The characters in this story, William and Henry, are peripheral characters in the story Appearances. This is the tale of the traumatic event that caused them to realize how they truly felt about one another.

"Whose idea was this, anyhow?" I said.

I did not receive, nor was I expecting, an answer. It was a rhetorical question that had become the slogan for our trip. I didn't remember which of the two of us had asked the question first, but one or the other of us had said it as we hitchhiked through the heat of the high desert country of Utah, as we gazed in awe at the majesty of the Grand Canyon, and at every high and low before and since.

Currently, we were standing under a huge oak tree on US Highway 301 in a small South Carolina town, vainly seeking nonexistent shelter from a sudden downpour. We were, I mused, a long way from Boston, ‘home of beans and scrod, where the Cabots speak only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak only to God.'

Look at us, I thought, Henry Cabot Lane and William Lodge Lane. First cousins, sons of twin brothers, who had married respectively, female descendants of the celebrated Cabot and Lodge families of Boston's Brahmin society. In truth, the Lane family was older and wealthier than either of the other two families, but had managed to stay out of the New England limelight for three hundred years, and was less well known.

The Lane brothers and their society brides had been given a lavish double wedding in Boston's historic Trinity Church. Their brides were evidently on identical fertility cycles, because Henry and I had both been born on the same day, exactly ten months after our parents' weddings. We had grown up together, gone to school together, roomed together, and graduated from Harvard Law School together. In a word, we had been virtually inseparable for all of our twenty-five years.

"It's at times like this," I said, "that I wish we had taken our parents up on their offer to send us on a Grand Tour of Europe after Law School."

"I know," Henry replied, "but we wanted to do something different, didn't we?"

"Backpacking around the country is about as different as you can get, is it not?"

"True enough, but it's been nearly six weeks, and we're getting into the hottest part of the summer. I, for one, am more than ready to be back in Boston, studying for the Bar Exam in an air-conditioned room."

"In other words, you are saying that you're ready to cut the trip short?"

"No, cousin, not in other words. Those are the words. As soon as we get to Charlotte, I'm ready to head for the airport. How about you?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?" Henry asked.

"Yes, I'm ready to fly home. For that matter, why wait until we get to Charlotte, there are closer airports."

"True, but I doubt if either Greenville or Columbia would offer direct flights to Boston."

"Okay, then Charlotte, here we come. Just as soon as it stops raining. The first thing I'm going to do at the airport is shave. This is the first time I have ever allowed my beard to grow for six weeks."

"They might have a Barbershop there. Some airports do, and we are both looking pretty shaggy."

While we were having this conversation, I had noticed a Police Cruiser drive by, and out of the corner of my eye, I had also noted that it had done a slow U-turn and was pulling up in front of us. The letters on its door said ‘Police Department, Manning, South Carolina,' in large black letters. The driver motioned us over to the car and we walked up to the passenger window, which slid down as we approached.

The uniformed officer behind the wheel said "would you boys like a lift to someplace dry?"

"Much obliged," I said, and Henry and I got into the back of the cruiser.

When we were settled in the seat with the door and window closed, the officer asked "where y'all from?"

"Up North," I said. "We graduated in June and have been backpacking around the country before we start looking for work in the Fall."

Henry spoke up "you mentioned someplace dry. Where would that be?"

"Police station. There's nobody in jail right now and we've got lots of empty holding cells and an interview room. Plenty of space for you to dry off, change clothes, and wait for the rain to stop."

"Thanks officer," I said. "I didn't catch your name."

"Captain Starling," he said.

"I'm William and this is my cousin Henry," I said.

After a few minutes, the Cruiser pulled into an alley between a two-story brick building whose sign said ‘Police Department' and an Episcopal Church whose design was clearly late Victorian. The Captain drove around behind the Police building and pulled under a freestanding awning large enough to shelter a half dozen cars. Currently there were no other vehicles in sight.

He unlocked the back door and led us down a short hallway, past several doors. He opened one of them, saying "this is an interview room. You can dry off and change in there. Do you need towels?"

"No thanks," I said, "we have dry towels in our backpacks."

"Okay," he said. "I'll be just down the hall." He closed the door and left.

We stripped off our soaked clothing, retrieved our towels from the backpacks, and began to dry ourselves. I had just finished drying my hair and was about to dig in my pack for clean clothes, when the door opened. I turned toward it at the sound just in time to see Captain Starling and two other uniformed officers entering the room.

One of them was young, in his twenties I guessed, and the other was middle aged and getting a little heavy. The older one said "sheeit, Frank, you wasn't kidding. Looks like you reeled in a couple of good ones."

"I know, J. W.," Captain Starling said. He pointed at Henry "look at the ass on that one. It's just made for fucking."

I started to protest, but before I could get two words out, Captain Starling backhanded me across the mouth. "Shut up, boy," he said. "You will speak only when spoken to, got it?"

I nodded my head.

Starling said, "J. W., do you want this ass first?"

"Naw, Frank, you go ahead. I'd rather have a blow job. I haven't had a good blow job in a long time. That bitch I'm married to won't even touch my dick, let alone suck it. I expect one of these boys will oblige me before we're through with them."

Starling spun Henry around and shoved him roughly face down on the table in the center of the room. He then unbuckled his belt and slid his trousers and underwear to the floor. I could see that he was already hard with excitement.

"You'd better use a rubber, Frank," J. W. said. "No telling what kind of diseases these boys have. Bobby, you go around to the other side of the table and hold him down."

"I don't know, J. W.," said the Officer he called Bobby. "I don't feel good about this."

"I don't give a sheeit how you feel," said J. W. "Just do as I tell you."

Bobby complied and walked around to the other side of the table and placed his hands firmly on Henry's shoulders.

Starling bent down and retrieved a condom from his pants pocket. He opened it and rolled it down the length of his erection. Turning to Henry, who was still bent over the table with his ass fully exposed, he spread Henry's cheeks and pushed steadily into Henry until he hit bottom. Henry let out a single yelp of pain, and then was quiet.

"Hot damn, he's tight," Starling said. "I've never had my dick in anything this tight." He began to thrust roughly in and out of Henry.

I couldn't bear to watch. On the other hand, I couldn't bear not watching, either. This barbarian was hurting Henry, whom I had known and loved all of my life. With that thought, I had a moment of absolute clarity. I did love Henry, and not just in the brotherly sense of the word. I suddenly realized that I had always loved him, and I hoped that I would live through this experience so that I could tell him so.

Starling let out a grunt and pulled out of Henry. He said "J. W., you really ought to try this. It is so tight." He pulled the condom off his now shrinking penis, walked over to the exposed toilet in the corner of the room, and flushed it.

"Maybe I will," said J. W.

"Don't hurt him any more," I said. "You said you wanted a blow job. I give good blow jobs. In fact, they used to call me Hoover in school because I had such good suction."

"All right, now you're talking boy," J. W. Said. "Get down on your knees and show me what you can do."

"Yes sir," I said, and I dropped to my knees.

He walked up to me, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his trousers and shorts. I reached out and began to fondle his penis and balls, and he began to become tumescent.

Okay, I thought, you can do this, and I took his hardening penis into my mouth and bobbed up and down on it a few times, fighting down the almost instant nausea that I felt from the smell of him alone. I locked my knuckles together into a vice grip around his balls and began to squeeze them as hard as I could. At the same time, I bit savagely down on his erection and began to saw my teeth back and forth.

He began to scream "Get him off of me, get him off of me."

I squeezed my hands together harder and continued to bite and chew. My mouth filled with his blood. Something hit me on the head and the world went dark.