The Battle for Jericho Page 11

  “And how is that going?” There was a smirk in Dylan’s tone when he asked that.

  My sense of failure grew bigger, making my head drop as if it was overweighted. “That’s the second lousy part. We kind of got off to a bad start but… we kissed.”

  Dylan leaned back, looking up at me with shock widening his eyes. “You actually kissed a guy?”

  “Yeah. And the weird thing is… I liked it.”

  “Wait. What do you mean, you liked it?”

  “I mean that I liked kissing that guy. It was sort of exciting, like kissing a girl, but different. And that freaked me out. That’s not supposed to happen. I’m not supposed to like kissing another dude. And now I don’t know what to do, because… I want to kiss him again. And what if I do that? What if I do that, and I like it even more, and I start wanting to do… other things with him?”

  Dylan looked at me for several moments in silence. “Jericho, I want you to take a second and think about this before you answer. Have you been attracted to guys before?”

  “Not really,” I answered immediately, turning my gaze back to my feet. “I mean, I would kind of check out the other guys when we’d be in the showers at school, but it was no big deal or anything. It’s not like I got hard looking at ’em….”

  Dylan waited. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ there.”

  “That dude I told you about, the one I kissed, is actually a really good friend of mine. I just never knew he was on the gay team until now. He’s one of the guys I’ve seen naked in the showers. And when I think about his naked body now, I kind of, sort of… want to get hard.” I looked at Dylan helplessly. “What does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.” I glanced up at the street, just as a car moved past the house. The woman behind the wheel looked out at us, and it sent a bolt of panic through me. I didn’t know her, but she could have just as easily been someone I knew, a lady from church, some friend of my mom’s or dad’s. What was I thinking, sitting on the steps of Dylan’s house, with Dylan no less, where anybody could see me? My brain must have really been a scrambled mess of confusion. “Uh, can we go inside and finish talking?”

  “Sure, if you want to.” Dylan got up. “The front door’s locked. Come around back.”

  I scooped up my books and backpack and followed him around to the back of the house. There were two huge bags of mulch in the middle of the backyard, and I could see where he had started placing a mound of the stuff around the base of one of the dogwood trees. The door off the patio was open. Dylan tossed his dirty gloves on the ground and led me into the kitchen. He went to the sink to wash his hands, and I put my books and backpack on the table.

  “You want something to drink?” Dylan asked.

  “No, thanks.” I started stuffing books into my backpack. “So what’s going on with me, huh? Am I turning into a pervert or something?”

  Dylan sighed. “Jericho, being attracted to guys doesn’t make you a pervert.”

  “Then what does it make me?”

  “I don’t know,” Dylan replied, looking at me over his shoulder. Finished at the sink, he turned off the water, grabbed a towel, and started drying his hands. “That’s something you’re going to have to figure out for yourself. You’re the only one who can do that.”

  “But you’re supposed to help me figure this out. You’re the one who signed me up for this.”

  “Signed you up for what?”

  “To be gay!”

  Dylan gave me this shocked look. “Jericho, tell me you’re kidding.”

  “About what?”

  “Tell me you don’t seriously believe that being gay is something you can sign up for.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Dylan shook his head as if I’d slapped him across his ear. He looked me up and down with blatant disbelief. “You can’t possibly believe that. You just can’t.”

  He was beginning to make me feel a wee bit dim. “Well, you must believe it too. You gave me that contract to sign and told me how to go from straight to—”

  “Jericho, that was a joke!” He shook his hands at me in frustration. “I was just messing with your head. I wrote up that contract right after I sent you home Sunday night. I did that to make you see how silly all that right wing talk about the so-called ‘gay agenda’ really is.”

  “But….” I blinked at him. “My parents, my pastor… they all say gay is a choice.”

  He put his hands on his hips with an impatient grunt. “Do you believe everything your parents and your pastor tell you?”

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  Dylan buried his face in his hands and moaned miserably. I felt very sorry for him.

  A moment later, Dylan took his hands from his face. “Jericho, I am not gay by choice. Nobody is. This is the way I was born.”

  “But that can’t be. The Bible says homosexuality is a sin.”

  “Yes, it does. So what?”

  “Well, you have to choose to sin. Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit. Some of the Hebrews chose to make a golden idol after they were led out of slavery in Egypt. I chose to break into your house and tear up your property. All those things were sins that somebody chose to commit. God punishes sinners. But God wouldn’t punish someone for the way that they’re born. He wouldn’t punish me for being black or you for being white. It wouldn’t be fair, because we don’t pick the color of our skin. That would make God cruel, and God can’t be cruel.”

  “So, since the Bible calls homosexuality a sin, it has to be a choice. Or, to put the argument another way, a gay man who chooses to have sex with another man is committing a sin, despite the fact that he’s just acting according to his nature, the same way a straight man acts according to his nature when he chooses to have sex with a woman. Is that it?”

  “I suppose. Yeah.”

  “Oh, and one of the picketers out front shouted another little gem of wisdom at me last week, that all sex outside marriage is a sin, and all gay sex is sin because gays can’t get married. Right?”

  “Right.” So why did I get the impression that I couldn’t be less right if I had two left hands and two left feet?

  “And it certainly doesn’t matter that gays don’t have the option to get married because most governments in the world refuse to write laws allowing them to marry. That’s just too bad. All you queers keep your pants zipped and your hands off each other so you don’t make the rest of society uncomfortable. Is that how it goes?”

  I was now down to a single, hesitant nod.

  “I see.” Dylan nodded too, as if he understood, but there was a flat look to his eyes that made his disagreement very clear. He stepped up and got in my face, giving a look so clear and no-nonsense that I gulped. “Jericho, let me give you a little home truth. As far as the law of the United States goes, it doesn’t matter what the Bible says about homosexuality, or what any particular Christian thinks about homosexuals. In this country, everyone has freedom of religion. If you, your parents, your pastor, or anyone else wants to believe homosexuality is a sin, that’s your right. But sexuality is a state of being, just as race and gender are states of being, or ‘immutable characteristics’ as we lawyers like to put it. And freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. America is not a theocracy. As much as Christians in this country would like to force everyone to live by their beliefs, the US Constitution says they can’t do that.”

  Dylan stepped back, glaring at me now with anger. “I’m attracted to guys. I’ve been that way ever since I was twelve, and I will be that way until the day I die. That is not something I chose, and it is not something I can turn off like flipping a switch, and I am not going to deny myself the love of another man because some people don’t like seeing two men or two women holding hands. Gay is part of what I am, part of who I am. And I don’t believe it’s a sin. That’s my right as an American citizen.”

  I just stood there, looking at him, amazed. He seemed so sure, so c
onvinced of what he had said. And that only confused me all the more. Suddenly, I felt very tired. I pulled out a chair and sank down into it. “I’m sorry if I pissed you off, Dylan. But what you’re saying is that I’m gay. I want to kiss one of my guy friends, and that makes me gay, right?”

  Dylan smiled gently, the anger gone. He walked over and squeezed my shoulder. “Sorry, Jericho. I shouldn’t be getting mad at you. Listen, I have zero attraction to females. In fact, the idea of having sex with a woman makes me want to run screaming for the hills. I’m only attracted to men. This is how I know that I am gay. You, on the other hand, seem to be very attracted to girls, and although you say you now feel some attraction for another guy, that doesn’t necessarily make you gay.”

  I sighed, feeling frustrated and afraid. “So what am I, then?”

  “You know, the teen years are when most people discover just who they are. Give yourself some time, kid. You’ll figure yourself out.”

  “How?”

  “Start by listening to what your feelings are telling you. And no matter how scary your feelings are, be honest with yourself.”

  Chapter 13

  ON SATURDAY morning, I was lying across the table on our patio like a stuffed and cooked holiday turkey. The sky was a pretty bright blue, dotted here and there with bulging white clouds that looked like clumps of cotton balls. For a while, I tried to find shapes in the clouds, but nothing came to mind, so I just stared upward the way a corpse would until somebody came along to close its eyes.

  There was a scuffling sound as Mac climbed over the fence and dropped down into the yard. I didn’t look, but I knew it was Mac. He was the only person in our neighborhood who climbed over the fence to pay a visit. Such grace.

  He stopped at the edge of the patio. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Mac.”

  “Saw you from the window. You look like you lost your best friend, but I’m right here, so what’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  He sighed. The sound reminded me of a bull snorting before it tries to plant one of its horns in some part of your back as you run away. “Okay, what are you supposed to be doing?”

  I sighed in return, a listless noise. “I was trying to sleep in this morning when my dad woke me up and asked me when I was gonna take down the patio furniture and the grill and put them in the storage shed. I told him I’d do it next Saturday, and he said I’d been telling him that since he first asked me back in September. Then he said that if I don’t get everything put away today, he’s gonna make me sleep on this table every night until I do. So I figured I’d better come out and see what it would be like sleeping on this table.”

  “So how is it?”

  “This stuff is definitely going in the storage shed today.”

  Mac grunted out a little laugh. “Want some help?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” I folded my hands across my belly and kept lying there.

  “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t look okay. You have a fight with Lissandra?”

  “No. I talked to her last night. She said she misses me, and that she wishes I was there in Atlanta with her. Oh yeah, she said our team won, and Gordon Browning High is advancing to the next round in the debate tournaments. Whatever that means.”

  “Sweet. So what’s bugging you, man?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mac was quiet for a while. He just stood there, looking at me, sizing me up. Maybe he was trying to figure out where to start carving. “Get up,” he said at length.

  “In a minute.”

  Mac is used to getting his way. That tends to happen when you’re his size. He reached down, grabbed a fistful of my jacket, and the next thing I knew, I was standing on my feet in front of him.

  “You’re a wonderful person, man,” I said. That was sarcasm, in case you’re wondering.

  “I know,” Mac replied. He turned the table on its edge and started folding in the legs. “Come on. Let’s get this stuff put up. When we’re done, I’m taking you bowling.”

  “What if I don’t want to go bowling?”

  “Jer, you’re going bowling.”

  Guess what? After Mac and I got the patio furniture and the barbecue grill stashed away, we went bowling. You didn’t see that coming, did you?

  MAC had the right idea. Knocking things down again and again was therapeutic. It took my mind off certain issues, at least while we were hitting the pins. I actually bowled my best game ever, and when Mac and I walked out of the alley, I felt good.

  “Thanks, Mac,” I said. “I really needed that.”

  “I figured you did,” he replied. “Now let’s get over to Denny’s and see what he’s up to.”

  Denny Ward lived down the street. He was a year older than us, about my height, but not quite as thin as I am. When we got to his place, Denny was in front of the garage with his dad, setting up his basketball goal. Mac and I dumped our jackets on the grass and played a game of basketball against Denny and his dad in their driveway.

  All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. But by three o’clock, Mac was heading home to shower. Yesterday, he had been invited to drop by Gina Marie’s house at four this afternoon. He was unusually excited. She had pointed out to him that her parents and kid sister would be away at the movies. Denny and his dad took off to help man a food and clothing giveaway at their church for the homeless. That left me alone with my “issues” again. Almost immediately, they started dancing around my head like bothersome flies as I walked home.

  By the grace of God—and a last minute change in the hospital’s schedule—Mom was actually off that afternoon. She was in the kitchen scraping the kernels from corncobs with a big knife when I came in through the back door. “Hey, Mom.”

  “There you are, Jericho.” She had a pretty good rhythm going with the knife. She looked over her shoulder at me without missing a beat. “I’m making baked chicken and corn pudding. It’s been ages since we all sat down to a meal together. We eat at five. Make sure you’re here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I went to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, twisted off the cap, and downed a swig straight from the bottle. Mom usually frowned on such displays of uncouthness, by which I mean she’d take a swat at me, but she didn’t care about the Gatorade because I was the only one in the house who drank the stuff.

  Mom gave me a concerned look. “Are you okay?” She lay down the knife and reached over to put the back of her corny hand to my forehead. “Your face looks flushed.”

  “I just got through playing basketball.” I took off my jacket and draped it over the back of a chair.

  “Oh.” She kept looking at me. “Well, is something on your mind?”

  “No, ma’am.” I pulled out a chair and sat at the table.

  Mom picked up the knife and returned to her dinner preparations. “I’ll be off next Saturday and Sunday. Your dad and I thought we’d drive up to Louisville for the weekend, just the two of us.”

  “Hey, that would be great. You guys will have a good time.”

  “We’re going to see if we can get your Uncle Vic to come over and stay with you while we’re gone.”

  Under other circumstances, that would have insulted me enough to make the hair break-dance on the back of my neck. Today, I was simply too out of it to get so riled. I took a little swig of my sports drink and said calmly, “Mom, I’m sixteen, not six. I don’t need Uncle Vic to babysit me.”

  “Don’t think of him as a babysitter. Think of him as a housesitter.”

  “I don’t need him as any kind of sitter.”

  “Well, your dad and I do.”

  “Mom, don’t you trust me to stay here by myself?”

  She set the knife aside again and scooped a mound of corn kernels off the cutting board into a mixing bowl. “It’s not about trusting you, Jericho. You’ll be alone for two nights. What if there’s a fire? Or what if some thug
breaks in?”

  “If there’s a fire, I’ll put it out with the extinguisher. If somebody breaks in, I’ll go for one of your guns.”

  “The guns are locked in the cabinet, and you don’t have the combination.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Actually, I’d figured out the combination months ago (it was Mom’s and Dad’s wedding anniversary), but I didn’t think that was something she needed to know at the moment.

  “And what if the fire’s too big for you to put out?”

  “If there’s a big fire, then I’ll run out of the house and call the fire department. If somebody breaks in, then I’ll run out and call the sheriff. I don’t need anybody looking out for me while you guys are gone. It’s just for a weekend. I can take care of myself.”

  “Well. Let me talk it over with your dad. Maybe he can convince me that we’ll still have a home to come back to if we leave you here by yourself.” She tossed the denuded corncobs in the trash bin and started cracking eggs, separating the yolks from the whites. The yolks would be going into the garbage disposal. We’re serious about stomping down on bad cholesterol around here.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can the Bible be wrong?”

  “No.” You know the bang a door makes when you slam it really hard? That’s how that “no” sounded coming from Mom. Stark, final, unequivocal. End of discussion, let’s get on to the next topic.

  I stuck with the topic anyway. “But… what if something the Bible says doesn’t—”

  In a sharp, sudden move, Mom spun around to face me. “Jericho, the Bible is the infallible word of God. You know that.”

  The look on her face made clear that it would be wise of me to agree with her. “Yes, ma’am, I know that.”

  Mom visibly relaxed, but she kept staring at me as if trying to tune into the thoughts rattling in my head. “Why did you bring this up? Is there a particular passage in the Bible that you’re having trouble with?”

  “No, Mom. I’m not having trouble with anything.” I took my jacket and my sports drink and went to my room.