Calvin's Cowboy

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“f**k!” Calvin shook his head in resignation.

Little about Parish Creek had changed. The phrase Bumfuck, Egypt, passed through Calvin’s mind as he walked towards the small grocery store just off Main Street, the once-blue paint on the window frames just a little more sun bleached and peeled than he remembered.

His classic 1982 Pontiac Firebird stood out a mile in the small parking lot among the various pickups, some of which showed gun racks through the rear window. He rolled his eyes. After all, this was Texas.

The interior of the store hadn’t changed all that much either. There was still that unique smell, a mixture of fresh vegetables, kibble and floor wax.

He pushed his cart along the aisles in search of food that didn’t require barbequing, deep frying or smoking. His choices were thus somewhat limited.

The range of beer wasn’t exactly wide, either. He scanned the shelves in the cooler; there was the expected Lone Star, San Miguel, and Budweiser. There was a brand he didn’t recognise, and judging by the price, it was probably horse piss. The shelf above the Shiner sign was empty. He was about to settle for Corona, when he spied a case of imported Czech beer tucked behind a box of Bud Light. It was on special, too.

Old Mrs. Grantly at the checkout looked at him suspiciously when she rang up the beer. He was half expecting her to ask him for ID.

“We had a man come in few months ago asking for that. We didn’t have any, so I ordered some, but folks round here don’t like anythin’ that’s foreign.”

“Doesn’t suit their discerning palates?” Calvin asked as he reached for a plastic sack, only for Mrs. Grantly to wave him off and bag up the beer herself.

“They like what they like,” she said, picking up a jar of low fat mayo.

Calvin hoped this wouldn’t take forever. He wasn’t in luck.

“We haven’t seen you here in a long time. Guess you have made a life for yourself up in New York.” She managed to put a world of disapproval into the last two syllables.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Seems to suit you, though. You’ve lost weight. And you don’t need glasses any more.”

“Uh, no.”

“Seems like only yesterday since you were in here for Cokes and my homemade sugar cookies.”

The rye bread and yogurt were bagged.

Calvin felt obligated to ask if she still baked the cookies. He was relieved to find that she wasn’t allowed to sell homemade goods in the store any more.

“The government has no business poking its nose into what we sell. Why, next they’ll be—” Finally Mrs. Grantly got to her main point. “Your folks are selling up and moving to Florida.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Now, how much do I owe you?” Calvin took out his wallet, needing to end the conversation. Things were so different when checking out groceries in New York.

* * * *

As he walked to his car, he took note of the scattering of tired-looking family sedans and SUV’s in among the pick up trucks. There was an old green Ford Taurus in the space next to his. Instinctively Calvin checked to see that the driver of the Taurus hadn’t scratched his shiny black paint job. Satisfied his pride and joy was unmolested, he popped the trunk and put in his bags, before closing the lid gently.

Looking around, he muttered, “The town that time forgot.” Clearly the early employees of Dell Computers who had made it big when their stock options went through the roof, Dellionaires as the locals termed them, hadn’t moved out from Austin as far as Parish Creek.

He ran his shirtsleeve across his forehead. He’d forgotten how bad the humidity could be this far south. Growing up, he remembered that the locals would tell any newcomer who complained about the weather that if he didn’t like it, “just wait five minutes and something else will come along.” He was amused that when he moved to New York City and made a comment about the sleet and biting winds, someone made exactly the same remark to him.

He ramped up the car’s air conditioning before peeling out of the parking lot. However, the chilled air soon made Calvin’s damp white dress shirt uncomfortable, so he turned down the fan.

Driving down Main Street at just a couple of miles above the posted limit, Calvin was forced to slam on his brakes. Some gum-popping airhead had stepped out onto the crosswalk against the light.

Calvin hit the horn. “Can’t you f*****g read?” he shouted. Though, as his windows were all rolled up to keep in the cool, he wasn’t sure if the halter-topped blonde heard him. “It says ‘Don’t walk’ for a f*****g reason!”

She continued to saunter across the road, seemingly oblivious of how narrowly she’d come to being splattered across his hood.

By the time she had crossed, the light had changed to red, giving Calvin a couple of seconds to calm his pulse.

Glancing to his right, he saw a parked pick-up truck. The painted sign on the side caught his attention. Brockwell Home Improvement. John Brockwell, Sr., had been in business in the small town since Hector was a pup. Calvin smiled at the phrase he hadn’t thought of in years. John Junior had been the high school’s star pitcher, but he and Calvin had moved in very different social circles back then. Brock had been Mr. Popular with girls hanging all over him, whereas Calvin…

A horn blaring behind him brought him back to the present. Quickly memorizing the phone number painted on the sign, Calvin let out the clutch and sped off, leaving the impatient old-timer in his beat-up Oldsmobile in his dust.

He had no doubt his return to town and the selling of his parents’ house had been headline news among the local gossips.

Firmly putting aside his irritation at small-town life, Calvin fiddled with the car radio in an attempt to find something other than Christian radio, or some mournful country singer lamenting the lack of opportunity in his depressing blue-collar existence. “Yeah, bud, I can sympathize,” he said, looking round at the empty storefronts, boarded-up movie theater and derelict ice cream parlor. All of which were thriving businesses during his youth. He sighed. It was all so depressing, knowing he would be stuck in this podunk town for at least a month, so he thought he had better just make the best of it, and quit bitching.

As he continued to listen to the country singer’s crooning, he began to feel a little better. He pictured the cowboy as tall and blond, with his hat pushed high up on his head while he leaned against a split rail fence and…Calvin had to admit he’d always had a thing for cowboys in old flannel shirts and skin-tight Wranglers.

Soon the old homestead came into view. Calvin drove round back and parked. He cut the engine, which in turn stilled the singing cowboy who had moved on to complaining that his dog had run away with his best friend, or whatever it was. Truth be told, he didn’t hate country music as much as he pretended; it just didn’t fit with the city-smart image he liked to project.

As soon as he opened the car door, another blast of heat and humidity hit him. His shirt, which had barely had time to dry, became moist again before Calvin had hefted his grocery sacks and gotten them into the house. At least he’d remembered to keep the air on. The window unit in the kitchen was still whining away.

As he put away his few purchases, he pondered on how he’d begged his parents to get central air, but his dad had firmly resisted. “There’s nothing wrong with what we have. Why spend money when we don’t need to?” Calvin had offered to pay for the installation, but oh, no. So he’d dropped the subject. The argument about air conditioning was typical. His parents, while certainly not rich, could afford to make life easier for themselves, but stubbornly refused to do so if it meant spending money needlessly. It had therefore come as a major surprise when he’d gotten a phone call from his mom one evening after she and his dad had returned from a bus tour of Florida that they were giving serious consideration to moving to the Sunshine State.

“The weather is better for my arthritis,” his mom had confided.

Secretly, Calvin knew the real reason. As long as they lived in Texas, his dad would never quit his job as an assistant principal at the local middle school. The job was stressful, and Calvin had long argued that his dad should take advantage of the board of education’s fairly generous early retirement package.

In a later telephone conversation, Calvin had managed to extract from his mother the news that Tom had had a mild heart attack. This had been the wake-up call that he’d needed.

His mom had seen and fallen in love with a vacant two-bedroom condo in a retirement community in Lake Wales.

Calvin had had to push hard to persuade his parents to go ahead and not wait until their place in Texas was sold. He promised he could arrange a bridge loan at favorable rates if such became necessary, but the clincher had been his promise to return to Texas to co-ordinate the sale of the old place, thus freeing his parents to move to Florida just as soon as the ink was dry on the contracts.

Pulling a beer out of the case before putting the remainder in the fridge—a Frigidaire, which Calvin had repeatedly been told was as old as he was—he found the opener, popped the cap and took a long pull.

After draining the bottle and putting it in the trash, the habit of recycling not having yet reached as far as Parish Creek. Remembering his visions of cowboys in tight Wranglers, western shirts and Stetsons, he fired up his laptop and went to the CMT website hoping to find some s****l fantasies.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, clicking on the live feed link.

They were showing a retrospective of Dolly Parton, and although he didn’t mind her music, her outsized breasts did nothing for him. He closed his browser in frustration. Then he remembered Brockwell’s sign. Fishing out his cell phone, relieved that at least there was good cell service, he dialed the number and waited.

“Thank you for calling Brockwell & Son. I’m sorry, but…” Calvin waited for old man Brockwell’s recorded message to finish, before leaving his phone number and asking for someone to call him back. Once he hung up, he began pacing, his eyes catching all the little details which he knew would need to be attended to before he could put the house on the market. He’d not confided this to his folks, knowing it would probably have persuaded them to remain. He would pay whatever it cost to smarten the place up.

A few of the quarry tiles in the hallway were chipped; he hoped the whole floor wouldn’t have to be pulled up, but he’d negotiate that, plus myriad other things with the contractor. “When he finally bothers to call!” Calvin said, noting that an hour had passed since he’d contacted them.

He knew he was impatient, but his drive had got him where he was now. Gone were the days when he’d cower in dark corners while others, more sure of themselves, would strut around and make all the decisions.

After a second circuit of the house, he opened his laptop and logged in to check email. He was engrossed in a report from Tim, his business partner, on the potential that would be gained if they could wrestle the Jenkins account from their archrivals, when the doorbell rang. Still mulling over the satisfaction of seeing the expression on Thompson’s face if they did steal the account from under his nose, Calvin rose, walked down the hallway and opened the door, half expecting someone from the local Baptist church in search of a donation, or bent on saving his soul from Hell’s fire.

However, the vision of cowboy masculinity that stood on the stoop immediately had Calvin believing that whatever religion the guy was hawking, he’d be willing to sign on the dotted line immediately.

The man, at least six feet three of him—although it was difficult to gauge his exact height because of the white Resistol seated firmly on his head, hiding his eyes—gave Calvin a smile. Quickly sweeping his gaze downward, Calvin saw a firm square jaw, with perhaps a day’s growth of beard. The cowboy’s neck had a red kerchief tied around it that contrasted with a powder blue western shirt with, good heavens, pearl snaps. He was maybe a little paunchy, but Calvin could forgive him that.

A huge silver belt buckle sat above a more than amply filled out crotch contained by a pair of tight, faded Wranglers. Calvin’s eyes moved down to take in a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots.

“Hi,” said a deep voice that seemed to vibrate along Calvin’s nerve endings.

It forced Calvin to look back up at the vision’s face, the owner of which used its index finger to push up the brim of the hat, revealing a pair of blue eyes, the same color as the faded denim. Calvin felt himself falling into those eyes.

“Hey,” Calvin returned, stopping himself at the last second from saying , ‘howdy, pardner.’

“Y’all said you were fixin’ up the old place to sell.”

“Yes.” Although Calvin knew outwardly he was portraying an air of polite interest, over ten years of business dealings had taught him to maintain a neutral expression even under the most stressful of circumstances, and this hunk was certainly putting stress on a certain part of his anatomy. “Calvin Hamilton.”

“John Brockwell.” John held out his hand, which instinctively Calvin took. The shake was firm, strong, masculine, and dry.

Feeling devilish, Calvin said, “And here was me thinking you were Gary Cooper.”

John smiled again, this time showing a row of perfect white teeth. “Line dancin’ is tonight. I figured I’d get ready, then go from here.”

“I see. I guess I was expecting your father. It was his voice on the answering machine.”

Immediately the smile faded. ”My daddy passed last fall. I haven’t felt up to changing the message on the answering machine.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks. With you only just back in town, guess you wouldn’t have known.”

“No, I didn’t. Please accept my condolences.” His innate southern hospitality, rarely used in his cut-throat business dealings in the Big Apple, kicked in and he invited John over the threshold.

Almost before Calvin was aware, the two of them were sitting in the screened-in porch, two bottles of the imported beer between them. John’s Resistol lay on the chair next to him. The absence of the hat revealed a full head of mid-length blond hair that was starting to go white at the temples.

Dolly Parton, eat your heart out, Calvin thought, raising his bottle to John, or Brock as Calvin had been asked to call him.

“Calvin Hamilton,” Brock mused. “We were in high school together, right?”

“At the same time. I wouldn’t exactly say together.” Calvin remembered with bitterness the times when he would be pushed aside whenever the pack of star jocks would go strutting down the halls.

“You were that drama geek with the thick lenses.”

Calvin’s bitterness overflowed. No way was he going to let this guy intimidate him now! Not after he’d spent years honing his body in the gym, having Lasik surgery on his eyes, and generally improving himself until he was a partner in a well-respected New York PR and marketing firm.

“Yeah, that was me.”

Brock treated him to a smile before raising his bottle and taking a gulp of beer.

“And the rumors about me back then were true. I am a fag.”

Brock jerked forward; beer streaming out his nose as he coughed.

Calvin leapt to his feet, ran round the table and thumped Brock on the back.

“It’s okay,” Brock wheezed. “Thanks.”

Calvin returned to his seat. “I wanted to make that clear before you accepted the job. I’m an out gay man, and if you’re not comfortable with that, then…”

“No, no. It’s cool. You just surprised me is all. Folks round here wouldn’t…”

“Yeah. Guess I’ve gotten too used to New York ways.”

“So,” Brock asked, a twinkle in his eye, “did you have a secret crush on me back in high school?”

Immediately Calvin fired back, “No, I thought you were an arrogant asshole.”

Brock’s face fell and Calvin felt as though he’d got one back from all those years ago. “I just am still really sensitive about those days. They weren’t exactly happy times for me.”

“No.” Brock shook his head then looked Calvin straight in the eyes. “Guess they weren’t. Sorry.”

“Every day at school was a battle to remain hidden, to blend in, to stay below the radar, just so one of your jock buddies wouldn’t notice me, trip me, push me into a locker or use me as a punching bag.”

Brock looked embarrassed. “I kinda remember that.”

“And then they’d brag about beating up the school fag?”

Brock looked down at his half-empty bottle. His silence was answer enough.

“We lived in different worlds back in high school. Everybody knew you and how many home runs or whatever you had hit the previous season. Whereas no one, apart from my fellow ‘drama geeks,’” he sketched quotation marks in the air, “knew about me. And that was just fine.”

Brock shifted uncomfortably, Calvin had made his point, so he changed the subject to the reason for Brock’s visit.

They had a walk through of the house, Brock pointing out things such as the odd patch of damp, crumbling masonry and the quarry tiles in the hallway.

Going outside, Brock requested use of a stepladder so he could examine the roof.

“See how many of the shingles have turned up at the edges?”

Calvin was more interested in looking at the man’s ass than whatever was on the roof, but managed to make an affirmative noise.

“They’re quite brittle, too,” Brock said snapping off a small piece. “When was the roof last shingled?” Brock got down from the ladder and helped Calvin put it away in the garage.

“I was just going to college, so I’d say about seventeen years ago.”

A new roof was added to the list of what needed to be done.

When they were back inside, Calvin said, “I’m anxious to get the old place on the market and sold as quickly as possible, though still for a good price.”

Brock nodded. “I’ve had a cancellation, so I could start next week, if you want?”

Calvin did want. He doubted there had been a cancellation, but opted not to call Brock on it. He asked Brock to get some figures to him by the weekend. Though Calvin had decided to accept the quote; if nothing else, the eye-candy would be worth the few extra bucks. Also, throughout their conversation, Calvin’s gaydar had been pinging softly. He suspected Brock was deeply closeted.

Their handshake and eye contact at the door were held a second longer than those of a straight guy. This gave Calvin further support to his growing theory that Brock was a kindred spirit.

Once he had bid the tall drink of water goodbye, Calvin closed the door and rested his back against it. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”