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George’s mother had warned him of the wicked and evil beings that walked the earth. When he was younger, she had whispered them into his ear when they walked down the street, lips pursed and poisonous eyes lingering on two men sitting closely on a park bench, warning him of sin and defiers of society. As she readied for work, pressing curls into her hair, swiping at her eyes and cheeks with makeup, and smearing blood red onto her lips, she described what happened to those who defied the rules God had created for them to live and die happily. Their skin turned sickly and green, blood running like crude oil through their bodies, and their eyes burned with the flames of their dark urges and thoughts. God declared their souls forever ruined, stained green, purple, blue and yellow – a patchwork of immortal wounds and bruises.
His mother told him that God had no place for homosexuals in heaven.
George Milton had never been good at following rules, his teachers, the old ladies who gossiped in huddled circles, and the man who ran the convenience store who had caught him stealing before he got good at it, could attest to that. And so, even though his mother would say to other mothers that her son was good and had listened to her every word with reverence and devotion, and she would think him a son who would never sin by laying with another man, George knew that this would be another rule he couldn’t help but break – no matter how hard he tried.
He hid it, as he often did with his mistakes. During his time living with them, his parents never found out about the dark corners of his soul and the sickening thoughts that flickered across his mind. Those moments where they asked him to sit down at the dining table so they could talk, his father at the head and his mother at his side, he had feared they had somehow just known. He would sit, shaking and fidgeting, unable to lift his gaze from the table, but each time it was only ever about his grades, which were abysmal, or how they worried for his future and whether he would ever make something of himself in this vast world, or once — the smokes he had carelessly left in one of the draws in his dresser.
Eventually, George had left home, a disappointment of a son with little to his name, but with the comforting knowledge of them having never known how truly terrible he was.
He had trudged between ranches searching often fruitlessly for work, eventually accompanied by Lennie after passing through a town where the man had been desperate for help, following the seasons and begging what ever entity it was that existed and lorded above the earth for just another day. His soul was damned, his fingers stained, and path set into a road of sin and failure – but maybe with another day he could change things and become the man everyone wanted him to be. Inwardly, George knew his efforts to be worthless.
Finding work at a ranch, further away from what was once home than ever before, had seemed a blessing. An answer to his prayers and an olive branch which he could follow towards light and goodness, finally being the man his parents would have been proud of and happy to call their son.
He had been wrong.
On the farm he had met a range of men, all with their differences and habits, and as their first day stretched on a level of camaraderie often found between those in similar conditions had built between them all. But, outside of the norm, was another man who did not quite fit or perhaps, deserve, to be grouped in with the others.
Slim was the embodiment of the devil, sin and temptation and desire wrapped in a body worthy of an angel. His lips whispered greed and promises, his eyes burned with passion and lust when they were alone, and his hands had the ability to shape bodies and souls into his devoted worshipers, George among them. His voice summoned attention and ensured its continuity with siren-like tones and seduction.
But Slim was only a human, perfectly mortal and flawed, and George knew Slim likely thought similarly of him.
He and George were like moths to a flame, each their own destruction and promise of pleasure and stolen moments of freedom. Alone they could ignore the rest of the world, their personal ventures into the dark corners of the barn and abandoned structures of the ranch offering an escape from all that they wished so desperately to ignore. They revelled and bathed in their sin like gods bathing in the tears of their mortal subjects.
George often caught Lennie watching him, eyes pondering and flicking between he and Slim, and once, after a days gruelling work when escaping the heat in the bunkhouse, he had gone as far as to ask, loudly, where the two kept going.
It took everything in George to remain calm in the face of the suffocating panic, and the relief that coursed through his veins at knowing they were alone had nearly sent him crashing to his knees. Lennie hadn’t understood his explanation, his excuses, and George didn’t know where to start to in order to get him to. Things with Lennie were difficult and confusing and mind whirling on a good day, but on the days where George’s skin itched and his feet dripped with shadow and his mind raced, he was too tired to do much but bribe Lennie into silence with reminders of the rabbits and his own daydreams of feeding them alfalfa.
The resulting guilt had sentenced him deeper into the dark pits of loathing and circling thoughts that plagued his night. He couldn’t even be a good friend, that was broken about him too.
George very quickly understood that the brush of Slim’s hands against his own while waiting in line at mealtimes was a silent request to meet later. Each time his heart pound in his chest against his ribs, palms sweating with anticipation, and his tongue went dry in his mouth. Whenever he silently asked, Slim always met his eyes, appearance never ruffled from anything besides the days work out under the blistering sun and never revealing the dark lust that George knew he felt.
Slim’s cool and calm façade had once made George jealous, but they spoke little outside of those pointless conversations they made in front of the others out of fear of being overheard and their real feelings towards each other discovered. So, George made himself get over it and convinced himself that Slim was just good at hiding what he cared about. He tried to, at least.
He told himself that he didn’t particularly care if Slim really cared for him like that or not. If he didn’t, it would be a good thing and he would finally be able to banish the dark and wrong thoughts once and for all. He didn’t dare let himself dwell on how he would feel used and betrayed, and likely emptier than when he had been living within his parents and victim to their indirect loathing.
The ranch soon became his downfall, with the temptation and feeding of the dark parts of his soul in the form of Slim, and the tragedy and destruction and utter helplessness in the form of Lennie’s murder by his own hands.
Lennie had been at his side since those years ago when George had found him caught in the midst of what any other man would have seen as a warning to stay away. But George had stepped forward and tried his best to fix, in the process winning what he had imagined to be a lifelong companion. They had moved between ranches together, and though Lennie could sometimes drive him insane with his obsession for touching soft things and penchant for trouble and it sometimes drove George to saying things he didn’t mean, Lennie’s companionship had kept the overwhelming loneliness at bay.
Without him, George had no idea what he would do, despite having known how to a few years ago. The absence of the suffocating loneliness and no longer needing to fill the overwhelming silence with his own thoughts had resulted in him growing unaccustomed to it, and George wished desperately he didn’t need to settle back into the skin of who he used to be.
Things between George and Slim changed. No longer were their interactions limited to only dark corner trysts and the rushed moulding of their mouths, instead Slim seemed intent to start more meaningful conversations despite the still present possibility of someone discovering them. Some days George needed the comfort and reassurance that though his soul was damned and cemented in its path to the deepest pits of hell, Slim would still touch and be near him.
Other days he raged and fought against each of Slim’s words, spittle flying from his mouth as he screamed and yelled, and nothing could stem the flow of frustrated tears down his face. He wanted Slim to fight back, to scream and yell too, he urged him, baited him, and said unspeakable things he didn’t mean and instantly regretted. But he never did. Slim remained infuriatingly calm, and though his eyes would often turn sad and tired, nothing was ever enough to turn him away. Afterwards, when the wave of anger had passed and George was left lethargic and drained, Slim drew him into a tight embrace that held all the crumbling pieces of his body together.
Part of him couldn’t understand Slim, with his insatiable need to always be there for him and his endlessly open offer of comfort and companionship. He was kind and always made sure after a long day out in the field hauling bails and bucking barley, that all the men were alright. All that was good about him, qualities that made him the type of man any mother would be proud to have as a son, should have never been possible if the words of the preachers and his parents were to be believed.
But Slim was not manipulative, he did not lie, he didn’t steal away children and misguide them from the morals of their families. He did not seek to destroy all that was good in the world. He was not the demon all had depicted people like them to be.
On the night they had curled together in George’s bunk after all the others had drunk themselves to sleep with a seemingly endless supply of alcohol, encouraged by their own warm stomachs and fuzzy minds, George had told Slim what his parents and the preacher used to say. Slim had smiled slightly, ran his hand slowly down George’s cheek, and said, “Neither of us are what they want us to be, good or bad, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
And then; “If any of that shit they said was really true, George,” a breath where a second stretched into moments of infinity, “I wouldn’t be able to love you like I do now.”
Nothing, not even the loudly slumbering men at their backs or the lingering sense of wrongness in their limbs, could stop George from reaching up and pulling Slim down into a mind-numbing blend of mouths and teeth and tongue.
It took another month for the both of them to realise they couldn’t continue the routine of moving between ranches working for others and living with no true place to call him for the rest of their lives. It took another week after that for them to realise they could get what they both wanted if they worked towards having a farm of their own together.
Their days were filled with planning and dreaming, their every move fuelled by the dream that pound through their body like a second heart. When George reached out to the people he had been originally planning to buy the farm from with Lennie, he was caught in a moment of indecisiveness. Candy and Crooks had each expressed their desires to get away and out of the control of another’s demands for the remainder of their days, and the slowly healing part of George that had worked towards making Lennie’s dreams of rabbits and alfalfa become reality wanted to have them join he and Slim. But he was also terrified of what the two might say. George didn’t want to have to live in secrecy and constant paranoia where he was meant to be comfortable and finally free from the influence and control of others and their thoughts. He imagined Slim didn’t either.
In the end he easily resorted to asking Slim, and they decided to leave offering them a place on their farm until the last possible moment, so that after they were told everything, Slim and George would be able to quickly leave and escape the worst of the others’ reactions and repercussions if they decided to tell everyone.
Weeks passed and both waited and hoped in taut trepidation and uncertainty for a response. When it finally came, they waited to open it, secreting themselves away in a less used shed on the outskirts of the homestead, both glad they had done so when they had erupted into loud yells of happiness and pure relief. Slim pulled George to him, arms as tight as they had been when he was holding together pieces of him and buried his wet face in George’s neck. Nothing could dim their smiles and silence the laughter of their joy and excitement, not even God or the preachers they had both once feared.
That night they had prepared their belongings for if the worst scenario occurred and they needed to leave quickly and went to speak to the boss of the ranch. The boss wasn’t much in terms of intimidating might, but it was daunting all the same, and George had minutely twitched at each of the man’s proclamations at needing to change plans and being two men short once their time at the ranch came to an end. They had a month left to get every coin they could from the gruelling labour and to scrape together everything they had to put towards the farm.
To have enough to pay for the farm and live on it, even with the both of them pitching in and Slim having more saved than him, they would need to work at least another month to not be cutting it so close to affording the essentials that they couldn’t afford food a week later. They would also need to purchase something they could use to begin making a living off their own land and with the little they’d have remaining; it was looking more and more worrying. The uncertainty in everything almost made George sick to his stomach, and though Slim tried to put on a brave and optimistic face, he was as equally affected. The two began to hope Candy and Crooks would come along for reasons beside friendship and a shared desire.
Two weeks before they were due to leave and the day after the fortnightly pay, the both of them approached Candy and Crooks in the barn while they were alone, the others having already retreated into the dining hall with rumbling guts and mouths thirsty for whiskey. They had listened while George and Slim spoke, and the tense air that had settled once they had fallen silent was only broken by Candy’s soft sniffle and the shuffle of his feet against concrete as he shifted his stance against his broom. Candy hadn’t tried to hide his gratitude at being given the opportunity, shaking away the topic of their relationship, and just like last time he offered to put in his own collected pays towards buying the farm. Slim had given that beautifully crooked smile and thanked him — though George knew him to be perplexed at the easy acceptance as well — and said, “It will be good to have a familiar face around to keep things interesting.”
Crooks had remained silent throughout the exchange, his eyes shifting between them, expression absent of anything that could reveal what he was thinking. Eventually, though, he had nodded to himself as if finalising a debate and settling on a decision, having what George almost thought was a look of understanding. Crooks had chuckled at their expressions of relief and muttered under his breath about foolish, helpless bastards who’d no doubt need a stable hand to keep everything going – surprising George with the lack of immediate mocking towards them and their plan as he had done when learning of it when Lennie was part of it.
The men’s lack of declaring them sinners and outing them to the others as monsters, soothed the jittering pulse in George’s veins and rid his skin of the crawling insects. Slim relaxed further into his side, the stress that had lived in his shoulders and back dripping away and into the earth like oil.
The boss had been even less happy to learn of two more of his workers leaving, though George suspected his reaction wasn’t as bad as it could have been considering the positions the men had taken on the ranch and the perceived worth of their persons. Curley was not as calm, him declaring it a ‘fucking relief’ that Crooks was leaving, and yelling enough demeaning insults to curdle milk, were loud enough to be heard by the whole ranch.
When Candy and Crooks had found them afterwards and told them of the Boss’s acceptance, Crooks had stood quiet and hollow eyed, and it had made George all the more impatient for the month to be over.
The day before the four of them were set to leave the ranch and start what would be a short but gruelling trek towards where their ride was willing to meet them, George and Slim set out for where Lennie had been buried by the bank of the Salinas River. Though the sun was as blaring and bright as any other day that had passed absent of rain or cloud in the valley, George felt distant and cold. He had dared visit here only once after happened, and the nightmares that had resurfaced from where they slumbered and plagued his mind for weeks afterwards had been enough to keep him away. To return felt like dipping his feet back into the bottomless lake of grief.
The makeshift headstone and slight rise in the soil was the only indication of Lennie’s resting place. Everything else about the river was the same as it had been that day, the water warm and shining with the might of the reflected sun, wildlife scurrying beneath the brush and singing from their place on high tree branches. Distant mountains watched the flitter of life though the green vegetation, and a little rabbit gazed at them from where it had resettled into its created impression within the sand.
Slim held George to his side, silent and understanding, as tears ran down George’s cheeks and his resolve gave way to the grief rising in his chest.
Lennie had been an important part of his life and was likely the reason he had even lived long enough to make it to this ranch. It felt wrong for a man like him to be moving forward and achieving the dream they had shared without Lennie at his side, but he knew now that dwelling in those thoughts would only send him hurtling back into the darkest corners of his own mind. Though he wished to, he could not change what he had done that day, or the course of events that had led up to it and resulted in it happening.
It was time for George to move into another stage of his life, just as he had done when leaving the control of his parents. He had Slim at his side, an ever steady and present support, and together with Crooks and Candy, they would make a small part of the big and daunting world their own. They would work and sweat and yell, but it was their own farm, and they were independent and at the control of only their own wishes.
As he and Slim left the bank, George sparred the bustling life one more glance, and gave his silent farewells and thanks to a man who would forever be his friend, even in death.