Bad Moon On The Rise (28 page)

I stared at him. He stared at me. I
noticed the graceful curves of the tusks on either side of his
hard, mean mouth and thought of how he could slash open my belly
and pretty much eviscerate me with a single jerk of his head. He
probably was thinking the same thing about me. But then he simply
snorted and shuffled off to his left, picking his hoofs up
precisely as he danced off across the carpet of snowy leaves that
covered the forest floor.

It was a sign. I knew it with all of
my being.

I had met a kindred spirit.

That pig wasn’t even supposed to be
here. They weren’t native to North Carolina. Every wild pig in the
mountains was a descendant of a pack of domesticated boars that had
escaped from the holding pen of a visiting German baron’s estate in
1926. The baron had been a less-than-good sport. He’d imported the
boars from his native land and had planned to hold a bogus wild
game hunt for his rich friends. But the very day before the hunt
was to take place, one hundred and twenty-four intrepid porcine
prisoners dug and gnawed their way to freedom, breaching their
fence and disappearing into the wilderness where they promptly
adapted and happily reproduced for decades. Their progeny now
populated the mountains for hundreds of miles around me.

In other words, I had met a true
freedom fighter.

The thought filled me with hope: if
those fat, domesticated boars, whose sole destiny had been to
become Black Forest ham, had transformed themselves into sleek,
feared fighting machines of the mountains then, by god, my fat ass
could survive a night on Silver Top and I, too, could live
free.

The closer I got to the campground,
the louder the music became, with the sounds of a stand-up bass,
guitar and a couple of fiddles now filling in around the more
insistent chords of the banjo. I was nearing the edge of the
campground and felt too exposed, so I took a detour to the right
and ended up in a patch of woods behind a main stage. A hardy
audience had gathered in front of the small covered stage to watch
the musicians defy the October cold. I knew it was my chance. If I
planned to lay in some supplies, I needed to move
quickly.

I circled the campground, using the
woods as cover, reaching the entrance and a field that had been
converted into a parking lot for revelers. Many people had driven
campers that had been pulled further into the campground itself,
but there were still a couple dozen cars and trucks lined up in the
darkness, probably people driving up for the day. I went down each
row of vehicles, checking for unlocked doors. My, but people had
lost all sense of trust. There I was, in the middle of nowhere, and
just about everyone had locked their damn car doors. I finally
found an old white truck with an unlocked passenger side door,
climbed inside the cab and started searching for something to keep
warm. There was a thick flannel shirt, more of a coat really, with
a zipper up the front. It was a hideous green-and-red plaid but
freezing beggars can’t be choosers. I slipped it on over my other
clothes gratefully. Most of all, I needed socks and shoes and a
pair of britches that covered more than my ass. But I wouldn’t find
those in the truck. I kept moving and had better luck. By the time
I was done pilfering, I’d scored a dry pair of jeans too small in
the ass and too big in the waist, a length of rope I could use as a
belt, tennis shoes a couple sizes too big and, most glorious of
all, thick brown woolen socks that could have kept a hunter warm
for a month.

It was a huge improvement. Yes, I
looked like a backwoods Nirvana fan. But it protected me from
freezing and freed me to stave off starvation.

That proved more problematic. The
festival attendees had arranged their campers and tents in circular
groupings, like pioneers of old circling the wagons. Clotheslines
were tied vehicle to vehicle, chairs had been set out around
bonfire areas and the more experienced among the festival-goers had
assembled outdoor dining areas with metal tables and chairs
alongside of the campground’s picnic tables. The camper doors were
shut against the cold, of course, but I knew that the occupants had
very likely left them unlocked.

The trouble was that each grouping
seemed to have at least one person at home. There was always one
camper with a light twinkling merrily out of its windows and the
shadow of someone moving back and forth inside as they prepared
dinner.

My god, the smells that wafted forth
on the wind to torture my hollow belly. I am an experienced country
girl. I know chicken fried steak when I smell it. I can predict the
diameter of a biscuit simply from how it smells while baking and I
can smell the difference between a cherry and blackberry cobbler at
fifty paces.

Right now, I was surrounded by frying
chicken, sweet potato casserole, green beans with molasses and a
pot of chili with extra onions. Plus something else with an odor so
delicious I was going to end up as damp as I’d been before, thanks
to drool, if I didn’t do something quick.

A door slammed shut behind me and I
scurried over to another grouping of campers just in time to hear a
stout woman with wiry hair call out to her neighbor, “Betsy, do you
have any butter? It’s got to be real butter or Jimmy won’t eat it.
I left mine in Rocky Mount.”

Good old Betsy had switched to
margarine, so the woman set off, leaving the clearing in search of
real butter she could borrow. God bless dairy, I thought as I did
something I am still ashamed of doing. There is something so low
and common about stealing food, about being so desperate you have
to snatch and grab what you can find, then sit huddled in terror,
afraid you will be discovered before you can cram a few morsels
down your craw.

Fortunately for me, I hit the mother
lode. Inside the camper, the air was thick with the smell of baking
biscuits. A wrought iron skillet sputtered and simmered on the
stove top, filled to the brim with cream gravy flecked with bits of
spicy pork sausage. 

Oh my god, biscuits with sausage
gravy. I thought I might faint from joy.

I had no time to waste. I was taking a
ridiculous chance as it was. I grabbed a coffee cup from a cabinet
above the stove, stole an empty sauce pan from the drainer by the
sink and quickly ladled a pan full of gravy before plucking three
browning biscuits from the oven and slipping back out the front
door, easing it shut behind me. I was out of the clearing and into
the woods within two minutes. Sure, the wiry-haired woman would
think her friend Betsy had slurped up her gravy and stolen her
precious biscuits and it would probably cause a rift between them
that would last until both were well into their
nineties.

I could live with that.

I was dry, I had a whole pot of gravy
plus biscuits to dip in it and I didn’t have to share it with a
damn soul. It was the best meal I have ever eaten in my life, even
though I had nothing better than a boulder for a dining room
table.

I admit it: I ate all three biscuits,
each one nearly as large as my hand, and I licked the pot clean
when I was done. I was celebrating being free, being full and being
alive.

Revived by the meal, my senses became
as sharp as they had ever been. I waited an hour before I returned
to the camp, searching for more supplies. I learned something
unexpected on that second foraging trip: old people really do have
sex, they just need the powerful engine of a motorized vehicle
beneath them before they feel inspired enough to attempt it. A lot
of trailers were a’rockin, so I didn’t go a’knocking, steering
clear of a whole lot of shenanigans before I finally managed to
snitch three blankets from three different campers, always from
beds that had a plentiful supply in hopes no one would
notice.

It turned out to be a wise precaution.
I found myself a cozy spot on the edge of a ridge overlooking the
back of the campground and wrapped up Indian-style in two blankets
while I sat on the third. I leaned against a tree trunk in the
darkness, enjoying my stomach being full and feeling as happy as I
had ever felt in my life. That was when I saw a sheriff’s car pull
into the campground entrance. One of the deputies who had arrested
me at the Pampered Princess Lodge a long week ago climbed out and
began questioning people in the crowd that gathered. He was showing
them something in his hand, and I was pretty sure it was a mug shot
of me because, you know, that photo was too hideous not to share.
But no one looked at whatever he was showing for long and the crowd
quickly went back to their whiskey, spouses, other people’s spouses
and their old-timey music.

The deputy left and my heart slowed to
a more normal rate helped, in part, by the impromptu concerts
emanating from different bonfires. The sweet mountain melodies
soothed me. But I had learned a lesson I could not afford to
forget: they were, indeed, bothering to look for me.

The night wore on and, in an odd way,
I was happy. I was alone on the mountainside, hidden in the
darkness, surrounded by hundreds of unseen creatures and a merry
band of humans below. My belly was full and my feet were dry, and
the comforters wrapped around me cozy and warm. There was nothing I
could do about anything, nothing but rest—rest and think of my vow
to Corndog Sally to bring her grandson to her before she died. Then
I thought of how I could fulfill my debt to her daughter, Tonya,
the debt I owed for witnessing the terrible aftermath of her death
and then simply walking away.

Had the stay inside Silver Top been
worth it if it brought me closer to finding the boy? It had been a
soul-snatching, spirit-numbing experience for me, yes, and perhaps
I had lost a man I cared for more than I wanted to admit in the
bargain. But I had learned a lot, and once this was all over, I
would have a place to look for Trey Blackburn: if I could find out
where the guards lived, the ones with the plowshare and sword
tattoos on their wrists, I could track down the men behind what had
happened to Tonya Blackburn.

I fell asleep before midnight, the
sweet, high tune of a mountain lullaby sending me off into
dreams.

I woke before first light. My joints
were stiff and protested when I left the cocoon of my blankets to
creep down the mountainside. I skirted the still-sleeping
encampment. Snores floated out from camper windows and bottles of
beer littered many of the clearings. I probably didn’t need to be
worried about being seen, these people were still half drunk and
likely to be sleeping it off until noon, but I didn’t want to take
any chances, especially not with Ramsey on his way to help me. He
had a record and he didn’t need any more trouble with the law. He’d
go down for serious time if he were convicted again.

I was hungry in that greedy way the
human body can get —the more food you give it, the more it wants.
But I had no time for any of that: first light, Ramsey had told me.
Wait for first light, and head up the mountain from the campground
entrance until I found the first straightaway and wait for his
signal. I did as I was told, ducking behind a strand of trees when
a rattly old truck that sounded like it had pleurisy came chugging
up the mountain, cab piled high with cordwood. After that, no
vehicles passed and I grew cold from waiting. I had no way of
telling the time, and I dared not turn my cell phone on. I’d need
every minute of juice left should Ramsey fail to show
up.

But I had no reason to doubt Ramsey
and I was pretty sure I never would. I reached the first
straightaway after the campground entrance in about ten minutes of
hard walking and thanked the fading stars above that it had not
been far. I waited in the darkness of the forest beside the road,
trying not to think about all those encounters with black bears
that tourists reported each year from the scenic overlooks along
the North Carolina mountain roads. Surely they’d started
hibernating by now?

With that unlikely thought in mind and
my ears in overdrive for every crackle of brush and every rustle of
leaves, I waited and placed my faith in my friend. It felt like
over an hour, but it was more likely about twenty minutes before I
heard three beeps, followed by the low grind of a pickup truck
climbing the mountain. I peeked out and spotted bright blue
rounding the curve. It had to be Ramsey. He was moving slowly,
scanning the brush with the eyes of a true mountain man, able to
see through the forests and into the dells, probably counting the
stripes on the skunks sleeping there. He spotted the straightaway
and slowed to a crawl, rolling down his window to call out my name.
“Casey!” he said in a low voice that somehow seemed both loud and
discreet at the same time. “Casey!”

I ran from the trees and hugged him
through the window, breathing in his tobacco smell and the piney
tang of his hair. Ramsey was one of those men who seems old the day
he is born, springing forth strong and enduring, with hair that
never quite seems to turn gray but can’t be called a color either.
He was like a human beech tree, silvery and supple and strong. I
wrapped my arms around him and wanted to weep.

“
Easy, girl,” he said.
“Get in the cab. I brought you sausage- and-egg
biscuits.”

That was all I needed to know. I
jumped in next to him, ripped open the bag from Hardee’s and
started stuffing my face.