“Why not?” Nick got a better grip on the basket. “I don’t know. She bugs me.” Brian’s relationship with his siblings was complicated, and it probably rubbed off on him. “Has she said ‘thank you’ to you yet?”
“Yes. Half a dozen times.”
“She’s getting a hell of a deal.”
“Let me worry about that.” The sound of a truck pulling up outside caught their attention, and Charlie turned to the front door.
Nick ran up the stairs quickly and dropped the basket in the closer bathroom. With luck, that truck was Brian, who’d promised to help Yasmin with something goat-related on the farm. Doc was bringing him over after work. Maybe now they could finish up.
He took the stairs down three at a time. Because he wanted to get the truck empty, of course, not because he wanted to see Brian… smile, like that. As he reached the porch, Brian was getting out of Doc’s pickup, and the look on his face as he caught sight of Nick would’ve melted the coldest Minnesota ice.
Nick put a hand on the porch rail and vaulted down to the walkway. “Hey there. Done playing the lonely goatherd?”
Charlie laughed. “Yodelayheehoo.”
Brian flushed but told Charlie, “Hey, Maria, you got the tune right. Favorite movie?”
It was cool that Brian was getting comfortable ribbing Charlie back. Nick went over and nudged Brian’s shoulder. “Didn’t work too hard? Ready to do some heavy lifting?”
Brian smiled at him. “Yeah, sure.”
Doc came around the hood of the truck. “How much more is there?”
“Not a lot. The mattresses and box springs your mom’s lending them. A few other bits.”
Over by the rental truck, Lori said, “Your mom’s great, Zander. We totally owe her.”
“She’s all that.” Zander headed toward her. “She’s really glad of Brian’s help. So am I. I got out of helping trim goat hooves.”
Brian said, “It was kind of cool. The way you can sit them on their butt and they hold still. Some. Not as well as the sheep do.”
Lori sniffed. “So you have your pets at last. Win-win. Did you shower before coming over?”
Nick tugged Brian close and placed a blatant kiss on his neck, then rose on tiptoe to nuzzle his hair. “Yep, Lor, I promise, he showered.”
From the porch behind them, an old man’s voice said, “Y’all look like the United Nations out here.”
They all turned. The guy standing by the front door had to be the so-far-unseen downstairs neighbor. He was small and wiry, with wisps of white hair framing his shiny bald scalp. By contrast, his eyebrows were bushy and drawn down. He stood there eyeing them, arms folded, dressed in a faded T-shirt and striped pajama pants.
Charlie made the first move, stepping forward with his hand outstretched. “Hi, sir. I’m Charlie Connors. I’m moving in upstairs.”
The old man didn’t come forward to meet him. “Yeah? You and who else? The black boy or the two men kissing like this is San Francisco?”
Charlie lowered his hand. “These are all friends of mine, but I’ll be sharing with Lorraine, over there.” He gestured at Lori.
“She your wife?”
“She’s a friend.”
“Girlfriend? I’m not so narrow-minded as that.”
“No. She just needs a place to stay when the baby comes.”
The man looked at her. “Yeah. Looks like she’s about to pop. When are you due, girlie?”
Lori said with a perfectly sweet smile, “Another three weeks yet.”
The old man tilted his head. “I’m betting on sooner. Doctors don’t know nothing. When my wife got that big, I knew to keep the bags by the door. The father’s not around, huh?”
Lori’s smile didn’t falter. “No, sir, I’m on my own. But I have good friends.” She gestured at Charlie.
“Well, that’s something. Sometimes friends are better than a deadbeat dad. You tell these boys not to let you lift nothin’, unless they want that trip to the hospital to happen tonight.”
Charlie said, “Don’t worry. We’re taking care of her.”
The old man nodded firmly and came down the front steps in his bare feet. “Frank King.” He held out his hand. “Good to meet ya.”
Charlie shook hands.
The man looked around the group. “Y’all aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Nope,” Charlie said less tightly. “Minnesota.”
“Guess I can make allowances. After y’get moved in, y’all come on down for coffee and cake. My wife’ll give me hell if I don’t invite you right off.”
“That’s kind of you,” Charlie said, “but I promised the guys pizza and beer.”
“Even better. Bring it along. She might let me eat pizza for once.” Frank put a hand on his chest. “Heart, y’know. They’ve got me on one of those diets where you live forever if you eat cardboard. I can break it for a special occasion.”
Nick couldn’t resist asking, “What about the gay guys and the black man? We all welcome too?”
“Why the hell not?” Frank peered at him. “Did I get your feathers ruffled?”
Nick jerked a thumb at Doc, standing stone-faced by the truck. “For one thing, he’s not a boy.”
“If you say so. Don’t none of y’all look old enough to shave to me.”
Charlie said, “And you don’t think your wife will care about the gay guys?”
“Ah, hell, no. She’s real open minded. Always has been. Now me, it took a while for me to be okay with the blacks and the queers. Was probably my second tour in ’Nam, I finally realized that the lieutenant from that good white Charleston family was mean as a snake, and the guys hauling my ass out from under fire were the darkest guys on the squad. When I started lookin’ under the skin, I eventually got my head ’round the idea that white don’t mean nothing special, you know?”
“Sure.”
“As for the gays, well, that was tougher. Not that there’s probably any man that did tours overseas can say he never went behind the latrines with another guy. But that felt like a different thing. A guy has needs, you know? Didn’t mean we were queer.”
“Um.”
“And when I got back here, the preacher was shouting up and down that gay folk were damned to hellfire. But my Helen, she kept working on me. Got me to change churches, too. What a man won’t do for a pretty woman, huh?” He glanced at Nick. “Well, some men.”
Nick wasn’t sure what the answer to that was, so he shrugged and slid an arm around Brian.
“Yeah. Anyway, Helen wouldn’t hold with anyone going to hell for lovin’ somebody. Can’t say as I have strong feelings on that, like she does, but I’m good with live and let live, you know? And the world’s changing. Hell, there’s even that gay guy in football now.”
Charlie said, “And probably a lot more who aren’t out yet.”
Frank gestured at Nick and Brian. “Now doing that kind of thing? That could get you hurt around here. Not like up North, I guess. It’s probably smart to keep it off the street, but personally I don’t care what goes on in a man’s house, as long as you don’t wake Helen up when she’s sleeping.”