Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [35]
“Josh Aysgarth is wild,” they agreed, “but he would help any lame dog, and he’d never hurt anyone.” They called Josh “one of life’s innocents.”
Sammy Morris could remember perfectly the day he realized Josh was beautiful and he was ugly. It was the same day he knew he loved him.
They had gone walking in the dales with a crowd of other lads. Josh, tall and athletic, strode easily at the head of the group, his head held high and a little smile on his face as he stared at the wonders of nature around him. He did not need the applewood stick he swung in his hand to help him over the hills and boulders, he sprang up them like a deer. Sammy, bringing up the rear, watched jealously while the other boys crowded admiringly around him, laughing at each other’s quips and slapping each other affectionately on the shoulder. He wasn’t used to sharing Josh with anyone. It had always been just the two of them.
By the time they reached the river he had sunk into a sullen, tired stupor, straggling well behind the others. When he caught up they were already stripped off and skinny-dipping in a sheltered pool by the bank of the fast-flowing river. Josh was standing on top of the rock, naked as the day he was born, smilingly surveying the dark, still pool. An admiring silence fell on the merry group as he stretched his arms over his head, ready to dive, and Sammy caught his breath at the sight of his slim-hipped, tautly muscled young body and his carelessly displayed manhood. Flinging back his head Josh stood there in a moment of perfect stillness. And then in a pale, flashing arc he dived with scarcely a ripple into the chilly dark water. He rose to the surface almost instantly and climbed laughing onto the rocks, shaking his blond head with a shower of crystal droplets and throwing a friendly arm around Murphy, a brawny Irish lad who lived in the next street.
Jealousy struck Sammy’s heart like a blow, it burned his stomach and churned in his guts. Josh was his friend. He belonged to him. But Josh was wayward, he liked the other lads’ company as much as he liked Sammy’s, and now Murphy was his best friend.
Sammy undressed, wrapping his arms about himself, shivering in the chill northeast wind that always seemed to blow even on the hottest summer day. He glanced down at his body, comparing his stocky, powerful torso and short, bulkily muscled legs with Josh’s grace, and his own heavy, bulging masculinity with Josh’s, and he felt uglier than the hunchback of Notre Dame.
Josh and Murphy were dunking each other’s heads under the water, jumping in and out on top of each other while the other boys splashed around, and after a while Sammy ventured cautiously in, too, but he was always on the outside of the group, always the observer. That was why it was so odd when later he claimed he didn’t know what happened next that afternoon.
Sammy told his mother they had all been frolicking in the river and Josh and Murphy were daring each other on to even bigger and better dives, slapping each other on the back and laughing all the time. After a while the others grew tired and climbed out and were drying off on the bank. He said Murphy must have swum out from the pool into the river, mebbe to show off a bit more. Next thing they knew he was missing. It was two days before they found his body, tangled in the slimy green weeds on the opposite bank. His head was bashed in and they said he must have hit a rock when he dived.
When Annie asked Josh what happened he just shrugged without answering, but his gray eyes looked far away and she could not read them. She told herself he was grieving and patted his shoulder comfortingly. “It’s all right, Josh,” she said, “there’s nothing you could have done to help him, else you would have done it. I know.”
Sammy and Josh had both worked for Frank Aysgarth since they had left school at fourteen. They had started at the bottom the way Frank had, climbing the scaffolding with a hod full