I was fully bewildered by this. It’s hard and rare that my dad talks to me about it. It’s like every time this peeks out from the ground where he buried it, he digs a deeper hole in hopes it wouldn’t resurface. He didn’t do it because of shame, though. I think he did it to protect me. Even though he had never said as much, his actions speak more than his words or emotions. He moved us here together, instead of just abandoning me like what happens to others, or worse.
“Yes, and I don’t think he meant to confirm it, if it’s a consolation,” looking up at me for the first time. “I think it slipped out in the terror he was feeling, that I had an ulterior motive against you, but I put him at ease.”
He wasn’t telling me something.
I could feel it.
Then his eyes got shifty when I must have looked like I was still questioning him. Yeah, he is definitely keeping something from me. “Why are you okay with me?” I said it with so much confidence, even though I was still afraid to talk about myself in this way.
“Huh?”
“I asked, why are you okay with me, when any other man and even some women would beat my ass and leave me for dead if they found out.” He shifted from foot to foot from my bluntness.
And then I saw it.
There was this glint in his one eye that triggered this epiphany in my brain. “Holy Shit!” The echo of my voice traveled down the tunnels in both directions. The excitement of meeting someone else that likes men. I never thought it would ever happen. The thrill was making me vibrate uncontrollably.
“Shhhhh,” Jim came and he covered my mouth to keep me quiet, but it came out anyway, just muffled because of my excitement.
“You are like me,” I eyed him with hope. His hand was still over my mouth, making what I said come out all blended together since my lips couldn’t move correctly. He was reading my eyes again, like it was his normal form of communication.
Then he nodded.
I broke free and twirled around not being able to keep still, “Oh my God.” Turning back to him, “OH MY GOD,” not being able to contain my volume, my excitement clear, but my voice was breathy already from breathing in all the coal dust..
That’s when we heard voices. “Did you hear that? Sounds like someone is having themselves a good time down here.”
Jim reached up and flicked off my light, grabbed me and pushed me over the edge of the empty mine car, then jumped in after me forcing me to lie down flat, him lying next to me in the confined space. I could barely see that he had his finger to his lips in a quiet signal from the occasional bulb hanging along the walls to light the way down here.
I nodded and held my breath.
“Who would bring their girl down here for that?”
“You are an idiot. They are probably two fags.”
“No way! Tom would never let those kinds of people work with us.”
“How would he know?”
“Jesus, if that’s true that means they have seen us naked in the dry room.”
The voices grew louder as they got closer and the entire time, Jim’s eyes in the darkness shined like the sun this morning. Showing their true light and feelings. He was looking at me with fondness. Then they burned out with what we heard. I released the air I had been holding right in Jim’s face as the men faded away as they passed going down the other passage at the fork.
“This isn’t the place to have this conversation,” he whispered, the sound of his voice echoing off the metal mine car, but he didn’t make a move to get up.
“What conversation? The one we were having about you putting my dad in his place or the one where we both–,” but Jim cut me off with a finger on my mouth.
“Don’t”
“–might like each other,” not being able to stop myself.
Then the shock set in.
I just said that.
Out loud.
My eyes got big in panic. “Oh my God, that was rude of me to assume just because you are like me. It doesn’t mean you like me, like I like you. And, oh my God, I just said that out loud too. What is wrong with me?”
