Page 43 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

S

But if Grady was disappointed, Cole could only be described as catatonically gutted.

“This is all my fault,” Cole said as he swigged on his third or fourth beer and flicked the locusts that kept on swarming in off the porch.

“You reckon you God now?” Grady asked and finished his second beer.

“I’m cursed!”

Grady laughed. “This ain’t biblical.” He swatted at a locust buzzing in. “Though it sure as hell feels it.”

“How’re you so…” Cole waved his hand at him.

Grady sat back and set his empty beer aside. “I ain’t. Just, you know…” He waved his own hand at the field in front of them, the swarm of yellow bodies buzzing over the once proud stems, now barely visible under the haze.

“Just what?”

“Farming,” Grady said with a wry smile. “My granddaddy always said, You farm ’til you run outta money, and then you keep on farmin’. ”

“That ain’t no way to live,” Cole said and stood, his legs wobbly. “You want another?”

Grady shook his head. “It is if you wanna be on the land. You reckon you need another?” he called after the slamming screen door.

“I reckon!” Cole shouted.

Grady smiled and looked at the buzzing in front of him, the last of them finishing off what they’d started. They were tapering off now, mostly—windshields full of them, windows, the ground; a swarm of dead bodies born to come do their damage and then die.

The door slammed open behind him, and Cole slumped down on the step below, his torso leaning sideways on Grady’s thigh. Cole handed the bottle back, Grady cracked it open on the post and passed it back to him. Cole drank.

“There’s gotta be a way to make some money outta it,” Cole said.

Grady shrugged. “If that’s all you’re after, I reckon there’s easier ways.”

“Whaddya mean?” Cole craned his head back. He was flushed from the alcohol, but his eyes were still steady. Grady reckoned it’d take a lot to get Cole out of it. Sex seemed to do it, but other than that, he was always sharp, always watching.

“If you aimin’ to make money, live comfortable, well then. I reckon you’d sell the land, move to the city and get yourself a job, a steady paycheck.”

“And then what?”

Grady smiled knowingly down at him. “Exactly.”

Cole nodded like Grady had just confirmed everything he’d always been thinking. “Exactly,” he repeated and turned to drink his beer.

They sat for a while in silence, Cole finishing his beer and Grady smoking a cigarette. Cole set his empty aside and started picking at the inseam on Grady’s pant leg, his nimble fingers a steady patter on Grady’s inner thigh.

“Guess you might not be needin’ a hand now,” Cole said.

Grady glanced down at him, at the back of his head where it was bent and looking at the thread he was playing with.

He hadn’t broken it, just picked at it. His hair was shiny like usual, thick, and long past his shoulders; he’d be able to tie it back like a girl’s now.

There was a slight crimp to it, and Grady slid his hand into it, gave a little tug.

Cole didn’t look up, but he allowed the movement with the way he shifted into it.

“Might have to look at what we lookin’ at first,” Grady said.

Cole nodded. “Reckon we won’t be lookin’ at much.”

Grady scratched Cole’s scalp with his blunt fingernails.

“I gotta expand that barn,” Grady said.

“Huh?”

That got Cole’s head turning. Grady left his hand where it was. He’d been thinking on it in a background kind of way for a few weeks. Somehow that background became a voice before he’d acknowledged it was a real possibility.

“Need to build more stalls,” Grady said.

“What for?”

“Whaddya reckon?”

Cole smiled like that made sense, even though it didn’t, not really to Grady anyhow.

“Yeah, all right. What’re you thinking? ’Cause here’s what I reckon you could do…”

And he was off, detailing the addition of stalls, a tack room, the direction to be facing them so the horses got the best insulation in winter and the coolest places for summer.

Grady nodded along and grunted in all the right places.

He hadn’t thought on it that much, but Cole knew horses, so it didn’t matter much what Grady had been thinking.

“I reckon you’ll be salvaging more than we thought,” Cole said. He was sitting Chloe alongside Grady atop the biggest hill on the property, surveying the final field.

Grady spat. “Yeah.” He might break even. He might not.

They rode back to the house, the bodies of the locusts crunching under the horses’ hooves as they hit the road.

Once they were inside, Cole got back to the plans for the stables, as he liked to call it, his ideas for the expansion sprawled over the dining room table.

The table hadn’t been used since Grady’s daddy died and his mama went to the city; Grady always ate at the little table in the kitchen.

It was in full use now—huge sheets of planning paper, drawings and rulers covering it while Cole explained how everything was going to work.

Grady left him to it and got their dinner. He called Cole when it was ready.

“Just a sec.”

Grady went in to see what the holdup was this time. He found him with the pencil in his mouth, his brow deeply furrowed, his hair tied up in a bun on his head, both hands planted on the table where he studied the papers in front of him.

“It’s just a horse barn,” Grady said.

Cole looked up and narrowed his eyes at him. “It ain’t.”

Grady held his hands up and couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Anyone would think Cole was planning the invasion of Europe.

“C’mon, eat before it gets cold, then you can get back to it.”

“You gotta get it right,” Cole said, but he followed Grady to the table.

“You’ll get it right,” Grady said once they were eating.

“You sure about that?” Cole leveled him with those eyes. “You puttin’ a lotta trust in a boy who ain’t never built anything.”

Grady nodded. “Yeah, but I reckon you’d sooner sleep in the hail or a drought yourself before you’d let them horses do the same.”

Cole grinned and waved his fork at him. “You’re right about that, son.”

Grady snorted.

Once dinner was finished, Cole got up to do the dishes, but Grady could see he was itching to get back to it, so he sent him out with a swat on the ass as he bumped him away from the sink. “Go on, get.”

Cole laughed and bumped him back before skidding back into the dining room.

Grady turned in at the regular time, Cole saying he’d be up “in a sec” when Grady told him so.

He woke up when Cole slid in beside him, his body cold as it blanketed Grady’s.

Grady’s arms came up, automatic, and held him close.

Cole kissed his throat, and Grady tightened his arms, rolled them over so Cole was under him.

He brought his hand up, pushed Cole’s hair out of his face, traced his fingers down his cheek and jaw.

He dragged his thumb over Cole’s bottom lip and watched Cole’s eyes on his, steady but still with some uncertainty even after months of this in Grady’s bed.

Grady kissed him, slow and deep, and as Cole opened up to him, his tongue tangling with Grady’s, Grady kissed him harder.

He brought himself up on his elbows and bracketed Cole’s face between them.

By the time Grady was opening Cole up and pushing in, the sex felt like an afterthought to the main event; which was what, Grady couldn’t have said.

But as he rocked his hips in and Cole arched his back to meet him, his gasp breaking their kiss as he threw his head back, Grady felt like they were doing more than fucking.

Grady slipped his hands down, took both of Cole’s in his own and brought them up over his head, pinning them to the bed.

Cole gasped and met his eyes. Grady stilled and searched those eyes looking back at him.

Cole squeezed both of his palms in Grady’s and Grady squeezed back, held his hands bone-crushingly tight.

They started to move again in tandem. Cole sucked in a sharp breath before he came.

Grady watched him, fucked him through it.

Cole’s lids fluttered closed before they opened quickly so he could watch Grady fuck him deeper, harder, come too, come down.

They never stopped kissing, and those dark eyes opened and searched Grady’s every time they broke the kiss.

Grady hoped Cole found what he was looking for in Grady’s answering gaze.