Forever never ends Page 15

  "Do you want to wait a while, or what?" Wade looked around uncertainly.

  "Why not? Good a place as any to smoke a little number." They sat on a fallen log and replenished their buzz, blowing smoke pillars into the clear sky. Junior saw that the stovepipes were bare mouthed, meaning Don Oscar had let his cooking fire die out. That wasn't like the old bootlegger at all. He liked to brag that he kept the still cooking around the clock.

  And thin powdery roots had crawled up the walls of the springhouse, veining out across the warped planks. Don Oscar usually took a lot of pride in his operation.

  "Hey, look at that," Wade said, pointing into the shadowed pocket of a soggy stump.

  "Just some mushrooms. Sons of bitches grow all over the mountains this time of year.”

  "But those are the psychedelic kind. Used to pick them out of the cow pastures down in Florida, when we went for vacation. Hippies down there showed me which ones were the right kind. Pop a few, and a half-hour later, you're as fucked as a Homecoming cheerleader."

  "I got news for you, Ranger Rick. In case you ain't noticed, this ain't fucking Florida."

  "I heard they grew in the North Carolina mountains, too."

  "Since when did you turn into a goddamned nature boy? As I remember it, you're making an ‘F’ in Science, same as me.”

  "If it's got something to do with getting fucked up, then I'm an expert. Like peyote and acid and stuff. You ever tripped, man?"

  Junior's stoned smile was plastered across his face. His cheeks tingled. He shook his head from side to side. That Panama Red was some ass-kicking shit. No wonder those spics just wanted to lay in the shade all day.

  And what the hell was Wade doing, going over and picking some fucking mushrooms when they had a pocketful of pot, and maybe some moonshine in the near future as well?

  Wade sat back down and broke the moist splintery stem of one of the mushrooms. "See, if the stem turns blue where it's broken, that means it's a magic mushroom, or ‘shroom,’ as the hippies call it."

  "You're full of shit, Wade."

  "Hell, no, I'm not. We had hippies up north, too. Some of my best connections were hippies. Once you get past that peace and love horseshit, they're just like regular folks. And they know a hell of a lot about getting wasted."

  "Give me a joint and a jar, and I'm set. I don't know about that other stuff. Plus, what if it's one of the poison kind, death angels or whatnot?"

  "Look here. The stem's turning. It's safe as mother's milk."

  Junior looked dubiously at the stem, at the blue-green ring that was starting to emerge where Wade had broken the flesh of the fungus. Junior was starting to get thirsty. Where the hell is Don Oscar?

  "You ain't seriously going to eat that shit, are you?" Junior asked. But from the look in Wade's eyes, he didn't have to bother asking. Wade popped a couple of small caps in his mouth as if they were M amp;M's. Wade chewed and grimaced, then swallowed with effort.

  He smiled at Junior, and it was a preacher smile, the kind people wore during weddings and holidays, or funerals where they didn't know the dead person too well. Wade held out his palm, and a couple of tan moist mushrooms lay across his lifelines.

  "Magical Mystery Tour," Wade said, grimacing as if he had eaten a handful of earthworms.

  "I don't know. I want to see if you drop over dead first."

  "See you in the clouds, Chickenshit." Wade leaned back against the crisp, leaf-covered bank, oblivious to the moldering roots that threaded across the soil. "I'll say hello to God for you."

  Junior was curious now. He hated missing out on a chance to escape from this fuck-up of a reality. What was the worst thing that could happen?

  It was almost as if Wade read his mind, because Wade said, "What's the worst thing that can happen?"

  "I'll die."

  "Well, there's grass in heaven and there's booze in hell, so what have you got to lose?"

  "Not a damn thing, I reckon."

  He picked up the mushrooms that Wade had left on the log. They were light and innocent-looking. They couldn't be any worse for you than pot. His dad said that nature was there for a reason, and nature always did you right.

  Junior put them in his mouth and bit down, then his taste buds were flooded with bitterness.

  Wow man Wade is talking but his words are mushy and far away and they're not matching up with the way his lips are moving and the wind is painting my skin and I can feel every hair on my body and that tree has so many tiny flecks of bark, every one is alive, and the leaves are waving hello and the tree is slithering like a snake and the sky is an ocean if you look at it upside down and I can swim in it and Wade is smiling and I thought he said it took a half hour to kick in only how long has it been, hours or seconds, there's no difference because it all feels like NOW and I'm falling into the orange pool of the sun except these vines are holding me down and what the fuck these vines are holding me down and Wade's eyes are glowing, he didn't tell me it would be so fucking weird, no wonder those hippies are so goofy, this can't be real but what is real, and I want to lift my arms only the vines are holding me down but my arms are the vines and the vines are fingers reaching into the ground and I am the dirt and the trees and far-fucking-out I've come from the stars to swallow this land and I must eat the trees that I am and I am shu-shaaa and I must feed myself so I can go home and Wade's eyes are glowing green and he's part of me now and we are all children of the parent and boy am I fucked up and I bite the trees and I squeeze the life in my jaws and I come from space to eat the trees and I'm hungry and that is the wind in my throat and not my heart because my heart is not beating and this is really fucked up because I come from space to eat the life and eat myself who is the earth so I can go home and

  I am shu-shaaa Mull but what the fuck is shu-shaaa that is me that is the tree that is the sky that fills the fucking sky and

  I can’t feel the end where my skin used to be and I can never turn back until all is shu-shaaa and I come from space to eat the trees and I must go with the flow toward nothing and everything and always all at once and boy am I fucked up

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "This is a gorgeous place, Bill," Nettie said. Bill watched her eyes as he helped spread the blanket across the warm clover.

  They were on a rise of meadow that overlooked a laurel-covered river valley. The gray face of Bear Claw sloped upward from the meadow, the mountain harsh with rocky shadows. The softer outlines of Fool’s Knob and Antler Ridge met the sky on the southern horizon. The surrounding trees wore their new buds like a regal finery of jewelry and lace. A scattering of sparrows erupted from the forest and soared over the grass, their wings tilted at odd angles.

  Bill smoothed the blanket with his hand and sat beside Nettie. He smelled dandelions and wild onions, fried chicken and raspberry tarts. He had planned on stopping at the Save-a-Ton and buying one of those ready-to-go deli picnics, but Nettie had insisted on providing the food. And she looked tasty herself, in that lavender blouse and light-colored skirt, a yellow scarf tying her hair back in a dark ponytail, little wispy curls brushing her cheeks.

  Now get that stuff out of your mind. Is the devil going to follow you even out here, into the heart of God's country?

  Nettie opened the basket and passed him a napkin. "Bill, what made you ask me out on the spur of the moment?"

  Bill avoided her eyes and looked off at the mountains. "I just wanted to show you this place," he said, waving his work-roughened hand out toward the woods.

  "I love it here. I feel so… free," she said. "Close to the Lord. Pure." She said the last with a small blush.

  Bill saw the blush and gulped nervously. He nodded and said, "I've loved this place since I was a little boy. Used to go up there by that ridge and pick huckleberries."

  He didn't add that he used to bring his high school dates out here to give the Corvette's shock absorbers a workout under the ogling moon. But that had been a different, devil-ridden Bill, before the Light had found him. Those sins had been
washed away by the blood of the Lamb. He helped Nettie unpack the food.

  "I'll bet you were cute as a boy."

  Now it was Bill's turn to blush. Even his ears tingled. He dropped the bowl of mashed potatoes, tipping over the plastic container of sweet tea. He hated that he was always so clumsy around Nettie.

  "Even as a boy, I knew I wanted to live out here one day. Finally I was able to make enough money to buy it."

  "This place is yours?" Her eyes widened.

  Bill hoped he didn't sound like he was bragging. "Well, actually, it's the Lord's, but I get to keep it until He comes back for it. The lot goes over to the base of the mountain and across that ridge there, the one with the stand of oaks, on down into that old growth thicket by the river."

  Nettie picked a buttercup and tucked it behind her ear. "Wow, Bill, you certainly have an eye for beauty."

  Bill studied her face, wondering if she were fishing for compliments the way some women did. He decided she wasn't insecure about her looks. She couldn't be, not with all the gifts she had been blessed with.

  "Well, I've been wanting to settle here one day. Only… " He gulped again, feeling his big stupid vocal cords locking up on him. He'd never been very good at expressing himself, and now, when the bright sun and the swaying daisies and the velvet green fields demanded poetry, he could only stack words as if they were cinder blocks. "… only, the time's never been right."

  "It's a nice dream, Bill. I hope it comes true. You deserve every good thing in the world."

  Nettie was talking about dreams, and his heart clenched like a fist. He had shared dreams with his first wife, and she had vomited them back in his face every chance she got. She had ridiculed him, laughed at his idiotic plans that she said were a waste of money, snickered at his sexual performance, and taunted him with a string of lovers, from the entire landscaping crew to Sammy Ray Hawkins, making sure to time her trysts so that Bill had a fifty-fifty chance of walking in on her adulterous acrobatics.

  Bill had tried hard to forgive her, even asked the Lord to forgive her, too. And he draped her in silk, adorned her with diamonds, wrapped her in gold chains, hoping he could buy her approval and affection. But he only built the wealth of her scorn. And the devil had gained final victory by forcing him to break a vow to God and divorce her.

  He wasn't about to risk that pain again. Nettie must have sensed something, because she put her hand on his big forearm. "Is that the secret you told me about? You owning this?" she said quietly.

  "Well, yes," he said, after he jump-started his tongue. "But it's not just that. There was something else I wanted to tell you.

  "Confession is good for the soul."

  "We've been going out for a while now. And I've enjoyed every minute we've spent together. But I'm afraid I better tell you something before you waste much more time on me.”

  Bill watched her wilt. Her eyelids dropped, her dark, delicate eyelashes flickered like the butterflies that were cutting patterns over the grass. She bowed like one of those long-ago English queens, readying herself for execution. She nodded gently, as if praying that the ax-blow be swift and sure.

  "I've been married before,” he said, in a rush, wanting it over with. “And I got a divorce. I've sinned in the eyes of the Lord, Nettie."

  She blinked twice. "Is that your deep, dark secret?"

  Bill braced himself for her counterattack, the cruel feminine laughter that would slice like a saber. It didn't come.

  "Bill, everybody makes mistakes," she said. "And God's heart is bigger than the sky. There's plenty of room up there for forgiveness. That's one of the best things about His love."

  Bill looked up at the high ceiling of the sky with its thin stucco of clouds.

  He wiped the sweat from his palms onto the blanket. "I was afraid you'd think less of me, like I was a hypocrite or something, the way I promote the church and stuff. While I'm eaten up on the inside with black sin."

  And now Nettie was laughing, but it was a laugh of relief instead of ridicule. "Bill, I've got deep, dark secrets that would put that one to shame. And someday, I might tell you about them. Now, let's eat before the ants figure out we're here."

  The tension that Bill had sensed from the moment they arrived seemed to lift into the March breeze, as if God had waved a soothing hand overhead.

  "Too late to fool the ants," Bill said, blowing one off the back of his hand. It landed in the spilled mashed potatoes. Nettie laughed again, an airy music that was as natural to the meadow as the song of sparrows. Bill grinned at her and lifted the plate of fried chicken. His grin froze as Nettie pulled a bottle of wine from the basket. He looked into her deep, shining, curious, tempting eyes.

  "I hope you don't disapprove." She twisted a corkscrew in with a firm hand. Her face clenched with effort as she popped the cork. "One of my dark secrets."

  Bill's smile tried to shrink like drying plywood, but he kept it nailed into place. She was pouring the blood of Christ into two clear plastic tumblers.

  No, this is white wine. The blood of nothing but dead grapes. Do you mind, Jesus? Of course, You used to drink it. But what if it makes me weak, prone to the devil's whispers? Or is this a test of faith?

  But then he was taking the cup from Nettie and bumping it to her raised cup in a toast, and he was swimming in her beautiful eyes and the wine was on his lips and in his throat and then warming a small spot in his belly. He sipped again, nervously, and the warmth spread.

  They ate chicken, she a breast, he two legs and a thigh. They had scratch biscuits that were as good as Bill's grandmother used to make, back before she bought her first microwave. Bill's plate was emptied of the mashed potatoes that Nettie had covered with thin gravy that was good even cold. The buttersweet taste of the raspberry tarts clung to his lips, and he wondered if his smile were as red as Nettie's.

  They lay face to face, leaning on their elbows, and talked under the warm fingers of the sun, sharing their third cup of wine. Bill pointed to a sycamore branch and a flutter of bright red.

  "Male cardinal," he said. "Watch for a second."

  A small brown bird flitted from the growth of a spruce and the cardinal gave chase.

  “Going after a piece of tail feather," Nettie said.

  Bill was stunned. The Nettie he had known and dated and studied scriptures with must be back in Windshake, and this Jezebel had been sent by the devil to draw Bill back into the hellish fold. She giggled behind her hand and her eyes were alight with amusement.

  And his lips were mildly numb and now the warmth had spread all over his body and he was laughing, too. Then he was laughing so hard that he fell toward her and then their eyes met and their lips met and they shared laughing breath and raspberry saliva and Chardonnay tongue and then the devil was on Bill's shoulder, whispering in his ear. But the Lord was on the other shoulder, drowning out the Prince of Lies with an orchestra of blinding sunburst heartbeats***

  — and Nettie couldn't believe this was finally happening. Her heart had almost stopped when Bill said he had something to tell her "before she wasted much more time."

  He was going to tell her that, while she was a nice girl, he didn't think they should see each other anymore. He would be too kind to say the truth, which was that she was homely and independent and not the picturesque queen he envisioned at his side.

  He would just say that even though her company was pleasant, their relationship wasn't going anywhere because the tinder just wasn't taking the spark. And they should remain friends and continue the Lord's work together at the church and not have any ill feelings toward one another because the Bible said to turn the other cheek.

  But he didn’t say those things, only some ridiculous thing about being divorced, but marriage wasn't as sacred as love, so why should he worry about it? But Bill was sweet to consider her feelings, even if his solemnity almost made her laugh. Some people took the covenant of marriage more seriously than others, and she respected Bill's tenets. Her own relief had gushed through her body
so forcefully that she was afraid it was going to burst through her skin.

  And Bill had not frowned on the wine. Well, perhaps briefly, but he had taken a cup, and then more, and she could feel his awkwardness fall away into laughter and now into this kiss, which was making her head expand, this kiss which was drowning her in a pool of light, this kiss, which was a moist dew, this kiss, which was a free fall, this kiss, which was tangling their limbs in liquid knots, this kiss, which was one long heartbeat, this kiss that was a pillow cloud that was her body that was fighting out of the blouse and cotton dress and winding inside Bill's shirt and trousers and skin and now the kiss spread over their entire flesh as the hot white honey wax arms of heaven embraced them and swept them aloft on a cream silk fire breeze and dropped them into a milk sky sun ocean and then they were racing together toward a frozen forever only now they were exploding like golden flowers and she was melting and flowing and arriving and disappearing only to find herself back in Bill's arms where her journey had always led.

  Junior stumbled through the laurels along the riverbank, ignoring the sharp branches that gouged his skin, not caring that the flesh peeled from his bones like shucks from an ear of yellow corn. Because it wasn't his skin, it was the parent’s, and shu-shaaa had no awareness of pain or decay. There was no death, only change. Only a joining into the life that must become shu-shaaa so the journey could continue.

  Junior heard the life in the trees and under the thickets and behind the shrubs and in the meadow and he stepped into the sunlight and saw the life that was like his own used to be.

  A memory of being human, of a time before shu-shaaa Mull, swam in the swampy mist inside his head. He was about to cross the green earth skin to reach the writhing human lives so that he could touch their hearts with the hand of the parent. Because they sang with light and stole the sun that fed the life and their animal cries filled shu-shaaa's air.

  But another force pulled him away, tugged at him like vines and creepers and kudzu, and compelled him to cross the river and ascend the mountain that rose from the earth to return him to a bed of memories. A place from his human past, a place of roots. An old human who deserved to share the glory, a human whose name was Mull, only its own name had once been Mull, but that didn't matter since they would soon all be one.