From Chapter One of Pearls in the Mountains

...I really liked this young woman. When we got to the top of the mountain, I pulled into the wide space to the right of the road where people park their horse trailers. The headlights were shining on a small North Carolina State welcome sign. There was also a sign for the Appalachian Trail and a gravel service road crossed here as well. We hadn’t seen another vehicle since we left Sammy’s. The road seemed to drop off into a black abyss beyond the lights.
“This is Indian Grave Gap. We’ll come back here in the morning and take a bike ride before getting on the river.” She was standing over me now with a hand on my shoulder, stooping down to peer through the windows. I shut the engine off and slid the big window next to me forward and open. Her hand slid down my upper arm slowly as she bent lower to put her face out the window. I didn’t miss that. Then her hair draped across my head, some falling over my eyes and nose. I can’t describe that. I turned the headlights off and we sat in the dark for a few silent moments, letting Spring waft in. Mary twirled around and down into my lap, her ass slamming hard into me. Her face was beaming.
“This is exactly what I wanted!” She smiled down at me and I kissed her then, in the dark, but just with my eyes. It was a long kiss, and my lips began to ache to touch hers. When I started seeing the same ache, and the same surrender in her, I broke the silence.
“Let’s go for a little stroll!” I was whispering. My hands lingered, warm and full across her back. She shook her legs and squealed like a little girl. We stood up, and I stepped past her to the back where I poured a glass of wine for us to share. We set off for a short, slow stroll into the quiet, but the dogs were sending shock waves through the peaceful mountain stillness, darting ahead and back, and exploring all sides. Playfully violent in this sleepy night, tromping. Noise rippling and raging outwards into the moon-filled forest, lapping against fresh young leaves. It was an unusually warm night for April. The heavy, cold humidity that had draped the mountains in the last days was lifting and being ushered out ahead of a more gentle, dry, warmer breeze. There were few clouds left in the sky, just small, white fluffs with small dark centers, racing above, between us and the moon. Silent. Mary handed me the glass, and I stopped to take it from her, unbuttoning the large wooden buttons of my sweater. The gravel service road was wide enough for two cars to pass here. There was a bit of a grade, and large mountain boulders and outcroppings began to define themselves ahead of us. Mary’s hands found their way into my open sweater, sliding around my waist, and she pulled herself into me laying her head across my chest. Heavenly. My left arm fit perfectly around her and melted there. We stood silent in those moments. Quiet at heart. I lifted the glass to my nose so that I could take in some of that craftsmanship, And I breathed in hints, like memories, of chocolate, cherry, currant, and oak. And then took in equal measures of Mary’s scents – lemon, verbena, some tea tree oil, and also vetiver.
Ellie raced in and split our legs apart, panting and spinning into us alternately. That dog was having a blast. I whistled, weakly, for the three-legged one and turned to start back down to the bus. Eventually Mollie flopped up from behind us and shot by, disappearing immediately from sight. “Does that make you nervous? The way she just races around so fast and how much ground she covers?”
“Yep,” I said, “it does. And she causes some drama every once in a while.”
“She gets lost?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t begin to guess at the adventures that dog has. I hear about them sometimes. Pieces.”
“…And maybe you should leash her?” Mary poked me in the side, lightly.
“Probably more than I do, sure.” I took another sip and handed the wine back to Mary. “But then she wouldn’t let us walk like this.” Mary had one arm hooked through mine. We moved so slowly, feeling out the details. It was as fast as one could go with so much to absorb.

“What do you know about this area?”
“Nothing really. No more than anyone else. It’s like the history has been erased. Here we have these amazing, ancient mountains, the Unakas, and we have thousands of years of human existence, but we don’t know any of the history with any certainty. I read an interesting theory by a local archaeologist that the entire culture was severely disrupted, mixed, rearranged, and mostly lost during thw two-hundred plus years of the Spanish Conquistadors. I’d like to come up with a different name for the Conquistadors…something more accurate. I know this place is called Indian Grave Gap because I’ve heard it called that, and I’ve seen it on the maps, but I don’t know why. Or where any graves are. Or whose graves. And of course, the aboriginal people didn’t call themselves Indians. And the Nolichucky River that we are rafting? We don’t even know what the name really means. I’m not even sure that’s its original name. I just repeat what I hear, and when you look at everything, there isn’t much of that – the history told is more empty spaces than empty answers. I’ll save you the awful story about Erwin and the elephant. Her name was Mary.” We were stopped and Mary’s head was tilted straight up, looking at the pieces of a very full moon between gently waving tree limbs. That made me smile, and I remained still, closing my eyes and feeling that warm, soft breeze.
“Elephant?” she whispered absently.
“They hung an elephant here. For murder. In the early 1900s.” She said nothing for long moments, as if caught partly in a different world above us.
“There is no way that could have ever happened,” she replied, eventually, breaking the silence again.
“Also, a lot of the stuff I say, I just make up. Except the really weird and far out shit. Those stories are usually real.”
She laughed and passed the wine back to me. “That’s funny. You don’t tell lies though, right?” Her tone was sort of flat and matter-of-fact. The girl was not having any liars in her life.
“Oh yes. Constantly.”
“What?!” She slapped my arm, aghast. “You’d lie to me?!” She couldn’t believe it. She hit me three more time, and I think the last one was for not calling Sammy.
“Oh yeah. And without blinking. I’ve been paid to lie and tell stories for over twenty years. It just comes naturally now.” She was slapping me repeatedly at this point, voice raised with a little more frustration than flirting. “But… But…” I continued, and grabbed at her hand, which she let fall into mine.
She was smiling. “I can’t believe you would lie to me,” she whispered.
“…But…I promise that if you ever ask, I will always tell you if it is a lie or not.” I held her hand gently into my chest while she studied the situation, confused, and then I released her softly and started walking again.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
She jumped me from behind, legs wrapping around my waist. “But how do I know you’re not lying right now?!” The rest of the wine spilled down the cuff of my sweater, and I started horse laughing, working hard to stay steady on my feet. She took my hat off and tossed my hair around. “It’s not nice!”
“I know…I know,” I said.
“Liars aren’t nice. Hey! I remembered you having more hair. And actually, being a little taller.”
“Careful lil sista. I remember you having a bigger ass.” She squealed in delight and I tossed her off of me to walk on her own two feet.
“Is this place really called Indian Grave Gap?”
“Yes.” We got back to the bus, and I could hear the dogs already inside. Mary stepped abruptly in front of me.
“Do you think I am beautiful?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“I think you are the most beautiful creature I have ever known, inside and out.”
“Are you lying?” she asked again.
“No, I’m not lying.” I stepped around her to climb into the bus. “But it doesn’t change anything.” She hurled my hat – she had put it on her own head earlier – right into the side of my face. Great shot.
We were about to start down the mountain. I took some big, deep, obvious breaths. The bus was at idle speed, and I had made a big deal about shifting all the way down into first gear. The bus was creeping slowly forward on its own, out into the road and towards the big, white state line painted across the pavement. Beyond that white line, the headlights extended out into nothingness as the road dropped off steeply. I shook my arms, dangling my hands down to try to loosen up. Took a few more deep breaths, loudly exhaling. “Alright…” I said so softly. “This is the most dangerous part of the entire adventure. Do you have something to hold on to?”
“How steep is this?” Her eyes were wide with growing concern, and that panic you get when the only control you have is letting someone else be in control, and then suddenly you don’t trust them anymore. But it’s too late.
“Pretty damn steep…” My voice cracked as much as it trailed off. The large hood covered all of the ground ahead of us now, and we were steering the bus into god-knows-what, blind. I reached down, turned the lights off suddenly, and mashed my foot down on the throttle, lurching into acceleration as I screamed, “”Ahhh! It’s not really that steep!!!” She was screaming too, but I turned the headlights back on, and I was right. It wasn’t really that steep. It was an illusion. I was getting hit a lot by this young woman, but the drive down to Poplar was pretty and easy.
The signs clearly stated that camping was prohibited, as well as overnight parking. There was no doubt about the matter, but we were camping here, parked, anyway. “Are we going to have trouble, camping here tonight?”
“Do you mean, is the law going to give us trouble? No, I don’t think so. It isn’t that they can’t, it’s just that historically, they don’t,” I replied. It only took a moment to set up the shower for Mary. I built the RV shower outside, towards the back, on the driver’s side. I used one of those big, heavy, and expensive shower heads that you sometimes see at beaches and parks. One with a pull-chain. I love it. It pivots out away from the bus, and when completely extended, locks in place with plenty of room to put the shower tent under it.
“I’m beginning to not trust you,” she said. I smiled and hung her towel and wash cloth on hooks mounted on the side and left her to go start a fire in the sand by the river. I carried down a couple of packs and a big barrel pump. We use barrel pumps to inflate whitewater rafts.
Inside one bag was a bundle of seasoned, split firewood and a fire log. Inside the other, “I shit you not,” was an inflatable sofa. Made just like a raft. And two blankets. At first it was a joke, this sofa. I got it as a prop for a redneck, southern riverman character, but I have to say, it’s pretty perfect. Sometimes. I was still scraping out sand to level it up when Mary caught up with me. She got a huge laugh out of my sofa.
“Wait ‘til you try it,” I said. She had brought another glass of wine to share, and I helped her with it until it was gone. We were still sharing one glass. I thought that was adorable. I poured our third one and left it with her while I went to take my own shower. When I returned, I brought a couple of pillows. The wood in the fire was burning low, but I didn’t add any. I stuck a stick into the sand where the river lapped into the bank just below us. “To see how much the level changes by morning.” She sat up smiling, silky, the firelight playing magic with her skin. She was ten years younger than me, but she looked closer to twenty-five and was making me feel much more forty-four than I usually felt. I handed her a pillow and then sat down, leaning into the other one. She lay into me like our bodies had always known each other. Sometimes I don’t know what is real and what is role playing, picking up where another left off. But I liked this. It felt natural. Easy. Right. She lifted her hand out, so I passed her the glass of wine. She didn’t take it though. She just wrapped her hand over mine and held the glass out between us and the fire, watching the colors and flares through the thick, red liquid, shooting at angles against the wet curves of the glass at its borders, and radiating ruby light, glowing as if from its own center.
“Please, kiss me now,” she said. I had been watching the wine through the reflections in her green, color-changing eyes – long, thin slices of reflection among the fascinating speckles arranged like some coded message from the gods. She turned them to meet mine, and I passed the wine to my left hand. I took my eyes from hers and let them move down to her full lips, then down and around the curve of her chin, the long valleys and rises of her neck, past her collar bones to her chest. I reached up with my right hand and unbuttoned the first button of her blouse. I traced her skin with my finger tip and my eyes, drinking it in, drinking in the swells revealing as I pushed. I unbuttoned the next one and gently eased her blouse open to where her bra would be, but she wasn’t wearing one…the youth and vibrance in her skin like some lovely, terrible sin. I could see her heart beat in her neck, and I lifted her chin carefully, bringing our lips together to hover in that last space before contact…to find the right connection…a fresh, new kiss. Our own. We danced together, through our lips, meeting each other for the first time in deeper inner chambers. First touches. My chemicals were racing. Her body and self were so connected she was like a musical instrument, and she was really such a fortunate woman in her easy response. The more she came for me, the more excited we each got, and before long, the sweet love making that she had desired to have by the riverside bubbled up and over, spilling heavily…with a delightful surprise…into realms far more primal and animalistic. In the dark, by a river and a dim fire glow, in front of a thousand eyes, we left marks on each other to sweeten our pleasure. And she drank every bit of me, an entirely different glow in her eyes. Finally, we lay there, still and glowing, while I consumed the last glass of wine, drop by fingertip drop, off her body. “Let’s stay right here until the sun rises,” she spoke into my chest. The fire was out, and we were taking refuge from the creeping in of the cold against our sweaty bodies by burrowing further into the heavy, wet blankets.
“That would be nice, but eventually this sofa is going to get too small.” She protested politely, but helped me carry everything back to the bus. We left it all sitting outside the door carelessly and climbed inside the RV to burrow into each other in bed like long lost lovers.