"NINE hours and 47 minutes,"

   the woman in the Daisy Duke's told.  She gulped down straight tea, no sugar, on ice, drained the Pepsi cup of the stuff, crushed it and chucked it on top of a pile of trash.  She crossed the parking lot amidst unblinking eyes, tugged at her ponytail holder and her hair fell down all around her shoulders.  She put her Dragon's Tail ballcap back on.  Wiped a backhand across her lips and picked up the racing flags. 

  It was true, that two guys with perfect hair had gone from Chapel Hill to northah New York to try and help somehow.  Between people on strike! and bad attitudes peoples' bloodwork all over the State was being held up.  "Maybe indefinitely," a male nurse slumped down on a hunk of logseat.  The two guys and a referee-type making sure no funny business had made it back in nine hours and forty-seven minutes.

  The Mustang purred to the quickly  drying Baptismal engine bath.  A splash of water left.  And a young girl admonished, how dare you waste water.  Then she donned a plain red ballcap and waved a little American flag on a stick like she was lettin' 'em loose.

  It wasn't racing on the Dragon, but something called an Autobahn.

  Oh my God, the balding guy was still mouthing at the sight of his very academic "girlfriend" in such short, well-worn, cut-off jeanshorts.  Between that time-of-the-months and still-beer-smelling ruined outfits, she'd ended up with the hottest outfit, swear to God.  "Even on you," the jeanshorts' owner hissed.  "Don't listen to the Cougar," a guy in a dress polo and not too much gut urged the woman to get out of the car Squiggles. 

  And it was true, and not really a "secret" so much as a don't tell everyone

  "Some guy's giving out fifty cents a lap to scholarship of choice!!!!!!!!" The wife overheard a kid hollering.  "He's not a guy," she turned and blew air through her lipstick'd lips and shook her head in little no, no's this can't be rights.  "He's MY old man," she dramatically thumbed herself like a peacock spreading tail.  Nobody said anything.  "And that was only supposed to be for OUR son." 

  A woman in sunbonnet and swirly peacesign printed skirt went to the woman.  "Something wrong dear?" At that the show dissolved and the woman burst into tears putting her hands all up and all over her welldone makeup eyes.  Another woman with a clipboard and sporting tubesocks with Sharpied-on stripes came over and put the clipboard down on the hood of a car, and took the woman's head into her bosom.  The driver of the car in front of which this was playing out, got out, heels hard on the pavement, and brushed the clipboard off the hood.

"They have to want to."

  While some of us were having the opportunities to try-out different positions (all beginner level, apprentice-style) with various American services and private sector jobs that summer, there were also kids that were towing families from place of abject poverty.  Or trying to.

  "I can't even tell you how cool my life is now," the scraggly guy told some people in a parking lot.  

  "'Cuz you found Jesus cuzz?"  A less scraggly but meaner boy about the guy's size sounded serious and then would burst into cackling laughter.  The scraggly guy sat back down in the shade.  Put his head on his knees and his hands clenched at the grass beneath the tree.  "I didn't find Jesus asshole," he yelled in the direction of the pot smoking peers.

  "Dude, nobody and I mean nobody wants to hear about it." 

 Aaaaaargh, the scraggly guy expressed his frustration. 

  "Actually, I do." A larger than scraggly but gorgeous girl put a stack of reading materials close to her chest like a breastplate shield and stood in front of the scraggly guy.  "Iaready toll you it all." 

  The social worker guffawed.  "Before you blew me off yesterday?"  The scraggly guy nodded, plucked two fists full of grass and threw these into the air.  

  "I met somebody I want you to meet." 

  "Like sharing?  I doubt that'll help me stay clean!" 

  The girl put her head down slightly and shook the misunderstanding off with a graceful smile.  "Actually he's a Chief." 

  "Of what?" 

  "An Indian tribe not from here." 

  "Don't you mean Native American?" 

  "Yes, I do.  Around here the two words are interchangeable, mostly." 

  "Don't you mean three words?" 

  "Yeah, I do." The social worker unfurled her arms and looked through her reading materials until she found a list of meeting times and speakers.  She'd snagged a few copies and held one out to the scraggly guy.  He stood and took it but didn't read it, put it in his back pocket.  "I would suggest

  "I'll read it later.  Jeeeeeez." 

  "Going to say; not hang out near old friends." 

  "Not friends.  Douschbags." 

  The social worker visibly closed her mouth and didn't respond. 

  "A brother and his friends." 

  "Want a ride somewhere else?" 

  "Not in the, what'd you call it? Toddler car?" 

  She'd actually been overheard calling it that.  Some of us were looking for silver linings despite all the changes to program and heavier personal costs involved in work we were passionate about, but.  She had a little car.  Tiny car like a tiny home.  We all took turns sitting in the backseat and telling what it made us feel like.  More than one of us decided on "toddler".  A more creative person amongst us talked-out how that could be advantageous for a shy social worker.  She'd drew in a breath and said, "I'm not shy." 

  "Yes yah are," a long time friend of hers countered. 

  "I said, I'm NOT." 

  "But YOU ARE." 

  "Am not." 

  "Anyway," another of us said, "Even though it doesn't pay much, I want to keep doing the forest fire fighting." 

  "So, you're not preggo?" 

  "Apparently not." 

  The group of girls didn't interfere with any of these "besties" chats happening in a parking lot.  There was something socially formal established about that even though we hadn't said so out loud.  It was like letting the guys help open a can of corn that was stuck, or, show somebody how tires have PSI's on them and not flipping out.  We were trying to cut down on generic, not much real reason, lambasting everyone and everything.

They'd gotten off a bus that

  ran on vegetable oil and recycled pee and poo.  The few people that were lingering past grab coffee and uselessly rehash how-to hang insulation under a trailer..."It's called skirting.  What we do to the homes.  Ya ready?"...weren't paying attention to the new arrivals like they were rock stars.

  "Really?  On poo?" An older middle aged guy drinking half coffee, half bottom shelf whiskey asked the "prettiest" amongst them.  A bruised top skin from a health check up hand swatted at a fly in the face as he stood near the back of the bus.  It had sort of been a group decision amongst the retirees that you never know, one might want to shack up for the colder months that had gotten this guy "a finger of confidence" and the "duty" of checking out "the new people". 

  Robbinsville, N.C. on a summer Tuesday morning.  Young peoples' pickup trucks and minivans parked to the sides of a grocery store parking lot, people having teamed up for the average 20-125 mile rides to work and family.  Crew chiefs like convoy beacons checking out the whys of not here and deciding 'nother chance.  It is and isn't a coordinated community effort to get the day going.  When someone is missing you'd only have to ask two or three others to get hintimated at as to really why.  "They were really into each other at the end of last year.  Catch my drift?" An everybody's Mom nods head, flips a travel coffee mug shut.  Drives off, not on a hunt.

  The on-poo bunch have come from way up north in Massachusetts somewheres.  But the whiskey quickly soured the man's breath and a horn blowing let's go, let's go curtailed getting too much information.

  Some cardinals flit between mailboxes.  American flags both sides of the road.  The knee-high roadside weeds crackle and buzz with summer bugs.  It's Thursdays and Friday mornings that weekend eventsters prep to make money on their two or three big weekends in Summer.  Even a kid can make a buck with a crowd veneer on local.  

  Phones go in and out of service.  And on both states' sides of The Dragon people practice run.  Sportsters and trucks with growling engines take the eleven miles in stride; no stress without photographers and scouts; less harangue by parents hoping young people stay on track; and distance from the challenges tourism poses to wallets.  A motorcycle roars alive, unseen but rumbling somewhere around a dam.

  A woman had giggled like-a-girl-again and straightened a sweatshirt getting out.  Some people in the mountains trade outdoor spaces and rents to ease the burden of seasonal work.  Others set right here where we are for the whole year while visitors come and go.  Ragged, faded dollar store seasonal lawn flags are changed out for fresh, some years, and some years, not.

  The lakes sparkle in full-on sunlight creeping towards late morning, God's glitter, we used to call it.  Eyes just barely able to take it all in so's I remember.  "It only looks like I'm staring at that nurse's all day," the man's grin spreads his fox personality in the direction of his older-now daughter.  "I reckon I'm thinking of all this nature." His arms lifted and he pulled it towards him, all of it, like a sponge sucking up water. 

  Like trees losing leaves, each season brings people-change news.  Not all of it is "good" and for caring people sensitive to how a prison stay, for instance, effects remnant family, some of it hits hard.  Most of the social news is taken with a healthy dose of salt since some of it's rumor and some of it's tainted by mean-spiritedness. 

  "Whose business is that, you advertising?" A wrinkling woman snides without engaging.  "Young snots," she declares and goes back to sipping her icewater.  Her not smiling doesn't mean she doesn't call some people honey but her poker face helps keep tendrils of group separated.

  "Don't care," someone else warns of a rough-looking bunch outside of a bathroom area.  Talking like, Let me get my asshole back in place and I'll let you know 'bout that, regarding a next leg of road.  "Ain't never did about nuthin'," another somebody throws a line.  Nobody bites.  People grunt and shake numb arms and legs.  Then a leathery guy gets to the very bottom of braiding a long brown and gray chunk of hair, "If'n I din't give a crap, I wun't look like this." 

  "Whatcha mean sweetie?" A leather-vested and graying faded sports bra'd woman asks the man.  Her tone is gruff even though she's being tender.  He explains.  "We's rode four hundred miles or so since whatever day it was before yest'day.  At about 'leven cents a mile, that shood be about a million dollars.  Shood be able to lay off." 

  "Sumin' tellya to not relax?" 

  "Not sayin' such." 

  "Whaddaya sayin'?" 

  "If I din't not give a shit 'bout kids I wun't look'n like such." 

  "Sumin' say sumpin' 'bout how you look?" 

  "Saw." The man tucked a worn feather into the slight furl at the end of his braid and worked it up into the honeybread "x"s like tucking memory flowers into a book. 

  "There mirrORS in men's?" 

  "Shit no 'un, not since," his voice trailed off. 

  "Where'n then?" 

  "A girl." The man pulled at the sagging butt of his winter jeans. "In her eyes," he said. "Then I saw." 

  "Honey, somebody else lookin' don't mean not a thing." 

  "Prolly true I reckon so." 

  A young woman came storming out of the scrawny bushes in front of the fishing pond like a baseball diamond of first base, second base, and onward to preggo.  A heartthrob of a young man followed but threw down his fishing pole and crossed his arms.  "THAT ONE'S IMPOSSIBLE!" He told the rest area. 

  The storm-brewing faced girl stopped midstompin' off.  She didn't turn around because the tears were like a Bermuda thunderstorm on a moped ride.  Hurts and feels good in a hard way, same time.  "He didn't touch me!" She declared to the rest area. 

  "Whoo'n those?" The braid guy had got off the picnic table seat, crossed his arms, and was tapping a booted foot--no scuffs, to find out fast.  The heartthrob picked up his pole with dried leaves now stuck in the saddled hook and line.  "NEXT!" He demanded.

  His Daddy had won 'em in a bet, the young girls, but before that could be sanely explained a pair of rocket cycles with skeletal "brides" aride had drove in front and center.  "They ain't living," a gap-toothed hottie guy said to the shocked and awed.  "You're shitting me?!" A geeky girl who hadn't smiled for the first half of the summer broke into a beaming ray of sunshine out of cloud and dropped a headlamp she was fixing.  Was given a business card, handdrawn, saying The Hub, as she got closer then threw a battery at the skinny bitch.  The man in front ducked out of the way, but the AI gal-thingie didn't flinch.

It was getting ugly.

  Some of us young people rose in the ocean waves crashing like froth.  Authentic--yes, glamorous--no.  Besides being boomed and busted by the American cycles and not having any real security, we were bundles of emotion and energy.  Between the menopausal middle agers and the difficult elders and every sort of "traditional" gone or going weird, some of the Cherokee men and women called for extra meditation and bonding.  Many got kind of sucked into not walking away.  

  "But I'm not thrilled about any of this," one Cherokee woman said.  She'd managed to eek out a living in a full-time-job-necessary environment while being decidedly shut out of automatic benefits and job security often being told keep at it, it will change.  Like she might do the right favor or....I hesitated to finish the sentence.  A Cherokee man who'd taken time to read some of my writing knew I was having a hard time writing "truth" without being harassed as the messenger.  His hand lingered over re-packing some dollar store groceries but when I didn't finish my sentence he asked out loud, "Kissing the right, probably white, asses?" I nodded yeah. 

  "Why did you bring all our food up here into the forest?" A woman asked as she completed the walking-in with duct-taped shoes and newly carved-on walking stick.  "Why not?" The man asked back.  The woman sighed.  "I thought we were going to," her words fell away and her eyes filled with tears which the man did not see because he'd put a rip in a bag of macaronis and busied himself picking up dropping out macaronis.  "Just go back to normal?" The man asked. 

  A boy, small, but like a little man, came and sat at the pinic table.  He watched the man spill out more macaronis to pick up.  Weathered labor hands seemed to decide which macaroni should be picked up next and then next.  The woman just stood there.  The evening sounds of the forest were beginning to rise.  "If we move away, we may not come back." The man said more to the macaronis than anyone specific.

  "Because you gave up a long time ago," one man said to another man.  The beer cans were in a descending order of really crushed to barely crushed but the man's can do mood was clearly ebbed away.  "At least they're not in the river," the other man had declared regarding progress to a fellow forest worker just checking in, and going home. 

  A forest messenger held up the relay to check in with some of the women and children.  She stood, mohawk hairstyle slightly sagging for the afternoon's thundershower, and one kid hollered out, "MOM!!!!". Other children made way from imagination and invented activities towards the figure waiting.  "Wow." A thin small girl said.  "That's some hairdo," a brother finished the sentence.  Our mom made way to the relayer.  "Do I write it down?". 

  "You can." 

  Mom dug out her Astronaut pen and scissors from a sagging back pocket.  "No paper," she told as she was remembering using the last of the looseleaf for starting a campfire and a songwriting session.  "What is the message?" The relaying woman asked.  Another mom with the feet part of her stockings cut away and feet dirtying walked over.  "She wants to know if her menfolk are okay," she said.  The brother smiled bright and glamorous and looked at our mom and said, "I'm good.  Can't you tell?!" Mom smiled too.  "Yes, I can.  But I haven't heard from my other, uh, menfolk." 

  "She has many." A Cherokee mom also walked up. 

  "And what part of the Forest are they staying in?" 

  Mom dug around in more jeans pockets and found scraps of paper but was tear-ing up and so the barefooted woman in the business suit skirt put her hand over the scraps and told, "She misses her husband." Sherry nodded.  A couple tears plopped on her blushing cheek.  These she wiped away after stuffing the scraps back into her pocket.  Her girls smiled then, okay.  

  Nearing the Appalachian Trail the amount of wetted-and-dried paper towels and wet wipes was considerably less than in the campgrounds.  A skinny guy in a colorful nylon jacket like a horse jockey's came down out of a very tall pine tree.  His rock climbing shoes and chalkbag were zipped-in between the jacket and his bare chest.  He tucked a small but stealthy pair of binoculars into one of his pockets.  "HARK! I hear the angels have been singing," he said to the relay messenger.  She took a leather pouch out of her raggedy pants waistband.  Unrolled a little rolled pile of small dollar bills and licked a finger to count out twenty-three dollars.  "Groceries." The man asked, "Mostly salad?" And the woman snatched the money back.  "I'll find someone else." The man pulled out a twenty from the not binoculared pocket.  "Your B-eye." 

  "Your kids need their own food to keep staying," she pointed chewed down dirty finger nail at a hand-drawn map, "There." The man's eyes flashed wide open, then brow furrowed.  "You found them?!" 

  "No message." 

  "But, did they look okay?" 

  The mohawk somewhat bounced as she nodded.  The man gave her the twenty dollar bill and leapt a good four feet from ground onto tree trunk.  He shimmied to a remaining low, thick branch and sat his butt there.  "Practicing," he told me.  I shook myself from just gazing.  "Do you do it professionally?" 

  "Right now there are only some contests." 

  "I think I saw one announced in the newspaper." 

  "There's a newspaper?" The mohawked woman asked.

  "Sort of.  Funny story really.  To hear tell because of the gas prices and all that, we had to relay a bunch of had-beens to produce a few sheets worth of 'area' news." 

  "Had-beens?" 

  "Cha.  Had-been actively literary but when the economy broke a lot of people suddenly just had dreams but no money." 

  "Same with us outdoorsy people," the man finished unpeeling a fruit rollup ans let the wrapper drop.  "You stop that!" The woman said.  I went closer to the tree and swiped the trash up.  The man let half a fruit rollup wrapped in a dollar bill fall out of the tree.  "It's all yours Eve.  If'n you want it." I looked up quizzocally at his now swinging feet.  Hard muscles like ballet people I'd met in New York City.  Then I left it there and started to walk away.

  A clanging could be heard before we got to a mancamp.  The woman with the mohawk flapped her hand twice on my shoulder and pointed with her head that I should stay back.  I fell behind maybe twenty, twenty-five feet but found a hiding spot near the entrance.  The relay messenger walked the length of the campground area, came back to the entrance, pulled up a pantleg and removed a small bundle of mail-looking materials including a Time magazine.  Then she went back in and matched a list of numbered "messages" to campsites.

  Without being able to hear, my mind matched up the image of the strange-looking person talking with various men with how it might have seemed as "diplomats" checked-in with various stalled fighting tribes.  The woman made her way towards the clanging, a site in the middle.  A man put down a hammer he'd been using on an anvil and stood but didn't leave his stool.  The messenger handed him an envelope.  He slumped back onto the stool and clearly was hesitant to open it.  He asked her something.  Then she asked him something.  He pointed with the envelope to another man and a small boy.  The taller of the two's eyebrows went up and he pointed at himself like a questionmark.  The woman chewed the inside of one side of her lips.  Then went towards the pair.  The older quickly sat down in a plastic lawn chair with three good legs and one leg busted like it had a folding knee.

  The small boy looked at his Daddy and crouched into almost sitting down too.  "Are you Mr. Lane?" The woman asked.  The man slowly nodded.  The messenger woman slightly bent over and hugged him.  Then stood and sent the missing you's.  She started to step away and the small boy stood up and took her hand.  The father asked him something like, what are you doing?  To Mom the boy told.  The Dad showed him his lap and sighed, still waiting Son.  The small boy blew out a breath, let go of the hand, and climbed into Dad's lap.  The messenger patted him on the shoulder and then tossled his short hair.  The boy smiled.

"What are YOU doing here?"

  The woman scrambled upright from relaxed (no bra) futzing with the campfire and her hands instinctively pulled up a bed sheet in the air.

  "My God." A short balding man said in an end-of-the-world-again tone as he looked the two other men up and down.  They were covered in fishing gear from head to toe.  One was eating an apple in three bites from a stash in a fishhook bag.  "Are those real apples?" The woman ignored the perfect hair guy and padded her bare feet over to the taller man.  "Ah-hah," the man held the core way up high over her head.  "Real as sugar sugar." 

  "Did you two?" Perfect hair guy let a slight intake of shocked breath finish the question.  "Is that why?" He made crazy person all messed up hand gestures all above his head in regards the woman's hair. 

  "Real real?"  Everyone ignored perfect hair guy whose fishing hat, still with fold marks, was hanging on the strap of a caught-fish basket.  The woman glanced at him and rolled her eyes.  "That basket is for Bass.  Did you catch any?" 

  He ignored her then.  "My God." The balding man said again. 

  "You; stop the spinout into stressville," she pointed a crooked caked in marshmellow stick at the balding man.  "No one's doing it here," she looked at all three men and the women and children milling about the campsite.  "No tents?" The taller man asked and an appleseed popped out of his mouth and stuck on a big rubber boot.  "We didn't sleep here." 

  "My God." Balding man said a third time.  "I was just about to ask." 

  The damp and smokey night had been a mixture of screaming, running and hiding, and tending coals that weren't beer-pissed on and covered in time to go toilet paper and chomped-on hamburgers.  The camping area itself was best broadly defined as "controlled chaos" and "summer circus".  Not far from the women and children but having quiet time and five minutes peace and privacy were a mélee of handicapped and elderfolk.  All of us in various states of mind and ability to speak about chips falling where they may.  

  Honest Americans surfing the crush and pinch between boom and bust.  Economic downturns and little rises like stairsteps effect the middle class and the working poor sort of about the same.  But for anybody somehow marginal to "security" there's literal need of shade while people see what to do.  And absolute surprise to see you again. 

Collective call to action,

  sounds like, when Hannity revealed that sex trade monies have surpassed drug trade monies.

  We were shocked by the amount of dealing in children and young people in the 1990's.  Totally floored.  And as women, we knew, what a difficult topic/reality/problem bad economy makes for people as commodity.  While some saw the political flip as rah, rah deal is done let the money rain down on me, others looked around at our horrifying selves.  It was hard not to get depressed.

  For a lot of women the topic of "sex" is taboo.  It brings up a lot of other topics too...like respect and love and kindness.  Brings up issues regarding principles and perfect lives too.  And back then we sort of gendered around the topic of sex trafficking.  Men/Women.  A lot of work was done to help as many taken advantage of as possible.  And on the whole our efforts did make a difference.

  When I turned to the Bible about this devastation to humanity I found Acts 9.  It takes a lot to change.  Sometimes that's little by little, and sometimes it's God (and nations of God, under God, God-based) that makes the change.  Keep the faith, a lot of people are working to better life.

Summer's mix of fence and wildflower

  Ever after big political change it feels extra weird to visit.  Lines had been drawn, footings fought over in the ways our nation defines and redefines ourselves.  Friends and foes have to come back around to a civil decency.  And a lot of people worry the dividing lines between that was okay then, but now it's a crime.

  Part of the mystique about East T'see and WNC is how we survive onward regardless of top-down politics as a bunch of fiercely independent people and "community" that defines us as an area of the United States of America.  There's always been kindhearted people who've no problem explaining logic to the more fantasy-motivated amongst us.  Sometimes that's same old shpeil to neighbors, but sometimes it saves youth from lethal mistakes, brings a human touch to business, and sparks something in visitors' hearts that will help them and our Country when they go back to different kinds of American places and spots in the world.

  Even not liking everything about an administration or someone with strong views isn't cause to disrespect.  It makes us all dig deeper for authentic and liveable.  The mountains being solid makes this principle so.