off our rockets on this glorious star-spangled night. O’er the ramparts, if you will.”
Byron said nothing.
“Army mule! You want to laugh. I know you, beneath the melancholy and doom. What can I do to make you happy? Something not so strenuous, please. I am spent.”
Byron finally turned around so that they lay together, breath to breath. “Tell me something. Tell me about you.”
Pearce sighed heavily. He sat up. Something in his face changed, which, for the affable Pearce, was significant. “Can I put my confidence in you?”
“I’ve put mine and more in you.”
“Serves me right,” Pearce said. “I resolve to bare my soul and you throw the obvious jab.”
Byron almost smiled. “It was there to be thrown.”
“Good, then,” Pearce said. “And now I’ll tell you what I didn’t tell your grandmother at the earlier inquisition—heaven forbid! I’ll tell you what I’ve told no one.”
Now Byron sat up.
“You asked me why I removed the Stewart name from my person and reverted to my family name, Pearce. Here it is,” he began. “My first years with the Stewarts were more than a boy in my circumstance could hope for. I was well fed. Wore the best clothes. Attended school and church. I was given their name, introduced as their son, and not made to feel like the charity case that I was. I was twelve when my duties changed.”
“How so?” Byron, who had turned inward, was now attentive. He yearned to know Pearce beyond being drawn to him. And now he would.
Pearce exhaled.
“I’m not the tender sort. I don’t take too much to heart. I think you know that.”
“Regretfully, true,” Byron said.
“Well, now, in the name of tenderness I ask for a kindness.”
“Which is?”
“To let me finish a tale I thought I would never recite—as it were.” Pearce and Byron understood the word as it applied to West Point. To recite, at the Academy, was to stand and be tested before everyone.
“I won’t stop you,” Byron said. “Recite.”
“At the time that I was welcomed into the Stewart home, I was told my adoptive father wasn’t a well man. That he needed care and that I would attend to him. I bathed Mr. Stewart. Dressed him. Groomed him. He’d stroke my hair in the evening and say, ‘Come, sweet boy. Give us a kiss. One here’—he’d point to his cheek—‘and one here’—to his knob. ‘Now, now. ’Tis nothing. Don’t be shy,’ he’d say. Then I was asked to play with it and to finish him off. It was always so polite—as if I had a choice. For an orphan, there was no choice. It wasn’t long before Mrs. Stewart joined in and told me I was becoming a young man and that I would have to do what Mr. Stewart could no longer do. On further reflection, I’m certain Mr. Stewart never performed that husbandly task on his wife. Not only did I learn to serve at Mrs. Stewart’s pleasure, I became expert in withholding mine. In the meanwhile, we sat in the front-most pews, straight and proud as the minister preached on filth, fornications, and sodomites. It only heightened my adoptive parents’ zeal.
“Then one night after supper we had plums. Plums stewed in brandy and tree sap. The tastes and texture stay with me although I’ve not had that dish since. ‘Eat your fill, Master Robinson,’ Mrs. Stewart said. ‘Eat.’ And Mr. Stewart sang the rhyme, ‘Little Jack Horner sat in the corner. He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘What a good boy am I.’
“I should have known. They’d given me every hint. But I was a boy of thirteen. I went to my room thinking I was off from service that night. I put on my nightshirt and went to bed, but before I could fall into a good sleep, the Stewarts entered my room carrying a lit candle. From his positioning on my bed, it was clear what I was to do. Mind you, I had washed his ass not an hour ago, and now I was to unlock the door and enter him, without an ounce of lard. Just my own spit. I hadn’t done that or had it done to me. Imagine. Thirteen! I was frightened and overcome. Exhilarated and disgusted. Something in me was both broken but had also unbuckled. And while I still serviced Mrs. Stewart, it was with Mr. Stewart that I . . . found myself. The only thing, whilst I fucked him, the merry couple sang ‘Little