just a Few Places
1'~
Been
hallelujah in the rays. Rolling green hills like some backwoods version of the promised land. Even Lewis thought so. Even he said, "This is a God moment." We made our way back to North Carolina, greeting the south with what they said were our Yankee accents and funny ways. Wicked, we said. Rad. Words they didn't use. Y'all. Sure is nice. Susie Lee, what's your last name? Lee is my last name. Oh, I see. And North Carolina hung onto us for awhile. For two long months. It's funny how that can happen, how you can land in a place and it sticks to you more than you stick to it, and somehow, you end up there until it is a piece of you, really. Until it is something you can't-don't want to - let go of. This was what happened to us. LEWIS AND I SET UP IN A LITTLE BED AND BREAKFAST on Rhubarb Lane in Davidson, North Carolina, college town divided by railroad tracks, black and white - also a cliche, but these things you can't make up or cover. These things are true. We were in Davidson when we realized I had one thousand dollars left. Between gas and food and the mechanic (oh, that greedy mechanic) and places to sleep, it had all slipped away. So, we decided to stretch it out for awhile. We'd been gone a month already and we liked the feel of traveling. Besides, what did we have waiting for us back home? Lingering tourists at the Cape for vacation, and once they thinned out, it was just people we'd known forever living along the crooked finger of land that had always been ours, which was beckoning us now to come home. We refused. We got jobs at the Cushion Cafe downtown, little place filled up with relics of the college football team. Scrawny boys in tucked-in uniforms with well-combed hair parted evenly to one side and greased to stay. Helmets tucked under their arms. Old cleats, browning, hung up on the walls by their laces. Little fan flags in purple and green pinned above the booths. "We are famous for our milkshakes and our tuna melts," said the owner. Fat man in a white apron. Long sad drawl, drooping eyes. Hound dog of a man. "Taste," he said, handing a cool metal shaker to me and Lewis, who stood beside me on one hip. I tasted. Chocolate. Thick. Delicious. Behind me the door rang open and closed, little strip of hot air drifting to us before the air conditioner killed it. A tall blonde man walked in. "Morning, Tucker," said the owner. Dill. Like the pickle. Such a name. "It's a frappe," I said. "You Yankees. It's a milkshake. Y'all made up that name. Frappe. Psh." Summer - Fall 2006
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