- Hard Fall (21 page)

"No!" I darn near shot out of my chair with that word, hitting the edge of my seat and stopping myself before I stood. "I know what you're talking about, Pete, and there's no way." It took almost all the will I had to keep from getting into his face. "I've heard from people who've been to those places. They don't
fix
nothing. They just make you hate 187

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yourself." I swallowed my anger and fear at the thought of what went on in sessions like that. "I may not be all easy with me, but it's me and I don't hate Joe Peterson. I'm not about to let you take me down that road. I've seen that damage."

He smiled again. Each one of Pete's smiles was like a gut blow, cutting and hard. "But, Joe, if there was a chance to cure you..."

"Nothing anyone can say or do will 'cure me' of this." I grabbed my head with both hands, lacing my fingers over the top of my skull. If'n I hadn't done that, I might have used Pete's neck for outlet to all the pent up frustration, anger and worry that'd been building since my talk with Myron in his office. I promised myself that I would not lose control. At least not while anyone was nearby to witness. I sucked in a huge breath and then blew it out. "Okay, I ain't supposed to be having sex outside of marriage ... I get that. Masturbation is a sin." I challenged him with my stare. "Don't mean that both those don't happen all the time. Our sinful nature says we do what feels good. Our righteous minds say we act on it or not. But that assumes a woman would ever get me hot. I could have shacked up with some gal. And then you'd be all over me and she'd be all over me, heck the whole Ward'd be all over me for not giving her kids. Doing my husbandly duties."

"Let's pray about this." The man slid to his knees and held out his hand. "I'll help you pray until we understand it."

"Pete, I done prayed myself blue. Years of it. It ain't changed nothing about me. And I did come to understand. I understand this is what I am. And I've always been this way.

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Since I can remember." I'd held it bottled for so long. Now the cork had been popped and everything came spilling out.

Couldn't have stopped it if I tried. Don't know why, since I sure didn't want absolution from him. "And there was a time, Lord, where I hated myself and what I wanted. But, know what, God put me on this earth like this."

Pete looked like he watched me die. "That's the Devil talking in you, Joe." To his way of thinking, that's likely what was happening.

"No," I let go my grip. No need to crush my own hard head when it was someone else's that deserved it. "It's Joe talking." For a moment I thought I might cry. The feeling rushed up and overwhelmed me. Only the sheer mule streak in my blood kept me from it. I did not want to go down crying in front of Pete Sampris. I stamped it down, buried it. I knew it would come back later, hopefully I'd be alone by then.

When I got myself back under control, I glared at him, daring him to comment on my moment of weakness. Even Pete didn't have the stones for that.

"You know how we always talk about an epiphany." My words came out all rushed. "How if God wants something to be, and you follow what he says then it all goes right, everything in your life, the Holy Ghost confirms what you knew in your heart. Your paths just open up. Guess what, when I fought it, my whole life was upside down. I couldn't stand myself and nothing went right. I was sick all the time. I had no job. I accepted me, who I am, and the world went right. All the cards fell into place and I knew, I understood, this is what I am."

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"That's the Devil misleading you."

"Well if exactly what's 'sposed to be happening when God's working is happening when the Devil's working, how the heck does anyone tell?" My laugh was all filled with bitter. "And what ever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged?'"

With a grunt, Pete hauled himself off his knees. He stood, staring down at me, his hands clasped in front of him. "God doesn't hate homosexuals, Joe, we all know that. But it's the giving in to it, the sex outside of marriage that's an abomination, a sin against nature."

"I cain't believe that God would condemn anyone like that, Pete. I just don't think God would do that." Even standing above me in a position of power, Pete seemed weak and shallow. "Everything I ever been taught says he wouldn't. We don't love a God who puts people in a position where they never can love."

"Corinthians Six, 'know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind ... '" More scripture, the last resort of the faithful. "Joe, don't delude yourself. It's okay as long as you don't act on it."

Yeah, that's what they claim ... we'll accept you so long as you don't go out and get laid. Sucker you into a good ol'

feeling of acceptance and then kick you harder and harder in the balls as they try and wean you off of your desires. I believed that as much as I believed I could convince a dog to turn into a cat. "I cain't not act on it. Not now." I closed my eyes. Kabe floated there his dark hair all mussed by the wind, 190

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with a smile that washed away all my fear and his green eyes brighter than the sky behind him. Without opening my eyes, I whispered, "Naomi cleaved to Ruth and like David from the Old Testament, I've found grace in someone's eyes. And like David, those eyes happen to be on a guy." I don't know that it was love, don't think I was ready to call it anywhere near that, but Kabe's eyes held salvation in their acceptance of me.

Then I looked at Pete, what I saw was a tired and hateful man. "You come to me three, four months ago, knowing it, and I might have said you're right. God meant me to not love anyone. Be a rock. Don't be touched by no one. But now I've been touched, in here." I tapped my chest. "'There is no fear in love, but love casteth out fear.'"

"So you're not afraid?" He sneered. "It's the Devil's bravado, Joe."

"Naw," I snorted, "I'm terrified." Lord knows I was.

"Then it can't be love that you feel." His voice cajoled. It was scary how Pete could turn it on and off in a heartbeat.

"Lust is overwhelming you. We'll get you help. You'll see."

"Know what, I'm terrified of people like you. People who judge me, who think I'm a monster or I'm sick. People who hate what I am. 'Cause I'm hearing the words, Pete, I just don't think you believe in them." I stood and stuck my hands in my back pockets. Offering up a bit of a shrug, I knew he wouldn't understand, but I told him anyway. "Places like you're talking about, they drive people to suicide. The one thing I'm not terrified of is holding him."

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"Joe, you can't turn your back on the church. Jesus sacrificed himself for you. Abstinence is such a small sacrifice for someone who gave everything for you."

"Pete, I'm done talking." I jerked my head toward the door. The man could find his own way out. "You've said your piece. Go home."

He didn't budge. "I can't leave you like this, Joe."

"I'm telling you to get." Pushing my point with my body, I stepped in.

"Joe, you keep on this path and it'll be the end, a bad one." A thousand threats wove under that simple statement.

One of those I knew what it was. Excommunication—try me, strike my name off the rolls and tell all other members to shun me, even my folks. "I ain't gonna appear."

"What?"

"You hold a Bishops' Court, I ain't gonna appear. I'll save you the trouble, just excommunicate me by proxy. I don't want my family to go through that, having to listen to all the charges against me." That'd likely kill my mom. Not that this wouldn't anyway. If the church threw me out, they'd expect my family to cut me off. That was a hell of a position to put them in. Still, the whys and the hows and the spin they'd put on what I did, none of my family needed to be put through that. And at this point, the church wouldn't accept my resignation from the rolls. Not after tonight. "I ain't going to suffer being called to testify and you ain't got no power 'cept the scorn of the church to make me. You can't be fool enough not to realize I already got that in spades. I ain't done 192

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nothing wrong except that I'm involved with someone of my own sex."

"Joe, it's sex outside of marriage, you know that's wrong."

"Well, if you'd ever let me marry a guy, I might not be so pig-headed. And you'd just disfellowship a gal or guy messing with each other when they weren't married. Let them earn their way back. I hear you reinstated Jessie Dane's Temple Recommend 'cause she prayed real hard about having kids outside of marriage. Somehow, I don't think anyone'll ever give me that option." Whoa, I didn't think I could ever sound so snide as I did right about then.

"If you do that, there won't be a place for you at Jesus'

table."

"You know they served wine at the last supper, right?" I snapped. Pete was wearing on my nerves. I had a shotgun in my bedroom. It might be time to get the damn thing and escort him out.

"That's uncalled for." As if he still couldn't fathom my resistance, Pete sighed. "You've been through Temple Endowment. I don't believe you could do this!"

"Hey, that's when the trouble started." I laughed at him.

"Actually it was my mission. You know what it was like being stuck in a foreign country, living day to day with a cute missionary partner—living, sleeping, eating with him—for two years? God couldn't have created a better hell for a nineteen-year-old gay boy than the church managed."

"If that's what you really think," he spat, "you're going to rot in this little shack of yours. We're all going to watch and say 'look, that's what happens when you fall.'"

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"Gee, Pete, how Christian of you." I stalked past him and yanked the front door open. I just stood there, couldn't look at him so I studied the clock on the far side of my kitchen.

"Get out!" About as much force as I could put behind it without yelling had me shaking.

Pete turned toward the door and stopped dead. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. His mouth started working, but nothing was coming out. It took me a moment to figure that he was staring at something. I craned my head 'round the door and looked out onto the porch. Kabe stood there, his hands balled into fists at his side.

God must have been testing me right then. 'Cause I wanted to murder someone I knew I couldn't.

"How dare you!" Kabe sputtered. I don't think I'd ever realized what saying someone was black with anger meant. I saw it for the first time in Kabe's face. "How dare you say that shit to him? Joe's fucking better than you'll ever be."

I guessed he'd heard at least some of it. Darn fool little piss-ant boy, not doing like I'd asked. Now I shouted. "Kabe, get in here!" I grabbed his shirt and hauled him through the door. Two shoves moved him into the room enough that the Bishop could get by. I swung on Pete, "Get gone!" Like the bottle'd been shaken, everything I'd smashed down in the past day came boiling back up, ready to explode. Pete must've seen the murder in my heart seething up in my eyes.

I don't recall that I'd ever seen that man move so fast. If'n I weren't so pissed at that point I might have suffered a laugh at his prissy little run. I'd have thunk the Devil was nipping his balls by the way he moved.

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I stepped to the door and slammed it on Pete's heels. The whole cabin shook to its foundation. Before I turned I took two deep breaths, it was enough to back me down that I wouldn't kill Kabe ... least not yet. Then I spun and bellowed,

"What the Sam-hill are you doing here?"

"Oh my fucking God!" Kabe yelled back. "Is that what it means to be a Mormon, an intolerant bigot!"

"No, I'm what it means to be Mormon!" I laced my hands above my head and leaned against the door. "No matter what he says, anybody says, I have my faith. It runs all through me." After a second I couldn't stand that position. Too much of everything roiled inside me and I couldn't stay still. I paced to the kitchen and back again. "You say things like that and it hurts me. It's my faith, it's my God, it's what I am."

With a glare, Kabe flopped into the middle of my couch ...

pretty much the same spot Pete'd been in. "How can you believe in such intolerant shit?"

Two men on my couch in one night and both judging me.

"You crossed the line." Pete I'd take it from, 'cause I just didn't care about him. It hit me hard that I cared about what Kabe thought.

"I crossed the line?" He seemed to choke on the words.

"What line?"

"Don't you dare disrespect my belief like that!" I stalked over and stood above him. There he was all lean and dark and pissed off staring up at me with those big hazel eyes.

"There are maybe people who don't understand what love thy neighbor is all about and not casting stones, but just 'cause some apples are bad, you don't uproot the whole tree."

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"But he's telling you you're sick and perverted." Kabe rolled his ankle, shifted a bit, so that his legs were splayed on either side of mine. Rubbing his knee against my calf ... that little bit of contact shot frost up the back of my legs. I barely heard him say, "How can you swallow that bullshit?"

"I don't have to. I know it ain't true, in here." I sat down on my coffee table, my knees between his and leaned in. My voice got all low, like a snake's warning rattle. "I told you to go home. Somehow, I don't think this is your home." Elbows resting on my knees, I dropped my face into my hands. My whole body still jangled. All this adrenaline pumped me and I didn't have nowhere for it to go.

Kabe tapped my knee with his. "What are you doing?"

I didn't look at him. Couldn't look at him, 'cause I wasn't sure what I'd end up doing if I did. "Trying to decide what to do 'bout you."