Running Wild

Zachariah overhearing the conversation. So fucking what? He was going to get kicked out if he didn’t call. At this point he had nothing to lose.
“It’s long distance,” he stated, a last-ditch effort to avoid dialing home.
“I can afford it.” Zachariah tilted his head at the phone.
Grimly, Seamus picked up the receiver and punched in the numbers. His face was burning; his parents were going to think he was begging to come back.
Maybe he was.
“Hello?” His mom, of course. His dad didn’t answer the phone often.
Odd, how easily he could reply, as if they hadn’t had a blow-out fight, as if he was still their son. Nineteen years of conditioning, of being part of a family, didn’t just fall away in less than a week.
“Hi, Mom.” He sounded weary, his voice thicker than he liked.
“Seamus!”
He blinked at the way she yelled his name, not sure what it meant.
“Where are you? What…” She began sobbing, and if she was speaking, he couldn’t figure out what she was saying. A kind of lightheadedness assailed him, and he made himself focus, straining to hear her words.
“Uh…Mom?”
Her crying faded away.
“Seamus?” Dad was on the line, and Seamus breathed more easily. His dad hadn’t stood up for him when Mom had screamed at him, first saying he couldn’t be gay, then saying he wasn’t their son, then saying she didn’t want him in her sight.
But his dad hadn’t spoken those awful words.
Seamus attempted with everything inside him to keep his voice steady. “It’s me.”
“You come on home now.” His father sounded gruff with concern. “Your mother has been worried sick.”
Seamus’s throat thickened at the unexpected words. Zachariah’s exact words.
“Seamus?” His father’s volume rose. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
“Dad?” he managed, embarrassed at sounding close to tears. Had they not kicked him out?
“You surprised us, but you belong here. You got accepted into university, your studies are about to begin, you need to come home. I’m driving over to get you as soon as you give me an address.”
The anger inside Seamus drained to confusion. He wrapped an arm around his middle, unsure of what was going on. “But…you said…I mean, Mom said…”
“Never mind that. She’s very sorry and so am I. Didn’t mean it.” His dad’s words were clipped.
“I’m not changing. This doesn’t change, Dad,” Seamus said, wishing it didn’t sound more like a plea than a warning. He wanted to be at home, recovering, not clenching this phone in a stranger’s house, his body tight with tension.
“You’re my son, we love you, and I’m coming to get you. All right?” His dad clearing his voice almost undid Seamus. “Now, where are you, Seamus?”
“I don’t know.” He looked to Zachariah, who smiled as if this reaction of his parents was the outcome to be expected. Then he held out his hand to take the phone and give Seamus’s dad directions to the farm.
Seamus settled down on the couch, shocked. His parents went to church, disliked gays and were not open-minded.
But they wanted him to come home. He scrubbed his face. He’d waited nineteen years to tell them about his real self, waited until he’d graduated high school, and it had blown up in his face.
But it wasn’t over. He was still his father’s son.
Zachariah didn’t say anything when he hung up, simply went about tidying the kitchen. Seamus vaguely thought he should offer to help, but by the time he managed to rise, the old man was done.
He remembered the horse then, wanted to see it before he left. That horse had saved his life. He wandered out to a back porch. There were fences and fields, but no animals in sight.
Zachariah came to stand beside him. “Your father will be here in less than two hours. You just rest till then.”
Seamus took a moment to make sure he sounded casual. “I would like to see the horse.”
Zachariah turned to face him. “That time has passed. I have no horses. Too old, too much work.”
“A horse brought me here, remember? Black coat. Big. You called it grandson.”
Those brown eyes held his, not accepting what Seamus was saying. “What I remember is that you fell to the ground in my backyard. It was a lot of work to encourage you over to the couch.”
“Someone carried me,” Seamus protested, but he was beginning to feel silly. None of this made sense. Zachariah couldn’t carry him. The whole riding-thehorse-through-the-night experience sounded bizarre, felt