A Prairie Dog's Love Song (2 page)

Every one of them broke his heart a little more as he saw the changes in Ben, witnessed Ben’s first time with a guy caught on camera, his first kiss, first blowjob, first top, even his first bottom. He watched Ben’s expression as he took a man inside him for the first time (being Ben, he looked determined and sort of fascinated by a new challenge). He watched Ben grow in confidence, get fitter and tanner, become a star. And all of it was caught forever in Technicolor.

Those moments, those intimate moments, those
firsts
, were supposed to be Joshua’s, and they’d been stolen as surely as if cattle thieves had raided his pastures. That made him so angry and upset his teeth ached.

The videos also made him hard enough to drive fence posts.

He cried a little that night, a few old painful, rusty tears. And he came. Three times.

“H
I
,
EVERYONE
. This is Caleb. Caleb, can you tell us how old you are?”

Caleb smiled real wide. “I’m eighteen.”

“Tell us a little bit about you.”

“Well, I live way out in the boonies, and I’m a cowboy.”

“No kidding? A
real
cowboy?”

“All my life,” Caleb drawled. He gave the camera a sexy, shy look.

“So you actually work with, like, cows?”

“Yup. And horses. I done it all. Even went on a monthlong cattle drive with my brother and his best friend when my dad bought a whole herd from a ranch in Idaho. It was plumb awesome.”

“Yeah? Looks like you built good muscle tone doing work like that.”

“Sure did.” Caleb flexed his arm, showing an impressive bicep under his T-shirt.

“Why don’t you take that shirt off and show us?”

Caleb removed the shirt playfully and flexed for the camera.

“
Very
nice. What do people tell you is your best feature?”

Caleb looked shy. “Well, heck, they don’t really. But I guess girls like my eyes and my smile okay.”

“What do
you
think is your best feature?”

“I have a big dick.” Caleb smirked.

“I bet people would like to see that, cowboy. Want to take off your pants?”

Caleb did want to. He turned for the camera, showing off his fine ass and then his hard eight-inch cock as instructed. He climbed onto the bed.

He stroked himself, making it last, looking right into camera with a gaze that was part come-hither and part bashful-boy-being-naughty.

He nailed the money shot—moaning and hitting his chin with thick, creamy ropes.

“Cowboy, I think I can speak for our clients when I say that I hope we see a lot more of you. You’ve got it, kid.”

Caleb winked at the camera and licked a splash of come off his fingers. “Thanks, y’all. See you soon.”

T
HE
NEXT
morning, Joshua’s white Chevy pickup pulled into Fred Rivers’s ranch as soon as it was decent, which was the business end of 6:00 a.m. He pulled under the iron “White Buffalo Ranch” sign (which Joshua had always thought was a mite fanciful for a ranch) and up the long drive that curved to the house. The cottonwoods that lined the drive were bright orange this time of year, and even though he’d seen it a hundred times, Joshua allowed himself to appreciate how beautiful the ranch looked—open space, well-maintained dirt road and buildings, lots of shade-producing vegetation, sturdy fences, a rambling old-style house, and not one damn glimpse of any buildings or people that didn’t belong to the ranch—exactly how it should be on a man’s property.

And in looking it over with a fresh eye, he was thinking about Ben, and how Ben had left this. He clenched the steering wheel hard enough to hurt.

Fred must have heard him coming, ’cause he came out the screen door as Joshua parked. Joshua got out, and the two men stood face-to-face just looking at each other for a long moment, having a silent conversation about regrets and the wrongness of things. Then Fred spoke up.

“Got coffee on,” Fred said.

“Good,” said Joshua.

They went inside.

They were silent as they poured the coffee and took the mugs back out onto the porch. They settled into a couple of rocking chairs to watch the pink-and-orange dawn.

“I don’t know how I didn’t see it comin’,” Fred said at last. “He started goin’ to Vegas ’bout two years ago. Said he got hired as a model after submittin’ some stuff online. And later, when I asked about pictures, he said it was mostly runway stuff and not picturey kind of stuff.”

Joshua grunted.

“He did show me some pictures once, and they was real good. He looked good. But I guess them pictures I saw were just the decent ones.”

Joshua said nothing. He’d seen pictures like that on the B2B website. They liked to dress the guys up in sports clothes and such and then get ’em naked, photo by photo. It appealed to the whole “unwrapping a package” sort of mentality, he reckoned. There were a whole mess of decent pictures of Ben, but there were even more that were nice in other kinds of ways, ways a father wouldn’t appreciate.

“My stars, I’m a damn fool,” Fred repeated with self-disgust. “What boy that age makes the kind of money he was makin’ doing
runway modelin’
in Vegas? He was makin’ ten grand a trip! And I didn’t even
think
about porn. I suppose I could have been stupider about it all, but I don’t rightly see how, not without sawin’ my brain in half.”

“Me too,” Joshua said. Because he’d been just as dumb. Ben had been working part-time at Joshua’s ranch in high school, even though he had chores for his dad too. Then suddenly Ben had been too busy for that. He’d been doing some traveling, some kind of “modeling” work somewhere, Joshua had heard. But Joshua had—shit, he’d assumed it was cowboy stuff like for rodeo posters or magazines or
something
like that. That had always been Ben’s thing. He should have dug his nose right into it and sniffed out the facts. But he hadn’t.

“Chet’s gonna be fit to be tied.” Fred snorted in disgust.

“Yup.”

They drank some more coffee.

Joshua cleared his throat. “So Ben left?”

Fred sucked at his front teeth, which was usually a warning sign, or at least it had been when Joshua and Chet were growing up, that they were about to be in a world of hurt.

“Yup. He took everything he cared about. Left me a note. He ain’t comin’ home, Joshua. And with Chet gone, I don’t… I don’t know how I’m gonna live with that.”

“Goddamn Henry Atkins,” Joshua growled.

Because Joshua had known, the minute Nora had told him about that ruckus in her diner, that it was gonna be this bad. The fight was already legendary in town, a nasty brawl involving Henry, Ben, flying bits of blueberry pie, a couple of punches, loud accusations that had shocked nearly everyone in the little town of Clyde’s Corner, and at the end, a distraught Ben, in tears, storming out, getting in his car, and leaving tread marks on Main Street.

“I need more coffee.” Fred grunted, as if it were whiskey and he needed to get drunk. They went inside, and both poured some more.

“You wanna see the note?” Fred offered.

“Yup.”

Fred led Joshua to Ben’s room. The room still had all the stuff Joshua remembered so well—a shelf full of 4-H and Junior Rodeo awards and blue ribbons, posters showing pro rodeo riders, horses, and one of a cowboy walking his horse home across a pasture at sunset. Joshua had always thought that particular poster was a bit of a giveaway, seeing as how the cowboy’s back was to the camera, and his ass was so prominent in the threadbare jeans. Hell, the picture would have been less lewd if the man had been as bare and blushing as the day he was born.

Joshua blinked at the poster again. Come to think of it, the guy kind of looked like
him
.

But these were a boy’s things, and they’d been left behind. Joshua could feel it, feel the emptiness. The room was like the ghost of Ben past or something. His spirit wasn’t there anymore.

Fred picked up a piece of paper from Ben’s dresser and handed it over.

Dad,

I’m moving out for good. I’m sorry to leave you this way, but I guess you’ll hear soon enough why I have to go. I done some things that you won’t like, and now everyone in town knows about it. I guess it’s good ’cause it forces me to make a decision I’ve been trying to make for a long time now. You know I can make real good money in Vegas, and I’m saving up and everything. I’ll go to college, I guess, once I have enough saved. But for right now it’s a damn good job, and I hope you can understand that and forgive me.

Love,

Ben

Joshua read it over a couple of times and sighed. He rubbed his jaw.

He and Fred just looked at each other for a bit. Joshua had never seen Fred look so old. It was a bit frightening.

“I don’t like what he’s done, Joshua. I can’t say that I do.”

“Yup.”

“I ain’t…. Have you seen any of it?” Fred looked down at the floor.

“I looked it up.”

Fred scratched his head, his face torn, like he really didn’t want to ask what he needed to ask.

“Tell me straight up—how bad is it?”

Joshua gave that some consideration. “Well, it’s with other guys.”

Fred blushed and looked out the window. “I heard that. Could have figured they don’t pay you that kind of money for messin’ around with a Playboy centerfold. Even Ben ain’t
that
good-lookin’.”

“But… for what it is, it’s kinda classy,” Joshua added.

“Yeah?” Fred looked at him hopefully.

Joshua struggled to think of an analogy Fred would understand. “The company he works for is kind of like the Wranglers of gay porn.”

Fred smiled faintly and looked a little nauseated at the same time. “That’s… good.” He looked at the trophy shelf. “Ben always did have to be the best.”

He sighed, and his eyes darkened. “You know, the sex…. I guess I can live with that. I don’t like it, but I can live with it. God knows, I made some mistakes with my pecker when I was Ben’s age. But what really scares me….”

Joshua waited.

“You hear stories. Do you think they have him doped up to do those things? Is he on drugs? And then there’s diseases, AIDS. When I think about that, I just don’t think I can stand it. Ben was always such a good kid. He’s my baby.”

Fred’s voice choked a little, surprising the hell out of Joshua. Fred had always been one tough old son of a gun. Joshua pretended not to notice.

“Ain’t no signs of drugs in those videos,” he said firmly.

Fred nodded, looking relieved. “I didn’t see any signs of it either, when he was home, but….”

“And them places do testin’. For diseases and such. Pert sure.”

Fred blinked at him hopefully and nodded.

In silence, they wandered back out to the front porch and stood looking at Joshua’s truck.

“I can’t hardly ask you…,” Fred began. “But Chet’s not here, and Ben probably wouldn’t appreciate his old man showin’ up.”

“Already bought tickets.” Joshua grunted.

Fred looked relieved. “You’re a good friend, Joshua.”

Joshua felt like the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth. There was no way in hell he could tell Fred the truth about what he thought about those videos, or why he had to go to Vegas. But it didn’t have as much to do with being a good friend to Chet as it oughta.

He got into his truck and started home. He spent most of the drive trying to figure out how he was gonna break the news to Charlie that he was taking a little trip. He could only afford to be gone a couple of days. He hoped it would be enough.

“W
HY
DO
you love it?” Ben asked.

“Love what?” said Joshua.

“This.”

Joshua knew what Ben meant. Ben was his best friend’s kid brother, and all three of them were lying out under the stars in their sleeping bags. Above them the sky was so full of stars it looked like someone had spilled a bucket of sand across the sky, and every single grain had gotten perfectly separated and was glowing. The campfire was still warm at their side, and the night was a crisp fifty degrees. From off in the darkness came the soft sounds of the cattle they were moving.

All was well, and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done except sleep the sleep of the just, get up in the morning, have some coffee, and ride all day in the most breathtaking scenery on earth.

“Who said I loved it?” Joshua argued, just to be ornery.

“You do. You know you do.” Ben rolled onto his side and looked at Joshua.

Even at fifteen, the boy was a looker—blond, like Chet, but with big blue eyes instead of Chet’s brown. Ben looked shy and sweet—till he opened his mouth. The boy talked like a high-speed train and had more energy than a mechanical bull set on “death defying.”

“Guess so,” Joshua admitted. He glanced at Chet, a bit embarrassed to say it out loud, but Chet was already asleep and snoring softly.

“Tell me why?” Ben insisted. “I mean is it, like, the big open spaces? Or bein’ your own boss? Or workin’ with horses? Or—hey! You know what I like the best? I really like calvin’ season. I used to get up really early every mornin’ in the spring and run out the pasture to see the newborns.”

“You still do,” Joshua teased. In truth, he did too.

“’Cause, I dunno, it’s like, you know the herd is healthy when they’re havin’ lots of babies. And you did that, right? I mean, not that you got the cows
pregnant
, but you gave ’em a good life and a big pasture and good food, and then they have babies, and
they’re
healthy. And it makes you real proud. Like in
The Lion King
. Circle of life.”

“Yup,” Joshua agreed with a tiny huff of a laugh.