Short Stories by Phoenix Hocking

This little story began as a 3-word writing exercise. The rules are these: Out of three random words, I must use at least one word in the first sentence and the other two (or variations thereof) in the first paragraph. After that, anything goes. The three words for this story were given to me by my new friend Steve Foster, and were: Life, Only and If


Life is a funny thing. If only it would follow a straight and narrow path, where none of us could get off-track, how much more simple it all would be. Of course, life is more like a river than a road. It meanders about and chooses paths of its own desires, or at least paths of least resistance.

 Harriet leaned against the gate, watching and waiting. She called out to her neighbor Margaret, who was passing by on her way to the market. “Billy is coming home today!” she cried. “I can feel it in my little boney bones!”

Margaret, who had heard this very thing from Harriet every day for the past seventeen years, just smiled sadly as she hurried by. Billy Haroldson had left Miller’s Corners years before and he wasn’t ever coming back. At least, nobody ever expected him to come back, not after what had happened.

For Billy, the path of least resistance had been simply to leave. He had picked up, packed up, and left in the dead of night and never looked back. He hadn’t expected anyone to understand what had happened, and he was right. The only person who had understood was dead, and the rest didn’t matter.

Billy’s river had shuttled him from one continent to another, from dusty roads to super-highways, and from synagogues to temples to churches in search of a peace he never could quite find. From the shallows to the rapids, always moving, never staying, Billy’s river cast him over pebbles and cradled him in stagnant pools until he was tired of it all.

Only once, recently, had the river let him rest in a place where the water of his soul ran sweet and cold. In this place, he was accepted and loved for who he was. It was good there. But Billy had unfinished business at home, so he betook himself to that place from which he had fled to finish the business he had left behind.

So, Billy thought, I’m going home at last. Home to face the music. Home to see what home might be left to me after all these years. And Billy Haroldson was afraid, far more afraid of coming home than he had been to leave.

He knew how the questions would go:

So, Billy Haroldson, tell me why you left town.


I had to leave.


Why? If you didn’t do anything wrong, why did you leave?

And that, Billy thought as he walked down the dusty road that led to his house, that is where I get stuck.

How could he possibly explain to anyone why he felt compelled to leave after Marvin’s death? He’d had no hand in the dying, and everybody knew that. He’d never been accused of having a hand in the dying. Not the actual dying part, anyway. But there had been rumors; there had been speculation, there had been suspicion.

And the rumors would have been right.

Miller’s Corners is a small town, like many other small southern towns. It’s a coal town; its men are miners and its women are wives, and that’s pretty much how everybody likes it. If you aren’t a miner, or a wife, or a merchant...well, what are you?

Billy wasn’t any of the above. Billy was an artist, a musician, a writer, a dreamer. His mother, Harriet (yes, the same Harriet who even now waits at the gate for her prodigal son), looked at her son and knew he was never destined to work in the bowels of the earth, mining coal. He was going to be Somebody.


After high school, instead of getting a job in the mines, like the other boys his age, Billy went to Junior College in Packard Flats, the next town over. Packard Flats was also a coal town, but it was a little bigger, a little more progressive, a little less restrictive.

Marvin was Billy’s math teacher. He was a good looking older man with a square jaw and friendly eyes. And when Billy looked at Marvin, and Marvin looked back, something stirred in him that he hadn’t known existed.

Oh, sure, Billy had had girl friends. Peggy Ann and he were supposed to get married when he returned from college. Everybody expected that. And there wasn’t a thing wrong with Peggy Ann. She was cute and smart and everybody liked her. Heck, Billy liked her just fine. He could see himself married to her, just like he was supposed to be.

But when Billy looked at Marvin, he felt something he didn’t feel when he looked at Peggy Ann. And it scared him. It scared him a lot.

Later, when he was trying to explain things to the priest, Billy put it this way, “We became friendly, then we became friends. Then we became best friends. Then we fell in love.”

For Billy, falling in love with a married man was not something he had ever contemplated in all of his young life. Such things were simply not done. Certainly not in the coal mining towns of Miller’s Corners and Packard Flats.

Marvin’s wife, Susan, knew about his sexual orientation, and loved him anyway. Theirs was a good relationship, loving and kind and compassionate towards each other. They were open and honest with each other and had an easy companionship. They were as happy as they could be, under the circumstances.

Let us be very clear about one thing. Marvin, to his credit, did not lead the young man on. He didn’t pursue, he didn’t seduce, he didn’t entice. But...he also didn’t discourage, and perhaps he should have. Had he discouraged his young student things might have turned out differently for Billy, though probably not for Marvin.

By the time Billy and Marvin met, Marvin had already been diagnosed with HIV. He knew he was dying. This was at a time when treatment was in its experimental stages, and more expensive than most people could afford. Many gay men remained “in the closet,” which is exactly where Marvin was when he and Billy met.

We won’t go into the details of their relationship. That is nobody’s business but their own. Suffice it to say that when Marvin died, a part of Billy died with him. By then, everybody had their suspicions about their relationship, but nobody said anything outright. What they didn’t know was that there was no way Billy could have contracted the disease. Marvin wouldn’t allow it.

When Marvin died, Billy picked up, packed up, and left. He rode the river of his life like it was a life raft, without oars or paddles. He fetched up on a sand bar once or twice, but never for long. There was only the one place where the waters were sweet and cold, but that place was not for him. At least, not yet.

In the end, he just tired of the ride, and knew he had to go back home.

So, Harriet leaned against the gate, watching and waiting. She knew her Billy was coming today. She could feel it in her bones, in her heart, in the very cells of her being, she knew it. She also knew that everybody thought she was crazy for believing it, for counting on it, for trusting her intuition. After all, hadn’t she been saying this very thing for years?

But today, she didn’t know how, but she knew today was different. Today he really was coming home. So she leaned against the gate, and watched and waited.

He was still a long way off when she spotted him. He was older, of course, and he looked tired and sad. But he was still her Billy, and she flung open the gate and ran.

“Billy!” she cried, “Billy, Billy, Billy!” Then she was there, holding him, kissing him, laughing and crying and praising God for his safe return.

For Billy, his homecoming was a sand bar time of peace and of quiet. People had long since given up caring about what his relationship with Marvin might, or might not, have been. He was just Harriet’s son, home after a long absence, and only the old timers still whispered in the back rooms and bars. But pretty much, nobody cared.

Billy needed his sand bar time. His soul needed the respite home provided, so he stayed, and let himself be cherished and nourished and loved.

But one day, the river of his soul began to call once more. He had wandered for so long, he didn’t know how to just stay, so one day, he picked up and packed up, and went away again.

But this time the river took him, not away in flight, but toward, in love, to a place where the waters were sweet and cold, and he was accepted for who he was, at last.

END