Country

by Jeff Mann

  “Mr. Brown, that’s just awful. You want to spend some time in our Forest Hill house? My parents will be gone until the spring. They’d probably appreciate having someone watch the place once I go back to school.”

  “That’s kind of you to offer, but anywhere still in Summers County—”

  Travis’s green eyes widened. “Oh, hell! Wait! I know!”

  “What?”

  “You need to meet Mr. Philip!”

  Brice grinned. The boy was so excited he was practically doing a jig. “Mr. Philip?”

  “Yeah! He’s a graduate of WVU. He visits campus sometimes and comes to the student group meetings and takes us all out for dinners and down to the bar and always pays the tab. He’s not trying to pick anybody up, he’s just real generous and real rich. A philanthropist. He’s donated lots of money to the group. He owns a kind of compound up in Randolph County, near Pickens and Helvetia. He even hosted a gay college-student conference last summer at his place. It’s a bunch of cabins and a lodge. Used to be a guesthouse, I think. Real nice. Maybe he’d put you up for a while.”

  “For free? A stranger? I don’t think so.”

  “But that’s just it! You’re not really a stranger. Not exactly. Mr. Philip attended our last meeting of the semester, back in early December, right after you’d been outed by that asshole Zac guy, and we were all talking about how much we loved your music, and how disgusted we were that the press was treating you the way it was. Mr. Philip was the one who suggested that we write you letters and that we sign that card I gave you earlier tonight. I was going to mail the card to your manager’s office too, but then I heard that you’d moved back to Hinton, so I decided to try to give you the card myself when I came home for Christmas.”

  “I’m damned glad you gave it to me personally. Otherwise, I would have burnt it.” Brice rolled his eyes. “Who knows how many supportive letters I destroyed? Stupid, stupid.”

  Travis snatched the card up off the coffee table and opened it. “Look here! Philip Rogers. He signed it himself. He’s a huge fan of yours! I’ll bet he’d love for you to visit for a while. The place is out in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere. No one would bother you there. He has a little staff to keep things up for him. A cook and a handyman. I think you’d love the place!”

  “Maybe, kid. I gotta admit that your enthusiasm is infectious, but—”

  “You should try it! Mr. Philip could maybe help you get back on your feet. Restart your career! At least give you some breathing space where you won’t be harassed by the ingrates and Bible-thumpers around here.”

  “Restart my career?” Brice gave a grim laugh. “That sounds too good to be true. It’s hard to keep hoping that things could turn around. I’m afraid the rest of my life is going to be a long, slow, dark slide into—”

  “You’ve got to hope!” To Brice’s surprise, Travis seized his hand and squeezed it hard. “How can you not have hope? You’re so talented! You’re so handsome! You’re Brice Brown! People know your name all over the country, even if lots of them have turned on you. Why, if I could write the songs you have…. I saw you in concert in Morgantown! And in Roanoke! You were amazing. And your music saved my life when Mike dumped me. You’ve got to hope! You’ve got to try!”

  Brice laughed out loud. “Okay, okay. Calm down, kid. What’s your e-mail address?”

  Travis bent to the coffee table, grabbed up Brice’s pen, and scribbled on the back of the red envelope. “There you go.”

  “Good. I’ll drop you a line here in a day or so. Then you can give me this guy’s contact information, and maybe I’ll drop him a line too. All right?”

  “You bet! You won’t regret it!” Travis bounded into the foyer and pulled on his coat. Brice followed, missing the boy’s energy already.

  “Would you come back sometime?” Brice asked, handing Travis his ball cap. “We don’t have to wait till Spring Break. I’ve really enjoyed your company.”

  “Sure. I’d really like that. I’m heading back up to Morgantown in another week or so, but I’ll be around till then.”

  “Okay. Sounds good. Come back for another dinner.”

  “You bet!” Travis adjusted the cap on his shaggy head. He looked Brice up and down, and then he stepped forward and gave him a hard, quick hug. “You’re great! Good night!” With that, the boy threw open the door and loped out into the darkness.

  Brice locked the door. Outside, the flurries had ceased. In the kitchen, he poured himself another glass of Irish whiskey. He stretched out on the couch, watched the dying fire, and took a long sip.

  “Hope,” he muttered.

  “To the young,” he muttered.

  Brice gulped the rest of his glass, rolled onto his side, dragged the afghan down on top of him, slipped a throw pillow beneath his head, and fell asleep.

  A FEW MILES NORTH OF PICKENS, BRICE PULLED his truck into the gravel lot beside a roadside general store and stepped out, belly rumbling and lower back smarting. The store’s proprietors, he hoped, could tell him how to get to Mr. Philip’s, a place seemingly as legendary and difficult to find as Brigadoon. He’d been driving up and down Randolph County roads for an hour now, but the directions Mr. Philip had e-mailed him were more poetic than specific, full of references to natural landmarks like tulip poplars, sway-back ridge-tops, roofless red barns, and silos painted with hex signs.

  Brice looked around the high valley, savoring the quiet and remoteness despite his frustrations at feeling lost. It was the second of February. Fog made the pastures blurry, and the afternoon air was very cold. About the store, huge white oaks loomed, a few dead leaves clinging to their branches. To the back of the property, behind a rail fence, three shaggy ponies grazed. Across the road, a willow-skirted stream rushed, high and restless with winter rains. A red sign at the edge of the parking lot pointed to the rear of the store, announcing “This Way to Good Food.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” Brunt grunted. He pulled his guitar case out of the extended cab, unwilling to leave his old Yamaha to suffer from the cold, then slammed the truck door and crunched over gravel toward the building. When he opened the back door, welcome warmth poured over him, and the scents of spicy meat and baking bread. The walls were lined with shelves full of wines and gourmet items in jars: relishes, pickles, olives, jams.

  “Nice,” he mumbled, moving up to the counter. A sign on the wall, “Sandwich Special Today: Pulled Pork BBQ,” made him briefly, intensely happy.

  “Howdy,” he said to the emptiness, peering at a door to the right that seemed to be the entrance to the kitchen. “Anyone here? Y’all open?”

  Beyond that door sounded a rustling and then a voice. “We sure are. Welcome!”

  A woman in her mid-forties appeared around the corner, rubbing her hands with a towel. She was solidly built and handsome, around five foot nine, with high cheekbones, her dark hair cut very short and graying at the temples. She wore black patent leather shoes, the shiny kind a cop might wear on duty, plus jeans, a white shirt, and a skinny black tie, the sort popular with men in the 1960’s.

  “Well, hey,” Brice said, staring. For a split-second, he was taken aback by her masculine appearance. Whoa. Not a lot of women in West Virginia dress like that. I do believe she’s a ferocious bull-dagger. But then he grinned, remembering butch lesbians he used to get shit-faced with in the gay bars of Morgantown back in his university days. Maybe I’ll fit right in here. I don’t think she’s as likely as some to throw me out into the fog if she figures out who I am.

  “Welcome to Radclyffe’s Roost. You hungry?”

  “I sure am.” Brice had only stopped for gas during the lengthy drive from Hinton, afraid that he might be recognized and reviled if he stopped at any fast-food spots for lunch. “Starving. And I love barbecue. How about one of those sandwiches and a cup of coffee?”

  “Coming right up.” The woman might have been intimidating-looking but she had a friendly smile. “You want slaw on the sandwich?”

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p; “Oh, yes.” Brice deposited his guitar case in a corner and rubbed his still-chilled hands together. “Please.”

  “Potato salad or fries?”

  “Umm. I’m plump enough.” Brice perused the menu pasted to the top of the counter. Long gone, the days I’d have to fucking diet for months to get lean for my latest album cover shots, but, hell, I can hardly get into any of my jeans after all that holiday eating. “Could I have a side of the brown beans and chow-chow instead?”

  “Sure.” The woman poured out a big mug of coffee and handed it to Brice. “I’ve never seen you here before. What are you doing in our isolated little valley on such a cold and gloomy day?”

  “Glad you asked, ‘cause I was about to ask you for directions. The smell of your barbecue kinda distracted me. Do you know how to get to Mr. Philip’s? Philip Rogers?”

  The friendliness on the woman’s face faded. Suspicion replaced it. She looked Brice up and down. “Why do you ask?”

  “Uh, well, someone I met back in my hometown said that I should meet him. Mr. Philip and I, we corresponded, and he’s asked me to visit him for a while.”

  The woman’s mouth pursed. “I find that highly unlikely.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t look like his kind of people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you look a little rough, to be honest. You look like you could be…hostile.” The woman gestured vaguely to Brice’s Stars and Bars cap. “Mr. Philip’s is a safe place, and it needs to stay safe.”

  She doesn’t know I’m gay. She thinks I’m some dangerous redneck. She’s trying to protect him. Shit. Well, here goes. From the look of her, seems like honesty’s the best thing here.

  “Look, I need his help. Please? I really need to find his place. Look, what’s your name?”

  The woman folded her arms across her chest. “Grace Simmons.”

  “Well, hey, Miss Grace.” Brice offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Brice Brown.”

  Her face shifted yet again. She looked him up and down once more, as if trying to reinterpret a difficult mathematical formula or an opaque, experimental sonnet. “Brice Brown?”

  “Yeah. The country singer? I’ve been in the news recently?”

  That look of recognition Brice had seen so many times before—for years combined with adoration, more recently amalgamated with hate—flickered across her face.

  “Well, shit!” Again came the friendly smile, this time broader.

  “Welcome!” She reached across the counter and gave him a handshake so strong he winced. “I thought you were some nasty bubba who’d got wind of Mr. Philip’s Rump-Ranger Ranch, as we call it, and wanted to bust up the place.”

  “I look like a bubba?”

  “Haven’t you checked out a mirror lately? You sure do. A big mean one. With those shoulders, that big beard, and that Rebel-flag cap? Is that the latest Nashville look? Well, Bubba Brice, lunch is on the house. After all the bullshit you’ve been through, it’s the least I can do. I sure wish Amie were here. She’s in Baltimore for a week, visiting her cousin. She loves your music.”

  “Amie’s your….”

  “Yep. My wife out of wedlock. Voluptuous little femme with a striking resemblance to Betty Page, the pin-up star. Ex-burlesque dancer. I’m crazy about her. We live in that white house with the Victorian gingerbread just down the road. Hey, you look around—we have some nice stuff here. Pick up some wine for Mr. Philip. He’d love that. I can show you which wines he likes. Then take a seat and I’ll bring your lunch out to you here in a minute. After that, I’ll drive you up the hill to Mr. Philip’s myself.”

  Grace strode off into the kitchen. Brice picked up his coffee cup and sipped it. He wandered through a few shelves of this-and-that, noticing little, and then he sat heavily on a chair by a wooden table and leaned back, shoulders slumped with relief, staring out the big window into the fog. He’d found a place where he was welcome.

  “YOU WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST to seek shelter at Fairyland Ranch,” Grace said. She sat across the table from Brice and drank black coffee while he snarfed up his food, which was even tastier than he’d expected. “It’s mainly gay boys and gay men, but a few young lesbians have stayed there too, trying to get their heads together after their shithead families threw them out.”

  “When did he open the place?” Brice said, adding black pepper to his brown beans.

  “Last spring. For a long time, it had been a guesthouse, but the new owners had the charm of water moccasins and snapping turtles, so a lot of former customers stopped coming, and the place went bust. Mr. Philip had been a successful corporate lawyer in DC for years, but then his wealthy daddy died—he was also a lawyer, with lots of coal company connections, and a nasty old bastard, from what I hear—and Mr. Philip inherited everything. He’d had enough of DC, so he bought this place as a sort of retreat for troubled queers who need somewhere to stay for a while. He’s got loads of money now, so he does as he pleases. Sometimes he’s up at Fairyland, or Rump-Ranger Ranch, or Sodomite Central, or Phagg Heights, or whatever he’s calling it this week—the guy is a real wit, let me tell you—and other times he’s down in his Florida condo. Right now, I’m pretty sure he’s just up the hill, though I think he’s leaving for Florida in a few weeks.”

  “Sodomite Central?” Brice snickered. “Sounds like just the kinda retreat I need. When everything went to hell in Nashville—”

  “Yeah, Amie kept me abreast of all that. She’s a huge fan of Dolly Parton, so she subscribes to lots of country-music magazines. We both felt really bad for all the crap you were going through. So you fled to your hometown, right? Hinton?”

  “Yeah, it was a reflex action, I guess. Wounded critter scurrying back into its den.” Brice stuffed the last bite of barbecue sandwich into his mouth. “Damn, that was delicious. Thank you. But everybody knows me there, and they treated me like a pariah. Once I’d been their cherished hero, the local boy who’d made it big, but then….”

  Grace rose and moved toward the counter. “I get it. But then you sullied the town’s good Christian reputation with your egregious sexual sin. Narrow-minded pricks. I grew up surrounded by that kind of nastiness in the coal towns of southwestern Pennsylvania.”

  Brice nodded. “People were downright vicious. I nearly got knifed by one pair of assholes. Last week, someone slit my tires, and someone else stole the wood out of my woodshed. And people kept leaving Christian pamphlets inside my screen door. I’m just glad the fuckers didn’t heave rocks through the windows. So I closed up my house there—my sister will keep an eye on it—and I drove up here, hoping that Mr. Philip would put me up for a while.”

  “Oh, he will. Count on it. I bet a piece of Amie’s pecan pie would lift your spirits. In fact, I’m going to have one myself. How about it?”

  Brice grinned. “I ain’t gonna argue.”

  Grace returned with two huge slices. “Dig in.”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

  A few moments of silence, five big bites, and Brice’s plate was empty. “Goddamn. That woman of yours can cook.”

  “Why you think I married her? You got anyone in your life now that you’re getting divorced?

  “Like a boyfriend?” Brice snorted. “Naw. Thanks to my own ambition to become a huge star, and the conservative nature of Nashville, and my attempt at marriage…shit, I’ve never really had a love life to speak of. With a man, I mean. Well, other than furtive tricks. And the guy who outed me. I was too busy trying to be straight. Trying to convince folks I was straight.”

  “Trying to convince yourself you were straight? I did that some in high school. Then I fell in love with my female vocal coach. That ended my desperate attempts at heterosexuality. When my family found out about my affair with the female basketball star in college, there was hell to pay. I wish Mr. Philip’s Homo Hideaway had been available then.”

  Grace collected their empty plates and cups. “Let me get these washed, and then let’s dr
ive up the hill. It’s time you met Mr. Philip.”

  BRICE’S PICKUP FOLLOWED GRACE’S HONDA. AT first, the road squeezed up the side of a narrow woodland gorge overhung with sharp rocks. Below, a splashing creek cascaded over a series of ledges. Then, as if one had just passed through a gateway, the land changed, opening out into yet another high valley spotted with clumps of forest and wide spreads of pastureland, the tops of the encircling hills all capped with milk-curd fog. After a couple of miles, they turned left at a roofless barn and climbed farther and farther up a dirt road. Where a gate made a gap in a long wooden fence fronting the road, they made a sharp right, drove through the middle of a wide meadow, and traversed a level quarter-mile between leafless forest trees. Brice could make out a scattering of cabins along the hillside and, farther on, a rustic-looking lodge built of rough wood and stone.

  Grace parked in the circular driveway in front of the lodge and climbed out. Brice followed her lead, lugging out his guitar case and a colorful gift bag full of two bottles of wine. Grace led him up onto a wooden porch, past an array of rocking chairs, and into the lodge.

  “Damn. Nice,” Brice sighed, leaning his guitar case against the wall and strolling around. “Just the kinda cozy I like.”

  The place was built of dark logs, with a high, raftered ceiling. In the great room, a huge stone fireplace and chimney predominated. To the side was a well-stocked bar upon which Brice deposited the gift bag of wine. The furniture looked solid and comfortable: big brown leather couches, heavy coffee tables, baskets of magazines, green plants sprawling out of pottery, and huge armchairs in earth tones. The paintings on the walls were all Appalachian landscapes. To the far end, a screened-in porch gave Brice a wide view of the mountains above bare treetops.

  “There’s a pool for summer use and a hot tub,” Grace said, pointing out a side window. “There’s a grotto downstairs with a steam room and an indoor hot tub. The dining room’s downstairs too, and the kitchen. I don’t know how much of a staff Mr. Philip has on hand these days—or how many queer refugees he has staying here, for that matter—but a local Randolph County lady, Doris Ann, is usually the cook. She’s as good as my Amie. In fact, she taught Amie how to cook. Let’s see if she’s around. Maybe she knows where Mr. Philip is.”