The Tennessee Mountain Man

by Olivia Gaines

  “Right now, no. I’m not even sure I matter to myself,” she said forlornly.

  “May I inquire as to what happened to you?”

  Khloe’s vision cleared as she gazed at the walls covered in photos of old white women, ladies in prairie dresses standing next to wagon trains with sober expressions at the idea of heading west. Each wall had images of decades of women in varying dresses for the respective era, standing beside a young woman with a bobbed haircut and intense eyes. The ladies in the images looked like an exact replica of the one cleaning her feet.

  “Are these your relatives?” Khloe asked, ignoring the statements.

  “Yes, nearly six generations of matchmakers, since the first wagon trains went west in 1843,” Coraline said with pride. “You are diverting my question about what happened to you.”

  “I’m not diverting,” Khloe replied. “I’m just not in the business of telling my woes to complete strangers.”

  “My name is Coraline Newair. I’m a Scorpio and professional expert in the ways of love. I also love tea and lemon biscuits with a drizzle of clover honey. Let’s see, I’m allergic to bullshit, dumb men, and polyester,” she said. “Now we are no longer strangers. Your turn.”

  “I’m Khloe Burgess, a Nurse Practitioner from Chicago. A former soldier in the Army Corps of Nurses and retired after 20 years. I have horrible taste in men and lived with a functioning alcoholic as a mother, who earlier this week burned down my house with herself in it,” Khloe said.

  “Good gravy,” Coraline said, touching her arm. “You are grieving the loss of your mother and nearly got mugged to boot. Did you come to New York for a moment of solace?”

  “No, I came to meet my boyfriend who is a professional child who fancies himself to be a poker player. He is terrible at the game and even worse at life. I can read his tells so easily and saw through this latest scheme of his,” Khloe said.

  “Scheme?”

  “Yeah, he flew me to New York to break up with me, but of course, he planned to do it on the way out of the hotel door in the morning,” she said, looking about for her belongings. “I need to get going and find somewhere to stay tonight. Can you recommend a hotel, close by, considering the shoes in my bag aren’t made for walking?”

  “No, tonight you are going to keep me company,” Coraline said. “I can use some and you could use a friend. We will order in some dinner, settle in for the night with a nice glass of Bordeaux, and turn on the television while it watches us.”

  Khloe’s bottom lip quivered as the tears welled in her eyes. It had been so long since a person did a nice thing for her without wanting payment in return. Or did she?

  “What is it going to cost me?”

  “In my world, women don’t pay a dime, so it shall cost you nothing. Hopefully, by the end of the weekend, you will leave with some answers and a new direction in your life,” Coraline said.

  “From your mouth to God’s ears, but why are you doing this for me?”

  “Because we all need a friend, and sister, you look like you could really use an ear, a few hugs and a good night’s rest,” Coraline said. “Come on, I am closing up. I live upstairs.”

  “Thank you for all of this,” Khloe said, looking at the perfectly bandaged feet. “I really don’t want to impose upon you any more than I have.”

  “Oh pshaw! It beats eating alone and talking to the imaginary cat that people assume I have,” Coraline said, moving to the front office and securing the door. She led the way to the back elevator after turning down the lights, leaving a soft pink glow about the room. Khloe didn’t know why, but she felt safe with her new friend.

  “Lead on,” Khloe said, trying to walk and not damage the fresh bandages.

  THE APARTMENT WAS EXACTLY what Khloe expected. A whole lot of New York with no personal style to the place. The fridge was empty, the wine rack full, and loads of expensive paintings hanging from the wall reminding all who entered the space that the lady came from old money. A quick trip to the ladies’ room and Khloe returned to find the table set with dishes and hot food ready for consumption.

  “I played it safe and ordered chicken,” Coraline said. “Everybody eats chicken.”

  “Yeah, that works,” Khloe said, taking a seat. “Coraline, do you mind me asking what it is you do for a living? You said a professional love ...something or other?”

  “My family has run a mail order bride service since 1843. My mother ran the company before me, and her mother before her and my daughter shall inherit the company as soon as I find the right man to be my life mate,” she said.

  “Lifemate?”

  “Yes, most people don’t understand the concept of marriage,” Coraline said. “In my many years of experience, I have turned away quite a few women applicants that are enamored with the idea of the white dress and getting gifts, planning for the wedding and not the relationship.”

  “I assume since your family has been doing this for so long that business is good,” she said.

  “There are times when it hasn’t been, but out there in the real America are men who want to be married to women who want to be married to them,” she said. “We have a 99% success rate.”

  “And the 1% of failures?”

  “Well,” Coraline said, plating the chicken and pouring the wine. A couple of quick glass clicks to toast the meal and she sipped, swallowed, and gathered her thoughts. “Every now and then we get a woman who signs up, gets to the location, and says, ‘Oh, hell no.’ It’s rare but it does happen. Then last year, I had an incident which shook all of us to the core. A mail-order bride went missing.”

  “What?” Khloe asked.

  “Down in the Georgia mountains. She was set to marry one man, who sent his brother to pick her up, and the brother absconded with her,” Coraline said. “Kept that poor woman in a cabin in the woods for nearly a year. But she escaped and found help and delivered her baby on another man’s floor.”

  “This is juicy,” Khloe said. “The chicken is as well, but this story. Please go on.”

  “Khloe, it gets better. The man married her and kept that child as his own,” Coraline said with the corners of her lips forming a smile. “The really cute part is that her friends came looking for me to give me, you know, the once over. Ironically, the man’s brothers, the Neary Brothers as I call them, showed up to stop the two friends from opening a can of trouble.”

  Khloe chewed anxiously, swallowing and shoveling more food in her mouth as she listened intently.

  “I set the four of them up as couples, of course, added a bit of romantic magic, and his brothers are married to his wife’s best friends,” she said with a smile. “The youngest brother, Isiah, he and DeShondra just got married. Little did they know I was in the back of the church. Lovely couple. Good life mates.”

  “You make it seem so easy,” Khloe said. “Finding a life mate is hard in this world where everyone wants to swipe a butt and move on the next one. I don’t even want to talk about kids and a warm home that doesn’t revolve around the internet and fancy cars. To me, at this point in my life, I just want simple. I could care less for a TV at this point.”

  “Khloe, will you let me help you?”

  “Help me do what? Become a mail order bride and run the risk of being kept in a cabin by a man with three teeth as his love monkey? I’m with that one chick, oh hell no,” Khloe said with a straight face.

  “Again, she and the other were an anomaly in thousands of matches,” Coraline said. “Answer me this, what is it you want out of a relationship?”

  “I want to love a man who takes care of himself. Meat at every meal means you are going to die,” she said. “I want kids but I am pushing 40, which means I have to spit a few out real fast, or I will be sitting in the audience at my kids’ high school graduations and people will think I’m their Grandma.”

  “You still haven’t told me what it is you want in a relationship, Khloe. You said kids and a man who takes care of himself, but you can’t build a relationship
off of that,” she told her.

  Khloe thought long and hard about her last four relationships. The things that had gone wrong and the things that had been right. Smushing them all together, she gave a well-thought-out answer.

  “I want a man who loves to cuddle, not just the sex portion. A man who wants to know me and what makes me tick. I love my smoothies in the morning, fresh air, and a garden tended with care. Even though I don’t watch a great deal of television, I really enjoy Game of Thrones and discussing a good book after dinner over a glass of brandy seated next to a man who pushes me to be better,” Khloe said. “More importantly, I want to be in a relationship with a man who wants to be committed to being in a relationship with me. Coraline, I want to be loved and adored. Thoughtful gifts made by hand versus a shiny trinket found in a window. Does that make sense?”

  “More than you know,” Coraline said. “Would you believe me if I told you that man walked into my office downstairs this past Monday?”

  “No,” Khloe replied.

  “Well he did,” she said. “However, I can’t just put the two of you together. There are a series of test, health screenings, personality profiles, and the like.”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, and unless you have plans, I am ready to get started,” she said. “To think the man, I just described is out there and waiting for me, I feel anxious.”

  “No, my love, for the first time in a long time, you are feeling hopeful,” she said. “I say we do it right after dinner.”

  Most of the night passed with Coraline and Khloe huddled up taking Khloe through a battery of tests. She had blood drawn and was told she needed to give a poop sample. At the end of the night, with her information plugged into the Perfect Match database, Khloe Burgess was perfectly matched with five men.

  “The one in Hawaii sounds promising,” Coraline said.

  “Yeah, but it’s an island. There is no way off an island other than boat or plane,” Khloe said. “In case of inclement weather, neither of those are an option to escape danger.”

  “Arizona?”

  “Too hot and no grass or greenery,” she said. “I can’t grow a garden in the desert, and the amount of water it would take to yield a decent crop would be scandalous.”

  “New Hampshire, Vermont...the husband to be in Vermont is pretty sexy, and he owns an apple orchard,” Coraline said.

  “Too cold in the winter,” she said. “I live in Chicago. It would be nice to spend a winter and not freeze my ass off.”

  “Tennessee it is,” Coraline said, pressing the key to bring up the photo of Beauregard Sherman Montgomery.

  “Whoa, he looks like the leader of the Aryan Knighthood,” Khloe said. She leaned forward towards the screen staring into the eyes. “This man likes to cuddle and drink smoothies?”

  “Yes,” Coraline said. “He was also the one who walked into my office on Monday. I think he came just in time to set the stage to meet you.”

  Khloe turned around to look at Coraline. Words hung between them as her eyes went back to the screen to her potential new husband. A man who enjoyed watching Game of Thrones and drinking smoothies and had a nice garden just off the back porch. The picture Coraline pulled up showed it.

  “I’m not sure what to say here, Coraline,” she said.

  “Thanks, would be helpful,” the matchmaker replied.

  “Normally, I wait for the test results to come back, but this one, I have a good feeling about,” she said. “Here is his e-mail. Reach out, start a dialogue and see where it leads. I’m going to bed.”

  “Goodnight,” Khloe said as she stared at Beau, as he liked to be called. He was a lot of man. Six feet four, over two hundred pounds, the sides of his hair shaven and his arms covered in tattoos. “He could keep me warm in winter.”

  In the guest room which held even less personality than the rest of the apartment, Khloe sat on the side of the bed and read again his ad for a life mate. Reach out, start a dialogue. Pulling her laptop from the bag she’d fought like a hellcat to keep and pressing the start button, she waited for the little apple to show up. Logging into her off the books e-mail account, she sent a message, nice and simple.

  July 28, 2018

  “Dear Beau,

  My name is Khloe Burgess. I am responding to your ad for a life mate. I meet all the criteria of what you need, but I think it’s only fair to tell you I am responding to the ad in hopes you can provide a bit of reciprocity.

  I answered the ad in optimism that you can help me find my smile again.

  Looking forward to your response.

  Chilled out in Chi-Town

  Chapter Five – ... My Dearest Khloe

  Hooters Holler, Kentucky

  Beauregard drove through the back roads and gulleys into the area of the Smoky Mountains few people dared enter, Hooters Holler. The small valley, nestled inside of some of the prettiest countryside God ever created, had been inhabited by generations of Montgomery’s since the Civil War. Others had moved into the area as well, creating a close-knit community of patriots who lived off the land and cared for their neighbors.

  The only problem was that many had never left the Holler nor did they plan to do so in the near future, but Beau had. He left to attend summer camps and to attend college and understand the outside world to return and teach those in Hooter’s Holler about the changes going on around them. The best way, he figured, to teach and show the people is to let them see it for themselves. At the University of Tennessee, he majored in Computer Science, coming back to the Holler and setting up an affordable cable company to offer his neighbor's satellite television and cell phones. No more runners with messages to the neighbors, but actual cell phones.

  It wasn’t an easy sell. Many in the Holler still believed the government was spying on them and the radiation from the cell towers would turn them into blathering automatons for the ‘C.I. of A’. However, the Montgomery name was attached to the company, which meant the folks could trust Beau since he was all educated and understood the new world of race mixing and dancing suggestively in public. For folks in the Holler, those types of things were reserved for the wedding night and special occasions like baby-making nights.

  He practiced several times what he would, in fact, say about his latest decision to take an unconventional approach to marriage to very conventional mountain folk parents. Albus, his father, knew his eldest son was a bit different, and he’d made concessions and even worked outside of the Holler to make money to send the boy to computer camps and to college. Albus understood Beau. His mother Honey thought the sun rose and set on the boy’s every choice and seldom if ever questioned his decision making. Beau only hoped that today would be the same.

  “Hey Pa,” he said, parking his truck. He left the office early today to come for supper in the hills, hoping his Ma was making his favorite, possum stew.

  “Son,” Albus said, taking a puff or three off his corn cob pipe. The old blue eyes looked grayer these days as cataracts began to take over. The weathered skin of too many days in the sun had taken effect, and his father fit the stereotype of an old mountain man with a few good teeth remaining in his head. Albus was a good father and Beau had no complaints.

  “Albus, is that Beau I hear out there?” Honey Montgomery called from inside. The beautiful, shoulder length honey blond hair which had begun to gray over the years still shone like the sun was following behind her head as she walked.

  “It’s me, Ma,” he said, handing her bags of flour and sugar, along with a box of fancy chocolates he’d picked up in New York.

  “I hear tell you went up to New York City,” Honey said looking at the box of chocolatey delights.

  “Yes’m,” he replied, looking down at the toe of his boots.

  “Oh, possum nuts in a squirrel’s mouth,” Albus said. “We know that look, Honey. That’s the same dumb ass looks he gives us when he’s done gone and dun sumpin’ stupid.”

  “Lordy be, Beau, who’s pregnant?” Honey asked.

  “No on
e is pregnant,” Beau said, snapping his head up to look at his parents’ eye to eye.

  “Well, what is it, boy?” Albus demanded.

  Beauregard feared no man and very few beasts, however, he did fear having to tell his parents what he’d done on a whim. The logic behind his decision was sound. His happiness was at stake and he deserved some of that in a royal flush. Inhaling deeply, he rattled off his decision.

  “Ma, Pa, I’m getting married,” he said.

  “To who? Ain’t that many eligible girls left in these Hollers which would suit you,” Albus said. “You’re bringing in an outsider?”

  “Pa, I think we have to at this point. The last County doctor left two years ago and we haven’t even been able to even get a nurse in these parts. We are just too country poor to sustain one,” Beau said.

  “How does this impact the stupid thing you did?” Albus asked.

  “What makes you think I did a stupid thing?”

  “The way you’re shuffling your weight from foot to foot,” Albus said. “Spit it out before I die of a brain fart trying to figure you out.”

  “I placed an ad for a mail-order bride,” Beau said in a whoosh of air.

  Albus leaned forward in the creaky old rocker that his father, Joe Boy, had handcrafted from a fallen tree. His left eye half closed as a circle of smoke rose up from the pipe, getting into his eye and making it water. One-eyed, he looked at his son then his wife.

  “You like to do that freaky stuff in bed with things that require batteries and Vaseline don’t you?” Albus asked.

  “Pa!” Beauregard said. “No, that’s not why I did it. I placed an ad for a woman who likes the things I like and has a medical background. Times are changing and we need healthcare in whatever form we can get it. You two aren’t getting any younger, and I would feel better if my wife had the capabilities to help me take care of you in your later years.”

  Honey stepped forward. The worn-out apron around her waist had seen better days, but she refused to get rid of it. The plain cotton dress she wore also had lasted longer than the fabric should have, along with the run over shoes she wore that still had tread on the bottom. Beau wanted a savvy wife that would get his mother into a decent pair of shoes and dresses that didn’t bear more patches than fabric. He didn’t know about those kinds of things, and even when he’d brought her bolts of material, Honey wasn’t a seamstress.