Dearest Milton James by N.R. Walker

Chapter Fourteen

“Morning!”I said brightly as I entered the breakroom. Paul and Theo were at their usual table, Paul with his newspaper and Theo talking to him regardless. Denise was at the kitchenette making herself a cuppa, and Cherry was sitting at her table reading something on her phone.

They all replied good morning in some variation. I quickly made my coffee and joined Denise and Cherry. “So,” I began, “if I needed to try and find the class records of a high school in the 60s or 70s, how would I go about doing that? Social media groups for that school aren’t public, and I found nothing on any of the three dozen websites that have school photos from the olden days.”

“The olden days?” Paul asked. “You’d probably need to contact the National Historical Society for any photos from the 1870s.”

I turned around to face their table. He and Theo were both staring at me. I hadn’t intended for this to be a whole squad conversation but it was too late.

“Uh, I meant the 1960s and 1970s,” I explained.

Paul blinked. “The 70s are the olden days?”

Oh fuck.

“I drove a Ford Charger in the 70s, not a horse and carriage, son.”

“I didn’t mean . . .” I shrugged. “Well actually, I did mean the olden days because . . .”

Paul raised one serial-killer eyebrow.

“You know what?” I quickly changed tack. “I’m good. I’ll find it, I’m sure.”

“You could try calling the school. They keep old yearbooks forever,” Theo suggested. “Or the local library might have copies. If it were me, I’d call the closest library and just explain what you’re after. Librarians love info retrieval missions. It’s like adding a Zelda side-quest to their day. Seriously, call them.”

I smiled at the Zelda comment.

“That’s a good idea, thanks.”

“Is this for your secret squirrel stuff?” Paul asked. He seemed to have gotten over the olden day reference.

“Ah, yes.”

“I love secret squirrel stuff,” Denise said, excited. “What’s it about?”

“Well, I can’t tell you that,” I replied. “Then it wouldn’t be secret squirrel stuff.”

“He’s looking into the Milton James letters for me,” Julian replied from the doorway. His deep voice both excited and soothed me.

I spun to see him smiling at me. He was wearing brown again, though this time there was a dark umber knitted vest, no tie, his shirt sleeves rolled just once.

It might have been a contender for the sexiest school-teacher outfit, if there were awards for such things. Which there totally should be, because he would win. Was he a teacher? No. Did he look like one? Yes. Did I want afternoon detention with him? Hell yes. I would even argue that maybe he could bring back the cane just so he’d spank me . . .

I hadn’t realised everyone was now looking at me, because I was still staring at Julian.

Did he just . . . did he just tell them what I was working on?

He walked in, giving me a smile as he went past on his way to make himself a coffee. “I decided we should try finding the sender or the recipient of the Milton James letters, and I asked Malachi to do it.”

Everyone’s eyes went from Julian back to me, but Julian continued to explain. “I asked him not to tell anyone, so don’t blame him. I just felt, given the sensitive nature of the letters, that privacy would be best. It wasn’t anything against anyone else here. I just wanted to respect their . . . secret.”

“They’re gay?” Paul asked. “Because you know we don’t care about none of that.”

Julian’s cheeks tinged pink and he glanced at me before he focused on Paul. “I know that, thank you.” He cleared his throat. “I just . . . I just assumed Malachi and I would be best suited to assess them.”

I held my fist up. “Gay Avengers unite.”

Denise cleared her throat. “Uh, excuse me. What am I? I’m totally a gay Avenger. I might look more like Thor, but can I please be Black Widow? She’s smoking hot.”

Cherry waved. “I’m an honorary gay Avenger, considering I helped already. I’ll be Scarlett Witch for this exercise.”

“Ooh,” Theo said, standing up. “I’ll be Magneto.”

“He’s X-Men,” I said.

“That’s okay,” Julian said gently. “Magneto’s fine.”

This was getting bizarre, but we all looked at Paul, waiting for him to pick an Avenger. He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be . . .”

If he says Thanos . . .

“Thanos.”

I fucking knew it.

“Of course,” I replied. “Good choice.”

It was not a good choice. It was the worst choice.

“So now we’re all honorary gay Avengers,” Theo said. “Can we help?”

“What about Glenda?” Denise said. Everyone turned to look at the shrine of the dead woman, ex-employee, on the wall. “Pretty sure she’d have liked to be an Avenger.”

I tried to think if there were any accordion-playing, cat-loving Avengers. I couldn’t think of any . . .

Paul and Cherry answered at the same time. “Groot.”

Theo said, “Storm!”

I was going to have to give him a rundown on the differences between X-Men and Marvel.

“I think Groot is fair,” Julian said, giving me a smile.

Jesus. So Glenda was a cat-loving, accordion-playing octogenarian woman who could speak just three words. “I wish I’d have met her,” I said because, honestly, she sounded awesome.

“Who are you going to be?” Theo asked me.

Oh. Me . . .  “Um—”

“Loki,” Cherry, Paul, and Denise all answered in unison.

I was stunned and affronted, but mostly proud. Julian smiled at me. “And what about you?” I asked him. “Which Avenger are you?”

He tilted his head to think. “I’m not sure.”

“Steve Rogers,” Paul answered.

“Peter Parker,” Denise offered.

Cherry studied him for a second. “Tony Stark.”

“Wolverine!” Theo yelled proudly. We all ignored him.

Julian nodded slowly. “It is duly noted that I’m the boring human counterpart of the Avenger heroes and not their superhero persona.” He sipped his coffee. “I can accept that.”

I laughed. “Well, I have a list of notes I’ve taken from the letters, if anyone’s interested in helping. The only thing I’ve found are dead ends.” I took my list from my pocket. “I have school information.”

“For the olden days,” Paul deadpanned.

I nodded and smiled at him. “Correct. So maybe school records or a local library might help, as Theo said.”

“Me!” Theo yelled so loud poor Denise almost dropped her coffee. “I can do that.”

“Okay, thanks,” I replied. “And I have a possible military lead, if we can access some dates for Duntroon.”

Denise and Theo both pointed to Paul, and Paul gave a shrug. “I have connections.”

I honestly should have guessed that.

“What about me?” Denise asked. “I’m not just the forklift driver. I can look for stuff.”

I handed her the list. “Take a pick.”

She read through it and gave a nod. “I’ll have a think.”

“Excellent.” This was actually exciting. I didn’t even mind handing tasks off if it meant we would have an answer sooner. “I’ve tried searching at home, just with Google, but it wasn’t much help.”

Paul and Theo took my notes to their desks to start whatever it was they were going to do, and then the back loading dock buzzer went off. “Well, that’s me,” Denise said, disappearing out the door.

Cherry made herself another coffee and gave me and Julian a nod as she zipped out the door, and that left just Julian and me.

“Sorry if you didn’t want me to tell them,” he said gently. “I just hated that you might have to had lied.”

“No apologies necessary. I’m happy they know. Now they can do all the searching and I can get my carts unloaded quicker. Then I’ll help them do theirs. Plus, they’re so much better at finding information than me.”

“I think you’re doing pretty great,” he murmured. “You have a success rate similar to everyone else at putting the mail back into circulation.”

I stood up and washed my coffee cup. “Thank you.”

He came to stand beside me, washing his cup as I dried mine. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“Hell yes, we are,” I answered. “Oh, and as for which Avenger you are. You are one hundred per cent the Hulk.”

He met my eyes. “The Hulk?”

“Yep. I’ve seen you naked. Definitely been some gamma radiation happening there. It makes everything really big, if you know what I mean.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, I get it. And I probably should thank you for not saying that in front of the others.”

I grinned. “You’re welcome. Anyway, I better get to work before I get Hulk-smashed.” Then I stopped. “Actually, getting Hulk-smashed by your huge—”

“Okay, thanks, Malachi. There will be no smashing.”

I gave him a wink. “Not until after dinner, anyway.”

He was still smiling as I walked out.

* * *

I would never beone to toot my own horn . . .  Who am I kidding? I talk myself up all the time. But I kicked arse at work. I ran cages, I filed letters, parcels, boxes, crates, and canisters. I did my own, then put a dent in everyone else’s workload because they were helping me.

I saw Paul on the phone a few times, writing down notes, clicking away at his keyboard. Theo was the same, and I was certain I heard him on the phone flirting with a librarian in Milldale.

I was a little proud.

Denise had a skip in her step and told me she’d put in a few calls. Cherry smiled at me every time she saw me, which, for a goth girl, was like winning the lottery.

There was a definite vibe in the air. Like a buzz that we were all on the same mission.

Like a team.

By the end of the day, though, it was only Paul who had something back for his efforts.

“Malachi,” he said, calling me over, holding up a notepad. “This is all I could get. Between my contact and public records, I have four names. There were six, but two signed up voluntarily so I excluded them. These four men were registered in the army from the local Milldale shire after the conscription. Aged between eighteen and twenty, all went to Duntroon. I searched through the Vietnam War records of Australian involvement and found this guy, Peter Digby, was involved in a battle on the Laos border, so if you say your guy never left the country, I think we can put a line through him. This guy, Steven Harrell.” He pointed to his list. “His entire record is basically redacted.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well,” Paul said thoughtfully. “My guess is he did a lot of shit the government doesn’t want anyone to know about. Covert ops, retrievals, murders. That kind of thing. There were a lot of covert ops during the war, a lot of under-the-table deals that the public doesn’t know about.”

I didn’t want to know how he knew this kind of stuff. “Nice.”

Paul didn’t seem fazed at all. “Anyhoo, that means he very likely saw action overseas, so we can cross him out. So that leaves these two. Michael Flannagan and Errol Hunt.” He ripped out the piece of paper and handed it to me.

I had two names.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

Paul shrugged but I could tell he was kinda proud. “It’s not exact, and there’s always room for error. But by process of elimination, I narrowed it down for ya. It’s a place to start, anyway.”

I nodded. “It is. Thank you.”

Julian came out of his office and I held up the list to show him. “We have two names for the guy who went to Duntroon. He could be one of these two. Paul narrowed it down. Now I just need to search up Michael and Errol to see if they returned to the Milldale area. This could be a real possible lead.”

“That’s awesome,” Julian said, but I could tell by his tone that he wanted to say something but not in front of the others. I could ask him about it later because this sexy man was making me dinner tonight, amongst other things he was going to do for me. Or to me, to be specific.

I checked my watch. “Shoot. It’s almost five.”

“You in a rush today?” Paul asked. “You’ve been running around like a blue-arsed fly all day.”

“Can’t miss the bus,” I said, folding the piece of paper and slipping it into my pocket.

“Ooh, got a hot date?” Paul went on. He very obviously meant it as a joke, and there was no way he could have known about me and Julian. He was just being himself and saying cringy things.

But I decided to play along. “I have a scorching hot date tonight.” I deliberately didn’t make eye contact with Julian. “I have a lot to do before he picks me up for dinner, so I can’t be late.” I could have explained the douching process but doubted Paul or Theo would enjoy the details. I went to my computer and turned it off, beginning to pack up my desk.

“I got Susan’s phone number,” Theo announced, standing up proudly. “The librarian at Milldale.”

I stood up so I could see him over the cubicle wall. “You did?”

He looked so proud he could burst. He held up a slip of paper. “Yep. We got talking and she was nice, so I asked her for her number and she got all giggly and gave it to me.”

Well, I’ll be damned. “Look at you go!”

He grinned, his cheeks pink. “She likes sudoku and making papier- mâché.”

Well, that was random as hell, but okay. “Awesome.”

“She’s going to look through all the yearbooks for anyone called Raymond and call me back.” He was so happy, I wanted to squish his chubby cheeks.

“Oh hey, you’re all here. Got some info for ya’s,” Denise said, walking out one of the aisles. She had her phone pressed to her ear. “Okay, Doll . . . you’re a national treasure . . . yes, I’m sure. See you then,” she said into the phone, then disconnected the call. She looked at me, then Julian. “If you wanna know anything about gay history in this city, you ask the elders, right? So I called old Dolly. She’s been on the lesbian scene forever. She’d have to be seventy by now. Can still knock a smartarse off a barstool though, but that’s a different story for another time. Anyway, I called her and asked her if she’s heard the name Milton James. It was a long shot, but it had to mean something, right?”

This was taking forever and I had a bus to catch. “And?”

Denise obviously liked to tell stories. “So the gay scene in the late sixties and early seventies was mostly underground because cops would raid clubs and arrest anyone who even looked remotely gay, right?”

God.

Julian nodded. “Right.”

“So there was a community radio station back then on some random AM frequency that was run out of a room above a pub on Oxford Street. They’d announce all kinds of stuff, most of it in code so the cops wouldn’t be able to figure it out, like decoy addresses for parties, that kind of thing.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to prompt her along.

“And there was a segment on the radio one night a week called Dearest Milton James.”

I felt the blood run from my face.

I shot Julian a look. “Dearest Milton James.”

He looked as stunned as me. He turned, wide-eyed, back to Denise. “What else did she say?”

“It was like a talkback program, but you could write in. He’d answer any questions about sex or dating. He’d also read erotic poetry. Or whatever people wrote in, he’d read on-air. They had a postbox, but it only lasted a year until the cops waited for someone to collect the mail and that put an end to it.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered.

Denise nodded. “Dolly might be old, but she’s as sharp as they come. She never forgets a thing. She knows every single thing that went on back then.”

“He was writing to a radio show,” I mumbled, sitting down at my desk. “They must have listened to the show. Well, Raymond definitely did but I wonder if they listened together. Maybe they drove out to the river and listened in the car? I don’t know. But Raymond wanted the radio guy to read the letters on-air, but they never made it.”

Paul tapped his watch. “You’ll miss your bus.”

“There’ll be another one,” I whispered. Why did this hurt so much? Why did finding out this information make me feel terrible. “Dearest Milton James was a radio segment for gay people so they could communicate and share stories.”

Denise came over and put her hand on my shoulder, giving me a bit of a shake. “It’s a good thing. Folks back then found ways around the laws to make themselves a community. Just shows how resilient they were back then. How they would always rise above it.”

I nodded. When she put it like that . . .  “I suppose.”

“You ready, Malachi?” Cherry had collected her bag and she glanced at the clock. “I’ll walk to the bus with you.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Thank you, everyone, for helping. You guys are the best. I never would have found this stuff out on my own.”

Everyone acted like it was no big deal, even if it was, and they began packing up as I walked to the door with Cherry. Except for Julian, who was watching me, clearly wanting to speak with me, probably ask why I was catching the bus but not sure how to without being obvious.

I took my phone out of my pocket and shot him a quick message as I got to the door.

Six thirty. Don’t be late.

I held the door open for Cherry and turned back to see Julian smiling at his phone.