Page 32 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

“I’m serious. If Bonnie hears you been sleepin’ on the streets again, she’ll have my balls like she did the last time.”

“Ah, come on now, who you foolin’,” Cole said and shoved JP playfully.

“Look at this one, thinks he’s a big man now!” Keith said and picked him up. Cole was passed around in hugs before the crew saluted Grady and set off in a cloud of dust.

Grady stood next to Cole as they watched the point where the trucks had long since disappeared, the silence filtering in and feeling empty for the first time in a long time.

Grady frowned. He wanted to say something.

He knew Cole wouldn’t be sleeping on the streets again if he could help it and yet, that was an impossible thing to promise, wasn’t it?

Cole was his hand. Sure, they also gave each other a hand , and it mightn’t be like with anyone else, but it’d be weird if he went and said something about it.

Cole was holding his book to his chest and looking at the point where they’d disappeared like he’d lost his farm all over again. Grady knew he needed to say something, anything. He didn’t expect the truth to come tumbling out.

“You should’ve told me it was your birthday.”

Cole glanced at him and then back at the emptiness.

“Well, now you know,” he said after a while.

“For next time,” Grady said.

“Yeah, sure,” Cole said like it was a platitude.

“For next time,” Grady repeated more firmly. He tugged Cole against his side and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Happy birthday.”

“Get off it,” Cole said, but Grady felt his smile against his throat as Cole buried his face there.

“Let’s go celebrate.” Grady let him go.

“It was a while ago.”

“Two weeks ain’t a while.”

Cole kicked the dirt, looked at the book in his hands and smiled as they went down to the house.

“Reckon I got some better beers than that shit JP brought anyways,” Grady said.

“It ain’t a contest.”

Grady held the gate open for him and Cole went through.

“’Course not, how can it be a contest if I already won?”

Cole sniggered, gaze on his boots as he opened the door to let Grady through. Grady told him to get the good glasses out of the buffet and went down to the basement for the good stuff.

It was dusty, the shelves buckling under the weight of old cartons of the beer his daddy used to like to drink.

He bypassed it and went for the whiskey.

One bottle in particular. It was from when his granddaddy ran the place, when he turned the land from nothing and made it into something.

Grady picked it up and wiped the dust off the label.

It was written in old Irish, which Grady didn’t understand, but his daddy and his granddaddy said it was good drinking whiskey and meant for a special occasion.

Grady gripped it in one hand and got a box of beer under his other arm. He went up the stairs and found Cole sitting at the kitchen table, good beer glasses in front of him.

Grady set the bottle of whiskey on the table.

“We can start with this.” He turned and stashed a few beers in the freezer.

He was pulling out the whiskey tumblers when Cole murmured something from behind him.

“What?”

Cole turned the bottle slowly and dragged his finger under the label. “ Uisce beatha , it means water of life. It’s Irish Gaelic for whiskey.”

Grady kicked his chair out, sat and set the glasses down.

“Water of life,” Grady said and snorted. “Crazy Irish.”

Cole quirked his lips into a smile. “More like drink of death.”

“You don’t want any?”

“Oh, I want some.” Cole gave him a wolfish smile. “I’m just sayin’, water is water and that’s life, not whiskey. Whiskey’s a hangover. This is good stuff, though. You sure you wanna drink it now?”

Grady cracked the seal and poured. He nudged Cole’s glass to him and lifted his own.

“We’re celebratin’.”

Cole lifted his glass.

“Well, I hope you got more of this down there then. Not sure it’s worth it for this.”

Grady clinked his glass with Cole’s. “It is.”

He tipped the glass at Cole and said, “Happy birthday.”

He drank. Cole maintained eye contact and drank too.

It burned, and Grady swallowed it down. Tasted good too, smooth finish. Cole blew out a breath and squinted his eyes.

“Good?”

“Shit,” Cole said and laughed. “Goddamn Irish.”

Grady chuckled and finished his glass.

“Reckon the beers could take a while to get cold enough.”

He poured another few fingers and topped Cole up.

“So, what’s the book?” Grady reclined in his chair and stretched his leg out so his booted foot was knocking into Cole’s.

Cole took a big drink, whooshing out a breath and squinting his eyes again. Grady leaned forward and topped him off.

“Just a trilogy I was reading.” He sipped and sat back, mirroring Grady, kicking his booted foot against his. He seemed young then—as he mirrored the position of an older man in front of him, it showed his youth imitating the posture he would soon grow into and own like he’d always been that way.

“Can’t believe she noticed it.”

Cole was swirling his drink and looking at the amber liquid as it sloshed around in the glass.

“I was on the second one last time they came. Bonnie came in and had tea with Mama. They were talkin’ all serious and hushed. I dunno, I knew it was comin’ but I didn’t, ya know?”

Cole took a sip and Grady did too.

“Anyways, we were gone not a week later. New buyers arrived, and that was that.”

Grady pictured it. Generations of stuff sold out from under them. Can’t pack that in a week. A book wouldn’t have been an important thing to grab on to.

Cole leaned forward and poured himself another drink. He tossed it back and wiped his mouth. Now he really looked like that young man trying on the older man. Grady smiled at him.

“I just stuffed my duffel and took off.”

“Didn’t think to grab your horse?”

Cole put the glass down. He leveled Grady with a look that made all that boyish charm disappear; he looked in that moment like he’d lived through hell and made it to the other side not only a man, but a really pissed-off man.

“She was already gone.”

Grady held his gaze. Cole was looking at him like he was daring him to ask a follow-up and telling him he wasn’t going to like the view if he did.

Grady sipped his drink and then pulled out his cigarettes.

He tilted the packet to Cole. Cole kept those steely eyes on him.

He took a cigarette and leaned forward so Grady could light it.

He sat back, blew out the smoke, and it was like he’d become that young man in front of Grady’s very eyes, right there in the kitchen over an old Irish bottle of whiskey.

The events had transpired long before, but it was like he’d finally allowed them to settle on his shoulders.

He smoked that cigarette, watched Grady, and Grady lit his own cigarette and regarded him in return.

They didn’t speak, just smoked, the swirls of gray twirling and circling in the air between them.

Cole knocked his boot against Grady’s, and the moment was gone.

“Reckon the beer’s cold now if you wanna try one,” Grady said.

Cole butted out the cigarette. “I’ll get it.”

He got up, and Grady drained the whiskey.

“What’s so special about these, anyway?” Cole said as he staggered back to the table with a longneck.

“You all right there?” Grady laughed and steadied him with a hand on his hip.

Cole grinned. “Feelin’ it.”

“Lightweight.”

Cole giggled, cheeks ruddy from the alcohol, eyes glassy. He went to open the bottle and then seemed confused when it wouldn’t twist open.

“Sit,” Grady said. He leaned forward, cracked the seal on the edge of the table, and poured them both a glass.

“We can’t all be heavyweights,” Cole replied a few moments too late, his mind several paces behind the play.

“Who’s a heavyweight?” Grady handed Cole the beer. “And it’s special ’cause my daddy brewed it. Family recipe.”

He clinked his glass with Cole’s, and Cole squinted at him.

“You’re right.” Cole sat up and drank the beer.

“Not a heavyweight, more like…” He leaned his head in his hand and studied Grady openly.

Grady would call it checking him out, something he was not used to being on the receiving end of with another man.

He didn’t mind it one bit. Probably because it was Cole, and more likely because it was Cole drunk.

“Like one of them old-school Hollywood fellas.”

“Hollywood?” Grady kicked Cole’s foot and leaned back in his chair.

“Yeah, you know, all tanned and manly and shit with those eyes.” He waved his hand at Grady’s face as if that explained it.

“I got eyes?” Grady said before he could stop himself. He must’ve been drunker than he thought. “You lookin’ in the mirror lately?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a pretty boy, blah, blah, blah.” Cole sounded drunk and pissed off. Like he’d heard it a million times, and not in a nice way.

“No.” Grady shook his head. He measured his words. “They pretty, yeah,” he said slowly.

Cole narrowed those eyes at him; the little drunk sharpening up under the impending insult.

“But they’re deep too. A man could get lost in ’em.”

Cole’s eyes widened, and his previous ire fell away.

“Shit, I’m drunk,” Grady said to cover that slip, and Cole cleared his throat and said, “Me too.”

“We should eat somethin’,” Grady said and got up.

He heard Cole slump behind him, his glass clinking on the table.

Grady opened the fridge, pulled out all the leftover containers Bonnie had sent, and set about putting them on the table. He set out the plates, watched as Cole picked out all the best portions and snorted a laugh.

“Bonnie done spoil you, huh?” Grady sat and started fixing himself a plate.

“She’s the only one,” Cole replied around a mouthful.

He swallowed and went on. “Like, my mama was good, but I’m the youngest and not a girl, ya know?

I reckon she saw a disappointment when I was born and then felt guilty about it and then that’s what I got.

A mama warring with disappointment and guilt every time she’s lookin’ at me. ”

Grady ate and didn’t say anything. Not much to say to that and besides, it sounded true enough. Or rather, Grady had learned Cole generally saw the truth of a thing and said it true as well. So, if he said he had a mama who never really wanted him, then he had a mama who never really wanted him.

“Anyways, I reckon Bonnie tried to make it up to me as much for Mama as for me.”

“Where’s your mama now?”

Cole shrugged. “City, I reckon. Ain’t like we was keepin’ tabs on each other when it all fell down. Daddy said we were all adults, time to be actin’ like it, and Mama never argued with that.”

Grady chewed and thought on that. It wasn’t quite true though, was it?

Cole wouldn’t have been an adult yet, and besides, something about the whole thing hadn’t sat right since the day Cole showed up.

Something hadn’t sat right since before that—Old Man Cole had been in the hole a lot longer than most without outright losing the place to foreclosure—but it wasn’t something Grady gave a lot of thought to until Cole blew onto his doorstep.

It was just one of those background niggles you never give full flight unless you have to.

Before he could ask, Cole was knocking his boot into Grady’s with a different intent and well, Grady wasn’t one to be saying no to that. He had a birthday surprise in mind.

Grady wiped his mouth and then his hands on a napkin, watching Cole drain his beer, before he stood and put his hand out for him. Cole looked at it for a moment. He took it, and Grady pulled him up so they were chest to chest. Grady leaned down, closing the inch between them, and took Cole’s mouth.

He wrapped his arm around Cole’s waist and deepened the kiss, Cole meeting him with little sounds, his hands coming up to grip Grady by the neck. Grady pulled away and kissed Cole as he said, “C’mon.”

He slid his hand back down and tangled their fingers together.

He pulled him down the shadowy hall and up the dark stairs.

Grady held his bedroom door open and made out Cole’s raised eyebrows in the moonlight.

Which was a fair response, this wasn’t usually the kind of thing that was done in the marriage bed, but Grady reckoned they might as well.

Cole went in and sat on the edge of the bed, and Grady sank to his knees in front of him to get his boots off. Cole’s chest was heaving with short breaths. Grady got each boot off, rested his hands on Cole’s knees, and looked up at him.

“We don’t gotta do anythin’ if you’re not feelin’ it.”

Cole swallowed. He looked nervous in a way he’d never done before. He shook his head like he was trying to clear it. Grady stood and watched Cole flinch. Grady frowned down at him. He sat next to him on the bed and put a little space between them.

“Sorry,” Cole said.

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for.”

“No, I—” Cole shook his head again. He climbed into Grady’s lap and went to kiss him but Grady held him back.

Grady searched his expression—he was startled like a frightened horse, eyes too wide, body rigid; if he had their ears, they’d be pinned back to the top of his head.

“I ain’t lookin’ for anythin’ here,” Grady said.

“I know. I want…”

Grady loosened his grip. He brought his hands to rest on Cole’s back in a loose hold.

“I wanna go back and not drink so much,” Grady said and smiled. Cole returned it and nodded.

Grady squeezed his waist. “You wanna sleep here?”

“Can I?”

“’Course,” Grady said and deposited Cole on the bed behind him.

He leaned down and got to untying his laces.

He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he reckoned focusing on his boots would give them both a second to regroup.

And besides, sleep sounded good. Grady could try and get Cole to fuck him with that big dick some other time—the birthday surprise was as much for him as it was for Cole.

He’d been looking forward to that thing.

Grady stood, stripped his shirt off, and kicked his pants off. He climbed onto the bed. Cole was staring up at the ceiling, his breathing all funny again. Grady rested his head against his pillow and looked at the ceiling.

“You reckon we take the horses out to check the dams tomorrow?” Grady asked.

Cole blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

“Reckon Chloe been gettin’ all sad, not havin’ you for two weeks.”

Cole snorted a laugh. “She’s probably already forgotten about me.”

Grady scoffed. “How can she? I seen you sneakin’ her treats every day.”

“They ain’t treats, they’re good for her…”

Cole talked all about the importance of treating horses, handling them often, being consistent, and his breathing settled down the longer he talked. Grady listened until he felt himself drift off to the sound of Cole’s confident voice returning with the sound of horses, horses, horses.