TheOnce Future King
Part One: The Boyhood

Chapter Two:
Life on the Ranch

--

Greg walked around the fenced pasture looking at all the different horses. After several trips around the fence, he finally picked his horse out. It was a rich dark brown horse with a black tail and just a white star in the middle of his breast. The horse was magnificent.

She paid the man with cash and instructed him to hold on to the horse for a few days as she smoothed things over with the husband. The horse dealer didn't argue with her and the transaction was completed.

To this date, this was the first real gift that Greg had received and he was sure it was going to be the last in quite a while, so he cherished the gift dearly.

--

When Greg was seven he was still being home schooled by Jillian. There were two reasons for this Greg reckoned. Jillian couldn't stand for him to be taught by the teacher she called that 'old hag,' and she knew that Greg would have never gotten out of that attic room of his if he had to spend all day at that dreaded institution of a public school. She hated it deeply, but that was the way it had to be.

Her lessons were long and tough, for she wouldn't have his education slacking on the account of her teaching him. It was a Tuesday morning and Jillian had given him a rare day off. However rare they were, though, this wasn't the first time he had been given the run of the plantation. Jillian was very strict and threatened severe punishments for wandering off the property. Greg never understood this, but he complied nonetheless because he hated the attic and loved it outside.

Walking around, Jillian having just pulled out of the drive, he puckered his lips and whistled loudly calling his horse to him. "There you are boy," his eyes glistened with gleeful happiness as his horse Hope slowed from the gallop to a slow walking stride. In the barn, the horse followed him as he walked to the back closet to find his riding tack. In the working area of the barn, his horse stood perfectly still and docile as Greg worked Hope over with the curry and the dandy brushes.

To anyone looking in from the outside, it would appear that Greg was the perfect little boy. He was well mannered and very open about everything. The truth though, was much graver than that. No one knew that outside of Jillian, his glossy-brown stallion he called Hope was the only other life he loved. The sad truth was that Greg never was close to this family. For the most part, he was the invisible child and Bill kept it like that. It was against Jillian's wishes for sure, but she never questioned him on it. He was closest to Jillian who had grown very fond of him. In fact, she truly thought of him as her own son. If he were to ever have a mom, it would have been her. He called her mom once, and she smiled, so he called her that a few more times and accidentally made the mistake of calling her by that term in Bill's presence and was spanked pretty hard for it. So he continued to call her Jillian.

He wasn't very close with any of the boys since most of them went to the most expensive prep schools in the state, and lived in the dormitories on the campuses. Greg had hardly met any of them except during the long hot summer months, and the holiday season. Normally, he was locked up in the attic, while they were downstairs enjoying the time off. Oftentimes, he would watch them from the window in the attic, as they wrestled and laughed and talked about girls. They even poked fun at the youngest for not having one. If there were a child of the Stokes that Greg felt closer to than the rest, it was Nicholas.

On that day, Jillian's car returned to the drive with two bodies in it. On Jillian's the other was Nick. Greg's eyes widened, as his heart beat faster watching Nick slide out of the vehicle. He wasn't supposed to see him like that. He wasn't supposed to see him in a glowing radiance of shimmering gold and silver sparkling lights dancing around him. He wasn't supposed to see his saddened eyes that swallowed him up into the depth of the soul. He wasn't supposed to see Bill Stokes's children at all, and especially not that way.

He watched with curiosity as Nick walked over towards him with that saddened expression melting away. Nick was by far Bill's favorite son. He was the youngest, the most ambitious, the most athletic, and everything Bill Stokes considered good qualities to have in life. Greg thought Bill put too much pressure on the young child. However, anything that Greg thought, he kept it silent, and he was of course the invisible child and as long as things stayed that way life was livable.

Those brown eyes were saddened, nowhere near cheered up by Jillian's fetal attempts to do so. His head was down as he walked towards Greg, who really didn't know too much of the boy. He puckered his lips and whistled quite loudly for the white Mare he called Jasper. She came to him in a hasty gallop and slowed to a stop within his arms reach. He too saddled up his horse and joined Greg who had already mounted.

"Follow me," recommended Nick spurring his horse to a gallop. Greg quickly followed him down the path to the cotton fields. Bill continuously threatened them for running their horses through the crop of cotton, but on this day that was the last thing that crossed their minds. They galloped through the rows of the knee-high cotton now in bloom.

They ran to the thicket of trees that just beyond was a small water hole full of minnows and crawdads. They took two sticks and some hooks and string Nick had brought and tied them all together and fished for a bit. The natural sounds surrounding them were a comfort, especially for Nick.

--

Nick had had it. The pressure of his life had become too much. Being his dad's favorite son had certainly worn him thin. For months now, it had become too much, as he continuously failed in everything his dad had arranged for him. He was given the best schooling, the best athletic coaches; the best of care money could buy. Most of all, Nick was tired of daddy-dearest planning out everything for him.

The worst thing about it was that Bill had Nick's life planned out. There was nothing he could do about it, not a damn thing. He was to go to the finest private and prep schools. He would go then to the best university at the school of Texas Agriculture and Mathematics down in College Station. It was an honorable school, and nothing less than the best would have suited his son. It was also planned for him to study criminal justice and for him to go into law enforcement with the rest of the family.

There was a hopeless feeling knowing there was little to nothing Nick could do about his father's wishes for him. He oftentimes expressed his frustrations through other means. Getting expelled from the fancy prep school was only the latest episode in his rebellion against the overly controlling and rather stern man that was his father. It wasn't the first time he had been kicked out of a prep school. This was actually the third prep school he was booted from.

Being with Greg was probably the best days he could remember. They never had much time to spend together, when dearest dad was home he was locked either in his room, down eating dinner with them or out in the field with the servants working. Though Greg was treated as a servant or in Nick's opinion he wasn't treated any better than a slave working for a fruitless labor. Though his dearest dad viewed Greg as a servant, he never did let him do the every day housework. Dad would have never allowed the boy to go rummaging through their personal affects. This never made sense to Nick, though there was little he could do about it.

To Nick, Greg seemed rather fascinating and he enjoyed spending his rarely found free time with him. He always would tell some outlandish story brewed up from his wildly overactive and very vivid imagination. However, it didn't matter to Nick. He knew all the stories were hogwash, but he still enjoyed hearing them.

It might have been because his dad made him out to be some servant kid. It might have been that Nick never spent much time with him. Whatever the reason behind the strange occurrence, Nick never really thought about him as a brother. Instead, Greg was more like a friend to him, a very good very loyal, very funny friend. Now, they had lived together since Greg was one and Nick three, but Nick never thought of the boy as a brother. In fact, Bill wouldn't allow him to think of Greg in such ways.

Nick couldn't explain it, but he seemed more attracted to Greg than even friends are concerned. He never voiced this, of course, his dad with his pride and controlling ways would have beaten him if he ever made a comment like that. After what he had said to the queer folk down in Houston a few summers back, he realized then that there must be something wrong with them. Maybe it was unnatural to show affection towards a person of the same gender. But, if something was so wrong, how could it feel so right? When Nick saw Greg, sitting on the banks of the pond, dipping that hook repeatedly into the water, there was some spark of interest there. Something inside his body was changing as puberty was starting to hit him. According to his father's actions, he was afraid those changes were unnatural. This all added up to him as nothing more than one gigantic failure.

None of that mattered on this day, Nick and Greg were down by the watering hole fishing digging up crawdads making bear traps and climbing trees. There wasn't a gigglier group if you could find them. They rode around challenging each other to races and Greg won quite easily. There far up into the fields they ran through the dirt as the sun began to sink low into the sky.

"We best put the horses away before you get into trouble," said Nick. If there was one thing Nick hated more than anything else, it was how dad treated Greg. He never treated him bad, or beat him silly or anything like that as far as he could tell. It was more of a passive neglect. He wasn't permitted to the same privileges Nick was. He questioned him on it once, and he was promptly sent to bed without dinner. If it weren't for mom sneaking food up late after dad had turned in for the night, he would have gone to bed hungry that night.

To Be Continued...