back with Cal’s car. I shook hands with Cal, and went back the way I’d come in to the employee’s parking area. Pete had something to say while Sammy distracted the two policemen with some unknown tactic.
“Listen quick, Jeb. I was a Navy Seal until I retired, remember? That vessel was blown up by people who knew how to do it, and what to use. The boats on both sides of her weren’t even scorched. She imploded .” He cupped his big hands and clapped them together to show me. “Good thing Sammy and I were not aboard. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been enough of us left to spread on a piece of toast.”
I nodded, thanked him for the information, shook one of those big hands, and drove Cal’s Chevy out into the Washington dawn. It had begun to rain again.
* * *
In any normal year, this time of mid-autumn, many North Carolina natives become tourists, making annual treks to the mountains to see the enormous palette of color the forests become. It’s a kaleidoscope that’s as impressive as any drive through the New England fall foliage. This year, however, the unusual amount of heavy rain that had fallen all across the State was keeping most of them at home. Nonetheless, I-40 traffic, both ways, was enough to make me turn off and take the back roads. The ones I knew so well. I remembered the infrequent times I’d made the trip home by car, driving west to east, leaving the Great Smokies with their heads in the clouds and their toes in the Pigeon River, and rushing like a lemming down Black Mountain toward the coast, full of nostalgic anticipation. I remembered how the large cities had become larger, the small ones smaller; something that bothered me. What had bothered me more, though, had been the gaps in the pine forests, where loggers had taken what they wanted and left denuded acres looking like grainy news film of war zones. I’d pass rusting clusters of drooping mailboxes standing like squads of tired soldiers guarding dusty crossroads and rotting derelicts that had once been proud, whitewashed farmhouses. Most of them had been long abandoned to their swaybacked misery along with their broods of tobacco barns, all totally enveloped in vine and weed, like neglected graves.
Sometimes I’d stop and get out of the car to stretch, and watch a large family scavenge a peanut field, mining the tender nuggets left behind by the harvesting machine. I’d enjoy the smell of it, chuckling softly as I noticed some of the women wearing old fashioned bonnets tied with sashes as faded as my memories of Grandma, who wore them with grace and dignity. Often, there would be a small cemetery next to the field. The closer I got to Tryon’s Cove, the more of them I’d see. Then I’d smell the brackish water lapping roots of the cypress trees, and I knew I’d be home soon.
Those had been happier days, and seemed like a century ago. Now, I was driving in the opposite direction towards God knows what, and with a partner I had figuratively kidnapped. I hadn’t wanted to take any chance of seeing or talking to the Johnsons, so I’d parked a block down the street from their house. Luckily, Liz had emerged less than half an hour later, on her way to some class. I had gotten out of the car and waited for her. Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t recognized me until she was no more than a dozen feet away, then she’d rushed into my arms, given me a quick kiss, “Jeb!” Then another one. Deeper and longer. A kiss that under any other circumstances would have sent me into a different plane of existence altogether. I had shoved her into the Chevy and driven out of Chapel Hill as fast as legally possible. We were nearly south of Greensboro before I finished telling her everything.
She was quiet, then. Not sullen, only pensive. For a hundred miles. I knew she was trying hard to think it through. Understand it all, and I wasn’t much help. She asked very few questions, and finally said, “Jeb, I don’t want to die, and I
“Listen quick, Jeb. I was a Navy Seal until I retired, remember? That vessel was blown up by people who knew how to do it, and what to use. The boats on both sides of her weren’t even scorched. She imploded .” He cupped his big hands and clapped them together to show me. “Good thing Sammy and I were not aboard. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been enough of us left to spread on a piece of toast.”
I nodded, thanked him for the information, shook one of those big hands, and drove Cal’s Chevy out into the Washington dawn. It had begun to rain again.
* * *
In any normal year, this time of mid-autumn, many North Carolina natives become tourists, making annual treks to the mountains to see the enormous palette of color the forests become. It’s a kaleidoscope that’s as impressive as any drive through the New England fall foliage. This year, however, the unusual amount of heavy rain that had fallen all across the State was keeping most of them at home. Nonetheless, I-40 traffic, both ways, was enough to make me turn off and take the back roads. The ones I knew so well. I remembered the infrequent times I’d made the trip home by car, driving west to east, leaving the Great Smokies with their heads in the clouds and their toes in the Pigeon River, and rushing like a lemming down Black Mountain toward the coast, full of nostalgic anticipation. I remembered how the large cities had become larger, the small ones smaller; something that bothered me. What had bothered me more, though, had been the gaps in the pine forests, where loggers had taken what they wanted and left denuded acres looking like grainy news film of war zones. I’d pass rusting clusters of drooping mailboxes standing like squads of tired soldiers guarding dusty crossroads and rotting derelicts that had once been proud, whitewashed farmhouses. Most of them had been long abandoned to their swaybacked misery along with their broods of tobacco barns, all totally enveloped in vine and weed, like neglected graves.
Sometimes I’d stop and get out of the car to stretch, and watch a large family scavenge a peanut field, mining the tender nuggets left behind by the harvesting machine. I’d enjoy the smell of it, chuckling softly as I noticed some of the women wearing old fashioned bonnets tied with sashes as faded as my memories of Grandma, who wore them with grace and dignity. Often, there would be a small cemetery next to the field. The closer I got to Tryon’s Cove, the more of them I’d see. Then I’d smell the brackish water lapping roots of the cypress trees, and I knew I’d be home soon.
Those had been happier days, and seemed like a century ago. Now, I was driving in the opposite direction towards God knows what, and with a partner I had figuratively kidnapped. I hadn’t wanted to take any chance of seeing or talking to the Johnsons, so I’d parked a block down the street from their house. Luckily, Liz had emerged less than half an hour later, on her way to some class. I had gotten out of the car and waited for her. Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t recognized me until she was no more than a dozen feet away, then she’d rushed into my arms, given me a quick kiss, “Jeb!” Then another one. Deeper and longer. A kiss that under any other circumstances would have sent me into a different plane of existence altogether. I had shoved her into the Chevy and driven out of Chapel Hill as fast as legally possible. We were nearly south of Greensboro before I finished telling her everything.
She was quiet, then. Not sullen, only pensive. For a hundred miles. I knew she was trying hard to think it through. Understand it all, and I wasn’t much help. She asked very few questions, and finally said, “Jeb, I don’t want to die, and I
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