Watermelon Summer

by Anna Hess

  Copyright © 2013 by Anna Hess.

  All rights reserved.

  Line break artwork is used courtesy of http://www.WebDesignHot.com.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Visit my blog at www.waldeneffect.org or read more about my books at www.wetknee.com.

  For Mom, who let me steal freely from her experiences.

  And for Mark, whose blue eyes kept me writing.

  If I'd known I was going to fall in love that day for the first time in my life, I would have taken the attendant trials and tribulations in stride. But I didn't know, so I spent far too many minutes considering whether my parents would buy me a ticket back home to Seattle if I called up and begged. The remainder of my stay in the West Virginia airport was devoted to figuring out how to get to Kentucky, which meant trying to break through the Appalachian language barrier.

  You'd think that, since I mastered Spanish in high school and picked up a smattering of French from Canadian visitors, I would have had travel within the U.S. covered. You also would have been wrong. Stopping by the information desk at the airport felt like a Peanuts cartoon—you know, one of those scenes where the teacher is talking and all you hear is "wa wa wa, wa wa, wa wa." The ancient attendant's excessive head-shaking seemed ominous, though, so I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

  I didn't remember my new smartphone (and the airport's free wireless) until the nice lady at McDonald's laughed at me for suggesting bus or train service to the Pikeville area. She, at least, seemed to speak English, albeit with a mountain twang—perhaps the problem at the information desk had merely been the old guy's lack of teeth?—and she was quite ready to give me driving directions to Kentucky. Until, that is, I mentioned my lack of wheels. Then the lady started to look concerned and to call me "sugar," so I made up some excuse about having family who could come and pick me up after all, then retreated to a waiting area to figure out Plan B.

  Now, before you take my parents to task for stranding me in no-bus-service West Virginia, let me speak in their defense. Actually, I probably should back up about a week and explain what a suburban girl like me was doing stranded in an Appalachian airport. It all started before I was born, when my mother hopped in a VW bus with some friends and drove south from her Massachusetts home to join a commune.

  "It wasn't a commune," Mom said, correcting my wording just like every other time I'd ask her about Greensun. "And I wasn't a hippie."

  "Sure you weren't, Mom," I'd either say or think, depending on how nice I was feeling at the moment.

  "It was an intentional community," Mom reiterated a week before I ended up stranded in West Virginia. The flier that had restarted this conversation hit the trash can as Mom continued her historical whitewashing. "You can call it a community land trust if you want, but not a commune."

  I wasn't buying it, but I knew what Mom was trying to say with her adamant denial of hippiedom—she hadn't smoked pot (supposedly) and I'd darn well better not either. That message was coming through loud and clear, so I decided to humor my mother on the semantics issue. "Sure, Mom. You spent a solid year living in an intentional community. Got it."

  I'd been begging to visit the Greensun community since I could pronounce words of four syllables, but Mom never saw any reason to fly across the country to grant my wish. Never mind that my biological father still lived there (I thought) and that I've never met him.

  (Oh, yeah—I'm a love child. Still not a hippie, Mom?)

  "You think you want to go there now, but you really don't," Mom replied. (I decided to let it slide that my mother seemed to think she knew my wishes better than I did, so I stayed silent.) "When I left, there were plastic doll heads on all the fence posts. Your father said they scared away deer, but they mostly just scared away people. Very creepy."

  "So, I'll wear my doll-fighting gear," I said. "No problem. I'll even bring a wooden stake if it'll make you feel better."

  Mom smiled despite herself. "Forsythia—" (Naming your child after a flower—another sign of being a hippie. Just saying.) "—Do you really want to spend your Europe money visiting an abandoned commune?"

  At this point, I couldn't hold my tongue any longer, so I crowed: "Ha! You admit it's a commune, which means you're a hippie!"

  Mom plowed right past that remark and continued trying to talk me out of my plan. But even though I yes'ed and no'ed appropriately, I was already at Greensun in my mind.

  A summer spent among aging hippies might not sound like fun to most going-on-eighteen-year-olds, but the truth is that this felt like a do-or-die situation. Greensun had sent out a call to all of its past members (thus the flier) asking for a commitment of time and money if we wanted the community to continue. And as much as I had to agree with Mom that sleeping in an old farmhouse with holes in the wall large enough to see through wasn't so appealing, the alternative was that if the community shut down, I'd never know what I was missing.

  And I might never meet my bio-dad.

  Which is all a long way of explaining how I ended up in southern West Virginia, which apparently had the closest airport to Pikeville, Kentucky, which was relatively close to Greensun. (You know you're going to the boondocks when specifying locations involves lots of "It's near"s rather than an actual town's name.) Mom had given me the phone number of a neighbor who could come pick me up, and she'd even offered to book a room at a nearby hotel so that one of the previous Greensun inhabitants could drive me down when he or she arrived. But I wanted to get there early to see the place all by myself, and I also wanted to travel on my own. After all, if my trip had turned out to be a tour of Europe instead of Appalachia, I'd have been figuring out transportation as I went along, and I didn't want to miss out on that experience.

  On the other hand, now that I was in West Virginia (aka the land of no public transportation), I was starting to suspect that I really couldn't get there from here. While researching options for where to go on my post-high-school and pre-college trip, I'd initially chosen Europe (before throwing that voyage away for what was currently seeming like a very bad idea) since its extensive rail system made it easy to get around for those of us too young to rent a car. Why couldn't Greensun be located on an Amtrak line?

  The smartphone Mom had given me (along with strict instructions to call her as soon as I got to Greensun) provided the depressing information that there really were no trains, buses, or even taxis running between Huntington and Pikeville. I was seriously considering throwing away my pride and calling Mom's old neighbor when a voice disturbed my brown study.

  "Excuse me." The words came from a guy about my age, who didn't seem to understand that person-you-don't-know-frantically-pushing-buttons-on-a-phone is American for "Do not disturb." The interrupter of my solitary frustration was easy on the eyes, and if he'd been the kid next door, I probably would have been thrilled to be spoken to. But since I was in an airport all by myself, I couldn't help thinking that the guy was probably a rapist or a serial killer. So I merely frowned at him and went back to my agitated button-pushing.

  But the stranger was undeterred by my lack of eye contact. "I couldn't help overhearing that you're having trouble getting to Kentucky, and I think I have a solution," he told me.

  "Hmmm?" I replied noncommittally, unwilling to be totally rude by ignoring him but hoping my tone would send him away.

  "I'm Jacob," the stranger said, thrusting out a hand, which I reflexively shook. "And you're in luck because I'm the sole owner and driver of the Mountaintop Taxi Company. I just came up here from Pikeville to drop someone off
, and I'll give you a 50% discount so I don't have to ride back empty."

  (I know what you're thinking. I start off by telling you this is the day I fall in love, and now here's a cute guy standing in front of me. Not only is he no serial killer, he's also the love of my life, so I should definitely accept the ride. Come on. Could you be a bit less conventional and pay more attention to the dangers of my situation? And, for the record, I didn't fall in love with Jacob...at least not that day.)

  On the other hand, dangers aside, my options appeared to be severely limited. "Hmmm," I repeated, trying to decide whether accepting a ride from this guy was as bad as hitchhiking, and whether I could walk ninety-odd miles before my shoes wore out.

  "Okay, I know it probably seems a bit dicey to accept a ride from a stranger," Jacob said, unfazed by my monosyllabic replies. "But if it'll make you feel better, I have character references. Wanna call my mamaw?"

  "Your what?" I was startled enough to reply. And before I could glue my eyes back onto my smartphone screen and make another go-away hum, the stranger had speed-dialed his mamaw (which seemed to be a sort of grandmother) and put her on speaker phone.

  "Jacob?" a female voice answered. "Did you get your uncle to the airport on time? Will you be home in time for supper?"

  Now it was Jacob's turn to look a bit chagrined, which actually made me feel a lot better. If he still lived at home, he probably was as young as he looked, and no one my age could be a serial killer, right? "Um, Mamaw, I'm still up in Huntington, so I'll probably be late...."

  "Well, could you pick up some milk on your way home? Your brother drank it all, and we need some for breakfast. And maybe some bananas and eggs?"

  Wow. I didn't know it was possible for someone's face to turn that shade of red without his air passage being restricted enough to make him pass out. "Mamaw," Jacob tried to interrupt her as the grocery list continued. "Grandmother! Yes, I'll stop by the store, but there's a girl here who wants a ride down to Pikeville, and she needs to know I run a real taxi service."

  "Well, now, I don't know if I'd call it a real taxi service," his grandmother replied. It occurred to me at this point that her accent was thicker than Jacob's and the McDonald's lady's but that I was understanding her just fine. Progress, right? "After all, that's my minivan you're driving and I pay for your insurance. But you did buy the magnetic sign yourself, so that makes it a bit official, I guess.... Be sure to invite her to supper if she's from out of town!"

  "Never mind, Mamaw. I've gotta go," Jacob replied, ending the call and turning away. Having endured more than my share of parental embarrassments, I figured he was going to flee and pretend he'd never made his offer. But somewhere in the midst of the conversation just past, I'd made up my mind and decided Jacob wasn't an ax murderer.

  "Wait!" I called, gathering up my bags. "I'll take you up on that ride, with just one caveat—I drive."

  Okay, there were really two caveats, the second of which was price. You see, I wasn't exactly flush with cash, and the longer I could make the contents of my wallet last, the longer I could explore Greensun. I'd saved up quite a chunk of change working as a park ranger for the last two years (which sounds much more glamorous than it really was—mostly I rented out paddle boats and told people where to find the bathrooms). But the Greensun meeting came with a pretty hefty price tag attached.

  "Uh uh," Dad had said over dinner the night I first floated the idea of attending Greensun's (maybe) final meeting. "No way are you promising two grand to a cult in Kentucky. This has 'scam' written all over it."

  Oh, did I not mention that I already have a father? I'm not one of those poor, fatherless girls with an Electra complex or anything. Mom married my step-dad soon after she left the commune...ahem, community land trust...and he'd always felt like a father to me. I even titled my half-sibling "brother"...except when he was being really annoying. Wanting to meet my bio-dad...I can't really explain it. But the hole I was trying to fill (if there was one) wasn't a paternal gap.

  Surprisingly, Mom was the one to defend my crazy notion. (Her words, not mine.) "Well, that's the one thing I can promise you, honey—it's not a scam," she reassured Dad. "That's how we always dealt with money at Greensun. We'd throw it in a pot and then decide what to do with it. Unfortunately, it never seemed to extend much past buying beer and prayer flags, but no one ever ran off with the kitty."

  "So that means I can go?" I asked. My younger sibling, Johnny, calls this my "Daddy voice," meaning that I use it when I'm trying to wheedle something out of the paternal unit. It really worked, too...until the darn kid pointed out the technique in Dad's hearing.

  "No," Mom said, at the same time Dad (to my profound surprise, but maybe the Daddy voice still works after all?) chimed in with his answer: "Yes."

  My mother raised her eyebrows at my step-dad, who shrugged. "Hey, I was trying to follow your lead," he muttered under his breath.

  "Maybe," Mom said after a long pause. "That means a definite maybe."

  I won't bore you with the details of how I managed to wrap Mom and Dad around my little finger. Okay, the truth is I have no clue what decided it—they talked that night and the next morning told me I could change my ticket from Heathrow to Tri-State Airport. (I'm making a concerted effort here not to take it as a bad sign that it required three states to muster enough population to merit an airport.)

  Dad rolled his eyes when I wrote out a check to Greensun—"What, they don't take credit cards? You know, then at least we'd be protected if this turns out to be a scam. Okay, okay...." I already had a tent and all the trappings from my plan to spend the summer before college camping in every park I could find across the Pond, so I wouldn't have to sleep in that drafty old farmhouse with who-knows-how-many-other people. And, after $2,000 went into Greensun's kitty and I paid the ticket-transfer fee, I had all of nineteen bucks left in my Europe fund. While taking me to the bank to withdraw that measly amount of money, Dad slipped in an extra hundred—"Just in case you have to take a cab or something." And then Mom pressed $50 into my hand at the airport for the same reason, and I refrained from calling her cheap.

  But $169 only gets you so far, even if you're doing Europe on $5 a day (which, by the way, would be $37 a day now if you consider inflation). Which is why the real clincher on my "taxi" ride was Jacob backpedaling to the point where I only had to pay for gas. Done and done.

  A two-hour ride with a stranger gives you plenty of time to ponder, and what I was thinking about was...mountain men. Mountain men (Mom's term) were one of the top-ten reasons my mother had left Greensun and my bio-dad for the hip Seattle suburbs and my computer-programmer step-dad. She wasn't very specific about whether my bio-dad was, indeed, a mountain man, but Mom spent the better part of an hour right before my adventure began regaling me with the pros and cons of the typical Appalachian male. Apparently, I had a genetic predisposition to be taken in by them, and forewarned was forearmed.

  At first glance, a mountain man looks perfect...but then you scratch the surface and see the rough interior (or so Mom told me). Sure, a mountain man will likely stop and change your tire with a smile if you end up with a flat by the side of the road, but you'd better bring a male of your own along to the mechanic if you want to get any details about a more serious problem. "Don't worry your pretty, little head about it" might not be uttered, but the sentiment is no less true for being unspoken.

  While most of Greensun's compatriots drifted in from far out of town, the mountain ways seemed to seep into their previously-liberal brains. I'd inherited a love of gardening from my mother, and I couldn't quite understand how she could trade in two-hundred acres of potential for a postage-stamp lawn...until Mom explained that it was frowned upon for her to spend much time in the garden at Greensun. The vegetable plot was a communal affair run by the men, who brought the produce into the kitchen for the women to turn into bountiful meals (and then to do the dishes afterwards). Not that Mom didn't like to cook, but the division of labor rubbed her the wrong way.
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  Which is a long way of explaining why I had planned my trip so I'd arrive a solid month before anyone else was likely to show up. Mom had made some phone calls and discovered that the farm was entirely vacant at the moment, and I wanted to experience the land in all its glory before the former inhabitants came home. I had a sinking suspicion I wasn't going to like these old frenemies of my mother and wanted to give Greensun the benefit of the doubt before they arrived.

  "So, what are you doing in Pikeville?" Jacob asked, dragging me out of my thoughts after we'd gone about an hour down the road.

  "I'm going to a...um...meeting at Greensun," I said, while my mind turned to pondering whether or not Jacob was a mountain man. His grandmother's menu of soup beans and biscuits (she'd called up again to regale him with the details and to extend another invitation to me) suggested that Jacob was, in fact, typical mountain material, but my own mother had pointed out that mountain men won't shake a woman's hand without a pointed pause, so maybe he wasn't. Heck, for all I knew, mountain men might have gone extinct in the last seventeen years, and the new generation could have a completely different set of unpleasant traits. Worst-case scenario, they could be like the guys at my old high school.

  "Greensun? Are you sure that's near Pikeville—I've never heard of a town called Greensun," Jacob replied, starting to look a bit worried. He pulled a map out of the glove compartment and tried to spread it out, a tricky project in the confines of the passenger seat. (Yes, I'd meant it about being the one driving. Even if Jacob wasn't an ax murderer, one of Mom's hard-and-fast rules is that I never ride in a car driven by anyone under twenty-one, myself excluded. After a few clandestine, and very harrowing, excursions with friends, I decided Mom was on the right track.)

  "It's pretty close, actually," I told him. "And I've got directions if you need them."