Country

by Jeff Mann

  Wayne gave Brice a short round of enthusiastic claps. “Thanks! I always thought that was pretty amazingly poetical for a country music song. ‘Girl,’ huh?”

  Brice nodded. “That was one of the first songs where I deliberately…well, wrote it to seem like I was singing a love song to a woman. Yeah.”

  “So what inspired that song?”

  Brice blushed as he closed up the piano. “That last time we went camping up Madam’s Creek, you and me and Thelma.”

  “Oh, yeah. Damn, I haven’t thought about her in years.”

  “She was mighty big on you that summer, as I recall.”

  “Yeah. She cried when I left town for the Marines. I felt pretty shitty about leaving her.”

  “I think she was in love with you. I sure was. Anyway, we grilled hot dogs and drank a lot of cheap wine—Riunite—and it was August and hot and humid, so you—so proud of your body, you bastard—you spend the entire evening with your shirt off, with the flame flickering over your skin. Then you and her went to your tent, and I went to mine, and I could hear y’all, you know, doing it.”

  “Shit, Brice. Sorry.”

  “Well, anyway, the song’s kind of a rewrite of that evening. With just you and me. I guess a lot of what I’ve written and what I’ve pretended to be has been an attempt at rewriting reality.”

  “Honesty sounds a lot simpler to me. But that’s easy for me to say. It’s gotta be so much easier being a straight guy.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Brice said, twisting his mouth up.

  “Okay, look,” said Wayne, swigging down the last of his coffee. “I’d better get back home. I need to call Gail and—”

  The doorbell rang. Both men jolted.

  “Might be my sister,” Brice said. “She said she had some extra work in the office and might bring me down some homemade rolls. Hold on a minute.”

  Brice shuffled to the door. When he opened it, he saw, to his deep distress, two portly strangers standing on the porch, flanked by a third, a tall, thin guy with a bulky camera.

  “Who y’all?” Brice growled.

  “I’m Leon Anderson from Hinton Daily News, Mr. Brown,” said the broader of the men, waving a held-held audio-recorder. “Welcome home. I’d love to interview you for the paper.”

  “And I’m with the Star,” said the other. “I’m Micah Jones, and this is my photographer, Curtis. We’d gotten word you were back in Hinton, and we thought we’d give you the opportunity to tell your side of the story.”

  “I ain’t interested in talking to y’all,” Brice said, torn between the polite manners with which he’d been raised and the bristling annoyance and sick anxiety he felt now that he knew the press had tracked him down.

  “Please, Mr. Brown,” said the Hinton reporter. “Don’t you think local people, your fellow townsfolk, deserve to know the truth about—”

  “What the hell do you all want?” Wayne’s deep voice resounded behind Brice.

  “Well, hello,” said the Star reporter, grinning. “Who are you? Are you Brice’s new lover? Are you two shacking up in there?”

  He stepped aside, then nodded to the photographer behind him and said, “Get this, Curtis. This is great.” Curtis, in response, started clicking his camera with eager rapidity.

  “I think y’all need to get your fat asses off this porch,” Wayne said, nudging Brice aside and barring the door. “You leave my buddy alone, or I’ll tear each of you new buttholes right here and now.”

  “God, he’s ferocious,” said the photographer. Smirking, he trained his camera on Wayne and clicked wildly.

  The Hinton reporter ignored Wayne. “Mr. Brown, it seems to me that you owe your many fans the courtesy of—”

  “Give that here,” Wayne snarled. Snatching the audio-recorder from the man’s hand, he lobbed it over the side of the porch into the snow.

  “Sir! How dare you? I’ll have you know—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Wayne pushed him aside and lunged at the photographer. The Star reporter had just enough time to squeal, “Watch out, Curtis! He’s crazy!” before Wayne had wrenched the camera from the man’s grasp and hurled it off the other side of the porch.

  “Interview’s over,” Wayne said, stomping his foot and brandishing his fists. “Now git!” All three men stumbled back and cringed, as if a mad dog were about to go for their throats.

  Recovering from his frozen surprise, Brice stepped out the door behind Wayne. He squared his shoulders, trying to look intimidating despite his ailing back, the weak link in his show of strength. “You heard the man. I have nothing to say to y’all. Now get off my property.”

  The reporters fled down the steps and into the snow in order to retrieve their devices. “We’ll be back,” the largest one shouted. “You have to live in this town now. You can’t treat us like this! Word’s out that you’re here. There’ll be all sorts of newsmen coming your way.”

  “Fuck off! Get out of here!” Wayne shouted, moving threateningly toward the edge of the porch. “Otherwise, all three of you are going be wearing your balls for earrings.”

  “Crazy faggot!” the photographer said, snatching up his camera and bolting up the sloped sidewalk. Brice and Wayne stood glaring at them till they’d reached their respective vehicles at the top of the park and driven off.

  “Motherfuckers,” Wayne said.

  “You sure showed them. Now get back in here before more of ‘em show up,” Brice said, gripping Wayne’s elbow. “That bastard’s right. You know how fast news spreads in a town this size. Yesterday, between being recognized at Rite Aid, thanks to my damn driver’s license, and then Randy Doyle shouting my name in front of everyone at Kroger’s….”

  Wayne nodded. “It’s a miracle we managed to get down breakfast before they showed up.”

  The two friends stepped back inside and Brice locked the door. “You were my protector yet again, and thanks for that. But you need to get out of here, buddy. You heard them. ‘Are you his new lover?’ As much as I wish you were….”

  “Flatterer. You’re just talking sweet ‘cause you think you can get in my pants,” Wayne said, barking out tension in a raspy laugh.

  “Yep. We homosexuals are a conniving bunch. Seriously, though, you need to head home. If you’re seen with me…we’re just lucky that Hinton reporter didn’t know who you were…then folks’ll be spreading the news that….”

  “That I’m cheating on my wife, and that you and I are fucking. I get it. Yeah, I’d just as soon avoid that. Gail doesn’t need to be dealing with that kinda crap, and, hell, Roy and Myrtle might up and have heart attacks from the sheer shame of it. But shit, Brice. I hate to leave you like this.”

  “Me, too, but it’s for the best. Why don’t you slip out the basement door?” Brice peered out the front windows. “No one’s out there now. Leave before anyone else shows up. Just head out back, up the steps past the woodshed, and around the other side of the fire station.”

  “Shit. Okay. C’mere, friend.”

  Wayne grabbed Brice by the arm and pulled him into a brief bear hug. He stepped back and squeezed his hand. “Thanks for a great time. Please keep in touch, okay? Now I’m real, real worried about you.”

  “Okay. Here’s my number.” Brice scrawled on a notepad lying on the foyer table, tore the page off, and handed it to Wayne. “Call before you leave for North Carolina and give me your phone number and e-mail address. Now get out of here.”

  “I could come down for another visit before I head back to Charlotte. I ain’t leaving till—”

  Brice shook his head decisively. “Nope. Just another chance for reporters to see you and stoke up those flames of scandal they’re so fond of. Sad as I am to say it, you should stay away from me. Now go.”

  “Okay. Listen, take care of yourself, brother. Don’t let yourself get too down. Come down to Charlotte and visit Gail and me. She’d be cool with you, I swear. Just don’t tell her you wrote those songs about me, ‘cause I sure as hell ain’t.”

 
; “Maybe I’ll come visit. Now go.” Brice cracked open the basement stairs. “Just pull the outside door closed behind you and make sure it locks. I don’t want any of those news-rabid morons sneaking into the house.”

  “You bet.” Wayne nodded, gripping Brice’s hand a final time. “Bye, old friend. I’ll be thinking about you.”

  Turning, Wayne clomped down the basement stairs. A few more moments, and Brice heard the outside basement door slam shut.

  Brice pulled the front drapes closed and double-checked the lock on the front door. Then he put another log of wood on the fire, poured himself a big slug of Jameson, took a swallow, wrapped himself in the afghan, and closed his eyes. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before the doorbell would ring again.

  THREE DAYS LATER, ON THE MORNING OF Christmas Eve—three days that Brice had spent brooding, masturbating, over-drinking, over-eating, and shouting reporters off his property— Leigh, looking outraged and muttering obscenities beneath her breath, dropped off the latest issue of the Star on her way to the office. Scanning its cover, Brice discovered, to his profound regret, that tossing a camera off a porch into the snow does not always damage that camera’s ability to preserve images.

  Brice clutched the paper, belly tight with alarm, shaking his head as if that gesture might dismiss this latest wave of hostile reality. The photos of Brice and Wayne featured on the front cover were painfully crisp and clear. Wayne stood in the foreground, fists clenched, face contorted with anger. Brice, looming in the background, looked simply stunned.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Damn, those Star bastards are fast. I’ll bet Wayne never speaks to me again, Brice thought. He retreated to the back parlor, studying the photos, then skimmed anxiously over the short article.

  APPALACHIAN LOVE NEST?

  Brice Brown, disgraced country music singer, has returned to his hometown of Hinton, West Virginia. A local informant tipped off the Star to his whereabouts.

  After the recent revelations in Nashville—his shocking homosexual affair and the tragic end of his marriage—he’s holed up in the house where he grew up, near the Summers County courthouse and overlooking the New River.

  When we attempted to interview him, Brown answered the door looking like a hungover, overweight frat boy (one with a lot of premature gray in his beard) and he refused to speak to us, but then his companion revealed himself, a handsome man of about Brown’s age, who grew very irate and attacked us, uttering vulgarities and making threats. He even snatched our camera and a local reporter’s recorder and threw them into the snow.

  Though Brown’s immediate neighbors, including his sister, a Hinton attorney, refused to speak to us, several locals were more than willing.

  “It’s just so upsetting that he’s come back here,” said Charlotte Deeds. “I went to school with him, and I never imagined that he was the kind of man he was. He had us all fooled.”

  Another former classmate, Theresa Ferguson, said, “This is a God-fearing community. He should leave. And to think I bought his music. He’s a liar and a pervert. He’s betrayed the whole town. The whole nation, for that matter.”

  A third interviewee, Randy Doyle, a part-time pastor, was able to identify Brown’s belligerent companion as Wayne Meador, a construction worker in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a married man.

  “We three used to play football together. The thought of them leering at me when we were all naked in the locker room makes me want to throw up. I always thought there was something weird about them, and now I know what it is. I guess the two of them are old flames. They’re going to hell, that’s for sure.”

  Brown continues to cower inside his Hinton home. Meador could not be reached for comment.

  Brice stood and paced. He picked up his phone, dialed half the digits of Wayne’s home number, then put the phone down. In the kitchen, he toasted a brown-sugar/cinnamon Pop-Tart and ate it, swigging milk from the carton in between bites. He poured out more coffee, resisting the urge to add Irish whiskey to it and coast toward another bout of drunken oblivion. Then he sat down at his computer in the back parlor, and he composed an e-mail message to Wayne.

  Hey, buddy.

  Thanks for leaving your contact information on my phone. I’m sorry I missed your call. To be honest, I was passed out. I’m drinking too much, and I’m taking too many pills, and I know it. But I’m just so fucking miserable that it’s a relief to be shit-faced or unconscious.

  Your visit meant so much to me. I’m so glad and grateful that you didn’t mind that I told you what I did (from what I can remember…man, I was drunk!). But now I’m guessing that you don’t want anything to do with me at all. That article in the Star, they said you couldn’t be reached for comment. They’re all liars, so who knows if you know about this yet, or if they did even call you.

  But, so, look, in case you don’t know, the latest issue of the Star—which just came out this morning, from what I can tell—there’s a picture of the two of us on the cover. That dildo photographer’s camera wasn’t broken, man! You should have thrown it harder! That prick Randy Doyle identifies you in the article as the guy who cussed them out so well on my porch.

  You probably know all this, and it might be that asshole reporters are harassing you now too—about eight sets of them have come by here since I saw you last, and I’ve taken my lead from you and tried to scare them half to death, and, as big as I am, I’ve had pretty good success—but if they are hounding you, it could be that you’re cursing my name and regretting ever being kind enough to come check on me, big old mess that I’ve become. So now you definitely need to stay away from me. I suspect your wife, if she knows about this, has already told you that.

  If you come back to Hinton, buddy, for God’s sake, don’t come down here. There’s no reason that all the dumb mistakes I’ve made should mess up your life, or your wife’s (lucky lady that she is). I know your tendency is to say to everybody, “Fuck you! I’ll do what I please, and I’ll hang out with who I please!” but don’t do that, okay? You’ve stood up for me and you’ve been brave and you’ve protected me again and again, and you mean so much to me, so now it’s my turn to try and protect you. And that means, dammit, that as much as I hate this…I need to tell you to stay away from me. Okay? Please tell Gail that I’m so, so sorry. All this just makes me sick. Stay away, okay? I really care about you, and you’ve been mighty kind to me, and I want what’s best for you. I love you, man. I love you, but stay away.

  Big Hugs,

  Your Buddy,

  Brice

  Brice sat there for a few minutes gauging the connotations of every word before he hit SEND. Then he pulled aside a curtain in the front parlor. Seeing no reporters lurking outside, he hurriedly bundled up, grabbed his grocery list, and headed out to his truck for a drive to Beaver, one county over in Raleigh, where, with luck, he might not be recognized.

  BRICE WAS JUST BEGINNING TO unpack his haul of groceries and liquor when he heard a knock on the door, then heard the door opening. Before he could tense up with defense, he heard the welcome sound of his sister’s voice.

  “Hey, Brice. It’s just me. I brought you some Christmas cheer.”

  “Hey! Come on in.”

  Leigh entered the kitchen with a big box. She put it on the kitchen table before brushing white flurry-dust off her coat and removing it. “I locked the door behind me. There was another batch of reporters coming down the walk, including that dullard Leon Anderson from the Hinton Daily News. What a horse’s ass he is. I gave them all a sharp piece of my mind and threatened them with a harassment suit, so they scurried off. Where you been?”

  “Didn’t want to go to the Hinton Kroger’s and be pestered, so I drove up Beech Run to Raleigh County to get liquor and groceries. I was lucky for once. I managed to load up and get home without running into any disgruntled ex-fans or pushy journalists.”

  “You’re in a mess, all right,” Leigh said. “Let me help you put this stuff up. I have a few minutes before I head up the road to Forest Hil
l.”

  “Thanks,” said Brice, lugging big bottles of bourbon to the liquor cabinet. “Stay as long as you can. Be good to have some company.”

  “Other than Wayne Meador?”

  “Yeah.” Brice groaned. “I sent him an apology this morning on e-mail and told him to stay away from me.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. Jerry’s been saying even more obnoxious things about you at home. He and Carden had an argument about you this morning.”

  “An argument that ended with, ‘Don’t you sass me, boy!’ right?”

  “Pretty much,” Leigh said, putting cheese and beer into the fridge. “Last week—I’ve been putting off telling you this—Carden even got into a fist fight with a kid at school who called you a faggot.”

  “Great. Now my ten-year-old nephew is defending my name.”

  “He wanted to come down here today to see you—he’s off school this week—but Jerry wouldn’t have it. Thus this morning’s argument. But he sent you a present anyway. Here you go.” Leigh handed Brice a festively wrapped package.

  “Can I open it now?”

  “You can do anything you want to. It’s not like you have a Christmas tree to put it under. I thought about getting you a little one to go with those wreaths I hung upstairs, but….”

  “But I ain’t much in the mood for Christmas decorating, as you might imagine, with dildos from the Star and People and the Globe out on the lawn. Let’s see here.”

  Brice ripped off the wrapping paper. “Oh, great! X-Men Mutant Empire 3. Fun!”

  “You and Carden share several enthusiasms. It’s odd how much he’s like you, considering how little time you’ve spent together. So, see? You didn’t need to get married and have a son. I had a little Brice for you.”

  “He sounds a lot braver than me, actually. Standing up for his pore ole queer—”

  Footsteps thumped on the porch. Brice stiffened.

  “Just the mailman,” Leigh said, looking down the hall. “Relax.”

  “Good. Afraid it was more pestiferous gossip-rag types. So what you got in that box?” Brice said, rubbing his hands in an exaggerated show of excited expectation. “Christmas cheer, eh?”