The Real

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The Real Page 3

by James Cole


  Living in the woods, Claire tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, using natural products whenever she could. Today, she mixed a paint made from linseed oil and a pigment known as the King’s Yellow. Claire discovered the pigment, which occurs naturally in a particular mineral, in a rocky area near the rapids of The Devil’s Crotch. Curiously, the mineral is formed by thermal processes such as those in volcanoes and hot springs.

  Because of its toxicity and its tendency to react with other pigments, the King’s Yellow was not one Claire routinely used for her paintings, but it would work well for this particular project. While the river and the willow trees and the slanting sunbeams would surely make for a lovely scene on canvas, today she painted on a plank. She was making a sign to hang over the front door of the house.

  She had never bothered to name the commune, but now it seemed imperative to do so. She thought of those early communes: Tolstoy Farm, Gorda Mountain, Drop City. Perhaps, everyone would one day know the name Lotosland. After all, she was the one who had found the key to living in harmony with her fellow hippies. She had discovered the all natural, perfect instrument of peace and love. Over the summer her aspirations grew from modest to grandiose.

  This could change the world forever. Just think of how they will love me.

  The only problem with Claire’s little fantasy was the lotus. How could she supply the world when she wasn’t even sure if the swamps would produce enough lotus blooms for the seven of them?

  She had regretted not having been party to the Haight-Ashbury summer of love, now two years past. Instead, she had been here, the better part of a continent removed, sitting through botany classes at the University. Who could have predicted that, of all things, her schoolwork would lead to this? But one never knows where the road of one’s life will lead, and now here she was, living her own grand summer. It was her summer of love and, perhaps more appropriately, the summer of the lotus.

  When she was done, she hung the sign on the door and stepped back to read its proclamation, painted in the vivid King’s Yellow:

  LOTOSLAND

  anno domini 1969

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday, September 17

  The parking situation, a never-ending complaint of most campus commuters, was of no consequence to Jeremy Spires. Today, like almost every other day, he parked his motorcycle, a hyper-sport Hayabusa, in the shade of the ginkgo trees that lined the east side of the University Biotechnology Facility.

  In the lobby, Jeremy picked up the daily-distributed University newspaper and bought a Coke from the machine. He could not help but eye the artificial plants where Tavalin had been lying in wait for him the other night, even though he knew he would not be hiding there now. As he rode the elevator, he chuckled out loud when he recalled how Tavalin had unwittingly scared Dr. Cain, the executive director of the Facility.

  The entire fifth and sixth floors were reserved for the laboratories of Dr. Cain. Desks of the various lab workers, mostly graduate students, were scattered throughout the nooks and crannies of the various laboratories. Jeremy had been assigned the lone desk in one of the smaller labs, squirreled away from the much larger and busier labs located down the hall and on the floor above.

  He stopped at the door to his lab and frisked his pockets for his keys. The janitor emerged from the lab three doors down. Jeremy watched as he fished through the contents of a small trash can with slow, measured movements. The janitor removed an empty soda can which he placed in a bucket on the back of his cart. The remaining trash he dumped into the main receptacle on the cart.

  Jeremy’s search for his lab keys continued. He emptied his pockets of their contents – cell phone, wallet and his personal key ring. His lab keys, which he kept on a separate key ring, were not there. With some irritation he pulled off his backpack and unzipped one outer pocket and then another. When he did not immediately locate the keys, he dropped the heavy backpack to the floor. When he first bought the bag, he assumed that having so many little pockets would be a convenience. After he searched in vain through most of them he began to rethink that assumption.

  “Did you lock yourself out?”

  The voice startled Jeremy and, when he turned in that direction, the proximity of the pushcart startled him again. The black of the janitor’s wraparound sunglasses matched the man’s face.

  When Jeremy recovered enough to speak, he said, “I seem to have misplaced my keys.”

  “Normally I’m not allowed to do this, but I can make an exception for you.”

  Jeremy studied the profile of the janitor’s face as he unlocked the door. The fellow reminded Jeremy of someone, though Jeremy could not think who, especially considering the oversized sunglasses he wore.

  “Thanks,” said Jeremy as he hoisted his backpack.

  “One good turn deserves another.”

  The janitor did not immediately step aside from the doorway. Rather, he stood toe-to-toe with Jeremy in a challenging pose and a deliberate look on his face.

  “Do I know you?” asked Jeremy.

  “Only rarely can a man assume to know another,” he replied circuitously.

  Only one person Jeremy had ever met spoke in such a manner. “It’s Grady, right? From Sticks River Road?”

  “Greetings, Master Jeremy.”

  “I didn’t recognize you with those glasses on,” Jeremy muttered as he tried to process this unexpected circumstance.

  “Sometimes we see only what we expect to see and nothing more,” replied Grady.

  “I didn’t know you worked here.”

  “Yes, it’s true. I’m your trusty janitor.”

  Grady removed himself from the doorway and went about his business of removing the trash from Jeremy’s lab.

  “How long have you been employed by the University?” asked Jeremy.

  “Three days, give or take,” replied Grady without looking up from his chore.

  “What’s the deal with those sunglasses?”

  Grady lowered the glasses to reveal his strange blue eyes and winked. “The glasses must stay on at all times, doctor’s orders. Understand?”

  “I guess.”

  Grady pushed the glasses back into place and ambled toward the back of Jeremy’s lab. Jeremy watched with mild interest as the Johnny-come-lately janitor tried in vain to get through the silver-steel door to the cold room at the back of his lab. After tugging at the handle of the locked door and rummaging through the keys on his key chain, Grady said, “I don’t appear to have a key to this door. Is there any trash in there I should take care of?”

  Jeremy stood, reaching into his pocket before remembering that he would not be able to unlock the door, at least not today. “I’d let you in with my key to check, but since I seem to have temporarily misplaced my lab keys…”

  Grady mumbled the words, “Right, right,” and walked a few steps toward the door before stopping dead in his tracks. He had the look of someone who had just forgotten what it was he was about to do next. Finally, he turned to Jeremy and asked, “Do you dream dreams?”

  “Of course,” Jeremy said with a grin. “Just last night I dreamed I was giving a lecture in my underwear.”

  Ignoring Jeremy’s attempt at a joke, Grady said, “Pay attention to your dreams, Jeremy. They just might be trying to tell you something.” After glancing over his shoulder, presumably to verify that no one else was listening, Grady added in an ominous tone, “And don’t forget what I said before about steering clear of Reefers Woods, you hear?”

  All morning long Jeremy pondered the peculiar ways and words of Grady. Was it a coincidence that this man he met on Sticks River Road now worked at the Facility, or had Grady gotten the job just to harass him? And why was this odd man so hell-bent on keeping Jeremy out of Reefers Woods? Whatever Grady’s motivations, Jeremy didn’t take well to anyone telling him what he could and could not do. In fact, Grady’s mysterious talk and admonitions to stay away made him want to spend more time in Reefers Woods, starting this very weekend. If there
really were strange goings-on there, Jeremy wanted in on it, or so he thought.

  Despite his defiant attitude, Jeremy was not at all enthralled at the prospect of working in the same building as that man. Having to share the hallways and other common areas of the building with him was bad enough, but even Jeremy’s lab provided no refuge. With his master key, Crazy Grady could come and go anytime he wished.

  Chapter 4

  Friday, September 19

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

  In one continuous motion Jeremy turned over, switched off the alarm, and rolled easily out of bed. He had talked up the camping trip all week and, when the alarm went off at six a.m., he hit the floor running. It was nice to have a reason to want to get out of bed for a change.

  Jinni Malone, his girlfriend, picked him up one hour later. On a typical Friday she could be found at the local hospital where she worked as a nurse, but not today, as she, like Jeremy, took the day off. Jinni arrived in her late model, four--wheel drive SUV, a vehicle well suited for road trips like this one that called for extra gear.

  “I’ll drive,” he said after he had loaded his stuff in the back.

  Jinni rolled her eyes but knew any resistance was futile. Jeremy always insisted on driving. Trying to be pre-emptive, she said, “There’s no need to speed.”

  They set out for the podunk town of Gilly, about a one-hour drive north of the University. They arrived ahead of schedule and easily found the general store, an old one-story structure down by the river that, as far as they could tell, was the town. Jeremy parked next to an antique pulp wood truck, pale green with an overlay of rust. The cab had no doors. A hound dog, brown and white splotched, lay motionless on the old wooden porch. Jinni thought it might be dead. Jeremy suggested it might be a clever decoy, one prop among a thousand, placed in Gilly to give it the look and feel of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry.

  They entered the store through a screen door, the kind with a spring that pulls the door shut with that characteristic stretched-spring squeak and slam, which triggered a non-specific memory of Jeremy as a boy at his grandmother’s house. Both the old country home and his Mammaw were only memories now.

  The store, a general store in every sense of the word, was a one-stop shopper’s dream: Here, one could buy firewood, split or not; ice, block or crushed; and groceries, including those sometimes hard-to-find pork delicacies such as chitterlings, fatback, ham hocks, and pig’s feet. There were guns, ammunition, fishing poles, and a bait shop in the back corner that lent a grating background noise of live crickets to the ambiance.

  While Jinni went mulling about the store, Jeremy headed for the counter. The cash register was manned by a middle-aged, bearded hillbilly reading a newspaper. He wore what looked to be real-issue army pants and boots and a faded tee-shirt that read:

  Women WANT me

  Fish FEAR me

  Jeremy had to clear his throat to get his attention. The clerk glared at Jeremy and asked in a gruff tone, “What can I do you for?”

  “We’d like to rent a canoe.”

  Jeremy picked a map up from the counter and pointed to the lower section of Sticks River, the part that ran through Reefers Woods. Not surprisingly, the map did not indicate any reference to Reefers Woods.

  “We’d like to do this part.”

  “From here to the lake?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d have to advise against that.” The clerk used his pinky finger, its nail nicotine yellow, to indicate a different section of Sticks River on Jeremy’s map. “Now your best canoeing would be here, in the middle section of the river, anywhere between Ratcliff Ferry and here, depending on how far you want to go.”

  “What’s wrong with us doing the lower part?” Jeremy asked.

  The man fiddled mindlessly with the hair on his chin. “Nothing’s wrong with it, it’s just that most folks avoid the lower part on account of this one set of rapids they call The Devil’s Crotch.”

  Jeremy looked back with inquisitive eyebrows.

  The man snickered from behind the unkempt mustache that originated from inside his nostrils. “I guess that’s got your attention, huh?”

  Jeremy stared at the map, wallowing in his indecision. He certainly didn’t want to endanger Jinni, but the whole purpose of the canoe trip was to explore Reefers Woods from the river side.

  Finally the clerk broke the silence. “One thing in your favor is that we ain’t had much rain around here and the river’s running on the low side. With the river like it is now, I would say the rapids are only a hard class three. So that takes it from darn-near impossible to just plain tough as all-get-out.”

  That was all the encouragement Jeremy needed. “We can handle tough as all-get-out,” he said in as confident a tone as he could muster. Jeremy pulled out his credit card and slapped it on the counter. He wanted to settle the transaction before Jinni came over. “We’ll need one canoe for two nights. Can you pick us up at the lake landing Sunday, say, around noon?” he asked.

  The clerk was shaking his head. “That’s the other thing; we don’t do pickups way down there. We do have a rack at Sticks River Landing. I can give you the lock combination but y’all will have to get your own ride out.”

  “I think we can manage that.”

  “My question to you, son, is why are you so dead set on running that part of the river? There’s a reason why hardly anybody goes down that way.”

  “We just want to enjoy some peace and quiet.”

  Over the years, Jeremy had been known to fixate on certain things, whether the sport of triathlon or some obscure rock band or the chicken pizza that he never tired of eating from the local hole-in-the-wall pizzeria. It was the same for the strange stories connected to Reefers Woods, but Jeremy wasn’t about to try and explain himself to Hillbilly Joe behind the counter, nor to Jinni either. How could he when he himself didn’t fully understand the reasons behind his infatuation with Reefers Woods and Claire Wales?

  The clerk was still talking. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t see anybody else at all. And I reckon that’s all fine and good as long as you don’t get yourselves in a pickle and need some help. And don’t think your cell phone is gonna work way out there either.”

  As the clerk filled out the paperwork, Jeremy looked across the way and caught Jinni’s eye. She walked over with a small bottle of sunscreen and a giant bag of potato chips.

  “Well hello, little lady,” said the clerk.

  Cheerily, Jinni replied, “Hello.”

  “I hope you know what your boyfriend here is getting you into.”

  “What…?” she asked with a perplexed look.

  Jeremy quickly ran interference. The last thing he wanted to do was to spook Jinni. “I’ll show you a map of where we’re going in a minute,” he said. “Right now, you just need to sign this waiver.”

  Jinni signed the line but not before throwing a mistrustful glance over her shoulder at Jeremy.

  Once outside, Jeremy called Tavalin, explained his and Jinni’s predicament, and persuaded his friend to pick them up on Sunday at Sticks River Landing.

  “Don’t forget us, Tavalin,” urged Jeremy. “I know how you are.”

  *****

  The occasional bumping of paddles on the sides of the aluminum canoe resonated like thunder in the stillness of the Sticks River National Forest. At the moment, only Jeremy was paddling, though sporadically. There was no hurry. From his position in the back of the narrow craft, he had a wonderful view: the natural beauty of the river, the trees, the sky, and Jinni, basking in the still-powerful rays of the September sun.

  She leaned back, her face cocked towards heaven and her elbows propped by the large Coleman ice chest behind her seat. Her muscular legs, sculpted by several seasons of triathlon training, draped over either side of the canoe. An inverted “V” trailed from the point where her toes broke the water’s surface. With blonde hair, eyes the color of the sky, and a fit body, Jinni had the physical attributes of a goddess. Jeremy won
dered, not for the first time, what he had done to deserve her company.

  Two hours before sunset, they set up camp on a stony outcrop that plateaued some forty feet above the level of the water. They wrapped potatoes in aluminum foil and cooked them in the hot coals of the campfire. Jeremy used a multi-pronged stick, like deer antlers, to roast an entire can of seven Vienna sausages at once. After supper, they lounged lazily on the still-warm rock slab, staring at the fire, mesmerized by its ever-changing form. Periodically, Jeremy got up to add more sticks from the pile they had collected earlier until he noticed with a start a pair of snakes lying mere feet from their spot by the fire.

  “Bedtime,” he declared, as he hoisted Jinni to her feet.

  “Already?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “We’ve got a long way to go tomorrow.”

  As they headed for the safety of the tent he stole a glance back at the spot where he had seen the snakes, but strangely, they were gone. Had he imagined them?

  Chapter 5

  Saturday, September 20

  It was late afternoon on Saturday, the first full day of fall, and it had been a perfect day. Amazingly, they had seen no one else since they left the outfitters some 30 hours prior. Jeremy waited until after lunch to tell Jinni about the rapids. As much as possible, he downplayed what Hillbilly Joe told him back at the general store. Initially this worked, but only until he made the mistake of referring to the rapids by its proper name.

  “The Devil’s Crotch?” asked Jinni. “That sounds – well, wicked. Where is it?”

 

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