Free All American Boy by William J. Mann

survived prison,” Missy says. “Prison wasn’t what was so bad. It was afterward. Things started happening here in Brown’s Mill after you left, Wally. Some of us tried to put together a community center. Zandy was part of that. And we got a political group going. Do you know we got a civil rights bill passed in this state?”
    Wally nods.
    â€œWe did some good things. But then ten, twelve years ago somebody came along, some do-gooder from the gay rights alliance or whatever they call it up in the state capital, and he says that it’s not such a good idea to have a convicted child molester playing such a public role in such a small town. Bad for the image, you know. What would the media do if they got ahold of it? The community , he said. Think of the community . So Zandy dropped out.”
    Wally’s quiet, watching the day get colder outside the window. The temperature is dropping: the purple roses shiver on their vine, and gray clouds are moving in to obscure the sharpness of the blue sky.
    â€œI bring him over his mail sometime,” Dee says. “He can’t make it to his PO box anymore. So I bring him whatever comes in, like The Advocate or Out magazine. He keeps up on everything. I told him how I took my boyfriend to my junior prom last year, and he just loved it. Thought it was really awesome.”
    Wally lifts his eyebrows, looking over at Miss Aletha. “What do you mean, Brown’s Mill hasn’t changed? Can you imagine me going to my prom with some guy in matching tuxedos?”
    â€œThat’s what we had,” Dee agrees. “White tie and tails. Top hats, too. Zandy wanted to know all the details, see all the pictures.”
    â€œIt’s what he always predicted,” Wally says, feeling a smile stretch across his face. “He said someday things were going to be easy. Someday we wouldn’t have to hide.”
    â€œHide?” Dee echoes. “I’ve never hidden in my life and I’m not planning on doing it, ever. Even when I make it as an actor. I’m going to be out as queer right from the start. I’ll never have to worry about being outed because I’ll always be out.”
    Wally’s looking at him, this strange, orange-haired man-child, but he’s thinking of Zandy, hearing his words. “He was the first to tell me stories,” Wally says dreamily. “Stories about places like Greenwich Village, and the Castro, and P’town … They were like fairy tales. That’s how I thought of them.” He laughs. “He told me we were going to change the world.”
    â€œHe was a leftover hippie,” Miss Aletha says. It’s just a statement. Nothing else.
    Wally looks at her. “I use the stuff he taught me every day. Do you know that?”
    Miss Aletha is quiet. Dee listens to every word.
    â€œHe taught me so much,” Wally whispers.
    And he thinks of Zandy’s hands, scarred and twisted, the hands of a laborer, the hands of a man , on his fourteen-year-old boy’s body.
    â€œYou tell him that, “Missy says, “when you see him.”
    Alexander Reefy was the man who first touched Wally’s trembling skin. He is the man whose hands live on so strongly in Wally’s memory, hands that first caressed the pink buds of his nipples, hands that stroked his hair and gripped his innocent butt. There, among the shadows of the orchard, lit only by an autumn moon, he did things to Wally’s body that made him shake, that made him cry, that made the boy love him. Things he shouldn’t have done, maybe, things that were wrong—but things Wally has never forgotten, things that have remained a part of him. Zandy’s hands. Big hands. Rough hands. And then his breath, hot against Wally’s face.
    â€œWhy do you want to see him again?” Dee asks as he shows Wally upstairs to his room. It’s the same one Wally had as a boy, when he stayed here with Miss Aletha for