HAMMOCKS and LEMONADE (SCENES FROM A POSSIBLE FUTURE: 4)

Ian McDuff

The air was soft, and sweet, redolent of clover and Confederate jasmine, honeysuckles and magnolia blossoms. Peace breathed in the light breeze, and the lambency of the sun illuminated and gilded all it touched.

After it had ended ... no. It had never ended it, would never end. They'd realized that from the start, even when they were swearing up and down it was ended. For all their vows, though, they'd never even made the gesture of a farewell: they knew, deep down, that it could never end, nor would they wish it to. Certainly, they'd not taken a Ripken-and-Gwynn-style retirement tour, as Backstreet inevitably had done.

Even now, they responded to the pleas, the actual clamor, every so often. They would come together and do a single or two; or a concept album (Josh was proudest of the all-vocalese swing CD); and a few appearances. They had fallen comfortably into the mode of the Stones, or the Moody Blues, or Steely Dan: CDs separated by long periods of quiescence, singles when they felt like giving in to the begging – and had something to say: they never cut a track merely to please the crowd, not any more. And they had found, with delight, that limiting their output only increased the eagerness with which each new offering was received. They'd had a 'Concert at Red Rocks' special on PBS, for God's sake: Chris still got a pleasant shiver down the spine when he thought about that one. They'd reunited Backstreet a few times to appear with them, had done special, limited tours with Alabama, with Rockapella, with the Manhattan Transfer, with Gloria Estefan and with Natalie Cole. They'd played 'Austin City Limits' with Lyle Lovett and Asleep at the Wheel, and done a set with Robert Earl Keen on his 'Texas Uprising' Tour (Joe had ragged mercilessly on James for that one).

So. It hadn't truly ended.

But when they'd stepped back....

The first thing they'd noticed was that the N Sync solar system really did, as Josh, Joe, and CK had long determined, revolve around James. There was nothing new in James's being the center of Josh's universe, of course. But Chris and Joey had always felt, deep down, that it had been Lance's coming along that had started and permitted their success, just as it was he who had held the group and its members together, just as it had been he and Josh (and Uncle Phil) who had gotten them away from TransCon and its TransConmen.

But. Yes. It was still their Lansten around whom everything centered. It wasn't as if they all made pilgrimages to see him and Josh. James and Josh happily went to see their brethren, too. To Florida, where Joe was always eager to see them, a happy, fulfilled Joe, smelling of garlic and basil and suntan oil and Kel's perfume and Brianna's burps and diapers. To Pittsburgh or Seattle or LA – or Milan or New York or Paris – to see Chris and Dani and tell old, old jokes, as comfortable and worn as a flannel shirt. Even to see J in New York-LA-Nashville-Hotlanta ... though mostly, for J even more than the others, it was mostly him coming to see them.

James was their sun. Josh, their mercurial Mercury, was of course his closest satellite (Chris, to James's humiliation and Josh's entire agreement, had once riffed on that metaphor for a good five minutes until someone – possibly Joey himself – made a comment about Joe's being a large, gas planet, and the whole thing had dissolved in laughter). But even Justin, in his increasingly eccentric orbit, revolved, in the end, around James Lance Bass. It was Lance who mediated, corrected, supported; who intervened to ensure that neither Jonathan nor Stevie would make the same mistakes as J had; who, with Josh, provided a refuge and sanctuary when Justin panicked and had to bury himself in the depths of the Deepest South to get away from the life he'd chosen.

It had been a period, for all of them, of growing up and settling into their actual selves – though J had yet to manage either. Immediately after the – well, not the end; after the change, then, the stepping back – but after the pace slackened, the others had found it hard to slow down and adjust to the new rhythms. Not so James and Josh. Certainly, they had maintained some momentum. The pied-a-terre in Manhattan, the showplace in LA that was Josh's monument to having come back and beaten the town that had once defeated him, James's (and Josh's) sprawling house with manmade lake in Florida: the (as Chris loved to niggle at it) 'Chateau du Basse-Chasez,' 'Bass Manor,' 'Bass Hall,' 'Castle Bass': all saw plenty of use. James got his MBA, Josh a Masters in Music; and FreeLance, A Happy Place, and Chasez Productions kept them shuttling.

Yet in the end, it was all about home.

They'd grown and changed and begun to fill out into their real selves, no question. For a while, after the pace first slackened, Josh had vegetated happily, wandering – whenever the studio didn't call him to itself or classes require his attention – wandering about in theatrically off-kilter outfits, or often just shorts and sandals and maybe a slightly feminine top, if he wore anything above the waist at all, hair down almost to his ass: whereby he fit in with many a fellow grad student, after all. James had sunk comfortably into absolute Southern prep-dom, starched and buttoned-down and aristocratically outrageous in patchwork madras trousers and no socks with his tassel loafers and a change of membership to the Episcopal Church. And for both of them, for the former Clarence 'Wipeout' Adams and for a red-dirt romantic, a magnolia mystic from Mississippi, that was a coming home.

It was all about home.

They kept the Manhattan and LA residences, the small Georgia coast Sea Island they co-owned with Howie D and Nick, with its houses at each end, and of course the place in Orlando; they'd inevitably acquired a condo in Nashville as FreeLance went from triumph to triumph. And there was always the familial Clinton / Brandon axis, and the saving grace of their anonymity in the Floribama region.

But it needed to be about home.

Clinton: people who didn't know better always talked as if it were some rural wide spot in the road, instead of a Jackson suburb. You might as well speak as if Alexandria, Virginia, or Silver Spring, Maryland, were country towns light-years removed from DC. Clinton was simply not what they needed, much as James and Josh loved it and the memories and family ties it stood for.

They'd thought, for a while, about New Orleans, Metairie or the Garden District, but it was too much, too frenetic, too urban and intoxicating. After all ... they had a family to plan, someday soon. And west of New Orleans, there was only Roy's family, Josh's crazy, coon-ass Cajun paternal relations, which was great, but seemed too much like taking sides. And it wasn't the sort of land they wanted for home.

So here they were. Home. They'd found and restored what had been at most a second or third rank, small plantation, but one with sweet Greek Revival lines, down in the Pearl River country not too very far from Poplarville. (Josh had suggested they find a place in Bassfield, snickering, but James had kissed him until he shut up about it.) It had a creek and a lake, and it was within a short enough drive to Pass Christian for water-baby James, and equally, not far from Clinton and Nawlins, really. The bluesy Delta was on its borders, and Josh made pilgrimages to shotgun shacks and roadhouses ... which, within a month, had become a welcome thing, and the spaced-out-seeming white boy with the wild hair and perfect pitch was eagerly sought after, trading licks and swapping chordal progressions with the most revered of bluesmen.

Home, now. It had an old, old bit of orchard they'd revivified, lush pasture, and quiet. Josh had taken an unexpected, sudden delight in gardening, and James had started a sideline in horses and work mules – not a few of which latter ended up in Clinton and in Hinds County, where, since 1909, the Piney Woods Country Life School has taught rural self-sufficiency and strict academics to poor Blacks – and indeed, not a few poor whites, osmotically, one way and another. Folks all over the Deep South, from the Delta to the Appalachians, who couldn't afford the equipment their acres needed, were relying on James's mules, now, and the generosity of the Foundation that now subsidized the mule business.

This was home. This place, with its broad acres and utter stillness. Here, where neighbors were there when you needed them and stayed out of your business when you didn't need them. Where it wasn't far to the small, casually elegant Episcopal Church, but where – if you didn't care to drive that far – it was nearer still, on any given Sunday, to the AME Zion congregation down the road, a church at which, sneak in though they might, the Reverend Mr Lightfoot and the deacons all but frogmarched James and Josh into the choir each time, and made them stay if there were to be a 'dinner on the grounds.'

This was home. Here, where directions at the nearest crossroads feed store weren't forthcoming for teenies or reporters or people their solicitous neighbors just 'might not care much for the look of.' Here, where there'd actually been a movement to rename the highway for the Bass-Chasezes, and no one had made a public issue of the most famous – and still, to some, infamous – relationship in Mississippi. Here, where, in the way of country folk from time immemorial, approval and disapproval were private things.

Home. Right here. In this place, where D and Nick had come, separately and together, to pour out their problems, where AJ had worked through some of the hardest of the steps in his continuing, life-long recovery process, where Kevin had gotten off his high horse and started reconciling with his former bandmates the year after Backstreet had split up. Where Chris and Dani had finally gotten back together for good. Where D and Nick had had their quiet commitment ceremony, in the end. Where Joe and Kel had conceived both of Brianna's brothers. Where J had proposed to Brit for the umpteenth time, and she'd finally said yes – if he got his head screwed on straight before the wedding. Where J would come and fidget and snap at everyone and tear up the pea-patch for three days and then, suddenly, would simply still, eyes clear, hands at rest at last, available to sing in the choir on a Sunday before heading out, at peace ... until the next time.

This was home, this place. Where viciousness had reared its head and James had stared it down, the purveyors of hate cowed by that green, berg-ice glare, and the rock-chunking and cross-burning and spray-painting of generations ended in one tense hour. Where Mister C and Mister Lance treated everyone as equals, and were treated by everyone, even those who secretly grudged it, with deference and respect and subordination. Where old folks with ties further north and west thought back to the Percys when they saw this, and said little. Where even those with reservations or religious issues acknowledged Mister C and Mister Lance – especially Mister Lance – as the natural leaders of the community. Where Mister C was the man everyone turned to for non-material help, the man who got the schools up to standard and got the music program going and bought the instruments for the whole marching band. Where everyone knew that Mister C stepped a pace back only because he chose to, and that each of the Bass-Chasezes was in charge in his own way. Where folks swallowed their doubts and their texts and their verses because Mister C and Mister Lance led by example.

This was home. Here. In this community, where folks always loved to see Mister C, sought him out, welcomed him ... unless he had a sack with him, or a crate in the bed of the old pickup, when – though they loved him – they would hide, would not answer the door, having long since learned that Josh always went a little overboard with the planting, and even if they didn't answer to his knock, they'd be stuck with bags of the overflow on their porches, bushels of ears of corn, pecks of Vidalias and 1015s, quarts of honey or pickled okra, baskets full of squash or English peas or black-eyed peas or snap beans....

Home. The air was soft, and sweet, redolent of clover and Confederate jasmine, honeysuckles and magnolia blossoms. Peace breathed in the light breeze, and the lambency of the sun illuminated and gilded all it touched.

Josh had gotten most of the dirt off with a bucket of well-water, and stretched now, pleasantly tired from hoeing, in the hammock they'd slung between two massy oaks. The radio was tuned to the St Louis Cardinals game, and sweaty and sun-stupefied and pleasantly achy as he was, he was at peace. He didn't open his eyes as he heard James's boots swishing through the grass and smelled the horsy scent that overlay his spouse's own cologne and personal essence. He didn't open his eyes, but then, he didn't really need to, and a surpassing sweet, sun-sleepy smile curved upon his lips as James drew near.

James didn't speak, either. He stood at gaze, smiling, eyes gleaming, as he looked at his tousled, sun-bronzed love, sprawled bonelessly in the hammock in nothing save a pair of khaki shorts; noting how their mere proximity and the caress of his own glance caused Josh to smile and his nipples to tauten. Cautiously, but with the ease of long practice, he set the two glasses of lemonade he'd brought out upon the rickety old table that held the radio, and got into the Pawley's Island hammock with his spouse: as gently as the breeze, and with no more than the breeze's own slight swaying of the hammock.

Wordlessly, Josh wrapped himself around James and they kissed, tenderly and long.

'Mmmmm. Hi, handsome.'

Josh smiled still more widely as he felt James's bass chuckle vibrate in them both.

'Hi, yourself, darlin'. Done with the garden for a time?' Josh nodded. 'So you think country livin' is just about doin' a little weedin' and then takin' a nap?'

'Not napping.'

'Awful close.'

'I know exactly what's going on around me, thank you very much. It's the bottom of the fourth, Cards are ahead 4 to 1, there's a runner on second, there's two outs, and the count is three and two.'

James laughed again, and planted kisses all along Josh's shoulder. 'Yeah, okay, you are definitely with us today here at the home place. I was afraid you were somewhere else.'

'Nope. No intergalactic mental voyages for me. I'm home and I like it here just fine.'

'Good. That's good.'

'James?'

'Mmmm?'

'You know what? It is home. And I think we're to where it's time.'

'You're ready? To start ... to start our own family?'

'I'm more than ready. Just like you.' Josh opened his eyes and sat up a bit, looking around at the place. In counterpoint to the play-by-play on KMOX, he heard, faintly, the hens and the horses and the Jersey cow, and he would have sworn he heard, too, the actual growing of the azaleas and the runner beans, the tomatoes and the squash. 'And I think the old place is ready now, too. It's home, and it needs to house a few new faces.'

James beamed as he took his husband in his arms. It was all about home.

END