Climbing the steps of the bus was like stepping into a thick wall of silence and dread. I took the dogs out and came back in as quickly as possible. I didn’t say anything. I just sat there with her. She stared at the wall across the bus, but wouldn’t look at me. I thought about the night before and how suddenly everything fell apart, drink by drink. Something beautiful and magical snapped there – something that tied us together – leaving us to drift past. And there would be no going back. It couldn’t be mended, I was sure. God, it was beautiful for a second. Strange how two extremes could be so close. After a while she said softly, “Take me back to my car, please. I want to go home.” I gave her a moment, but she didn’t say anything else so I got up and climbed into the driver’s seat. It would take an hour and a half to get back to my house. Sometimes silence can be deafening, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted to hear anything anyway.
There was a lot of daylight left in the evening. Once you get to Tennessee again, Asheville Highway winds along the French Broad River. Everywhere I go, it is always the same highways along the same rivers. I always thought that stretch of road was a pretty drive. When we got past the turn for Del Rio, I heard an old man’s voice in the back of my mind, “I shoulda never crossed the river, Joe.” When I was very young, I drove trucks in the winters and this old man would tell me stories about my father’s family. They were from Del Rio. Stories I would never otherwise hear, stories of the end of an era, and of the man coming out of the mountains. I remember in all of them, the man lost. The mountains became sealed off. There was no going home. And then death. Eventually. Eventually the body dies too. I wasn’t scared of sadness or depression anymore. I was terrified of numbness though.
I turned the ignition off in the drive. There was just barely enough daylight to pack Mary’s car. We moved quietly. I pulled things out and stacked them by the door, and she took them to her car. When I couldn’t find anything else, I took the dogs for a walk and let Mary go through the RV by herself to double check. Everything was painfully awkward now. I just wanted it to end quicker. Once the dogs were taken care of, I put them in the house and came to see Mary off.
“You!” We hadn’t spoken a word since she asked me to bring her back to her car. I stood there and just let it happen. “You are some kind of bastard! She is everywhere out there. Her shadow in every shadow. All your river stories. All your LAME jokes! It’s in everyone’s eyes. It’s on the tips of their tongues, but they don’t speak of her. And Charlie! Charlie is the WORST! Did you see how far he sat from me on the bus? He was about to fall off the edge! He absolutely refuses to look at me. How dare you bring me or anyone into that?! You’re dead. Like a tumbleweed in the winds. Or better yet, like a GHOST! Haunting these hills and rivers. You look down from some high horse, watching everyone else have these experiences. Changing. While you sit there. Not changing. Are you mocking us? You shouldn’t. At least we ARE changing. You’re stuck! You can’t change. You need us to live through. Because you’re DEAD!” I didn’t say anything. She just got in her car and left.
The next morning I was up early, a few hours before the sun. I listened to some music and wrote for a long time. I also did a lot of staring at the walls and thinking. I’m not sure which one I did the most of. It was daylight before I let the girls go out. We went for a short walk. The grass was growing quickly and filling in. I fed the dogs, skipped breakfast, and sat down to check messages I had missed while gone. There were a lot. I didn’t finish them though. After the first few, I went outside and started unloading the bus and storing everything in the garage. Except the motorcycle. I got it out and then got the saddlebags out of the garage and attached them. I packed them and a backpack for an overnight trip and then loaded the dogs into my Jeep. We went to a friend that owns a kennel and I left them for a couple of days and returned home. The house got locked up with everything turned off again, and I hopped on the Triumph and started heading North, wriggling through the countryside until I came to I-81. There, I jumped onto the big road and continued North, thinking about Sammy and his generous spirit. I had years of memories with him. Decades. He was a passionate, kind man, but also a very dangerous man if you crossed his loved ones. Hearts like that… I thought about the early days when he first moved up from Florida. All the dinners. So many good times. So many broad smiles. I thought about our last rafting trip. God, I was horrible that day! He was a part of that river to me, a loved feature that I could always count on. Sometimes he was my favorite part. But he was gone now. That’s why I had all the messages – he had died. So I had to go back.
It was a place where words weren’t welcome yet, sitting in that dark den. We went outside to talk in hushed, reverent tones. The grief was unbearable. Inside, we walked softly as Diane’s sobs cut you into shreds. All the pictures. All the memories. Outside, people by the dozens came and went. And came again. The entire community was devastated. There was talk of having a wake, celebrating Sammy’s life with a big party, but that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. Everything was too much. Too much for us all. Finally Michael went outside and stood on a table above everyone, tears in his eyes, begging everyone to go home. Yelling. And begging. I saw magic then as each person silently walked up and hugged him and left. The family would take Sammy back to Florida in the morning, and when they returned we would ach figure out how to keep going forward. The river just flowed below, paying no mind. Such an ancient thing.
I couldn’t stay there. I left in the night and tried to go home – to Grandfather Mountain. Home…if even just for a minute. I got there very late, and laid a bedroll on the ground next to the motorcycle. But Grandfather Mountain would never be home again. In the morning, I got up and went to where we used to have coffee. I sat in the rear with my back to the door and wrote while I had my breakfast. I don’t really have a purpose for writing. It’s cathartic – maybe sometimes illuminating to go back and read – but mostly it is horrifying and so it gets burnt in little fires, that the world may never read it. Sometimes though, it’s burnt so that the words may be heard somewhere very far away. Aren’t there so many ways words can burn?
I didn’t go back to that side of the mountain after breakfast. I went around and worked my way up to the Blue Ridge Parkway instead, and I rode out to Blowing Rock, towards Boone, and then back to Beacon Heights. I spent the rest of the morning out on those rocks, but I was haunting that place too. Mary was right. About everything. And so I hopped back on the Triumph and rode the two and a half hours back to my house in Tennessee, searching for myself the entire way, almost without any anchor. Pushing through the numbness crowding in for something sharp. Something acute. All I could find was momentum. There was a lot of packing to do. I had river trips down on the Ocoee.