Who if I shouted among the hierarchy of angels
would hear me? And supposing one of them
Took me suddenly to his heart, I would perish
before his stronger existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
And so I restrain myself and swallow the luring call
of dark sobbing.
Rilke, from Duino Elegies, translated by C.F. MacIntyre
1
The dirt road between Muffing's Garage and The Sweet One Bar is, by the end of August, pitted and rutted and hellish. Scrubby bushes overgrow its margins; twistings and turnings define its path; it slopes down or winds up -- depending on which way you're traveling. Blazer Mountain road is a barren stretch and there is little traffic on it. The poor farms which look onto it are few and far between.
In the fading sunlight, Clifford Granger led his team of horses along this road on an uphill stretch, pulling a wagonload of newly felled logs.
After he'd finished unhitching the horses and tending to them in the stable, he sat down in his work clothes to supper.
His mother still wasn't speaking to him, but it didn't bother him. He knew she suffered more when she was angry at him because of her anger than he ever did. He'd been indifferent to her anger, in fact, and to her love, too, since Kate had died from the shaking that no one ever mentioned and his father had disappeared. He didn't mention it himself, either; had almost forgotten it, but it had played its role in shaping him, even if he could not have told you so himself. But then, he wasn't likely to tell you anything.
For an ornery boy he was damn good looking, and it could make you wonder what Mother Nature was about when she made him, what kind of tricks she got pleasure out of playing on mankind.
Elizabeth wasn't as tough as her son. She'd gotten old. Age, loss, and a long acquaintance with poverty had taken a toll on her spirit, and she always broke down first.
Wind's changing and there'll be a chill in the air before you know it. We hardly get summer.
Nothin' to complain about. I can use some cooler weather if I'm going to be logging the Huss property.
There was silence again, but she felt better for his having addressed a few words to her. And he didn't mind because he understood that the victory was his if she spoke first.
He liked victory. It was reassuring. It made long days working by himself in the woods bearable. It was a victory when he felled a great old tree and cross cut it into sections with his chain saw and chopped it into wedges with the axe, and stacked it by the cord and watched it burn to ash bitter winters in the Franklin.
It was a victory when he took a girl despite her first reluctance, and it was even more a victory when he left a girl who showed an inclination for him to take her. He could see the desperation in her eyes. And sometimes he compounded his victory by seeming to come around, by flirting. He liked how he could get a girl to be obedient, to say yes, and know she was there to serve him, to be quiet when he spoke and to subdue her own inclinations and follow his, and then nevertheless after he'd leave her high and dry and wanting him, she was still unable to do anything but blush the next time she saw him and suffer the humiliation all over again. At worst she'd say, Granger you're a conman. I know it, and I don't know why I always fall for the con. But I do.
And he'd stare deep into her eyes and say, I know why you do, honey. It comes with being a female. Ain't nothing else you can do when a man like me's around.
Most of his girls hated when he said that but they also hated themselves because as unfair as it was, they believed it was true. It felt true while he was looking at them. Even if it oughtn't be. Even if they knew enough to deny it.
And it was a victory when Harry came back to the farm from the war in one piece and Granger told his brother that he was going away and leaving him alone there to take care of their mother and Harry was powerless to object.
You've seen the world. Now it's my turn, Granger said.
I sure as hell hope the world I've seen ain't the whole world, Harry said, but didn't argue with his brother or try to get him to stay. Nineteen years of being his brother had subdued Harry's ambitions to Granger's will. His one act of defiance, joining the Marines had shattered him for ever. The isolation of the farm was a haven from the turmoil that had become a storm in his very depth.
Everyone noticed he was quieter and that every one of his gestures was slower than what they'd been before he went away.
2
Finding a place in New York wasn't easy. Getting an apartment by himself was prohibitively expensive, and while Granger searched for a share, he took a room in the Y across the street from the Chelsea Hotel. Pretty quickly, just from hanging around and walking back and forth between Twenty-third Street and the Village, he learned what life could be like in Manhattan for a handsome, well-built guy with a rural freshness and enough spunk for three.
He got a lot of backward, over the shoulder glances from guys he passed on the street, and he stopped in bars with them or went back to their places, always figuring he might find a place to live that way. Pretty quickly, too, he saw that not only his looks but his personality, his flirtatious contempt, were worth money, that he could earn a good living in the city doing for guys what he had done for only his own amusement to the girls on Blazer Mountain.
He knew how to make guys want him, to tease, and to withhold himself until when he said, with an innocence that was breathtaking, That'll cost you another c-note, stud, the guy he was charming was so much under his control and so driven by pent-up desire that he gratefully would consent without even being able to think about what he was doing.
3
The hot needles of water in the shower, and then the flood of cold, beat against Granger's body, first his back, then his chest, opening the flow of life in him after a loggish sleep. His body had been sore and his spirit tired in ways he never had felt even after a hard week's logging in the woods with his team of horses.
On the farm, he knew what he was doing. In the city, something strange was happening. He had begun to follow prompts which suddenly arose as if from nowhere, but impelled him with an irresistible driving force. He became aroused as he never had. And arousal was knowledge. The desire to exercise power over men gripped him, aroused him sexually with a force that toying with women never had. And he never failed.
His last client yesterday afternoon had become one of his regulars, a very wealthy numbers cruncher, some kind of high class accountant named Mathew, Mathew Parker, Geoff Martin's friend, but Granger did not know Martin, yet, or even that he existed, and Martin did not know that Mathew had a thing for male hustlers, yet. Granger met Matt Parker in a gay bar in Soho one night. They spoke, but Parker had to leave. He was meeting his wife to go to the opera. Granger gave him his card and told him to call his cell if he was interested. Mathew did the next afternoon from his office, and they began to meet regularly in a room in a fine, old hotel near Grand Central. Actually, Granger liked him. But that was beside the point.
You're not going home tonight, Granger said quietly after they were both inside the room with a bottle of champagne. He turned the key in the lock and stuck it in his pocket.
Intuitively he sensed what to do, as much from an inner prompting as from his sense of his client. His intuition was guided by something like contempt, contempt he always felt for anyone who was attracted by him, and from a desire to torture which that attraction always excited in him. With Mathew it was special. The way he made great trees fall, he wanted to see this guy succumb to him.
It's different this time, Granger said with a wicked smiled.
Mathew panicked.
That's not what I'm paying you for, he said.
Be quiet. Do as you're told and everything will be alright. Cross me, and^Å Granger stopped mid sentence and turned his palms to the ceiling.
The two men were facing each other as if they were about to kiss, except, they did not kiss. Instead Mathew was knocked off his balance by a surprising blow across his left cheek. He stumbled and fell backwards onto the bed. No sooner was he struck than Granger pinned him down, and fastened his hands to the bed posts with handcuffs and, holding his legs still in his powerful grip, pulled down his trousers and his black silk boxer briefs, exposing his hard-on. With the belt he pulled through the loops of the waistband of his trousers, he bound his legs together. Then Granger pulled Mathew's shoes off and pulled off his trousers and his black silk boxer briefs the rest of the way.
What the fuck are you doing? I'm not paying you to do this, Mathew shouted, half into the mattress.
Granger took Mathew's wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers, extracted five one hundred dollar bills, returned the wallet to its place, flicked a finger against his hard on and grinned.
Yes, you are, boy, he said. You just have. You don't get something for nothing, and from the looks of things, Mathew, my boy, there's no denying you got something.
Then he rummaged through the front pockets and took hold of Mathew's key ring and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. He tossed the trousers across the room, pulled Mathew's tie loose and ripped his shirt open, not bothering with the buttons.
He gripped Mathew's nipples hard and hurt him. Mathew screamed.
Shut up, he said, and there was menace in the command.
Mathew shut his eyes and obeyed.
Mathew had worried, always, when he arranged these secret assignations with a street hustler that something like this would happen one day, but his sense of his own good luck always trumped his anxiety. And his anxiety had always fed his excitement. The need to triumph over odds, the act of confronting danger with steady nerves, of defying danger and of resisting fear constituted the gutsiness that made him a good gambler, a good trader on the exchange, dexterous with numbers. That's what made him love his work and what accounted for his meteoric rise at Pinchon & Broadfells, and that's what made for the excitement of these encounters. He always beat the odds.
But this looked like something else. Now he wasn't sure what was going on, if he was in a rough game or if control had really been wrested from him and things would never be the same again, if this was a different kind of danger. He was frightened.
The worst of it was he was hard as a rock.
Granger bent over him and kissed him on the mouth with the hard assertion of mastery. He tasted of fear.
I like it, Granger said, stepping back. I like seeing you scared and hard at the same time. You know what it means, and you like it too. It means you belong to me.
Mathew didn't speak. He was trying to think, to figure things out. He was searching for his next move, looking straight at Granger, trying to figure out what he was up against, but he kept drawing a blank.
That's right, Granger said. Everything is different. And you don't know what to think. And you know there's nothing you can do. But it doesn't matter anymore. From now on you belong to me because, scared as you are, you like this. You spend a lot of time bossing people around, telling them what to do, but what you really want to do is obey. So from now on, you're going to follow my instructions. You can't resist it. You know it feels right. You should be grateful to me, boy. You always wanted a master, and now you've got one.
It was true, and that Granger knew it only added to Mathew's terror.
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