From Chapter One of Pearls in the Mountains

Chapter One

“Why don’t you go back?” Her attention was fully on me and there was no judgment. She waited for the answer.
“I do sometimes,” I said eventually. “But you can’t go back to a time. Things happened. And there seems to be a point where things end. Grandfather Mountain is a time for me as much as it is a place. It’s a time that I feel I’ve been stuck in, by feeling stuck…away from it. Do you understand?” She didn’t. “By being in this state of mind that I am away from that time and place…kept out? I don’t know, but I’ve done this unconsciously. I’ve turned myself into some sort of voyeur to that point in my own life. That’s the problem. While my life happens all around me, and in me, I sort of circle this collection of moments as if it were on display in a glass globe. I don’t realize it, but I make constant comparisons. And so the present moment is on hold. My life is on hold because it is constantly being compared to some impossible past. And I miss my life like that.”
She inhaled sharply. “Wait. Do you mean that you miss your life on Grandfather, or that you are missing your life now?” I just smiled. We were getting close.
The moon was full and bright. Through the driver’s window I could clearly see the mountains rising up like big, silent creatures peering down. It was amazing and electric. I changed my plans silently. We were driving through a flat, narrowing valley, and ahead, where it started to close off on us, was our exit. “Let’s just camp at the put-in tonight. We can drop the bike off and meet my friends now, and then shoot up that big ridge to our left. Poplar is on the other side, down below. We could have a fire by the river this evening.” She looked up from her phone, smiling, and nodded enthusiastically. We made a few turns off the interstate and were winding along the river on a narrow, precarious road with old houses on the right side and a sharp drop off on the left side. Moonlight swirled in the cold, swift currents below. I could see Sammy’s driveway ahead of us, and I was only going to be able to fit half of the bus in along side of it. The driver’s side would just have to hang out in the road some. We were getting ready to cause a big fuss, I was sure.
“Hey! Hey!” Sammy is a huge bear of a man, and I was getting one of his hugs. “I thought that was an 18-wheeler pulling into my driveway.” All of his syllables are beautifully long and drag out into a nice, easy, and gentle cadence. He is in all ways warm. “Whatcha got there? Is that a rafting bus? And WHO is this pretty young lady with you? Are you going to run the river?”
“Yep! We’re doing an overnighter. The water and the weather are perfect for it. This is Mary, and Mary told me that she needed an adventure.”
“Are you doing a moon light run?”
“No, we’re just going to camp at the put-in tonight. In my new bus out there,” I replied, motioning towards the driveway and stepping aside so that Sammy could square up to examine Mary. He was shaking her hand as if she were royalty. He didn’t care about any bus.
“It’s very, very nice to meet you,” he gushed politely. We were just inside the door. Sammy had a fire going in the stove which I thought was odd. The big guy wears a t-shirt most of the winter.
“It’s nice to meet you too!” she beamed back. “I’ve been hearing so much about you. So we’re staying here with you Tuesday night?” Sammy straightened up and looked at me stuttering. His eyes were wide and confused.
“Well, I hadn’t really asked him yet, Mary,” I said.
“I thought you called…” she trailed off, embarrassed. Sammy and I laughed, and I shrugged, guilty.
“He never calls!” Sammy half whispered. “He just shows up when he shows up.”
“I love you, Sammy. If the bed on the porch is free Tuesday night, would you mind if we crashed on it? I’d love to hang out. Maybe do dinner? My treat.” Mary was studying me with a disapproving look.
“Sure. Sure. We’d love to have ya. What are you thinking about for dinner?”
“Whatever you’re in the mood for.”
“Do you need me to run your shuttle?”
“No, I’ve got that covered. But I’d like to use your take-out…”
“You’ve got your own shuttle?” He sounded disappointed and was looking out the window for another car.
“…I’ve got a motorcycle. I’d like to leave it here. Do an overnighter. Then take out here and hang out Tuesday evening. Where is everyone?”
“Oh, they’re at the Wal-Mart shopping, but they should be back soon. Can you sit a spell?” Mary and I had grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator before stepping out of the bus.
“Would love to,” I said, and I cracked the top off the first bottle for Mary. “Wanna see my rig?” We walked slowly to the bottom of the drive. It takes Sammy time. Mary was teasing me a little, telling Sammy how proud I was of my little school bus. I was. This was its maiden voyage.
“It looks like a short rafting bus on steroids,” Sammy observed. On top was the exact same wooden deck that we build on school buses to haul rafts. My whitewater raft was strapped onto it. It was a short bus, like a special needs bus, but on a full size bus chassis instead of the van chassis one would normally see. The windows along the sides were covered with solar panels that I had mounted like window shutters, or awnings, and they were fully closed now, but could be lifted for the optimum angle to the sun when parked.
“Yep, that’s pretty much what it is. Last year I took the company short bus out a lot for paddle board trips with the dogs. The paddle board that I use with them is pretty big, so the roof rack made the trips really easy. And the dogs love buses now. Seriously, it’s impossible to get them off of one. So I thought if I could find a diesel bus in good shape, small enough to be usable, and for the right price, I would convert it to burn fryer grease. And I did…” The dogs were inside the bus and Mollie was barking. “I love everything about it except this.” Just behind the school bus entrance was another door, a wheelchair access door. I opened it up and inside was the wheelchair lift with a motorcycle strapped to it.
“Nice!” Sammy said. “What do you not like about it?”
“That they didn’t mount this thing in the back. I looked all over for one that had the wheelchair lift in the back, but none of those were as nice as this one. It messes up my chi, having to crawl around the motorcycle with it mounted up front.”
“Yeah…I see.” I love the way he drags his words out.
“But most of the time the motorcycle won’t be in it so…” I was holding a lever down, and the lift was coming out. I have to admit, it is a little impressive, which embarrasses me. I dislike showing off.
“They got some storms up on the Toe this afternoon. Is that a Tri-umph?”
“Yeah, I liked the name,” I said. It looked like a toy with Sammy standing over it. “Which one, the North or the South Toe?”
“It looked like it was heading towards Mt. Mitchell, so I guess the South Toe. We didn’t get anything here, but you be careful.” Sammy’s tone had a sort of gravity to it now, like the sky might fall at any moment. He dramatizes things, but his concern was valid. This area had received a lot of rain the last few weeks, and the river was flooding only a couple of days earlier. A relatively small amount of rain in the right spot could put the river back at flood stage again, even if only for a brief time. “It runs on fryer grease, huh?”
We talked to Sammy for almost an hour – that’s about how long it takes me to drink a beer – and then left to wriggle through the mountains. “It’s a dangerous job,” I told Mary. We had crossed a bridge and were winding up along the outskirts of town, where the valley arches up into the steepening folds of the abrupt ridges. This was a very curvy, narrow road populated randomly with houses, fields, cattle, a school, churches, and graveyards. Every inch of it was another curve.
“It looks dangerous. Or like it could get dangerous quick.” Mary was sprawled out with the two dogs, talking to me through the bus driver’s mirror above my head. LED lights were dimmed down to a soft glow over her. She was asking about my work, but she was projecting a lot, seeing it for what it wasn’t. She was enamored with it all – this passion she had found for the river, and the fascination with a life that appeared completely opposite of her world. I was poking along gently with the bus, using the driving as an excuse to take long pauses to respond to her. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s much nicer in here without the motorcycle.”
“It flows…” I said, waving my hand through the air. I had left Sammy some money on the kitchen counter before stepping outside with him. I knew he wouldn’t take it if I had just handed it to him, so I left it while he wasn’t looking and told him about it later before we drove away. They depend on money they make from driving shuttles, but he loves to host and cooks wonderful, huge meals. Diane and Michael, their son, had not returned from shopping before I was ready to go, but I would see them in a couple of days, and there would likely be a nice, small crowd of some of my favorite people there too. Mary was going to have a magical time.
“Yeah, there is a little bit of that sometimes, physical danger, but that isn’t what I’m really talking about,” I said. Mary was drop-dead gorgeous. I adored her curves and the length of her long leg crossed over the other. I was also trying to keep that to myself and not indulge in gawking. “My life isn’t dangerous, and my job isn’t dangerous like people often think. It’s physical and playful, but it is also very routine, relaxed, and almost scripted. I mean, you may not know exactly what is going to happen next, but you know most of the possibilities very well. I rarely feel an adrenaline rush…and I don’t do it for that.”
“Then what’s dangerous about it?” she humored me.
“Losing yourself.” We were at a stop sign. “It seems to me that there are all manners of ways to lose yourself in this life. Some seem to be enlightening, and some seem to be sticky, swirly eddies that trap us.” The headlights lit up the side of a church covered in slick river stones as its siding. “We take a right here, and this road will shoot us straight up to the pass. There will be a few more houses in the next half mile, and then the rest of the drive is all forest until we get to Poplar.”
“Is this going to tie into what you were talking about with Grandfather Mountain? This ‘losing yourself?’” I smiled, but I didn’t look at her.
“Probably,” I said. Her only prodding was a smile that said, “I’m waiting…” Nice eye contact, I thought, looking away. Back at the road. Back at the sharp turn I was taking. This was the only place and time our lives would ever connect. She managed a dance studio in downtown Atlanta. I wasn’t ever going to Atlanta, and her life wasn’t here. Something was calling her though. I could see that clearly. Some moments I didn’t know when she was seeing me and when she was seeing something or someone else in me. Normally I wouldn’t care. We met last summer on a rafting trip. I was her guide. Sometimes on those rafting trips you get rare, flash connections, and they can be of any variety. Ours was pretty chemical and immediate with flirtations and innuendo that skimmed across the surfaces of politeness in some moments, and then dove deeply into breath-catching, gritty vulgarity at other moments. I know there were other people in the raft, but I can’t remember them. We were obvious.
“You’ll probably get this and agree with it, at least in part,” I said. She was looking at me questioningly. “ I’ve been kinda off the farm for a long while, Mary, and sometimes I wonder if certain thoughts I have will make any sense to anyone. Sometimes I think they do,” I explained. “I have a theory on esteem – on this concept we have of esteem. What it means to people. What it means to me. Other people’s energy, favor – their esteem – is powerful. I call it ‘other people’s esteem.’ And like a drug, it’s addictive. Ya get a huge high when other people throw their esteem at you. In my theory, ‘other people’s esteem undermines ‘self esteem.’ I think you have to manufacture your own esteem, self esteem. Sorta. Actually, let’s say that it is produced through its own natural processes and gives its own, very mild, high. Follow me?” She nodded. “When we indulge in the high of other people’s esteem, which seems more thrilling, we lose the ability to make our own, and we become dependent on other people’s energy. There is no freedom in that.” I had the throttle all the way down, trying to build up as much speed as possible. The turbo charger was singing nicely as we passed the last house and entered the forest. It was like a light went out – the trees were dense and old inside this first part of the national forest. We wouldn’t see any more moonlight until we got closer to the top. “There’s no integrity…no authenticity like that. That’s what is dangerous about being a river guide – because we often become somebody’s ‘hero.’ Not necessarily all the time but often enough. We are the center of attention. Boss. Entertainer.” She was looking down now, listening and thinking. I continued, “So my theory is, and I live by this as much as possible, that other people’s esteem is a much more powerful, fun, and short high than the high one gets from self esteem. It’s natural that people would want to indulge in it. But living life like that…from that kind of revelry…is a trap. You become a slave to what makes you high, and in this case – which would be every case, every moment, and every motivation in your life – you are dependent on others for validation, for energy – for the very life force even. You can’t have any self esteem like that.”
She looked up into the mirror at me, flat. Sober. “That could apply to a lot of us.”

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