volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

Mel is preoccupied with where to put Pete’s hat. He brushes
Pete’s compliment aside.
“Combination early Twentieth century and too-late-to-fix.”
His eyes land on the Ardley Hall china cabinet. As he
transfers Pete’s relic of American cinematic history to the peak of
the battered, but not beaten, Ardley, Rick enters the room.
“Fuckin’ A.”
Everyone but Mel turns.
“Eek. It got out.” Jason steps closer to Pete. “Save me,
daddy.”
Rick’s hair, wet from a recent dowsing, is combed back from
his ratty face.
Pete ignores Jason and stares hard at the recently-rinsed Rick.
A shadow beneath Rick’s nose testifies to the birth-pangs of a
mustache.
He wears a white poet’s shirt open to his breastbone. Black
leather pants make him sound like a human huarache when he
walks.
Pete turns to Roy.
“You’re absolutely positive he’s your brother?”
Jason laughs throatily and wraps a gaggle of fingers around
one of Pete’s old-man biceps.
“You’re funny.” He leans closer. “I’m a Libra.”
“You’re a bitch,” opines Rick, who then laughs as if he just
said something witty.
He glares hatefully at Pete. “And you—”
Mel—his hands relieved of Pete’s hat—waggles a warning
finger. His gayness is instantly gone.
“You behave tonight. I mean it.”
Behind him, above him, as if the light surmounting a
lighthouse, Pete’s white hat gleams.
“This is my dinner. I paid for it, I cooked it, and I’m gonna
enjoy it—with or without you, mister two-months-behind-in-hisrent.”
Rick fumes. His face chases after the color of the red, red
roses. He sputters when he speaks.
“Me an’ Roy, we got bidness—”
02 ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY