the september story continues

For those who might be enjoying a trip back into the summer of 2001...

September 3

I wake up slowly to the light seeping through the lace curtains, and recognize that this is the last mattress I will enjoy for many days. I linger, though the lace on the pillow scratches my cheek. Brian, always so cheery in the morning, is pointing the video camera at me.

            "Ready for the big adventure?"

            "Ten more minutes." I shoo him away, but the eerily quiet house compels me to rise and get ready. I linger more in the shower, aware that it will also be many days before I again enjoy a private bathroom. The hot water does its work, and despite the bite of the air conditioning when I exit, I dress appropriately for another day in the pitiless sun, stashing yesterday's sweaty clothes in the side pocket of the duffle bag.   
 As the rest of the neighborhood leaves its driveways bound for the work week, we buckle ourselves into the van and wave goodbye to Uncle Don. Straight across remarkably smooth Interstate 40, “The Music Highway”, we weave among semis and 80° rain drops. Nothing too scenic so far. Three hours later, we are on the outskirts of Nashville, ready for lunch and watching for a White Castle sign. The famous chain was first brought to my western attention by The Beastie Boys and is constantly cooed over by Brian. I’m always ready to sample a burger, but I have strong loyalties of my own.
“I’m not saying it's better than In-n-Out,” he defers for the hundredth time. “It’s different. Excellent in its own way.”

             “We’ll see.”

It is very excellent in its own way. For less than 10 bucks we get two Sprites, two orders of fries, and eight miniature hamburgers. We call them sliders on the west coast, but these are special: diced onions nestled in the patty and grease infusing the soft square bun, curling it around the edges where white cheese sneaks over the sides.

            “Ketchup?” Brian offers the bottle.

            “Nope. Gotta keep it pure.” I eat my first two sliders without a breath. Then some fries—not as flavorful as In-n-Out, but crispy enough to suffice. I savor the second course slowly and think I could eat four more.

            “They’re everywhere,” Brian assures me, “we’ll get them again.”

            "If you say so."

 

We manage to pass right by the city center of Nashville. Its cluster of towers and billboards are visible north of the highway, but no exit signs pique our interest; maybe we assume it’s just Memphis with country music. We are not country music fans, and something better--as far as we're concerned--awaits us deeper into the heart of the landscape; so we turn south and leave the traffic behind.

Highway 82 is terra-cotta and still eerily un-bumpy, as if the last century of tires has never found it. The flora mesmerizes me. All I know from my passenger seat are acres of feathery trees, as if all the trees in the world are here, collected into endless, shapeless, waving layers, with nothing else beyond them. In many places the multi-green mass is shrouded with a mutant cobwebbery; other trees are completely overtaken by kudzu, anthropomorphizing their limbs and tresses. White butterflies flit among the greens in indifferent dives and arcs. I offer them exaggerated blinks; I have slipped down a rabbit hole.

            The road gradually becomes narrow and rough, twisting down into misty shadows and then cresting over radiant hills. Drum-shaped hay bales speckle the fields; clusters of cows nap under oak trees. The town of Lynchburg emerges. No supermarkets, no streetlights, almost no sound besides the buzz of summer insects. Rusty signposts point the way to the Jack Daniels Distillery. There's a dirt parking lot hidden by a wall of box hedge, and a u-shaped wooden house with a covered porch. The walkway leading to the front door is edged and swept neatly, the clipped lawn full of clover and the invisible crickets’ songs. We notice some sheds set further back on the property in the trees, as we tumble out of the van stretching and smiling.

            “This isn’t what I thought it would be,” says Brian, his tone suggesting it’s better.

            “Pretty rustic, right? Not too flashy compared to the flash of Jack, the big king of drinks." I somehow don't hear the echo of a Graceland assessment in this. I'm enchanted.

            “It’s like a secret.”  His chest puffs a little at what fine explorers we are, and he starts toward the house. A dragonfly sunbathes on the first step. The trash bins are weathered wood barrels and daisies cascade over baskets hung from the roof corners. Inside, giant pixilated black and white photos embellish the walls, narrating the story of how a young man learned to make sour mash by the creek behind this house, mentored by a distiller named Nearest Green. At 13 years old, Jack bought the operation from Dan Call, a lay preacher compelled to choose between ministry and liquid sin. Jack, having no such dilemma, drove wagonloads of whiskey to Alabama with his cousin Button, and sold it to boys embroiled in the War Between the States. During Reconstruction, Jack's was the first registered distillery in the country.

A larger than life statue of the man himself dominates the center of the room; old charcoal filters, infamous shipping orders and yellowed news clippings are displayed in glass cylinders all around him. One plaque elaborates the captain’s marketing approach:     
          Jack Daniels always insisted on giving a customer good value for his hard earned money. 
            So when it came time to switch from earthenware jugs to glass bottles, Mr. Jack adopted the
            now-famous square bottle, a reminder that Old No. 7 represented a square deal.

The signature label debuted and won gold at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, its square bottle designed to distinguish it from the competition; but its real secret was the limestone water flowing through this town. 

            The gift shop is closed on Mondays, so through the window we take a picture of the Lynchburg Lemonade I had hoped to add to the cooler in the van. Then we tilt back in a couple of teak rocking chairs on the porch for a spell. I sigh loudly and offer my neck to the sultry air. Under the eaves I can relish being completely warm, like wrapped in a towel right out of the dryer, without having the white-hot rays of the direct sun roasting me. We stay in the stillness until, looking languorously at each other, we agree that it is now ice cream time.

            Two minutes down the road is a dirt block of mercantile connected by a wavy planked boardwalk. Some shops carry distillery stuff, some offer everything indigenous to Tennessee, from blackberry preserves to Confederate flags. Now that we are out of mainstream tourist territory, the language on the artifacts has graduated to the War of Northern Aggression. We keep our Yankee heads down and our wallets open—shot glasses, more postcards, miniature jars of whiskey-spiked mustard. We find homemade ice cream at the back of a bakery. The girl scooping it is about seventeen, short layers of platinum hair revealing black roots, a thin silver bar through her eyebrow, black t-shirt and black jeans that don’t meet in the middle. Is she really talking to another customer about moving to New York City, or do I just fill in blanks like I did at the Memphis Denny’s? I can't help presuming that no one young belongs here. After she hands over our whiskey raisin cones, a guy arrives to send her on break and she asks him for a smoke.  Leaving Lynchburg, I watch her watching us as she takes a long drag.

Brian fills the gas tank for $1.40 a gallon at Ed’s Mini Mart. Map across my thighs, I discern a different road to take us back to the interstate, and find a radio station playing the subversive hit, I Ain’t No Monkey. We advance our watches to eastern time and spend the afternoon surveying the Tennessee Valley. The curtain of trees gives way to rolling plains, willows and birch spread out between barns and waterwheels, and I begin to collect evidence of the history I have only read about. Every so often a roadside sign denotes the site where a battle was waged over the cohesion of this country. 

At first we pull over at each of them to read the details. One site was a three-day siege, another claimed the life of sixty boys from the same township. Brian and I are quiet, taken aback by the impenitent truth of things. All the scaffolding that holds up our fanciful little edge of existence is in plain view; it looms around and under us, blanketing our breath. I squint across the fields for traces of spilt blood or tattered flags, stretch my ears for the echo of a rifle report or an anguished cry. But there is only mile after mile of still yellow grass and an occasional swooping crow. 

And sometimes a graveyard. They’re all small, a few dozen tilting wood crosses or less, surrounded by a buckling cedar-post or chicken-wire fence. There might be a pot of shriveled chrysanthemums, but not left by any close relations, as all of the markers are very old, older than we know how to recognize.

I had thought about Tennessee in terms of Civil Rights, not Civil War. That fighting went from Gettysburg to Atlanta in my mental picture book; the western theater was not sensational enough to get much play in a West Coast history class. But there is definitely more to learn: somewhere below us is Collierville, Wauhatchie, and Pittsburg Landing, which I called Shiloh and 24,000 mothers called their son’s final resting place. The world grows bigger as the shadows lengthen. And when the sun is at our shoulders, we're passing the “funky architecture” of Knoxville, as identified by my driver.

“Should we go downtown?” he asks.

“Mmm…" Knoxville strikes no particular chord. "I vote no.” I guess we could eat dinner there, but leaving the highway feels complicated with my head still in those pastoral battlefields; I'm not up for city navigation tonight.

We are almost to the east edge of the state and veering south toward the Great Smoky Mountains on Route 66. Every cloud has blown away and the hills around us are positively undulating. On my side we’re following the curve of a long marsh, and as the sky unfurls its thick ribbons of ginger sunset, the color is reflected in the wetlands. I’m inside the song America the Beautiful. I turn around in my seat to watch as the last wisp of fire falls behind the horizon. When I face front again we are approaching a smatter of motels and gas stations.

            “Okay, this must be Sevierville,” I announce. “It’s about another hour to our campground at Pigeon Forge. Want a break?”

It seems risky to wait longer. There usually aren’t many dining options around a Kampground Of America, and who knows what to expect from a place called Pigeon Forge. 

            “Yeah, let’s eat.” We spot the Route 66 Roadhouse and nod in tandem. Tennessee is playing Arkansas on the big screen and it’s biker night—the parking lot is littered with Harleys. We decide to stay out of the bar. In the dining room they have peanuts we can pop open and throw the shells onto the sawdusty floor. We sit under an Elvis mural and each expeditiously devour a margarita and a fried chicken salad.

After dinner it's cool enough to drive with the windows down instead of the air conditioning on, and now we are chatty as we plow through the night. The surrounding darkness makes our van seem like a snug clubhouse. We conspire about all the things we’ll do when we get to the ocean, all the colors we’ll paint the town in Savannah and New Orleans. The hour passes quickly and then I see a fluorescent glow growing out of the black road ahead. It looks like there's a spaceship landing.

            At seventy miles an hour the glow takes shape fast. First a convenience store with a neon top. Then a pancake house with a neon top. Then a mini-golf course lit up like a major league baseball field. Brian wordlessly lifts his foot from the gas pedal. And then everything is light and music, towering on either side of us, flashing and rocking everywhere, as far down the road as I can see. Our jaws fall open.

            “Get the video camera,” He breaks the stunned silence with this measured command. We are cruising at 15mph now.

            “Where are we…,” I wonder in a dream voice, “…is this for real?”

            “Holy shit, GET the camera!”

I get it and thrust it, along with my upper body, out the window, turning and reaching up over the roof to record the driver’s side of the street as well. In the middle of eons of empty sky and road, in a land ruled by trees, the foothills of Appalachia, is a Vegas strip for little kids and cowboys. A world’s worth of laser tag arenas and one arcade after another, stories high, offering discounts in bright dancing graphics. Humongous music clubs trimmed in gold feature bands like Sawyer Brown. Go-cart tracks and carnivals with carousels, tilt-a-whirls, flumes and octopus rides.

“How did we not know this was here?” Brian is nearly accusatory. 

I have no response, except that the people I see teeming along the sidewalks and screeching from the crests of roller-coaster tracks are not those from whom I can usually solicit travel tips. They are mostly wearing plaid shirts and pointy boots, acid-wash jeans, long and short leather skirts. There are hardly any adults unaccompanied by children, and zero groups of same-gendered grown-ups. I spot some huddled pairs of high schoolers wearing too much jewelry. Where can they have come from on a Monday night, their home in a neighborhood far away, or did they get to bring their boyfriend or girlfriend on the family vacation? 

Every other structure is a place to sleep or eat (we find our first Krispy Kreme here, but are too gob smacked to stop), always flashing neon. The kings of the strip are the golf courses. Not actually called mini-golf, too magnificent for that—thirty foot dinosaurs, pirate ships, crashed helicopters or Hummers, great conglomerations of caves, cliffs and waterfalls, one that looks like a giant’s game of mousetrap—this is Adventure Golf. As I will learn, it's a staple of southern recreation, which explains why no alerted me to it; over here, this is run of the mill. 

            We reach the end of the parkway, and with it, the Dollywood sign. We did expect to see that, and were confused as to why she chose this random spot in the woods for her theme park, but of course now it makes perfect sense. We were not even planning on visiting Dolly; Pigeon Forge was merely the right spot to stop for today's planned mileage. It hits me this moment, though: our plan has wrenches waiting all over the side of the road to be flung in, some to bruise, some to dazzle.

            “Turn left, man,” I’m still using my dream voice, “here’s the KOA.” 

The blitz, bang and whir of artificial adventure filter into the campground, which is itself full and lively. Lanterns shine on tables next to motor homes and palatial tents, radios play classic rock, guys in unraveling cutoff jeans shuffle around with marshmallow bags and cans of beer. We meander through the makeshift roads, waiting for our campsite number to appear on a little rock in the headlights, crossing our fingers for a good spot. Luck is with us; it’s a flat clearing between two ample willows, right beside the Little Pigeon River. 

            After a smoke and mutual confirmations that we are in fact not (but sort of) on another planet, we transfer luggage into the front seats and spread out the blanket bed in back, locate toothbrushes and head for the latrine. I love to be in the midst of campground bathroom activity at this time of night: ladies in pastel halter tops, hair wrapped in towels, little bottles and tubes spilling out of plastic cases and dirt sliding off into sinks, warm air blushing squeaky clean faces, moths fluttering against the naked light bulbs. I was initiated to car camping early by my dad, so this atmosphere maintains the high voltage of childhood to me, a giant summer slumber party. I return to the van in fine spirits. Brian is inside and a hard hot rain begins to spatter the roof as soon as I slide the side door shut. We play Yahtzee by flashlight until we finally get sleepy inside this feral night.    

 

September 4

Both of us rise with the sun and emerge from the showers before many other campers are stirring. I’m wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt that smells like the mercantile. We have breakfast—blueberry muffins and orange juice boxes—standing next to the river, under the willow trees. The soundtrack is chirping birds and a CSNY tape across the campground. It’s a dewy morning, and everything feels green; the opposite side of the river is a swathe of more willows. Five ducks floating by decide we’re an off-ramp, and waddle onto the muddy embankment to forage our muffin crumbs. They followed us across Tennessee from the Peabody. 

Brian has already been exploring at the registration office. He shows me the cover of the Knoxville News-Sentinel: Husband Killed, Wife Left Critical in Shark Attack.

“Says they were wading in the surf off the Outer Banks,” exactly where we are headed. We’ve heard about the shark thing already, all over the news this summer on both coasts, the sea asserting its dominance over our brash inferior race. Galeophobic from infancy, I’ve never been a big fan of ocean swimming anyway. But I can’t wait to view this ominous new ocean from a safe distance.

The Pigeon Forge main drag is subdued in the daylight, but fully exposed, it is astounding. Bungee-jump towers; diamond, boot, and bible outlets (1000’s of bibles up to 50% off!); Christmas boutique; Muscle Car museum; Great American Fur Company; Big Pit BBQ. Dollywood doesn’t open for a couple of hours, so we just drive through its parking lot. It has a big topiary butterfly carved into a grassy circle, referencing the Mickey Mouse head at the entrance of Disney. Looking over the log fence onto Dolly’s village of thatch-roofed haciendas, I picture petting zoos, country music wax figures, and boys in friendly bear suits inside; I’m not too sorry to miss it.

“Cool, ‘cause we either get sucked into Pigeon Forge for the whole day, and change plans… or just move on.” When Brian presents choices, the right one is indicated by tells like the tilt of his head or the big sigh after the wrong one. I am attuned to it because we share this passive trait. He's eager to get eastbound again, as am I.  

The massive amusement park passes out of our rearview mirror and we’re back to nothing but trees for a little while. The first coffee opportunity along the quiet road is a shack doubling as a ticket booth for something called “Hillbilly Fun.” The coffee lady tells us about a gondola that disappears up the ridge to a woodland golf course. A quick inspection of the gondola’s first few weathered posts and swaying cables leaves me skeptical.

“Come back for the first ride up at 10am;” says the coffee lady, “only eight bucks a ticket.”

“We’ll see.”

To my continued awe, (though “Hillbilly Fun” was a clear signal) the roadside attractions return and multiply, tucked into the woods along River Road as we approach the big mountains ahead. Another vacation destination has been engraved into the foothills: Gatlinburg, which looks to me like Santa Monica Beach mislaid and on steroids. Buildings with bright facades sell designer clothes, confections, fine art, rafting and bear-watching tours, Austrian and Thai cuisine. In the background are a coaster, Ferris wheel, giant sled ride, bungee trampoline. The sidewalks are alive with sight-seers, perhaps some of the same people who enjoyed adventure golf the day before, but not those who spent the night at the KOA with us—these folks are dressed crisply and swinging shopping bags. 

            “Is this the craziest place ever?”

I'm answered by a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum, and then, across the street, the final fracture in my geographical logic, the Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies. 

            “Whoa. We're going in there,” I announce.

            “Really?”

            “Oh yeah. I’ll pay the eight bucks.” I add this paltry incentive to override any reluctance. As eager as he is for road exploration, he is apathetic about most indoor attractions that don't relate to drinking. Even a museum whose theme genuinely interests him is passed through in a flash; reflection takes him a matter of minutes and he is forever “waiting outside” for me. I’ve learned to choose my battles, since the “waiting outside” vibe feels like failure, and that feeling can diminish my whole day. 

There are some things he should not be allowed to resist though. An aquarium at the foot of a mountain, 500 miles from the nearest body of salt water is surely such a thing. Inside Ripley’s, the ceilings vault over a wide open space full of light. We come in on the top floor and look over a railing onto layers of exhibits. There is a waterfall we can walk behind to see poison dart frogs and iguanas among the ferns. Tiny tanks with tiny seahorses and dragonfish; bigger tanks with four-eyed fish (two above the water and two below), Pacific octopus, catfish and piranha from the Amazon River; open-topped touch tanks with skates, shellfish, and a huge Japanese spider crab; dry tanks with amphibians; room-sized tanks with eels and tuna; even a shark tunnel.

“You don’t have to run along the edge like that;” Brian taunts, “you can stay under the sharks longer if you stay on the slow mover in the middle here, with me.”

Ha. The front page of the newspaper, combined with the flooded shark tunnel scene from Jaws 3D, weighs heavy in my imagination.  I hurry along to the activities and education room, where Brian poses inside an ancient diving suit, and snaps me with a jaw full of Great White razors. It turns out that a few million years ago, Tennessee was covered by a warm shallow sea, and many of the animals we’ve seen this morning used to live on its reefs. Believe it or not!

Tonight’s campground is on the other side of the mountains, so after the aquarium we move along, into the Great Smokies. As soon as the road begins its earnest incline, all man-made structure ceases and the single-file line of cars is folded into the forest. Out the window things remind me of Northwest scenery, magnified. With every few curves, we crest up to a clearing where the scene bursts open upon endless layers of Appalachia, the shoulders of every ridge wrapped in shawls of “smoky” fog. It comes from the funnel holes in the tops of the peaks, and this fog is like the mother all the rest of the world’s fog drifted out of.

We find the celebrated Chimney Tops: twin summits of quartzite and hard slate sprouting mountain laurel, rhododendron, blueberry and sand-myrtle. We have lunch beside a lake and visit the visitor’s center, which turns this green sea of misty vistas and valleys into a national park and another place to buy stuff. Most people are just walking their dogs. We take our own free tour through stone pathways and lookouts, and study a map which details how, two centuries ago, men struggled all the way over an uncharted mountain range just to discover the other side. The Appalachian Trail is one of the longest continuous footpaths in the world, crossing 2150 miles through 14 states.

One of them is North Carolina. At the state line marker outside the visitor's center, we take the appropriate photograph. The marker also puts our current elevation at 5048 feet. Brian laughs at how low it is compared to his snowboarding mountains in Washington, while I shake my head, feeling further displaced. It seems like we are way up in the clouds only because where we started yesterday was such low country. And when we descend on the other side we’ll be even lower than that, at the level of the sea and all its lapping tributaries. Home will always feel ungrounded now in comparison.

It is late afternoon when we pass the Smokies park exit sign, returning to the flat and now fairly congested highway. Besides the gun racks and Rebel bumper stickers, North Carolina mostly furthers my tree fascination. In the rural areas, the great spidery cotton and kudzu-clad creatures continue their vigil along the road, until they fade out and there's just a single thick oak reaching across a meadow to the next one. Some of the leaves are beginning to turn hues of wine and gold. I wish Brian could just watch them through the side windows like I am, but then I wouldn’t be able to.  

Since ours is an industrial age, ultimately the nature show becomes factories and office parks. The highway sprouts interchanges and overpasses, and we are jostling along the main artery of Winston-Salem with the rest of the commuters. 40 mph, 30mph, 20mph. I sense us sliding down a chute, away from our vulnerable open-road rhythm. In the traffic everything gets louder as it slows and nearly stops. The captain turns off the air conditioning, rolls down the windows, and a tidal wave of heat sloshes into the van. I un-stick myself from the seat and stretch my legs out the window, while Brian makes his own limited position options known with a grimaced throat-clearing. Local radio is nothing but the grating voices of commercials and sports reports. We want to break the no-smoking-in-the-van rule, but instead we just begin to peck irritably at each other.

“This was well-timed," he pecks.

            “How could I have planned exactly when we’d hit the city, when we’re making random stops all day?”

“The only random stop was the Aquarium.”

Damn. Deflect. “Why didn’t you stop for gas somewhere earlier?”

            “What? The gas is fine." He reaches insincerely for the map. "Is this really the only route to where we camp tonight?”

“I thought we wanted to see Durham or Chapel Hill." Goddammit, I'm in charge. "This is the way to both.”

“Well, do you want to stop here and check out the factory or something?” He gestures over at the bastion of tobacco puffing its own smoke from gray towers. It is a historic, if contemptible, sight. But we can’t escape the static of the traffic. 

            Then the city is Greensboro and the red gas light blinks on. We both see it but still can’t penetrate the highway’s magnetic grip. A few miles more and I decide that it’s only Brian who can’t take action. After several gas next exit signs elude us, I bark instructions.

“Get over. One more lane. Now get off. Now!”

He jerks down an off-ramp only to get us lost in a tangle of backstreets, each one dead-ending in a clump of warehouses. Passive-aggressive sighs. U-turns. When we finally sputter into a Texaco, I explode out the van door, leaving it open, and march into the store for Frappuccino bottles. When I return, Brian is squeegee-ing bugs off the windshield.    

            “Okay, sorry,” I offer, passing him an ice cold mocha.

            He focuses on the windshield, “Okay.”

I put his drink in the cup holder and gulp down half of my own. “Do you want to find some dinner?”

            “How far is the campground?”

            Yes, I am the guardian of this knowledge.

            “Far, we’re barely halfway through the state. I’d say three hours.”

            “Okay.” He thinks for a minute, plunks the squeegee back into its dirty blue tub. “Let’s keep going and wait for some place to catch our eye around the colleges.”

Good enough. A college town is better than a tobacco town. We agree to be partners again, but some hitch remains unspoken. We have been each other’s only point of reference, stuck in this little box together, for three straight days. We must be both over and under-stimulated at once, and distressed that we don't know how to crystallize each perfect fleeting moment. An hour later we are still in heavy I40 traffic and the only change of scenery has been a further shrinking of sky into suburbs. I see the exit warnings for Durham and Chapel Hill.

            “Which one do you want?” Brian asks.

Split second choice, all mine. If I fail, I fail us both. I flip through the catalogue of my associative memory, between high school friends who went to Duke, and a college boyfriend’s beloved Tar heels basketball team.

“Chapel Hill.” 

Nicknamed “The Light on the Hill,” the University of North Carolina was the first public university in the nation when classes began in 1795. Slaves were responsible for much of its original construction. Over 300 Confederate UNC alumni died in the war while Union troops quartered their horses in what is now one of the campus theaters.

Without a city map, only instinct leads us to the university--we take our cues from all the back-packed young people in the crosswalks, glowing with fall semester optimism and the flaxen light thrown across their faces by the afternoon sun. It warms the brick walkways and touches all the turning leaves that hang low. The light is so active at this hour, the whole population of the town appears to have just begun the most vital part of the day. We don’t drive through any of the 700-acre campus, but draw a sense of its culture from the historic homes that surround it, tucked behind the wide lawns and beneath gold-flecked trees. Probably also built mostly on the bent back of slavery, they all have wrap-around porches and shuttered square windows in neat rows, vines of wisteria growing toward their brick chimneys.

Franklin Street is at the center of town, marked by pizza parlors and copy shops. Bohemian and business attire share the space. People relax at sidewalk tables, tinkling bells as they swing in and out of doors. I made the right choice; this is an oasis.

            “Where should we eat?” I ask.

            “Pub?”

A pub is always a safe bet, and we pass a few of them as we roll slowly through the grid of lettered streets. One has a parking lot behind it, so it wins for convenience. Brian is thrilled as he unfolds out of the van, first to stretch his legs and then to have direction. But as we round the corner, my gaze is snagged across the street by a balcony full of green canvas umbrellas. I can see waiters in black dress shirts folding cloth napkins and filling water glasses from a frosty pitcher.

            “Hold on; look at that place.” I point. It’s called Top of the Hill. I put on a coy pout that I must know only complicates things. “A fancy dinner to cap a tough day?”

            “Definitely," he says, and I smile for real. He doesn’t need any excuse to indulge himself, and he must know that our complications are not my responsibility alone. He stops at the crosswalk and squeezes me around the waist; trying in earnest to impart the conviction that we are together in this, we are great out here. 

We climb a white stucco stairway splashed with ivy, walk through the dining room and find an umbrella table on the balcony, front row seats for the sunset. A few other ladies and gentlemen are sipping happy hour martinis, so we talk quietly and sparingly. We lean across to share each other's eggplant parmesan and crab ravioli, and lean back meaningfully after each bite. We linger for a second round of wine--his red, mine white--the golden dusk winking off the rim of the glasses. When we can finally pull ourselves away, Brian leaves a generous tip and buys a pint glass to add to his fast-growing collection of souvenir barware. I wonder how we we’ll get all these fragile things home on the airplane.

            The proper procedure now would be to insulate ourselves in a cool hotel room with crisp sheets, and put the day to bed in this tenor. But instead, we must drive another 80 miles to someplace called Rocky Mount. The heat has not dispersed with the dusk tonight; I press my palm to the inside of the van window and feel the other side of the glass baking. I watch the dashboard clock tick off minute after minute, and shift in my seat for an hour before asking to stop at a McDonalds bathroom. After the stop I try to reinvigorate us with a loud Doors CD. Break on through to the other side. But there is no singing along, just willful driving and riding. Finally we turn north onto an unpaved road that leads into farm land.

It’s pitch black when we come upon the Enfield KOA, and tonight not a soul is stirring; the stagnant 90 degree air has immobilized the scene. There is a line of what looks like rock star tour buses parked in front of the office, lights out and absolutely silent. The office is closed, and has left us a map tacked to the door. The map has a red circle around a tent hieroglyph indicating our spot. I peer around in the murk. The marked spot is in a very grassy field, with no picnic table, no fire ring, nothing but the mounting drone of bugs. 

Once parked and shut down, sweating inside the van without the air conditioning, we shuffle stuff around as quietly as possible (because I’m afraid we'll disturb the slumbering rock stars), but still it requires a cacophony of opening and closing van doors in the motionless dark. Brian starts the engine again to crack the front windows. I wince. The grass is so high and damp that I don’t know whether it’s worse to bring my sticky-dirt crusted shoes inside or leave them out there; I finally scrape them against the running board and shove them under the front seat. Brian drags the side door shut for the last time and falls back onto the layers of blankets. We peel off everything, toss the sweaty clothes toward the dashboard, fan ourselves with the sheet, and close our eyes.

            And the buzzing begins.

An isolated, high-pitched sound that is at first remote, and then zips right in at my ear. Mosquito.

I pull the sheet up to cover my face and every other inch of skin. The sheet sticks to me like papier-mâché. 

            bhiiiiizzzzzzzzt

bhiiiiizzzzzzzzt

BHIZT

Brian clicks on the flashlight and I hear a smack.

            “Ha! Motherfucker!” He clicks off the light.

            “Good.” I snuggle into his shoulder, but then back away from the body heat. And then, another flyby at my ear. 

BHIZT

            “Oh no. No no no no no.” I’m falling down a well.

            “We might have to shut the windows.” Brian says rather calmly.

            “No way. We’ll suffocate.” 

BHIZT

On clicks the flashlight again. I see beads of sweat falling from my eyelashes. Another smack, another minute of relief, and then another invader. I sit up, clutching my hair away from my feverish neck, crawl to the front seat and wrestle the stick of bug repellant from the glove box. Inspired, I roll it over the edges of the open windows. I lie back down, pull the sheet back up, and still hear the maddening whine of the bloodsuckers.

Brian smacks himself, then stealthy silence, then buzz. Inside my shroud, I debate whether it is worse to suffocate or be eaten alive.

            “Why don’t we have one of those rad vans with mesh windows for this?” His posits.

            “Because you can’t rent those. Because we suck.” 

“We’re going to die in here.” He is deriding me.

            “It’s all this high grass, it’s ridiculous. Can we move to another spot?”

            “Sure!” Now he's pissed off, diving into the driver’s seat and cranking the key in the ignition. The engine roars like an earthquake.

            “Don’t turn on the lights!” I hiss. Who knows why I still care about the comfort of the other campers, but I think we have become a spectacle.

            “Okay.” His teeth are clenched. He swings us around, out of the grass and onto the crunchy gravel, and pulls right up next to the tour busses. “Check the map, is this a spot?”

            “Sure.” I don’t even know where I put the map. “I’m sure it’s fine. It’s Tuesday. It’s not like we’ll even be here past seven a.m. They’re not going to care.” 

So he climbs back to bed and we scrunch down under the damp sheet and listen. I think it’s less infested in this new spot, but either way I am exhausted. I sleep fitfully, waking many times throughout the night, sheet twisted constrictively around my limbs, slapping at real or imagined wings against my neck.