Becoming Andy Hunsinger Read online

  Bucky Buchholtz had fled for the mountains of western North Carolina, where he, Eddie, and Flo were renting a cottage for two weeks. Fergal was spending summer in Melbourne.

  “It’s wintertime there,” he’d told me. “No sweating like here in Florida.”

  The whole city felt like a steam room, and the few folks I saw on the sidewalks moved like their feet were mired in molasses.

  I hadn’t seen Travis since the farewell dinner party, weeks before, and the thought of spending an entire day with him appealed to me. Closing my eyes, I imagined us floating in a cool stream.

  “Well?” Travis said.

  “Sure, I’ll go.”

  I dressed in swim trunks, a faded T-shirt with the FSU crest silk-screened on the chest, and rubber flip-flops. In the kitchen, I made two ham and cheese sandwiches. I shrouded both in plastic wrap while listening to a mockingbird tootle in a slash pine, just outside the kitchen window.

  By the time Travis picked me up in his station wagon, the sun had crested the tree line east of the four-plex. Already, the morning felt steamy. Travis wore a Furry Freak Brothers T-shirt, a pair of jeans with the legs cut off at mid-thigh, and leather sandals. As usual, his dark hair was disheveled; it brushed his shoulders and tumbled over his ears. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

  “I’ve missed you, Andy; it’s been too long.”

  My face grew warm at Travis’ remark.

  He’s “missed” me? Really?

  I tossed a bath towel and a small ice cooler into the back seat. The cooler held the sandwiches I’d prepared, along with sodas and a jar of pickles. Sunlight glanced off the station wagon’s hood. While we drove down Franklin Street, Travis fished a pair of aviator-style sunglasses from his glove box.

  “It’ll be stinking hot today,” he said, perching the sunglasses on his upturned nose. “I hope the river’s not too crowded.”

  We traveled in southeasterly direction, on Highway 27, and my scalp prickled when we passed through Perry. I thought of the night I’d come there with Ray, and the abuse I’d endured at his hands. I saw the motel where Travis had picked me up, after that awful night.

  Neither of us mentioned the incident, which was fine with me. We drove in silence mostly, past endless pine forests. Stink from paper mills drifted into the car. Heat shimmered on the asphalt pavement before us. Air rushing through the station wagon’s open windows was too warm to even cool our skins. The sill of the passenger door was hot as a griddle; I couldn’t rest my arm on it. Sweat gathered in my armpits, on my forehead, and between my legs. I longed for the air conditioned coolness of Capital City’s locker room, for my bedroom and box fan.

  After turning east, we crossed the coffee-colored Suwanee River. Then we entered the small town of Branford with its brick and glass storefronts. Morning sunlight bore through the car’s windshield, and I squinted in the brightness.

  “I need shades,” I told Travis. “Let’s make a stop.”

  We found a convenience store with a revolving rack of knockoff sunglasses and a little mirror. A fat girl in a red smock, with acne and hairy forearms, sat behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and watching a small portable TV. I tried on pair after pair of sunglasses, each time asking Travis if he thought the sunglasses looked good on me.

  “Face it,” he said; “they all look terrible ‘cause they cost next to nothing. Just choose a pair and let’s get going.”

  I bought a pair with metal frames and round, purple-tinted lenses; I thought they made me look like John Lennon or Ozzie Osborne. In the car, Travis looked at me and shook his head.

  “What?” I said.

  He turned down one corner of his mouth. “With any luck, you’ll lose those sunglasses in the drink.”

  Once we’d reached the Ichetucknee River, we rented tubes from a vendor, just outside the state park. The tubes were black and fat, each about five feet in diameter, with multiple orange patches. Four students from nearby University of Florida joined Travis and me in the bed of the vendor’s pickup truck, for a ride to the head of the river. We trundled down a red clay road, all of us clutching our tubes, passing beneath live oaks that completely shaded the road. Already, it seemed, the temperature had dropped by ten degrees. The woods on either side of the road were so thick I could only see a few feet into the forest.

  Inside the park, the river’s beauty stole my breath. The Ichetucknee was fed by a fresh water spring called “Blue Hole”, and the spring’s name was certainly apt. As a kid, on a school trip to Washington D.C., I’d viewed the Star of Bombay sapphire on display at the Smithsonian Institution, an amazing gem with an azure hue one rarely sees in nature. Blue Hole had that same unearthly color. Groups of bathers splashed about the spring while others sunned themselves on limestone outcroppings rimming the spring. Children’s laughter and shrieks echoed through a stand of towering cypress trees.

  “I’m hot and sweaty,” Travis said. “Let’s take a dip before we tube.”

  After we’d both shed our shirts and footgear, my mouth grew sticky while I watched Travis’ muscles move under his milky skin. His broad shoulders tapered to a trim waist, and his belly muscles rippled like a washboard. His nipples were dark, as tiny as raisins. A thin line of hair trickled from his navel and into the waistband of his shorts. When he waded into the spring, goose bumps popped up on his skin. He clasped his arms in his hands. Then he looked at me with a grin on his face.

  “It’s cold as ice,” he cried.

  I stepped to a rock ledge that hung over the spring. Then I dove in head-first. The chilly water pricked my skin like a thousand needles, and the sound of rising bubbles filled my ears. The spring’s temperature was nearly twenty degrees less than the air above it. I thought of the hot drive we’d just made in Travis’ station wagon, and I marveled at the spring’s natural coolness.

  Who needed air conditioning?

  I swam through crystalline water to the shallow area where Travis stood waist deep with his feet planted in the spring’s sandy bottom. I stood alongside Travis, and then we both shivered like little boys in an ice storm. Droplets of water glistened on Travis’ shoulders, in his dark hair. Sunlight reflected off the spring’s placid surface.

  Travis said, “I think my balls crawled up inside my body.”

  We both chuckled while we continued to shiver.

  “How long will the tube trip take?” I asked.

  “If we stop for lunch along the way -- and we should -- it’s about three and a half hours. You’ll like the ride; the river’s beautiful.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  He nodded. “My folks are big on outdoor activities. When my brother and I were kids, my family camped all over the state of Florida, from the Keys to the Panhandle. I think I was nine or ten when we stayed here.”

  The river proved as pretty as Travis had said. The water was just as clear as Blue Hole’s. The river’s width varied from thirty to sixty feet, and in most places the depth was less than three feet. Beneath the surface, exotic water plants undulated with the river’s flow. We glided at a speed of two miles per hour, passing beneath ancient cypress trees with buttressed trunks and lacy branches. Using a length of bailing twine he’d found in a trash can, Travis had tethered our cooler to his tube, and now he trailed it behind him in the cool water.

  As much as I’d cursed the sun’s intensity earlier that morning, I felt glad for its presence during our trip. The water remained seventy-two degrees throughout the river’s six-mile length, and I’d have been cold that day without the sun warming my shoulders and belly.

  “Weekends, this place gets really crowded,” Travis said.

  But we encountered few other tubers as we slid past the river’s forested banks, listening to the river’s gurgle and the cries of birds echoing in the trees. We passed a hammock where a flock of wild turkeys, perhaps ten or so, pecked at the marshy ground. As we floated, Travis pointed out various species of trees I wasn’t familiar with: sweet gum, Florida maple, turkey oa
k, swamp chestnut oak, wax myrtle, and red mulberry. He knew his flowering shrubs, too: arrow-wood, possum-haw, elderberry, and dahoon.

  “Plants and trees have always fascinated me,” Travis said. “My dad keeps a greenhouse at our home in Jacksonville. He grows orchids and bromeliads.”

  “Your folks sound pretty cool,” I said.

  He raised a shoulder, let it drop. “They can be... demanding. They set high standards for themselves and for their kids.”

  I nodded. “Butch told me many of your family members are doctors.”

  Travis bobbed his chin.

  “I guess you will be, too?”

  He pursed his lips, and then he spoke with a tone of resignation in his voice. “That’s the plan.”

  “You don’t sound too excited about it.”

  Travis trailed a few fingertips in the chilly water, creating ripples on the surface.

  “Practicing medicine’s okay, I guess. But I don’t have the passion for it like Biff and Austin, or like my dad and brother do. I’d sooner do landscape design, maybe own a plant nursery or tree farm. Does that sound weird?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “What about your folks?” Travis asked me. “Have they always expected you to practice law?”

  I shook my head. “That was my idea, not theirs.”

  We dined on a sandy river bank, seated in our beached tubes. We chewed our sandwiches and munched on pickle spears. The fresh air and sunshine made these simple foods taste special. Even the sodas we drank seemed to carry more flavor than they usually did. Travis’ damp shorts clung to his body. Between his thighs, his genitals bulged beneath the denim. I studied the dark hairs dusting his calves and the milky smoothness of his thighs. Because he hadn’t shaved that morning, stubble blued his face.

  I asked myself, how would it feel to kiss his lips, to feel my whiskers rasp against his while I ran my fingers through his hair?

  Between my legs, I stiffened. Then I tore my gaze from Travis.

  Cut it out, Hunsinger. Remember, he’s not interested in love.

  Once back on the river, we floated in silence. My full stomach and the sun’s warmth made me drowsy. My chin kept dropping to my sternum as we drifted along, and I was nearly asleep when Travis roused me with a question.

  “Have you seen that man from Perry again -- the one who roughed you up?”

  Heat rose in my cheeks. I looked at Travis and shook my head. “Do you think I like bondage and torture?”

  Travis narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what you like, Andy. You seem to have a hard time deciding.”

  I lowered my gaze. Then I looked at Travis again.

  “You’re right, I guess. I seem a bit lost right now, but at least I haven’t quit trying like...”

  Shut up, Hunsinger.

  “Like me?” Travis said.

  I didn’t answer him; I gazed at treetops instead.

  “Has Biff told you about my Myrtle Beach debacle?”

  I nodded, but I kept my gaze fixed on the cypress trees we passed.

  Travis said, “Do you know how it feels to think your life is over?”

  I thought about the day of the Anita Bryant demonstration.

  “I think I do,” I said.

  “After Myrtle Beach and all the miserable shit that followed, I entered a very dark place inside my head; one I thought I might never escape from. They locked me up in a psych ward, you know.”

  I nodded. “How long were you in?”

  “About three months, but it seemed like more. Most of the time they kept me sedated with Seconal. I wandered the halls in a bathrobe like a sleepwalker.”

  “Are you gay?” I asked.

  Travis raised his eyebrows. “I guess, but I’ll never let myself love another man. Gay sex is forbidden by my faith, plus my family won’t tolerate it. My folks have told me, more than once, ‘We love you, but not your homosexual urges. Be a good man and make us proud: control yourself.’”

  I made a face. “You’ll go through life alone?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s crazy, Travis.”

  “Is it?”

  “Look, I know your faith’s important to you, but I don’t understand. How can loving another man be a sin? Did Jesus ever say homosexuality was wrong?”

  Travis shook his head.

  “And your family’s not being fair,” I said. “It’s like they’ve put you in jail.”

  Travis snorted. “You sound like Biff. He’s told me a dozen times, ‘Grow some balls. Tell your family to fuck off.’”

  Behind us, a group of bathers, a mix of high school boys and girls, approached on inflatable rafts. Their laughter rang through the surrounding forest. Travis and I fell silent. We hugged the river bank, allowing the kids to float past us. One boy on a raft held hands with a girl on another raft. They floated side-by-side, gazing at each other and whispering back and forth. They looked awfully happy.

  Once the kids rounded a bend in the river and their voices faded, Travis and I re-commenced floating, and then I told him about my friends at AGA.

  “This fall,” I said, “you should come to a meeting with me.”

  Travis made a face. “Why? What would that accomplish?”

  “You could be yourself among people who’ll accept you. It’s liberating, believe me.”

  Travis gazed into the river’s crystal-clear water.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.

  ***

  I lay on my bed in my Franklin Street apartment. My bedroom was dark, but faint moonlight entered through the windows and I stared at the water-stained ceiling. Hours before, Travis had dropped me off, following our tubing excursion, and ever since then I couldn’t get him off my mind. I remembered every detail of our conversation. I visualized the delicate contours of his face. I pictured his lanky limbs, his milky skin, and long fingers. I heard his baritone voice inside my head.

  After seizing a tube of KY jelly I kept in my nightstand drawer, I stroked myself while visions of Travis loomed in my head. When I came, I groaned so loudly Fergal would have heard me downstairs, had he been there. My chest heaved and my breath whistled in my nose. While my pulse slowed, I stared at the ceiling, feeling utterly satisfied.

  If imaginary sex with Travis was that good, what would the real thing feel like?

  For a fleeting moment, I thought of getting dressed, jumping into my Vega, and driving to Travis’ home. I would seize him in my arms, plant a kiss on his cheek, and tell him how much I cared for him. But then I recalled what he’d told me while we floated downstream, earlier that day:

  “I’ll never let myself love another man.”

  Now, in my bedroom, I stared at the ceiling and shook my head.

  Shit...

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My mother called on a weekday afternoon, in late July.

  “Your father’s had a heart attack, Andy.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in surgery, right now.”

  My knees turned to jelly. I had to sit in my rocking chair or I’d have fallen to the floor. My voice trembled when I spoke.

  “How serious is it, Mom?”

  A second or two passed. Then Mom answered.

  “They’re not sure he’ll make it. You’ll need to come, now.”

  I rode to Pensacola with Bucky Buchholtz, in his convertible Chrysler. We hardly spoke during the three-hour drive on Highway Ninety. Bucky kept working his jaw from side to side; he flexed his fingers on the steering wheel while we flew past pine forests and pasture land.

  “I can’t believe this,” I’d told him earlier. “Dad’s always been so healthy; he’s never even smoked. I thought he’d live to be a hundred.”

  “He damned sure better,” Bucky said. “I can’t imagine life without Drake Hunsinger. Who will I hunt and fish with? Who...?” Bucky’s voice broke like a teenager’s. He kept his gaze straight ahead while a tear rolled out of the corner of his eye. Sniffling, he shook his head. Then he cleared
his throat. “Look at me, I’m crying like an old lady.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Bucky looked at me with a stricken expression on his face. Then he returned his gaze to the windshield.

  “Your dad’s the finest man I’ve ever known, a true friend, a good husband and father, and a damned fine bomber pilot. When he’s in a cockpit, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word fear.”

  I tried to imagine my father piloting a B-17 in the skies over Germany, while flak exploded all around him and Messerschmitts peppered his plane’s flanks with bullets. Dad had always seemed mild-mannered and averse to conflict. The times he’d quarreled with my mom I could have counted on my fingers, and he had never struck me or my brother. He said his prayers each night and never missed church on Sunday. Yet this same man had rained destruction on his enemy, time and again. He bombed bridges, factories, train stations, oil refineries, and chemical plants. No doubt he caused dozens, or maybe hundreds of deaths.

  Did he feel guilty about these deeds?

  I had never asked him the question. In fact, early in life, I’d learned not to ask him anything about the war. Whenever I did he quickly changed the subject, and when I asked my mom why, she answered carefully.

  “Men who fought in that war don’t like to discuss their experiences. They saw things too awful to describe, I’m afraid; things they prefer to forget.”

  By the time Bucky and I reached Pensacola, the sun had dipped its lower edge behind the taller buildings to the west. Traffic was light and few pedestrians appeared on the city’s sidewalks. Bucky maneuvered the Chrysler through downtown’s narrow streets, past structures dating back to the Civil War. Baptist Hospital sat on West Avery Street, a red brick, five-story structure with Florida maples spaced evenly in the hospital’s freshly-mown Bahia lawn. I had passed the building a thousand times while growing up, but never went inside.