Ravens Roost Ch. 05

It didn't occur to me until I had driven up to the Ravens Roost Lookout on the Blue Ridge Parkway in response to that long ago request by Dabney Belcastle to be here at a precise time on this date that this was the same date, two years later, of my first meeting of Belcastle in this exact spot. I'd had the date circled in red on my calendar for several months; I gave no thought to not showing up. Belcastle had cut me a hefty check just to be here, although he'd made no secret of why he'd asked me to be here or how he hoped it would make up in some small part for taking Hank Hemings from me.

The irony there was that a heavy burden lifted off my shoulders the moment I was free of Hank. He was an indulgence that had become a ball and chain for me—a sex-driven habit and fetish that I could not break until Belcastle arranged the divestment.

The day was perfect, so I had come up early. I saw no reason why I shouldn't multipurpose this trip. I'd brought my easel and my canvases and paints and I, once again, was trying to capture the light just at the right time on the Torrey Ridge opposite the lookout ledge as I had done in the painting I had left by the front door at Castleton when I had discovered Hank fucking Dab on the floor in front of Dab's fireplace.

I was so engrossed in trying to capture the reeling ravens and hawks flying over the little valley created by the spur of the Torrey Ridge pushing out from the main Blue Ridge range that I didn't hear the car pull into the parking apron off the parkway.

"I think you've gotten it just right." The voice was melodic, a basso profundo. The sort of voice you'd hear narrating a PBS documentary. I turned and looked, and for the briefest moment my attention was drawn past the young man standing there to the white Bentley convertible parked beyond him. My heart leapt into my throat, and my gaze snapped back to the man, half way expecting to see Dabney Belcastle, but knowing that wasn't really possible.

"Are you Paul?" I asked.

The young man did a double take but quickly relaxed and smiled.

"He arranged this, didn't he? This is why he specified the day and time."

"Yes, I suppose he did," I answered. This Paul was quite a good looking young man. Belcastle had told me that he was an English professor, so I was expecting something academic and anemic. But he was strongly built, achingly handsome, and deeply tanned. Ah yes, I then thought. He's been off in Southeast Asia the last few months.

I felt my hand trembling at the sight of him. He was much more presentable and alluring than I had thought. I had wondered what Belcastle was up to in this, but now I could see where he might have been as manipulative as ever—but even more promisingly so in this than in some of his other controlling schemes. I turned back to the painting to play for time and to catch my breath from having taken in the beauty of him.

"You're not wearing the fur coat," I said.

"It doesn't seem to be me," he said, and then he gave a rich and rumbling chuckle. "It's in the car, though. Still in the backseat where he left it."

"Ah, yes, the car. I can see that you're 'wearing' that, though."

"Yes, I think that's me perfectly," he answered with another chuckle. Then he moved in close behind me and put a hand on my shoulder as he peered into the painting. "Yes, I think you've got it just right."

"The birds," I muttered, pleased that he liked the painting but not that pleased that he was so forgiving. I had expected the eye of an artist, but I was being unfair. He was an artist of an entirely different eye. I continued with the demur. "I don't have the birds right. I never can seem to do them justice."

"That's because they value their freedom too highly, I think," he countered. "They are free spirits up here; not static and showy like the mountainsides in their autumn mantel. They defy capture, and maybe that is as it should be."

Ah, a discerning artist after all, I thought. All of this time and it took an artist of words and concepts to free me of the need to control even the birds reeling on the updrafts of the mountain slopes. Be free and loose, go with the flow, they were telling me. Follow the moment. I suddenly felt more relaxed and free than I had for years.

"I would like to buy this painting when you are done, if you wish to sell it," Paul whispered over my shoulder. He had his other hand on my other shoulder now. I saw that he had placed a silver box on the ground beside my chair as he had moved closer to me.

"That's what he said—two years ago today, right here," I answered in a low voice.

"Ah," Paul said. "Do you think he planned all of this?"

"I'm sure he did," I answered.

"Do you mind?"

I let that float in the crisp mountain air for a moment. "No, no, I don't think I care."

"I was angry with him," Paul then said.

"Yes, I suppose you were. But I'm sure he was thinking more of you than himself at the time."

"I'm not sure I follow," Paul answered. I could hear the slight anguish—the barely controlled anger and disappointment in his voice now. "There was no grant, you know. I went to Indonesia because Dab manipulated my being gone."

"That would be like him," I answered. "But again, he wanted you well away."

"So he could shoot himself while sitting in a rocker on his portico? So he didn't have to face me and tell me why he needed to do this to get away from me—how I had failed him?"

"Is that what you thought?" I asked, now tilting my head up and looking up into his tear-stained face.

Silence.

"He didn't tell you he had pancreatic cancer?" I asked. "That he had only a few painful months to live anyway?"

"No." The voice was strangled. Disconsolate.

I let that hang in the air for a few minutes, giving this beautiful young man time to absorb this basic kindness and act of self-sacrifice Dabney Belcastle had accorded him.

"Maybe that's why he asked me to be here then," I said when I broke the silence. "Maybe he loved you so much he couldn't tell you himself. And maybe he didn't want to prolong the grief."

I looked up into his face. His lips were trembling and he eyes were pleading with me.

"Would you like to . . .?" I whispered.

"Yes, I think I would. I think that's what Dab wanted."

I lifted my hands up to each side of his head with its fetching tousled blond curls and brought his mouth down to mine and we kissed. It was a sweet kiss. Not yet a kiss of lust. More of a discovery and a question and a promise kiss.

When we broke away, I looked down at the silver box. "Is that . . .?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you might like to do it now, and then we can move to the car."

"Yes, I'd like that," he answered. He picked up the box and walked over to the stone parapet and stood on it. With a flourish, he opened the box and spread his arm wide across his body, scattering the ashes of Dabney Belcastle down the cliffside toward the vineyard in the small valley below, it's vine leaves now turned a golden yellow—the same color the vines back at Castleton would be.

He then turned back to me and held out his hand, and I stood up from the easel and walked back to the Bentley with him. We slowly stripped, he on the driver's side and me on the passenger side.

As we were doing so, I asked him a few more questions. "So, you inherited the Bentley and the fur coat?"

"Yes, that and the winery and a section of the estate he called the back forty. It has a very nice farmhouse on it with a terrific close-up view of the eastern slope of the mountains. I would like you to see it if . . . if you are interested."

I looked at him, now standing there in his full, naked glory, and I gasped at the beauty and size of him. "Yes, I'm quite interested," I whispered. And I wasn't just talking about seeing the house. And Paul knew I wasn't. His eyes were twinkling, and he obviously was pleased that I was pleased.

"But what about the rest of the estate? Castleton? The manor house?"

"He has left that to Hank Hemings," Paul answered. "I think he tried to tell me why the evening Hank left him, but I didn't press and he wasn't ready. In his will, though, he said he was leaving it to Hank as the last of the line, so I think I understand now."

I said nothing, but I understood as well—and I gained added respect for Dabney Belcastle. If anything would take the anger out of Hank and save him in this life, it would be this gesture of long-withheld justice.

"I'm to hold and maintain the estate until Hank gets out of prison," Paul continued. "And now that he has some place to come to, I'll bet he'll be out on good behavior in short order."

We stood there, looking at each other. I had no idea why I was doing this, and I doubt Paul did either. I'm not sure it was enough for either of us that Belcastle had taken matters into his own hands and manipulated the situation yet again. But I, for one, had been keyed up ever since Belcastle had taken Hank from me—at loose ends, tense, and trying to put everything in its designated box. Perhaps it was what Paul had said about the ravens and hawks soaring above us that had set me free and let my inhibitions melt away. And perhaps there were some demons Paul was exorcising also.

"If you're the owner of the Castleton winery now, I think I owe you the completion of a painting," I said to break the spell of the two of us standing there, beside the parkway, stark naked and neither making the next move.

"Leave it," Paul said. "The patrons find it intriguing, and it gives me a sense of freedom and of perfection to come."

I think I'm going to want him to interpret all of my paintings for me, I thought. He sees far more in them than I can. He can see right to the center of me. And I knew at the moment that I wanted him to make love to me—I wouldn't do it because it was what Dabney Belcastle wanted but because it was what I wanted.

And he could see in my eyes that I was ready. And this made him ready as well.

He opened the driver's door and pushed the seat over onto the steering wheel and pulled the fur coat out of the backseat.

"Here, could you put this on and wrap it around yourself, climb into the backseat, and lie on your back, please?"

I gave him an amused, quizzical look, but he just laughed and said, "Indulge me, please. I think you'll enjoy it."

And so I did—both indulge him and enjoy it.

The End