Page 68 of Grumpy Bear

“It was the shittiest, longest bus ride—stopped everywhere—took me all day to get up here. I actually thought Edgewood was pretty cool though. The campus was nice. I was never going to be cut out for college, but for a small town, there were a lot of bars. Tons of younger people. It reminded me of Athens, minus the football cult.”

I nodded, chuckling, and began to slowly trace the veins of his forearm with my fingertips. I could pick any spot on his body and it was perfect. Even the scar on the back of his hand, the broken edge of his thumbnail.

“I called Wayne, and he showed up in a shitty pickup, blaring country music. He bought me dinner and a couple of beers. It felt a little more like a date than a job interview, and I was pretty much expecting he’d want to fuck around when we got back to his place, but he was really sweet. He was thirty-one. Handsome. He had the coolest, deepest voice. When he laughed, you could feel it in your bones. His personality was a lot like Jim’s, actually. He offered me the job before we even got to the campground. I saw the pool and a couple of guys walking around naked, and I figured what the fuck? Why not? Back in Atlanta, I was broke and basically homeless. I figured I could always go back if I didn’t like it here.”

He laughed, frowning and shaking his head. “It was Bumfuck, Nowhere. And it didn’t look anything like it does now. Wayne was basically running an underground B&B out of the lodge, which was only semi-renovated. There was a bunkhouse and a rough version of Bathhouse One and a new pool way down the holler near an old barn. He had plans to build it up—the pool was the start. He was going to add some cabins. An RV park. I fucking hated it. There were six guys living and working here. And these weren’t pretty little fuckers like Jim and I have on staff now. Most of them were quite a bit older than me. Rough-looking country dudes. A vet. A farm hand. An ex-con. Hell, three of them were over forty. Not that I’m dogging older guys. Fuck, I’m their age now. But I thought I could do better back then.”

Coleman croaked and put a hand to his throat. “Ack. I need some water.”

“I’ll grab you some.” I was reluctant to leave his side, but I peeled away from him and grabbed a bottle from the little fridge for us to share. I paused at the foot of the bed, rewarded for my trouble with the view of him spread out for me, an arm behind his head. The sight of his hairy pit alone was jack-off material for the rest of my life.

He smirked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking in the view.”

“View’s not bad from here either.”

I handed him the water and sat on the bed beside him, crossing my legs and squeezing his thighs. God. He was fucking beef.

He swallowed loudly and coughed.

“Not used to all this talking, huh?” I teased.

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m thinking you might’ve put a spell on me.”

I slipped my fingers under his sac and weighed his heavy balls. “I think I might’ve put it in you, actually.”

He growled, eyes flashing.

I was tempted to straddle him so my junk could be near his, but I wasn’t ready for his story to be over. I took his hand in both of mine and examined the calluses on his palm. “Are any of those guys still here?”

Coleman took another swig of water and lay back on the bed. “Just Jim. He was the only other person close to my age. He was Wayne’s cousin, and really the one who was running the place. Jim and I became friends quick. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have lasted a week. But both he and Wayne grew on me. They treated me like family. I’m sure I had all kinds of daddy issues, and even though he was only ten years older than me, Wayne was almost everything my dad wasn’t. They did have one thing in common though. Alcohol. Jack Daniels, to be precise.”

I winced. I’d thought I was such a hipster wearing my Jack Daniels T-shirt tonight.

He took his hand away, pressing his thumbs into his eye sockets and massaging his forehead. “Wayne had a lot of good ideas, but he was shit at implementing them or maintaining anything. That was all up to me and Jim. This campground was… not his number one priority. His big dream was to be a famous musician. He’d drop everything to go gig anywhere he could.”

He paused, and I held my breath. That sense of shame returned. The one I’d felt when he’d told me nothing was going to happen. Here I was thinking he saw himself in me, how my story mirrored his own. But was it Wayne he saw in me? Was that why he seemed so judgy at first? Was that why he hadn’t wanted anything to happen with me?

“Wayne was definitely talented. He knew a lot of big-name people in the business, and they liked having him on the road because he was fun. He’d disappear for weeks or months at a time and leave everything to me and Jim. I cleaned up and dried out quite a bit. I still smoked a little weed and drank on occasion, but it was different here. It wasn’t… destructive. There was sunshine, fresh air. A steady supply of food and rest and manual labor. Construction. Yard work. That actually saved me. It helped me get rid of a lot of rage.”

I stretched out beside him, head propped on my elbow, covering his feet with my own so I could continue to touch him.

“We had a couple of regulars who came down from North Carolina a few times a month. They were landscape designers and they taught me a lot. They’d bring me old issues of magazines and those DIY books you get at Home Depot. I started sketching plans, and Wayne always said, ‘Go for it.’ He’d give me his credit card and send me to town to buy whatever I needed, whatever I wanted to plant. I started around the lodge, and it all grew from there.”

He smiled inwardly, remembering more than he told. “Over the years, more and more guests started showing up. A steady stream of horny men looking for fun. These guys had money. They were on vacation. They were looking for a good time and someone to have it with. Trust me, I got my share of attention. Wayne was cool with it. He never tried to keep me on a leash. We were open. Although we never really discussed it. He was the only man in the world, other than Jim, who really gave a shit about me. And I loved him. I did. He was building this place and this life here and he gave me a seat right next to him. All I had to do was not fuck it up.”

He shifted suddenly, pulling himself up away from me to lean against the headboard. He folded his arms across his chest and absently scratched at the back of his arms. “I did fuck up a few times. I’d get these impulses that came out of nowhere, flares of anger and jealousy, and I wanted out. I left, oh… three or four times. And I’m talking, like, going home with guests from Atlanta or hopping a ride to Myrtle Beach. I drove to Dallas with a couple of guys one time. No intention of coming back. But no plans for when the party was over either. I always ended up back here because it was my home. It was the only home I’d had since before my mama got sick. The only place I could land. The only place where I could turn back up like a stray without a penny in my pocket and sleep it off for a couple of days. Try to get my shit together, like a lot of guys who work here do.” He caught my eyes again, twisting his lips. “Maybe like what you’re doing.”

It didn’t sound like a judgment though. More like an acknowledgement. Like he understood.

“One winter, I had this idea for doing some plantings in among the boulders by the pool and the cabana bar. There were all these big stones we could never really move all over the property, and I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if, instead of trying to clear shit out to replace it with the same stuff you see in magazines, I added to what was already naturally there. I thought if it looked good, I could do it all over the property. I’d been imagining it in my head for months, just waiting for it to get warm enough so I could start planting. Somebody invited me to go to their beach house for a couple weeks down near Panama City, and… I said no. I guess I wasn’t as big a whore as I thought I was. At some point I stopped thinking about getting out, stopped looking for somebody to give me a ride or offer me a hit of something or invite me to go party with them. I didn’t want to go anywhere because I had this project. Something I dreamed up, something I really wanted to do. It was gonna take months to make it happen, and I wanted to see it through.”

I smiled at him, remembering the look on his face in The Village when I’d called it his art.

“I’d finally found some sense of my own purpose in this place. Wayne was also getting really bad by that point, and after exhausting myself working outside all day, and putting him to bed for the thousandth time in his big master suite up at the lodge, all I had the energy for was lying there watching TV and making sure he stayed rolled on his side. Even before he died, I really wasn’t up for fucking a bunch of strangers in the bathhouse anymore.”

“Wait.” I couldn’t stand not knowing the details any longer. “So, how did he die, exactly?”