How Father Tam Part 8

The next day, I was working from home when Justin asked me from the living room if I'd ever known Obie to walk around shirtless in skinny jeans with a backwards wide-brim 'homeboy' cap. That's one of those questions that is like  turning a familiar corner in your hometown to suddenly find you're in a 3-D Hieronymus Bosch painting, where people's torsos are made out of half egg shells and birdmen with Elizabethan gardening hats spit-roast decapitated heads.

"Wait ... what?" was all I could say.

He called me into the living room where he was peeking out of the curtain onto the condo parking lot.

"Look," he said.  I did.

There in the distance, walking around kind of aimlessly, was Obie, thinner by about 10 pounds, holey sneakers, a wadded up black tee shirt jammed into his back pocket, carrying a large backpack, and in the company of a very thin woman who had not washed her hair in a while. His own hair had magically grown at least 2 inches since we saw him yesterday.

"It's not Obie," I said.

"Duh. Of course not. But then who is it?"

"My best guess would be either Joel, Amos, or Micah.  And since Micah is Obie's twin ..."

We watched the two crane their necks to look at addresses on the surrounding buildings and just as they spotted ours, Justin opened the door and watched them walk up.

"Can I help y'all?" Justin called.

"Maybe," the guy said.  His baritone was a few pitches deeper than Obie's.  "We're looking for a dude named Obie."

We let them in. It was Micah, Obie's identical twin and his girlfriend Sarah. I offered them coffee but they politely declined and took two very tall cans of alcohol out of the backpack, cracked them open, and started sipping on them. They gave us the long story of Obie's banishment from their home.

Apparently, their father, Ignacio, banned Obie right out of high school from his home unless he "opted out of" his homosexuality. That much we already knew.

"Nacho [Ignacio] had no idea he was gay, which goes to show you how much he cared. Like, how can a father not even know his own son? Mom and the rest of us knew ... "

"Or at least suspected." Sarah said.

"Or suspected he was," Mike said. "And I shouldn't have said nothing, but I was just so mad, and scared, that I wanted to shift his focus away from me and onto Obie. I thought sure Obie would deny it and accuse me of lying. Or somewhere deep inside my brain, I knew he wouldn't. I feel bad about that."

I felt my mouth squeeze into a tight circle.

"Said anything? What do you mean?" As usual, Justin was clueless.

"Yeah, said anything about him being queer," Mike said. "I didn't mean to. I just blurted it out." He made his voice kind of raspy, sing-songy quoting himself yelling at his father, "Yeah well. It's just weed. It could be worse. I could be queer like Obi, your little favorite, perfect son. At least I don't suck dick."

In Mike's words, Nacho's rage blossomed like a mushroom cloud. He grabbed Mike by the arm and pulled him down the stairs to where Obi and his mom were making tamales. It was a week before Christmas.

'Tell your brother what you just said, you vile little liar.' Ignacio, still held Mike by the arm and pushed him in front of Obie.

'I said you were queer. And that's worse than smoking a little weed any day. Go ahead and deny it if it's not true.'

"You outed your own brother to your homophobic father?" Justin loaded every syllable with as much angry incredulity as he could pack in there.

"Yeah. It was a shitty thing to do. But I probably wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been drunk at the time.

"Obie just sat there for a second then looked at me with so much hurt in his face I couldn't stand it. Then all he said was that it wasn't my place, that he wanted to tell Pop himself when the time was right.

Their mom tried to stop him from speaking but Obie went on. "He's right, Pop. I'm gay."

The next day Ignacio told him to leave and not to come back unless he had a girl on his arm.

Mike and Sarah sipped almost daintily on their 10:30am beer while telling the story.

"Anyway, I guess I got what was coming to me because over the next seven years, I was arrested for drunk and disorderly five times, nearly beat a guy to death, but I was drunk and tweaking. I couldn't hold a job so Nacho kicked me out too. The last couple of years we been staying with Sarah's fam in Utah, but we got kicked out there too. So now we're here in Austin, looking for work and we got some pretty bad news to tell Obie."

"Isabella died," Sarah said.

"Yeah, that's our mom. Heart attack, I think."

"Pancreatic cancer, babe." 

"Oh yeah. That too. I didn't want nobody to tell Obie in an email. I'd rather do it in person. So we're on our way back to Houston unless we can find work here in Austin. Hey y'all wouldn't mind if we crashed on your couch a few days while we're job hunting, right? I promise no hanky-panky while we're here."

"Absolutely not," Justin said.

I jumped in. "We already have 3 people living in this tiny condo, and my boyfriend has been taking up the couch lately ... while his place is getting some remodeling," I lied.

"But we will offer you both a shower," Justin said as pointedly as he could.

Sarah cleared her throat. "Where's Obie right now? Maybe we ask him for his opinion?"

Justin's eyes were sparkling and not in the good way. I cut him off before he could explode. "He's working down at Our Lady of Prompt Succor today. They're having a pre-lent fish fry."

"Lady of Prom Sucker?" Mike snorted. "That's your church's name?"

"Succor. S U C C O R. It means help in Catholicese, I'm told." Justin said.

I'm going to help