First Flight (16 page)

“God,” Jesse said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I’ll clean it up or paint over it.” He wiped his hands on his pants and turned toward the door to the mudroom.

“Don’t,” Leanna said, holding up her hand. “Take pictures, first. We have to document everything, the police said, and tell them about it.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“
J
ESSE
, you need to wake up. Tanner needs to talk to you.”

“Huh?” Jesse rubbed at his face and squinted at his clock. Glowing green numbers told him it was a quarter to six. “Tanner? Now?”

“Yes,” Leanna said, holding the phone out to him. “I know it’s early.”

“’Sokay,” he said, taking the phone. “Tanner?”

“Hi, Jesse. I’m sorry to wake you up, but you may not want to come to work, today.”

“Why? What happened?” Jesse sat up, far more alert.

“Well, when I got here to open, I discovered that someone had spent a ridiculous amount of time spray-painting the building. Front, sides, and back. It’s all about you, and about your, uh, orientation.”

“Lemme guess, I’m a fag?” Jesse groaned and flopped backward. “Screw it, I’ll come in anyhow.”

“It’s a little more, um, explicit than that,” Tanner said. “I don’t know what it’s going to cost to get it cleaned up.”

“Don’t clean it up!” Jesse sat up again. “Uh, I gotta ask Mom. She’s been talking to the cops. They said you have to take pictures, first, and call them before you do anything. Kevin painted our garage last night. I don’t know if there’s someone you have to ask for or anything, but Mom’ll know. Hang on.”

lock up ur sons! jesse swanson is a fag! ull b sory! jesse swanson sucks cock! ull see ull b sory u shold of lisend! jesse swanson is a slutty whore!

“Charming,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “At least Chris isn’t here to see this.”

“At least it doesn’t
involve
Chris,” Desmond said. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then shook his head. “It’s not right. None of it is.”

“Not on this side of the building, anyhow, and no, it’s not,” Jesse said. The thought of the same slurs applied to Chris, who would have understood that they were meant to hurt but not why, made him feel sicker than he already did. “Why is it that he can spell my name right, but not
sorry
,
should
, or
you’ll?
”

“Beats me,” Desmond said. “I swear to God, if I catch him,
he
is going to be sorry. And I’ll plead guilty and go to jail and be damn happy about it, too.”

“Dad,” Jesse said, and sighed. “Thanks for driving me over here. I’ll see you later.”

“O
H
,
HERE
,
you need one of these,” Betsy said, holding out a small slip of paper.

“What is this?” Jesse said, even as he took it from her. It was a green
Hello, my name is:
sticker, which had the word
FAG
written in the space beneath. “Excuse me?”

“We’re all wearing them, today,” she said, moving her jacket aside so he could see the pink one stuck to her apron, just below her regular name badge. “It was Tanner’s idea.”

“Really?” He blinked and realized that he hadn’t looked at
anyone
on the way in. “Uh, okay. Why?”

“He made some noble-sounding speech about valued employees and valuing one another and camaraderie,” she said, taking her jacket off and hanging it up. “Which I’m pretty sure is just a bunch of cover-your-ass BS so no one will know he’s got a little crush on you. C’mon, we gotta get out front.”

Jesse peeled the backing off the sticker and stuck it to the dead center of the top of his apron. One of his bosses apparently had a crush on him, his boyfriend was currently a bird, his ex-boyfriend had lost his mind, and the whole world had been informed that he was gay. On the other hand, everyone in the store seemed to be claiming solidarity with him. “This is the weirdest day of my life,” he said, and followed her out of the room.

“
H
EY
, are you Jesse Swanson?”

Jesse looked up from the pack of gum he was scanning. “Why?” The last guy that had asked that had used it as a lead-in to asking him where his purse was, then told him a hoary old joke about the difference between lesbians and gay guys preparing to go on vacation.

“Robbie Amundson,” the guy said, holding up an ID badge that said PRESS on it. “With
Inquisitive Times
. My boss lives up the street. She called me on her way in this morning, saying we gotta talk to you and your coworkers.”

“Oh, okay,” Jesse said, dropping the gum in beside the chips and the soda he’d already bagged. “That comes to five seventeen.”

“Can I get an interview with you?” Robbie said, holding out a ten.

Jesse shrugged as he took the bill. “Why?”

“My boss, she’s Juliana Hyde.”

“That’s awesome for her, I’m sure,” Jesse said, as he finished up the transaction and handed the man’s change over. “But I’m not—I don’t read the
Inquisitive Times
. I don’t know who she is.”

“She used to be Julian Hyde,” Robbie said, stuffing his change in his pocket without looking at it. “She’s got a huge chip on her shoulder when it comes to discrimination and denigration and a lot of other big words that
don’t
start with D. Anyhow, she wants to do a story on the graffiti and on you and the response of your coworkers and stuff. When I told her about the sign out front, she actually swore in front of board members ’cause she couldn’t come down here herself.”

“Julian Hyde?” Jesse frowned, then tilted his head. “Wait, is she the one that sued the mayor for vetoing the assembly’s motion to add sexual orientation to the non-discrimination thing? And what sign?”

“Yeah! That’s her.” He nodded enthusiastically. “The sign in front of the entryway that explains that by shopping here, people are making a stand against hate, so please tell your friends to shop here too and the plan to donate money to some good causes and the whole nametag thing. So can I ask you some questions?”

“Really?” Jesse looked around, standing on his toes so he could see all the way back to the customer service desk. Everyone seemed to be busy with their normal Thursday tasks, from what he could see. “Huh. What the hell, okay.” He checked his watch. “I’m supposed to go on break now anyhow. I can give you twenty minutes, okay?”

“That’s awesome!” Robbie dug a battered notebook and a cheap pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “Okay, so, first thing is, do you know who did this?”

“S
O
ON
top of the guy from the
Inquisitive Times,
there was the lady from the regular paper and a photographer, Marnie and Devon from Rock On’s morning show, a guy from the public radio station, two girls from the university’s radio station who couldn’t stop giggling, and two TV reporters, one from channel five and one from channel twelve,” Jesse said, rubbing his face and wandering across the kitchen to open the fridge. “I need a
nap
.”

“Good Lord,” Leanna said, on the other end of the line. “What did you tell them all?”

“Basically the same thing,” Jesse said, closing the door again and heading back toward the phone, “since they were all asking the same questions, pretty much. It was more tedious than anything else.”

“Ah. Oh, I know what I was going to ask you. Where did you get that big stuffed bird that’s in your room?”

“Stuffed—oh, uh, Betsy found it at some craft store in their Halloween stuff for, like, five bucks. She brought it in and was trying to give it away, and since Chris likes ravens and crows, I bought it from her.”

“Oh, okay then. There was something else…. Oh, that’s right. Will you be okay if your dad and I go out to dinner tonight? He made us reservations at Bellaluna a couple of weeks ago, but if you’d rather not be home alone, we can cancel.”

“No, I’ll be fine. If Kevin shows up, I’ll pretend I’m not home and call the cops, I swear. Chris was going to try to call me tonight, which I’m really looking forward to.”

Leanna laughed. “And I’m sure you don’t want snoopy parents listening while you’re being all mushy,” she said.

“Hardly,” Jesse said and laughed too. “Seriously, go have a good time. I’ll be fine.”

“All right, then. Don’t burn the house down.”

“Aw, that was right after ‘talk to Chris’ on my list of stuff to do tonight! I guess I’ll just have to go to bed early, then.”

“I’m sorry, but you know how your father feels about insurance premiums,” she said. “All right, then. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Mom. Bye.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

H
E
WAS
late. Jesse would already be home, and maybe worried about him. He didn’t want to make his chosen one worry.

Sings-like-water looked down as he rested a moment, not liking something about the car that was traveling along the street below. It was just a car, big and smelly and dangerous, but it was down there and couldn’t hurt him. He was almost home; he really needed to pay attention to where he was going.

Home. Just as he reached the edge of the Swanson’s property, the car pulled across the drive at an angle, part of it on the grass. The door opened and Sings-like-water didn’t think about it: he simply shrieked, dropping straight out of the sky.

Jesse frowned and paused his game, listening hard. He decided it must have been a kid or something and went back to playing.

Kevin hit him, pushed him away, and leaned back into the car. When he straightened up, he was holding something long and dark and skinny, but Sings-like-water didn’t recognize it. He’d only had a glimpse of it, anyhow; he was too focused on finding purchase on Kevin’s head or face to pay attention to what was in his hands.
“Go!”
he said,
“Danger! Go away!”

Danger.
Bright-tail flew up to the peak of the roof and looked over, looking for the hawk or eagle that was threatening Sings-watery. She couldn’t see one, couldn’t see any other birds at all, actually. A movement from the ground and another cry of
Danger!
caught her attention and she hopped down to the gutter.
There
was Sings-watery and a man too. The man seemed to be the one who was dangerous. Bright-tail wouldn’t argue that, not at all.

She also would not sit and watch, not when Sings-watery needed help. Leaning forward, Bright-tail let gravity pull her over the edge, flicking her wings open just enough to arrest her fall and gain forward momentum.
“Danger!”
she called, diving at the pale oval that was turned toward Sings-watery.
“Go away, go away!”

Another shriek pulled his attention away from his game. “That’s not kids,” Jesse said, shoving his chair away from his desk. He leaned back and glanced out the window, fear lancing through him as he recognized Kevin. The black-and-white shape on Kevin’s head was a
magpie,
and the big black shape— “Chris!” Then the magpie made a feint at Kevin’s hands, and he swore his heart stopped: the man was holding a gun.

Jesse turned and tripped over his feet as he tried to get up. He crawled across to the table beside the bed and found the handset, dialing with a shaking hand.

“Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?”

“Hi, um, I need you to send the cops over here because he’s got a gun and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna try to kill my boyfriend—”

“Okay, you need to slow down. Someone has a gun?”

“Yeah, Kevin, Kevin Woods. He’s on the lawn, um, and I’m at 7659 Emberly Drive—”

“Okay, I see your address here. Is anyone injured?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t hear any, uh, any shots and please you have to send someone—”

“Just slow down, sir. What’s your name? Are you Desmond Swanson?”

“I’m Jesse,” he said, peeking out the window again. “God, please, he’s loading the gun and you’ve got to get the cops here.”

Sings-like-water circled, called out, and dropped again, latching onto the fabric and soft skin at the back of Kevin’s neck, pecking hard at the back of his head.

Bright-tail caught the glint of light on brass at the man’s hands and darted at it.
“Want!”
she said, grabbing at the gold-and-red thing the man was trying to push into the pipe he held.
“Give me!”

The cartridge fell to the grass and the man swatted her, knocking her to the ground as well.

“Bad! Go away! Danger!”
Bright-tail, indignant, flew up into his face and drove her beak toward his eyes.

“Danger!”
Sings-like-water said, and tore a clump of hair free from Kevin’s scalp.

“Just stay calm, Jesse. I’m Lynda, and I’ve got two units on the way now. You said Kevin is on the lawn? Where are you?”

“In my room on the second floor,” Jesse said, his head swimming. He blinked a few times and took a deep breath.

“Where’s your, um, boyfriend?”

He couldn’t decide what the little hesitation meant. There had been a few vocal detractors among the day’s incredible support, and the idea that he’d managed to find another one scared him more than the gun in Kevin’s hands. “You’re still sending the cops, right? You’re not going to let him—fuck—” His breath caught, his throat squeezing tight.

“The police are about five minutes away, Jesse, and they’ll be there as soon as they can. Where is your boyfriend? Is he in the house too? I need to let the officers know where he is.”

“No, he’s outside.” Jesse didn’t want to look. He could still hear the birds, which probably meant that they were fine.

“He’s outside? All right. I’ve just let the officers know, so they can look out for him, all right?”

“Okay.” He couldn’t stand it. Jesse peered over the window sill in time to see Kevin lift the gun to his shoulder, aiming at something that Jesse couldn’t see. “No!” The phone fell to the carpet, Lynda’s voice a forgotten buzz as he dashed from his room.

Jesse took the stairs two at a time, landing in the entry way with a thump and staggering a little before wrenching the door open.