Tommy is gone.
It was a barbed thought, a crown of thorns laced around the inside of his skull. Every time he tried to touch the idea, it hurt, and he could feel himself tearing inside. It was the mental equivalent of trying to swallow with his torn throat.
Some part of him was being ripped to shreds--maybe the part that believed the world made any kind of sense.
One half of him knew the truth: that Tommy Baird, the man he loved, had gotten up off the examination table, laughed in his face, and left him here to die.
The other side of him knew another truth: that the man who walked out that door was no more Tommy Baird than the Man in the Moon. He was someone else entirely, looking out of Tommy’s eyes, talking out of Tommy’s mouth, and joy-riding in Tommy Baird’s beautiful body like a thief in a stolen car.
James clenched his fists and rotated his feet in their cuffs, listening to the clink of the chains that secured his ankles and wrists to the table. He could keep working them, but the odds of breaking free of medical restraints were low. They were designed to hold violent patients in place for many hours.
Tommy—or whoever it was passing for Tommy—had left him alone. That would normally be a foolish thing to do, if a person could scream and call for help. But he felt a cold certainty that his power of speech was gone for a reason. They had done something to him, while he was unconscious.
Will I ever be able to speak again?
No. Not a good thought. Think something else.
As it stood, he was likely to remain alone down in this basement until Tommy (Ezekiel… his name was Ezekiel) came back.
Alone except for the rats.
And the old man in the wheelchair.
Speaking of the old man…was he still breathing?
James tried to be still, to slow down his own shaking breath, to quiet the heartbeat that pounded like thunder in his ears. The wheelchair should be off to his right, next to the table where Tommy was strapped down. Was it still there?
Had he heard the creak of a wheel? A wheeze of labored breath?
Something soft, wet and cold touched his hand in the dark, and he jerked away, moving so fast and hard that the chain rang against the table like a bell. He began thrashing and fighting with all his might, hoping to frighten away whatever had come nosing around looking for a mouthful of meat.
“James.” The sound was like a rusty hinge. “Be still, hon. I’ll try to get you loose.”
Tears once again flooded his eyes. “Tom.” The instrument was wrong, weak and reedy, but there was no mistaking the music. He would know that voice anywhere.
“I’m here.” James heard the trembling hiss and felt the cold wet touch again, this time on his wrist. Chilly fingers fumbled with the buckles of his cuff. “Try not to move. These hands don’t work so good.”
“How…?” His questions swarmed up into his mouth, all of them too crazy to ask. Finally he settled on, “How did this happen…?”
“I can’t explain what he does, James. He’s always done it.” The shaking hands finally seemed to conquer one buckle. They crawled on, reaching for the next one. “There’s a trick to it—some of him has to be inside you. I saw him take a man once by spitting in his eye. That wasn’t the way he took my father, though. Or my mother. Or me.”
James swallowed hard, grimacing as he did. “Your father…?”
The fingers shook as they worked, cold and clumsy. “Yes. After the War. I told you once that he shot himself… I didn’t tell you why.” The tongue of the buckle resisted, and Tommy cursed it quietly.
“What happened to him?”
“There was a lynching, down in Hendersonville.” The hands went still for a moment, then back to work more slowly. “My Daddy didn’t hold with the Klan, especially after he come back from France, but someone slipped an envelope under the door of his office in town. It was a picture of the necktie party, with the two black boys hanging from a pole. And somehow my father was there in the photograph, standing in the front row looking right at the camera with a big ol’ grin on his face.” A deep breath. “I found him in the parlor that night, just sitting with that picture in his lap and crying.” Another moment of silence, broken only by the whistle of bad lungs. “The next day he drove over to my Uncle Ezekiel’s house and rang his door bell. When the old man answered the door, he blew his brains out right then and there.”
The second buckle gave way, and James felt the cuff on his wrist relax.
“I wish I had done the same,” Tommy said quietly. “I wish you had never met me, James.”
James wriggled out of the cuff, flexing his free hand…and then reached toward the hand that freed him. It was a gnarled, elderly claw, every joint a swollen and misshapen knob of bone. The owner of that hand could only be in constant pain—he had seen rheumatoid arthritis before.
The hand pulled away from him after a moment, trembling, and he heard a strangled hitch of breath. “I’m sorry…” The squeaky old hinge wheezed laughter. “I’m afraid I’m not myself right now.”
James reached up to the strap across his forehead. His own fingers were still nimble and swift, and he was almost free by the time Tommy could roll the chair across the room and find the light switch.
“Cover your eyes, hon.”
James lowered his head and closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. He was in a room with a floor of stained tile, sitting on a high table of cold steel. There were glass fronted cabinets and trays of instruments along the wall. A room for the preparation of bodies.
He put a shaking hand to his throat, found the bandage and gauze that covered it. He took a deep breath and slid off the table carefully, extending his foot to catch himself—it was a long drop to the floor.
He crept to the door, holding his genitals cupped in a protective hand. Outside there was a wide silent hall, leading to an old-fashioned Otis freight elevator. The room next door was a wood-paneled office, lit with banker’s lamps of brass and green glass. Through the open door he could see the bent figure in the wheelchair.
“Tommy?” He put a hand to his throat and winced, moving into the room.
The figure in the chair cringed lower, and did not face him. “Just trying to find your clothes. He’ll have them in a gunny sack somewhere. Ready to dress you again, if need be. Or to throw into the furnace, if…”
He didn’t seem able to finish the thought. Instead he put his hands to the wheels and struggled forward a few more inches. “Soon as we find your clothes, you can slip out the old coal chute in the back. If you listen for the sound of water you’ll find Smith Mill Creek. And if you follow the stream downhill, it’ll take you all the way to the French Broad River. The black folks live around Burton Street. I reckon you’ll know it when you see it.”
He would have continued rolling toward the wardrobe in the corner, but James stepped up around the chair, planted his hands on the armrests to stop it, and crouched low to look directly into his lover’s eyes.
The man in the chair was not just old. He was ancient. James looked him up and down slowly. The ruined head was resting atop a scrawny chicken neck, all bone and wattled folds of leather. The starved frame was only loosely dressed, a thin robe belted at the waist and open to reveal slotted ribs and a shrunken belly. The skin was scaly grey and sick, covered with vivid purple spots and red, raw sores.
He looked up into blue eyes milky with cataracts, and saw Tommy Baird looking back at him.
“I used to love the way you looked at me,” the old man said. “Like I was everything good in the world.” He raised his gnarled hands to cover his face, bending his head to avoid his lover’s gaze. “I did wonder sometimes…‘Could he keep looking at me like that? When I’m old and grey?’” The chest hitched with something like laughter or tears. “Could anyone look at me like that forever?” He sucked in a hissing breath. “I guess now I know.”