That evening we had a cabin full of people, a couple of local friends of Lynne's came by. It was jolly just like a get together n a TV show. I grilled burgers and hot dogs on the carcoal grill in the yard, standing in my socks on a cool fall evening, the crescent moon setting and Javier Bardiem on the TV. The kind of night you wish you could freeze and come back to often.
In the morning, Michelle cooked a delicious breakfast of eggs and grits and bacon, broiled in the oven. Mandy treated me to a true gift, she brought out a copy of the slide show from our friend Rich's memorial service two years ago. It was such a blessing being able to see those pictures again of his smiling face, see them now without grief or sadness, but with an appreciation I had the eyes to see it, and the ability to tell her: "That dog there, his name was Jack from Tennessee!"
We said our goodbyes and Wayne, Mandy and myself rode down to the dock near the boat launch. Although we were on the water it was the only contact we had with it as the wood came betwixt Cabin 12 and the lake. Nice and quiet and peaceful. It promised to be a good day.
Chris and Lynne were at the Waffle House in town with her brother. I stopped by and had a cup of coffee with them, heard a couple of family stories and share some time with this remarkable woman. I wished I had another day so I could go with them to see Sewanee, but we all know, there is never enough time, when you got to be somewhere else and there are miles to travel to get there.
So Chrissi, I took 41A north to Tullahoma, and then got on 55 to Manchester and continued on throught the country side to McMinnville, then pealed off on 70S to where it merged with 111 and went north to Sparta, a town where a classmate of mines father was from. He had took the Greyhound to NYC and became a mortician and my hearing impaired roommate for years thought his son had told him he was a magician. Then Rt70 took me up the mountain again and at Crossville I got back on I40 for exactly 101 miles before exiting off onto I81 for a short ways.
I took exit 8 onto 25 E at Morristown and there to my left it set.
The flea market, all the vendors packed up and gone home its pristine white tables and buildings and neat and orderly as the first time it was shown to me, by my father's attorney, the Philpott, not long after he died, when he came to visit me in a dream. I have never understood, I think he was trying to tell me what lay ahead. I told all this to Curtis when he first took me there exactly 16 years earlier, the same weekend. When I had made my one visit to see him.
Soon I was on the bridge and crossing Cherokee Lake and there on my right was the Lakeside Marina, just as it was then. Just as it was the last time I saw it six years ago, when I began my Bettermost journey. I pulled around back to the docks. It was a heavenly Indian Summer afternoon, the water was like glass. Had he been there we could have took Nightfever out for a spin.
I hummed a verse of Strawberry Wine, but I did not come back to this place year after year to remember the taste. No, I looked about and remembered and smiled. No grief, no tears, no hate or regret or longing nothing but the pure joy of being able to stand there and remember being happy. Remember and be.
"It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts."
--Annie Proulx, 2005
That, I have done. And because I have done it, I am free.
I stopped in the convenience store where six years earlier I had passed a child named Travis while headed to a post card rack. Amazing how fast things can become seedy in a disposable age. The restaurant part was cordoned off, chairs upturned on tables. Inventory laying idle and dusty. Over against the wall the post card turnstile sat neglected. I turned it, turned it like a prayer wheel until I found the right one. A scene of Cherokee Lake, golden on a day such as this. Thirty cents, the young man at the counter said he appreciated it.
This card will not go on the inside of my closet door. This card is in the mail.
You Bet.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fe1dzhY_ps[/youtube]
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2574554 times)