Country

by Jeff Mann

“Used to be, Mr. Brown, these scars were like little jagged mouths. They’d whisper to me in the dead of night, when bad dreams woke me up and I couldn’t sleep. They’d tell me I wasn’t worth shit, that nothing would get better, that I didn’t deserve nothing better, that I couldn’t do nothing right, that I was a piece of ignorant white trash with no reason to hope for anything, that no one would ever feel anything for me, except for bastards who might want to use my mouth or my asshole as their tight pussy for the night, that I might as well find myself a nice, scenic mountain ledge and throw myself right off the edge and break my worthless neck. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m tired of that shit. Tired to death. Those voices can shut the fuck up. I got better things to do now than listen to them. You said I could initiate anything, right?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. I’m up for whatever you are.”

  “Will you…?” Lucas paused, shook his head, and grinned. “This is kinda hard. Will you…will you come back to my cabin and sleep with me? No sex yet. Just snuggling good and close. Will you? It’s not real late, so we could climb in bed and watch a movie, if you want. I even got a jar of moonshine we could sample. How’s that sound?”

  The thankfulness that Brice had felt so often since the first evening he’d seen Lucas’s solemn face pulsed up in him again. He finished his champagne. He bent forward and planted a kiss on Lucas’s brow. “You bet, kid. I’ve been waiting for weeks for you to ask me something like that.”

  “Good. If you can rein in those horndog lusts of yours till I’m ready for more, we might just make sharing a bed a regular thing.”

  “Whatever you say,” Brice said. I’ll do anything necessary to hold you. “I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise.”

  The two men climbed out of the hot tub, covered it, dried off, and dressed. Lucas snuffed the candle. As they left the grotto and climbed the spiral steps to the pool, a light drizzle falling on their shoulders and faces, a sudden realization hit Brice: he couldn’t recall ever being happier.

  Happiness? My God, happiness. How long has it been since I’ve felt this way? I don’t think I’ve ever really felt this way before. Savor it, Brice buddy. Savor it while it’s here. Who knows how long it might last or when, if ever, it might come again?

  “Thanks for a wonderful Valentine’s Day,” Brice said, taking Lucas’s hand.

  “Thank you,” Lucas said. “You’re one sweet Daddy, that’s for sure. As much as I liked the Speedos, I’m thinking a cuddle-fest with you is gonna be the best Valentine’s Day gift of all. Furry as you are, snuggling’s gonna feel great.”

  “I’M THINKIN’ UNDERWEAR IS BEST,” LUCAS SAID, smiling shyly. Standing in the low lamplight of his bedroom, he peeled off his clothes, giving Brice a glorious show. Brice watched, full of a profound ache, an ache composed of equal parts erotic desire and aesthetic awe, admiring the boy’s well-defined muscles as they were exposed, admiring the contrast between white skin and chestnut-colored body hair.

  “Me too,” Brice said with a sigh. Damn, those sweet little nipples. I’d like to suck on ‘em till the sun comes up. Slowly, he stripped as well. “That’ll make it easier for me to keep my hands off that prominent crotch of yours, or that magnificent butt.”

  Lucas face flushed. “I’m thinkin’ all those are gonna be yours to handle sooner or later.”

  “Promise?”

  “Uh, yeah. I feel safe in promising that.”

  The two men stood face to face, a few feet apart, Lucas in his tighty-whities, Brice in his gray boxer briefs. Both of them gazed with greedy fascination at the other’s exposed body, both of their cocks discernibly hard.

  “This is crazy. We’re both stiff as boards. I really don’t mean to be a tease.” Lucas moved over to Brice, wrapped his arms around his waist, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his whiskered cheek. “You sure you can do this? Give me just a little time to…to feel safe and adjust and get over my hang-ups?”

  Brice hesitated. The crotch-swell in the front of Lucas’s white briefs and the buttock-swell in the back were more than sufficient to make him suffer. “I think so.” Brice stroked Lucas’s bearded jaw and looked into his sad blue-gray eyes. “Yes. Yes, I can do this. For you, Mr. Lucas, I can do anything. Including resisting the violent urges I’m feeling right now.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. That means a lot. Your patience will be rewarded, I swear. Okay, let’s get to this movie. It’s one of my favorites. Lotsa stuff gets blown up.”

  Lucas fetched the jar of moonshine, and they climbed into bed together. For the next few hours, they took turns sipping the liquor, watching The Rock on Lucas’s VHS machine, and cuddling together beneath a heap of blankets in the high, chilly room.

  Both men were half- or fully hard all evening, but Brice behaved as promised, holding Lucas close but resisting the temptation to initiate anything sexual for fear of the boy’s negative response. Sometimes, Lucas rested his head on Brice’s torso or shoulder and fooled with Brice’s belly hair or navel. Sometimes Brice curled against Lucas from behind, fondling the boy’s soft chest hair but avoiding his nipples. Brice desperately wanted to stroke, pinch, lick, suck, and bite them, for he’d always found men’s chests in general and men’s nipples in particular especially appealing. Even a glimpse of Lucas’s fur-swathed little nubs brought out the rough and raging Top in him. Still, he controlled himself, determined to make the boy feel safe and comfortable no matter what, as if a magnificent but thoroughly skittish wild animal had been given into his care and keeping.

  They fell into kissing bouts with regularity, beards brushing beards, tongues softly wrangling, Lucas’s strong arms tight around Brice’s big shoulders. When the movie ended and Lucas turned out the light with a whispered, “This is wonderful. Thanks for staying with me. Good night, Daddy,” Brice spooned him close from behind, stroking the boy’s cheek and kissing his shoulders till Lucas began to snore.

  Brice studied his face in the dimness, stunned yet again at his remarkable good fortune and the universe’s sudden and thoroughly unexpected generosity. Already, he sensed, the loss of this fuzzy human warmth he held in his arms would be greater than any loss he’d ever experienced, and he fell asleep praying that such a bleak eventuality might be delayed as long as mortality might permit.

  BRICE OPENED HIS EYES TO the sight of Lucas, still in white briefs, sitting on the bed’s edge and holding two steaming mugs. “Good morning, Daddy,” Lucas said. “Sun’s out, snow’s meltin’. How’d you sleep?” Warm light streamed through the window, glinting off his silver necklaces, illuminating the curves of his fuzzy torso and the scrawls of his tattoo sleeve.

  “Great. More than great. You?”

  “Great too. Felt damned good, those beefy arms wrapped around me. None of the usual nightmares neither. Coffee?”

  “You bet. Thanks. Let me hit the toilet first.”

  When Brice returned, he found the pillows arranged in a heap against the headboard and Lucas back in bed. The two reclined side by side, blankets pulled up to their bellies, and sipped their mugs.

  “You have such a beautiful physique,” Brice said, running a finger over Lucas’s biceps. “That weightlifting you do really pays off.”

  “You too, brawny. That fur all over your chest and belly gets me pretty het up.”

  “Good to hear. I gotta admit that being, uh, chaste last night was—”

  “Hard? Yeah, I agree. You were hard, I was hard.” Lucas snickered. “Like I said, just give me a little time.”

  “I will.” Brice put down his mug and cupped Lucas’s cheek. “Pretty eyes. Pretty beard. Everything about you is just so fine.”

  “Even these?” Lucas gingerly fingered his scars. In the bright light of morning, they were glaringly obvious, ragged pink lines etched across his ribs on both left and right sides. Another scar, a puckered oval one, gleamed beneath the dusting of his ruddy belly hair.

  Brice gripped Lucas’s arm and bent over. When he kissed the scars over Lucas’s left ribs,
the boy tensed and gasped.

  “Even these, kid.” Brice kissed the scars over his right ribs next, then the one upon his belly. “They only make me….”

  Brice paused, swallowing hard. Love. Already I want to say “love.” My God, how has all this happened so fast? And what will I do if his feelings aren’t as deep as mine? “They only make me care for you more.”

  Lucas fell silent. He sipped at his mug, then put it down on the bedside table, stretched out, and folded his arms behind his head, displaying red-brown thickets of armpit hair.

  “I want to tell you about them,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “My scars. How I got them. It happened exactly two years ago today. February 15, 1996.”

  “Really?” Brice was torn between surprise and a desire to bury his face in Lucas’s armpits. He took a deep breath, savoring the boy’s rich scent. “You sure you wanna talk about it?”

  “Yep. I want to tell you about prison. You wanna hear? It ain’t pleasant.”

  “I figured that.” Brice settled back into the pillows, half-afraid of what he was about to discover. “Yeah, I do want to hear. I’d like you to tell me.”

  “Okay.” Lucas paused. “Then we can head down to the lodge and I’ll cook us up some sausage and fried apples and a cheesy grits casserole.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “So….” Lucas closed his eyes. “I wudn’t in prison but a week before four guys ambushed me in the shower. They crammed a washrag in my mouth, and they held me down, and they took turns with me. I’d fought so hard to keep that fuckin’ trucker’s dick outta my ass, yet there I was, on the tiled floor of that shower, those bastards on top of me, one after another, pounding away. I hollered and I fought, but it didn’t do no damn good.”

  Brice groaned. “Jesus, Lucas. I’m so sorry. As good-looking as you are, I figured that something like that might have happened.”

  “Yeah. Bad combo: they liked my looks and they were all a lot bigger’n me. God, I wish I’d been your size. I might have had a chance.”

  “Like I said before, no matter how big a man is, if he’s outnumbered….”

  “He’s screwed. Literally, in this case. What made it worse is that I hadn’t been fucked before.” Lucas rubbed his forehead and grimaced, the ghost of past pain darkening his face. “Ever. Old-fashioned fool that I was, I was saving my cherry for some guy I really cared about.” Lucas shot Brice a glance and then closed his eyes again. “Someone like you.”

  “Like me? Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.” Lucas rolled over onto his side, his back to Brice. “There’s a kindness in you that…well, ain’t no use to talk about might-have-beens, right?”

  “How old were you when all this happened?”

  “I was twenty.” Lucas pulled the blankets up to his shoulders. “All the lube they used was soap and spit. I bled some afterwards. And that was only the first time. About every two weeks, those guys would get me somehow, somewhere. Brett, and Rick, and Greg, and Matt. Fuckers. ”

  “You reported them, right?”

  “Oh, sure. I told the guards, begged ‘em to do something, but they just snickered and rolled their eyes like it was some kinda big joke to them. After a while, when those bastards grabbed me, I stopped fighting and just tried to relax. It didn’t hurt as much then. And they were less likely to slam my head against the floor or punch me in the side, if I just lay there, bit down on that washcloth, and took it. They were always tellin’ me to ‘take it like a man.’ So I guess I learned to do that.”

  “Lucas?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m asking permission to hold you. Would that be all right?”

  For a long moment, Lucas said nothing.

  “Yeah. Please.”

  Brice scooted across the bed. When he wrapped an arm around Lucas and pulled him close, the boy emitted a low whimper and curled into a ball.

  “Is this all right?”

  “Yeah. You make me feel safe. You made me feel safe last night, when you held me close in bed. I cain’t recall when I ever felt safe before. When I was a kid, I guess. Before Dad died.”

  “I’m real glad I make you feel safe. Do you want to go on with your story? Or have you had enough?”

  “Naw, I want to finish it.”

  “Okay. So they just kept on…raping you all those years?”

  “Naw. That shit went on about six months. Then Eric showed up. And things changed.”

  “Eric. You’ve mentioned him. You two were lovers?”

  “Yeah. I guess you could call it that. The only lover I’ve ever had. He was six foot three, built like a brick shit-house. Messy red hair. Big red beard. Blue eyes. Pale, freckled skin. Thick hairy legs, smooth chest, arms like oak limbs, shoulders so damn broad he’d have to shift sideways to get through some doorframes. He was like some kinda thunder god outta Norse mythology.”

  A faint tremor shook Lucas’s frame. Brice kissed the boy’s shoulders. “Go on.”

  “I hated Eric sometimes, the way he beat me, but, man, he was a goddamn glory. He’d only been there two weeks when he caught those guys giving it to me—one of ‘em with a dick up my ass and another with a dick down my throat, both of ‘em pumping away to beat the band. I’d pretty much given up any kind of fight by then, after half a year of that routine, so I just let ‘em do what they pleased.”

  Lucas coughed and chuckled. “Well, Eric lunged into that room and beat the ever-living hell out of all of ‘em. Then he—God, this sounds like some kinda romantic movie—he threw me over his shoulder and carried me back to his cell, like I was some kinda prize he’d won. I guess I was. Of course, then he beat me up and raped me himself, which weren’t all that romantic…but the funny thing was, after he’d blackened both of my eyes and bruised my ribs up, when he threw me down on the bed and clamped a hand over my mouth and fucked me…he was so tender.”

  Lucas shuddered. “It was crazy. Those big fists pounding into me, and then him on top of me, holding me down and kissing me and riding my ass, just as slow and gentle as if he were a groom and I was some kinda delicate virgin bride on her wedding night.”

  Lucas shook his head and huddled even closer to Brice, his back pressed against the older man’s chest. “Just fucking crazy. He’d grip my jaw and thrust in and out, that huge body of his crushing me into the sheets, and he’d whisper, “Does that feel good, boy? I want you to feel good, boy. Tell me that feels good, boy.’ And I’d nod and mumble into his palm, and after a while, I wudn’t lying, ‘cause he did make it feel good. Damn, was I insane?”

  “Naw. Folks are complicated critters, and our sex drives are probably the most complicated and irrational elements of all. So…what happened with Eric, that got to be a regular thing?”

  “Yep. He pulled some strings, and suddenly we were cellmates. I was his bitch, his boy, and everyone knew it. No one dared to touch me then. And God, I was so grateful. Getting beat up by him every now and then…his moods were erratic as hell, and the slightest little thing could piss him off…being bruised up all the time was worth not being gang-banged by those skanky pricks. So, yeah, that went on for years. Eric slapping me or punching me or whacking my ass red as fire, and then him gripping my head and fucking my face till I was drooling and choking and close to puking, and then him on top of me, hand tight over my mouth, screwing me slow and deep and sweet…and me crying…I think every goddamn time he fucked me, I broke down and cried like a baby, I don’t know why…’cause it hurt my hole some, ‘cause no matter how slow he went, his dick was huge…and ‘cause I was in pain, face and belly and sides red with the marks of his knuckles…and ‘cause I was thankful that God had sent him to protect me from everyone else…and ‘cause I was pretty sure he loved me…a love just as strong and deep as it was brutal and fucking nuts…and ‘cause I guess I grew to love him too…and ’cause every time he fucked me, my dick was as hard as the bars on the door and the window of our cell, and I always, I always came, he always insisted I come before him….”
r />   Lucas’s voice broke. He fell silent, trembling violently.

  Brice rocked him and soothed him. “Hey. Hey. It’s all right. It’s all right. I got you.” When he caressed the boy’s face, his fingers encountered hot tears.

  “Ah, Lucas. Ah, sweet boy.” Brice kissed his shoulders and hugged him hard. “That’s enough. That’s enough. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  “Naw.” Lucas shook his head, wiping his face with a balled-up fist. “I want to finish. I’m almost done.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.” Lucas took a deep breath. He gripped Brice’s hand. “You holding me helps. So….”

  Lucas cleared his throat. “So Eric owned me, and I guess I owned Eric, for over five years. He’d hold me at night, and he’d tell me about how hard his life had been…crazy, abusive, drunken parents…the drugs he’d been on…the shit he’d stole…the woman who broke his heart…the older guy who took him in, used him as a boy-toy for a year, then threw him out…the years on the streets…the gang he joined…the armed robbery he got busted for. Hearing all that, I could forgive him for his meanness. Man, he clung to me at night. Sometimes it was hard to pry his arms off me long enough to piss. There was something desperate in the way he held me. He told me he adored me—something he’d say while he beat me up and when he screwed me so slow and gentle right after—and I got to believe him. I got to thinking I couldn’t live him without him. But then I had to.”

  “He got out of prison? He was paroled?”

  “Naw. Eric died. He was murdered.”

  “Jesus. Really? What happened?”

  “Well, this conversation got started when I said I was gonna tell you how I got these scars. So now we’re around to that topic. Just a few months before I got out of prison—two years ago today—some new guys in our cell block decided that they wanted my ass and that Eric’s monopoly of me was done. They cornered us in the bathroom. Six of ‘em. With shivs, knives they’d made. Two of ‘em grabbed me and four ganged up on Eric. Two of the four were as big as Eric was. They had him pinned to the wall with a shiv to his throat. The other two—strong, nasty fuckers—subdued me pretty easy. I mean, I can fight with the best of ‘em, but once again, my smaller size was a big handicap. One of ‘em jerked down my pants, and the leader said that everyone was gonna have a go at me and that all Eric could do was watch. Well, Eric wasn’t gonna tolerate that, shivs or no shivs, and he went fucking crazy, and I followed his lead, and I went crazy too. To make a long story short, in a few seconds, Eric had stabbed one of ‘em to death, one of ‘em had cut me across my ribs real deep, and another had stabbed me in the belly. So that’s how I got the scars. Eric….”