Page 6 of Bobby Green

“I’ll be back in a month,” he said softly. “I promise. I’ll call when I can.”

She nodded. “You sure you have the address of the flophouse?” she asked, voice quavering. Apparently a bunch of guys who worked for the company all stayed in a trailer. The guy hadn’t sugarcoated it—a bunch of guys sleeping on cots with a shower—but then, what did Vern really need if he wasn’t moving there for good?

At least that’s what he’d told them.

Because he didn’t want to run away.

Because he felt like enough of a coward already.

“Yeah, Mom,” he said quietly. “I got it.”

She smiled at him, her eyes—hazel like his—troubled, and nodded after cupping his cheek. “Take care of yourself in the big city,” she said, her mouth quirking because they both knew Sacramento could be a lot bigger.

But he also knew it wasn’t Dogpatch either.

“I promise, Mama,” he said, drawing out his fake-Southern drawl. “I won’t let those big-city slickers corrupt your little baby boy.”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “You just might be wicked enough to beat them all,” she said affectionately. “I look forward to seeing you try.”

And that was it.

He got into the truck and drove down to Sacramento. Every mile he put behind him as he wound through the mountain roads to the foothills was a load of stone off his shoulders.

No more Keith Gilmore.

No more sucking guys off when they wouldn’t give him the time of day.

No more queer shit, period. He was done with all that, because he had a girlfriend, and he was going to try to do right by her.

He really was.

THREE WEEKSlater, he drove a nail through his thumb.

“Fuck,” he said dully, staring at it as the blood welled out.

The guy next to him turned around and threw up, but Vern could hardly pull his head out of the haze of exhaustion that enveloped him. The “flophouse” the company provided was seriously a bunch of guys on mattresses on the floor of a trailer—with no air-conditioning and windows that barely cracked. It was early September in Sacramento during a heat wave. That thing was like a convection oven, and the only guys getting any sleep were the three who could fit on the roof without it buckling. Vern had taken twenty dollars of his savings to buy himself a cheap sleeping bag—on sale—so he could at least stretch out in the bed of his truck. He slept a little better there, but not much, because he was sleeping with only a layer of his clothes between him and the hard bed of the truck, and his body hurt more every damned day.

“Dammit, Roberts!” Collins, the supervisor, yelled from across the site. “Stop playing around there!”

Vern blinked hard and caught the nail in the claw end of the hammer, yanking it out before his brain could even register what he was doing.

He stared at his thumb, complete with brand-new hole, and thought stupidly that he could probably push a stud through it like a piercing, when the pain penetrated the fog of exhaustion and he collapsed sideways, letting out a slow-boiling wail that felt like it would cripple his stomach, his balls, and all the other things he was screaming from.

Then God was really merciful to him, because he passed out.

HE WOKEup in the foreman’s trailer while someone bandaged his left thumb and someone else shoved a pen into his hand.

He ignored the pain because he had to and asked, “What in the fuck am I signing?”

“An affidavit that says you got your last check,” Collins said flatly, his pale blue eyes and sunburned face impassive and disgusted.

“Where’s my last check?” he mumbled.

“Right here.” Collins shoved it at him, and Vern grimaced. He’d gotten the first one, for a week’s work, the week before. This was for two weeks—and it was a lot, compared to what he made baling hay, but he’d seen prices down here in the city, and it might buy him parking for a month, with some gas thrown in.

“You’re firing me?” His brain felt like it was expanding and shrinking in his skull. “How’s that right?”

“This is your second time getting hurt,” Collins muttered, pointing to the bandage on Vern’s thigh. He hadn’t seen the brackets screwed onto the ends of the lumber in the pile, and he’d misjudged where to turn. He’d ended up with a puncture in his thigh the shape of a blunt, short blade.