Chapter 1 Out and Away #2
The Banana pressed his lips into a line, then pulled a spiral notebook from his hoodie pocket. He flipped to a blank page like he was about to take notes, but he didn’t have a pen.
“Okay, man. Shoot.”
Green dipped into his pocket to clutch his acorn.
“Well, I’m looking for a campground.”
“Like, the state park? Bro, you’re on the wrong road for that.”
Green frowned. Why hadn’t he gone to the state park?
Because that’s a place people go for a visit. I’m not a visitor. I’m something else.
“Not exactly. I want to find somewhere that’s a little more long-term. I’m looking to stay awhile.”
“Yeah? Maybe you should be visiting a realtor instead of a campground.”
“Fair, but I’m not looking to own property. I’m looking for a camp that’s friendly to the idea of semi-permanent residents. If there is such a thing.”
“Yeah, bro, ain’t we all semi-permanent residents?”
The Banana looked out the window. Green followed his gaze, but he could barely see anything beyond the moths he wasn’t allowed to mention.
“You gonna live in that car?”
“I’ve got camping gear. And I’ll figure out the rest when I get there.”
“Uh-huh. Alright. Respect.”
The Banana exchanged an unreadable look with his friend behind the counter.
“We got a brochure rack of attractions and parks. Boy Scout camps and boat rentals. Cabins. That kinda shit.”
He shrugged toward a wire carousel rack near an out-of-order ATM.
“But that rack is for tourists. The for-real one is in the back. Go through the door by the beer cooler. We’ll hit the button that unlocks it.”
The Banana nodded at his silent friend, who paused his card shuffling to pantomime extending his button-pushing finger and sending it through a wide, slow arc until it touched the featureless counter. There was no button.
The Banana said, “Click,” then grinned like a fox.
Green suspected he was being mocked, but his nerves told him to swallow his annoyance and play along.
“Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
He headed to the back, expecting to find nothing.
Instead, he spotted the door by the beer cooler.
It was only two feet wide and covered with yellow wallpaper depicting looping knotwork and swans with pronounced, angry eyebrows slanting down over black pits for eyes.
It was unlocked and Green slid through the narrow opening into a perfectly round room the size of a bathroom stall.
A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling. He could feel its heat on his scalp. An intense, artificial coconut smell with no visible source filled the space. The brochure rack stood in the center.
Green spun the rack and read the titles.
Ghost Stone: See the Most Haunted Rock on Earth
Harker’s Black Bear Sanctuary and Massage Therapy Center
Knife Ridge Tooth Museum
12 Jeffs’ Pizza and Ice Cream
Candle-Fly Camp: Choose Your Own Payment
Sara’s Garden of Tomorrow
Experimental RV Dealership and Service Center
Honest Cal’s Turtle Pond Aquatic Bed and Breakfast
Hike to the Hole in Nothing
Jake Peatmoss: Financial Combat and Unconventional Investments
None of them looked professionally printed.
There were also a few oddities jammed into the rack that weren’t brochures. A taxidermized frog on a wooden plaque with a small label reading Ask Me About Skittershine Swamp. A can of black beans with red pen corrections all over the label. A single flip-flop.
The teens were absolutely mocking him.
A cold feeling flooded into Green’s stomach.
He had imagined the gas station as a doorway back to civilization, a break from the heavy presence of the tree-crowded road.
But civilization meant shared cultural reference points.
It meant mutually agreed-upon social norms and a familiar context.
Whatever this was, it did not feel like civilization.
He noticed his hand was trembling, so he stuffed it in his pocket and focused on taking deep, slow breaths. He took inventory of his goals.
He was here because his old life stopped working for him.
He was here because an inscrutable nut bullied him into being here.
“I’m here because I’ve lost my mind.”
Breathe. Just breathe. Try to rationalize.
Change was always uncomfortable at first.
Change could be frightening.
Familiarity could be cultivated with time and patience.
He couldn’t judge his current path until he actually walked it.
Green plucked up the one and only brochure for Candle-Fly Camp. It advertised “real wilderness” and “a quick hike to each and every point of interest relevant to you” and “stay as long as you like” and “pay what you feel you owe.”
Well, it makes as much sense as anything else about what I’m doing.
Much of the flyer was handwritten, which deepened Green’s uneasy feeling, but the substance of the text matched his needs. There was an address. It was good enough.
The station door jingled and Green heard new voices.
He squeezed out of the brochure room and saw two college kids shopping the snack aisle. A third, a young blond woman wearing a puffy mint green jacket, hefted a bag of ice onto her shoulder and made for the register.
“Grab me some peanut M&M’s,” Mint Jacket called to the others.
“On it,” said a boy in a gray Ohio University hoodie. Green thought he looked twelve and was probably twenty-two.
Standing at the periphery, Green felt a pang of jealousy for the group’s confidence and comradery. They were probably on fall break, taking a little camping trip before their next semester started. His fearful wilderness was just a fun trip for a trio of twentysomethings.
They paid and jingled back out the door.
He stepped to the counter and raised the Candle-Fly Camp flyer.
“Thanks for your help. I’ll try this one.”
The Banana lifted his chin.
“It’s nothing, brother. Withholding help in a world like this? That’s almost the same as doing evil on purpose, ya feel me?”
Green wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Do you think those others are going to Candle-Fly too?”
“Nah, man. Kinkaid Cabins. Cheap, but still a tourist place. Not like where you’re going.”
Green’s core temperature dropped.
“Where I’m going? So…what’s Candle-Fly like then?”
The Banana smirked.
“Chill. I’m not sending you anyplace I wouldn’t want to go myself. It’s like you, bro. Different. That’s what you were asking me for, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, you tell Dancer that Alf says ‘hey.’ ”
Alf hooked a thumb at his wordless friend.
“Jerome too.”
“Okay. I will. Thanks, Alf.”
Alf handed Green a banana from a basket on the counter and then leaned in close.
“It’s got potassium. You might need that.”
He laughed a genuine laugh. Behind him, Jerome’s expression cracked for the first time, shifting to a cringe of embarrassment. He shook his head and gave Green an apologetic shrug, then returned to his mask of indifference.
Green took the fruit and turned to leave.
“Hey, what’s your name, bro?” Alf asked.
“It’s Green.”
“Alright, Green. If you end up staying at Candle-Fly, we’re gonna be neighbors. Me and Jerome live down the road in Hickory, but we spend most of our time here. We’ll see you around.”
He turned to go, then paused.
“Hey, why didn’t you ask that last group to pick a card?”
Jerome’s eyes smiled a fraction and he gave another ghost of a shrug.
“Life’s a mysterious thing, ain’t it?” Alf said.
Green managed half a wave as he departed, but already his thoughts were back out in the darkness.
Outside, Green watched the college kids climb into a boxy van and pull out onto the dark road. A gravel-dust specter rose up as they departed and flew away on the breeze. He pumped his gas and tried to keep his eyes off the storefront moths.
The numbers on the pump clicked up to thirty dollars, then stopped.
Movement at eye level drew his gaze to a spiderweb strung between the pump and a support column.
A spider that looked very much like a human molar was tracing the outer edge of its web, crawling in slow circles.
It made a faint chiming sound as it moved.
Green felt a nervous laugh bubbling up. He looked away.
His eyes traveled to his reflection in the driver’s side window.
A tired man with a five-o’clock shadow. He was a little wild-eyed, but that was fair.
He’d slept in his car instead of a bed last night, parked in the yellow glow of a Waffle House by a busy interstate.
That was a first. He had spent the last two days driving away from every familiar touchstone in his life.
“I look like I’m unraveling.”
He’d seen other things unravel. He knew the look. His ninety-year-old neighbor, Mr. Reynard, who taught him the hobby of making art from old clock parts. His relationship with Jess. The effortless grasp he once held on his own goals and identity. An underpinning of sanity he’d taken for granted.
He thoughtlessly pulled the acorn from his pocket.
There it was, resting on his palm again without his conscious choice to put it there. He studied it. Smooth, polished sides. That rough cap. The way it unnerved him then made him feel ashamed for being intimidated by such an ordinary thing.
He sighed.
The crow might have been a hallucination.
Falling in front of the bus, a vivid daydream, a momentary slip of his hold on reality.
But neither hallucinations nor temporary madness could put an acorn in your pocket in a place with no oak trees.
It was the tangible, enduring anchor for all the strangeness that had pushed aside his old life.
He could almost hear it whispering, You can’t pretend me away.
A tapping sound made Green turn back to the station.
Alf was at the window. He gave Green a thumbs-up and a questioning look. There were words in that look.
You okay, bro?
How long had he been standing there? If possible, the night beyond the station lights seemed even darker than it had a moment earlier.
Green waved at Alf, pocketed the acorn, and climbed into the car.
Nothing to see here. Normal guy. Doing normal guy stuff.