, a super afro, speckled with green bits, grass or leaves. Besides that and the dirt on his face, he was handsome. A young Harry Belafonte: sculpted features, freckles, bushy eyebrows above hazel-colored eyes.
“Yeah,” the boy said, tilting his head.
“Shane, remember when you were little and I took you and Paul to the fair in Little Rock? You remember?” The boy shook his head. “You gotta remember. You and I rode the Ferris wheel, it stopped while we were at top, I threw up. It doesn’t matter. Shane, it’s not polite to point an arrow at your uncle.”
The boy responded by raising the crossbow, aiming it at Leonard’s head.
Shielding his face with his hands: “Hey! Hey! Hey! Stop it! You might put my eye out!”
“It’ll do more than that.”
“Stop playing, Shane! Stop it! Dammit, I’m your uncle!”
“Why you kill my dog?”
“What! I didn’t kill your dog!”
Shane shook his head to rid a fly from his face. “Yeah, you did. You killed him and you killed pa-pa.”
I’m dead, Leonard thought. He’s going to kill me with a crossbow… I’ll be left out here to rot… Flies… Buzzards…
“Shane, I didn’t. I swear I didn’t do it! I didn’t arrive in time. What makes you think I did it?”
“’Cause you’re unnatural.”
“What?”
“You like bootie instead of women.”
“What! Who told you that?”
“Pa-pa.”
“He shouldn’t have told you that. Not a nice thing to say.”
“Is it true?”
Leonard’s mind raced. If he admitted being gay, Shane might misconstrue it as an admission of guilt and shoot him.