Page 77 of The Bright Lands

He saw a closet, a big TV stand.

“Joel, what are you doing in there?”

His eyes settled on a little nightstand with a big iron keyhole in the drawer. Antique, or trying to look like it. When Joel tugged on the drawer, he felt a latch hold it shut. Barely.

Wesley went quiet in the hall. Joel suspected he’d begun to look for the same thing as him: a tool to pry open a lock.

Joel found his first. He pulled his brother’s knife free from its sheath and wedged the blade into the drawer. He heard Wesley hurrying up the hallway.

“I’m calling the police, Joel.”Pohleessh. Jull.

The drawer began to give. Joel leaned on the blade. “That’s a bad idea, Wesley.”

“You have no right to come into my house like this, Joel, to—”

The drawer came open with a loud snap and a little puff of sawdust. Its contents clattered to the floor: a pocket Bible, a tacky old necklace with a dubious stone in the center, a credit card.

And, tucked in amid the clutter, was a small golden disk hooked to a wide blue ribbon. Joel pulled the medal free. He saw on it just what he thought he would, what he had been too drunk to recognize when he saw it on Sunday night. The letters MVP were embossed on the front.

And written across the back: STATE SEMIFINALS 2016.

Joel smiled. He thought of Clark asking him,“How many queers do we have in Pettis County?”

Standing on the side of the road a few minutes before, the adrenaline finally fading from his head, he’d finally stopped to think about what Luke had told him at the park.“I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

It was a stretch, but it was worth a shot.

Joel opened the bedroom door. Wesley stood on the other side with his phone in his hand, a finger poised over the screen, but at the sight of the medal he slid the phone slowly into his pocket and took a step away as if Joel had made to strike him with it.

“Just what were you and Luke Evers up to on Friday night, Mr. Mores?”

“I don’t like your tone.”

Joel did his best to sound bemused. “You must have shown that kid a hell of a time to deserve a gold medal.”

“He’s not a kid!” The burly man took another stumbling step back, hiccuped. Wesley was not—Joel was relieved to see—the sort of man whose drunkenness dissipated when shit hit the fan. He stumbled again, shook his head, stared at Joel like he wanted his forgiveness, but said only, “I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Joel studied the medal. A careful, conspiratorial hesitation. “Do you want to sit down?”

In the living room, Joel dropped his phone casually on the arm of the sofa, went to the drinks cart to pour Wesley a whiskey. The man accepted it without a word.

“I’m trying to help you here, Wes.” Joel sat down close, a hand on Wesley’s massive thigh. He thought of that clumsy stumble Sunday night when the minister had fallen against his chest just for the chance to touch him. How many sad accidents had this man survived on? “The cops know Luke wasn’t home Friday night. They haven’t spoken to him yet.”

“But you have.”

“He told me he was here.”

“Consent in Texas is seventeen.”

“But Luke was still one of your pupils at the church, wasn’t he?”

“He’s a Methodist.”

Joel gave him a muted shrug.

“What’s the point?” Wesley sighed into his glass. “Luke was caught sleeping with some boy over in Rockdale. In a parking lot. A parking lot! His mother—I hope you never meet that woman—she and I’d been friendly since I bought this house. She came to me for help, asked me to give the boy some private guidance. How could I say no?”

The minister raised a toast to the TV.