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.