Blue and Gray

Chapter Seven – Panta Rhei

Written by: minoan

Crown of leaves, high in the window
on a gold morning.
Young today,
old as the railroad tomorrow.
Days are just drops in the river
to be lost, always.
Only you, only you,
you know.

~ Fleet Foxes – Drops in the River

July 19, 1863
Ohio River, Adams County, Ohio

Flynn’s lone antler scraped the side of the bunk and his hoof hit the wooden partition as he stretched lazily. He could see the light shining in from the cracks around the door to the flatboat cabin. The beams of light told him it was mid-morning, possibly later. There was something about Sundays – even when the days of the week didn’t seem to matter he seemed to instinctively know what day was Sunday because he always slept in late.

He smiled widely as he stretched, thinking of last night. It all felt like a dream. Calvin had said he loved him, and Flynn had said it too. They’d made love again under the moon in the West Virginia woods and there was no telling what time it was when they made it back onto the boat. Flynn didn’t even try to walk, he just let Calvin carry him the whole way. He never felt as safe and cared for as he did in Calvin’s arms. Loved. Was this love? He had nothing to compare it to, but it was certainly nothing like anything he’d ever felt for anyone before. Can I call this new feeling love? I don’t know what else to call it, Flynn thought. What else could it be?

Calvin had already left the bunk. He was likely out on the deck eating breakfast – or maybe lunch – with Cletus and the foxes, though Jonathan and Emily seemed to have been avoiding them lately. At least, they were avoiding them inasmuch as could be done on the small flatboat, which mostly just meant a reticence to engage in conversation. Calvin had mentioned a few days prior that he found it strange since they had been so friendly and talkative when they’d first met. It was like something changed in them a few days after they left Pittsburgh.

Flynn didn’t mind that much, not at first. He didn’t have anything against the foxes, but this voyage was one of necessity. They weren’t here to make friends. They were here to escape. But it had gotten so obvious over the past few days that the foxes were avoiding them that it became concerning.

Flynn finally rolled out of the bunk, which was already almost level with the floor of the corridor. He stood – stooped, actually, given how low the ceiling was – and walked out onto the main deck. Calvin was chatting with Emily while Jonathan was facing away from them, looking at the shore.

“Look who’s finally up! Good morning, Flynn!” Emily yelled with friendliness as Flynn emerged from the cabin into the sunlight. Calvin had been facing away from the door, but he turned and smiled his big, sincere wolfish grin when he saw Flynn.

“Morning Emily, Calvin… Jonathan,” Flynn replied. Jonathan didn’t acknowledge him.

Flynn turned over his shoulder. “Morning up there, Cletus!”

“And a fine one it is,” he answered.

Flynn started limping towards where Calvin and Emily were standing. His leg always hurt worst in the morning, but if he put weight on it and used it throughout the day it hurt less and less. It was all part of the healing process, he figured, and he was eager to be able to walk again. He needed to be able to walk by the time they got off this boat no matter what.

“Steamboat coming!” Cletus yelled as he spied a large side-wheeler navigating around a bend in the river several miles ahead of the flatboat.

After the initial excitement of the first few days on the river had passed, the prevailing mood on the flatboat was boredom. Days were long, and the slow pace and monotony left all the passengers looking for any kind of entertainment throughout the day.  With the foxes – particularly Jonathan – being less than talkative most of the time, Flynn and Calvin found themselves bored for long tracts of time.

Sometimes relatively interesting things could be seen on the shore, but by far the most entertaining spectacle to regularly occur was the passage of steamboats. Seeing their powerfully churning paddle wheels, billowing smokestacks and ornately decorated exteriors was a welcome diversion for everyone.

“Coming fast!” Cletus added.

And indeed it was. Calvin, Flynn and the foxes leaned over the edge of the low sidewall of the flatboat to get a better view. In only minutes it was near enough for them to hear the steady chush-chush-chush-chush-chush of the paddles plunging into the water.

“That’s the fastest one we’ve seen yet!” Flynn beamed. He really did get a kick out of seeing them. Flynn had never even seen a real ship until a few weeks ago, the river near his home being too small to accommodate much larger than a rowboat. He didn’t know anything could move so fast on the water, let alone something bigger than any of the buildings back home.

The steamboat blew its steam whistle twice and some of its passengers waved as it passed by the flatboat. Flynn, Calvin and Emily waved back.

As the side-wheeler sped away the waves from its wake rolled towards the flatboat. Jonathan was distracted; he was keeping an eye on Calvin, trying to keep his distance from him, still dwelling on thoughts Emily had begged him not to. When the waves made their way to the flatboat the vessel dipped slightly, causing Jonathan to stumble.

Calvin saw him lose his balance and instinctively stretched his arms to try to catch the falling fox, but Jonathan instead recoiled the other direction, away from Calvin. He was afraid of Calvin and Flynn, afraid of what they were and what he’d been told it meant for his entire life by people who he thought were wiser than him. It was his phobia, just as the water was for Calvin. In that moment, with the wolf reaching for him to catch him, Jonathan panicked. He tried to fight the water.

Jonathan tripped over the knee-high sidewall of the flatboat and tumbled backwards into the Ohio river, disappearing underneath the water’s surface.

“Jonathan!!” Emily screamed.

Calvin stood in shock, turning to Emily.

“He can’t swim!!” she cried.

Before he could process the implications, Calvin saw Flynn dive into the river. He hadn’t hesitated an instant. Where only seconds before there had been four passengers on the flatboat there were now only two.

Flynn couldn’t see anything under the water. This river wasn’t like the French Broad, where Flynn could open his eyes underwater and at least see several feet in front of him. It was a little murky, but nothing like this. The Ohio was like swimming in a liquid fog.

Flynn dove deeper, kicking his legs wide hoping to feel something, swiveling his cervine ears in all directions to try to hear something, anything that might tell him where Jonathan was. Nothing. Nothing! Deeper he went, further from the bright summer sky and into the world of shadow.

His skin tingled under his fur as he passed the thermal layer of the river, where the water transitions from warm to cold. He took another stroke down and then, barely audible, he heard something. It sounded like a muffled scream, air escaping and water flowing into the void it left behind. It was right next to him. He kicked his leg to the left to swim toward it and immediately felt fox fur and cloth. It was Jonathan. He wasn’t moving.

Flynn wrapped one arm around the fox’s limp body and kicked as hard as he ever had. Through the thermal layer from cold to warm he swam up, up, up – up again towards the warmth, towards the blue.

His leg throbbed and his lungs felt like they were going to burst as he willed himself to the life-giving surface of the water. A final powerful kick and he broke through, emptying his lungs and gasping for life, fresh air filling him once again.

“There!!” Cletus yelled as he spied Flynn emerging from under the water. He’d been scanning the water’s surface, keen eyes penetrating far under the river. Calvin had grabbed the flatboat’s long oar, waiting to drop it next to Flynn when he surfaced. When Cletus spotted the deer Calvin dropped it next to him right as he surfaced. Flynn grabbed hold of the oar and Calvin spun it around to deliver him quickly to the side of the boat.

“Jonathan!! Jonathan!!” Emily screamed as Calvin jumped down onto the deck and pulled Flynn and the lifeless body he was holding onto the boat, one in each arm. “My Jonathan!! He’s drowned!! He’s dead!!”

“No!” Flynn yelled as he scrambled on his knees to where Calvin had lain Jonathan on the deck. He put his hands over Jonathan’s chest and began pumping. “I can save him!!”

He leaned to Jonathan’s mouth and planted his on it, blowing air into the fox’s lungs.

“What are you doing to him!!” Emily shrieked. Calvin didn’t know what Flynn was doing either, but he held Emily back.

Flynn pulled back from the fox’s mouth and started pumping on his chest again.

“I can save him!!” he shouted again.

Emily fell to her knees, inconsolable and screaming as Flynn continued pumping her drowned husband’s chest. Calvin watched confused as Flynn put his mouth on Jonathan’s again and blew air into his lungs. He saw Flynn starting to pump the evidently dead fox’s chest again.

The scene was having an effect on Calvin. Three minutes ago they were happily watching a steamboat pass by. How could this have happened so quickly, this picture of needless death and anguish? Calvin’s mind wanted to escape from it. He began to retreat into himself.

Jonathan’s body convulsed. The gurgling noise he made as he vomited river water onto the deck of the flatboat reminded Calvin, immediately, of the badger’s dying gasps. The emotions he felt waiting for Flynn to come back to the surface, Emily’s screams, Jonathan seemingly dying and being resurrected, that might not have been enough. But the gurgling, the same as the badger – that was enough to trigger it. Calvin’s mind went back to the war.

Calvin stumbled backwards on wobbly legs. He fell against the wall of Cletus’s fore-cabin before sliding down it, collapsing to the ground, whimpering, eyes shut tight, hands over his ears. He was back at the Battle of Second Manassas. He was running for his life as bullets whizzed past him, some hitting the men around him with a sickening sound. He saw a horse – half a horse, ripped in two by a cannonball – trying to stand. It was happening all over again. He heard the screams. He saw the face.

Jonathan opened his eyes and his body lurched as he inhaled deeper and most desperately than anyone on the boat had ever heard, like a corpse reanimated. He coughed and heaved a moment later, vomiting more water before drawing another deep, frantic breath.

Calvin began to return to his senses. These episodes, these flashbacks always lasted less than a minute, sometimes only seconds. He opened his eyes and uncovered his ears, reappraising his surroundings, his situation. Right, he remembered. I’m not in Virginia on a battlefield, I’m on a flatboat on the Ohio River. I don’t think anyone saw me and the Nostalgia, they were looking at the drowned fox. No, he didn’t drown. He is moving. Flynn must have saved him. Flynn… where’s Flynn? Flynn!

“Jonathan!!” Emily yelled as she scrambled towards her husband. She cradled him in her arms as he took strained breaths and coughed. “My Jonathan!! You’re alive!! It’s a miracle, a miracle from God!!”

Flynn, now sitting on the rough log deck, furrowed his brow as Emily wept and clutched her husband, who was beginning to recover. Flynn was still catching his breath too; he’d risked his life for Jonathan, he’d saved the fox’s life, not God.

But he forgot all that in an instant. Calvin scooped him up in his arms, lifting his hooves off the deck of the flatboat. He hugged him tighter than he’d ever been hugged before and then, right there on the deck of the boat, Calvin kissed him. Flynn melted into it, tongue coursing through the wolf’s mouth.

“I was so worried!” Calvin exclaimed when they broke their kiss. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again! Don’t you dare! I can’t lose you!”

Flynn looked at Calvin, the wolf’s face betraying a dozen emotions as he held Flynn in his arms. There was relief, there was care, there was adoration – there was love.

Over his shoulder Flynn saw another face. Cletus had seen everything. He always did.

- -

It was Flynn’s father who had told him what to do if one of the boys swimming in the river ever drowned. Flynn couldn’t have been twelve or thirteen years old when he’d told him.

“Pump his chest thirty times, here,” his father had said, slapping him on his chest much harder than he needed to, causing Flynn to wince. “That’s so you’ll remember. Then you fill up your gut with air and blow it into his mouth. You gotta do it hard, blow out the water. Then you do it again, until either he wakes up or it’s clear he ain’t never waking up.”

Flynn couldn’t say why he remembered that when he saw Jonathan laying on the deck, dead by outward appearances. It was probably the same reason he remembered what his father told him about bleeding out, about tying a tourniquet on a wound. Maybe it was because his father hit him so hard when explaining it. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t because was the best hunter in the valley, the one who knew all there was to know about getting out of a scrape. No, it wasn’t that at all. Flynn had always been afraid of his father. And for better or worse, when someone you’re afraid of tells you to remember something, you remember it.

“It’ll make you look like a dandy gettin’ sweet when you do it, so don’t do it if he ain’t sure enough drowned!”

His father had laughed uproariously at his own joke, so much that Flynn felt compelled to pretend to laugh too. Inside he’d been terrified. Even then he knew both that he liked boys and that it was dangerous to like boys. He’d been so afraid of his father for so long. What if he finds out? What will I do? But that seemed so far away now, almost inconsequential. There was no war back then. Edward was alive. He’d never met Calvin. It seemed like another life.

But the danger was still real. When he was alone with Calvin he could forget all that and just be himself. They both could. But in the society and times they were in, the secret he and Calvin shared would always be dangerous. Now Cletus knew. The foxes probably did, too. We can’t be this careless in the future, Flynn thought. We have to be more careful. If the wrong person finds out about us, ever, we’re finished.

“Evening Flynn, Calvin. Mind if I sit with you?”

Emily didn’t wait for an answer as she sat in the dark next to Flynn. They were at the front of the boat; Calvin and Flynn had found that the narrow space between the boat’s fore-gunwale and Cletus’s personal cabin afforded them more privacy than anywhere else on the boat. They usually spent most of their nights here, whispering so no one could hear, holding hands in the shadows where no one could see. Sometimes they just sat in silence leaning against each other, being together while they slid slowly over the surface of the dark waters. It was on such a scene that Emily intruded.

“Hi Emily, sure. How’s Jonathan?” Calvin asked, sensing that Flynn wasn’t going to. He was still a little sore at Emily’s ‘miracle from God’ comment, but more than that he was upset that she hadn’t even thanked him.

“Good. He’s good. He’s sleeping now. Cletus was kind enough to let him sleep in his bunk tonight. It’s not so cramped so maybe it will help.”

“That’s great, I’m glad to hear that,” Calvin said.

A moment of awkward silence passed.

“Flynn, I wanted to thank you. I should have earlier but I was just… everything with Jonathan and… thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” Flynn said.

“No, Flynn, it’s not nothing. You saved my husband’s life. I’d be a widow tonight and for the rest of my life if it weren’t for you. I can’t… I can’t ever pay you back for that. Thank you, thank you, thank you a thousand times, from the bottom of my heart.”

“Well, you’re very welcome Emily,” Flynn said, feeling flattered. “I guess I just, when I saw him fall in I knew I had to do something. Swimming is one of the only things I’m really good at, the only thing really, so I knew I had to do something, had to try. I’m sure Jonathan would do the same for me if it was reversed.”

Emily flattened he ears back against her head and looked down, feeling ashamed. Jonathan wouldn’t have, she knew that. He would have let them drown because of who they are.

Another moment of silence passed, just the cool breeze on the river and the faint sounds of frogs on the shore.

“Flynn, Calvin… I... I have something I need to say.”

Flynn and Calvin turned their heads to her in unison. That is not the way a thought without consequences starts.

“Please just… hear me out and let me say it before you say anything. Can you do that?”

“Sure, Emily. What is it?” Calvin replied. He squeezed Flynn’s hand in the dark. Emily sighed heavily before continuing.

“There’s not an easy way to say it, so I’ll just say it. Jonathan was… pretty sure about...”

She paused again, gathering her courage. She didn’t know how this would go. She remembered her own words to her husband the night before about cornering a wounded animal. But today, after this deer had saved her husband’s life, it needed to be said.

“… about your relationship.”

Flynn froze in the same way he had on the battlefield, the way he swore he never would again. Calvin’s muscles tightened and his senses heightened the way they had before in the moment before he’d leaped from the supply wagon and pinned Sgt. Will Thayer to the ground.

“We’re going to be on this boat together for a while yet, and there’s no sense in any of us being suspicious or scared of each other. We’ve got our own cross to bear with Jonathan being a deserter. We have enough to worry about our own selves without getting into your worries and making them worse. I just wanted to clear the air. Whether it’s true or not, whether you’re that way or not, if you two are… it’s not our business. I don’t want it to be. We won’t ever say anything to anyone.”

Calvin felt his muscles relaxing. He squeezed Flynn’s hand, and Flynn squeezed back.

“I’m sorry if I’m mistaken I just…”

“No it’s fine, Emily. It really is. Thank you. I…  we understand. We appreciate it,” Calvin said. Using ‘we’ was a tacit admission without having to directly admit to anything. Emily understood.

“Okay. Good. Good! I’ll confess I was a bit nervous about saying my piece but… good.” Emily replied. She paused a moment before continuing. “Where’d you learn that anyway? How to save someone from drowning, pumping on their chest and breathing into their mouth. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“My father,” Flynn responded brusquely.

“He must be a great man,” Emily said.

“No. No, he’s really not. He’s terrible man, actually,” Flynn answered.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Emily said, piecing together Flynn’s story. “I’m sorry for whatever he did to you Flynn. You don’t deserve that. I don’t know if you’re a Believer or not, but I am. I believe if God sets an obstacle in your path, it’s for you to grow by overcoming it. If He puts a terrible person in your life it’s for a reason, even if you can’t see it. I believe that.”

With those words she stood again. She turned to walk away before pausing and turning back to the wolf and the deer.

“Flynn... thank you again. No matter what else is true or not, or what anyone believes, the fact is that if you weren’t on this boat my husband would be dead. I’ll never forget what you did today, not until the day I die. Thank you.”

Flynn and Calvin watched as she walked away, around the fore-cabin and out of sight. They heard the door the cabin where her husband was sleeping open, then close.

“That could have gone a lot worse,” Calvin said as they once again found themselves alone again. He sighed loudly as he rubbed his thumb on Flynn’s hand. “We’ve got to be more careful. It took what, two weeks before they figured us out? Not even that long. Jonathan’s been avoiding us since a few days after we left Pittsburgh. Have we been that obvious?”

“We did disappear into the woods all night last night. And every night in our bunks, with them a few feet away… yeah, I think we have,” Flynn said. “Everyone on the boat knows about us now.”

“Not everyone. Cletus doesn’t,” Calvin said.

“Yeah. He does.”

“What? He does? How do you know?”

“He saw us kissing. On the deck, right after I saved Jonathan. He was looking right at us,” Flynn said.

Calvin’s ears splayed back. He’d been the one who had grabbed Flynn and lifted him into the air and kissed him right there on the deck.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess I didn’t really think about that right then. Jeez, that was really stupid of me. I can’t believe I did that,” he said, lowering his head. “I’m sorry, Flynn.”

“Hey, look at me,” Flynn said as he turned to Calvin, wrapping his arm around Calvin and placing his hand on the far side of his temple. “I told you to stop apologizing, right? That moment, that kiss – that was real, you know? Showing that you care about me… don’t ever be sorry for that.”

Calvin lifted his head and smiled back at Flynn. He saw the deer’s icy blue eyes reflected in the moonlight gazing back at him.

“You’re so beautiful, Flynn.”

“Mm-hmm, think that line’s gonna work again, big boy?” Flynn answered with a mischievous grin.

“Was worth a shot,” Calvin answered, grinning so wide now that Flynn could feel it with his hand.

“Well I didn’t say it wouldn’t work… just wondering if you thought you were being original...”

“I’ll give you something original.”

“What does that even mean-nnnhhh...”

Flynn was suddenly being kissed by Calvin and he felt himself being coaxed onto his back. He offered no objections, wrapping his legs around the wolf. He’d already slid his hand down Calvin’s torso and was an instant away from feeling the growing bulge in his pants when he gathered the wherewithal to stop himself.

“Calvin… wait...”

Calvin leaned back as Flynn uncrossed his legs behind the wolf’s back.

“What’s wrong?” Calvin said, his face betraying confusion, unsure whether to be embarrassed, hurt, neither or something else.

“What did you just say, just a few minutes ago...”

“You’re… so beautiful?”

“No! Before that!” Flynn said, stifling back a laugh. Calvin was so cute when he was confused.

“Oh...” Calvin realized, “we’ve got to be more careful. Jeez Flynn I’m sorr--”

“Don’t! Don’t apologize.”

Calvin sighed and leaned up, resting his back against the wall of the fore cabin. Flynn did the same.

“It’d be so easy if we were like Jonathan and Emily, you know? If we were normal. They can go anywhere and be honest about who they are and not have to think twice about it. I hate hiding, I hate lying to people about who we are and what we are, pretending to be something we’re not. I hate pretending we’re not… the way we are.”

“Say it,” Flynn said bluntly.

“Huh? Say what?”

“Say the word. Say the word for ‘the way we are.’ The word.”

Calvin hesitated. He knew what word Flynn meant, but he’d never said it, not about himself. He’d only heard it said in church sermons with vitriol and disgust, said in school by other boys like they were conjuring a ghost. He knew who he was – there had never been any doubt he liked who he liked. But the word – the word – had always been a separate thing. He could pretend that the preacher was talking about someone else if he just didn’t say it.

“Calvin…” Flynn said, squeezing Calvin’s hand, “if you hate pretending... stop pretending.”

Calvin looked at the crescent moon floating in the starry sky above the Ohio River, its ethereal pale light reflecting in a thousand ripples on the water’s surface.

“Homosexual.”

Flynn let a moment pass and gazed at the same moon.

“Homosexual,” Flynn repeated.

He leaned on Calvin’s shoulder and let another quiet moment pass before continuing.

“I didn’t want to say it for a long time, either. I think I was maybe 16 or 17 before I was honest with myself about it. I looked in the mirror into my own eyes and I said it, and meant it. ‘I am a homosexual,’ I said. ‘Flynn Harrison is a homosexual.’ And there he was, staring back at me – the great sinner, the abomination, the homosexual. I don’t know if I was expecting the ground to open up and spew fire and brimstone and swallow me alive, devil come jumping out maybe and claim me right there. But nothing happened. Nothing changed. The house was quiet and it was the same reflection I’d always seen. It was just me.”

A dark cloud passed in front of the moon. The ripples on the water grew dark and the surface of the River became a featureless black void. Swiftly the cloud passed and once again the river shone beautifully, reflecting the light of the moon from a thousand dancing points. 

“I felt scared by the things the preacher said before I spoke to myself in the mirror, but after that I just felt alone. I thought I had to be the only homosexual in the world, which was even worse than feeling like I was a sinner. At least sinners go to hell together. But then I had this idea. The preacher and the Bible spend a whole lot of time talking about homosexuals, so they can’t be that uncommon, I think. And the stuff in the Bible happened thousands of years ago, so they must have been around way back then. So maybe that means they’ve always been around. And if they were always around, they must still be around, and they must always will be. So I’m not alone. I just have to find them, find a way to turn they into we.”

Calvin pulled Flynn closer to him. 

“You did. We did,” Calvin said as he kissed the top of Flynn’s head, brushing against the nub of an antler he’d shot off.

“I never had a moment like that,” Calvin continued after a moment. “I think before I met you I was still scared to admit it to myself. Deep down I knew what I was, but I thought I could ignore it, or deny it, or just keep it pushed away by force of will. I thought maybe I could just let it die like I let so many other parts of me die in that war. I was pretending, I know that now. You’re right.”

“What if...” Flynn started, “What if we all stopped pretending? All us homosexuals, all at once? What do you think would happen?”

“Well… I don’t know,” Calvin said. “Maybe a lot of folks would go to jail, get killed even, but... I guess there’s no way of knowing how many there are until something like that happens. It might be that there are a lot more than anyone thinks but they’re all keeping it a secret. Pretending, like me. Or maybe there really aren’t many at all and it will never happen. I don’t know.”

“I bet there’s a lot more of us than a lot many would suppose. And I bet if we all came right out straight-forward and said it all at once, screamed it from the hills, they couldn’t stop us. I think it’ll happen one day. Someday,” Flynn said.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Calvin said hesitantly. “The way things are now… I don’t see how. Everything is stacked against us; society, religion, the law, just... everything. I don’t see how anything will ever change.”

“You have to have hope though, right? If you had to guess, just pick a time, how long do you think it will be before someone can live as a homosexual without pretending? Before society accepts it?” Flynn asked.

“Honestly?” Calvin started as he turned his eyes up to the moon. “Honestly… I think real-life space sailors will float across the Ocean of Storms up there, walk on the Sea of Tranquility before that happens. I really do. Everything would have to be totally different. Society, people, just… everything. We don’t live in that world. We never will.”

They both gazed at the eternal, unchanging moon for a moment before he continued.

“A hundred years? Two hundred years? A thousand? I don’t know. We’re all victims of the times we live in, in a way. Maybe if I was born in the year 1942 or 2042 or 3042 instead of 1842 I’d see that day. Maybe our lives would be different. Or maybe we’d just trade this terrible war for another one, this pretending for a different kind. I don’t know. It’s impossible to know. I think if America ever does accept homosexuals, that day is so far away that we’ll never see it. Folks who haven’t been born yet might see it, but we’re stuck here, like we’re all on the same river moving the same speed, but it’s our fate to find ourselves miles and miles behind them, never to catch up. That’s just our lot, I guess, our luck. Our place on the river. You and me Flynn, the both of us… we’ll be dead and gone and buried for ages before that day ever comes.”

Flynn sighed heavily. He hated to think about it, but Calvin was probably right. In their world, while they floated down the Ohio River, the country was tearing itself apart over whether slavery was acceptable. Interspecies relationships were still deeply taboo in most places. They’d be long dead before homosexuality was accepted, that was almost certain. They would always have to pretend.

“But we’ll never know until we stop pretending first to ourselves,” Calvin added, reassuringly, trying to make the conversation positive again. “So can now be my own moment in the mirror?”

“If you want it to be! We’re missing the mirror, but that’s fine. I can personally vouch for you,” Flynn said playfully. Calvin laughed and kissed the top of his head again.

“No we’re not, we have a mirror,” Calvin said as he leaned forward towards the knee-high gunwale on the bow of the flatboat. He peered over the edge into the black water of the Ohio River and saw his face reflected in the moonlight. Flynn leaned forward with him and looked into the water as well, but at Calvin’s reflection instead of his own. He looked into the water at the familiar chevron fur pattern Calvin’s his snout, the face he’d grown to love.

“I am Calvin Riley,” Calvin whispered at his reflection. He took a deep breath. “I am a homosexual. Calvin Riley is a homosexual.”

He stared at his familiar reflection in silence for a few moments. The water didn’t swallow him. The devil didn’t pull him down. Nothing changed. 

His face in the water distorted slightly as a ripple passed across the reflection. He turned to Flynn, who had failed at holding back his emotions, a single tear falling into the Ohio River and becoming a part of it.

“I love you, Calvin Riley, I love you,” he said with a quivering voice, burying himself in the gray wolf’s chest and arms.

“I love you, Flynn Harrison,” Calvin replied in a whisper, searching for more profound words but failing, holding the blue deer tightly in his arms.

Flynn and Calvin couldn’t say if they stayed there in each others’ arms for minutes or for hours. It didn’t seem to matter. They were contented to just exist in this space, in this moment, drifting through the night on the Ohio River. Contented to just be, two souls drifting together down the river as one.

- -

Flynn let Calvin carry him back to the cabin. He didn’t want to risk the noise from his hooves as he hobbled across the deck waking up the foxes asleep in Cletus’s cabin, or waking Cletus himself, who appeared to be sleeping in his pilot’s chair atop the aft cabin. This was the first night since they’d been on the boat that they’d had any real privacy, and it might be the last for a long time. Flynn didn’t plan to let it go to waste.

They were kissing as soon as they entered the cabin. Removing their clothes was a struggle, a goal that required more determination than the immediate desires their groping hands and dancing lips were seeking. Calvin had to stoop to enter the cabin and Flynn’s antler scraped the low ceiling. By the time they pulled each other to the floor and rolled into their bunk their desire for each other was almost animalistic.

Calvin began thrusting before he had even removed his pants. Flynn, with the wolf’s heavy body surging on top of his, wrapped his legs around Calvin as he untied them, his hooves scraping on the low ceiling of the bunk. He felt the heat from Calvin’s loins through the fabric.

Flynn exhaled sharply and moaned as the wolf’s cock emerged from his pants. He wrapped his hand around it and Calvin began thrusting harder into the deer’s familiar grip. With his other hand Flynn worked to remove his own pants. Calvin thwarted his attempt when Flynn unclasped his hooves from behind the wolf’s back; Calvin felt up Flynn’s leg toward his hoof, then brought it to his mouth. He wiggled a finger between the prongs of Flynn’s cloven hoof. His tongue soon followed, licking the space between the prongs. Flynn wasn’t surprised – he’d done this before, and had told Flynn he had always thought hooves were incredibly alluring for reasons he couldn’t explain. It was a little surprising the first time he’d done it, but by now Flynn actually got enjoyment out of it – not for its own sake, but solely because he knew it made Calvin happy. That was reason enough.

Flynn’s long, tapered cock rubbed against Calvin’s thick canine manhood as he finally removed his pants. He wrapped one hand around them both as he slid the other over Calvin’s firm, muscular ass, hooking his thumb under the waist.

“Here, I got it,” Calvin said, pulling away briefly to pull off his own pants himself. He lifted one knee up, then the other, and they were both fully naked. He leaned back down onto Flynn, who once again began stroking their cocks together.

Now is the time, Flynn thought. With the foxes in the other cabin, this is the chance. What almost happened in the woods last night, what would have happened if Calvin hadn’t finished… I can’t let him finish yet. I want it now. 

“I want you so bad,” Flynn whispered to the wolf thrusting above him.

“You have me,” Calvin whispered back, not understanding what Flynn meant.

Flynn let go of Calvin’s cock and put both hands behind Calvin’s head, ruffling his canine ears with his thumbs.

“No. Calvin, I want you. Now,” Flynn said. Calvin had stopped thrusting and was looking into Flynn’s eyes. Did he mean…?

“Fuck me,” Flynn whispered. “Fuck me, Calvin...”

Flynn maintained eye contact as he turned his body, twisting and sliding against Calvin in the low, cramped bunk. He turned away as he lowered himself onto his stomach before looking back over his shoulder.

“Fuck me,” he whispered again as he lifted his tail and pressed his ass back against the wolf.

Calvin had no words. He watched as if apart from himself as his hands slid up Flynn’s thighs and grabbed his ass, spreading apart the deer’s cheeks to reveal the hole at the base of his twitching tail. He stretched Flynn’s ass cheek with one thumb as he slid his other hand down, cupping Flynn’s balls before roaming forward to his sheath. Flynn was fully erect, his long, comparatively narrow cervine cock throbbing in anticipation, dripping precum onto the rough straw mattress.

Flynn moaned as Calvin sank a finger into his tailhole. Calvin’s other hand went from Flynn’s cock to his own. This was the moment he’d been dreaming of since he knew what sex was. He pulled his finger out and pushed his hips slightly forward, rubbing the canine tip of his cock against Flynn’s tailhole, smearing precum messily. He aligned his tip and pressed forward into Flynn.

“Ahh!” Flynn winced.

Calvin pulled back immediately.

“Are you okay? I’m sorry Flynn,” Calvin said, fearful that he had hurt him. Had he done something wrong? He had no experience with this. Neither of them did.

“No I’m fine it’s… just bigger than I thought. And rougher? Go slow...” he said, leaning back again.

Calvin put his hands on Flynn’s cheeks again, pausing for just a moment.

“Wait,” he said. “I think I know something that will help...”

Flynn looked back over his shoulder as Calvin leaned to his side. He began rummaging through the burlap sack of food and supplies he’d picked up in Pittsburgh, the one they’d been using as a kind of extra wall for privacy in their bunk. After several seconds he pulled out a small bottle.

“Olive oil. Guy at the mercantile threw it in since I bought so much – said it was for good luck, a safe passage… maybe he was right.”

Calvin poured a small amount into his hand, coating the length of his canine cock. He poured another dab into his hand, rubbing it on Flynn’s tailhole. Flynn pressed back as Calvin pushed his finger inside. He then repositioned himself behind the deer, gripping Flynn’s ass cheek with one hand and again guiding the tip of his cock to Flynn’s hole with the other.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes...” Flynn exhaled.

Slowly, deliberately, Calvin pulled Flynn back onto his erection. He felt Flynn’s warmth as his tip penetrated the deer’s tailhole, felt his tightness as he pushed further. Gently Calvin slid into him, inch by inch, until he’d pushed as far as the base of his unswollen knot.

“You okay?” Calvin asked, still worried that he was hurting Flynn.

“Y-yes...” Flynn answered haltingly. “God yes… fuck me, Calvin...”

Calvin began rolling his hips gently, wrapping his hands around Flynn’s waist. In the cramped interior of the bunk he’d had his back on the ceiling, neck crooked down, but as he began rocking into Flynn faster and more deeply he lowered himself onto Flynn’s back. His weight, more than a hundred pounds more than Flynn, pressed the deer down into the mattress.

“You feel so good… oh god...” Flynn heard Calvin whisper in his ear, feeling the heat of his breath. Calvin was laying fully on top of him now, covering every part of his body as he pumped his cock in and out of Flynn’s tailhole.

“Nnnnhh...” Flynn moaned into Calvin’s mouth as he turned his head and kissed him. Calvin wrapped his arms underneath Flynn’s, holding his body tightly against his own. Solid muscle, Flynn thought, and somehow he’s even stronger than he looks, impossibly strong. I couldn’t move an inch if he didn’t want me to.

“So good… god Flynn...” Calvin breathed as they broke their kiss. He was surging into Flynn faster now, more forcefully. Flynn was pressing back into Calvin in time with his thrusts. The feeling of the wolf’s cock filling him, working in and out of him, was unlike anything he’d ever felt. He’d practiced some with his fingers before, but this fullness was a wholly new experience for him.

“Nnh… give it to me, Calvin. Make me yours...”

Flynn’s antler was knocking loudly against the wooden wall of the bunk in time with Calvin’s thrusts, each one rocking Flynn’s entire body. He unclasped one arm from around the deer and used it to hold Flynn’s antler to stop it from hitting the wall, fearing the noise might wake Cletus or the foxes, even in the other cabin. As he did, one of Flynn’s arms was freed. Flynn slid his hand down to his own erection and began stroking, lifting his ass slightly up and back into Calvin. 

“Flynn… I’m gonna…” Calvin said as his thrusts became more ragged and disjointed. His breathing had long since become panting.

“In me… cum inside me...” Flynn pleaded in an exasperated whisper, wanting everything Calvin had, every part of him, every inch of him.

“Ahhh!” Calvin moaned as he came deep inside Flynn. Hearing Flynn say those had words sent him over the edge.

He thrust deeply into Flynn as he did, but an instant later he remembered to pull his cock halfway out of the deer’s tailhole; Flynn wasn’t ready to take his knot yet, that much was clear when they started. He didn’t want to hurt him.

Calvin’s knot swelled just outside of Flynn as his shaft pulsed deep inside him. He pushed forward into Flynn again when the knot had grown too large to slip in. As he did, Flynn reached his own climax.

“Calv… fuuuck…” Flynn moaned as a thick jet of cum shot from his tapered tip. He felt Calvin continuing to pulse into him as his second, then third powerful stream of cum sprayed into the straw mattress below him. As the fourth and final, weaker ejaculation ended, he collapsed down into his own puddle. Calvin fell heavily on top of him.

For several moments they lay there panting, sticky and wet as Calvin’s canine cock continued to pulse cum deep into Flynn. Flynn, eyes half-closed, tongue half out of his mouth, turned to look over his shoulder at Calvin, whose snout was still inches from his.

“Are you okay? How was--”

Flynn didn’t let him finish. His impassioned kiss was answer enough.

- -

Calvin woke before the sun rose the next morning. Last night had been the most amazing of his life, without question.

It was the first morning he could remember in ages that he’d woken up smiling. Not just glad that the badger didn’t haunt his dreams – smiling. Whatever else this was between him and Flynn, it was without doubt the cure for this Nostalgia, the dark cloud of melancholia that had been growing inside him for two years that surely would have burst by now if he not met this blue deer.

The day they’d met he’d been on the very edge, peering down. Whether it would have happened by luck, a reckless action inviting the outcome, or even directly by his own hand, he couldn’t say. But it would have happened. He would never have survived this war. It’s doubtful he would have lived another month. As surely as he’d saved the fox from drowning, Flynn had saved Calvin from himself.

Calvin tried his best not to wake Flynn as he slipped quietly out of the bunk. There was still something that was troubling him, a cloud that hadn’t yet been dispelled. Jonathan and Emily knew about them now for certain, but after yesterday he was sure the foxes wouldn’t hurt them. Cletus, however… Cletus was an unknown, and it was just as certain he knew about them now, too. Calvin decided he had to talk to him directly, come what may, and that the best time to do it was while everyone else was still asleep.

Calvin froze when Flynn stretched his legs and made a muffled mumble, but after a few seconds it was clear he was still asleep. Flynn was a very heavy sleeper, as Calvin had learned.

Quietly, Calvin put on his clothes, clasped his US belt buckle and tiptoed to the cabin’s small, low door. It creaked as he opened it and he froze again, but again Flynn didn’t stir. As he stepped lightly onto the deck and carefully closed the door behind him, he looked out over the waters of the Ohio River. The first dull, diffused light of morning was creeping over the landscape. Gray mist hung delicately on the surface of the water. The world was stillness.

“Morning. You’re up early,” Cletus said without turning around. He was sitting in the pilot’s chair atop the cabin exactly as he had been the night before, staring out into the clearing fog behind the boat.

“Morning, Cletus. Got a moment?” Calvin asked.

“Plenty of time, sure, got nothing but time on my hands,” the heron replied. Calvin climbed up on the roof of the aft cabin and sat next to Cletus. For a moment he said nothing. He’d planned on using the same strategy Emily had used yesterday to start her conversation, just out and say it, but he couldn’t bring himself to be that blunt.

“So how many times you been down this river, Cletus?”

“Never been down this river. First time,” Cletus answered with a wry grin. Calvin wasn’t as amused, frowning at the remark. He’d said many times he’d made countless flatboat trips from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.

“Why’re you lying, Cletus...” Calvin answered, less to accuse the heron than to express disappointment at him.

“I always tell the truth, Calvin. I’ve flatboated down the Ohio and the Mississippi dozens of times, that’s true. But this river, the one we’re on right now… no, I’ve never been down this river. Last time I floated the Ohio it wasn’t the same river. That water’s ocean now, or snow on some white mountain-top, or blood coursing through veins. ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice,’ a man wiser than myself once said. ‘It’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man. Everything flows,’” the heron Cletus said.

They sat in silence for a moment as the morning slowly drove away the night.

“I know you have something you want to say to me, Calvin. But I’ll tell you the same as I told you in Pittsburgh: the high price you paid me wasn’t for passage. That toll was for me not to see things. Not to say things. I intend to honor my word. We can leave it there if you like.”

Calvin spent another moment in silence, carefully choosing his next words, deciding whether it would be best to leave it there. He needed more assurance, though. He decided to speak directly, like Emily had to him.

“You did see something though, didn’t you? You saw me and Flynn… after he saved Jonathan,” Calvin finally said.

Cletus sighed and shook his head, long beak exaggerating the movement. He’d hoped his words had told Calvin everything he’d need to know, but the wolf seemed intent on discussing it. Well, we can do that too, he thought.

“I did,” the heron answered truthfully.

“So you know… about us.”

“I suppose I do.”

“Cletus, if you ever--”

“Listen,” Cletus interrupted. “I knew you had secrets when you got on the boat because you paid me what I asked. Maybe I was wrong about what those secrets were? Sure, fine. But it’s all the same to me because I took your fare and promised safe passage. Know this and understand it: I ain’t a saint, I never said I was, but I ain’t evil, neither. And there ain’t nothing more evil than a captain who takes a passenger’s fare and then knowingly, willfully delivers them to harm. Doesn’t matter who the passengers are, they’re the captain’s charge while they’re on his vessel. A captain who betrays his passengers, delivers them to harm, would sell them for thirty pieces of silver – that’s Judas Iscariot himself, and there ain’t nothing more evil in this world. I’m not that captain. I pray you never meet him.”

Cletus paused as if waiting for Calvin to speak, but Calvin remained silent.

“I’m telling you all this so you know my word means something. You’re looking for assurances, I understand that. I can appreciate that. But I can’t give you nothing but my word. You’ll either have to take or leave.”

Still Calvin didn’t speak, thinking over what he should say, what he should do. The heron was right – there was nothing he could give other than his word. In the end it was up to Calvin whether he believed him or not.

“Okay Cletus,” Calvin finally said. “I’ll take it.”

Down below them on the deck the doors to both cabin’s opened almost simultaneously. Flynn walked out of one, rubbing his eyes and stretching. Out of the other walked Jonathan, Emily behind him.

“Flynn!” Jonathan yelled excitedly, quickly taking the few steps between him and Flynn. He grabbed and hugged Flynn tightly, squeezing so hard that he lifted him into the air.

“Good… morning… Jonathan… oww...” Flynn managed to squeak out.

“Flynn! My god, you saved my life yesterday! How can I ever repay you!” Jonathan happily exclaimed, squeezing Flynn even tighter. 

“Start by… letting me… go… please...”

Jonathan set Flynn down again and they both started laughing like old friends.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The light turns silver, 
draining the hours from the day.
The weight of the water
pulls at the branches along the banks.
And it tears at the fallen,
and it carries the broken on its way.
I’ve seen the water rolling,
I’ve seen the colors fade away.

~ Down Like Silver – To The River

August 14, 1863
Ohio River, Cairo, Illinois

“‘His limbs are as strong pieces of brass, his bones are like bars of iron. Behold, he drinketh up the river and hasteth not – he trusteth that he can draw up the River Jordan into his mouth,’” Emily said quietly, almost to herself, as the flatboat rounded the last bend in the river before the town of Cairo, Illinois came into view.

“‘He taketh it with his eyes, his nose pierceth through snares,’” Cletus replied, looking at the same iron monsters moored in the river. Everyone on the boat was transfixed by the sight of them, only Cletus had ever seen anything like it. “We’ll steer clear of those ‘behemoths,’ that’s a snare I’d like to avoid.”

The ironclads at anchor in the river, a detachment of the famed Mississippi River Squadron, were yet another new and terrible invention of this war. With these machines the United States had cleared and secured the entirety of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Their armor was impervious to any weapon the Confederates could attack with, and they’d almost effortlessly destroyed the wooden Confederate warships they’d encountered. Together with the blue-water naval blockade, the Union had secured a maritime perimeter around the CSA, isolating it and choking it off from the rest of the world.

Cletus was maneuvering the flatboat to the far side of the river, away from Cairo. They’d wait there until night fell before traversing across the river to the town to drop off Flynn and Calvin.

After Flynn had saved Jonathan from drowning and their secrets were laid bare, the mood on the flatboat changed. Jonathan’s entire perception of and attitude towards Flynn and Calvin seemed to flip entirely. He and Emily had come to accept Flynn and Calvin for who they were and what they were.

During the seemingly endless tracts of idle time they’d spent on the flatboat the four passengers had talked about almost every topic imaginable, and the more they talked the more they all realized they had more in common than they ever had different. Even when it was revealed that Calvin had actually been a Union deserter instead of a Confederate it didn’t seem to matter. Family, friends, hopes, dreams, fears, doubts – they were all the same.

They’d even worked out a system so that each couple could spend quality time together without bothering the other. Every night the foxes would go to sleep a few hours before Calvin and Flynn, and every morning they’d leave the bunk a few hours earlier. It was a system that worked out well for Calvin and Flynn; they could continue their evening talks at the front of the boat while looking out over the river. Even better, every morning was a delight, a beautiful start to each day. Flynn could even sleep in as late as he wanted on Sundays.

Flynn had made progress in teaching all three of the others how to swim during the stops they made for Cletus to sleep. Jonathan and Emily made faster progress than Calvin, who still seemed to have a deep-seated phobia of the water. While the foxes had become confident enough to paddle, Calvin still wasn’t able to truly overcome his fear.

Calvin had joked with Flynn that all he had to do was save a few million more people from drowning for the country to accept homosexuals the way Jonathan and Emily now seemed to. Flynn laughed, but he knew there was truth in the joke; if Jonathan hadn’t almost drowned, if a homosexual hadn’t literally saved him from death, would he feel any different towards Calvin and Flynn? Likely not. The fact that it took something of that magnitude to make Jonathan realize that maybe Calvin and Flynn aren’t evil spoke for itself.

He tried not to think about it. It was better just to be happy and grateful that the other passengers on the flatboat weren’t hostile towards them, because once they were back on dry land there were no guarantees. Their entire lives now were wrapped up in dangerous secrets, intertwined and stacked up on top of each other. Like Calvin had said, they had to be more careful.

Flynn was nervous because he knew the carefree time of truth and honesty with their unlikely friends was almost over. It was strange for him to think about, knowing now what Jonathan and Emily believed about homosexuals when they’d first met, but over the course of the slow weeks on the flatboat they had all truly come to regard each other as friends. By this point Jonathan even reminded Flynn, ever so slightly, of Edward. But it couldn’t last. Nothing ever does.

Flynn and Calvin had decided, painfully, that the best thing for them to do was to say goodbye to Jonathan, Emily and Cletus in Cairo, the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the great crossroads of the major waterways of the nation. Cletus and the foxes would continue south towards New Orleans to meet and hopefully stay with family that Emily had in the port city until the war was over, but Flynn and Calvin would find passage on a steamboat north to St. Louis. That city, they’d both heard throughout their lives, was the gateway to the great American West. That was their destination: west, out and away from anyone who might be looking for deserters. It was their best hope.

“You know anything about steamboats up to St. Louis? Which ones are the fastest, which ones take passengers who just walk on without a reservation?” Flynn asked Cletus as all five sat on the deck of the flatboat in the hot afternoon sun. They’d wait where they were on the other side of the river for the rest of the day and through the night, crossing early the next morning to drop off Calvin and Flynn.

“I know there’s a few that ply between N’Orleans and St. Louis, up and down and back again. They always stop in Cairo, it being halfway between. You’ll know it if you see one. Big as they come,” the heron answered.

Just minutes later, as if on cue, around the river bend south of the city an enormous steamboat came into view. It blew its horn almost boastfully, announcing its arrival. It moved swiftly up the current and in less than half an hour it was moored at the Cairo docks. That’s the one, Flynn thought. Tomorrow we’ll book passage and we’ll be on our way up the river to St. Louis. If everything goes smoothly we might even be on a wagon train heading west within a week’s time. We’re almost free.

Flynn squinted his eyes to look across the mile-wide river and see the name of the huge steamboat, tall letters emblazoned proudly on its side above its forty-foot tall paddle wheel. He could just make it out.

Sultana.