Watermelon Summer (9 page)

    Talking to my family had cheered me up, so I decided
to beard Jacob in his den after all.  There was no trail on either
side of Cell Phone
Ridge, but Jacob's directions and map had seemed pretty clear. 
The trouble was that I wasn't sure
exactly what he was calling a holler when he said to take the third
holler on the left.  Lots of small and large depressions
branched out from Cell Phone Ridge, and what I'd thought was the
third holler turned out to be a bowl that I later learned was formed
when an underground cavern collapsed and left a sinkhole behind.

 

    I headed back up onto the spur that divided the
sinkhole from the next holler over, but I must have gotten turned
around because I didn't end up in a residential area soon
thereafter as Jacob's directions had predicted.  Instead, all
around me were trees, trees, and more trees—I was lost.

 

    By now, the afternoon sun was blazing, I was hot and
sticky, and my stomach was starting to ask when that promised dinner was
coming.  Back in Seattle, I sometimes struck out off the
trails in the little park near my home, trying to enjoy the wilderness
experience by getting lost.  But, there, I'd always come upon
a road or trail in short order.  Now I was starting to realize
that the Appalachian landscape was less peopled and that meant I might
end up wandering these woods for a good long time.

 

    The obvious solution was to throw in the towel, climb
back up Cell Phone Ridge, and go home.  But which ridge was
which?  The mountains around me seemed to split and merge in crazy
patterns, and I wasn't entirely clear on where Greensun lay. 
Too late, I wished I'd taken a compass, or at least looked at where the
sun was sitting in the sky when I left the farmhouse.  I eyed the creek at my feet
thirstily, but my Viking-Festival experience was enough to remind me I
should keep walking rather than tempting fate with a drink.

 

    Downhill always leads you to civilization eventually,
right?  Whether or not the truism would bring me out of the woods, I
was footsore enough that uphill no longer seemed to be an option.  Down it was.

 

 

 

    When I finally saw brighter light between the trees in front
of me and stepped out onto a gravel road, I was too exhausted to
celebrate.  Instead, picking a direction at random, I continued to
walk.  I might have even considered
hitchhiking if I'd known
where I was going (and if a single car had passed me), but instead I
just kept trudging along for what seemed like hours.

 

    The rundown gas station that
appeared in front of me as I rounded the billionth curve looked like
paradise—a source of water, if nothing else.  I headed into
the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, then sipped up enough
from my cupped hands to set my belly gurgling.  I'd realized
during my long walk that I didn't have any money on me, and my cell
phone didn't get service unless I was on the ridge I'd come down off
of, but at least I'd reached a spot where I could ask for directions.

 

    The man behind the counter took my bedraggled
appearance in stride but didn't have much advice since I had
never managed to ask Jacob what his last name was.  His sole
customer, though, thought she knew who I was describing once I
mentioned the minivan taxi service.

 

    "He lives up past my turn," the forty-something woman told me.  "I can give you a lift there if you
want."

 

    A lift sounded perfect!  And the woman looked safe enough, so I thanked her
profusely, followed the lady out the door, and then stopped dead in
my tracks.  There wasn't a car or truck in sight, but there
was
an ATV pulled up at the pump.

 

    The only thing I knew about ATVs was that they
tore up one of the parks near where I lived pretty badly, and my mom
had signed a petition to outlaw them on the trails.  I was 99%
sure the vehicles were illegal on public roads too, and it didn't seem safe to
ride on one without a helmet.  (There were definitely
no helmets on the ATV.)  But this appeared to be my only way to
get back into civilization, so I took a deep breath, clambered up
behind the woman, put my arms loosely around her waist, and we were
off.

 

 

 

    To my surprise, I not only survived; I also
enjoyed the ride.  We didn't go very fast, but the speed was
enough to cool the sweat that coated my body, making me feel more human (if
more wind-tossed) by the time we reached our destination.  After
thanking the neighbor (whose name I
never caught), I slid down off the ATV and headed up a driveway that led
up to a mobile home.

 

    I could already tell from the short ride between
gas station and trailer that mobile homes outnumbered traditional
houses two to one in this part of Kentucky.  Here's where I
have to admit that I'd never been in a trailer before this day and
had, in fact, soaked up most of the common prejudices pertaining to
their inhabitants.  I was especially leery of the long, skinny
trailers (single-wides, I later learned they were called) that
dotted many of the hillsides around Greensun.  I can't quite say
which movie or book I'd seen this in, but I was positive that if I
came up to a strange single-wide, a rabid dog would leap out at me,
while the trailer's inhabitant (a fat, white guy with no shirt on) would
greet me at the door with a shotgun.  I was relatively sure the
trailer in front of me was Jacob's home since his minivan sat in
the driveway, but who's to say the scary gun-owner didn't live here
too?

 

    There was no bell.  I knocked timidly on the
door, then repeated my knock a little louder when no one
answered.  I was already thinking ahead to how I'd get home if
Jacob had given up on me and gone elsewhere when the door swung open and revealed Jacob's
grandmother.

 

    "Hi," I said timidly.  "You don't know me,
but...."

 

    "You're Jacob's friend, Forsythia!" the woman
completed my sentence, her whole face breaking into a smile. 
"He'll be so glad to see you!  I'm Sylvia Walker, his grandmother.  Come on in!"

 

 

 

    Due to my misadventure, I was late, so the family
had started eating without me.  But my plate was still waiting on
the table, and Jacob's smile went a long way toward setting me at
ease.  In the space of a few minutes, I
went from a trepidacious stranger on the doorstep to part of a
family every bit as tight (and sometimes annoying) as my own.

 

    "You put the beans on the biscuit," Jacob's
little brother Davey explained helpfully when I seemed to be at a
loss about how to construct my meal.

 

    "And you cut the biscuit with your knife," their
grandmother said a bit sternly, but this admonition was for Davey, who
seemed to think the sopping biscuit was finger food.  From what
I could tell, the boys' Mamaw, although a grandmother in name, wasn't
much older than my own mother, and she definitely filled the maternal
niche rather than the overindulgent-grandmother role I was used
to.  "Don't forget your vegetables," she added, proving that some
statements transcend cultural barriers.

 

    I followed Davey's lead, and soon my mouth was full
of an unusual concoction that was much more flavorful than it looked.  The
slices of yellow tomatoes with red starbursts in the center turned out
to be even tastier than the plump orbs I'd eaten out of Arvil's basket,
and I soon discovered that the greens (like the beans) had been cooked
with bacon—what doesn't taste better with a little bacon?

 

    "Jacob tells me you've come all the way from
Seattle," Mrs. Walker said, turning to me once Davey's culinary
technique seemed to be within bounds.  "What do you think of our
mountains?"

 

    What
did
I think of their mountains?  The
landscape was beautiful, and the people were nothing like I'd expected
them to be from television (and from Mom's stories).  "Everyone's
so friendly," I replied.  "I already wish I could stay longer, but I
start college in the fall, so I've just got a couple more months."

 

    College seemed to be very much the right topic for
Mrs. Walker, but the wrong topic for Jacob.  "Jacob is sharp as a
tack, but he won't even consider college," his mamaw told me, while
Jacob tried to glare her into silence.  "He's got one more year of
high school—he's homeschooling himself, you know—and he says
he's going to start a business and stay right here.  But how can
you go anywhere without college?"

 

    "I don't want to go anywhere," Jacob ground out, and I
could tell it took an effort for him to stay polite in what was clearly an old
argument.  "Why should everyone who's smart leave Appalachia? 
I like it here, and I'm sure I can figure out a way to make ends
meet.  I'm already paying some of the bills."

 

    "Jacob has a paper route," Davey piped up.  "And
he cuts firewood for old Mr. Hennessy, and he mows lawns, and he drives
a taxi."

 

    I'd been afraid to say anything while Jacob and Mrs.
Walker were facing off, but Davey's words seemed to cut the tension, and
I couldn't help laughing.  "A jack of all trades," I agreed.

 

    "And master of none," Mrs. Walker harrumphed, but she
seemed willing to let the subject drop.  "I'm afraid I need the
van in an hour to go to work, but maybe Jacob would like to show you his
room and then run you home so you don't have to walk? 
Davey will help me with the dishes."

 

    The ensuing whining definitely reminded me of home,
and I was smiling when I followed Jacob down the narrow hallway to the
room at the end of the trailer.  Stepping inside, a set of bunk
beds took up most of the space, and it was clear which zone belonged to
the little brother because the area was full of action figures and
legoes.  I felt a bit odd to be in a guy's room, so I clung to
Davey's section, pattering on about how much he reminded me of my own
little brother.

 

    Jacob obligingly sat down on the lower bunk to give me space
to wander around.  "He's a good kid," he agreed.  Then, in
the manner of a proud older brother, he aimed my eye toward a clipping
taped to the wall, and I smiled to see Davey's beaming face pointed at
the camera.  It took me an extra second to realize what the
clipping portrayed—Jacob's little brother kneeling beside a
dead deer, a huge rifle in his small hands.

 

    Without thinking, I recoiled, and words I immediately
wished I could take back spurted out of my mouth.  "That's
criminal!  Who would give a kid a gun?!"