Page 160 of Beneath the Stain

A stocky middle-aged man with gray curly hair, wearing a pricey leather cowboy hat, matching boots, and clean, unfaded Wranglers, waved Debra around the back of the perfectly sculpted yard to a hard-pan dirt spot behind the multicar garage.

“Damn,” Trav said in surprise, and Mackey cackled.

“Wow—it’s like a 50/50 ice cream bar! Wouldja look at that?”

The front of the house may have been all faux English garden, but the back of the house was dusty horse farm. There was a stable about a hundred yards off of the house and a practice ring behind that. Mackey marked four different pens—each one roughly half the size of a football field—with a galloping Arabian horse in each pen getting its panties in a bundle as the new car drove up.

“Horses!” Stevie and Jefferson piped up, excited.

“Grant hates ’em,” Kell muttered, and Mackey nodded. He remembered that about Grant. His old man kept them, paid a live-in trainer, dragged the family to horse shows every weekend, and fawned over the creatures—but not Grant.

Grant had escaped them.

Mackey, who had always knownexactlyhow small he was next to an animal that size, had never blamed him.

Right behind the house was a little shaded patio with chaise lounges and a picnic table complete with a big umbrella to keep off the sun. Even though the air was brisk and the wind edged with cold, the sun was still bright and hard.

The young wraith in sunglasses and a bandana, leaning back on a chaise lounge, turning his face up to the sun and smoking a joint through coughing fits, did not seem to mind either the cold or the brightness.

He just looked happy to be there, under the heartbreak blue sky.

He turned toward them when they walked up, though, sitting up painfully and lifting his arm to wave.

“You made it!” he said by way of greeting, although Mackey knew they were probably a little early.

None of the boys wanted to get there late.

“Yeah, well, when we heard it was a day getting high in the sun, we could hardly hold ourselves back,” Mackey retorted.

Grant took a pull on his joint and raised his eyebrows. “Just ’cause you’re jealous,” he murmured. “Besides, I’m almost done, and then you all can come in and see the baby. You haven’t met her yet.”

Kell walked up and claimed brother-privilege by hugging him. Everyone followed suit like they hadn’t just seen him two days before, but nobody said anything.

Unspoken things—stupid unspoken things: Grant Adams had a finite number of hugs left.

They talked excitedly while he finished up, giving him the details of the fight after he’d been hustled out.

“Yeah, you shoulda seen Mackey!” Stevie burbled. “Man, Trav just crouched low and caught Del like a charging horse—”

“Delmont, really?” Grant asked animatedly. He looked at Trav and nodded, adding a low whistle. “Man, that takes ball-balls—he’s freakin’ huge! There’s rumors that man kills people with a swing of his fist!”

“He would have,” Trav said, and Mackey wanted to weep when he didn’t sound grudging or hostile or anything. “But Mackey jumped on his back and wrapped his arm around the guy’s throat. Didn’t quite put him down, but it didslowhim down before the cops could Taser him.” Everyone laughed, and Mackey brushed Trav’s hand with a careful fingertip. God, he was trying.Thank you, Trav, thank you thank you thank you.

“Man, Mackey was always the fiercest, but he couldn’t pick his fights for shit. He’d getwhaledon by the biggest guys. Kell, how many times did we have to beat up little kids to keep him out of the shit?”

Kell groaned. “God, it was a nightmare. And Mackey, in like, the third grade—he’s like that cartoon, right? The ‘I’m a chicken hawk and I eat chicken!’—and then he’d walk up to the biggest, toughest guys and nail them in the jaw. It’s like the whole school was lining up to dust his weenie little ass and Grant and I were taking guys out in hallways to keep them from jumping my little pain-in-the-ass brother!”

“Well, you suck,” Mackey drawled, “’cause I know a bunch of them slipped through!”

“Well, dude….” Kell looked at Blake and shook his head. “He issomuch less a pain in the ass now that he’s come out. Man, I think if teachers knew that, they’d be askingallthe scrappy kids at school if they were gay, just to get it out there and stop having to bandage up the poor Mormon kids who didn’t see it coming!”

Blake grunted. “I’m sayin’.” He looked at Grant and shook his head just like Kell had. “Man, he was insufferable. I was just not ever gonna be you. And then I found out why, and yanno, I didn’t mind so much.”

The group laughed like it was all a long time ago and it hadn’t ever ripped Mackey into little pieces and stuffed him full of chemicals so he could get up and do it again.

But that was okay, because Grant laughed too and met Mackey’s eyes in a moment of understanding for just the both of them.

He’d hurt too. Suddenly Mackey knew—they’dbothbeen hurt. The only thing that had put the hurt to an end for Grant had been the end itself.