Pirates You Don't Know, and Other Adventures in the Examined Life by Griswold John;

Author:Griswold, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

With the semester over, I drove into a June sunrise, the trunk filled with books, rooster sauce, fish sauce, good wine, and better bourbon. Ohio was under construction, but West Virginia rewarded me with black cows grazing in lush grass up to their hocks on a hillside; the forested ridge behind them glowed with sun. A bit further into the mountains, near Nutter’s Road, I lost my cell signal for good. Here, I thought, is where I’ll go all Kurtz, train battalions to explicate and parse as we sip sumac tea and gobble tiger-lily blooms. I’ll compose essays in nut shells and tail feathers, and Dennis Hopper will deliver them to my editors, on an ass.

I stopped daydreaming at Flinderation Road, the start of the Land of Roadside Crosses. The sunset in my mirror turned the color of the apocalypse, then it started raining. A sign offered “Deer Cutting.” Fog rolled down the mountains onto the road. Night fell, and it rained harder.

In a dark hamlet I stopped at the last Hardee’s on earth and dashed inside to ask directions. I was still wearing the clothes I’d left in: white shorts, the yellow polo shirt Mrs. Churm bought me for my birthday, and running shoes over Nautica anklets (desperation socks; my others were packed). Cowboys waiting for their Angus burgers stared, puzzled how I’d gotten there from Pluto.

It only took five hours more to climb Frenchy’s driveway. I’d been saving my liver for old age, but he built up the fire and we talked a long time. Then I slept without stirring in the cold air from the open window. I woke after dawn to omelets cooked in bacon drippings, biscuits with butter and elderberry jelly, and black coffee.

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