Page 68 of By Any Means

The boy gestured to Chary’s face. “Ouch. That what you’re runnin’ from?”

Chary quickly found his r’s. “First time, yes,” he confirmed, not quite a lie. “Yeah.”

“Not his, though,” said the boy, about Laurie. “Oooh,” he breathed excitedly. “Booze.”

Laurie glanced back when spoken of. He had opened his knapsack and was giving out pint flasks (mold-blown, vintage Washington obverse, likely Midwestern) of liquor to the handful of men—boys—hobos—in the boxcar. Some made appreciative grunts; some shook his hand; some, who appeared to be paired, accepted the gift for another; one ignored him. Another jubilantly called him “Christmas in July!.”

Chary wondered if there wasn’t a situation on earth Laurie couldn’t come prepared for, a person he couldn’t get along with. Chary felt prepared for nothing and didn’t get along with many. Strangers were especially challenging.

Maybe that was Laurie’s success. He never felt like a stranger, hadn’t even to Chary.

The boxcar’s corners were coveted, as were the rumbling sidewalls. Chary huddled into himself where he sat and wondered where Mrs. Leonard had procured a half-dozen pints of moonshine at five minutes’ notice. How Laurie had known she’d be able to. Was there a Mr. Leonard, collector of pre-war glassware, moonshiner?

Laurie handed one last bottle, zero hesitation, to the boy beside Chary, who stared in amazement. It shouldn’t have surprised Chary—boys drank—but when he thought of the impoverished, meant-to-be boy protagonist of Laurie’s unwritten novel, it did. Not that anybody but Laurie knew how the book might shake out in the end. Perhaps the boy would grow and become an unsympathetic, drunken anti-hero.

Laurie sat close and nudged Chary’s shoulder with his own.

“We survived. What d’you think?”

Chary said nothing. It was warmer inside the boxcar than out, though a steady breeze pushed into the open door. Laurie was warmer still, sweating faintly and smelling delicious.

“That how you pass in the glassworks?” Laurie said quietly, so that Chary felt the rumble of his voice falling onto his shoulder more than he heard him. “That accent? It’s good.” He hesitated. “But you don’t have to worry here.”

Chary disagreed. Of course, it could’ve been the other thing everyone was seemingly always worried about—Chary’s photoluminescent queerness.

“Not about anything,” Laurie stressed, and there it was.

“Are you waiting,” Chary whispered, exasperated, “for me to have a bourgeois panic at some coal dust?” He showed his hands, in fact already filthy.

“Are you saying,” Laurie whispered back, “that you’re willing to get your hands dirty, bougie?” His eyes sparked with goading challenge, intrigue. Slowly, watching him, he drew a finger across Chary’s palm.

To avoid that boxcar-darkened, black gaze, and also to avoid confronting the shudder that’d overtaken him at Laurie’s teasing touch, Chary pulled back his hands and watched the spot over Laurie’s shoulder. There the boy sat and took two careful swigs of moonshine, then coughed, stashed the flask hastily, and coughed more into his elbow.

No, he wasn’t used to it. It had been the adult consideration that made the boy look at Laurie with stars in his eyes, not the liquor itself.

Chary said, “I thought you liked to be forgettable, Mr. Moore.”

Laurie smiled and crossed his legs at the ankles. If he noticed the hacking behind him, he didn’t let on. “Depends on the company, y’know?”

Chary frowned. Laurie’s smile fell.

“You know what I meant.”

“You don’t need to remind me that I didn’t pass muster.”

“I wasn’t— I wish you’d unhook me from that,” Laurie said exasperatedly. “Don’t tell me your velvet collar and ruby pin weren’t shields just the same as that ten-dollar tongue you’ve suddenly switched off. I made all the assumptions you wished me to.”

Chary bit said tongue and turned away. “I do know what you mean.”

“Well, then.” Another nudge. Trust me.

He’d figure it out eventually. He’d nosed out almost everything else.

“The accent’s not put on,” he said. “Though it once was.” He almost turned coward at the last. “It’s been ten years.”

Laurie hummed. He didn’t sound particularly surprised, just intrigued. Yes—he was putting Chary’s pieces together as neatly as he’d feared he would. It was only a matter of time.

“And they were your overalls,” Laurie went on after a pause—softest of all.