It'd been like five weeks not five days.  Almost everyone had been deeply inspired by the group makeup event where there was singing and praying and planning for a future.  Some of the people from the Country were astonished that people from the City were so downhearted.  A predominant phrase heard in conversations everywhere was you don't get it.  It went with young people and older people accusing of each other they just don't get it!!!!!

  "Get what?" My ever-practical Mom asked.  More frustrating sighs.  "Well, why don't you explain yourselves better?"  One of the Dads, with a fat lip from not backing down on some things, tsk'd, and winced when his lip hurt as he made the face he so often made--like he was shaking his head but only in his lips.  He'd press those together instead of just saying and his nose would twitch and those lips would talk without saying anything.  "It's like he's breakdancing with his mouth," one of the Forest scouts said looking in the binoculars.  "Yeah, but he doesn't really express himself clearly," a daughter said of him.  "But he's warming up to the idea."  

     "We'll put him in this column."

      Possibles. 

     A Native American friend with a deadpan sense of humor annoyed that we hadn't been to the Reservation to see The Drama quipped, "Stop the world, They need a new Great Big White Father."  

     "Why do you think or refer to us all as one person?  Just 'white'?!  

     He humphed.  "That's obvious." 

     "What time is it?" The jackets in the backseat moved and a woman emerged from having the jackets in the night put over her.  My friend yelp-silent-screamed and frantically tried to get the door open.  "Why did you lock me in?  Why did you lock me in?" His hand scrambled all over the door but couldn't find the handle.  "I'm not going to hurt you," the woman said.  My friend looked back at her and said, "That's not what I've heard from hundreds of years of history!!!!"  His hand finally found the handle and he fell out of the car and closed the door and made the call me later sign.

     "Ready?"

     The line of speakers and cords and bags and old coffee cups stacked in a column and shoes and a tennis racket was neatly waiting to be loaded into the car.  Agnes hugged and hugged the two girls.  Pops added the restored tent to the line of items to load up.

     Laughter and squealing-being-chased, smells of food cooking, donated tarp-shade-tents on all sides.  "Looking good baby girl," a woman who never took off her black sweater and black skirt winked and clucked the sound of a gun firing go.  She blew the smoke from her pistolè hand. 

     Everything fit and we fit ourselves in too.  Turned the key and the gas was on EMPTY.  "We'll have to make it to my Dad," I confessed. 

     All three sons and my Dad were sleeping side-by-side like sardines in a can in their tent.  Gatlinburg-- stickers and brochures and a mug and a hat, tee-shirt, and a beach towel all boasting Gatlinburg, Gatlinburg.  I backed out of the tent.  Realizing something, Dad came mussed-up hair and boxer shorts out of the tent.  His Mary medal making the little cling-clang noises we'd always here at the house.  "DAD!"  He yawned and scratched his stomach.  The brothers all in a row poked heads out the tent door.  "DAD!  YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN CHEATING!!!!!" 

     "I don't know what you're talking about."  

     "Did you go to Gatlinburg last night?" 

    "Maybe.  Not sure.  No?" 

    Silence.

     "Throw me a shirt, will you?!" 

     One of the brofhers hucked a Carolina tee-shirt at him.  It hit him in the chest and fell onto his lily white feet in the dirt. 

     "I'm not like you people." He whipped the dirt off the tee-shirt as he scooped it up and put it on. 

    "Us people?" 

    "Yeah.  What do you mean Dad?" 

     "Pioneers.  Or survivors.  Or something." 

     "Does your camp need an extra Dad?" The littlest son asked. 

     "Did you guys eat out last night?"  

     "Steak.  And vegetables, barley sprouts, on a board with on fire sauce to put on the potatoes!" The littlest brother said. 

  "Really?!  Well, I hope you guys saved some leftovers." 

     "Why?" 

     "That's what you'll be eating when Mom finds out about this." 

     "She ate the leftovers!" Shock overtook my face, "Really?"  "Yeah," he nodded slowly.