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back to the rest of part four
He was less calm as he slipped back out into the night, the dampness sinking into his bones even before the breeze hit him. James shivered at the wind, too, as he tossed a cigarette to the ground and nodded his head in the direction of the highway. They headed out across the parking lot in silence.
They didn't seem any more eager to talk when they turned and pursued a path up the shoulder of the road, a mix of gravel and, tonight, mud. On Jack's end, the silence was because he didn't know what to say. He had no doubt, though, that James did. He would simply have to wait for him to say it.
Jack set himself to absorbing as much of his surroundings as he could, as he had on their earlier walk, but he found that he was both too nervous and too tired to concentrate. His mind kept wandering, his consciousness landing on a lot of things he didn't want to think about just now, but as soon as he managed to banish one concern, his mind drifted around to another. He was only jolted out of this swirl of thoughts enough to pay attention to his surroundings when they passed an American flag, hanging heavy with water, outside an auto garage, and only then because James gestured at the flag and snorted darkly.
"Fucking disgraceful," he said.
"It's probably legal, though." A light was fixed on it, and as long as it was of the proper all-weather material, it was fine to display it like that.
James said, "A lot of things are legal. Don't make 'em right." James paused, then he asked, "You ain't one of those…?"
Jack just glared at him. "I would never burn a flag. I don’t like this, either, but it's not like I can do anything about it. I have to think they've got a reason for wanting it up all night, even in the rain."
James sighed. "Maybe."
"Maybe they know somebody over there."
James nodded again, and just as Jack was sure they were going to fall into silence again, James said, "You never told me why you don't know if Marc's alive or not."
Jack took a deep breath. "He was shot. In the leg. At least that's what his platoon reported. But he went down in an area where they couldn't get to him."
"He a POW?"
"Technically MIA, but, yeah," Jack said quietly. "They're pretty sure he's a POW. Or else…" He could never let himself change the M to a K, at least not out loud.
"Jesus." James ruffled his hand back over his hair, pointedly not looking at him, then he seemed to think better of that. He stared at him long and hard enough to catch Jack's gaze. "Look. I'm sorry about what I said earlier. Before I hit you."
"You didn’t know."
"Well, I shouldn't have opened my damn mouth."
"Look who you're talking to. I'm honestly surprised it took you that long to hit me."
"I don't wanna hit you. I sorta admire the hell out of what you're doing."
"Even if I'm going about it all wrong?"
"Not all wrong. It takes a lot of guts to try and do something. 'Specially not knowing where he is."
"For all the shit I talk, I'm pretty much a coward."
"No."
"It's true."
"Well, I know one thing you're not a coward about."
It was the most direct thing he'd said about what they'd just done since Jack walked outside to meet him again. Part of him wanted to let it go, but James was looking at him expectantly, like maybe this was the only time in his life he'd let himself be really honest about it.
Jack said, "Ten years of knowing and not doing much about it."
"Least you knew."
"So did you."
James shook his head. "I'm pretty fucking good at ignoring things I don't wanna think about."
"Are you gonna think about it when I'm gone?"
"Maybe," he said a little too quickly. But then he turned his head to look at him. "Do you watch the draft lotteries?"
For a moment, he was thrown by the sudden shift in the conversation, but he said, "Yeah. Who doesn't?"
"I don't."
"Why not?"
James shook his head.
"Scared?" Jack said. It began to sink in, finally, why James had brought up the draft.
"Everybody's scared. I just know… Well, I know I can't get out of it. I couldn't go up to Canada. I can't even fucking get my foot out of this town."
"You want to?" Jack asks, knowing the answer, just from James's tone, but not really believing it, somehow.
"God, yeah. Sometimes I think it would be better to be anywhere but here. Even over there. I mean, I don't actually think that, but that's how much I feel…"
"Yeah."
"What do you mean, yeah? L.A.'s a big place. How the hell could you feel like that out there?"
"My father's there."
James sighed out a breath, then he made a noise Jack couldn't interpret before he moved on. "Anyway," he said, "I envy you. I really do. Get to go live your own fucking life. Go anywhere you want."
"And nobody on earth gives so much as half a shit about me."
"I know that ain't true."
"Maybe not. I mean, my mother cares, but she's…"
"Mothers. Yeah." After a pause, James chuckled sardonically. "Why do we keep going down these depressing trains of thought?"
"If we whine about our parents we won't have to talk about…anything else."
"You wanna talk?" He shook his head, smiling. "Why should that surprise me."
"I didn't say I wanted to. I'm good at avoiding shit, too," he said with a roguish smile.
"Uh huh. Like you were good at avoiding picking a fight with me downtown."
"I avoided kissing you, didn't I?"
James didn't reply for a moment, but when he did, he shocked the hell out of him: "You're a good kisser."
"Yeah?"
He nodded his head and gave him a acerbic smile. "Not that I would know. I do know it's all a damn sight easier than making it with a girl."
"Not that I would know," Jack said, faintly echoing him.
James just shook his head, snorting out an amused breath.
Jack said, "So why do you think flying all over the goddamned country has to be a good life?"
"We gonna start the shit again?"
"It's either that or talk about…"
James laughed. "Yeah yeah yeah. Okay. Fine. Here's how I see it. You get to see everything so you can make up your mind about everything like you know what the fuck you're talking about."
"Except what I'm seeing is the same shit I see in L.A., just with different accents. Bored rich kids and even more bored hippies. You're only the second or third person to ever actually show me the town, the real one, not just the college, and you know what? People are people."
"Even when they've got Confederate flags in their windows?"
"Even."
"Because my house does."
Jack almost stopped, but James was still walking, so he kept stride beside him. "You're serious?"
"It's small. My father put it up in an attic window, and my mother ain't been up there since…he left, so, yeah. I suppose that makes me a fucking hick."
"James…"
He watched James's nostrils flare, at first thinking it was simply a reaction to his pitying tone, but then he realized it had more to do with something brewing inside him. For some reason, he was finally choosing to let it out.
James said, "You think I don't know how screwed up it is down here? My mother…" He smiled sardonically, throwing his head back. "God, my mother lives and breathes by what a bunch of wrinkled up old crones with just enough money to be dangerous say to her. She don't see anything wrong with living under their thumbs. Everywhere you look is some person with crazy rules that you gotta follow, and if you don't, you're screwed. Not like they'd tell you what they are, though. You just gotta know 'em. Well, I know 'em, and I don't like 'em. Worst of it is half the people in this town know how much of it's bullshit, but nobody does a damn thing about it. 'Specially not me. I just coast on through. I don't have the guts to leave and I don't have the guts to rebel against it. What?"
"Nothing."
"Jack…"
"Never mind."
"Are you even listening?"
"Of course I'm listening. I swear to God. But do you know what your voice does when you get excited about something?" He tried not to let a grin form at his lips, but he couldn't help it, not when James already seemed to be reacting to his tone with a slow, half-annoyed smile, despite how worked up he was.
James began to translate that frustrated anger into a bark, but it held little bite, not with the way his smile had turned sheepish. "I might've known."
"What?"
"This"-he gestured between them vaguely-"is about me being a southerner."
"You're crazy. If there's such a thing as a mystique about southerners…like that, it's nothing compared to how…"
"There's a reason I keep saying I'm not gonna hit you." James let out a long breath of air and Jack watched his chest deflate a little, and his face. "So if you were listening…?"
"You were talking about rebellion. You can't view it like rebellion, by the way. That's like a kid throwing a temper tantrum just to get attention."
"Sounds like a lot of marches I've seen."
Jack nodded. "I often wonder why some people are drawn to these protests, if maybe they just need something to resist. Sometimes I think I'm just doing this to get back at my father."
"It's not just that."
"I know that. But sometimes I wonder, that's all. Or it's because he said we couldn't accomplish anything."
"That's why you're doing it."
"I know."
"I mean, because you don't want to become your father."
"Maybe."
"No maybe. Nobody ever wants to become their father. I sure as hell don't."
"Is he a miserable man who's disappointed in everything you do?"
"Naw," James said quietly. "He's a coward who runs away from shit he can't handle. That, by the way, is why I'm walking down the road with you right now."
"To piss off your father?"
"To make sure I'm not like him."
It got quiet, then, enough that Jack began to listen for their footfalls against the wet pavement and gravel, until he was finally counting them. But it was too quiet, and although Jack knew what he wanted to say-although he no longer feared saying what he meant, not to James-his heart started to beat in counterpoint to his footsteps until he pushed the words out:
"You can handle this."
"Seems like it," he murmured.
"James…"
"I'm pretty sure the freaking out hasn't even started yet."
"What happened to I don't ever do anything I don't wanna do?"
"It's true. But I regret a hell of a lot after." After a pause, he added, "It doesn't have anything to do with it being you. It's all on me."
"It's stupid."
"Probably."
"No, look at me." James's sea green eyes snapped up and over to his instantly. "It's really, really stupid."
"I know."
They walked along in silence for a moment, Jack trying to make his eyes and ears focus on the strange quiet town around him, nothing now but the sporadic rustle of a solitary car on the highway and the intermittent howl of the wind and the even blinking of red lights at the four way stop. But the thing his eyes kept coming back to was James, walking beside him, eyes on the road, neck bowed in surrender or contemplation or both.
Jack found himself nervous leaving James to his thoughts for too long. Not yet.
Jack said, "I keep wondering why you came to the hotel."
James softly snorted out a laugh. "I didn't realize how starved for conversation I was until I realized I'd rather butt heads with you than talk to anybody I know."
Jack nodded.
"What time's your flight tomorrow?"
The question shocked him for some reason. It took him a moment to come up with the answer. "Noon."
"Out of Birmingham?"
"Yeah."
"You got anybody to drive you?"
"Somebody at the house."
"Well, I'll do it. If you ain't sick of me."
Jack held his face tight against a goofy but confused smile. He nodded, and after he did, James nodded his head back in the direction they'd come from and turned, motioning for Jack to follow.
"Should you call somebody?" Jack said.
"Momma's asleep. She ain't missed me yet."
"But if she knew you weren't in the house…?"
"Who the hell can ever tell what she'll do. Maybe she'd shrug her shoulders and gripe at me tomorrow. Maybe she'd call all the hospitals and sit up worrying till I get home."
"But you're not gonna call?"
"Jack," he said, suddenly serious, or maybe just weary. "She's had three or four cocktails. She ain't waking up anytime soon."
Jack just nodded, shifting his eyes back to the road under his feet.
James said, "I love her. I do. She's my mother. But sometimes I think if I never get out of that house…"
"Why don't you?"
"And leave her like my father left her?"
Jack let that comment lie and James shook out his last cigarette from a pack and lit it up.
After some of the heaviness dissipated, Jack said, "Maybe it's not a question of leaving, you know?"
"What isn't?"
"You act like the only thing you can do is get out of town. Maybe the thing is to try and change things where you are."
"Which ain't exactly easy to do."
"No. But things change."
"Or I change."
"Isn't that something?"
James gave him a queasy-looking frown.
Jack said, "Besides, you don't actually hate it here."
"Oh. I don't?"
"As you're so fond of saying to me, don't bullshit me. I've been listening to you talk about this town-and the south-all night. You don't hate it."
James shook his head. "It's fucked up."
"Every place is fucked up."
Jack reached out his hand for James's cigarette, and he handed it over so Jack could take a drag. Jack held onto it and took another drag, and finally James shook his head, grinning in annoyance, and began to talk.
"I don't hate it. Truth is, I can't imagine being anywhere else. People might get in your business all the time, but they care. Do anything for you. It ain't near as fucked up as people make it sound."
"I know that. Now."
"I wish you'd been down here when everything's blooming. You ain't never seen so much green and white. We got good live music, too."
"And cheap whiskey," Jack said.
James said, "Were you serious before? You don't like L.A.?"
"Everybody hates their hometown. The thing about a big city, you don't think of yourself living in the whole city, really. There's too much of it. You keep to the parts of it you know and like the best, especially close to home. I don't particularly care for the area my parents' house is in, but where I live, up near the campus, is cool. Always something going on. We have this diner, out near the freeway, that stays open all night. Serves breakfast, mostly. I can't tell you how many times I've had pancakes at 3:30 in the morning."
James said, "Ain't no place around here like that. Least not on the regular side of town. One place I wish was, though."
"When does it open?"
"Seven? I don't know."
"Maybe by seven o'clock," Jack said with a sly smile, "I'll want food."
James gave him a long look, then he chuckled to himself. "And what the hell you propose we do for"-he checked his watch-"four hours?"
"Sleep?"
James eyed him skeptically. "I'm gonna come back to your hotel room and we're gonna sleep?"
Jack shrugged.
"You're just a little nuts, you know?"
"So I've been told."
James frowned, but he couldn't entirely keep the smile out of his eyes. "You're just gonna take my word for it the food's worth it?"
"Sure," Jack said with an easy smile, suddenly feeling that chemistry crackle between them again. When James smiled back, he looked like he was smiling with a purpose, and Jack wanted so very badly to reach out and touch him, somehow, his tight shoulders or his taut stomach, but he kept his hands at his sides and just walked on, grinning.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, and when they reached the parking lot, James stopped at his car and pulled a new pack of cigarettes out of the glove box. He lit one as he reached the door and sent Jack in ahead of him. The rain was starting up again, light and cool against his skin. But once inside again, he found the same warm world, just this short of suffocating.
He made himself breathe slowly, finding that as he climbed the stairs and let himself back into his room, the warmth started to feel less smothering and more comforting, like the world was wrapping tight around him, trying to help him hold all the pieces of himself together, just for a little while longer. If nothing else, his body's reaction to the heat made him know he might be able to sleep after all. Of course, he would if he were going to be alone. But he wasn't, he reminded himself. He wasn't, and that made the difference.
Jack was lying in the bed in his t-shirt and pants, heart pounding up into his throat, sure that James had already climbed into his car and driven away, when he heard a faint knock and saw the door swing open. James came to the side of the bed and looked down at him almost confusedly for a moment, and without much conscious thought, Jack just scooted over and made room for him. James's face quirked into an odd smile, but he began to divest himself of all his things, his cigarettes and car keys and wallet and finally his shoes.
When he lay down beside Jack, both of them on their backs, the bed dipped and creaked and Jack's arm lay against his.
James said, "Bed's too small for this."
"Yeah."
After a moment, James chuckled darkly, then again. Eventually, it turned into a full-blown giggle, but one still sardonic in its intensity.
"What?" Jack said.
"I am never in my life gonna lay eyes on you again, am I?"
Jack's stomach squeezed in on itself. He'd always thought things like that were just metaphor, but he could literally feel it. It was a little like panic.
"That's funny, somehow?" Jack snapped.
James retorted, "I sure as hell ain't gonna let it be fucking depressing."
When the force of his words finally dropped out of the air, Jack offered, "We could always-"
"Don't say bullshit you don't mean."
"People always mean it when they say it."
"Still bullshit."
"No."
He could hear James breathing, there in the dark, and the rain tapping against the window glass. Suddenly, he was tired, so tired of this long, impossible day and the kind of shit it had stirred up in his brain. His body, too. He didn't want to think about what was coming. Maybe he could, in the daylight. In the daylight he could face a lot of things and be the brave person he needed to be. But when he lay down to sleep at night, a lot of things he tried not to think about plagued him, and tonight was no different. Worse, maybe, for all he had this person breathing into the close air beside him, just as fucked up as he was, too. But it was better, too. Better in a way it hadn't been since Marc left. That thought made him feel a little hollow and wounded, but it made him resolute that no, he wouldn't let this James Ford recede in his mind, become as unreal as his other memories of backwater Alabama would in the weeks and months and years to come. He simply wouldn't let him. And that, he knew, wasn't bullshit at all.
Jack's arm turned, and he opened his palm up to James's forearm, sliding it down until he could circle his wrist.
James sighed into the darkness. "People always mean it?"
"Yeah."
"But still," James said. "Ain't there some other way to say it?"
James turned over and faced him and reached out with his hand, laying it along his jaw, warm and unsure. Jack felt a shock of electricity all along his body as James shifted over and settled in against him, slinging an arm over his chest and a leg over his thigh, as his mouth searched out his tentatively, those soft lips landing first on his jaw and then dragging with a sigh of warm air up and over to his lips.
Jack felt a sigh shake his whole body as he opened up his lips against James's, and when he slipped his tongue into his mouth almost desperately, he felt James fall into it, too, into whatever this half crazy thing was they were doing. He still didn't understand quite how this negotiation worked itself out, like so many others before it, but he was thankful that James was now suddenly far from tentative, once again the same man who'd called him a fucking moron hours earlier-probably without at all understanding why.
Jack thought, now, that he understood. In the end, that would just have to be enough.
~