Shake Your Tree

Chapter 2

So, as you could probably surmise from the fun in the library, things between B and Fitzy were pretty good just then. And things with Jack were getting to be all right, too. Sometimes Jack still tried too hard and wanted too much, but most of the time, Mariah kept him in check enough for B to deal with. It helped that Jack had gone and knocked her up. Mariah was eight months on by then, so B had some welcome competition for Jack\'s fatherly affections.

Things at Earl\'s Garage were good, too. Brantley liked working with his hands- taking something that was useless, giving it back its purpose, and getting all dirty in the process. It was very Zen- changing something for the better- even if it was just a motor. He got along well with Earl, who hadn\'t exactly been friends with Jack when they were growing up here in Possumville, but had known him well enough to give Brantley some useful advice in dealing with his father. It was odd how he could deal with a skittish Fitz with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back (they\'d done that one a few months ago, actually), but he couldn\'t give Jack an inch for fear he\'d take twenty or thirty miles.

***

The day after they\'d desecrated the sanctity of the library, Fitz came home from the library on time but flustered. As was usually best, B let it ride a while, distracting Fitzy from whatever was troubling him with a goofy grin and even goofier innuendos until Fitzy was laughing at him over dinner and dragging him to the bedroom instead of having dessert. They\'d laughed their way though a sloppy groping session until Fitz had suddenly gotten serious, pushed B down, straddled his shoulders and fucked his mouth with a determined look on his face. Once he\'d come, Fitzy jerked Brantley off, while kissing him desperately, hardly coming up for air more than once. The sex was good, but it was obvious Fitzy was in pain, so B didn\'t sleep well that night.

\"So, what\'s eating you?\" B prodded over breakfast.

\"Oatmeal,\" Fitz answered without looking up from his bowl.

\"Uh Peaches, you know that thing we do?\" B asked as he stood up to clear his breakfast dishes and put the cornflakes away.

\"Which thing?\" Fitz answered, starting to pay attention.

\"You know, the thing- the sharing our troubles thing we do.\"

\"Right.\" Fitz smiled at him a moment, \"We do do that, don\'t we?\"

\"We do.\" Brantley took Fitz\'s empty bowl and put it in the sink before sitting back down across from him. \"So . . .\"

\"You remember that volume of periodicals we upset the other day- the one whose binding broke?\" Fitz got up to find his shoes in the bedroom, walking away from B so he had to listen hard to hear the end of the sentence.

When Fitz came back to the kitchen looking for his keys, B asked, \"Trouble fixing it?\"

\"No, that was no trouble, at least not much.\"

\"But . . .\" B helped Fitz search the kitchen for the missing keys- they were always lost.

\"Uh . . . It was the Possumville Press.\" They searched the living room, too.

\"Uh-huh.\" They took the cushions off the chesterfield and found $2.37 in change but no keys.

\"From July, eleven years ago,\" Fitzy added, putting his cushion back.

\"The summer your parents died. Oh man, Peaches, I\'m sorry. Come here,\" Brantley beckoned and wrapped his lover in an overly tight hug.

\"It\'s more than that, B,\" Fitz told him, pulling out of the hug to look Brantley in the eyes. \"The front pages from the three days after they died were missing, as were some other pages over the next few weeks. In fact, there were no pages that referenced their deaths at all.\"

\"So, what do you think? They didn\'t just get lost?\" B asked as Fitz spotted his keys under the coffee table and bent down to retrieve them.

Still on his knees Fitzy responded, \"I\'m not sure. They looked like they were cut out after the newspapers were bound for archiving and not ripped out, like it wasn\'t accidental.\"

\"Why would anyone have done that?\"

\"That\'s what I want to know.\" He stood up and continued, \"I\'m gonna call Edna Reynolds over at the paper and arrange to look at their copies.\"

\"That\'s a good idea. You want me to come with?\"

\"No, I\'m fine. It\'s not like I don\'t know what happened to them and reading about it will be some great revelation.\"

\"If you\'re sure, Peaches . . . Still, you change your mind, give me a ring.\"

\"I promise,\" Fitz assured Brantley and punctuated it with a swift kiss before stepping out the door.

\"Good,\" Brantley told the empty room, only slightly concerned that Fitz had left in what had felt like the middle of a conversation. Fitzy would call if he needed him, B was certain of that.

***

Later that day, B stopped in at the No. 1 Chinese Restaurant and brought all Fitzy\'s favorites over to the library for his lunch break. B didn\'t know what to expect since Fitz was dealing with stuff about his parents\' deaths- it was years ago and Fitzy seemed pretty well over it, but Brantley had lost his mother more than two years ago and some days it still felt new. He wondered if anybody ever really got over losing someone that important.

When B arrived, Fitz was working behind the circulation desk helping a couple of people check out books. He pointed B to the office behind the desk, so Brantley went back there and started setting out the food on the small table inside.

A minute later, Fitz hurried in, closed the door and said, \"There was a fire!\"

\"What where? Was anyone hurt?\" Brantley had been working in town all morning. He hadn\'t heard any sirens.

\"No, it was after hours, only a few people were there, but they lost a couple of years,\" Fitz assured him, walking across the small room and sitting down at the table.

\"Wait, Peaches, what are you talking about?\" Brantley puzzled, turned one of the chairs around, pushed its back up against the edge of the table and straddled it.

\"The Possumville Press- they had a fire.\"

\"When? I didn\'t hear anything about-\"

\"Not recently,\" Fitzy interrupted. \"It was about five years ago. I was still at college, somehow I never heard about it until Edna told me today.\"

\"And, let me guess, all the editions with articles about your parents were lost.\"

\"Yes.\" Fitzy got up to pace the room, agitated. \"B, I just got off the phone with the fire chief- they classified the fire as suspicious, but never arrested anyone. Until this, I was thinking that someone might have removed the pages from the library archives to spare me. Miss Mariah used to work here years back and she\'s always been so protective, but-\"

\"But she\'s not the kind of person to burn down a building to keep you from reading about something you already know. Shit.\"

\"Am I just paranoid or is this too much? It could still be coincidence.\"

\"That seems pretty damn unlikely. Look, you know I love Mariah but, I think you need to ask her about this stuff.\"

\"How can I? She\'s been so good to me. Asking her if she knows anything about this would break her heart. I can\'t. No, I won\'t,\" Fitz promised himself.

\"Peaches, you really think ignorance is bliss here? Maybe there are things you needed to be protected from when you were young, things that she should tell you now? Mothers have been known to make choices like that, you know,\" Brantley said, thinking about how his own mother had kept her own secrets.

\"This is not the same thing. Your mother didn\'t burn down a building,\" Fitz reasoned.

\"No, she just kept me from knowing Jack for my whole childhood. And I thought we thought that Mariah couldn\'t have been a party to the fire?\"

\"We don\'t, which is why we are not asking her about it.\"

\"Fitz-\"

\"No, B I mean it. We\'ll leave it alone, at least until after the baby is born.\"

\"Your sure?\"

\"Yes.\"

\"All right, but I still think you deserve to know whatever\'s on those missing pages.\"