Country

by Jeff Mann

  Both siblings snorted. Hell would freeze over, they knew, before a conservative little West Virginia town like Hinton would ever have a gay bar.

  “Do you need money, Brice? I have a little in savings, but raising a child is pretty expensive.”

  “I know that, honey, and Lord knows I don’t want your money. I’ve talked to a realtor about my Nashville condo, so it’s on the market now, and she thinks she can unload it fast, and for quite a bit. Plus I have investments and savings I can fall back on. I can live on that for a while till I get my bearings and figure out what’s next.”

  Brice yawned and took a big gulp of coffee. He hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep the previous night, or over the past few weeks, for that matter. “Shit, I used to be so poor, eating beans and canned soup in college, and then in Nashville, paying the bills with fast food jobs. And then all of a sudden I got famous and I owned a big fucking mansion and all sorts of other hoity-toity shit. And now here I am, with all that gone and with me just damned grateful you brought me some good food.”

  Leigh smiled. “I love to feed someone who appreciates it. For future reference, there’s also Sam Adams in the fridge and a couple big bottles of George Dickel in the cupboard.”

  “Great! Thanks.”

  “Sure. I figured you’d need a little attitude-adjustment. Better than antidepressants, right?”

  Again a round of shared laughter, though this one was anxious. “Have you considered antidepressants?” Leigh asked.

  “Hell, no.” Brice waved off the suggestion. “That shit’s for the weak. Besides, they didn’t help Daddy, did they? I’ll stick to bourbon, and pain pills when my back’s irking me.”

  “We both got a taste for booze from Daddy, though I prefer vodka these days,” Leigh said, adjusting her blazer.

  “With all the bullshit you have to deal with as a lawyer, vodka makes good sense. I’m damned glad you took up the family profession instead of me. So, speaking of Daddy, what do you think our parents would have felt about all this mess?”

  “Oh, as long as you didn’t swish and mince and get all citified, Daddy’d be all right with you. He’d tell you to live your life and tell folks to get fucked if they didn’t like it. Mommy would wring her hands and worry about what the women in the lady’s garden club might be saying, and then cuss them up one side and down the other if they got snippy.”

  “Yep, that sounds about right.”

  Leigh checked her watch and gulped her coffee. “Okay, I need to get back to the office. I’m due in court pretty soon. I’ll check in with you at the end of the day. By the way, my secretary’s son, Dakota, is coming by to fill up the woodshed out back. I bought a cord of wood like you asked. I told him to put a few armloads on the front porch too, for easier access.”

  “Great. That should keep the gas bill down. I’ll write you a check right now.”

  “No rush. I’ll pick it up later. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. An old friend of yours was in town for the Railroad Days street fair in October. He came by the office and asked about you.”

  “Really? Who’s that?”

  “Wayne Meador. Your old flame.”

  “I wish,” Brice said, sitting upright. “I was crazy about him. I haven’t seen him since high school. How’s he look?”

  “Well, he doesn’t look the way he did in high school.”

  “In other words, like a male model or porn star?”

  Leigh smiled. “Yes, he was pretty handsome. He even made a pass at me once.”

  “Yes, I remember. I should have been pissed, but instead I was jealous.”

  “He was too much of a rounder for me. At any rate, he’s married, and he’s working construction in North Carolina, and he looks pretty good. Chunkier. Grayer.”

  I can relate, Brice thought. “Did he leave a number?”

  “No. But when he’s in Hinton, he stays with his father and stepmother on Fifth Avenue. My secretary lives up that way. I can ask her to let us know when he’s back in town. He told me he might come home for the holidays.”

  “Yeah, do that. It’d be super to see him again. He’d be more than welcome to drop by…if the Big Gay Scandal hasn’t put him off. Considering the circumstances, I doubt that I’ll be getting much else in the way of company.”

  “All right. I’ll tell Hope.” Leigh squeezed Brice’s hand and rose. “I’m glad you’re home. I might not be able to do anything about your career, but I can sure make certain that you’re well-fed.”

  “Hell, yes. I’m going to get into those meatballs here in a little bit.”

  Brice saw his sister out. For a few minutes, he simply stood at the door, watching the snowfall through the glass. Then he entered the front parlor. Bending, he exposed the piano keys, picked out a few aimless notes, and abruptly stopped.

  Nothing. Why the hell bother? There ain’t any melody to be found in this frigging morass I’m in. He closed the piano, shook his head, and headed back upstairs to bed.

  TWO DAYS AFTER BRICE’S RETURN TO HINTON, HE and his nephew Carden sat side by side on a picnic table in the woods, sipping Cokes and munching carry-out hot dogs and fries they’d fetched at Kirk’s, a roadside diner across the river from Hinton. Around them, the thick forest atop Sandstone Mountain was all gray trunks and fallen leaves, with the occasional drumming of a woodpecker or the quarreling of chickadees. Far, far below the little roadside park where they ate, Sandstone Falls tumbled its whitewater over river rock, a thundering faint but still audible at this distance.

  “So what d’you want for Christmas?” Brice asked, in between straw-sips of pop. “It’s coming up in just another week and a half, you know.”

  “I know. I can’t wait. Maybe some Spider-Man stuff? Or some dinosaurs. I love T-Rex.” Carden was ten, a sociable, handsome kid who seemed to have inherited the family willfulness but thankfully lacked the foul temper and dark moods that Brice tended toward.

  “I think I can arrange that. I liked comic book heroes and dinosaurs just like you when I was your age. You enjoying school? Fifth grade, right?”

  “Yep. I don’t like math much, but science is cool, and so’s English.”

  “I felt the same. Hated math. Speaking of school, your mother tells me that you’ve been defending my name. I appreciate that. Just don’t get into any fights on my account.”

  “People have been talking about you a lot, saying mean things. They’re just stupid, you know? And when I think they’re being stupid, I tell them. I tell them to shut their mouths. Daddy’s sure being stupid about you.”

  Brice laughed. “And do you tell him to shut his mouth?”

  “No. I was raised not to talk back, so I just try not to listen.”

  “Well, that’s probably a good idea. I’m glad we could have lunch together up here. And thanks again for not mentioning this to your father.”

  Carden shrugged. “No problem. Sometimes Mom and I have to leave things out, you know? He’s at church right now. He thinks I’m spending time with some buddies, and, like Mom says, what Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Carden paused to take a big bite of hot dog. Brice sucked up more Coke.

  “Flicker,” Brice said, pointing at the flash of yellow veering between oak boughs high above. “See the white rump? I thought I heard one calling. Sounds like ‘wik-wik-wik-wik-wik.’”

  “That’s neat. We see a pileated out back sometime, digging bugs out of a dead tree. Hey, Uncle Brice, are you really gay?”

  Brice stiffened. For a split-second, he was poised to respond as he usually did to the word “gay” but then realized it would be pointless to argue semantics with a ten-year-old. “Yep. Yep, I am.”

  “Okay. That’s cool. Some people just are, Mom says. How long you been gay?”

  Brice chuckled. “You looking at girls yet?”

  Carden flushed. “No!”

  “Ah, c’mon. Your mother told me you’ve already had a few crushes. You can tell me. Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody gets crushes.”<
br />
  “Yeah, okay. Some girls can be pretty cool, I guess. Not as cool as Mom, but pretty cool.”

  “Well, I’ve been gay since about your age, I guess. But I didn’t tell anybody ‘cause I would have gotten into big trouble if they knew.”

  “So you lied.”

  “Yes, I lied. For a long time, it felt like I needed to lie, but I guess the truth’s out, though I never had the guts to tell it.”

  “And now that the truth’s been told, you’re in big trouble, right?”

  Brice laughed and patted Carden’s shoulder. “Yeah, I guess so. But I’ll survive. We mountain folks are tough, right?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Brice laughed louder. “Where’d you learn that, potty mouth?”

  Carden grinned. “You say it, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yes, I say it. Just don’t use it around your parents. Your father already thinks I’m a bad influence. Finish up there. Time to get you home before he gets out of church.”

  “Okay.” Carden took the last bite of hot dog, then stuffed a few fries into his mouth. “Uncle Brice, you still gonna make music? CDs and stuff?” he mumbled.

  Brice rose, dusting crumbs off his jeans. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. You need an audience to make music, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have an audience any more.”

  “Why don’t you make music for yourself then? Besides, you do still have an audience. Mom and I’ll listen. Maybe next Sunday, while Daddy’s in church. You brought your guitar with you, right?”

  “Oh, sure. My guitar goes where I go.”

  “So why’d you bring your guitar all this way if you’re not gonna play music?”

  “Good question. Tell you what, you talk to your mother, and maybe y’all can sneak down some day while you’re off school, and I’ll make a fire and play you some songs off my last CD.”

  “It’s a deal. Mom plays your music all the time in the car, when she drives me to school and back. She used to play it in the house, but….”

  “Yeah, I get it. Your father’s got his opinions. Come on now. I have a surprise in the truck. Two of those Hostess fruit pies with our names on ‘em.”

  AS LEIGH HAD WARNED HIM, THE SIGN WAS indeed gone. “The Brice Brown Bridge,” it had proclaimed for years, and something in Brice’s chest glowed whenever he was home to visit family and drove over the structure spanning the New. Now, the Saturday before Christmas, there was no warm glow in his chest, inspired by pride or the holiday spirit or any other agreeable emotion. Instead, he wanted to ass-kick the motherfucker who’d torn down the sign, punch every member of the town council who’d voted to rename the bridge, and slap upside the head that up-and-coming politico brat, Suzanne Matthews, whose name now graced, or, rather, defaced the bridge.

  Brice drove past the new sign and over the river, snarling low in his throat. For nearly a week, afraid he might be recognized and harassed, he’d stayed inside the house, drinking beer or bourbon, watching junk TV and his library of action/adventure DVD’s. When his scattered concentration allowed, he stretched out on the couch before the fireplace and reread tattered paperbacks he’d savored in his high school years: war novels, fantasy novels, and historical romances set in faraway countries and faraway times. His only exercise was desultory weight lifting in the musty basement a couple of times a week. Otherwise, he wallowed beneath comforters in aimless, restless, resentful sloth.

  Brice’s cell phone had buzzed every so often, but he’d refused to answer it unless it was Leigh. Shelly left a message saying she was sending him divorce papers to sign and that the Williamson County house was on the market. Lorrie left a message telling him she was worried about him. Steve left a message saying that the Exodus International people were very disappointed that Brice hadn’t followed through with treatment and that Steve was seriously considering having to drop Brice as a client.

  When Brice got hungry, which was often, eating being one of the few pleasures left to him, he’d gobbled either the food Leigh brought by on the way to her office, or delivery pizza, or mac and cheese from a box. He kept the heat low so as to save on the gas bill, so he rarely bathed, shuffling muskily around the house in moccasins, boot socks, thermal undershirt, fleece lounge pants, and his hooded camo sweatshirt. He slept late every morning, went to bed drunk around 9 pm, and woke in the dead of night to bouts of insomnia, grim thoughts of failure, public disgrace, and bankruptcy swirling around in his head.

  Whenever Brice tried to compose new music on the piano or guitar, nothing came, leaving him even more despondent. Except for the one afternoon Leigh and Carden had managed to come by with a pot of beef stew and to visit for a surreptitious hour while queer-hating Jerry was off doing whatever the piddly-hell he was doing for a living, Brice refused to play his older tunes. Those songs—fifteen years’ worth of CD hits—with their regular references to much-loved, much-desired country girls and beautiful women, seemed to him among the most egregious lies he’d ever composed.

  That morning, though, he’d awakened late with the knowledge that he’d have to leave the house. Despite Leigh’s best efforts to supply him with what he needed, he was out of beer, bourbon, and assorted groceries. For a long time, he’d simply lain in bed, listening to the distant sound of the river and boxcars rumbling on the rails below the cliff. He’d jacked off half-heartedly into his customary joy rag, a camo bandana, remembering how sweetly that Daytona hustler, Mike, had moaned and squirmed while Brice was pounding his fuzzy ass.

  Near noon, Brice had crawled out of bed and showered for the first time in days, then stood before the mirror naked, feeling slovenly and overweight, studying his gray-streaked beard, widow’s peak, and the beefy mounds of his hairy chest and belly, and cussing himself soundly. “You’re so fucking fat, you’re so fucking old, you’re such a fucking failure. Idiot. Moron. Just pathetic. Who would want you?”

  Grim-faced, he’d pulled on jeans, hiking boots, and sweatshirt, in the kitchen gulped a cup of coffee and snarfed a Pop-Tart, swathed his head in the customary concealment of a camo hood, this time atop a “Stars and Bars Forever” baseball cap, tugged on his rawhide jacket, and tramped out into the light fall of snow. “Redneck wear,” he’d always jokingly called his fashion sense, the sort of outfits most Summers County men wore, but now that he’d been outed, Brice knew that his rough-edged country-boy look was valuable camouflage against the possibility of being recognized. “An infamous homosexual,” Brice had muttered, starting up his truck. “Not exactly the career goal I’d dreamed of.”

  Now he skirted the New River, driving through dusty swirls of snow, studying the high green water to his left and the glistening mountainside icefalls to his right. Memory after memory sideswiped him.

  There. KFC used to be there, where I went out on a date with that little Jennifer Wiley my senior year, doing my best to be straight. And there’s the Dairy Queen, where I fell off the merry-go-round when I was in grade school. Where Daddy used to bring us for hot dogs and fiesta sundaes. And there…Wayne…why were we there, that gravel turnout beside the water? A summer night, it must have been. That was the last time I ever saw him. His plaid shirt was unbuttoned. He bent down and picked up a stone and skipped it across the water, and his shirt fell wide open as he lobbed it, and I could see how hairy his chest was, how flat his belly was, and my dick got hard and my heart did a crazy flip. Damn. One of the best guys I’ve ever known. Beautiful and brave and funny. A real buddy. Damn, I hope he gets back to town soon and drops by. But why would anyone want to visit a has-been like me?

  Brice crossed the double bridge over the converging rivers, stopped for gas at the Go Mart, then pulled into the Rite Aid parking lot. He pulled on his dark glasses, cocked the brim of his cap over his eyes, and sucked in air. Here we go, he thought, clambering out. If I want more booze, I’m gonna have to risk the paparazzi. Head down, he entered the store.

  To his immense relief, the place was nearly empty. A pretty blonde girl stood behind the counter. She gave him a lit
tle wave. “How you?” she said.

  “Just fine, ma’am,” Brice said, giving her a crooked smile before grabbing a cart and shuffling off toward the liquor aisles. He returned with four large bottles of Dickel, two liters of Jameson Irish whiskey, and three six-packs of beer.

  “Are y’havin’ a Christmas party, sir?” the girl asked, as she rang him up.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Brice said. “Weather’s so cold, I thought a toddy or two’d—”

  Brice stopped in mid-sentence and swallowed hard. There at his elbow, in a metal rack, was the latest issue of the Star, and there he was on the cover, juxtaposed with a photo of Zac Lanier. The headline blared, “Brice Brown Disappears in Aftermath of Divorce Announcement!” A smaller photo in the lower right-hand corner showed Shelly leaving her lawyer’s office, looking very stylish and very sad.

  “Sir? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brice croaked, pulling his gaze away from the magazine. “Guess I’m just thirsty. Better get these bottles home and heat me up that toddy.” He pulled out his credit card, realized his name was on it, tucked it back into his wallet, and counted his cash. He didn’t have enough.

  “Ohhh, hell,” he murmured, biting his lower lip. “Credit card it is then.”

  “Sorry, sir, I’ll need to see your driver’s license, since your bill’s over a hundred dollars.”

  Ohhh, hell, Part Two, Brice thought. Grimacing, he pulled out the laminated license and handed it to her.

  “Tennessee. I have a cousin in Tennessee. She works at—”

  Just as Brice feared, the pretty clerk paled. She looked at the license, and then she looked at Brice, and then she looked at the issue of the Star, and then she looked at Brice again.

  “Oh, Lord. Mr. Brown. It’s you,” she said, blinking mascara-laden lashes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brice sighed, swiping his credit card. “In the flesh.”