Endicott,VA -- Where Tar Turns To Dirt

Did it wake you as it woke me? Did you reach for a blade while the thin hair on the nape of your neck rose like a cat that never knew sleep? Did your ears strain to see till they hurt? Forget about all of the screams that shout out between nine and five just outside that white picket fence of Mayberry. You heard it. This was different. This was real. Death was coming down hard over water. Down the river bed it rode the deer mercilously, deer shins batting round rocks. Stones were hitting one another in goth billards as the deer scream kept coming in one long note held in the cold air,: a rifle shot without powder. Tight in trees the sounds bit. It was this side of midnight. The cold moon was confidently high. We heard it running toward our bed that was hard on the forest floor.
Was it a cat that rode that bleeding back? Could a cat be that big as to wind choke a deer with it's own jaws, and ride? I sat in my tent feeling as defenseless as a young warrior sleeping behind a rice paper screen. The air smelled like old leaves, a cold fire, and clean earth. Bugging my eyes I could see little more than a deer running mad with a reinless rider, cantering down the riverbed in a half foot of water and rock. Skiding. Running drunk.
I am not a warrior anymore. My swords are in waxpaper and grease. My bullets are sleeping with books. If I had a cell phone what would I say? Who would I call if this hunt turns in at my camp, feet from its course? In this life there really are no calls I need to make when the lion comes to camp. I am 911 now, for better or worse. I can count the cars that passed me today. I am in God's country................no, I am in God's hand. I am awake on a forest wrapped in a silk sheet that lines my sleeping bag. If you are afraid, and still hold your course, then you are brave--I am told. I am afraid. It is like being wet, or cold. It will move on.
We will lie down now. We can't sit like this all night with all of our flesh in a tight fist. I pull my hawk close as if it will not tangle in tent cloth and flesh if I am called to fight from here, from this open door, and a river that has already forgotten. I pull the hawk close because it is my teeth. It is my claws. I pull the hawk close because it is comfort even when cold.
As I stumble back to sleep, I wonder if it was the same hairs rising on my neck at sunset when I squatted by the river, filtering water as the sun made its own camp over the Blue Ridge. I heard my stomach tell my hands to be empty then. My stomach told my tired feet to swollow and be strong--borrow, steal, cut rope ties if need be, but be ready. I opened my hands until everything fell. My eyes scanned the river's edge. The trees were watching me patiently.
While I made tea, then dinner, I kept the small fire between me in the river. My tent was at my back. I played my flute with my eyes open. It is not 2006 here. There are no plastic calenders with happy blemishless faces waving at me. Here a dying rabbit can make you pray.
Tomorrow I will be in Floyd, VA dancing in The Country Store with women loaned from their husbands arm. People will know my name for a day.