Love is a Wounded Soldier by Blaine Reimer Page A

to live off the land, so I bought as much fresh food as I
thought we’d eat before it spoiled, some dry goods, a frying pan, and other
utensils I thought we’d need. I looked at my rapidly depleting roll of bills
and was glad we had decided to forego staying in a hotel.
    We gassed up and headed back in the
direction of Coon Hollow. Confident I had a good eye for the lay of the land, I
had kept a sharp eye out for places that looked like promising campsites on our
way to Gatlinburg, and there was one spot that I had particularly high hopes
for, which was approximately halfway in between towns, I figured.
    We bid farewell to city limits, and Ellen
commenced exercising her newfound wifely liberty, exploring my body with her
fingers, stroking and stoking the fires of desire until they burned white hot.
I reciprocated with my free hand, and this continued until we mutually decided
we needed to either find a suitable place to satiate our gnawing appetites, or
hold off and resume once we had a campsite established. It was with great
reluctance we agreed to abstain. The hour or so we would have to wait seemed to
be an eternity at the time.
    I turned on the radio in an effort to
distract us. Clyde Daniels came on singing “Blue Eyed Girl,” and I turned to
Ellen and sang the song to her:
    “Hand in hand we’ll walk along life’s
pathway, you and I,”
    “You give me the kind of love that makes my
spirits fly,”
    “When you smile like sunshine all my cloudy
feelings flee,”
    “I was meant for you my love, and you were
meant for me.”
    “Blue eyed girl . . .”
    Ellen’s ear-to-ear grin seemed to indicate
she was both flattered and a little amused by my serenade.
    Before long I began to feel we were getting
close to the area I’d mentally noted as a good camping spot. I slowed down and
examined every dip and knoll in the land. I wanted a place near water, and the
terrain looked liked it would support a waterway some distance away, on the
south side of the road, but it appeared that it would be difficult to get close
to the river with the car. I kept driving, and had almost given up when I
spotted what looked to be an old logging road, almost obscured by the
surrounding trees.
    I carefully turned down it, crawling along
as though driving on ice. It was obvious the road was rarely, if ever used, as
the waist-high grass showed no signs of being driven on, and four-foot-tall
saplings grew sporadically in the way, bowing under the belly of the car as we
drove, only to whip up defiantly once we had passed.
    “Do you know what you’re doing?” Ellen
questioned me doubtfully.
    “Don’t you trust me?” I laughed as I felt
my way forward, wincing when we’d hit a hidden rock or rut.
    After cautiously driving nearly a half
mile, we finally emerged into a large meadow. The absence of any mature trees
left me at a loss to determine whether the road continued through the meadow,
so I just followed the path of least resistance up and over the rise, to see if
the road continued elsewhere on the other side. It didn’t seem to, so I parked
as close to the tree line as possible and shut off the engine.
    It was so quiet. I could hear water flowing
somewhere. The heat had finally begun diminishing, but it was still sultry. The
waning sun shone through a membrane of haze. I glanced at Ellen, worried she
might be weary of our little adventure already, but she just smiled like the
good sport that she was and said, “Let’s go!”
    We eagerly collected our things. Ellen
helped load me like a pack mule; there seemed to be a few things dangling on
every side of me, hanging from my neck, shoulders, anywhere something could be
draped. She took what she could, and we both stood staring at the dense
underbrush. We could see maybe 10 feet into the tangle of grass, foliage, and
vines.
    “Follow me,” I ordered, forging ahead into
a jungle of green. Every step was a fight. I tried to trample as much of the
underbrush as possible and break off