*****
Dusty Sunbeams
2003 Angel
*****

Moses had been assigned the task of butchering the runts in the latest litters of pigs.  Daniel was glad of it, as he hated the job.  He didn’t mind slitting the throat of a full-grown pig, but the shoats were different.  Something about his brother, thin, dark and intense, made him better suited for the grim chore.

There would be scrapple for breakfast tomorrow.  But right now, their mother had sent him to find out what was keeping Moses with the meat.

The shoats were hanging by their hocks, bleeding out into a washtub.  Sausage too, as well as scrapple, Daniel thought, looking around for Moses.  He wasn’t at the chopping block, but the barn door was unlatched.

Daniel slipped into the warm barn, the familiar scent of hay and animals almost unnoticed.  There was more dust that usual, sliding down the sunbeams, and that meant someone was in the loft.  He’d finally figured out exactly how his father had known they were shirking chores, even when they’d gotten all the hay off.

An odd noise came from the loft, and Daniel climbed the ladder, slowly, carefully.  Moses was very good looking, and more than once, Daniel had caught him up here kissing a girl.

He’d always told his folks, and Moses and the girls had been punished.  It made him feel petty, yet deeply pleased when Moses would come back from the shed, tears on his face, and be set to memorizing three chapters of the family Bible.  The girl was never the same one twice.

He wondered who it would be this time.  He could definitely hear kissing, but no girlish giggles.  Daniel kept his head down until he was almost at the top of the ladder.  A low male chuckle, not from Moses, made him freeze.

“Come kiss me.”

Now that was Moses.  And he sounded dreamy in the way that he always did when Daniel caught him kissing.

Daniel rose up from the loft ladder like an avenging angel, ready to visit more punishment on his wayward brother.  But what he saw froze him on the top rung.

He watched, feelings in turmoil as the English, Book, swooped in for another kiss, his large body spread atop Moses’s smaller form.    His feelings were in turmoil, but his body knew what he was seeing.  It disturbed him, watching the men rub against each other.  He was jealous.

That brought him up short.  Jealousy.  Of two men being wicked in the hayloft, damning themselves for mere idle pleasure.  He watched them kiss again.  He wasn’t sure which mouth he wanted on his own.  He was damned, too, with the wanting of it.
It was bad luck that Book looked up at the instant.  When he saw Daniel, he made a grab for his clothes.  Realizing how ineffective that would be, he crossed the two yards to the ladder and pulled Daniel the rest of the way into the loft by his shirtfront

“If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you!”    The words were low and urgent.  Daniel knew that “anyone” specifically meant Rachael.

Daniel nodded his silence.  Moses was already getting dressed when he dropped to the blanket beside him and unhooked his brother’s shirt.

He looked sidelong at Book, and then turned to Moses, “Kisses for the girls.  Kisses for an English.  And yet never a kiss for your own brother?”

“Daniel?”  Moses was completely confused.  By now, Daniel should be rousing the whole neighborhood to have him Shunned.  Yet his brother sat waiting for a kiss.  He looked at the hair, golden in the sunlight, and the calm face, with eyes closed and lips barely parted.  Moses brushed the lightest of kisses across Daniel’s mouth.

Daniel opened his eyes and said, “No, kiss me as you kissed Book.”

Moses obliged.  Same and not the same.  His brother’s mouth was warm and pliant.

“And you, Book.  We have tasted each other on her mouth, why not taste me now?”

Book dropped to his knees beside the brothers and kissed Daniel as deeply as he had Moses.   He wasn’t blind.  The curiosity the other Amish had displayed was nothing compared to the interest he’d felt radiating off the Hochleitner brothers.  But this was very unexpected.

“I will tell no one.  But neither will you.  Now come, we have a while before anyone comes looking for us.”

They tumbled together on the blanket in the warm, dusty sunshine.