Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

direction.
    Grinning, she fluttered her long pink fingernails at him, then climbed into a white sedan and drove away.
    Thack had found firewood under a plastic sheet behind the house, but there wasn’t enough for a big fire, so Michael foraged for flotsam along the creek.
    When he returned to the cabin, Thack was hunched over his fire, blowing on a stack of crisscrossed twigs. The sky was still indigo, but here beneath the trees, darkness had come early. The light of the fire cast a coppery glow on Thack’s pale features.
    Michael laid the wood down. “Your faggots, milord.”
    “Aye, and fine faggots they are.” He smiled. “This isn’t illegal, is it?”
    “What?”
    “Building a fire.”
    Michael shrugged. “Someone’s obviously done it here before.”
    “Right,” said Thack, feeding a dry branch to the flames. “Good enough for me.” He looked up at Michael and smiled again—fire builder to wood gatherer—and Michael smiled back. It was a moment of prehistoric domesticity. Words would probably have ruined it.
    A nearly full moon looked down on them as Michael finished off his salad. “We should’ve done baked potatoes,” he said. “You know … in mud.”
    Brian said: “When did you ever bake a potato in mud?”
    “When I was a scout.”
    “You were a scout?” asked Thack, sounding a little too amazed.
    “I was an Eagle,” he replied. “Thank you very much.”
    “So was I,” said Thack.
    “Really?”
    Thack nodded.
    “I never made it past Tenderfoot,” said Brian. “I hated it.”
    “Why?” asked Michael.
    “Well, it was fascist, for one thing. We had a belt line at my troop. You know, where we all took off our belts and whipped this other guy’s butt while he ran past us.”
    “That’s not fascist,” Thack said dryly. “That’s all-American.”
    Michael threw another log on the fire. “I hated it too. I did it, but I hated it. My father had been an Eagle, so damned if I wasn’t gonna be one too.”
    “I liked camping trips,” said Brian. “I liked that part.”
    Thack nodded. “Same here.”
    “I went to Philmont,” said Michael. “You know … that Explorer camp in New Mexico?”
    Both Thack and Brian shook their heads.
    “Well … anyway, it was a big deal. Guys went there from all over. It was a big deal for me, anyway. I found out about love.”
    “Oh, God,” groaned Brian.
    Thack chuckled.
    “I was fourteen,” Michael said, “and my Explorer troop went on this two-week trip to Philmont. We went by bus, and we stayed at army bases along the way….”
    “What did I tell ya?” said Brian. “Fascist.”
    Thack laughed, then turned back to Michael, waiting for him to continue.
    “They fed us army food, and we bunked in barracks buildings, and went to movies at base theaters, and … God, I’ll never forget those soldiers as long as I live. Most of them were just four or five years older than I was, but … vive la différence.”
    Thack said: “Vive la similarité.”
    Brian laughed.
    “It was total fantasy,” Michael continued. “I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what to do. But … it got my engines going. I was hornier than a two-peckered goat by the time I got to Philmont.”
    “Isn’t he quaint?” said Brian, turning to Thack.
    “One night,” said Michael, ignoring them, “we were camped in this canyon, and there was this hellacious hailstorm, which knocked down our tents and got everything wet, so we were more or less adopted by this group of older scouts—”
    “Wait a minute,” said Thack, grinning. “Didn’t I read this in First Hand?”
    “First what?” said Brian.
    Michael ignored them. “So … we went over to the other camp, and dried off in front of the fire, and this older scout shared his poncho with me. He put his arm across my shoulders, and I sort of … leaned against him.” He stared into the firelight, remembering this.
    “And?” said Brian.
    “And … I just leaned against him. It was the most comfortable, wonderful, amazing thing….”
    “That’s it?” said Thack, joining in the torment.
    Brian looked at Thack. “Pretty scorching stuff.”
    Michael scowled at them both. “You had to be there.” He picked up a stick and used it to rearrange the embers. “That’s all anybody wants, isn’t it? That feeling of being safe with somebody.” Hideously embarrassed, he looked at Brian, then at Thack, and dropped the stick into the fire.
    Later, back at the house, the three of them went about