“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
Then nothing, for a long moment. Cowboy reticence. And when Uncle Pete spoke up again, gamely plowing through Kit’s dumbfoundedness, the man explained that it was in fact this very same reticence which had finally triggered his coming out. He’d been moved to see that the call from Bette had left Kit’s mom upset, tight-voiced, blinking back tears—“but you know her, Kit. She still wouldn’t talk.” Nina gave away nothing, or nothing beyond the basics. “She told Leslie and me that you weren’t hurt. That was it.”
Pete’s sister reached out instead to the church. “That tore it somehow, Kidder.”
Silence again. Kit tried to respond, but got no further than a grunt, a croak. Finally Pete asked if their sister had told him and Les the truth. Was Kit all right?
Aw, Viddich. “Uncle Pete, we’ve all — the whole family’s been playing it pretty close to the chest.”
“Right up tight against the old chest.”
“Uncle Pete, I’m sorry. I’m fine, I’m fine, but I didn’t expect this. You’re still half my father, Uncle Pete.”
“Wellsir. Good to hear.”
“I’m with you. I’m sorry about being such an asshole.” He knew the man better than to say I love you. “I’m with you on this, Uncle Pete.”
The uncle may have laughed. His voice light, he said there was no need to apologize. “Our Sister Nina’s kept her business to herself plenty of times before, without me going and doing something like this.” And Pete figured it wasn’t going to get any easier, letting people know. Kit had been the first one off the ranch to hear, partly because he was family of course — but also partly because the uncle had figured he might be more broadminded than the neighbors in Blue Earth county. “Today when you said you were an Easterner, I mean to tell you, I was glad to hear it.”
“I’m an Easterner, sure. But you raised me, Uncle Pete. That’s still true after this phone call.”
“Good to hear. But I mean to tell you, I’ve heard all about what’s happening back East. Your mother, you know, she can’t get through the day without Minnesota Public Radio.”
Kit ran a finger around the rim of his Ve-Ri-Tas mug. “Back East,” he recalled, meant the urban world generally. Not just New York and Boston, but also L.A., San Francisco.
“The gay revolution?” he asked.
“We’ve heard all about it. San Francisco, New York. Everybody’s coming out.”
Kit, interested despite the day’s wear and tear, bent towards the phone. Was Uncle Pete saying that seeing this story so much in the media had helped inspire him to come out?
“Wellsir. I guess I’d say so, yes.”
“Because you’ve heard it on the radio.”
“Not just because I’ve heard it on the radio.”
“No, no I guess not. But, Uncle Pete, telling everyone you’re homosexual — it’s hard work.”
“It’s something, all right. A test of character.”
“I’m serious. When you announce you’re gay, Uncle Pete, when you flat-out announce it, there’s a lot …”
Oh God, when had Louie-Louie come in? Kit, sitting up from the phone, spotted his visitor just as the big youngster turned away fast. The brother turned and slipped back out into the front workspaces with face averted. From behind he looked less threatening. Above his hips hung babyfat love handles.
Louie-Louie, the good brother. Kit’s uncle, oblivious, was saying something about Harvey Milk.
Come out, come out, wherever you are. From Bette to Mom to Pete to Louie-Louie — come out, come out.
The offices were getting dark. Kit, his eyes still on his visitor, reached for the light switch without standing. He found an unexpected serenity in that, a naturalness in having the switch so close and easy. Today’s blown secrets no longer rattled him. Whatever Bette had said, whatever Louie-Louie had heard, these felt like secondary aggravations. Hadn’t Kit just been thinking, himself, that he needed to start telling friends and family before they read about it in the papers? Hadn’t he just been trying to decide how to do it? His eyes adjusted easily to the fluorescents, and he caught up again on his uncle’s conversation.
“Now, Christopher,” Pete was saying, “you’re not going to pretend you never knew.”
“We all knew, sure. We ah, we knew you knew we knew.”
Once more the aging cowboy may have laughed. “You should have heard Leslie trying to explain that one.”
“Leslie, hoo boy. Lots of luck, Uncle Pete.” And how had Kit’s mother taken it? Composed again following her prayer session, she’d met Pete’s announcement with “that smile she has, you know.” Kit knew: an accepting smile, easeful, yet also neutral, at a remove. Afterwards, she’d said quietly that there was no point getting into the news from Kit’s wife, just now.
“Still playing it close to the vest, our Sister Nina.”
Again the mention of the call left Kit unfazed. “Well, we’ve all done it for years, Uncle Pete.”
“Your Uncle Leslie, wellsir. He said he wouldn’t’ve had so many women around, if he hadn’t’ve known about me.”
“Come on.”
“That’s what he said. Told me he probably would’ve married one of them, if he hadn’t’ve known about me.”
“Aw, he’s just flabbergasted. Just knocked for a loop, like I was. You’re not responsible for him wearing out half the women from there to Mankato.”
“Wellsir. I mean to say, once secrets start coming out, they’re hard to stop.”
“I hear you.” Though Kit had to wonder about his new equanimity. Tonight, after all, he might simply be too hammered to care.
“Uncle Pete,” he said, “what Les said, that just shows what this took, for you. This took courage.”
But that wasn’t what the uncle was getting at. “I mean to say, there’s evil in it.”
Evil? The word didn’t fit the man’s conversational style. He knew it, too: “Your mother now, she’s the one who can tell you about evil. She can give you chapter and verse.
“But I can see what’s the evil here,” Pete went on, more seriously. “I know this brand of evil, here. It’s too many secrets in one place.”
Another silence, on both ends.
“Too many secrets,” Pete said, “it makes people act up.”
“I hear you,” Kit said.
“That’s the evil. All these secrets packed in close. Makes people just about jump out of their skins.”
Which felt like enough for one phone call. Kit changed his tone, murmuring the kind of encouragement he’d brought up earlier for Louie-Louie. Uncle Pete I think you’ve got something there. Uncle Pete that’s great you’re still learning from this. Honest encouragement, but they’d both had enough. The uncle declared, out of nowhere, that he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Besides, in the outer office Louie-Louie looked like he was going to start climbing the walls. And yet, as Kit went his final congratulations, his promises to call (“Pete, you know I’m good about that”), he suffered less comfortable thoughts. He suffered memories.
Impressions of sharing a house with this man had lain for years under a cover of dust. Tonight however — with this talk of evil and secrets — Pete had blasted pockets of sudden clarity. Kit recalled his uncle’s mysterious long weekends in Minneapolis-St. Paul, “meeting beef reps” way out of season. He remembered that once or twice as a teenager, he’d been alone with Pete, alone with his shirt off on a hot vacation day, and the uncle had startled him with a long, slow, full-hand stroke down his naked back to his belt line. And during the last rounds of labor trouble up in the Mesabi ore fields, the man had taken the family’s Leftie sympathies to extremes Kit had never seen. Pete had started screaming about what the miners were going through. He’d whaled against the fireplace wall with a heavy-headed poker, bending the’ thing almost at a right angle.