Appalachian Galapagos (3 page)

Jimmy turned and swayed back to the pickup where he continued unloading. Frank sat his load of beer down onto the ever-growing pile of supplies and wiped the sweat from his forehead, watching his friend. Jimmy had put on a little weight, but he still looked basically the same—a giant bear of a man, his thick beard fell against a barrel chest.

Frank returned his gaze to the river. The strangeness of returning to the place where he had grown up was anachronistic. He should feel at home. Even now, as he watched his old friends, he could almost believe that he had never left. Almost. Even though the boys had treated him like he had just been on a long vacation, it was still different. He saw things differently. And it wasn't just his perception. He
was
different. Frank was a product of his own environment and for years now, his environment had not been within the Smokey Mountains of Eastern Tennessee.

And he wasn't sure he liked himself for it.

Like when they had picked him up from the Holiday Inn. He had been standing in front of the entrance in his waterproof Hi-Tec boots, brown cotton
Duckheads
, and an L.L. Bean jacket when he had heard his friends approach. They must have been a block away, but David Allan Coe singing X-rated country music preceded them like a redneck siren, a soundtrack to their beer-drenched lives. As Frank waited for them with a nostalgic smile, he realized just how damn much he missed them.

An old Ford pickup,
bondo
and rust-colored paint holding the rattling mass of Detroit metal together, skidded to a stop underneath the green and yellow awning. Frank's smile evolved into a grin as he realized that it was the exact same truck he remembered partying in when he was a kid. The same truck that he had shown Renee' what his
thingy
was used for. The same truck he had driven
pell
mell
through the tall trees of a Jacob Mountain pine nursery, three dead deer in the back and a sheriff hot on his trail. The same truck he had called his second home throughout his teen years.

Right up until the truck pulled up, Frank had been standing next to a tight young Asian girl who had been giving him a definite
fuck me
stare while waiting for a cab. But as Jimmy and Lukas fell out of the truck in an avalanche of empty
Budweisers
and man giggles he could feel her heat turn frosty. The friendly hugs and kisses of his best friends made it even more difficult to explain, but he was home again and that's all that mattered.

Yeah, he was home.

Jimmy walked up beside him, studied the angry rapids, and nodded before cracking open his can of beer. "Hell yeah, let's do this!"

Lukas was already pulling the aluminum bass boat from the back of his truck. His black hair whipped behind him as he worked. It was a haircut that went out of style in the late 1980s. They called it a mullet—short on the sides and top, long in the back like a tail. Only professional wrestlers, porn stars, and country singers seemed to wear the style now.

And of course, Lukas.

"You're goddamn, right. The river ain't never
goin
' to get any better than this."

Frank watched his friends for a brief moment, smiling softly at their little kid-like excitement, and let his eyes drift slowly to the rushing water of the river. Normally, the
Hiawasee
was pretty tame with families floating languidly down the center on rented rafts and inner tubes, or old men fishing along the edge for the elusive southern trout. The rains had been cascading for a week, however, and now the laziness of the creek had turned hyperactive, the water hurling by like a jet, the mist from the churning rapids sending his blond hair whipping around his head.

Frank took a long look at the aluminum bass boat and the mound of beer and sleeping bags and beer and food and fishing supplies and beer and knew that what they were going to do was stupid. In fact, it bordered upon the retarded.

He turned as he heard Lukas giggle and watched Jimmy push at his own belly button through his shirt, a big smile underneath his furry mustache, bobbing his head up and down in innocent joy. Frank grinned and glanced over at Lukas who was jerking out yet another case of beer from the back of the truck. The feeling of belonging was in a
slamfest
with his real desire not to do what he was about to do.

"Ever see the Darwin awards?" Frank asked. The river blasted air and mist behind him.

Lukas' eyes crossed and uncrossed several times.

"It's a list of morons that comes out every year."

Lukas cracked open a beer and threw one to Jimmy. "We ain't morons. They live over in
Hixon
and are
nuthin
' but a bunch of married cousins."

Jimmy punched Lukas in the chest and both of them cracked up in drunken laughter. It was several seconds before they straightened and noticed Frank's dull
Not Funny
stare.

"So what are the Darin awards?" Jimmy asked. "Is that for best husband on
Bewitched
?"

"I like Dick York, myself," Lukas said.

"I bet you do, ya old fag."

"I ain't no fag. I just got good taste. And
speakin
' of taste, ain't you the one who has had a crush on Barbara Eden all these years. Shit, I bet you're the only one who has ever rented
Harper Valley PTA
from the Blockbuster store. Hell, Frank. The dumb bastard could have owned it ten times over the number of times he rented the damn movie."

"What? You don't like
I Dream of Genie
? You actually
tryin
' to say Genie ain't hot? And you call
yerself
a man of taste?"

"Listen. One on one, in a Texas Cage Match, I'd take that
Bewitched
lady any day. All she'd need to do is jerk her head and
POOF
, Genie's in a straight jacket hanging upside down
pretendin
' not to be a pi
ñ
ata. Can't cast her spells if she can't move her arms."

"And Elizabeth Montgomery wouldn't be even able to cast a spell once Barbara got her in a headlock."

"Fool, all Elizabeth's gotta do is be able to wrinkle her nose. I don't think a headlock is gonna stop the witch from a nose-wrinkle move. Genie's fucked if she don't slap the witch in the face but quick and maybe break it."

This time their laughter carried them to the fern-covered forest floor and their howls mixed with the sound of the raging river. They wrestled, each trying to punch and kick the other until they finally wobbled to their feet, beer and mud coating their clothes.

Frank grabbed a beer. Instead of joining his friends in their Budweiser-soaked excitement, he cleared off the top of the cooler, sat down, and watched. He couldn't help but laugh at the childish delight exhibited by his friends. They were absolutely nothing like his associates in the fast and deadly world of big city business.

And he was thankful for that.

"All right. All right," Jimmy said, still breathing hard from his impromptu WWF audition with Lukas. "We're just
funnin
'. What's up with the Darwin Awards? What's your point?"

"My point is," Frank said with a sigh, "is that these morons are put on this list because they kill themselves in moronic ways. Some stick their heads through storm drains to get a quarter they dropped and end up getting drowned. Some pull down soda machines on themselves trying to steal a Pepsi. Some get stuck in chimneys trying to play Santa Claus and get roasted. Hey, the point is that most people find this list funny."

"Only a sick, city
dwellin
' fuck like you would find a list like that funny, Frank," Lukas said. "People
dyin
' ain't funny."

"Don't listen to Frank, Lukas," Jimmy said. "He's always
ramblin
' on about strange shit. You should hear him after a couple more beers. He just gets fuckin' weirder and
wierder
. I think it's all that culture he's been gettin'
watchin
' the Discovery Channel and that homo-Australian Snake Handler. Besides, who the hell is Darwin to be
judgin
' everyone?"

"He's the one said we came from monkeys," Lukas said, his voice almost scholarly.

"You
callin
' my mother a monkey, Frank? Is that what
yer
doin
'?

"A freakin' Chimpanzee! Even better, King Kong was
yer
daddy!"

Jimmy sneered, either too tired or too stoned to kick the shit out of Lukas.

"For fuck's sake. Calm down. Nothing like that at all. Charles Darwin was a scientist who hypothesized...made a guess...that there was no way that the Bible was totally accurate. He believed that we were like apes once. Over the years, we're talking millions here, those apes changed and became human."

"And you believe that nonsense? I learned different. Hell, we was even in the same high school, Frank. You and I both know that Mr. Murray taught us that Adam and Eve was the first man and woman. Even though I didn't pay attention all the time, I know he never said anything about monkeys."

As Lukas broke into a sad refrain of The
Monkees
trademark song, Frank shook his head. Had he changed that much? If the fallacies of creationism were too difficult for his old friends to grasp, he wasn't even going to attempt to explain their seventh grade curriculum where the Civil War was discussed at length as The War of Northern Aggression.

"All right. Let's just say that most of the world agrees with Mr. Darwin and the awards are given for those who end up drowning in the shallow end of the gene pool."

Blank stares.

"All right, let's just say that some dude gave out awards for people acting stupid."

"Well hell, why didn't you say that in the first place."

"Yeah, Frank. You know you don't need to impress us," Lukas said. "It's not that we're stupid, understand, but we've been
smokin
' and
drinkin
' like crazy since we found out you were
comin
' down. Gets us in the mood to wax nostalgic, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

Frank downed his beer, fought the urge to shake his head once again, and shrugged the international
I'm Sorry
.

"You know," Lukas said. "My uncle got stuck in a chimney once. Didn't find him until winter. My Aunt thought he had run off with some woman. It was weird how she was so happy when we found him."

"I heard once about this guy who saw a six point buck up in Jacob. You know that cliff back behind the fairgrounds? Well, he got it through the neck with his 30.06, and then stood there as the huge thing fell on top of him."

"Yes! That's the kind of stupid shit I am talking about."

"You
callin
' my uncle stupid?"

"He was stupid, Lukas. All dressed up in an Easter Bunny outfit. Easter Bunnies don't come down chimneys."

"He was
tryin
' to
sneak
in," said Lukas, his mumble barely heard.

"I can see the Darwin Awards getting handed out next year," Frank continued, ignoring his friends, his voice loud in an attempt to be heard over the raging
Hiawasee
. "A group of Tennessee rednecks decide to get out their bass boat, up shit's creek with a case of beer and..."

"...and no fuckin' paddles," Jimmy interjected, beer exploding from his nose.

Frank nodded. "A case of beer and no fucking paddles. They decide to take this creaky ass boat and put it in their local creek which winds into the mountains like a snake, each corner more dangerous than the next. The Devil's Shoals. Satan's Dip. Widow's Corner. A bad rain has made the creek into a furious monster of water, and these fools decide to go white water rafting in the
Hiawasee
. Their bodies were found days later, being munched on by a family of bears."

"Like in Goldilocks," Lukas said. "And Darwin, he says,
after
interviewin
' the bears, they apologized for their
eatin
' so messy like. The problem was they was
tryin
' to find the perfect one and they was either too cold or too warm. It wasn't until they ate the city boy that it all tasted good
."