One of my cousin’s friends had tried to recruit Heath after being brainwashed to believe everything under the rainbow was sent straight from hell. The guy tried to commit suicide because he was attracted to menandwomen, but Heath found him before it was too late and got him medical assistance, which landed the dude with a medical discharge.
The guy, Tucker Flake, got himself some intense therapy and attended the University of Georgia, earning his degree in mental health counseling. He currently runs an outreach program in Atlanta to help recovering bigots—for lack of a better term. I was convinced he and Heath had something going on back in the day, but I wasn’t rude enough to ask.
Art Judge stood on a raised stage and lifted his hands to quiet the crowd. Once the noise dropped to a low murmur, Art stepped toward the podium situated in front of a wooden cross with an American flag draped over it. There was a logo on the front of the podium I wished I could snap a picture of, but then again, I’d had to give up my phone when I arrived at the campground two hours ago—something Tucker failed to mention to me.
“Good evening, gentlemen. I’m Art Judge, one of the founders of the Defenders of the Faithful. The finishing touches are beingput on the food, so we have a few minutes. I’d like to thank all of you for coming out. I know many of you were referred to us by friends who respect our mission, and I hope you’ll pass on our thanks to them. By the time you hear what we have to say, I think you’ll be thanking them yourselves.
“I’d like to introduce the man who saw the need for a group like ours and rallied a few of us to help him fill the void inside young men raised in unconventional families. Please welcome Martin Dale.”
The applause was immediate, and it sounded like a hell of a lot more than the thirty of us on the benches. I glanced around to see a lot of other men emerge from the trees surrounding the campground, and my gut squeezed at the huge red flag waving in my mind’s eye.
“Good evening! The air here at Camp Brotherhood always smells great to me, but that barbecue cooking on the grills makes it smell that much better, doesn’t it?” Another round of applause.
“I’m Martin Dale, and I’min your corner!” Applause swelled around me at the man’s shouts and fist pumps. It reminded me of some of the videos I’d seen outlining a dictator’s rise to power. It was scary as hell.
“All of you were raised by well-meaning folks who taught you valuable lessons, including how to love, but none of them taught you how to be a real man. That’s what we’re here to do. My late mother and my sister raised me as best they could, but there was one thing missing: a supportive male influence.
“I thought I’d found one, but he was everything except a righteous, strong male role model. He turned out to be the worst person I didn’t see coming. He was a predator. Since I broke free from his influence, I’ve made it my mission to rid the world of those who see us as weak because we weren’t taught to be strong, confident men.”
I wanted to roll my eyes because no way was I raised without positive male role models. My father was deceased, but I had my mom’s brothers, Griff and Garrett, who stepped in to be the male influences in my life, along with my grandfather, Chuck.
Heath’s father, Gray, had been killed in a flood when Heath was a small boy, but our family made sure Heath and I knew we were loved and would always have the support of a strong family—even when I came out of the closet at sixteen.
“Every man here is capable of greatness and self-reliance. You only need to learn how to spot those who would lead you into unthinkable sin and darkness to dissuade you from being loved by the woman of your dreams because you are meant to be the strong leader of your family and guide your wife and children with a firm hand and a loving heart.”
I begged to differ with him. There was no girl in my dreams, but the blond twins in the row behind me could make me the filling in a sexy twin sandwich without asking twice.
Martin Dale continued with a vague diatribe that whispered of homophobia, so I scanned the crowd, directing my attention to the other men on the stage. One appeared to be a good-ole boy from the backwoods of any town in the country, what with his beer gut, overalls, and dirty trucker hat.
The other guy was far more polished than I expected, dressed in perfectly pressed khakis and a crisp blue button-down shirt. The loafers were definitely Italian. He had the vague expression of someone smelling sewage, but he didn’t take his eyes from Martin Dale, which was interesting.
“I was an impressionable young boy of fourteen when a charismatic man came into my life. He was the pastor of our little country church. My mother, a single mother much like yours, did her best to raise me right, but the pastor smelled the naïvety in me and groomed me for his vile desires. No one believed he was capable of such ungodly actions, so my motherand I were kicked out of their church when I finally told her what was going on. I was filled with so much shame that I wanted to take my own life for my wickedness.
“It took me a few years to see the truth—the pastor was pure evil and capable of great manipulations and distortions of the truth. He’d disrupted my path to righteousness, and he had to pay. Well, he’s paying for it now. He and his beard of a wife will never hurt another young boy the way I was hurt.”
That sounded ominous. His comment inferred that the pastor was a gay man hiding in a pastor’s clothing, right down to having a wife. What the actual fuck?
“This is where you come in, my young friends. We must be the Defenders of the Faithful. I challenge you to defend young men from being manipulated by men who would do to them what was done to me. I’ve sworn to seek revenge on the abominations of the world who lie with other men. Those who seek to steal their innocence. I challenge you to right the wrongs of the unnatural lust and wipe homosexuals off the face of God’s earth.” Martin Dale pounded on the podium hard enough that many of us jumped.
My mind swirled to take in his words. To hear what he was saying and make sense of it. Did he just equate gay and queer men to pedophiles? My stomach flipped as his sickening words echoed in my mind.
Heath had said he believed Art Judge and his band of psychos were anti-LGBTQIA+ kooks with an agenda, though he’d left in the middle of the rhetoric because he didn’t want any part of what the Defenders of the Faithful were up to.
He deployed a few days later to Turkey, and when he returned stateside, he didn’t re-up his contract. He’d been aloof with the family for the last six months since he returned home, and the family had been giving him time, but I had to wonder if there was more to it.
A great cheer went up as arms were held over heads, everyone high-fiving each other. I didn’t know why because I hadn’t paid attention to the last part. Figuring I needed to blend in, I turned to the cute twins and held up my right hand to high-five. I didn’t expect Twin One to grab my arm and flip it, wrist up.
“What have we here?” he asked in a deep voice.
My heart stopped. There on my wrist was my rainbow tattoo. My declaration of my sexual identity that my grandfather took me to get on my eighteenth birthday. Granddad Chuck had gotten an ally tattoo that day, and it was my most prized possession.
How the fuck had I forgotten it?
Chapter Two
Jericho Hess
I stood from the institutional gray metal chair where I’d sat for an hour, listening to the guest speaker at the addiction group therapy session I’d attended at my shrink’s suggestion. The speaker had told a story about how he’d spiraled out of control when his former boyfriend faked his own suicide and fled the country.
