Country

by Jeff Mann

  “Cautious, yeah. Part of me is so happy, and part of me is so afraid. Part of me is terrified you’ll bolt.” Lucas covered Brice’s hand with his.

  “And leave what I’ve found here with you? No way. Every now and then I’m afraid you’ll bolt. I’m afraid you’ll put up that prickly distance again.”

  “My insecurities have made me do some pretty dumb shit, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I have a couple of surprises that should ease that insecurity.” Brice pulled a small gift-wrapped box from his pocket. “After my appointment, I found a little something for you in Elkins.” He placed the box in Lucas’s lap. “Open it.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Lucas tore off the wrapping and opened the box. Inside was a smaller box of rusty velvet. He opened that and stared. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

  “Don’t get scared. It’s just a ring. A thumb ring. Nothing all that serious. Nothing all that expensive. I figured the silver would look good with those necklaces you wear, and the knotwork reminds me of the Celtic knots in your shamrock tattoo.”

  Lucas, with an expression of wonder, lifted the ring from its box. “How…how’d you know what size—”

  “I emailed your uncle. We guessed at the size.”

  “No one’s ever bought me a ring before.”

  “Consider it an early birthday present. And it goes with another gift.”

  “Another gift?”

  “The ring was bought. The best gifts are made.” Brice rose to fetch his guitar from its hard-shell case in the corner. He sat by Lucas, propped the instrument on his knee, and fine-tuned it.

  “The other morning,” Brice explained, “I got to thinking about your tattoos. This is called ‘Country Boy.’ Here we go. I hope you like it.”

  Wake me, boy, with your hot hunger,

  And then I’ll love your mouth with mine,

  caress thorny ink, your ginger beard,

  taste maple sap, your virile wine,

  your country muscles, hill-bred and fine,

  torso forests, scents of mountain pine.

  You’re the storm and you’re the thunder,

  the shamrock and the thistle too,

  my naked warrior, my Rebel rain,

  furry devotions strong and true.

  You’re country muscle, hill-bred and fine.

  Mountain boy, your love’s my shrine.

  Shields and spears, your flaming sword,

  Barbed-wire biceps, thorn-bound wrist:

  I taste tattoos beneath my tongue,

  grip your blade inside my fist,

  burning, burning inside my fist.

  Your salvation’s worth any risk.

  Country boy inside the mist,

  Inside the swirling highland mist,

  Come give this country boy a kiss.

  Musky boy, you’re starry sweat-shine,

  Mountain boy, make your body mine,

  Your love’s my salvation, my body’s bliss.

  Country boy, make our love a shrine.

  Country boy, make our love a shrine.

  Lucas swallowed hard. Eyes averted, he slipped the ring on his thumb and turned it around and around.

  “It fits just right. ‘Make our love a shrine.’ That’s wonderful, man,” he said in a voice so low that Brice struggled to hear him. “You buy me a ring and you write me songs…. After all the shit I’ve survived…all this is like a godsent dream.”

  “I’m glad you like the song.” Smiling, Brice returned the instrument to its case. “For a while there, I thought I’d never write a decent tune again, but meeting you, holding you…music and lyrics are bubbling up in me now.”

  “Wonderful music. We need to get it out there somehow. You sure that Nashville—”

  Brice shook his head. “No way. Believe me. I know how that world works. Openly gay lyrics? There’s just no way.”

  “Some other way then.” Lucas held his hand up so that firelight could glint off the ring. “This means so much to me. I wanna head up to the cabin and get naked and hold on you and listen to the rain on the roof. Maybe get frisky and give you a little reward.”

  “Yes to all of that,” said Brice with a wide smile. “You want some of that buttermilk pie first?”

  “I do. But before that, I guess I got a big question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Would you…? Now, I ain’t asking you to, I’m just asking if you’d be willing to…. What are your plans? I mean, for the future?”

  “I told you I’d stay here with you. I’m gonna stay here as long as you want me to.”

  “But if I leave to go to school? What’ll you do then?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t take advantage of your uncle’s hospitality forever. I still have a good bit in the bank, thanks to my investments and everything I sold a month or so back, but that won’t last, since no new money’s coming in. Like you, I need to figure out how to make a living. As much as I’d like to stay here and make love to you and make music about you and take hikes and cook big meals and spend cuddly fireside evenings with you….”

  Lucas cleared his throat, bowed his head, and fiddled with his new ring. “So, if I moved to that Cheat Lake house? If I asked you to, would you be willing to, to move there with me? Not that I’m asking yet. But would you be willing?”

  Brice chuckled. “What do you think? There’s nothing for me in Nashville, and there’s no reason to move back to Hinton until all the Star-brewed ‘homosexual scandal’ dies down. I don’t know what I’d do in Morgantown, but I’d figure something out.”

  “You could give guitar lessons. Or, better, you could be my houseboy. Or house-daddy.” Lucas leaned into Brice, grinning. “When I get home after class, you can meet me at the door wearing nothing but work boots and a jock strap and a dog collar. How’s that sound?”

  Brice guffawed. “Whatever appeals to you. Yes, I’d move there with you. The two of us parting is definitely not in my plans. What’s that line in the Bible? ‘Whither thou goest, I will too?’”

  “Something like that. It was two ladies, not two guys, but yeah.”

  Lucas patted Brice’s thigh and rose. “Something to think about, the big scary future. Might be easier to face with this magic ring. Now how about that pie? With a big ole hairy man like you to love on, I gotta keep up my strength.”

  “YOOOOOOOO HOOOO!”

  Brice jumped at the shrill sound, then laughed out loud. “Down here! In the kitchen!” he shouted, putting down the paring knife.

  With a heavy clumping, feet descended the stairs. The door between dining room and kitchen flew open, and Mr. Philip burst into the room. He was dressed in a cabbie cap, pale blue slacks, and a black shirt adored with pink flamingos, and he carried two big shopping bags.

  “Darling! Did I miss the wedding?” he said, dropping the bags before giving Brice a bear hug.

  “You did not,” Brice said. “That event has yet to be scheduled.”

  “The bride’s deflowering then?”

  “Ummm. Uh. Yes and no. Our, uh, intimacy is…coming along but still incomplete.”

  “I retract that last query as unseemly.” Phil stepped back and poked Brice’s belly. “I see that you haven’t starved. Looks like there’s more of you to love.”

  Brice blushed. “Yeah. Lucas has been feeding me mighty well.”

  “I’ll bet.” Phil leered, deepening Brice’s blush. “Feeding you his sweet favors. Is he still thin as a rail?”

  “No. He’s actually put on weight too. His hips are as lean as ever, but there’s the cutest little fuzzy bit of plump just below his navel I can’t help but dote on.”

  “About time he filled out.” Phil began pulling packages from the shopping bags. “Have you written a song about that yet?”

  “What?”

  “Lucas tells me via e-mail that you’ve been writing up a storm this past month.”

  “I have, thanks to him. He really gets the creative juices going.”

  “Indeed.” Phil winked. “I know they’re two
weeks late, but I have some belated April Fool’s Day gifts for y’all. Where is the prodigal son?”

  “He’s down at Radclyffe’s Roost, but he should be home for dinner. He’s been helping Grace around the property and working behind the counter some. So have I, actually, just to make a little money. Other than a gaggle of prissy ladies who come in after church for Sunday brunch and give us both raised noses and cold shoulders, customers have been pretty nice to us. We’ve had to tell a few reporters to fuck off, but media interest in us has died down, so incidents of journalistic harassment have tapered off, thank God.”

  “Thank God indeed. Though I was able to parlay my intimate knowledge of your outrageous affair into invitations to some of the best gay parties in Fort Lauderdale. Those queens were all hysterical with envy over the fact that I knew a famous gay star. Did y’all get the citrus yet?”

  “No. You sent citrus?”

  “I did. Grapefruits and navel oranges. Fresh juice for celebratory mimosas!”

  “What you celebrating?”

  “Why, you two, of course. Courting in this romantic woodland getaway all to yourselves! It’s like a fairy tale…in a manner of speaking. Did the erotic enchantment of the Homo Hideaway work its magic or what?”

  “It did,” Brice said. “It sure did. I’m head over heels. That boy’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “You do look like you’re in love. Is he?”

  Brice sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t said.” Moving back to the counter, he recommenced chopping stalks of rhubarb. “He sure acts like it, though.”

  “When it comes to love, actions really do speak louder than words. And speaking of loving actions, I brought y’all loads and loads of condoms and packets of lube to contribute to your orgiastic shenanigans. They pass ‘em all out for free at the gay bars in Fort Lauderdale. Plus, there’s some cute shirts for y’all, and some alligator boxer briefs, and a plush alligator to guard your bed, and all sorts of other things charmingly Floridian. Oh, and a shark’s tooth cock ring.”

  Brice winced. “Ouch! Really?”

  “You butch boys can be so gullible. It’s actually a shark’s tooth necklace. Lucas can wear it when you two play Fay Wray and King Kong during your next fantasy fest. I can just see him beating your gorilla chest with his tiny starlet fists.” Phil pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge. “Shall we share a welcome-home drink and some welcome-home gossip?”

  “We can indeed. Dinner won’t be for another couple of hours. I have a pork shoulder in the oven with some dry rub on it, and some barbecue sauce simmering. We’re gonna have pulled pork sandwiches and cole slaw, since Lucas says you and I share an unnatural passion for barbecue. Plus this here’s a strawberry/rhubarb pie I’m making.”

  “Sounds fabulous.” Phil poured them out glasses of wine, then sat on a counter stool and opened boxes. “I bought the stuffed alligator from the hottest young store clerk with an Australian accent and shoulders about a league wide. Miss Emily—that’s my bridge partner—she said, ‘Why, Philip, why are you ogling that young man? He looks dumb as a box of rocks. Bless his heart, he looks like he couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.’ And do you know what I said?”

  Brice took a sip of wine before pulling a lump of plastic-wrapped piecrust dough from the fridge. “Oh, Lord, I’d forgotten what priceless stories you tell. What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Honey, I don’t want to suck his brains!’”

  Brice guffawed. “Great!”

  “Yes! And another time Miss Emily and I were driving past this gated community, and I said, ‘In there live the Cresswells and the Burgoines and the Bermans and the Silversteins and the Brights. And that fit and charming bachelor, Kip Young. His cock’s too big.’ And Miss Emily said, ‘Why, Philip dear, mercy me! How do you know his cock’s too big?’”

  Brice began rolling out the dough. “I know this’ll be good. So what did you say then?”

  “I slapped her on her bony knee—she has stockings in every shade of purple—and I said, “Honey, I done SAT on it!”

  “Oh, fuck. Did you really?”

  “Say it or sit on it?”

  “Both, I guess?”

  “Both! Poor thing, Miss Emily’s been so traumatized lately. Back in March, she suffered a spiritual shock of the first order. You say, ‘Do tell’ now.”

  Brice sprinkled the dough with flour. “Do tell.”

  “I’m glad you asked. Well, she’s a devout Methodist, and sometimes she drags me to her church. The hats she wears! Egregious! At any rate, a scandal nigh about tore that congregation apart. Why, I was there when it happened. The minister, who’s a distinguished, silver-headed man about my age—his wife, I’m sad to say, looks like a two-bit whore half the time, with feathers and furbelows to beat the band—why, Minister Bush was in the midst of the most moving sermon about the seven deadly sins—just holding forth, just holding forth!—when who should sashay down the aisle but this plump young girl of Cuban hue—about twenty, I’d say—wearing, of all things, black stiletto heels and a baggy orange something that I could swear was a housedress, and she had a teensy-tiny ruby tiara in her hair—Can you imagine? A tiara!—and clutched to her voluptuous bosom was a cinnamon-colored child half-wrapped in a scarlet blanket.”

  “And then?”

  “Minister Bush, he turned pale as toilet tissue and his eyes bugged out, and he started stammering, but he kept on as best he could as she commenced on down the aisle, and then she came to a dead halt right in front of the pulpit and she raised the baby on high like an offering, and the baby started to howl like a little banshee, and just about the time the minister got to the text about ‘the works of the flesh,’ she said, ‘Donald, why you not return my calls? Your son, your hijo, little Luís, he needs you!’”

  “Holy fuck. Really?” Shaking his head, Brice lifted the dough on the rolling pin and slid it into the pie plate. “What happened then?”

  “The place exploded into pandemonium! The pastor began shouting denials and denunciations, and the two-bit whore of a wife flew at the little Cuban girl with her red fingernails bared like some kind of fearsome bird of prey, and the little girl threw her hands up in the air, and that baby sailed across the room, and a parishioner just barely caught it, and then the unwed mother took the wife by the bottle-blonde hair and the two started jerking one another all over that room. It was a frenzy! So I saw only one way to calm the waters. God showed me the way!”

  “And how was that?” Mouth twisted with amusement, Brice crimped crust.

  “Why, I picked up a hymnal, and I started singing ‘What Child Is This?’ at the top of my lungs, and pretty soon everyone in that church had joined me. I’ve never heard such a rousing rendition! We were all filled by the Holy Spirit!”

  Brice’s sides shook. “You are shitting me. You have got to be shitting me.”

  “Not at all. It’s the God’s honest truth. All kinds of wonders and marvels manifest in Florida. Well, ‘enough about me. What about you? What do you think of me?’ as the Divine Miss M put it in Beaches. What have y’all been up to? I hate technology, so I rarely turn my computer on. If you’ve sent me any e-mail lately, I might not have read it. Last I heard, soon after my wicked sister had showed y’all her ass in the worst way, y’all had made a frightful scene in the snowy Fasnacht streets of Helvetia.”

  “Right. Amie tore that bastard a new one. Well, after that unpleasantness…you remember I asked you about Lucas’s ring size? I gave Lucas a ring.”

  “Really? Is the engagement official?”

  “Naw, not yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. So then, after the weather warmed up last month, Lucas took me on a bunch of day trips. Spruce Knob, Seneca Rocks, Smoke Hole Caverns. We’ve hiked in the state forest a good bit. Let’s see, what else? We had Grace and Amie up for St. Patrick’s Day. Lucas made corned beef and cabbage, and I made cornbread. The four of us went to the Pickens Maple Syrup Festival
and about ate ourselves to death. Lucas and I put in the garden. Yesterday, we planted corn. Lucas said it was time to do that since the dogwood’s blooming. He’s still studying for his GED, and I’m still writing songs. We’re both wondering what’s next for us.”

  “He’s still planning to apply to WVU, I hope?”

  “I think so. Me, I need…I need to get a real job and stop mooching off you, for one thing. Or at least pay rent.”

  “Mooching?” Phil raised his eyebrows and sipped his wine. “Rent? You owe me nothing. You’ve been helping keep this place up in my absence, and you’ve made my nephew happy. He’s no longer the sulking, brooding, heart-maimed little introvert he was when I left, is he?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then you’ve given me a gift worth a king’s ransom. After all those years in prison…the scars…I thought the poor boy would never….”

  Phil slipped off the stool, stepped over to the fridge, and pulled out some cheeses. “Brie and cheddar. Very nice. Let’s let these warm up a bit for cocktail hour. After today’s flight delays and the long drive I’ve endured, I could do with a daiquiri or three. When is Lucas due home?”

  Brice looked at the wall clock. “Not sure. Pretty soon.”

  “Then you and I have time to discuss something. I have a proposition for you.”

  Brice began hulling strawberries. “Okay. What’s that?”

  “I’m thinking about retiring to Florida permanently. The warm weather is a balm for my aging joints, and I love my condo down there, and the friends I’ve made. There are lots of retired gay men in Fort Lauderdale. Here, I feel fairly isolated. I have only Lucas, Grace, and Amie…and the occasional game of bridge with some local ladies. And I must admit all those years of living in DC have made me want more of a social life than I could ever find here.”

  “Well, we’d sure miss you, but moving down there for good makes sense, I guess. But what’s the proposition?”