A flask with a glow-in-the-dark bead in it was shook like a server's bell and the bead made a little Tinker Bell noise.  The woman took a sip, then held it in her mouth, and took a swig of coffee.  She swallowed.  "Better?" A woman named Anastasia asked.  The woman shook her head side to side and the false eyelashes unstuck from her eyelids.  "Now I am." 

     She turned and offered me both.  I waved that off with my pen and notebook. "Now.  Where were we?" I assumed she was asking me about the interview. The other woman realized she meant her.  "Well," she put her butt against a field-type-portable desk and pointed soft slipper'd toes and gloved hands with the glove finger tops cut off at a woodstove, "It's hard to say exactly," 

     "Why?" 

     Anastasia scooped a tea pot off the top of the woodstove and poured the steaming water over the coffee grounds.  The woman closed her eyes and smelled the air dreamily. She pulled a match out of a leather jacket pocket and struck it on the stovetop.  She'd produced a cigarillo to smoke and lit it so the small space would smell (i)like heaven on earth(i).  "So....you slept good?" 

     "Oh yes," the woman puffed an "O" that stayed complete until she stabbed at it with a pen and didn't quite cut it as much as sculpt it.  Then she casually accused Anastasia of saying, "I was up there?" 

     Anastasia sighed.  "I had to.  Someone called emergency services or something and people in de-bombing gear showed up.  The woman lightly patted the cigarillo out in a mini skillet ashtray.  "Was the director there?" 

  "I can't tell you that." 

  The woman turned quickly and grabbed Anastasia's shoulders and didn't shake her, but grasped at her sweater and said, "But you must!" 

  "I wasn't there."

   A slim cardboardy textured wood door opened.  The tall auburn-haired woman in a blouse and slacks lowered her head and stuck it through the opening.  "Lara, you may speak to Mr. Tim now." I didn't even know there was a door there. 

     Inside a man in a scrunched up "S" of a home-hospital bed had his whole right side in a cast and the plaster was also in an "S" shape.  Before I could say anything at all the woman held up her hand for me to hush.  "And you would like me to relay a message?" 

  The man's teeth were clenching bloodied gauze, he slightly nodded and said, "Yes." 

  "It was something like," she pulled a tiny homework notepad out of her shirt pocket, "Tell a Mr. McGaha," the man nodded, yes, yes.  She used a corner of sheet to wipe drool from the man's chin.  "What would you like me to tell him?" The man looked out a cracked pane of glass and it seemed like colors ran through his eyes instead of tears and he said, trying to swallow and speak, she put a quiet finger to his cheek.  He rubbed the red rash near the cast on his chest.  "I need a pencil." 

  "Now come with me," she brush-tugged my sleeve.

  She put the homework pad on the portable field desk.  "Have a seat ladies." All our knees were almost touching. She sighed but it wasn't worry, nor frustration.  "Who wants to go first?" 

  It was a loaded question.  I ventured, "Outside to smoke?" 

  "All smokers?"  We nodded.  "I'll go outside." 

  As soon as she did we lit up and Anastasia accidentally knocked the notebook off the desk.  The other woman took a drag and looked way slanted down through the false eyelashes. "Put that back on the desk will you, Lara?" 

  "Na-ah," but I reached down and picked it up just as her foot shot out and tried to kick it.  Then I went outside.

  From somewhere came voices, GO Gunner, GO Gunner!!  GO Riley, GO Riley!!  I pressed hard on my walkie collar, "I love you Gunner Gray."  The auburn-haired woman threw her cigarette down and started to run towards me waving the smoke away from her face so I could read her lips.  I'm GOING TO KILL YOU.  I stumbled back a few steps when I realized she was still coming at me, pointing, YOOOOOUUUU.  She grabbed at my collar but I hand blocked her like karate.  She pulled at my shirt collar harder and I started to try to pull away.

  I got away.  Around and around the little outlying building.  The man in the cast watched us going by.

  As the sun started setting I went to sit by her on a rock.  She threw her arms up, letting go.  "Do you want me to go away?" She sucked in a thin steady breath and shook her head no, almost imperceptibly.  "But tell me why you did that." 

  "Okay.  Are we on tape?" She reached out for my hand, and drew it to her heart.  "No.  You must trust ME." Her hand got caught in the short stem of wire I'd tucked into my watchband.  She held it up and asked me with her eyes, "What's this?" She stood up and looked down at me.  "I can and will explain." I took it back from her and showed her the multiple holes on my special walkie.  "This one was the one I spoke into.  It goes with a documentary of us." 

  "Us?" 

  "MY generation 

  "It's a different channel?" 

  "Cha.  You think I'm crazy or something?!"

Penciled-In Plans

  People had somehow held on in the transition from living it our way, through no one does America alone and I can do it, I can do it, I can do it into "life goes on" and "Let's see what can be done".

  Some kids who'd found out there would be school and youth center and food and "home" were getting smiles and very individual in addition to being culturally tribal.  One day, some asked a woman social worker, "Why don't you ever smile?" 

  "Oh.  I do.  Just not in front of anyone," then she grinned big and her teeth were broken and black.  Someone covered her own surprised mouth.  Another asked, "Does it hurt?" And yet another just grinned big back.

  I rode with the social worker a couple times and it was really fine with both of us to just drink coffee and have quiet time.

  "Today I have someone special to see," she said as we drove up and up a dirt road.  She parked facing the front of another car.  But it didn't seem like there was anyone at the campsite.  We sat at a picnic table and waited. 

  For us it was more beautiful quiet time.  Then we noticed a long branch reaching, reaching and snagging a bit of rope hanging in some trees.  The rope got away from the branchpole.  Danggit. 

  The social worker started towards the thick tuft of rhododendron.  "Mr...." 

  "Don't come any closer." 

  Her feet stopped but she craned her neck towards the voice.  "Why are you in there?" 

  "I'm neked.  Hold on." The pole branch shot up again, snagged the rope, and there was a creaking sound.  A couple arfs and uh-ohs.  Then, "Okay, I'm ready.  You can come in now." 

  She parted the bushes and there was a man in a Hawaian long skirt sitting on a perfect bench of tree trunk.  "Good morning!  What brings you out this way?" 

  "I came to see if you are alive."

  "Quite." He snapped open a newspaper and fished a cigarette, lighter, and pencil from his shirt pocket.  "I need a word for 

  "I need a word with," she said before she could stop herself. 

  "Could you check the ice box and see if I caught any fish?" He asked me. 

  I went down to the creek.

   Previously at General Meetings....

  We'd had to sit in "talking circles" and this was before (i)welcome ins(i).

  "Still waiting," another student of Higher Education Learning worked his tired legs into dress shoes on balls of feet so he could balance his papers and forms and coffee on his knees.  "It's like Goddard time here," someone else said.

  "I assure you, it is not." 

  People staying in the few fee and free campgrounds had had to catch shuttles, jitneys, motorcycle rides, etc. (any ride but hitch hiking) to get to those meetings.

  (i)Outside....(i) 

  "So? We were late.  Can't you put that?" Our mini-group's moderator looked at the person with the clipboard.  "Well.  I suppose.  I can (i)put it(i).  But Ican'tletyouin," the person speeded up the "bad news" part of the statement.

  "LAST TIME WE HAD TO

  "could you quiet down please" 

  "HAD TO WHAT?"

  "WE HAD TO SIT IN CHAIR CIRCLES LIKE IT WAS AN AA MEETING

  "could YOU quiet down please?"

  "OH SORRY. But it was by State, the sitted order, AND ALPHABETICALLY." The MP shot her a look.  "Whaddaya mean (i)by State(i)?" Someone asked.  The MP took the clipboard from the volunteering State Park sign-in sheet person and the pen and held it like he was a waiter.  "I can explain." 

  (i)Inside....(i) 

  As soon as they'd closed the doors some people in the talking circles popped up out of their seats.  A few casually made way to people in uniform to find out what was going on.  Fewer still bolted to the doors.

  "What gives?" 

  "He means, um, why'd they shut the doors?" 

  "I need air." 

  "It's hot in here." 

  "As soon as we get all the people (i)already in here(i), sigh, SEATED, then we'll see if we're (i)at capacity(i).

  (i)In the woods....(i) 

  BAM!!!!! "Was that thunder?" Blue skies.  "We gotta roll with this take people.  We are just about out of tape." 

  "Okay then." 

  BAM!!!!! AAAAAAHHHH.

  The motorcycle's kickstand was resting on a sandwich of frozen dew, wet leaves, and a rat trap connected to a TNT wire that was connected to one of those Oxygen tanks, portable.

  Oooooooooooo.

  "Synchronize!  Now." The man had the biggest watch anyone had seen and he held up his wrist and held that wrist with his other hand and the assistant started a countdown on the walkie talkie channel allotted.  The man's other hand showed FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE

  Nothing happened.

  BAM!!!!! WOW.

  (i)Whoa, whoa(i)

  "What is that racket?" The walkie talkie asked.

Washin' us clean, washing us clean

God was washing us clean

Washing us clean, washin' us clean

The rain was washing us clean

A frog came out,

She was no goat;

She had no tale to sing 

The voices all-range in the dark of the Folk Center.  I was in my oil cloth.  I held the lantern up as high as I could.

Many were afraid to come, 

They thought they'd lost their honor; Oh yes, many were afraid to come without their documents.

  "Why doesn't the frog

  "That's my princess

  "Have a tale to sing?"

  "Well, it's a tradition in New Mexico." 

  "I don't care about tradition." 

  "Too bad for you." 

  A person had made it past "the wall" of lawyers surrounding a prospective TV person.  The person was more interested in local affairs such as preventing forest fires, and, kind of recruiting in an off-beat way, the protected person to be a POTUS person. 

  "Don't ever lose your beautiful smile," a mom and some little ones passing by on the way to the "wagons circled"/tent area waved and said.

  "I doubt that'll ever come back after this trip."

Not far from the campground

   I find the screened in porch place. Of Wildwater.  Just standing under a platform up a pole, my mind quickens and I recall coming on a group trip here.  A little brother said to another brother, "It's like your pirate ship!"  

  "There is someone here!" I tell another guy wandering around looking for information when I see a smiling face behind a front desk. 

           Taylor, manages the rafting and ziplining center of (i)Wildwater(i), Summer 2025, and is also a 5th season Ranger.

  RAFTING AND ZIPLINING in the Nantahala Forest, "That is so cool."

  One part of Wildwater's "center" handles jeep tours and whitewater rafting and Taylor's holding down the fort on the ziplining side.  She tells me one platform is 100 foot tall, and there are eleven ziplines which have you go across about 30 acres of property.  "Whoa.  Do you have to do them all?" 

  Taylor explains that some people do a couple and then decide they want to get off the course.  "There are multiple spots where they can?" 

  "Oh.  Why do they?" 

  "Some people are nervous." 

  "Like a fear factor?" 

  "Yeah.  They try a couple lines and decide..."

  "it's not for them?"  

  The center sells tee-shirts and stickers and I spot a map on the counter and ask if they have any of those.  Taylor gets a brochure map and explains that it's not exactly the same, but, she opens it up it's kind of, some people like it better.

 

  We fall quiet for a few minutes and I can hear the Summer's insects and I ask Taylor if they still do group-stuff here.  Then I reminisce just a little about the long ago time some of us outdoors types with scholarly and administrative interests came to this place or some place similar to have a group thing. 

  "We can accommodate pretty much any size group...we've done a group up to 120 people," Taylor tells me.  After asking if I can take her picture for the blogpost and she says, yes, I go outside to get my cameraphone. It's just so beautiful here.

  NO SANDALS OR CROCS ALLOWED a sign on the counter reads.  "How come?" 

  T: Crocs can fall off; it's not cool to zipline barefoot." 

   "Okay, ready for a picture?" She is, so I take a couple and ask her to see if they're too blurry or anything.  "Mind if I ask if you work here or do an internship?  You don't have to answer." 

  She smiles.  "I do work here.  I 'm a manager."  We chit chat a little more and she let's me know, "We do offer internships and it's a seasonal job March through October." 

  I thank her for such a nice visit and she let's me know, it is a good day.  "Me too."

     (i)The man had our children fucking each other(i), another man finally broke his temper--too hot--like the last waves of a tsunami, into the microphone of the secret location hearing.  Other men stood in front of the box where people were rehearsing how this might go down in a Courthouse.

     There was that half hour silence so famous in the Book of Revelations.  Hundreds of manila folders shifted through.  A blurred mug shot paperclipped to the outside of the folder.  A sticky note and legible cursive beside it read: Blurred on purpose, though that had not been the whole truth.

     Hundreds of motorcyclists had gone from the east to the west coast. In a spiral, these end to end would have covered the homeland's Midwest top to bottom, south to north.

     The man giving testimony growled and spit.  (i)Rabid(i) for revenge.

    "Moping." A British black woman reported on an "unknown origin" of birthplace. 

     "Admonished," I glanced up from writing and told an advisor.  

     And had found another two to co-miserate with; and now the two of them were acting like Beavis and Butthead.  One spit a pebble at a skillet and it dinged as the advisor motioned for them to be brought out of a (i)time out(i).  "Over here Davey Crockett. Please." The advisor still had a trace of accent.

  "Tree frog," a thickly accented but not identifiable accent snapped as she whapped an iron skillet on logs rolled into a pyramid. A man in a flannel shirt and dark blue jeans slammed an axe into the log beside the skillet.

     "Did I loan you my cook?" The older man had recently lost his wife and was tearfully trying to comprehend a line-by-line in a folder covered in colored sticky notes of every size.  Under a halfpad size fuschia colored list of errands was a series of tab stickies.  "On that one?  Did I?" A middle aged woman picked up a cloth napkin and put it on his head so a corner was hanging over his nose.  Just then a tour of the facilities for prospective workers followed a Staff member into the lodge-style dining room.

   Daughters and sons of the Greatest Generation were very reluctant to speak about "decline" in their elders' mental and physical acuity.  Some of the fighting in the Middle East brought to the fore some of our worst fears in regards other nations' standing militaries having way more continuity than ours.  When we realized they'd infiltrated us, and were employing tactics used in war in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam there was a bit of a healthy panic.  Late, late boomers and Gen X put fire under our feet to learn everything we could about (i)everything(i).

     

      The "mile-high" scaffolding had been welded.  "That had to have happened over night," the expert said somewhat exasperated.  A bunch of us had been showing support for our political party and who we wanted to win (i)someday(i).  "NOT the party that eats babies and humans put through grinders," the man with the gold chain bracelet explained.  His ex-wife but still together for the children's sake smacked at him and his blood-drained lips stayed where she put them as her hand wiped down the front of his face.  Like some of the other men in our group, his five o'clock shadow had turned to a three day old beard and there was baby blanket lint stuck to his face.  This did not come off in the "smack" and the priest retrieved from Maryland didn't seem to notice anyway.

     Some of the previous decades' "best and brightest" gone so wrong had evil-ka-neevilled across the nation-owned highway way up on scaffolding on both sides of the road.

  We'd barely made it out alive and with most of our body parts.  And now this.

  "Mustah been midgets!" A barrel chested, almost bald so closely crop-shaved man was on all fours yelling into the face missing an outer ear and being held down by a pile of people.  A man and a woman in Sunday clothes stood about fifteen feet away starting to make a perimeter around "the suspect".  The woman looked to the man repeatedly as they silently memorized what was being said.  The bulldog of man kicked the face.

  "Because you can't," a dark undereye man was leaning against the hood of a Classic pick up truck, hand smacking papers in a gypsy breeze to stay in place while one woman fumbled with a taped box of paperclips and another kept breaking clips of staples.  "I have THE RIGHT to kill these ones," the bowl-shaped-haircut guy firmly placed the safari binoculars on top of some of the papers.  "(i)You(i) can't kill that kind." 

    "What kind?" 

    The leaning man rested an armpit on a crutch; turned to face the parking lot, leaned back; folded a pant leg with a rolled terrytowel in it up and back; the woman dropped the staples, took a large safety pin from her mouth, and pinned the trousers sewn to shoe so it looked like the man was just a man with his leg up on a bumper.

  Some of us had seen our friend getting a teacheatomy, been taken hostage at gunpoint by clowns, tracked and released, been hunted, and arrested all in like seventeen hours.  The living nightmares begun for us en masse on Halloweens on Long Island were, apparently, playing out at this particular geographic location, and, very much so tied to politics and evil. 

  As we'd raced a convoy across the foothills we'd stopped at points on the parkway to dash the wounded (i)away(i).  That was when we'd found women and men we hadn't seen since being held prisoners to neo-nazis and German Psychiatrists.  Some of us had put just a little weight on in that interstice time period.  And now this.

     "Because you can't Hoss." 

     "But I can pretend I'm like the big CIA or something." 

     "Are you looking in my eyes?". He'd closed his as the fastener woman worked to pin not just one as in "the wire" under his shirt collar.  "Yes, I am." 

     "Then read my lips saying (i)no(i).  The man's lips did not move.

    The pile of people wouldn't let the bloodied person up off the ground.  And when an early morning newspaper delivery guy drove up and a local judge got out of the car in his bathrobe.  Someone yelled, (i)HIT THE DECK(i).

  A Detective from back home dove into our backseat.  "Give me the crossword puzzle." 

  "Oh no.  I've almost got it finished." 

  He snarled "Give me the fucking puzzle."  She put it in her purse. 

  The parking lot went chaotic.

  "I won't let you swear in front of my children like that." 

  "Give me the damn puzzle." 

  Everyone sighed.

     In the chaos an older-looking young guy had tackled, almost lastly in all the movement, the judge back into the car full of newspapers.  The judge's bathrobe got smushed up around his head and it was a muffled, "It smells like ink."

     "What?" the tackler stuck his hands and head back into the car.  "Tell my wife.  The bathrobe now smells like ink."

  The tackler ran a hand through his hair as he stood up and looked long at the scaffolding.  Then he spoke rather casually to a wristwatch.  "Not sure, kind of kooky, maybe been drinking."

    He walked forward counting his paces out loud to a car with a Surveyor's tape-flag on the antenna.  He lifted a windshield wiper with a latex glove.  He'd gloved his other hand in his pocket and used it to pick up a walkie talkie.  It immediately said, "I need you up here." The tackler kept his eyes on the hood of the vehicle.

     It wasn't an invention that he needed to ask the judge about.  It was a flying machine.

  First the hoss knocked over the safari binoculars.  "What was that?" It spooked the one-legged man who firmly leaned way forward and would've lost his balance but a woman doctor in a white coat and a mess of curls swooped a stool on wheels over to him.  "Okay.  I'll take a rest." 

  "Let me in the car Karen." She would not. 

  "Open the door and let me in." She would not. 

  A rush was gathering. 

  "Open the fucking door." She looked at his red, puffy, sweating, heart-beating-wildly-in-it face.  Hers was an impact zone of makeup and tears and sweat and slooooooow body rhythm.

  The Scooby-doo van that contained the little people who'd been for sale in the wooden cubby holes, banana boxes of papers, a tanned human skin, and one spider monkey was put in neutral and gently rolled into a drive-thru restaurant's awning.