High Country Fall (3 page)
He knows I don’t have a head for heights.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be hugging the center line all the way.”
Actually, except for my ears popping every time the elevation rose too quickly, the drive out next morning was fine.
When I left home at sunrise, the trees along Possum Creek were just starting to turn. Fall was late this year. Sassafras and crape myrtles had been showing a few orange and pink leaves for a couple of weeks, but oaks and maples were still mostly green.
By the time I reached the foothills around Hickory, the gums and tulip poplars were bright yellow. At Morganton, I left I-40 and angled northwest toward Lafayette County and Cedar Gap. As I passed over the eastern continental divide and started down a steep decline, late-morning sunshine lit up the valley from one side to the other and range after range of hills spread out before me in glorious fall colors. Heaven’s streets of gold are going to look pretty bland compared to those brilliant oranges and burning reds, the tawny browns and flaming coppers of trees I couldn’t begin to identify.
I almost ran off the road trying to take it all in and automatically braked to give myself time to drink in the beauty.
Behind me, a car honked angrily, then zipped around me. The driver gave me the finger as he passed and I heard him yell, “Fricking leafer! Get off the goddamned road!”
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have slowed so abruptly, but he didn’t have to go ballistic. Thoroughly steamed, I picked up speed and kept my mind on my driving the rest of the way.
Lafayette County is tucked into a fold of the Blue Ridge Mountains right smack up against the Tennessee border. It’s one of the smallest counties in North Carolina. In square miles, its actual footprint is only a sixth the size of Colleton County’s, but if you could lay it out somewhere and iron its craggy old hills as flat as Colleton’s landscape, it’d probably be half again bigger.
Cedar Gap sits right below a ridge that separates two valleys. It’s not the biggest town in Lafayette County—that honor belongs to Howards Ford down in the valley below. Indeed, Howards Ford was the site of the first courthouse, but it was burned during the Civil War when feelings between secessionists and unionists ran high, so the county seat was moved temporarily to Cedar Gap. After the war, the change became permanent. The “new” courthouse was struck by lightning in the late seventies and burned to the ground, which is why the current courthouse is built of native undressed stone and blends into the landscape like a modern, low-slung office building rather than something with Corinthian columns and a Grecian frieze.
I stopped at the grocery store in Howards Ford for some basic essentials and made a mental note of where a drugstore was since I’d been warned that Cedar Gap has none. No Wal-Mart, Kmart, movie theater, no OfficeMax or Home Depot either. A three-lane road winds from the valley up to Cedar Gap—three lanes so that cars don’t get stuck behind eighteen-wheelers that can’t seem to clock more than twenty-five miles an hour getting up that grade. Here at noon on a beautiful blue-sky Sunday, the road was clogged. Not with trucks, though.
With tourists.
While every third car seemed to have a Florida license plate, I did see plates from several other states, all moving antlike up and down the mountain. Cameras poked from the open windows and I could almost hear the passengers telling their driver to slow down! Wait! Look over there at that bunch of yellow trees! Oooh, see those red maples! Stop!
No wonder that earlier driver had given me the finger.
There are numerous scenic pull-off spots along this road, and every one of them was packed by tourists who hung over the rails with their video cameras to get a better view or a more artistic angle on those spectacular fall colors. The eleven miles between Howards Ford and Cedar Gap took me forever, and when I got there, it was more of the same—every parking spot taken, every sidewalk bench filled. A large bronze monument to World War I sat in the center of a traffic circle on one of the few pieces of purely level ground in town, and the low stone walls that circled it were lined with happy tourists who licked ice-cream cones from the hand-dipped ice-cream shop across the street while they watched the passing show.
As I waited at one of Main Street’s three traffic lights, I looked around to get my bearings. Except for the monument and the ice-cream store that was still called Roxie’s and still sold hand-dipped ice cream according to the sign in its window, nothing looked familiar, but then I was barely eight years old my one and only visit here with Mother and Aunt Zell.
Mother adored Daddy and she loved her sons and stepsons, yet there were times when she felt suffocated and exasperated by so much testosterone. That’s when she’d call her sister, and the three of us would take off for a just-us-girls adventure.
Since I was last here, Cedar Gap had evidently come down with what some of us down east call the “Cary syndrome.”
Cary used to be a charming, if somewhat scruffy, little village a few miles west of Raleigh. Then high-end developers moved in, the town was “revitalized,” and gradually the town board filled up with such fierce zoning zealots that houses and storefronts are now forced to conform to a limited range of bland colors and architectural styles, signs are discreet and almost invisible, and every lawn is groomed and manicured into such prettiness that all individuality has been tidied away—the Stepford wife of North Carolina towns.
Like Cary, Cedar Gap looked to be well on its way to becoming picture perfect, too. No ugly “big box” stores up here. Huge old sycamore and oak trees almost met overhead, and Main Street consisted of boutiques, upscale souvenir shops, real estate agencies, and restored Victorian houses that had been turned into B and Bs or pricey restaurants that catered to the tourist trade. A handful of law offices clustered around the courthouse just off the traffic circle here in the middle of town. Each sported dark green balloon awnings in keeping with all the other businesses. The whole town is only six or eight blocks long, and cedar-shingled houses and condos stair-stepped up and down the mountain on either side, through thickets of hemlocks and hardwoods. Banks of rhododendron bushes filled all the spaces in between.
Eventually, the light changed and oncoming traffic finally cleared enough to let me make a left turn through a set of gates next to an old stone church.
My cousin Beverly, who lives in Durham, has a condo here and she’s always urging me to use it during off- season. Leaf season still had a few weeks to go, so when I called her Friday night, it was only to ask if she could recommend a place.
“Oh, you’d have to pay an arm and a leg for something up there right now,” she said. “If you could even find a vacancy. The leaves are supposed to peak this week. But you can use our condo if you don’t mind the mess it’s in—”
“It’s not rented?”
“—
and
if you don’t mind sharing it with the twins on the weekend.”
“The twins? I thought they were in school down at Wilmington.” Beverly’s daughters are nineteen and sweet kids, but not rocket scientist material.
“Nope. They flunked out before Christmas,” she said cheerfully. “We’ve had them at Tanser-MacLeod since last January.”
I’d never heard of Tanser-MacLeod and said so.
“It’s in Howards Ford. Used to be a junior college up until about three or four years ago. Fred and I thought a small campus might work better for them. Anyhow, we’re in the process of renovation and they’re doing the painting, which is why the condo’s not rented out right now. We need to get it refurbished before it starts snowing. You’re more than welcome to use it if you can walk around paint buckets.”
Better than sleeping in my car, I assured her.
Beverly said her unit was three levels up from the street. Following her directions, I drove through the gates of the condo, up a slight incline to the parking area that served the first level, then up a steeper drive onto the second level that curved around to a driveway that I swear to God was only about three feet wide and went straight up the side of the hill.
No guardrails, just firs with long feathery branches that brushed the car windows.
My sporty little flatlander car took a deep breath—I did, too—and somehow we made it. At the top of the drive, the area leveled out and I pulled into the slot marked F-3 and switched off the ignition.
I do not consider myself a coward, but simply looking back down the way I’d come gave me vertigo. The angle was so acute I couldn’t see the bottom and I shivered at the thought of having to drive out again anytime soon.
“Put your faith in the Lord,”
said the preacher who lives in the back of my head and tries to lead me in the paths of righteousness and sanity.
“If He can move mountains, He can surely help you drive back down one.”
“Or,”
said the pragmatist who shares the same headspace and who had noticed a set of steep stone steps that led down to the street,
“maybe you could just walk back and forth to the courthouse.”
“Wimp!”
sneered the preacher. He took another look at that ski jump of a driveway.
“On the other hand, your hips could certainly use the exercise.”
The two-story weathered cedar condos were built up the side of the hill so that each had an entry that was close to ground level (or what passes for level ground in the mountains) depending on where the front door was in relation to the driveway that wound past the various units. Two shallow steps led up to a small porch in front of Beverly’s. I was unloading my car and stacking groceries and duffel bag by the railing when the door to the next unit opened and a gray-haired man emerged, carrying two large suitcases.
“Ships that pass in the night,” he said cheerfully. He pointed his remote toward the blue Grand Marquis parked in the next space and the trunk lid popped open. “You just getting here?”
I nodded. “I take it you’re leaving?”
“’Fraid so.” He set his bags in the trunk. “Are you up for the leaves?”
“Not really. You?” I put the last of my stuff on the edge of the porch, closed my trunk, and fished in my purse to find the notes and numbers Beverly had given me over the phone. One set was for the electronic keypad Beverly’s husband had installed so that they wouldn’t have to keep replacing the keys their renters lost or forgot to return to the local leasing agent.
“We come every fall,” the man said. “Forty years we’ve lived in Tampa and my wife still misses watching the seasons change.”
He smiled at the woman who now appeared in the doorway. “Not that she’s ever actually missed them.”
“He brings me back every spring and fall even if it’s just for a long weekend,” she agreed, handing him several shopping bags to stow in the trunk. “Azaleas and dogwoods in the spring, colored leaves in the fall.”
I smiled and wished them a safe trip home as I keyed in the numbers Beverly had given me.
Nothing happened.
“Are you sure you have the right place?” asked the woman. “I think that unit’s still occupied.”
I tried the combination again and this time it released the lock. Turning the knob, I pushed open the door. The inside looked as if it’d been hit by Hurricane Fran.
“Oh, my!” said the woman, who stared past me in frank curiosity at the jumbled mess.
The couch and chairs had been shoved to the center of the room and lamps and end tables were stacked on top of them, as is not unusual when a place is being painted. Instead of the usual drop cloths, though, the furniture was covered in a tangle of colorful T-shirts, jeans, sweaters, and dirty socks. A pair of high heels sat atop the entertainment center, and was that a black lace bra draped over a clump of stained sneakers? Through the archway, I saw a dining table piled high with pizza boxes and drink cups.
“I didn’t think they looked like they were leaving for good when they went out of here this morning,” said the woman. “Somebody must have messed up on your rental.”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s okay. This is my cousin’s place and her kids are painting it in their spare time. They’ll probably be back soon.”
“Don’t count on it,” said the man. “They haven’t gotten in before midnight the whole time we’ve been here.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“And you’ve been here how long?”
“Since Friday a week ago.”
Ten days? My mind raced through the possibilities. Had the twins lent the place to some of their friends without telling their parents? I gave a mental shrug and began carrying in my things. Beverly had given me their telephone number at the college, and if they didn’t show up by the time I was settled in, I’d call and sort it all out.
As I went back to get the last bag of groceries, the man was already in his car with the motor running. His wife finished locking the door and gave me a concerned look. “I do hope everything will be all right for you.”
“It will,” I assured her. “Y’all drive safely now.”
“Don’t worry. The only time we’ve ever been stopped was for driving too slow on the interstate. Can you imagine that? A warning for going too slow? When teenagers are weaving in and out in those little red cars, going ninety miles an hour?”
“Well, you do see more little red cars pulled over than big blue Mercs,” I said, thinking how there would probably be more kids than grandparents standing before me tomorrow morning.
The car moved slowly away, then backed up. The man powered down his window and thrust a thin newspaper into my hand.
“The local news,” he said. “Only comes out on Friday and if it didn’t happen in Cedar Gap or affect Cedar Gap directly, you won’t read about it here, but it does carry ads for all the good restaurants here and in Howards Ford.”
I had to smile as I watched his car disappear down the slope, brake lights bright red all the way. People accustomed to big metropolitan dailies, like the
Miami Herald
or the
New York Times
, never seem to grasp the concept of small-town newspapers; but Linsey Thomas, who owns and edits the
Dobbs Ledger
back home, explained it to me once when I teased him for running a half-page account of a Scout troop fund-raiser my nephews had been involved in. “Big papers sell news,” he said. “Little papers like mine sell names. Am I gonna print the names of any little peckerwood that was there? Heck, yeah. Their mamas’ and daddies’ names, too, ’cause every doting grandma’s gonna buy at least three extra copies to send to friends and family who live somewhere else and they’re all gonna keep renewing their subscriptions.”
