Appalachian Galapagos

by Ochse, Weston

  He swung into the empty gravel lot and pulled up next to the door. He turned the ignition off and paused, listening to the chorus of insects that were beginning their song. The engine ticked its approval.

  "Dad, what's a tripe?"

  Laurie shot a warning stare at her husband not to get angry. He evidently realized his last response had been a little short, so, as he unbuckled himself from the seatbelt, he turned and grinned.

  "You know? I think it's related to snipe. That's a bird that's pretty common around here. If I remember right, the best way to hunt it is by walking through the brush and banging two sticks together. Of course you need a burlap bag or the like. That you have to carry in your teeth." He rubbed his stomach. "And the way your grandma used to cook them really brought out the flavor. Remind me sometime and I'll take you hunting for them."

  Ian's eyes were wide at the prospect of hunting. Laurie could see his mind working as he probably imagined capturing a snipe big enough to stuff and place on the wall. The only problem with the prospect was that snipes don't exist. She raised her eyebrows and cocked her head at her husband. He grinned sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders.

  Everyone jumped out, eager to stretch their legs. When they opened the door, they were welcomed by the sound of a cowbell, bolted right above. The interior of Jacob Mountain Beer & Grocery was brilliantly lit with overhead bulbs that shone brightly over the surprisingly large and varied stock on the many-tiered shelves. A plump, middle-aged woman sat atop a stool behind the counter next to the door.

  "Evening, y'all," she said around an impossibly long Virginia Slim.

  "Evening," said Doug. "Real nice place you have here."

  Laurie's eyes widened slightly as she noticed the sudden lilt to her husband's normally accentless speech.

  The woman smiled and pushed a wisp of graying blonde hair behind her ear with a long, garishly-painted red nail.

  "What happened to the old firehouse?" He asked.

  She eyed him speculatively. "It burnt down a few years ago."

  Ian snorted behind him.

  "Don't recognize you, and old Annie never forgets a handsome young man. You got relatives around here? What's your family, son?"

  "No. No relatives around here. Used to live down Chattanooga way. Had some friends up here I used to do some fishing and hunting with."

  "Really. What's their name?"

  "It's been a long time. Maybe they moved."

  "Honey, nobody ever moves away from this place. Nobody."

  "Well, you know Spencer and Bobby Johnson?"

  "Do I know 'em. Chased 'em outa my rhubarb and strawberries until they were outa school. And then a few more times."

  "Are they still around?" Doug asked.

  "Spencer is. See him every day. But he's changed. I don't think he's like he was when you knew him."

  Doug's face fell slightly. "What do you mean, changed? And what about Bobby?"

  Annie paused for several seconds, one Lee Press-On Nail tapping rapid fire on the linoleum counter. She drew a deep drag of her cigarette and blew it out slowly.

  "We don't talk about Bobby no more. And I don't wanna speak any ill of Spencer. Let's just say they changed."

  "Wait a minute," Doug said, and then caught himself and slowed down. "Listen, why don't you give me Spencer's address. I'd like to see him while I'm in town. I thought that maybe me and him could hash over some old times."

  "Spencer's definitely good for that," she said. "Tell you what," she continued, seeing Laurie and Ian as if for the first time. Ian squirmed under her gaze. "I'll do you one better. Tonight's the annual Kudzu Festival over in Spencer's Grandpa's old pine nursery. If you hunted with Spencer, I'm sure you know the place."

  Doug reddened.

  "Just as I thought. Any friend of the Johnson's is welcome. In fact, as soon as you folks leave the store, I'm gonna close up and head over there myself."

  "Oh, Doug. It sounds like fun," said Laurie, eyes sparkling.

  "Okay. Okay," said Doug in what Laurie recognized as his pro-vs-con Army decision-making mode. "Should we bring anything?"

  "Just yourselves. The more the merrier."

  "Dad, I thought we were gonna do some fishing?"

  "Son, it's too late for that. It's almost pitch black outside. Let's wait until tomorrow morning. And don't worry, we'll be up and have our poles wet before the roosters crow."

  "But, Dad—"

  "Your Father's right, boy. You need to get you some mountain bait, anyway."

  "What's mountain bait?" Ian asked, wary of a grownup joke.

  "Didn't you know that Jacob Mountain has the biggest and juiciest nightcrawlers in the South? No, I guess you didn't. I see we need to advertise a little better. When you're at the Festival, see if you can scare up some kids to help you learn their secrets."

  "You got kids here, too?"

  Laurie mumbled something like, "He doesn't get out much."

  "What, you think everyone's born here all grown up and smokin', like me? Course we got kids."

  A night drive in a kudzu forest brings new meaning to the concept of darkness. During the day, the ever-present weed is a devourer of the earth and everything upon it. But at night it assumes a primordial Godhood, its ambition to swallow the sky. Even now, Doug was unable to see the moon he knew to be full. All that allowed him claustrophobic comfort was the thin strip of Milky Way that could be seen winding along with the road.

  Doug remembered his first hunting experience travelling down this same rutted road. Until now the memory had been a confused conglomeration of four-wheeled drive vehicles, high powered rifles and booze.

  That night so many years ago had been just as dark as this one.

  With the Jeep's headlights off, bucking along the thin mountain trail, he had felt like a blind man. The only light he'd seen as he rocked and bucked in the passenger seat were the orange and blue of the dashboard digits and their blurred reflections off the clear glass of the Wild Turkey bottle.

  The jeep skidded and stopped. Heavy breathing from the back seat. Heavy breathing from the front seat. Primal blood rushed through their civilized veins. The smell of their previous fear, replaced with the anticipation of their illegal hunt and alcohol sweat.

  This was their second stop of the night. The first, several miles back along the same road, began in drunken revelry. Beer cans hit the bushes as fast as he and the Johnson brothers could empty them. Doug sat on the warm hood of the Jeep, enjoying his first backwoods experience. Spencer and his brother, a deputy sheriff by day, had just finished setting up the fox caller: a portable tape deck with recorded rabbit cries that sounded disturbingly like a human baby's scream.

  The dense brush created a black living wall along the night road. All was silent except for the occasional burp and the wailing of the Memorex dead rabbit. The rustling in the bush came suddenly. Doug's heartbeat doubled.

  Spencer crouched and swung the shotgun towards the sound, his back almost touching Doug's feet. His brother readied the light in a two-handed grip, aiming at the approaching sounds.

  A hulking form, impossibly large for a fox, parted the vegetation. The light flicked on at the same time the shotgun blast sounded and cast its own deadly illumination. In that brief, intense flash Doug saw yellow eyes surrounded by green, at least eight feet off the ground. All went black as Bobby dropped the flashlight and from the continued spastic flashes of the rapid fire shotgun blasts, they watched the form disappear from where it'd come from and the hole in the vegetation snap shut.

  Within seconds they were in the Jeep, hauling terrified ass around the well-rutted corners of the dark trail, the fox caller crushed and forgotten under spinning wheels. Spencer answered Doug's unspoken question, "Must have been a deer." An obvious lie.

  In front of Spencer's grandfather's pine nursery, the last hour was almost forgotten. They scrambled silently out of the car. A Winchester 30/30 was passed to Doug, a real cowboy gun. Spencer grasped another rifle, pretty with an oversized scope
as his brother readied the light. The bottle of Turkey was passed around providing them fermented courage.

  After several seconds of subdued mutterings, Doug readied the Winchester and sighted along its deadly length at the black night. On whispered command, the light flicked on. Several dozen red reflecting eyes turned toward the boys just as the rifles opened fire. Doug emptied the Winchester, aiming at all the eyes he could see. The light illuminated a large portion of the field, but failed to penetrate the kudzu-covered forest edge. When the shooting was over, they'd smiled, giddy with the killing.

  Now, years later, he was going there again. The van's headlights seemed to create the road ahead as the van bumped slowly along the worn dirt road. Fresh, dark red earth smoothed out potholes, promising Doug he was on the right path. Behind him, Ian read an X-Men comic with the tilt of an overhead light.

  "So, Doug?"

  "Yes, Honey."

  "What exactly is a Kudzu Festival?"

  Doug laughed. "I'm not exactly sure. I remember that they had them every year, but we were always doing something. I do remember the papers and the news. They always showed some older folks dressed up with kudzu attached to their clothes. I always thought it was just a dance and country music thing."

  "But we have nothing to wear?"

  "There's a whole forest of it. Here, let me stop the van and you can pull off a few vines."

  She strained at the darkness, but couldn't discern the night from the forest. She remembered being terrified of a Christmas present her Grandma had once sent. It was the book, Where the Wild Things Are. Definitely not a kid's book. "I was just kidding, Doug."

  The van made a steep upward turn that hurled everyone back in their seats. When they leveled off again, there before them like a bright and glittering fairy encampment was the festival.

  As they drew closer they noticed an immense open-sided white tent dominating the field. The sides were draped with kudzu. Light poured out from the sides. People filed inside bedecked in sparkling garments. Six great generator-driven halogen lights were interspersed around the field, illuminating the mad weaving of the mountain throng. The far third of the field was a parking lot that surely held every drivable vehicle within a fifty-mile radius.

  No sooner had they found a parking spot by a green John Deere tractor, they were picking their way through the party. The brightly-lit tent was the obvious destination. Snatches of song could be heard from smaller groups where dulcimer and fiddle players made their stands.

  Doug remembered the field, but was a little shocked at the change. Many of the people they passed had the same blank stares that the deer had had. But the trees were all gone. All that was left was a grass and clay mat trampled and pounded into an asphalt consistency.

  The people were in differing forms of dress, from grime-covered coveralls fresh from the tobacco fields to handsomely-groomed couples in the dress of the long-forgotten mannered gentry. The connecting thread seemed to be the various amounts of kudzu intertwined, seeming to be almost attached to their clothing.

  As they drew nearer the tent, electric strains of melody began to overpower the lyrical tinny sound of the mountain instruments. It took a few seconds, but Doug recognized it. Christian Rock, the ubiquitous regional answer to what the Church condemned Hard Rock of Satan. It was as hard and fast as its more popular counterpart, easily setting the blood to thrumming, but ethics and morals were the message.

  "There's gotta be at least a thousand people," said Laurie, struggling to be heard over the music.

  Doug glanced back and noticed her firm grip around his wide-eyed son's wrist.

  "Like I said, probably the whole county's here. They most likely get a lot of business done then party all night. Seems all right to me."

  "I feel kinda funny being here and not knowing anyone. We've gotten quite a few stares."

  Doug regarded her, "I haven't noticed. Anyway, relax. This is the South. More importantly, it's Tennessee. All the folks are nice. You'll see."

  They arrived at one of the tent's entrances. A tall, thin man, black stove-pipe hat, nineteenth century suit almost totally covered in Kudzu vines, stood, his pen poised above a clipboard.

  "Name?" he said, his voice unusually officious.

  Doug hesitated a moment, remembering the anal tendencies of the Army. "Oh, we're not gonna be on any list," he said. "We're not from around here."

  The man's reply was a thin smile. "Name?" he repeated.

  "Listen, man," said Doug, wondering if he should just gather everyone back in the van and go to the campsite. "I said we're not from around here. We're not gonna be on any list. We just heard of this little get-together at the store."

  "Name?"

  Doug's body tensed.

  "Hey, Mister. We're the Daniels'," yelled Ian from somewhere behind Doug. Doug heard a soft whack. "Sorry, Mom. But he keeps asking the same dumb question."

  The man with the clipboard's eye's softened. "You must be young Ian," he said. "And that makes you Doug and you Laurie," he concluded indicating with his pen.

  "But how did you..."

  "Old Annie called me. Told me y'all would be stoppin' by. Said you're from Chattanooga."

  He flipped the pages on the clipboard until he came to the last page and made a mark by three names. "You folks are welcome. See Agnes at the table for your vines," he said indicating an older woman, gaudily-flowered hat perched on a head of blue-white hair, standing behind a Kudzu-heaped table.

  "I'm thirsty, Dad."

  "Sure you are, young man," said the man. "After y'all finish with Agnes, feel free to sample our refreshments."

  As they shuffled into the tent, Doug tried to remember exactly when he had told the old woman at the store their names. She must have heard them speaking to each other when they were getting their supplies. He shook his head.

  Agnes was pleasant and bouncy. As they approached, she jumped from her chair and deftly attaching several strands of kudzu to each of them. Across the tent was a series of tables pushed end-to-end. Each one was heavily-laden with food and drink.

  They made a beeline and were soon carrying sagging paper plates and red plastic cups to the black folding chairs that made up two thirds of the tent's interior.

  As they ate, Doug searched the people for his old friend, but had yet to see him among the milling throng. All the chairs in the tent were facing forward, and in addition to several couples snacking, others were watching the band performing on the raised platform. Hung from the tent supports directly above the drummer was an immense crucifix that appeared to be made entirely of kudzu. The figure of Jesus was strikingly accurate. Doug could even make out a green tear forever descending the statue's cheek.

  "Hey, Doug," came a slow whisky soaked drawl from his left.

  Doug turned and saw an emaciated man lowering himself into the seat next to him, denim jacket, multicolored with dirt and grime. The man's hair was a greasy waterfall, barely allowing two pinched, pink eyes to peer through.

  "Hello," said Doug, lowering a sauce covered chicken wing. He wiped the corners of his mouth. "Do I know you?"

  "Come on, Man. Why the hell are you here...now?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Doug, you dumb shit. It's me, Spencer!"

  Doug straightened and peered at the man he had thought at least a dozen years his senior. No, not an old man, he saw now. Life just weighed heavily upon the man's face. He could see exploded blood vessels crowning the nose. What he had taken for wrinkles were seams of dirt, etched deeply into the worry lines that no thirty-year-old should have.

  "Spencer? That you? What the hell happened? I mean, how the hell are you, man?"

  "I'm alive, man. Now, why are you here?"

  Doug could feel the force of his old friend's words as puffs of whiskey-coated breath hit his cheek.

  "Came to do a little fishing and met Annie at the new store. Invited us to this little shindig."

  Spencer looked around Doug and took in his wife and son and shook his head.


  "What?" Asked Doug, wondering how drunk Spencer was.

  "Doug, aren't you going to introduce me?"

  He twisted in his chair, "Sorry, honey. Spencer, this is my wife, Laurie."

  Laurie stuck out her hand. Spencer ignored it and pulled a pint bottle from his jacket. He hunched slightly and took a deep draught. When he was finished, he put the bottle back in his jacket and stared over Doug's other shoulder into the crowd. He leaned forward and whispered.

  "Listen, and listen good. You folks don't belong here. You need to leave."

  "Not very neighborly, Spencer," said Doug, struggling not to wrinkle his nose at the funk of his unwashed old friend.

  Spencer glanced over Doug's shoulder again. "Shit."

  "Mr. Daniels," came the voice of the man with the clipboard, "is this gentleman bothering you?"

  Doug glanced up into the officious eyes of the man. "No. Not at all. We're old friends."

  "Ah, I see."

  Laurie looked at the man and noticed behind him, Agnes and two other ladies staring daggers at Spencer, all former pleasantness evaporated.

  "Spencer, if you please?" The man held out a hand. Doug guessed it was for the bottle.

  "What you want, man?" asked Spencer, his anger a little over-the-top for the occasion.

  "Spencer, Agnes needs your help. Can you give her a hand?"

  Spencer, who had puffed up with anger, deflated like an old balloon. His eyes suddenly sad. Once again he had become an old man. He leaned into Doug and gave him a short hug. "Get lost," he spit softly into Doug's ear.

  Doug's childhood friend stood up slowly, letting his bones arrange themselves in his sallow skin and staggered away, his bony hips glancing off a few chairs before he melted into the darkness.

  "What was that all about?" asked Laurie.

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Daniels. I was concerned that one of our local miscreants might ruin your evening." The man's smile was a thin line, not overly enthusiastic. "Enjoy your meal, the service will be starting in a few moments."

  "The service?" asked Laurie.