They fucked in the backseat of Kevin's old Ford convertible, the rust spots belying any claim to being a show car, out by a lake near Dyess Air Force Base southwest of town. They really got going well when, Glade sitting on the cock and facing Kevin, Kevin's hand strayed to the rose tattoo. Kevin was every bit as hard bodied as Glade thought he'd be and as vigorous and deep reaching as Kevin said he'd be.
Barring the times Glade was at work, Kevin owning a vintage car repair shop and working on his own time, they fucked almost continuously for two weeks, Glade never asking for a cent, just being taken with a younger, more power hitting, and companionable lover than anyone Glade had known since Beaufort.
They were talking about moving in together, saving rent money for both of them, when David Patton asked Glade again about moving into his house. Glade was caught off guard and was naĂŻve enough to tell Patton that he was thinking of moving in with someone elseâthat he'd found someone he liked.
Two days later Kevin was out of the picture. David Patton called Glade into his office at Rapier and gave him the news, saying that Kevin had decided to move to another town. David also declared that Glade would move into his houseâif he wanted to keep his job.
David had offered Glade a cigarette when Glade first came into the office, and although Glade didn't usually smoke, he was nervous enough on seeing the serious look on David's face when he came into the office that he took the cigarette. It wasn't just any cigarette, though, and Glade was feeling a little more spaced out the more he dragged on itâand he was mellow enough that he took the news on Kevin without getting violent. David had a paper towel laid out on his desk top too, with strands of white powder lined up on it. There was a straw in David's hand when Glade entered and a residue of white powder on his nostrils.
When Glade was mellow, David offered him the straw and, cupping the back of Glade's head with a hand, push Glade's face down toward the paper towel. Glade hadn't done this beforeâand he did everything he could do not do it subsequentlyâbut David had found a new way to keep Glade under a modicum of control.
After Glade had taken a snort, he just lay back in his seat and watched as David lifted his legs over the arms of the chair, knelt in front of him, unzipped and pulled off his trousers and briefs, and, after playing with Glade's cock with his mouth until both men were hard and panting, crouched over Glade and fucked him in the chair. David didn't want Glade going wild in the fuck; he just wanted the young man lying there, taking the cock, and acknowledging David as the master. Glade did just that.
"Now I own you completely," David muttered when he was done. "When you go home tonight, it will be to my houseâand my bed. And we won't be hearing any more about any Kevin."
That was, Glade thought, the low point of Glade's life in Abilene, although he could have gone lower. He could have lost himself to the drugs, but he fought them hard enough and didn't take them long enough for them to take over his life. But he was owned now. And he'd let himself be maneuvered into that position. The night after he'd moved into Patton's house and found that he had no bedroom of his ownâthat he'd be sleeping in Patton's bedâGlade stole away down the block from the house and called Josh Caldwell in Beaufort, begging for his old position back if Josh sent him money for the trip. Glade had enough money saved now, but he needed some sort of sign of commitment from Caldwell. He didn't get it.
"That ship has sailed, Gordy," Caldwell answered. "I have other cuties to play with now. That business with the Marine officer was the last straw with you."
"The Marine officer?" Glade asked. He hadn't realized that Caldwell knew anything at all about Dean Horton.
"Yeah. I had a couple of boys rough him up and put him on the plane for where he was going. He was leaving you anyway. And still you took off on me. So, I'm not trusting you again."
Stunned, Glade just clicked off the phone. Dean hadn't just left him without a word. He'd been beaten up and driven out town. Glade gave a deep sob and then he steeled himself. That's when he decided he wouldn't be going any farther down. That's when he dropped his plan to go westâand also his plan to save more money before he did so. That's when he decided he was going north. Dean's assignment had been to Billings, Montana. Glade didn't know where that was other than knowing it was north of where he now was. But he was sure a bus could get him there. He had no idea whether he could find Dean nowâor even if Dean would remember him. But at least now Glade had a solid goal. To go north rather than west. His next call was to check out bus schedules.
Chapter Six: 9:30 Bus from Abilene
Sometimes Glade thought he was born with a "fuck me" sign painted on his butt. But then, he acknowledged that he seemed to have been born with that young and vulnerable look that turns some men on and had to admit that he loved being touchedâespecially in that sensitive spot below and to the left of his navel, where a blue rosebud was tattooed. But it wasn't the tattoo that pulled men in. Men wanted to fuck him before they learned the power of the tattoo.
The tattoo lifted their arousal for him, though. Ever since Glade, or Gordy as he then was named, started having sex, if a man touched him there, Glade hardened right up and softened to anything the man might suggest. Glade would just lay down and open his legs to the man and let him do whatever he wanted. It didn't help that, no matter how much Glade fought it, he loved being cocked. The first, dominating man who found Glade's sweet sex spot, his old boss, Josh Caldwell, had the spot marked with a tattoo for reference. Thereafter, If Glade really, really liked the guy, he'd move the guy's hand there himself to short-circuit any early indecision on his part.
These thoughts ran through Glade's mind as his bus ate up the miles north from Abilene. This was a history and these were impulses he knew he couldn't change or escape just by getting on a Greyhound bus.
Something got into his head that if only he could go north, he could start a whole new life and that this weakness in himâthese urges, this vulnerability to the wants of other menâwould just go away.
Just before Glade got on the bus in Abilene, David tried his last ploy. He pulled Glade around to the side of the station and embraced the young man in close to his chest. A hand sneaked up under the hem of Glade's athletic T, and David pressed a thumb into that blue rosebud tattoo. His lips clamped down on Glade's, and the younger man involuntarily danced on David's pole for a few moments. First one leg went up around David's hip and then another, and then he was dry humping Glade up against the wallâand the young man was loving it.
Glade was saved by the loudspeaker calling the "all aboard" for the 9:30 bus from Abilene, though, and he managed to break away from David and head for the bus without a look back. Instead, he looked up along the windows in the bus and saw that two cowboys were eyeing him real close. He wondered what they could have seen in the shadows at the side of the station house.
He climbed up into the bus and found a seat near the back on the side away from the platform. He didn't want to see David out there. Glade was fighting with himself, telling himself that life with David and in his sleazy little clubs weren't what Glade wanted. That he wanted something more from life. But he was afraid if he saw David out there, looking oh so forlorn, as David was so good at when he wanted something from Glade, he'd lose his resolve to leave Abilene.
The bus started out, and Glade felt a sudden sense of freedom. It was going to work. He knew it was.
As the bus moved out into the dusty countryside outside of Abilene and headed north, Glade looked around to see what there was in the way of travel companions. A Hispanic family, a man and his wife and three children, the oldest a sullen-looking teenage boy of fifteen or sixteen, was sitting near the front. From the way they were dressed, Glade thought maybe they were field workers moving north to start the harvest up there and to work their way back to Abilene again over the season. A couple of elderly ladies, both dressed out in their Sunday bestâoff on an adventure. A young woman who always seemed to be huddled close to the window and asleep. And the two cowboys Glade had seen in the bus window from the station platform.
The cowboys must have been together, because they were sitting side by side on a row about two thirds of the way back until the bus got started and then one moved to the window seat in the same row on the opposite side of the bus. One was older than the other, wiry with ropy muscles. Clean shaven, graying at the temples, with startling pale blue eyes in a deeply tanned and weather-lined face. Piercing eyes when he stared at youâeyes that told you you'd better do what he asked if he told you to do something. The other, younger one, was dark-complexioned, probably half Hispanic, equally tanned, but chunkier than the older one. Not fat by any means, but heavily muscled. Both were in checked flannel shirts and worn jeans, with fancy leather cowboy boots and big fancy silver belt buckles. Both had tattoos running up their arms and the hint at the neckline of more on their chests. And both occasionally were looking back at where Glade was sitting and then whispering to each other.
Buses weren't popular anymore as a means to move long distances, but what with the cost of gas and the overall economic conditions in the States at the moment, Glade thought they'd probably come into their own again. He had chosen the bus because he never had owned a car, couldn't afford the plane fare, and there were no rail connections between Abilene and Denver that didn't go hundreds of miles out of the way and that didn't, in the long run, take longerâand cost moreâthan the bus.
Glade didn't know why he picked Denver as his next destinationâhe ultimately was headed further north than that. He just knew he had to take this journey slow, just to be sure. He just had seen posters of Denver sitting right there next to the snow-capped Rocky Mountains and it looked so prosperous and clean and open that it had become somewhat of a Holy Grail to Glade in his last couple of weeks in Abilene, the symbol of a new, cleaner, less-complicated life. A place that wasn't Abilene.
