Once You Go Back 1
This is fiction. The narrator, Bucky Shealy, a country boy about 30 years old, has a pretty good life doing garden design for the Savanah elite. Deep inside, he struggles with a changing South, being in-the-closet gay, being lower middle class, and slowly unlearning most of what his culture taught him growing up.
The story follows his move to work for a super-rich actress who’s bought up an entire small town. It is set about 25 years ago on an isolated farm in Georgia. He makes an unexpected trip to the unmapped wildlands of Hispaniola, where he shocks himself when he falls in love with a Black man.
How the hell did I get here? I grew up getting off on her and Mickey Rourke in 9 ½ Weeks, the uncut original. Back in 1989. I still have the VHS tape. Tonight, 15 years later, I sat across a white tablecloth in a classy Savannah restaurant with her. And realized she liked me. It’s a scene from a movie right here: a supermodel falls for a country boy.
I made it happen. Not this scene exactly, but I always knew I was after more than that scrappy farm, more than whatever drew my Daddy away and left me an orphan, and for damn sure more than what those trashy girls around wanted me to do for them.
I took the boy out of the country and the country out of the boy.
It was a long, weird road, but here I am—a man. A successful landscaper, and she, a movie superstar, actually said to me, “We’re kind of alike. Aren’t we? We both left little towns, went to California, succeeded, and came home.”
I laughed at that and held up my wine glass for the clink but knew it wasn’t true. She came home a megastar mega-millionaire. I came with my tail tucked between my legs ‘cause bartending and catering out in California gets old fast. I’d tried my profession out there, but West Coast showboaters just don’t understand good plant design. Those people thought a grove of palm trees and a fake marble statue around a pool made a garden. They reminded me of an Uncle who always said, “I wish I could buy those folks for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they’re worth.”
They had money but no taste. Not one of them ever got my garden design- which was refined, complex and beautiful. I caught more cash bartending at catering gigs cause they’d tip big if I turned on the Southern accent. So I guess Kim and I were a like in that we both acted.
Another thing we had in common was that while we were out there, the South changed. We left a backwoods world and came home to find that a ton of northerners moved down from Maine and Michigan, and they brought money and taste.
Turns out, they loved me. I’d turn on the accent for them, too, tell some country boy stories but show up for the first meeting in my midnight blue Infinity. But they also wanted someone who gets things done efficiently, so on the second visit, I drove a work truck, bed filled with tools. One of them told me, “We’ve been here a year, and we knew there must be smart rednecks; we just never met one. Until we met you.”
They meant it as a compliment. I am not a redneck, and my skill in getting things done was more in getting along with the Gullah fellas who did all the labor. I became the intermediary. Miss Toledo only had to tell me her Southern garden fantasy; I translated, and the fellas would dig, plant, and mulch it up right.
When Timeless Elegance Plantationscapes, the biggest interior, architecture and landscape firm in Savannah, offered me a job, I negotiated salary and came up with my own title, “Manager of Garden Design and Style.” Fuck California. The other crew leaders called me for design questions.
One of those guys I grew up with, Kenny, moved close to the city and works at TEP too. His little sister crashed at my place on her drunk nights– usually, about sunrise, she might fall to the door, sometimes roughed up. Kenny was the high school soccer star, two years older than us. His Daddy’s timber company money bought him everything except smarts and goals. He still had his high school black curls, a schlong that bounced in his soccer shorts, a huge, tricked out, half convertible ‘79 Bronco, and a line of girls trailing him. Funny that quirky and me and him would become brothers. He was always nice to me, protecting me and his little sister too from the cool crowd.
So now that he was just a landscape manager, I’d take it his joshing about my design talk. He’d go, “Blah blaaahhh bla bla blablahahh” like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and roll his eyes. But who did old Kenny call on when one of his jobs needed a little flair? Now, it was me taking care of him. He still called me Bucky, and I called him Kenny, even though we both dropped our y’s trying to be more adult.
Kenny didn’t pay me. Not in cash anyway, but I made everyone else pay, even the other designers who did boring stuff—first-rate prices for first-rate style.
I bought a little carriage house off Chippewa Square. Exposed brick walls, brass doorknobs, granite counters. Uptown. Well, still pretty much Black folks all around. But it was changing. I could walk to meet the boss for new client suppers.
When Clay, the boss, called and said, “Meet at HipRestaurantofthemoment, 7 p.m. for a new client seduction,” I knew exactly what to wear and how I’d schmooze. It would be fun. I even looked forward to that lonely downtown walk home drunk on their 80-dollar wine.
But what threw me that night, for a second, was bossman sitting across the table with Kim Basinger. Holy Fuck. I should’ve brought my VHS tape to get her to sign it.
As the waiter cleared, the boss said, “I knew this would work out. I knew y’all would love each other. I should just leave you two alone. But here’s the deal: Miss Kim just bought an entire town. A whole town, about two hours inland. Lock, stock, and barrel. She’s gonna landscape everything, including a grand old plantation she’s fixed up already, couple hundred acres, the entire downtown, the school, the library. She’s gonna make galleries and shops and a bakery, and people from Atlanta and Savannah will come out there shopping for antiques. This will be a whole new division for our company. Why don’t you move up there and manage the whole thing?”
I didn’t really want to go back to the country. But to be Kim Basinger’s partner in her adventure in backwoods, and get a raise and start a new division. Hell yeah. She ordered a bottle of Robert Mondavi, put a hand on mine, and toasted, “To going away, changing, and coming home with better tastes!”
Oh goodness, I think I just had a sample of what goes on in your head before it comes out measured. By all means, let it out!
There are some marvelous verbal images, and great lines. Made me laugh. I guess I’m one of those northerners that moved south!!