Country

by Jeff Mann

  “Yeah, it’s tuned,” Brice said. “I fiddled with it the first day I got here.”

  “So are you ever gonna play for me? On that, or on your guitar? Uncle Phil said you brought your guitar with you.”

  “I did. I don’t know why. Like I told you, I haven’t written anything in months and months. Major writer’s block.”

  “So play me something old. Off one of your albums.”

  “Ahhhh, I don’t know. I’ve lost my chops. I’m thinking music’s done with me.”

  “Bullshit.” To Brice’s surprise, Lucas reached over and tweaked his chin. “You’re a singer and a songwriter. What are you if you’re not that? Worthless. Worthless like me.”

  “Stop that shit. You ain’t worthless. You’re smart, and you’re intense, and you’re handsome. You have potential in spades. You just need a break.”

  “You stop that shit about music being done with you. A gift like that don’t just shrivel up and disappear. So you’re going through a dry spell. That’ll change. Mark my words.”

  Brice rubbed his jaw. “I sure hope you’re right. ‘Cause, honestly, when I’m not writing, I feel rudderless. Like time’s a’wasting. Like there’s no real point to anything. I’ve been at kind of a loss for around a year.”

  “You’ll get it back. You’ll get it back.” Lucas leaned over, bumping Brice’s shoulder with his own. “You’re fucking Brice Brown! Things are gonna turn around, you just wait and see. Meanwhile…you expect me to be snowed in with a major country music star and—”

  “Former major country music star.”

  “Whatever. The point is, I’ve been listening to your music for years. Hearing it in prison….”

  Lucas bowed his head and dug his knuckles into his brow. “God, it felt like a blessing, like the walls and the bars disappeared and the ceiling vanished and all those loud, mean, brutal assholes faded away for a few minutes…and the sky opened up, and I was driving down a country road all by myself, with maple leaves falling, leaves the color of those wood-embers there, or I was walking down by a riverbank in spring, watching the sycamores and the willows leaf out, or…a big man was holding me in his arms and telling me I was tough, telling me things’d turn out fine, that we could survive anything long as we were together, and….”

  Lucas trailed off. He wiped at his eyes and coughed. “Shit. Sorry. Got carried away. Anyway, I been listening to your music for years. So now that you’re here, how the hell can you expect me not to ask you to play?”

  “Wow, kid.” Brice shook his head. “I’m glad my music helped.” Reaching over, he squeezed Lucas’s shoulder. “Okay. I’ll play. What do you want to hear?”

  BRICE PLAYED FOR OVER AN hour, with Lucas stretched out beneath the blanket, making request after request. By the time Brice plead weariness, the fire had died down and the room was chilly.

  Lucas swung his feet off the couch. “That was wonderful. Just wonderful. Thank you so much.”

  Brice closed up the piano. “Sure, kid. It means a lot to me that you like my stuff. I guess you’re my last fan.”

  Lucas smirked. “Oh, please. I kinda doubt it. Can you imagine all the queer folks across the nation—shit, the world—who are so happy to find out that a gifted guy like you is one of us?”

  “That’s what Travis said. That kid who came to visit me in Hinton.”

  “Yeah, I met him last summer. Cute, scruffy guy. Came here with a bunch of other queer kids from WVU. So, you wanna lift weights with me tomorrow?”

  “That would be great.”

  “Okay. Get back here around nine, and I’ll cook us up some grits and sausage.” Lucas turned abruptly and headed for the door.

  “Good night.” Brice rose, watching Lucas don his jacket and leave. An ache was building in his belly, a mingling of longing and regret. He closed up the fireplace and snuffed all the candles. He pulled his cap and coat off the hall tree, slipped them on, and stepped out onto the snowy deck. Above, gaps in snow clouds torn apart by wind revealed patches of night sky jeweled with constellations.

  Brice pulled a scarf out of his jacket pocket and arranged it around his neck. He was about to head up the path toward his cabin when he heard a shout behind him.

  “Hey!”

  Brice turned. Lucas stood beneath the redbud grove. He lifted a hand.

  “Wait.”

  Lucas loped over the snowy deck to stand before Brice.

  “Sorry. Forgot something.”

  Wrapping his sinewy arms around Brice, Lucas craned upward and kissed him softly on the mouth.

  Brice stood stunned, heart commencing to race, mind swamped with disbelief.

  “Thanks for the music,” Lucas said, kissing Brice again, this time on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.” He released Brice and stepped backward before Brice could return the embrace. Then the boy turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  Brice stood for a long moment, looking after him. He shifted his eyes to the stars. Amazement and thankfulness welled up in his heart. He shoved his hands into his pockets, drew in a long breath of cold air, then tucked his chin against his chest and started along the path to Laurel Cottage, filled with the sudden conviction that Lucas was right, that things might turn around, that anything was possible.

  THE DIGITAL ALARM CLOCK BY THE BED SAID 3:33. Brice rose, pissed, climbed back into bed, and stared up into the dark. He thought of Lucas’s unexpected and astounding kiss. He thought of the way Lucas moved, the color of his eyes, the color of his beard, the way his chest and biceps and butt bulged, filling out his clothes. He tried to imagine what Lucas must have suffered, a smart, sensitive, desirable introvert of a boy trapped in a big cage for six years with who knows what kind of hardened, brutal men?

  “And I’m feeling hopeless ‘cause I lost my audience and had to give up my fancy condos and shiny toys,” Brice muttered, tossing off the covers. “Christ, what a big baby. What a spoiled narcissist.”

  Brice climbed out of bed and dressed. He pulled on his jacket and cap and left Laurel Cottage. The snow had stopped; the skies were clear. He walked for an hour, around the compound, where he circled Lucas’s dark cabin, and then down the road into Brantley Valley. He trudged over hard-packed snow, breathing in bitterly cold air, taking in glimpses of the Milky Way. “I’m a small man. I’m a small, sad man,” he murmured again and again, looking up at the forested hills, the drifting clouds, the gleaming angles of the Big Bear and Orion.

  Face, toes, and fingers chilled, Brice returned to his cabin. He stripped down to his underwear, sat on the edge of his bed, and cradled his face in his hands. Sleep, he sensed, was still far, far away. He thought of Lucas sleeping soundly in his own bed, several hundred yards distant. Lucas naked, his well-defined, lightly hairy chest rising and falling, his left arm covered with tattoos. His cock limp, nestled in pubic hair the color of his beard. His armpits full of the same ruddy hair, smelling of youth’s virile musk. The same fine, gingery moss in the cleft between his plump, pale buttocks.

  “Okay, by God,” Brice groaned, rising. From the corner of the bedroom, he hauled out his guitar case and opened it. “No help for me but this.”

  Brice sat on the edge of the bed and tuned up his guitar, remembering the first guitar he’d learned to play, a miniature one his grandmother had bought at Sears and given him for Christmas when he was thirteen. He remembered the guitar he’d played on the Grand Ole Opry, a sleek Martin, and the Washburn that Zac smashed over a chair when Brice told him that they were through. This old guitar was his favorite, a Yamaha FG-345, the only brand he could afford back in college when he first started getting serious about songwriting.

  He picked through a few bars of “Hard Gray Rain,” the song he’d heard Lucas playing in his cabin, a tune that Brice’s feelings for Wayne had fueled. He fooled with “Sad-Eyed Angel,” another Wayne-inspired song.

  “The past. That’s the past.” Brice sighed. He slipped the guitar off his knee, poised to case it up again, and then he paused, and then he thought a
gain of Lucas kissing him, the feeling of the boy’s lips on his, the soft brushing of his moustache.

  “I need something new,” Brice muttered. He propped the instrument back on his knee and retuned it, searching for something fresh, something beyond the strictures of standard tuning. In a few minutes, he’d dropped into G-tuning—DGDGBD. He piddled with that for a few minutes, remembering chords by Joni Mitchell and Nanci Griffith, tunes of theirs he’d covered on his second album. “Newer,” he said, dropping the B string to A and then the bass string to C.

  Brice strummed the open chord—CGDGAD—and grinned. “There you go.” For long minutes, he forgot about everything else—his disgrace, his hopelessness, even his smoldering desire for Lucas—as his fingers moved up and down the strings, stumbling over dissonance, slipping into chords, patterns of suspension and resolution.

  “Now then, Lucas Tuning, give me a song,” Brice whispered. “Give me a reason to keep breathing.”

  In fifteen minutes, a tune had surfaced inside the flow of new chords. It stumbled, backed up, started over again, took a minor path, wavered through uncertainties and irresolutions, shouldered into a series of majors, swayed across a hanging bridge of major sevens, then tapered off into a minor nine, and ceased.

  He ran through his new discovery a second time, then a third time, writing down the progression in a notebook he carried with him everywhere. The last notation, the last new song, according to the scribbled date of the final entry—October 3, 1996—was one he’d written about his desire for Zac, the lyrics carefully sidestepping any use of revelatory pronouns. He’d never recorded it.

  Brice put away both guitar and notebook, sipped some water, used the bathroom, and climbed back into bed. He lay there in the dark, listening to wind soughing in the eaves.

  Sounds like death trying to get in, Brice thought. Death cold as the space between the stars. But I got an answer for that. At least for now.

  Closing his eyes, he hummed the melody he’d created, music that would capture a little of how he had come to feel about Lucas.

  “HELVETIA,” LUCAS SAID, STEERING HIS FORD down the wooded valley. They passed an assortment of alpine-themed buildings set along an ice-edged, rocky brook. “A bunch of Swiss immigrants settled here in the 1870s. It’s downright adorable, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Brice said, admiring the quaint, pitch-roofed structures, some clapboard, some log, some covered with dark-wood shingles. “And out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Exactly,” Lucas said, slowing his truck. “Out in the middle of nowhere is just where I wanna be. Any place that has more trees than people, that’s my kinda place. I felt that way even before I spent six years in a little cell, and I feel even more that way now.”

  Brice almost asked Lucas if he’d ever tell him about his prison experience but decided that Valentine’s Day was definitely not the right time.

  “So there’s a restaurant here?”

  “A great one. The Hutte. Here we are.” Lucas pulled into a gravel lot and parked beside a long, low wooden building with dormer windows and an open porch. The two men climbed out.

  “Glad I made reservations,” Lucas said, surveying the many parked cars. “Lots of folks out on dates.”

  “Uhhh. Lots of people?” Brice flipped his jacket collar up and pulled his ball cap down over his eyes.

  “Afraid of being recognized? Hey, I’m the local boy turned violent criminal and faggot whore, remember? The food’ll be worth it, I promise.”

  Brice nodded. I don’t want to look like a coward in front of him.

  Lucas led the way up onto the porch. “People around here have been pretty decent to me since I got out, though it’s not like I leave the Phagg Heights compound all that often. The folks that do recognize me will be too polite to say anything, since I’m one of their own, a Randolph County boy. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Your beard has bushed out so much since your last album cover, and it’s gotten way grayer—plus you’re a lot heavier. I’ll be real surprised if anyone figures out who you are.”

  Brice patted his gut. “Do you like the big, salt-and-pepper beard and the extra weight? I stopped dieting and dyeing my beard when I lost my contract.”

  “Would I be having a Valentine’s Day date with you if I didn’t?” Lucas held the door open for Brice and winked. His right eye was still faintly bruised. “I asked Eleanor for a quiet, kinda isolated table near the rear. That’ll help.”

  Brice stepped inside and began hungrily snuffling the scents. Several people looked up as they entered, but no one responded, except a rangy young guy near the door who shared a table with what were presumably his wife and toddler daughter. “Hey, Lucas,” the man said, raising his hand. “How you doin’?”

  Lucas strode over and shook the guy’s hand. “Hey, Ray. Just hungry for some of that Swiss sausage. Hey, Marion. Hey, little one.” The wife smiled; the child hid her head behind her mother’s back.

  “How’d you get that shiner?”

  “Ah, just brawlin’. You know me.”

  “Yep. A wild man to the end. Who we got here?” Ray asked, looking up at Brice.

  “This is Ken,” Lucas said, without missing a beat. “He hails from the southern part of the state. He’s my date.”

  Though Marion squirmed at the word “date” and pulled her child closer, as if they were in the presence of a threat, Ray seemed unfazed. He gave Brice a quick, firm handshake.

  “Welcome to Helvetia. You all have a great evening. Lil’ Lucas here deserves some good times. Save some room for the peach cobbler. It’s super.”

  “You bet,” Brice said. “Nice to meet y’all.”

  “See y’all around.” Lucas gave Marion a defiant grin before leading the way on into the restaurant. Soon they were seated at a little table in the back, relatively private, as Lucas had promised.

  “Ray and I went to high school together,” Lucas said, shedding his denim jacket. He was dressed in black jeans and a slate-gray button-down chamois shirt. Much to Brice’s delight, it was unbuttoned far enough to show off rusty chest hair and a couple of silver chains above the scoop of an A-shirt.

  Brice sloughed off his coat as well. He’d worn a pair of gray chinos and a WVU sweatshirt. Taking off his ball cap, he ran a hand over his scalp. Feeling exposed, he placed the cap back on his head. “How’d you know my middle name was Kenneth?”

  “I’ve done some Internet stalking, Mr. Brown.” Lucas winked and grinned.

  “Lucas!” A thin, middle-aged woman with short, wavy brown hair and sharp features bustled up to them. “I’m so pleased to see you out and about.”

  “Howdy, Miss Eleanor. This is Ken. We were wanting to enjoy a nice Valentine’s meal together, and I couldn’t think of a better place for a romantic evening than your restaurant.”

  “Hello, Ken,” Eleanor said, handing them menus. She too seemed to be unbothered by the concept of two men sharing a Valentine’s Day date. “Welcome to Helvetia. Where you from?”

  “Hinton, ma’am.” Brice gave her an anxious smile and then dropped his gaze to the menu.

  “He’s staying with us for a few weeks up at the compound,” Lucas said.

  “Mercy, you do look familiar,” Eleanor said, studying Brice’s features. “Have you been here before?”

  “No’m,” Brice mumbled. “First time here.”

  “Well, again, welcome. Do you have any idea what you’d like?”

  “Mind if I order for us?” Beneath the table, Lucas nudged Brice’s calf with his foot. Brice nearly jumped out of his chair.

  “Oh, uh, yeah. Go for it,” Brice muttered. All of a sudden, he wanted to cover his head with his coat.

  “We’ll both have the lemonade. I’ll have the bratwurst with sauerkraut, and Ken here’ll have your all’s homemade sausage with the rösti. And please save two pieces of cobbler for us.”

  “You got it. Coming right up.” Eleanor smiled, took their menus, gave Brice another quizzical look, and hurried off
.

  “Oh, Lord,” Brice groaned. “She’s gonna figure out who I am, for sure.”

  “Relax, big Daddy.” Lucas nudged Brice’s calf again.

  “How can I relax when you keep doing that? Don’t you get tired of teasing me?”

  “I’m only a tease if I don’t intend to follow through.” Lucas’s grin was broad and impish.

  My God, am I hearing things? “Do you intend to follow through?” Brice bumped Lucas’s thigh with his knee.

  “You want more than a kiss?” Lucas pretended shock. “The last few days, we’ve lifted weights together, gathered wood together, hiked together, cooked some good meals together, got a couple buzzes on together, watched—what?—three or four action films together. Greedy! What more do you want?”

  “I want—”

  Brice fell silent as Eleanor appeared with their lemonades. “Food’ll be out in about five minutes,” she said, before hurrying off.

  “You were saying?” Lucas took a long pull on his glass.

  “I want more of the same. I want to spend time with you. I want to get to know you better. I want….” Brice took a gulp of lemonade. He lowered his voice. “What do you think I want? I want you. You know I want you. I’ve told you that. I want us to kiss again. I want to hold you.”

  “You want one of my truck-stop-special white-trash blow-jobs, huh?” Lucas bit his lip and looked away.

  “Stop that shit. Stop trying to push me away. I don’t care what you did at those truck stops. You don’t care that I hired who knows how many hustlers in the past, do you?”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, I don’t care. Sorry. It’s some fucking reflex action of mine, pushing folks away. I think you’re…really cool, and I still…I still can’t believe that you…that you want…a fucked-up nobody like me.”

  “If we were alone, I’d take your hand right now.”

  “So do it.”

  “What?”

  “Be brave, big man. No one’s looking at us. Mean and muscly as I am and big and burly as you are, we could kick the ass of any other man in this place. If you feel like doing it, do it.”