Parker:You’re funny when you want to be.
Parker:I’m out of wine.
Omar:That was terrible advice, but thanks for listening / chatting.
Parker:Happy to, friend. Let me know how it goes.
Omar:Really though, thank you.
Parker:
Parker:I really am drunk if I just sent you a heart emoji.
Parker:Don’t tell anyone I did that.
Omar:Your secret is safe with me.
I pocket my phone and lean my head against the passenger window, remembering. I had many tutors, but the American POW was my favorite.
He was from Texas and taught me strange phrases like “this ain’t my first rodeo” and “that dog won’t hunt.” He told me stories he called Tall-Tales, and I never knew which ones were real and which ones were fake. He was kind to me, the son of the man holding him there against his will.
And I knew he was different. Even before I had the words, I knew he was different like me. He was an honorable man and never took advantage. My father’s general tried to beat the queer out of me, but this man—whose name I can’t even say without choking up—showed me how to truly be a man. To be kind despite the circumstances.
And slowly, over time, I developed a plan. One I didn’t even tell him about. I put away every bit of money that came to me. I eventually got travel documents and found out where the nearest allied checkpoint was. It was run by Australians, and I felt sure they’d help an American POW.
I figured he’d work through his channels to get back home, and in the meantime, I’d go to visit my cousin in Turkey, then fly into Mexico City, and then to Austin, Texas, where he’d been born and raised.
We had been working on my English, and I asked him to help me soften my accent. He looked at me funny, but helped me, nonetheless. I think he knew I was working something out.
But the general, seeing his influence on me, did not like this teacher and told my father that he was dangerous. That he was the reason I was so soft. My father, king of the object lesson, made sure it was a lesson I’d never forget.
I walked through the next six months, numb. I killed the people my father told me to kill because I’d always done it, and because I knew what would happen if I didn’t. Sure, I would die, but so would my mother. And then the person I was assigned to kill would be killed by someone else, and now their family would be slaughtered in retribution for my lack of cooperation.
I went through the motions, washed the blood from my hands again and again. My teacher’s name is one I’ll never again say aloud, but it is common enough that when I hear it…it hurts.
Right before my eighteenth birthday, the general who terrorized me through my teenage years was caught with a young girl from the village down the way.
She had not been his first victim, nor his youngest. And the idea that this man could look at me and call me unclean, call me immoral, call me worthless in the eyes of Allah… It set upon me a rage that I still feel to this day.
At our very next meeting, I employed on him all the things he’d taught me. I remember standing in front of him as he hung from the tree, his entrails hanging to the ground, his eyes glazed with fear and pain, and for the first time in my life, understanding what freedom could look like.
I look out the window as we pass the small towns of Texas, letting the memories and the sounds of his pleas fill my imagination.
11
Anders
Look, until today, the main draw to giving Omar a hard time was that he doesn’t react. So, if I can get the tiniest little jaw clench or raised eyebrow from him, that’s a victory. And today, I got him to swing at me. That’d be a banner day for me under any other circumstances.
Something has shifted, though, and I’m finding that getting him to play with me—even a little—is infinitely more satisfying. Wheedling him out of his seriousness, watching him hold back a smile until he thinks I’m not looking…then actually getting him to laugh? Hell, it’s enough to make a boy weak at the knees.
But he has tender spots he won’t let anyone see, and I’ve drifted into one of them. I got my reaction, and I wish like hell I could undo it.
He’s quiet now, leaned up against the window in a restless sort of half sleep, but he spent the last twenty minutes texting someone. Someone who told him to relax. Someone who told him to breathe. I’m genuinely glad he seems better, but that he needed it at all weighs on my gut like a stone. And it’s ridiculous to assume I’d be of any use to him, but that the someone who helped him relax wasn’t me…well, that hurts, too.
Finally, he stirs and stretches, and my hands ache to glide across that stretching muscle, to massage and soothe him, to provide him comfort and relief. My mouth twitches with the desire to taste his, to combine a kiss with the lush sensation of him under my fingertips, to soothe away the years of pain, to be the person who makes the present tense sparkle and shine for him.
He says nothing. I say nothing. And the farther we drive, the quieter everything seems.
