The Rivals of Casper Road
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Roan Parrish
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Chapter One
Bram
He’d chosen it because of the name: Casper Road. Recently Bram Larkspur had felt like a ghost. At least a friendly one would be an upgrade.
After six months of working at Hollywell’s Tree Farm half an hour north and housesitting for its owner, he’d gotten a tip that Garnet Run was a nice place to be. Cheap, picturesque, and possessed of a more robust queer community than you might expect for a small town in Wyoming.
The money he’d saved was more than enough for first, last, and security, so he’d rented the small house on Casper Road and moved his meager possessions there the night before, arriving after dark and falling into an exhausted sleep.
The August morning dawned, lazy and warm, and Bram felt his heart settle just a little; felt it beat, snugged safe within the protective cage of his ribs.
For a while there, he’d worried it might be irreparably broken.
But that was six months ago. Now, he told himself, he had a new life in a new town on a new street, and he didn’t want to waste a minute of it.
He whistled and Hemlock, his yellow Labrador, pranced into the room, brown eyes warm and familiar. Bram scratched between her ears and Hem put her front paws on his knees, whuffling enthusiastically. He kissed her head and she licked his elbow, as usual.
“Let’s go explore,” Bram said.
Hem yipped with excitement.
Casper Road was a curvy three-quarters of a mile, ending in the cul-de-sac near Bram’s house. At the other end, it dead-ended into Hoot Owl Road. The houses on Casper Road were of all different sizes and styles, and the road seemed to have grown in order to connect the houses rather than the other way around.
The most notable thing about it, though, was the way most houses contained “Casper Road” in their address plaques. No “745” here; it was all “745 Casper Road.” A few even had ghosts next to the numbers.
Bram and Hemlock spent a pleasant half hour walking up and back the street slowly, noting the gardens and trees (Bram) and sticks and smells (Hemlock). When they got back to number 667, Bram fed Hemlock, made some dandelion tea, and took his tea and his whittling bag back outside to watch Casper Road awake.
Bram settled on the front stoop. Hemlock snuffed around the steps for a while, then settled beside him, half of her on each step.
Bram had been whittling since he was ten, the only one of his five siblings to catch the bug. He’d been transfixed watching his father transform chunks of wood into art. For years, he’d begged to try it, and had always been told, “Watch. Learn.” Then, on his tenth birthday, he’d unwrapped a chunk of basswood and a pair of thick gloves.
“Where’s the knife?” Bram had said, fingers itching to hold wood and blade.
“You get the knife when you promise us that you’ll always wear the gloves while you whittle,” his father had said.
“I promise,” Bram had sworn solemnly, and his mother had produced a knife from behind her back. She’d laughed with joy at his excitement and his father had said, “Carve me something pretty.”
They weren’t the same gloves, of course, but Bram had always kept his promise. Even a thousand miles from his parents, he pulled on his gloves before he picked up the knife.
“What are you going to be?” he murmured to the chunk of wood he’d plucked from the curb on their morning walk. He let his mind and eyes wander as he thought.
Bram didn’t know anything about architecture, but the black-and-white house across from his looked odd. It seemed to have flown together rather at random until you unfocused your eyes and then it was clear that its symmetry was diagonal rather than horizontal. Bram found it both ugly and intriguing, but the more he looked at it the more ugly gave way to intrigue.
Sometimes when Bram whittled, the whole world went away. Other times, it was just something to do with his hands. This morning, it was the latter, and he carved into the wood as he contemplated the diagonal house and the stirrings up and down Casper Road.
What emerged was a pelican, the swoop of its beak breaking the diagonal of the wood. Bram smoothed his blade along its back and Hemlock farted in her sleep.
“Back to normal, then,” Bram muttered, turning his face away from her.
“Welcome, neighbor!”
A man was approaching from the left. He was white, appeared to be in his sixties, and was wearing shorts and a cowboy hat, a combination that Bram found cartoonish. But he was smiling as he held out his hand to shake, and Bram could never spurn a smile.
“Hey, I’m Bram Larkspur. Nice to meet you.”
He shook the man’s hand with his whittling glove on before he realized it. The gloves felt so much a part of him. But the man didn’t seem to mind any. He looked at the wood in Bram’s other hand.
“That an eagle? No. What’re them things called?”
“A pelican. At least, that’s what it seems like,” Bram said. You didn’t tell the wood what it wanted to be. The wood told you with every whorl and grain.
“That’s right, that’s right. I’m Carl Former, live right there.” He pointed to the house next door on the left. “Been here about fifteen years, so if you need anything you just let me know.”
“Thank you, that’s really kind.”
“You’re not from around here, I don’t think?” Carl asked it as a question, but he was peering at Bram as if trying to parse his not-from-around-here-ness before Bram even answered.
“No. I’m from Washington State. Olympia. I moved to Sundance Junction in the winter to help on a tree farm, but after the season ended I made my way down here.”
That was all true. But like most true things, it could have been said completely differently and been truer. He could have said, I lived in Olympia until my boyfriend and my best friend tore my life and my heart in half, leaving me a broken person who had to get away in order to keep things together.
But although Bram’s siblings liked to tease him about being too open with people, even Bram knew that this neighbor wasn’t the person to share that with.
Besides, he had put it behind him. He was in Garnet Run now and he wasn’t the same person who’d had his heart ripped out, chewed to pieces, and shoved back in his chest to beat sideways as a constant reminder that the people you trusted and loved the most were the ones with the power to destroy you.
Yeah, it was totally behind him.
“Hey, there!” called a woman from across the street. She’d come out to her mailbox and was now crossing to Bram and Carl. “I’m Charlotte Banks, nice to meetcha.” She held out her hand and Bram gave another gloved shake, then took off his gloves and put down his knife. If he was going to be meeting the neighbors, perhaps brandishing a knife wasn’t the best way to do it.
“Was Carl telling you about Halloween?”
“Er, no?”
“Every Halloween, Casper Road holds a contest for who has the best Halloween decorations. The local kids all know about it, so everyone comes here to trick-or-treat. The local news covers it. It’s a lot of fun! And since you’re one of us now...”
Bram smiled. That was a fun idea, and perhaps explained the ghostly Casper Road enthusiasm that he’d seen on people’s mailboxes and address plaques.
“When do you start?”
“Whenever you want,” Carl said. “Mags and I don’t put quite as much into it as we once did. But we’ll still plan our decorations a few weeks before. The Shertslingers at the end of the cul-de-sac go all out. They’ve got three kids who get pretty into it. Michael and Jean really do it up big too.”
“But Zachary Glass...well...”
“Yes, Zachary...”
Carl and Charlotte shared a look and then made the universal face of one performatively choosing not to speak ill of another.
“Zachary Glass?” Bram asked. It sounded like a supervillain name in one of the comics his sister Birch was always reading.
They both pointed at the diagonal house across the street that Bram had contemplated earlier.
As if the weight of their combined stares could conjure solid matter, the door to number 666 Casper Road opened and a man emerged.
He was slender and of medium height, with an olive complexion and thick, curly black hair. He wore a light gray suit, black wingtips, and a light pink shirt and tie even though it was 8:30 on a Saturday morning.
Carl and Charlotte waved at him and the man descended the steps and crossed the street toward them. He had an awkward way of moving, as if he weren’t quite comfortable in his own skin.
“Hello. You just moved in.”
It wasn’t a question, and the man didn’t hold out a hand to shake. In fact he seemed to be inspecting Bram rather than welcoming him.
“Bram Larkspur.”
Bram stuck out a hand, curious what the man would do.
“I’m Zachary Glass.”
Zachary shook his hand, and his grip was firm but not aggressive and he let go quickly, like he was sealing a business deal.
Up close, he was interesting-looking. His face was all hard angles and dramatic dark eyebrows, but his mouth was lush and soft, and his eyelashes were a dark and elegant sweep. His brown eyes looked sharp and intelligent.
“We were just telling Bram here about the Casper Road Halloween Decorating Contest. Really you should talk to Zachary. He’s won it every year since he moved onto Casper Lane,” Carl said.
A proud smile played at the corners of Zachary’s mouth.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“Seems like you start to plan the next year bright and early November 1st,” Charlotte said, clearly trying to include Zachary in the light and jokey tone of the conversation.
But Zachary just said, “I take a day off after winning. To enjoy it.”
Bram wondered if this buttoned-up guy ever enjoyed anything. But then Zachary broke into a real smile, revealing very white teeth that overlapped charmingly, and his face was transformed.
“Wait until you see what I’ve got planned for this year.”
Bram revised his opinion. There was an impish delight about him.
“What’ve you got planned?” Bram asked.
“You’ll see,” Zachary said, raising an inky eyebrow.
Bram snorted.
“You’ll join in the fun, won’t you?” Charlotte asked.
Bram had never cared much for Halloween, but he loved making things, and loved festivals and parades, so surely it would be fun to participate in something that would bring costumed trick-or-treaters. Besides, if he was going to be living here now, it would be an excellent way to make friends.
So he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely will.”
Carl grinned. Charlotte beamed.
Zachary Glass narrowed his eyes, all traces of his smile gone. Now, it seemed, he was evaluating the competition.
