He leaned on the bar, listening to some twangy numbskull sing about his glorious pickup truck. Henry hadn’t heard country music in ages, and he’d forgotten how much he hated it.

“Is this the only music they play?” he asked Dwight.

“Hey, you’re back in West Virginia,” Dwight said. “What, you forgot? We love beer, country music, and God. In that order.”

“I hate all three.”

“That’s un-American. Dick Cheney would shoot you in the face for that.”

“I hate him, too.”

Henry had ridden with Dwight to Big Dawg’s, a tavern on the state highway outside Prima, West Virginia, the little town where they’d grown up. Dwight was Henry’s old buddy, his only friend from high school, because Dwight had been the only other person in the school with a functioning brain.

He stopped a waitress hurrying past, a stunning blonde. She looked at him and broke into a big smile. “I know you,” she said. “Henry Franklin, right? Valedictorian, class of 1995?”

“Right,” Henry said. “You look familiar.”

“Sandy Lyons.”

“Okay, yeah – our senior prom queen.”

“That’s me. Dwight here tells me you’re living in New York City.”

“I am.”

“That’s so cool! You need a beer?”

“God, no – but could you play some different music, please?”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Anything but this. I hate country music. How about some Springsteen?”

Sandy shook her head. “No way.”

“Charlie Parker?”

At that, Sandy did a wide-eyed double take. “Charlie Parker? At Big Dawg’s, in Prima? Welcome home, Henry, but that’s not going to happen. Sorry. Hey, great to see you. Gotta run.” She laughed and spun away, blonde hair swirling, her jeans a perfect, smooth fit across her perfectly adorable buns.

Ooh, Henry thought, watching her go. Now that’s sweet.

“Nice view, huh?” Dwight said.

“A prom queen butt if ever there was one.” Henry turned back to the bar and his glass of Maker’s Mark. “But this music’s driving me nuts, Jesus. ‘Muh truck, muh Daddy, muh darlin’ – how can people listen to this pandering idiocy?”

“You’ve come home a tad full of yourself, pal,” Dwight said. “I mean, I have to tell you – I’m looking at you, listening to you, wondering ‘Who is this guy?’”

Growing up, Henry had counted down the days until he could escape from Prima, from the gossipy meanness, the willful ignorance and conventional thinking that leveled everyone, that mocked and scolded any show of ambition or creativity until those who dared to show it ended up regretting it, even apologizing for it.

“Come on, man, how can you stand living with these morons?” Henry said. “Some fucking Einstein threw a bag of trash on my parents’ lawn last night. You believe that? The crows tore it apart at the crack of dawn, of course. My first morning back here in four years, and I’m outside picking up chicken bones and shitty diapers.”

“What, they don’t have vandals in New York City? Lighten up. I’m content here because, unlike you, I refuse to embrace disillusionment.”

“Then you’re engaging in self-deception on a massive scale.”

“And you need to get the stick out of your butt. You sound like a man who needs to get laid.” Dwight nodded toward Sandy Lyons sashaying through the tables. “She’s exactly what you need, buddy. Just got divorced a little bit ago.”

“Right – exactly what I need. Trailer trash, for godsake.”

“My ass. Lucky you if you found trash like that on your lawn.”

“She’s gorgeous, I’ll give her that. Jesus, what a body.”

“Try her. Word is she’s a real firecracker.”

#

“So what do you do in New York?” Sandy asked Henry. Big Dawg’s had closed for the night, and they were sitting on barstools, chatting.

“Development and public relations for art galleries and small theatres,” Henry said. “It’s fascinating. I’m involved with experimental, cutting edge work every day.”

“It must be exciting,” Sandy said. “There you are, in one of the world’s most amazing cities. So much going on, all the time.”

“It’s fantastic,” Henry said. “I love it.”

But even as he spoke, Henry felt a twinge of discomfort, knowing his words weren’t entirely truthful. Only recently, and reluctantly, he’d had to admit to himself that his life in New York had proven disappointing in some ways, that it hadn’t quite turned out to be the life of rich intellectual stimulation and inspiring companionship he’d imagined and hoped for. He truly did love his work, but too often the people he had to deal with wore him out: the manic-depressives, megalomaniacs and narcissists, the money-grubbing gallery owners, the hustlers, charlatans and paranoid crack addicts. Some days it seemed New York City was nothing but a giant sewer of psychopathologies sucking him into the reigning madness, until he could hardly tell the truth from a lie, or remember who he was, what he honestly felt and believed.

“And what are you up to?” he asked Sandy.

“Going to college, part-time, at West Liberty. Working here.”

“What’s your major?”

“History.”

“Seriously?”

“That surprises you?”

“Well, a little, yeah. I would have guessed education, maybe business. Something more.I don’t know.practical.”

“Listen, Mr. Valedictorian – you may be the big ace intellectual that ever came out of Prima, but the rest of us have learned to use fire, okay? And the wheel. So don’t be condescending.”

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“Well, you were.”

“Sorry.”

“The other thing I’ve been up to is I got divorced a couple weeks ago.”

“Dwight told me.”

“Yeah, Prince Hubby turned frog on me. He got nasty, fat and lazy. He didn’t even want sex anymore.”

“Hard to imagine anyone feeling that way with you. Prom queens don’t exactly grow on trees.”

“Oh, it’s been a long time since I was a prom queen.”

“You’re still a very attractive woman.”

“Thank you. Yeah, the no sex thing finished it for me. I mean, I’m not a nymphomaniac or anything, but I’m a normal, healthy person. I like sex. I get horny.”

“Well, sure. Of course.”

“I get horny.”

“Right. You said that.”

Sandy looked directly at him, then nodded and smiled. “I was just checking. I saw your eyes light up. Both times.”

“Was it that obvious?” Henry said.

He smiled back at her, feeling a quick rise of desire, but accompanied, as always these days, by anxiety. In New York, his attempts at a sex life had run repeatedly into artists and intellectuals awash in gnarly feminism and taboos, everything your turn, my turn, meted out, measured. A pre-coital negotiation about what the sex would mean, followed by a post-coital critique of how it went, which in most cases could justifiably have been called a post-coital postmortem.

Henry spun left, then right, on the barstool, looking for Dwight. “You know, I think my ride home went home,” he said.

“I can take you anywhere you want to go,” Sandy said.

“Somehow I have a feeling no truer words were ever spoken,” Henry said. “So let’s go there.”

#

As they pulled out of Big Dawg’s parking lot, country music blared from Sandy’s CD player, some guy singing about how “she thinks my tractor’s sexy.”

“I love Kenny Chesney,” Sandy said.

“Is that him singing?”

“Uh-huh. Oh, my god – you hate country music.” She reached toward the CD player to shut it off.

“No, leave it on,” Henry said. “I’m enjoying it.” A clever, catchy song actually, with its blatantly sexual metaphor, the tractor emblematic of male size and power. Henry tapped his foot and bobbed his head as they drove.

At Sandy’s house, the kissing started the moment they closed the back door. Right away it felt fabulous, both of them enthralled with it, both dizzy when they pulled back to breathe.

Stripped of his vocabulary by lust, Henry simply said, “Wow.”

“Save that ‘wow’ for later,” Sandy said. “We’re just scratching the surface.”

They dropped a trail of clothing enroute to the bedroom, the momentum urgent and unstoppable. The trail ended between the sheets and in the dark.

“Is there anything I should or shouldn’t do?” Henry asked.

“Are we talking philosophy, Henry? Or making love?”

“That was a purely practical question.”

“You should shut up and kiss me.”

Sandy proved she meant it when she said she liked sex. She whispered dirty talk, laughed and moaned, took the lead changing angles and rhythms. Four positions and two toe-curling orgasms later, they collapsed in a sweaty, breathless heap.

“That was wonderful,” Sandy eventually managed to say. “The best ever.” She rolled toward him and took his face in her hands. “Who are you, anyway, Henry Franklin?”

“Is my tractor sexy?” Henry whispered.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s top of the line,” Sandy said, and they laughed, wound together, till their bellies hurt.

#

After Sandy fell asleep, Henry heard a coal train running along the river bank, the whistle blowing, the distant roar of steel wheels on steel rails. As a boy he’d loved those train sounds in the night, one of his few good memories from his childhood in Prima. Man, he thought, laughing to himself, I wish I could make love to Sandy with a big ole train between my legs, instead of just a tractor.

Jesus, listen to me – ‘a big ole train.’ Twenty-four hours back in the hometown, and suddenly I’m Kenny Chesney.

Sandy rolled onto her side, and Henry watched her hair tumble across the pillow. Quite a woman – gorgeous, sexy, not a scholar, by any means, but smart in the commonsense way she met the world head on. That’s what charmed him, how uncomplicated she was, utterly free of the bewilderment and paralysis that comes from intellectualizing our most elemental behaviors. He recalled her face in Big Dawg’s, looking right at him and smiling, her blue eyes wide open and locked onto his, telling him she’d just seen his eyes light up. It touched him, almost shamed him, that simple eagerness.

Maybe Dwight hit the nail on the head, he thought. Maybe I’ve embraced disillusionment, without even realizing it. “Who are you, anyway?” Sandy had asked him. If she’d really wanted an answer, he would have found it difficult to give her one.

But tomorrow would be soon enough to think about all that. He slid closer to Sandy and slipped his arm around her. Lying there beside her, in his hometown, listening as the train faded into the night, Henry felt a smile on his face as he eased into the warm fur of sleep.