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Part 6

I once knew I was in trouble when either I kissed Finn or he kissed me. I don't remember; we were both high. It's one thing to fool around with your friend's dick when you've smoked up, it's another to kiss and find out you curiously like it. So curiously that you go back for more.

That's kind of what I've just done to Hunter. Whoever his first kiss was, he's long since gone past the stage of discovering he was gay. What he's just unexpectedly discovered is that I wanted to kiss him. He's shorter than me, but not enough to make it an uncomfortable position for me. A slight crane of my neck and I'm there. I've looked at his naked body covered in bubbles for long enough, and it's time to do something, so I'm doing it. I know he wasn't expecting it even though he doesn't reject it. Once he's relaxed into it, we just let the water run over each other and I keep running my hands over his butt. He doesn't quite know what to do with his, but eventually he settles on holding the sides of my stomach.

We don't talk while drying off.

It turns out Hunter's picked a mellow kind of weed because he doesn't have much head for it. He's got a good bong though. He's spiced things up a little by putting Stoli in it rather than water. I toke first. He's mellow after one go, so I take a second one while he's climbing onto the top bunk.

There's room for two of us. It's a bit of a squeeze, but I'm happy to be this close to him. The last thing he tells me before falling asleep is that I have a warm body. He doesn't, he's pretty cool, but I've never cared much for someone's physical warmth so long as I can comfortably cuddle them. Hunter's such a perfect shape it's like we were supposed to fit together like this.

***

When I wake up with him, something I never realised I knew occurs to me: Hunter always ends up back in his own bunk alone after every night out that ended with a hook-up. He hasn't done the business and run with me, and I don't get the feeling it was because he fell asleep uncontrollably after weed. It's like he did that to make sure he stayed here.

I spend what I estimate to be half an hour before 'Satan's birds' start up outside. It's something I remember reading in an autobiography; I think it was Anthony Keidis: '...get some sleep before Satan's birds start.' It's true. We're all supposed to think birdsong is beautiful, but when you're trying to get a summer lie-in they're just a pain in the fucking ass. Besides, some birds actually make the most hideous noises going. Sometimes I think I'd rather have a chorus of acid jazz players in the morning.

Hunter stretches and rolls onto his back. 'Mmmm. What time is it?'

'I don't know but I reckon you should have been up and going running at least an hour ago.'

'Meh.'

'I was thinking about what you said last night. You were right, I ought to take slightly better care of my health.'

'What?' Hunter sits himself up slightly, slouching against the pillow. 'Oh, you're alright, snep. A lot of that was part of the act.'

'Maybe it was, but you still had a point. Will you take me running sometime?'

Hunter laughs. 'Okay, when do you wanna die?'

'You might be surprised. I was a runner at school. I was in the high-school baseball team too. I once hit a home run out of the park and then ran it anyway. Just because I was fast.'

'Yeah? Okay then. You can't run in those Japanese sneakers though. They're fashion, no matter how cute they are. We'll get you a pair of supportive runners. Foot Locker open on Sundays.'

'You wanna go shopping with me already? Can't we just lie in bed?'

'Actually I'd like that. You wanna know the truth, I ache everywhere at the moment. Too much exercise. My stomach muscles have been giving it to me a bit lately. I think I need to cut back on the sit-ups a little bit.'

I rub my hands over his stomach.

'If you're about to tickle me you are totally dead.'

I wonder how many people actually are totally dead because of Hunter. 'You want some coffee?'

'Yeah but it's gonna be hard to drink it up here without spilling it. No shelf to put it on.'

'There's a little shelf right there. That you're lucky I didn't hit my head on when you did that pulling the rug from under my ass kinda thing.'

'Oh yeah,' Hunter says. 'Oops!'

I make some coffee. Rico's stocked the place with a good blend. Hunter asks for almond milk, and I tell him Rico sometimes goes on a rant about all the nut milks and oat milk are for vegans, so fuck that shit, and that's why of course I made sure there's some in this RV.

For someone who did all the talking last night, Hunter's surprisingly quiet and calm. 'Hey, can I ask you something? Just out little secret.' I manage to get back under the covers without spilling my cup. I set it on the shelf. 'That night we went to that surf club with the band doing old school Torquays style rock. What did you take?'

Hunter smirks. 'Like you don't know the answer.'

'Darcy says it's not really blue in real life. Is she right or wrong?'

'She's half right. It's like Miles Davis.'

'Huh?'

'Kinda Blue.'

'As music in-jokes go, that's a shit-ass line.'

'No it's not, it's brilliant. Admit it.'

'What's meth like?'

'Too amazing to get more of. I did it twice and then I promised myself never again. It's a bad way to go, snep. If you wanna try it fine, but I'm not being the one who hooks you up. I had to know for myself. A little fuck you to the army.'

'How come?'

'They drill the whole "drugs are bad" thing into you like an episode of South Park but with more extreme pictures to go with the lecture. You have to take a piss test every month on some bases. So I could never do anything while I was serving. Now my life's my own. They can never take everything from a person. When you do your discharge parade and they tell you everything you've learned in your service has set you up for life, trust me, you're already mentally checking out with a list of shit you wanna get rid of. Even if you keep some of it.'

'I get it.'

'Do you?'

'Sheriff's kid, remember. Some things aren't so different about my life.'

'Yeah, I guess maybe not.'

I wait a while. 'Hunter.'

'Yeah?'

'Darcy said something to me that got me thinking.'

'Oh God,' Hunter said. 'You've got a susceptible brain, snep, you know that?'

'So what if I do? This time it's susceptible to you. That's why I kissed you in the shower.'

Hunter rolls over and looks at me oddly.

'Darcy said that if I liked you I should tell you. So there you are. I like you. I wasn't afraid of asking you if you wanted some fun with me. Okay, maybe I was a little bit...I asked Darcy who wouldn't be pants-pissing terrified of you in bed once they walked past your trailer and heard a guy getting it. I guess you were my meth. I had to know too. What I was scared of telling you is that I like you. So now that you've stayed the night and actually slept with me when you usually call time and go home, I'd kinda like to actually get to know you.'

Hunter sits up, looking a little bit like I must have done when I saw the dragon dildo in his hand. 'Nobody's said that to me in a very long time.'

'Well, I just did.'

'I don't do close friends well, snep. I fuck it up.'

'So do I. I didn't run off and become Dylan Highwood because I got things right with people who were close to me.'

'So now I'm you're next victim?' Hunter smiles at himself, then whatever he sees on me, the smile drops. 'Sorry, that was an asshole thing to say. I really don't know you either.'

'I am an asshole.'

'Maybe you kind of are. What would I care though?' Hunter sits back. 'Most people who ever wanted to know me never got past one simple thing, snep. You know how everyone you show a military ID to says "Thank you for your service?" Yeah, they mean it. I always tell them they're welcome. But they never know what it cost that person they said it to. Except they kinda do.'

'What do you mean?'

'Come on, what do think? They're always too afraid to ask. So eventually I tell them, and what I always say's this: when it's either you going home in a bag or someone else, you think of the people back home who want you to come back alive, and you do what you've gotta do. After you're done with it, you hope that one day you'll fall in love with someone who won't care that you were that guy once, that you did it. But people like that are goddamn hard to find outside of the movies. Especially when you tell them the strange thing is you're not ashamed of it. Not everybody leaves with PTSD. Not everybody wakes up having nightmares about what they did the survive. I don't. I wake up wondering what sort of person I have to be for all that to be true.'

I take it all in.

'You know what I resisted saying to you last night as part of the act?'

'What?'

'"They don't call me Hunter for nothing."'

'I would have liked that.'

'You sure about that?'

'Yeah.'

'The first time I said that to a bunch of guys who were armed with a rifle each, it never occurred to me they'd actually never known my first name. You go through a year's training with a bunch of guys, you only use surnames, so that's who that person is. Then I say that and I get "Your name's actually Hunter? Cool!" I never had to show them any ID to prove it. They just believed it. So I became that guy. I think I already was him. "They don't call me Hunter for nothing." It feels like it's for different reasons now, but I don't remember how I was that guy and think it was a bad thing. I had to be him to get here somehow.'

Don't I just know that feeling.

'You still feel like saying you want to get to know me?'

I've missed a chance to ask him the question nobody dares ask, but there's another one that will do instead. 'What's your kill-count?'

Hunter laughs in disbelief. 'Holy fuck, he did!'

'I know you're not going to tell me. But I had to get that look out of you at least once. If I say sorry I asked will it make me seem weak to you?'

'Thirteen. Lucky thirteen. I'm surprised it was that low.'

'You're not making that up to cover the real answer?'

'I never kept a kill count. A lot of soldiers really don't. But I kinda know what my count is anyway. When it's all over you realise you've added it up without knowing you did. It might be more, it might be less. It's best I don't know for sure. But that's what I feel like it is. Thirteen people who didn't go home so that I did. That's that. Mei and Quoyle knew what the deal was as soon as I actually did get home. We never talked about it. They just knew. I made choices and that's what they ended in.' Hunter shuffles himself up, as if looking for his shirt so he can leave. 'Gonna tell me you "get it" again?'

'I watched my dad kill someone once. I'm alive because he did it. It took him less than a second to know he had to. That was that. I'm here and someone else isn't. I've never pulled a trigger in my life, but I get it.'

He's not looking for his shirt now, or anything else. 'Who was it?'

I look away.

'Okay,' he says. 'We can both do better than this. You wanna see a picture of my family?'

'Yeah.'

'Okay. Go get me my phone. It's in my pants pocket over there.'

'What did your last fucking servant die of, weasel boy?'

'Come on, snep. On some level you kinda like being ordered about a bit. Why else did you end up working for a fuck like Rico? It's not just because he covers your secrets and gets you prescription meds and turns a blind eye to you smoking dope on tour. It's that you like being someone's bitch so you can collect reasons to get them back. You like fighting the world so you find ways to do it. Maybe I should get to know you.'

'Aren't you a psychologist.'

'Just get me my phone, ounce-boy. Let me show you exactly what you're getting into if you end up taking this all the way to meeting my family at the end of this tour because you've got nowhere else to go.'

'Ouch! Mother_fucker!_'

'One of my step brothers actually did want me to fuck him. Ironically he got more than just a little bit sore after I said no.'

'Seriously?'

'What, seriously he asked or you're judging me harshly for saying no? I get the whole step brother bromance fetish thing, but doing it for real? Uh-uh. Not for me. Mei and Quoyle would have gone nuts. I was already on a bit of an edge after I had a fight with one of the others. The only thing worse than that's a fuck.'

'You're practically writing lyrics right now.'

Hunter sniggers. 'That actually wouldn't be a bad idea. He'd totally know if we ever formed a band and recorded it.'

That stops me. 'Why don't we do that? At the end of this, why don't we ditch Rico and strike out on our own?'

'I've thought about it. More than once.'

'Yeah?'

'Cool your head, snow boy. I totally knew this was coming the moment I decided to hook up with you last night, and I know what you're going to spend the rest of the day dreaming about. You know it's not that simple. But I'm willing to dream a little with you. So long as you can keep this tour going like it matters and not like it's expendable because you think you've got a plan.'

He's right. Why's he so fucking right?

I get his phone out. 'Okay. Show me Clan Kershaw.'

He loads the pictures. 'That's Mei and Quoyle. That's a pic from before the road a couple of years ago, I doubt they look much different. They're their seventies now so they've stopped adopting kids, but over thirty years they've had twenty four of us.'

'Practically an orphanage on their own.'

'Yep. That's Drew and Hannah. The "Tiger Twins". That's where it started. They left when I was about nine or ten, but only to start their own place down the road. Coffee diner. Still there, still doing well. They help run the farm and the slopes now that our parents are semi-retired. Lots of the others left for their own adventure, but those two stayed. So did this guy.' Hunter pulls up a picture of himself standing with a handsome jet black mink. 'That's Ethan. Ethan's a little fuck, but I basically like him. Out of all the kids who ever came through the place, Mei and Quoyle said nobody was quite as dedicated to it as he was. He never wanted to go anywhere else or be anything else. Farm life and skiing was fine.'

I study the picture, and the more I do the more I'm sure Ethan didn't want to have that picture taken at all. 'Did he like you?'

'Yes and no. Kind of a brothers fighting thing. We actually did have a fist-fight once.'

'Who won.'

'Me.'

'Would he say that?'

'Oh yeah. He never tried me again. Or called me a fag at the dinner table in front of the family again.'

'Yeah, he looks like a die-hard straight guy who'd feel like his own brother threatened his masculinity.'

'Yeah, you've pretty well got his number, and underneath the lover boy ladies man's a mysogenist they all see through eventually. If his brand of Christianity doesn't scare them off first. What he really didn't like was how I once sniffed his sneakers too and told him he had awesome feet. He really did. If he'd been in anyway nice underneath I'd have fancied him totally.'

'Did he out you when he called you a fag?'

'Not exactly. I just said "So what if I am?" I guess I half came-out just to really wind his ass up. It was after he told everyone he caught me sniffing his sneakers and how gross it was. The others didn't care, I'd been doing it since before I could walk. The smell just lured me in like a siren call. It was "Hunter's thing", and then I eventually said I didn't really like girls feet, just guys. I can still see the look on Ethan's face. "Gross, dude. You're a fag." Mei and Quoyle were pissed. They had a "little word" with him after that dinner that lasted an hour and he just knew I was smirking about it. So he waited for me in one of the barns later and hit me out of nowhere. He didn't think I'd get up. Big mistake. The day I said I was joining up I actually expected him to think about it and do it with me, just to try and be bigger. But he didn't do it. So I called him a pussy right before the bus came and took me off. We've not spoken much since.'

'But you kinda like him.'

'He looks after Mei and Quoyle well. He gets off his ass and does stuff. I'll give him that, he works his ass off for the place. It's all he's got. I think he kinda knew it the day they adopted him after nobody else would. They had me from when I was a baby. They got Ethan from the orphanage when he was eight. Nobody would adopt him after he went through three other foster families in a year. The last one called the cops after he tried to burn their house down.'

'A true problem child?' Yeah, that mink sure looks like one. 'And Mei and Quoyle turned him around?'

'Nobody's quite sure how. They all say he just needed the right stuff to do and the farm and the slopes were it. And he needed a brother his own age and that was supposed to be me. I was a pain in his ass though. He hated my drum practice too. I tried to get him to learn too but he always lost his shit with it when he couldn't do stuff straight away and he said I was doing it just to show off that I could do it and he couldn't. Maybe there was a bit of that.'

'Brothers, huh?'

'You an only snep?'

'Is it that obvious?'

'Not exactly. I wondered if you had an Ethan of your own or maybe more than one of them and you left home to escape.'

'No, I don't. People say it's strange but I never wished I did. Everything you've just said's why.'

'They're not all like him.' Hunter finds another picture, this time a good looking twinky golden labrador who's dressed in orange blue and white ski gear, posing with his helmet under his arm at the top of a slope. 'I took that pic. That's Gunner. He was my favourite brother. Five years younger than me. I kinda looked after him when he joined the family. He copied me in everything. He wanted to join up too, but they wouldn't take him even though he grew out of his childhood asthma. He was totally gutted. He tried to become an elite athlete instead. Winter sports. Then he never quite got through the qualifiers for major competition. We all told him he should become a trail runner because hew was better at that, so he tried that too and found his asthma came back when he upped the training. He's the poor kid whose dreams never quite came true.'

I smirk. 'Including getting his hot step brother into bed with him? That was him, right?'

'I thought you'd guess. Yeah, that was Gunner. Impulsive as hell. He loved me so much that he crushed on me. I think he got over it eventually, after I told him no. He seemed pretty good at attracting cute guys once he said he could fix their car. He gave up on sports and trained as a mechanic. Last I heard he'd got himself a side job test driving sports cars to destruction for Chevrolet. He sometimes shows up at the farm in fancy cars we all know he can't afford, pretending they're his. Borrowed from his customers to make Ethan jealous, probably.'

He shows me a few more pictures. There's a red fox, Timon, otters Tyler and Lyra, raccoons Faye and Sabrina, and a great hulk of a Rottweiler called Garland, and a rough looking redneck stag called Ash who has a heart of gold and can still take all the Pokémon jokes you aim at him with a smile, right down to how he names the non-people farm cats after the characters and once had a big ginger and white one called Pikachu. After that Hunter confesses he doesn't remember the names of some of the others as they came after he left and he doesn't go back there much.

'Maybe I should come there with you after the tour,' I say. 'I'm seeing an absence of snow leopards. Odd if you're running a ski slope.'

'There's been two of them,' Hunter says. 'I think one's still there. I think his name's West. Or maybe West was the cheetah and Ori was the snep.' Hunter sighs. 'They're used to people showing up and getting introduced with "He grew up here too." I've not heard that in far too long. There's lots of pics of me in the place. I always seemed to like getting in them. They all know me and I've no idea about most of them now.'

'Except Ethan.'

Hunter rolls his eyes. 'Don't go getting curious about Ethan, there's really nothing to him. He's a bad boy mostly gone good. That's it. He made at the farm and he'll probably die at the farm one day. Good enough life I guess, but not exciting enough for either of us. Right? That's why we got in a band.'

'You got in a band. I'm the guy nobody sees who Rico can't do without.'

'You're in the band. That's how Rico sees it.'

'Yeah, sure.'

'Trust me. He wouldn't have come to me for what he asked for if you weren't.' Hunter flicks through his pictures until he finds one where it looks like him and Ethan are about eleven or twelve and Gunner, who's photobombed them from behind, is about 7 or 8. 'There's one thing about Ethan I don't get though.'

'What?'

'Mei called me a few months back. Just a how am I doing kinda call. She does the rounds with all of us. Only when my turn came up she kept talking for longer than usual. Because she wanted to tell me her and Quoyle had had a conversation with Ethan about the farm. I knew it was coming one day. The who gets it after we die thing. I always figured it would be Ethan. But it wasn't, and they told him, and apparently he was fine with it. I'm not sure what was happening there. Or why Mei actually wanted me to know.'

'Seems obvious to me. It's one thing to be in love with a place and work there and live there and it's another to run it.'

'Too simple,' Hunter says. 'That was the first thing I thought, but too simple. Then there was Gunner. Mei wants to me talk to him to see if I can "find out what he's really doing." She's got this feeling there's more to these cars he shows up in than customers letting him take a ride in them. Or Chevvy lending them to him as a perk. She kinda thinks he actually does buy them somehow. She can't think where he's getting his money. Apparently she's been down to see his place and it's pretty fancy. He told her it was sponsorship money he saved because you could get it even if you weren't pro, you just had to convince people you'd get there. She didn't buy it. I don't either.'

'Cars hmm?' I should be taking this more seriously but somehow I just can't. 'Gunner the getaway driver. Who just for irony never actually has a gun. He just drives.'

'You're thinking of the film with Ryan Gosling.' Hunter smiles as he puts his phone away. 'If that's what Gunner's doing, good for him. People get rich off of worse than car chases with the cops.'

'I'd like to meet him.'

'That'd certainly be fun. Gunner's got a funny thing about cats and he tries to hide it. I know he had a bad experience fucking one once; he was trying to get over his hang-up so he picked up a panther who liked to humiliate dogs for being dogs and didn't read the signs right. Really I think his thing was partly how cats often out-competed him. Especially sneps with the winter sports.'

'Oh, even better.'

'You know what he would do though? He likes watching guys do it. He'd love nothing better than seeing me with you. He'd never ask, but I'd definitely see the signs and I bet you would too.'

I shrug. 'I'm game.'

'I am not having sex in front of my step brother, snep.' At least he's laughing while he shakes his head. 'Okay. You can know. My eighteenth birthday present to Gunner was letting him do my feet. I was on leave from Afghanistan and I hadn't been laid for months and I just needed to get off, so after he'd had a few drinks on his birthday night I let him come in my room and taught him how do to a version of what I did to you. I jerked off while he did it. He filled his own pants hands free and thought I didn't notice, but I was too obvious. It was cute watching him come like that with my left foot in his mouth. But that's as far as I ever let it get.'

'You kinky little weasel!' I put my hands on his butt. 'Seriously? Your step brother. And a dog too.'

'Oh I wish he could have heard that. Come on though, he's at least as cute as you.' Hunter gets back on his phone and finds another picture, this time of Gunner naked on a bed cross legged with a pillow over his his lap. 'He sent me that on my last tour. Couple of the guys saw it and went "Holy shit Kershaw, that your boyfriend back home?" I told them "My step bro; he's drunk and horny and that's his way of saying come home safe." Guess it worked.' He puts his phone away, sits up and takes up his coffee cup. 'Your turn. Who have you got back home.

'I don't have anyone.'

'You had a girl. What did you call her? Bonnie. Tell me about Bonnie.'