Word fic
Word fic: Transistor
Fandom: Donald Strachey Mysteries - bookverse
Rating: PG-13, mostly for pottymouth and a bit of sex.
Warning: Terrible personal crisis for an original character.
Disclaimer: Don, Tim and Maureen belong to Richard Stevenson.
A/N: I started this word fic way back in May, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. It took nyteflyer to pinpoint the problem - and that was its lack of a point. Of course, the story grew to more than ficlet size. I've included a video at the end. It's funny in and of itself, but try to picture Don singing that song. And for anyone who has forgotten my system, I choose random words from the dictionary and write fics from them.
transistor
Timmy hung up the phone the second I walked into the apartment.
“Don’t mind me,” I said, pulling off my jacket and tossing it on a chair. “I’m just the plumber.”
“That was Maureen.” Timmy looked askance at my jacket. “They’re cleaning out the attic.”
I flopped into the chair and kicked off my shoes. “Sounds like a momentous occasion. Shall I break out the Champale?”
Timmy yanked my jacket out from under me and hung it up in our tiny hall closet. He ignored my shoes and took a seat in the chair opposite mine.
“It is momentous,” he said. “And if I don’t get over there, she’ll throw out all my stuff.”
I looked around the apartment. Timmy had plenty of stuff. “So what?”
“So I want my stuff. I want my past.”
“We’ve got a lot of stuff already. And the past is past. It’s done, over with.”
Timmy cleared his throat. I sighed internally, too tired to counter the forthcoming dose of Catholic guilt.
“Remember when Brigit was going to throw out books you’d spent twenty-two years accumulating?”
Paybacks were a bitch. “Yes.”
“You’ll recall that I helped you move those books, half of them twice.”
“I recall.”
“I should think you’d be glad to return the favor.”
I closed my eyes. “Of course, Timmy. I’d love nothing better than to help you sort through and move your Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. Not to mention your Erector Set.”
Timmy kicked my foot. “We’re not talking about toys. All that stuff went to charity years ago.”
“So what are we talking? Altar boy vestments? Muscle magazines?”
“Just some stuff I had Maureen store before I settled down here in Albany.” He examined his immaculate fingernails. “Before I met you.”
I sat up. “Before you met me? You mean you were actually alive and accumulating stuff before you met me?”
Timmy grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. I wanted to jump him right then and there.
“I had a rich and fulfilling life before I met you,” he said. “What with the Peace Corps and all, I did a lot of moving around. You know how it was. You were a wanderer yourself.”
I didn’t often burst into song, not being the bursting type, but I couldn’t let that one pass. Timmy clamped his hands over his ears; he knew what was coming.
“Oh well, there's Joe on my left arm
And there's Jerry on the right,
And Benny is the boy well that
I'll be with tonight,
And when he asks me
Which one I love the best,
I tear open my shirt and
There's Bosie on my chest,
Cause I’m a a wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around, around, around, around.”
“Are you done?” Timmy cautiously uncovered his ears. “My God, you’ll get us evicted.”
“Then we’ll have to be really, really quiet,” I said, leaping out of my chair and into his lap. He grunted in surprise and maybe a little pain, but that didn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around me and kissing me senseless. One thing led to another, and we were on the floor, casting aside clothing and inhibitions and making love like a couple of teenagers desperate to finish before somebody’s mother walked in on them.
****
“So you’ll help me collect my past?” Timmy rolled onto his stomach. “It wouldn’t take long.”
I skimmed my palm over the curves of his bare ass, making him shiver. “Sure, I’ll help you. Even if you don’t have an Erector Set.”
He leaned over and kissed me. “I don’t need an Erector Set.”
“Not yet, anyway.” I got to my feet, groaning when my knees and right hip cracked at the same time. I gave Timmy a hand up. He groaned, too, and I felt a little better about getting older.
****
We drove to Maureen’s the next Saturday. It was a nice fall day, perfect for cavorting outdoors in a secluded apple orchard, but we were going to spend it in a musty attic. Such is life. But I told myself there probably wasn’t much to sort through and even less to bring home. Timmy really wasn’t one to keep things for no reason, and I couldn’t think of very many reasons to keep warped 45s and ragged Georgetown sweatshirts.
Maureen greeted us in her usual brisk manner, berating Timothy for making her hold onto his junk for so many years. “This isn’t Lourdes, you know. If you need a shrine to your colorful past, have Don make you one.”
She led us up two flights of stairs to the attic. “I’ve had two garage sales already,” she said as she opened the door. “I can’t believe the crap people will buy.”
She ushered us inside a room that stretched the length of the house. Since it was a house of considerable size, the attic was, too. About half of it was empty, but the other half still contained sagging boxes of clothing, piles of old toys, garden implements, broken chairs, Christmas ornaments and bundles of magazines, along with other family detritus.
“This place is a fire hazard,” Maureen said leading the way toward a neat pile of boxes. “Everybody and their brother had stuff stored up here.” She punched Timothy’s arm. “You aren’t the only one I threatened with a fire sale.”
She pointed at boxes labeled “Tim” and left us to it. I started counting. There were fifteen boxes in all, and they appeared to contain more stuff than he had in our entire apartment.
“I thought you said there wasn’t much.”
Timmy shrugged. “This isn’t much.”
“It’s much. It’s much more than will fit in the car.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not keeping all of it. I’ll keep some things, throw out some things and let Maureen sell the rest.” He opened the first box and pulled out a pair of rusty roller skates. “I’ll bet someone will want these.”
It was going to be a long day.
After four hours of sorting we managed to get through half the boxes. I’d persuaded Timmy to junk his pale blue leisure suits, an assortment of board games with half the pieces missing, outdated textbooks and a stack of magazines he’d meant to read before he went to India. In return, he was allowed to keep several novels I wanted to read, a bird feeder his grandfather had made, his yearbooks, graduation memorabilia, a stuffed bear, ceramic Christmas tree complete with plastic tree lights and a round red transistor radio.
Timmy wiped his sweaty brow and looked longingly out the attic window. Maureen had opened it before she went downstairs, and the smell of autumn was thick in the air. I put my arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
“Let’s just get it done so we can go home.”
He sighed, returned to his stack of boxes and opened one of them. “This one’s all clothes. It shouldn’t take long.”
He pulled out a striped purple vest and held it up for inspection. “Did I actually wear this?”
The box also yielded a pair of matching bell-bottom pants. “Hey, if I borrowed Bowman’s nightstick we could play ‘good cop, bad hippie.’ ” I held the pants up to him. “Looks like they’d still fit.”
Timmy dipped into the box and found a purple leather hat. “Good God. I can’t believe I wore these for even one second.”
“Neither can I.” I pawed through the box, unearthing more outlandish clothing. “Sell this stuff to high school kids. They’ll go nuts over it.”
“Maureen can do that,” he said. He sat down on an old footstool and huffed out an impatient breath. “I’m sick of this. Let’s just quit. The rest is probably junk anyway.” He picked up a yearbook. “What am I supposed to do with this stuff? Display it for company? Ruminate on it in my old age? No thanks.”
“Maybe you should look through the boxes, just in case. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
He made a disgruntled noise and got back up. “I’m going downstairs for something to drink. I’ll bring you a Coke.”
I would have liked to go downstairs myself, through Maureen’s front door and out to the car. Then I would have liked to drive Timmy to some secluded orchard where I could spend some time polishing his apples. Oh, well.
I opened another box and started dragging clothes out of it. Mixed in with a couple of old sweatshirts and a pair of faded jeans was an old varsity jacket. Dark blue with orange trim around the wrists and collar, the thing weighed a ton, and that was entirely related to the massive number of medals pinned on both the right and left fronts.
Football, track, baseball and basketball. Judging by the number of pins, whoever this jacket belonged to was a four-year varsity player in all the major sports. That person could not have been Tim. He couldn’t even throw a softball without hurting himself. I turned the jacket around to look for a name or at least a school.
“Williams,” I read aloud. “Frenchtown High School.”
The attic floor creaked. I turned to see Timmy standing beside me, holding two Cokes. He set them on top of a box and reached for the jacket.
“I haven’t seen this in years.” He held it against his body, as if checking to see if it might still fit. The medals jingled together and then lay still.
“Who’s Williams?” Not that I was jealous. I was just curious, what with being a private investigator and all. I’d run track my senior year, but by the time my medal was awarded, it was too late to buy a varsity jacket. Such is life.
“Ben,” Timmy said. “Benjamin Williams.”
I sat down on Timmy’s vacated footstool. “Why do you have his varsity jacket?”
Timmy looked out the window, clutching the jacket to his chest. He didn’t say anything for a while, and I didn’t push him.
“Benny Williams. That’s what I called him. Benny. Nobody else called him that.” He turned to face me. “He was at Georgetown with me - I met him second semester.”
“Boyfriend?”
Timmy shrugged. “Nothing like that. After Skeeter, I was just trying to get by and not think about who I really was. I decided to concentrate on my classes, but meeting Benny shot that plan to hell.”
Timmy pulled up a box and sat down, cradling the jacket in his lap. He fingered the medals, only looking up at me when I cleared my throat.
“You want to know about Benny?”
“Sure.”
“Benny Williams was a jock,” Timmy said. He looked wistful for a second. “The kind of guy who would never have made friends with someone like me. You know the type - good-looking, no shortage of friends or women.”
I could hear a trace of the kid Timmy used to be, gawky and shy, terrified of his proclivities and unsure of his place in the world. He’d eventually found his place, and I was absurdly grateful and proud that he allowed me to share it with him.
“Anyway, we had the same algebra class. I’d qualified for the advanced class, so I was with a bunch of upperclassmen. They were all like me, bookish types. So I was really surprised to see him walk through the door.” He smiled suddenly. “I must have been quite a snob.”
“You still are.”
Timmy nodded; it was one of his shortcomings but an easy one to forgive.
“Turns out he was smart. Very smart. I ended up needing help with the course, so the professor set him up to tutor me. The upperclassmen usually did the tutoring, but the prof thought I’d be more comfortable with someone my own age.”
“He obviously didn’t understand the whole jock/bookish-type thing.” I imagined a tall, gangling Timmy taking math instruction from a beefy football player. They would have made an odd pair.
“One day, the math lab was closed, and I really needed help with one of my assignments. Benny suggested we use the common room in my dorm.” Timmy rubbed one of the medals between his thumb and forefinger. “There was a meeting going on in the common room, so we ended up in my room. My roommate was on his way out, so we had the place to ourselves.”
Timmy’s voice caught for the barest of seconds, but then he continued his story.
“We studied for a while, but then we started talking. He told me about football and how he’d rather have played basketball, but his scholarship didn’t call for that. He wanted to major in pre-med, but his father wanted him to be a lawyer, so he didn’t know what he was going to do.” Timmy smiled. “He wanted to know about me, too. So I told him about my family and how I had no idea what I wanted to be.”
His chin wobbled for just an instant. “He told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and then he kissed me. Really kissed me.
“I was scared to death, Don. Here I was, sitting with a guy who could have pulverized me without breaking a sweat. I thought for sure he was just experimenting, using me to figure out whatever the hell it was he had to figure out. Why he thought he could kiss me and get away with it, I’ll never know.”
I knew. Sometimes Timmy was a little obvious. But not much and not very often. I pulled my footstool over so I was sitting beside him. “What happened after that?”
“The oddest thing.” Timmy shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “He took a green pen from his bookbag and drew a little shamrock on his palm. Then he drew one on mine.
“It was our sign, Don. He drew a fresh one on each of our palms every time he came over to my room. I never wanted to wash my hand.”
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. I put my arm around his shoulders and got ready for the bad part.
“One Saturday night, Benny came to my door. My roommate had gone home for the weekend, so it was OK to let him in. Benny had been drinking, but he seemed all right. In retrospect, I should have known something was wrong.”
“You were a kid.”
“I know.” He fiddled with an All-State track medal. “We were on the bed together, just kissing and stuff, when he finally touched me. I thought I was going to come in my pants.
“He wanted to make love. That’s what he said, ‘make love.’ But he didn’t know what to do.”
I touched the back his neck. The muscles there were like ropes. “But you did.”
He nodded. “We got our clothes off, and I got on top of him. We frotted ourselves stupid for about a minute, then we were both coming. Benny was making these little noises in the back of his throat, like he was trying to keep himself quiet. But he was really trying not to cry.”
Timmy’s blue eyes welled with tears. “Afterward, we just held each other. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew it was morning and he was gone. I couldn’t figure out why I was so hot, but then I realized he’d covered me with this jacket.”
Timmy wiped his face on one of the sleeves. “I thought he’d be back. He’d have to get his jacket; he was so proud of it. I felt good that he trusted me to take care of it. It meant that I meant something to him. So I hung it in my closet so it wouldn’t get wrinkled and so my roommate wouldn’t see it.
“But he didn’t come back.”
Shit. I knew what had happened. That kind of thing still happened, too damned often. But I didn’t say anything. It was a universal story, but this time it was Timmy’s story to tell.
“He’d told me once that his roommate had to take sleeping pills in order to settle down at night. I didn’t think anything of it at the time; a lot of students took pills for one reason or another. I never thought …
“A few hours after I got up, I heard a bunch of yelling going on in the hallway. I opened the door just in time for my roommate to come charging in. He closed the door and made me sit down.” Timmy paused. “Then he told me.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, carefully. “Benny’s roommate found him. He tried to wake Benny up, but it was no use. He’d overdosed on the sleeping pills.” Timmy looked at me, his eyes large and blue and sad. “But you know what else?”
“What?”
“My roommate said Benny had a huge, green shamrock drawn on the back of his hand. Not on his palm, where he could hide it. On the back of his hand, where everyone could see it.”
I held Timmy for a long time in that warm, stuffy attic. We didn’t say anything, but as it often was with us, there was no need for words. After a while, Timmy sat up, still holding tightly to Benny Williams’ varsity jacket.
“I had no idea what to do with the jacket,” he said. “Nobody knew where it went, and I couldn’t think of a way to get it back to his family. So I held onto it. I hid it in the back of my closet and the first chance I got, I took it home. I stuck in the attic with some cedar so moths wouldn’t eat it, and it stayed there until I joined the Peace Corps. Maureen said I could store my things here instead of at our parents’ house, just in case Mom got a wild hair and decided to junk everything, so I took her up on it. It’s been here ever since.”
I thought for a minute. “Maybe Benny meant for you to keep the jacket. He knew it would be safe with you.”
“He would have been safe with me,” Timmy said. “Of all people, I knew how hard it was to be gay. I would have looked out for him. I never would have given him away. I loved him, Don.”
“I know.”
We both knew why Benny had done what he did. Athletes weren’t supposed to be gay. They were tough, strong and fucked every woman in sight. They did not fall in love with guys like Timmy. And Benny had loved him. Leaving him that jacket spoke louder than words ever could.
Timmy stood up, still holding the coat. “I don’t care what’s in those boxes. Let’s get rid of it. All of it.”
I found an empty box and held it out to him. “Not all of it.”
Timmy gave me a smile, the kind that made my heart beat a little faster. He folded the jacket and placed it in the box, then took it from me and added the things we’d set aside hours ago. His red transistor radio went in last.
I looked at his pile of junk. “What do you want to do with all of it?”
“Maureen can take it to Goodwill.”
He started for the stairs, the box in his arms, but I called him back. “You’re nuts if you think Maureen’s going to let us waltz off with nothing more than one little box. What about the rest of this stuff?”
His shoulders sagged. “We’ll have to load it in Maureen’s truck.”
“And pay your nephew to haul it off.”
“He won’t do it out of the goodness of his heart?”
“He’s sixteen. Of course not.”
Timmy and I toted fifteen boxes downstairs. Maureen ranted for a while about storing stuff she could have set fire to years ago, but she didn’t object to Timmy’s decision. Timmy gave Kevin ten bucks to haul the junk to Goodwill, but he asked permission to look through it first.
“Stuff from the sixties is popular. I could make a lot of money from your goofy old clothes.” He smiled, and for a second he looked like a sixteen-year-old Timmy. “I’ll take it over to my girlfriend’s house. We’ll sort it over there.”
Timmy granted his permission, and we both watched as he drove down the road. I half expected Timmy to take off after him, but he didn’t. He stood there, his one and only box of treasure in his arms, looking twenty mental pounds lighter.
“There goes your past,” I said as Kevin disappeared from sight. “Feel better?”
“Much.”
“Now what?”
Timmy dangled his red radio by its chain. “Let’s get a battery so we can listen to it on the way home.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and walked him to the car. “Anything in particular?”
“I think Georgetown’s playing this afternoon.”
****
Timmy's red radio
The Wanderer, by Dion. I really can picture book Don singing this, with appropriate name changes, of course.
Fandom: Donald Strachey Mysteries - bookverse
Rating: PG-13, mostly for pottymouth and a bit of sex.
Warning: Terrible personal crisis for an original character.
Disclaimer: Don, Tim and Maureen belong to Richard Stevenson.
A/N: I started this word fic way back in May, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. It took nyteflyer to pinpoint the problem - and that was its lack of a point. Of course, the story grew to more than ficlet size. I've included a video at the end. It's funny in and of itself, but try to picture Don singing that song. And for anyone who has forgotten my system, I choose random words from the dictionary and write fics from them.
transistor
Timmy hung up the phone the second I walked into the apartment.
“Don’t mind me,” I said, pulling off my jacket and tossing it on a chair. “I’m just the plumber.”
“That was Maureen.” Timmy looked askance at my jacket. “They’re cleaning out the attic.”
I flopped into the chair and kicked off my shoes. “Sounds like a momentous occasion. Shall I break out the Champale?”
Timmy yanked my jacket out from under me and hung it up in our tiny hall closet. He ignored my shoes and took a seat in the chair opposite mine.
“It is momentous,” he said. “And if I don’t get over there, she’ll throw out all my stuff.”
I looked around the apartment. Timmy had plenty of stuff. “So what?”
“So I want my stuff. I want my past.”
“We’ve got a lot of stuff already. And the past is past. It’s done, over with.”
Timmy cleared his throat. I sighed internally, too tired to counter the forthcoming dose of Catholic guilt.
“Remember when Brigit was going to throw out books you’d spent twenty-two years accumulating?”
Paybacks were a bitch. “Yes.”
“You’ll recall that I helped you move those books, half of them twice.”
“I recall.”
“I should think you’d be glad to return the favor.”
I closed my eyes. “Of course, Timmy. I’d love nothing better than to help you sort through and move your Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. Not to mention your Erector Set.”
Timmy kicked my foot. “We’re not talking about toys. All that stuff went to charity years ago.”
“So what are we talking? Altar boy vestments? Muscle magazines?”
“Just some stuff I had Maureen store before I settled down here in Albany.” He examined his immaculate fingernails. “Before I met you.”
I sat up. “Before you met me? You mean you were actually alive and accumulating stuff before you met me?”
Timmy grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. I wanted to jump him right then and there.
“I had a rich and fulfilling life before I met you,” he said. “What with the Peace Corps and all, I did a lot of moving around. You know how it was. You were a wanderer yourself.”
I didn’t often burst into song, not being the bursting type, but I couldn’t let that one pass. Timmy clamped his hands over his ears; he knew what was coming.
“Oh well, there's Joe on my left arm
And there's Jerry on the right,
And Benny is the boy well that
I'll be with tonight,
And when he asks me
Which one I love the best,
I tear open my shirt and
There's Bosie on my chest,
Cause I’m a a wanderer
Yeah, the wanderer
I roam around, around, around, around.”
“Are you done?” Timmy cautiously uncovered his ears. “My God, you’ll get us evicted.”
“Then we’ll have to be really, really quiet,” I said, leaping out of my chair and into his lap. He grunted in surprise and maybe a little pain, but that didn’t stop him from wrapping his arms around me and kissing me senseless. One thing led to another, and we were on the floor, casting aside clothing and inhibitions and making love like a couple of teenagers desperate to finish before somebody’s mother walked in on them.
****
“So you’ll help me collect my past?” Timmy rolled onto his stomach. “It wouldn’t take long.”
I skimmed my palm over the curves of his bare ass, making him shiver. “Sure, I’ll help you. Even if you don’t have an Erector Set.”
He leaned over and kissed me. “I don’t need an Erector Set.”
“Not yet, anyway.” I got to my feet, groaning when my knees and right hip cracked at the same time. I gave Timmy a hand up. He groaned, too, and I felt a little better about getting older.
****
We drove to Maureen’s the next Saturday. It was a nice fall day, perfect for cavorting outdoors in a secluded apple orchard, but we were going to spend it in a musty attic. Such is life. But I told myself there probably wasn’t much to sort through and even less to bring home. Timmy really wasn’t one to keep things for no reason, and I couldn’t think of very many reasons to keep warped 45s and ragged Georgetown sweatshirts.
Maureen greeted us in her usual brisk manner, berating Timothy for making her hold onto his junk for so many years. “This isn’t Lourdes, you know. If you need a shrine to your colorful past, have Don make you one.”
She led us up two flights of stairs to the attic. “I’ve had two garage sales already,” she said as she opened the door. “I can’t believe the crap people will buy.”
She ushered us inside a room that stretched the length of the house. Since it was a house of considerable size, the attic was, too. About half of it was empty, but the other half still contained sagging boxes of clothing, piles of old toys, garden implements, broken chairs, Christmas ornaments and bundles of magazines, along with other family detritus.
“This place is a fire hazard,” Maureen said leading the way toward a neat pile of boxes. “Everybody and their brother had stuff stored up here.” She punched Timothy’s arm. “You aren’t the only one I threatened with a fire sale.”
She pointed at boxes labeled “Tim” and left us to it. I started counting. There were fifteen boxes in all, and they appeared to contain more stuff than he had in our entire apartment.
“I thought you said there wasn’t much.”
Timmy shrugged. “This isn’t much.”
“It’s much. It’s much more than will fit in the car.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not keeping all of it. I’ll keep some things, throw out some things and let Maureen sell the rest.” He opened the first box and pulled out a pair of rusty roller skates. “I’ll bet someone will want these.”
It was going to be a long day.
After four hours of sorting we managed to get through half the boxes. I’d persuaded Timmy to junk his pale blue leisure suits, an assortment of board games with half the pieces missing, outdated textbooks and a stack of magazines he’d meant to read before he went to India. In return, he was allowed to keep several novels I wanted to read, a bird feeder his grandfather had made, his yearbooks, graduation memorabilia, a stuffed bear, ceramic Christmas tree complete with plastic tree lights and a round red transistor radio.
Timmy wiped his sweaty brow and looked longingly out the attic window. Maureen had opened it before she went downstairs, and the smell of autumn was thick in the air. I put my arm around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
“Let’s just get it done so we can go home.”
He sighed, returned to his stack of boxes and opened one of them. “This one’s all clothes. It shouldn’t take long.”
He pulled out a striped purple vest and held it up for inspection. “Did I actually wear this?”
The box also yielded a pair of matching bell-bottom pants. “Hey, if I borrowed Bowman’s nightstick we could play ‘good cop, bad hippie.’ ” I held the pants up to him. “Looks like they’d still fit.”
Timmy dipped into the box and found a purple leather hat. “Good God. I can’t believe I wore these for even one second.”
“Neither can I.” I pawed through the box, unearthing more outlandish clothing. “Sell this stuff to high school kids. They’ll go nuts over it.”
“Maureen can do that,” he said. He sat down on an old footstool and huffed out an impatient breath. “I’m sick of this. Let’s just quit. The rest is probably junk anyway.” He picked up a yearbook. “What am I supposed to do with this stuff? Display it for company? Ruminate on it in my old age? No thanks.”
“Maybe you should look through the boxes, just in case. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
He made a disgruntled noise and got back up. “I’m going downstairs for something to drink. I’ll bring you a Coke.”
I would have liked to go downstairs myself, through Maureen’s front door and out to the car. Then I would have liked to drive Timmy to some secluded orchard where I could spend some time polishing his apples. Oh, well.
I opened another box and started dragging clothes out of it. Mixed in with a couple of old sweatshirts and a pair of faded jeans was an old varsity jacket. Dark blue with orange trim around the wrists and collar, the thing weighed a ton, and that was entirely related to the massive number of medals pinned on both the right and left fronts.
Football, track, baseball and basketball. Judging by the number of pins, whoever this jacket belonged to was a four-year varsity player in all the major sports. That person could not have been Tim. He couldn’t even throw a softball without hurting himself. I turned the jacket around to look for a name or at least a school.
“Williams,” I read aloud. “Frenchtown High School.”
The attic floor creaked. I turned to see Timmy standing beside me, holding two Cokes. He set them on top of a box and reached for the jacket.
“I haven’t seen this in years.” He held it against his body, as if checking to see if it might still fit. The medals jingled together and then lay still.
“Who’s Williams?” Not that I was jealous. I was just curious, what with being a private investigator and all. I’d run track my senior year, but by the time my medal was awarded, it was too late to buy a varsity jacket. Such is life.
“Ben,” Timmy said. “Benjamin Williams.”
I sat down on Timmy’s vacated footstool. “Why do you have his varsity jacket?”
Timmy looked out the window, clutching the jacket to his chest. He didn’t say anything for a while, and I didn’t push him.
“Benny Williams. That’s what I called him. Benny. Nobody else called him that.” He turned to face me. “He was at Georgetown with me - I met him second semester.”
“Boyfriend?”
Timmy shrugged. “Nothing like that. After Skeeter, I was just trying to get by and not think about who I really was. I decided to concentrate on my classes, but meeting Benny shot that plan to hell.”
Timmy pulled up a box and sat down, cradling the jacket in his lap. He fingered the medals, only looking up at me when I cleared my throat.
“You want to know about Benny?”
“Sure.”
“Benny Williams was a jock,” Timmy said. He looked wistful for a second. “The kind of guy who would never have made friends with someone like me. You know the type - good-looking, no shortage of friends or women.”
I could hear a trace of the kid Timmy used to be, gawky and shy, terrified of his proclivities and unsure of his place in the world. He’d eventually found his place, and I was absurdly grateful and proud that he allowed me to share it with him.
“Anyway, we had the same algebra class. I’d qualified for the advanced class, so I was with a bunch of upperclassmen. They were all like me, bookish types. So I was really surprised to see him walk through the door.” He smiled suddenly. “I must have been quite a snob.”
“You still are.”
Timmy nodded; it was one of his shortcomings but an easy one to forgive.
“Turns out he was smart. Very smart. I ended up needing help with the course, so the professor set him up to tutor me. The upperclassmen usually did the tutoring, but the prof thought I’d be more comfortable with someone my own age.”
“He obviously didn’t understand the whole jock/bookish-type thing.” I imagined a tall, gangling Timmy taking math instruction from a beefy football player. They would have made an odd pair.
“One day, the math lab was closed, and I really needed help with one of my assignments. Benny suggested we use the common room in my dorm.” Timmy rubbed one of the medals between his thumb and forefinger. “There was a meeting going on in the common room, so we ended up in my room. My roommate was on his way out, so we had the place to ourselves.”
Timmy’s voice caught for the barest of seconds, but then he continued his story.
“We studied for a while, but then we started talking. He told me about football and how he’d rather have played basketball, but his scholarship didn’t call for that. He wanted to major in pre-med, but his father wanted him to be a lawyer, so he didn’t know what he was going to do.” Timmy smiled. “He wanted to know about me, too. So I told him about my family and how I had no idea what I wanted to be.”
His chin wobbled for just an instant. “He told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and then he kissed me. Really kissed me.
“I was scared to death, Don. Here I was, sitting with a guy who could have pulverized me without breaking a sweat. I thought for sure he was just experimenting, using me to figure out whatever the hell it was he had to figure out. Why he thought he could kiss me and get away with it, I’ll never know.”
I knew. Sometimes Timmy was a little obvious. But not much and not very often. I pulled my footstool over so I was sitting beside him. “What happened after that?”
“The oddest thing.” Timmy shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “He took a green pen from his bookbag and drew a little shamrock on his palm. Then he drew one on mine.
“It was our sign, Don. He drew a fresh one on each of our palms every time he came over to my room. I never wanted to wash my hand.”
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. I put my arm around his shoulders and got ready for the bad part.
“One Saturday night, Benny came to my door. My roommate had gone home for the weekend, so it was OK to let him in. Benny had been drinking, but he seemed all right. In retrospect, I should have known something was wrong.”
“You were a kid.”
“I know.” He fiddled with an All-State track medal. “We were on the bed together, just kissing and stuff, when he finally touched me. I thought I was going to come in my pants.
“He wanted to make love. That’s what he said, ‘make love.’ But he didn’t know what to do.”
I touched the back his neck. The muscles there were like ropes. “But you did.”
He nodded. “We got our clothes off, and I got on top of him. We frotted ourselves stupid for about a minute, then we were both coming. Benny was making these little noises in the back of his throat, like he was trying to keep himself quiet. But he was really trying not to cry.”
Timmy’s blue eyes welled with tears. “Afterward, we just held each other. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew it was morning and he was gone. I couldn’t figure out why I was so hot, but then I realized he’d covered me with this jacket.”
Timmy wiped his face on one of the sleeves. “I thought he’d be back. He’d have to get his jacket; he was so proud of it. I felt good that he trusted me to take care of it. It meant that I meant something to him. So I hung it in my closet so it wouldn’t get wrinkled and so my roommate wouldn’t see it.
“But he didn’t come back.”
Shit. I knew what had happened. That kind of thing still happened, too damned often. But I didn’t say anything. It was a universal story, but this time it was Timmy’s story to tell.
“He’d told me once that his roommate had to take sleeping pills in order to settle down at night. I didn’t think anything of it at the time; a lot of students took pills for one reason or another. I never thought …
“A few hours after I got up, I heard a bunch of yelling going on in the hallway. I opened the door just in time for my roommate to come charging in. He closed the door and made me sit down.” Timmy paused. “Then he told me.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, carefully. “Benny’s roommate found him. He tried to wake Benny up, but it was no use. He’d overdosed on the sleeping pills.” Timmy looked at me, his eyes large and blue and sad. “But you know what else?”
“What?”
“My roommate said Benny had a huge, green shamrock drawn on the back of his hand. Not on his palm, where he could hide it. On the back of his hand, where everyone could see it.”
I held Timmy for a long time in that warm, stuffy attic. We didn’t say anything, but as it often was with us, there was no need for words. After a while, Timmy sat up, still holding tightly to Benny Williams’ varsity jacket.
“I had no idea what to do with the jacket,” he said. “Nobody knew where it went, and I couldn’t think of a way to get it back to his family. So I held onto it. I hid it in the back of my closet and the first chance I got, I took it home. I stuck in the attic with some cedar so moths wouldn’t eat it, and it stayed there until I joined the Peace Corps. Maureen said I could store my things here instead of at our parents’ house, just in case Mom got a wild hair and decided to junk everything, so I took her up on it. It’s been here ever since.”
I thought for a minute. “Maybe Benny meant for you to keep the jacket. He knew it would be safe with you.”
“He would have been safe with me,” Timmy said. “Of all people, I knew how hard it was to be gay. I would have looked out for him. I never would have given him away. I loved him, Don.”
“I know.”
We both knew why Benny had done what he did. Athletes weren’t supposed to be gay. They were tough, strong and fucked every woman in sight. They did not fall in love with guys like Timmy. And Benny had loved him. Leaving him that jacket spoke louder than words ever could.
Timmy stood up, still holding the coat. “I don’t care what’s in those boxes. Let’s get rid of it. All of it.”
I found an empty box and held it out to him. “Not all of it.”
Timmy gave me a smile, the kind that made my heart beat a little faster. He folded the jacket and placed it in the box, then took it from me and added the things we’d set aside hours ago. His red transistor radio went in last.
I looked at his pile of junk. “What do you want to do with all of it?”
“Maureen can take it to Goodwill.”
He started for the stairs, the box in his arms, but I called him back. “You’re nuts if you think Maureen’s going to let us waltz off with nothing more than one little box. What about the rest of this stuff?”
His shoulders sagged. “We’ll have to load it in Maureen’s truck.”
“And pay your nephew to haul it off.”
“He won’t do it out of the goodness of his heart?”
“He’s sixteen. Of course not.”
Timmy and I toted fifteen boxes downstairs. Maureen ranted for a while about storing stuff she could have set fire to years ago, but she didn’t object to Timmy’s decision. Timmy gave Kevin ten bucks to haul the junk to Goodwill, but he asked permission to look through it first.
“Stuff from the sixties is popular. I could make a lot of money from your goofy old clothes.” He smiled, and for a second he looked like a sixteen-year-old Timmy. “I’ll take it over to my girlfriend’s house. We’ll sort it over there.”
Timmy granted his permission, and we both watched as he drove down the road. I half expected Timmy to take off after him, but he didn’t. He stood there, his one and only box of treasure in his arms, looking twenty mental pounds lighter.
“There goes your past,” I said as Kevin disappeared from sight. “Feel better?”
“Much.”
“Now what?”
Timmy dangled his red radio by its chain. “Let’s get a battery so we can listen to it on the way home.”
I put my arm around his shoulders and walked him to the car. “Anything in particular?”
“I think Georgetown’s playing this afternoon.”
****
Timmy's red radio
The Wanderer, by Dion. I really can picture book Don singing this, with appropriate name changes, of course.
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