Country

by Jeff Mann

  “I think. I’ve read stuff. What really happened?”

  “What really happened is that I faked it for years. Pretty soon, my marriage had turned into a sham, a habit, a convenient disguise. When I was horny, as I’ve already admitted to you, I hired hustlers on the side. Then Zac—he was a guitarist in my band—he and I got involved. I could’ve loved him if I’d let myself, but I was just too afraid of what would happen if I….”

  “If you let yourself feel too much. Oh, yeah. I know about that too.”

  “Then Shelly found some letters Zac wrote me. There was a big scene. She broke a bunch of stuff. Cheap stuff. Even in the middle of a rage like that, she was careful to leave the pricy pieces alone. So I moved out. But she agreed to keep my secret ‘cause she enjoyed the…I guess you’d call it the social prestige of being married to a star. I was a star back then.”

  Lucas looked over at Brice. For a split-second, Brice thought, the expression in his eyes was simple, frank desire. “That’s for damn sure. You were great.”

  “So you know my music?”

  “Yeah.” Lucas turned away. “I got some of your CDs. Well, okay, all of ‘em. So get on with your story.”

  “Okay. I’m nearly done. I broke it off with Zac. It tore him up. He dropped out of my band, ran crazy, and slept around a lot. He caught HIV. He went to the tabloids so he could make money for treatments. And to hurt me, I suppose.”

  “Shit! Are you…?”

  “Healthy? Yeah. Zac caught the virus a few months after we went our separate ways, and I’ve been real careful with the hustlers I’ve hired. Anyway, when the big homosexual scandal hit, my wife started divorce proceedings. She’s taken a lot of what I owned—I feel too damn guilty to bicker with her—and the rest I’ve sold just to have some money to fall back on. From feast to famine, right? My label dumped me as soon as Zac’s story came out, and yesterday I heard that….”

  Brice paused. He dug his fingers into his scalp and scowled. “Goddamn it. God damn it.”

  “What? What did you hear?”

  “It turns out the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame took down the little exhibit they had about me. But that’s not the worst news. The worst news I got was that my manager, Steve, is dumping me too.”

  “So what does that mean exactly?”

  “It means that…without his help, without his connections, ain’t no way I have a chance of salvaging my career. No way in hell.”

  “How about some other manager? There’ve gotta be scads of ‘em in Nashville, right?”

  Brice shook his head. “After all the bad publicity I’ve gotten, there’s no way another manager would touch me with a ten-foot pole. An openly gay country music singer? Impossible. Just ain’t gonna happen.”

  Brice fooled with his glass and took a long drink. “My career was going downhill anyway. I was getting older, and lots of young up-and-comers were beginning to crowd me out. Being with Zac had made me real sick of lying, so writing love songs to imaginary women—which is what my label wanted me to write, of course—started to feel like, well, mercenary hypocrisy. So I stopped writing songs. ‘Cause I couldn’t write the songs I wanted to write. Who would want to hear a country song about a man loving another man? Plus, well, other than my feelings for Zac, which I nipped in the bud, I’ve never really loved…. I’ve never shared….”

  “Hold on.” Lucas removed the last of the buckwheat cakes from the griddle and slid the heaped platter into the microwave. “We can heat these up in a little bit. Go on now. I think I know what you’re gonna say, and I could say the same thing, and it’s a hard thing to say. But say it anyway, all right?”

  “Shit, what’s the point?”

  Lucas took a sip of his mimosa and slid onto a stool beside Brice. “‘Cause sometimes it helps to tell a friend about painful things. Talking to Uncle Phil has sure helped me. I think I might have blown my brains out by now if I hadn’t had him to talk to.”

  “Friends? Are we friends?” Brice cleared his throat. “This is the first day you’ve been decent to me.”

  Lucas nodded, staring at the floor. “Yeah, you’re right. And I’m sorry about that. Things’ll be different now, I swear. I think we’re gonna be friends, yeah. I think having talks like this is what makes a friendship.”

  Brice studied Lucas for a long moment. “I think you’re right. God knows I could do with a friend.”

  “Me too. Real bad. Real, real bad.” Lucas met his eye, then returned his gaze to the linoleum. “Go on.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that…I was sort of in love with a straight buddy in high school, and then I had some confused, conflicted infatuations with a few guys in college, and God knows I’ve sneaked sex with as many men as my closeted state and married status allowed, but, other than the thing with Zac, which scared the hell out of me and sent me running for the hills, I’ve never had a real relationship with another man. I’m fucking forty. My life’s half over, and I’ve never let myself love another man and had that feeling returned. Pathetic, ain’t it?”

  Lucas stood. He strode over to the fridge to fetch butter and maple syrup, then over to the cupboard to fetch sorghum. “If you’re pathetic, I’m pathetic,” Lucas said. “I’ve lost count of the strangers who paid me to suck their dicks, but the only guy I’ve ever halfway loved was Eric, and he used to beat me up about every week. You want pathetic, that’s pathetic.”

  “Shit. Really? He beat you?”

  “Afraid so. He liked to beat me up before he fucked me. It turned him on. Didn’t turn me on, but…small price to pay. He protected me from worse sorts. Way worse. Like I said earlier, story for another day, after a few big glasses of booze.”

  “Christ,” Brice groaned. “We’re a pair, that’s for sure. So what do we do now?”

  “That’s easy.” Lucas chuckled. “I got us a rigorous agenda. Now we gobble buckwheat cakes till we can’t eat anymore. This afternoon, we work breakfast off with a long walk in the snow. Come nightfall, we have a few drinks and heat up that beef stew and some of Doris Ann’s biscuits. Then we stretch out on those couches in the great room and relax and listen to music and talk some more. If there’s one thing that’s helped me get through shit—other than talking to Uncle Phil—it’s the little things in life. Bourbon, beer, down-home cooking, wood fires, and long walks in the hills.”

  “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” Brice thought of the copious comfort food his sister had brought over again and again during those lonely, harassed weeks in Hinton. “Take those sweetenings on into the dining room and I’ll bring in the buckwheat cakes.”

  OTHER THAN POINTING OUT FEATURES OF THE natural landscape—a few remaining bright-red hawthorn berries not yet plucked by hungry birds, snow-dusted heads of dead goldenrod, and a nuthatch crawling upside down over the trunk of a locust tree—Lucas was silent during their walk. The silence was, Brice sensed, not of the sullen and prickly variety encountered before but a sort of contemplative withdrawal, as if Lucas wanted to spend time with Brice but needed time to think, to turn within. Fine with me, just as long as I can look at you and be close to you, Brice thought, watching Lucas’s breath stream out in curlicues of fog, his beard-framed pink lips purse as he bent to examine the bright feather a blue jay had shed.

  They parted for a few hours, Lucas to study for his GED and Brice to nap a bit and check e-mail in the lodge library. Shelly gleefully proclaimed the divorce nearly final, Leigh told him that she and Ferrell missed him and that she was still driving reporters away from his Hinton house, and his ex-label informed him that a small check had accrued from the next-to-nothing sales of his CDs and would he please send them a forwarding address so that they might mail it? Another request for a forwarding address came from Steve Morgan’s venomous secretary, who wanted to send along another “package of praise from your adoring fans,” as she put it. Brice resisted the urge to tell her to stuff the letters up her prissy, judgmental twat. Instead, he didn’t respond. More hate mail was not what he needed.r />
  Brice had just sent off an update to Leigh when Lucas appeared in the library doorway. “It’s cocktail time, as Uncle Phil would say. What you feel like, drink-wise?”

  Brice rubbed his head and yawned. “Something with bourbon?”

  “How about something sweet and strong?”

  “Like me, huh?”

  Lucas rolled his eyes. “Just what I was gonna say. You know how to make mint juleps? I know they’re a summer drink, but Doris Ann bought some mint at the store the other day to put in some fancy salad, and I don’t want the rest to go off. Plus Uncle Phil has some fancy silver glasses he uses for juleps. I figured you’d like ‘em, being from southern West Virginia and all.”

  “Yeah, I know how to make ‘em. Sounds good.” Brice turned off the desktop computer and rose.

  “Okay, you mix ‘em up—fancy glasses are on a shelf above the bar, mint’s in the kitchen—and I’ll start us a fire.”

  The hearth in the great room was flickering by the time Brice had prepared the drinks, but Lucas was nowhere to be seen. Here and there, candles were lit around the room. Yesterday, he’s treating me like shit and tonight he’s arranging a romantic atmosphere? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as unpredictable, but at least things are changing for the better. At least right now. Who knows how he’ll act tomorrow?

  Brice settled onto one end of the leather couch and gazed into the fire. So quiet here. God, the silence is wonderful. Why did I ever want to live in a city? The people, the traffic, the noise. Ugh.

  The door opened and Lucas stepped in, hefting an armload of wood. He stomped his boots on the welcome mat. “It’s snowing again. Glad we got some provisions stored. For a few days, it’s gonna be hard to get out.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere,” Brice replied. “It’s not like folks are clamoring for my presence any longer. I was just sitting here thinking about what a great place this is. How quiet, compared to cities like Nashville.”

  “That’s one reason I’m here. Can’t stand noise. And, man, was prison noisy. Jesus.” Lucas deposited the wood in the wood box by the hearth, wiped shards of bark and dust off the front of his shirt, unlaced and removed his boots, and plopped down at the other end of the couch. “Hand here that drink.”

  Brice obliged. Lucas sipped. “Oh, yeah. That’s nice. Haven’t had one of these since last summer.”

  “So how long have you lived here?” Brice asked.

  “Since last spring. Right after I was released.” Lucas leaned back onto the pillows cradled in the arm of the couch, stretched, and yawned. Lifting his legs, he nudged his sock-covered feet into Brice’s lap. “You mind?”

  “No, I don’t mind.” Brice took a foot in his hand and squeezed, more than happy to share such unexpected, albeit minor, intimacy. “Now you’re getting all cozy and snuggly with me? I never know what you’re gonna do next.”

  “I like to keep guys guessing.” Lucas gave Brice a wink. “Keeps the tension up. So look, I wanna explain some things.”

  My God, he is just so fucking fine. The most beautiful boy I’ve ever met just winked at me. “All right. Go for it.”

  “I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m sorry I’ve been such a bastard. Sometimes I do shit, and even I don’t know why I’m doing it. Uncle Phil calls me ‘irredeemably and charmingly neurotic.’”

  Brice snickered. “Nice phrase. Join the crowd. I think we’re all pretty damned neurotic. God knows I am.”

  “You seem pretty together, considering all the crap that’s been thrown at you lately. Anyway, you’ve been real nice to me ever since you got here, and you didn’t deserve the cold shoulder I gave you. I mean, hell, you’re a guest. I was raised better than to be rude to a guest. Getting my eye busted up…it’s what I deserved for acting like such a jerk.”

  “Naw, that was my fault, acting like a drunk douche.” Brice kneaded the sole of Lucas’s foot. “You have been pretty cold to me, though. I thought I’d insulted you somehow.”

  “Naw. I’m just…a fucking mess. When I’m scared or insecure, I get chilly and nasty just to drive people away, ‘cause it’s easier for me to be alone. Look, I think you’re amazing. That’s part of the problem. I mean, I love your music. You’re so talented. You’ve achieved so much.”

  “All that’s great to hear, especially the fact that you love my music…but I’ve lost just about everything I’ve achieved.” Brice rubbed his thumb hard along the arch of Lucas’s foot. “Feel good?”

  “Hell, yes. Thanks. Well, the reason you’ve lost so much is just total bullshit. It’s ‘cause so many folks are backwards, narrow-minded assholes. The fact remains that you’re amazing. Man, the songs you’ve written…so beautiful. So beautiful.”

  “Well…thank you,” Brice said, feeling profoundly touched. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

  “Sure. Just speaking the truth.” Lucas rubbed his undamaged eye and sighed. Brice took up Lucas’s other foot and massaged it. The fire spit sparks. In the corner, a grandfather clock ticked.

  “You just intimidate the hell outta me. It’s hard to be around you.” Lucas’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “That’s why I’ve been so distant, so downright rude. I’m really sorry.”

  Brice chuckled. He dug the ball of his thumb into Lucas’s heel. “I intimidate you? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Naw, I ain’t kidding. You’re a star, no matter what shit’s been said in the press, no matter what’s happened in the last few months. You followed your dream. You’ve put out bunches of CDs and toured and performed. You’ve created. Your music has moved who knows how many people?”

  “But all that’s over.”

  Lucas folded his hands behind his head, arched his back, and groaned. “You sure know how to rub a foot. Well, maybe it’s all over, and maybe it’s not. Who knows? The fact remains that you’ve accomplished a helluva lot. Me, I ain’t done jack shit. Why would you want to spend time with me? I’m the biggest goddamn loser you’ll ever meet.”

  “I don’t think of you as a loser, Lucas.”

  “You don’t know me very well. I ain’t done nothing with my life. I’ve worked at Walmart, sucked cock in truck stops, and got to be Eric’s butt-bitch for five years. That’s it.”

  The image of little Lucas getting his ass pounded by a huge convict was arousing, but Brice dismissed the flicker of lust as untimely, something to be savored when he was next alone in bed with a Kleenex handy. “You’re twenty-seven, and you’re from a rough background. You haven’t had much opportunity to do things. And you ending up in prison is as much a crock of unjust bullshit, far as I’m concerned, as me losing my career ‘cause I was outed.”

  “Yeah. No justice anywhere.” Lucas sipped his julep and sighed. “Yum. This is good. You can make me one of these any time. Well, I’m glad you like it here, but…there’s gotta be some place you’d rather be. Somebody you’d rather spend time with.”

  “Nope. I don’t have much of anyone left. Just my sister and nephew back in Hinton, and I want to stay away from my hometown for a while, because most folks there hate me and think I’ve shamed the town, and the damn reporters were knocking on my door day and night. Thank God they don’t know I’m here, or the same thing would happen. Funny. When I was on top, people couldn’t get enough of me. I always had a passel of hangers-on. Now…no one wants anything to do with a disgraced old bastard like me. So, no, there’s no one else I’d rather be spending time with.”

  “So here we are.” Lucas wore a tired smile. “Together at the ends of the earth. The snowy wilds of Randolph County.”

  “Yep. I’m glad we met. Not only do I think that you’re, well, really good-looking, but, what you said about friendship earlier, I think that could happen. Like I said at breakfast the other day, you and me have some things in common. We’re both kind of at the same place in our lives.”

  “True enough. Damaged. Outcast. Hiding from the world. Wondering what’s next. What’s coming up next. God, I’ve felt so completely out
ta control of my life.”

  “Like there’s nothing to look forward to and no choices left? I get that. But here’s a choice.” Brice stroked his bearded chin, feeling nervous. “Valentine’s Day is coming up in a couple of days. I think we should celebrate it.”

  “Together?” Lucas toed Brice in the belly.

  “Yeah, together. Let’s go out. Interested?”

  “Out, like on a date, right?”

  “Uhhh, right.” Brice squeezed Lucas’s big toe.

  “Where to?”

  “Up to you. These are your stomping grounds, not mine.”

  Lucas slipped his feet off Brice’s lap. “I know a place.”

  “Where?”

  Lucas stood. “It’ll be a surprise.”

  “So that’s a yes? You’re agreeing to go out on a Valentine’s Day date with me?”

  “That’s a yes. I figured you wouldn’t have the guts to ask.”

  “I wasn’t planning to, since you were so consistently surly. But today….”

  Lucas gave Brice a crooked grin. “Guess that weight machine knocked some sense into me. About time, huh? You ready for some dinner?”

  Brice drained his drink. “You bet. I’m starved.”

  Lucas grabbed Brice’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, ole broke-back Daddy. Let’s get you fed.”

  “IS THAT THING TUNED?” LUCAS asked, nodding at the upright piano against the wall.

  The two men, full with a big dinner, sprawled side by side on the couch, sipping some of Phil’s stash of Frangelico and watching the fire die. Lucas had arranged a knitted blanket over the both of them. The proximity of Lucas’s body made Brice ache, but he feared that Lucas would turn cold again if he made any kind of move.

  Gotta wait, Brice thought. Gotta be patient. He’s willing to go out on a date, so at least that means he likes me some. Settle for that for now. Don’t scare this skittish kid away. Let him take the lead. Let him let me know if he wants more. Damn, it’s hard not to lunge.