Remember this: Impromptu is the best laid plan. No one
sees it coming.
I was trying to get away from the idea of dating. I
believe the E-Harmony commercial is right. The person shows up with the couple
for the cake, or hints at a one night stand. I was on the previous with the
cake couple after one outing.
I wanted to decompress without the pressure, even though
my mother was pushing this person. I rebelled. Who wouldn’t?
I had enough and put my fishing gear in the truck. I cut
out of there. I drove down the road and pulled into this drive. I found the
person I was looking for sitting at a decrepit, rotting picnic table. The
little, old man was nursing a blue can filled with the Gods of Barley. He was
slowly caving in on himself. I rolled down the window.
“Hey, you! Want to go fishing?” I started to laugh. I
noticed his eyes open wide as he popped up from his seat.
“Yeah, yeah”, Thom blurted in his slightly inebriated,
loud voice. He pulled out some keys to lock the door on a RV trailer, now
occupying most of his drive. The blue can disappeared somewhere in his mobile
house. He shuffled over to the truck and hopped in after opening the door.
I watched Thom struggle with the seatbelt as he tried to
latch himself in. I smirked. Somewhere in Thom is an alien running on 100%
fermented liquids, instead of blood. I am amazed some days at how functional he
is.
We headed down the road toward the river. Thom began to
grill me about my evident absence from his daily view of life at the picnic
table.
“Where have you been?” Thom looked out the truck window
watching the passing landscape.
I began messing with the dial on the radio, looking for
a decent song. “I’ve been around. I was finally removed from doctor’s care.
Why? Did you think I died?” I laughed at this thought. You never know. People
disappear all the time.
I am sure at Thom’s age he is a little hard of hearing.
He always talks with emphasis with double words. Thom may have an inner
Hispanic in him that is trying to communicate.
“No, no. I thought you went North.”
I eyeballed Thom. “North? What are you talking about?”
He looked around suspiciously. “Lightning moves North.”
I was about to choke with laughter. “Are you saying I am
lightning Thom?”
“You never know when you are going to strike.” We both
chuckled over that observation.
Thom and I spent the next two hours on the river bank,
wandering from knobby hole to the next, getting our bait snatched by baby fish.
The baby fish were staying close to the shallow, sandy sections of the river’s
rim. One three inch fish snatched my hook and made for a hole in a tree trunk
on the bank before letting it go. I saw another palm length fish meander in the
shallows through the roots and fallen limbs.
Of course, do not be fooled by the inviting photography
of South Carolina rivers. You will dehydrate fast during the summer months. The
woods on the bank are the equivalent to a sweat lodge. Imagine moist, steamy
heat hitting you from all sides with no barrier. It is constantly surrounding
you. You spend up to three to four hours on the bank of the river with no
water, and you’ll be having yourself a spiritual experience. If you’ve had a
belly full of food, you will vomit it up, eventually. If you drink too much
water, after losing to many fluids, and get stressed, you will get the dry
heaves.
Thom caught a fish and pulled it to the bank. I began to
realize how humid it was at the river. I started feeling my impurities floating
out my pores then decided to go find Thom. I had so much sweat beading down my face, I
could barely keep it wiped out my eyes. I found Thom on a log near my yellow
backpack.
I asked him, “Did you give up?”
He replied, “Yeah, yeah. The fish aren’t biting.” Thom
began to rock back and forth to get off of the log. He has bad hips.
I began to pack up the stuff while Thom carried the
bream busters. We weren’t very far from the truck. I know Thom is in his early
seventies. I didn’t want him to prune up and die on the river. How would I
explain that? I took Thom fishing and it killed him.
Not today.
I went forward to clear the path of snakes. I didn’t
want Thom to get snake bit but if so, the snake wouldn’t make it. The snake
would lose all venom quality from the alcohol content in Thom’s blood. I jest.
We walked back through the woods to the truck. I ignited
the engine and turned on the A/C. I put the gear in the truck with the rods. Thom
hopped in to the winds of the A/C. I offered him some fluids. He refused; no
alcohol. I downed three Capri Suns. When I go out in the jungles near my home,
I deflate like a balloon. Thom sweat till it made him sober.
I had already been sick for a week. I decided I didn’t
want to pass out while driving. I just sat in the A/C, collecting myself. We
were watching a couple fishing from the bank, out in the middle of the river.
Thom spoke up. “They must be fishing for roots out
there.”
I just turned and looked the other way. The trees had
yet to move. I laughed.
I stopped the truck near the access to the river that
lead to the main road. “Thom, do you have anywhere you have to be?”
Thom began to slowly disappear into the seat. “No, no. I
don’t.”
“Let’s ride across the road. I’ll show you where I
caught some shellcrackers.”
Thom agreed. “Okay, okay.” He adjusted his little hat.
We drove up to the main road.
“Thom, people are going to think you’ve been kidnapped.”
“No, no.” He wiggled around in his seat laughing.
We drove to the other side, noted how low the river was,
then I took him home. He got out in his
drive and walked around the truck. “Maybe next time we will have better luck.”
“I guess Thom. I’ll see you later.”
He walked over to his trailer. A blue can appeared. He sat down and I pulled off to head home.
There were a couple of things I learned on this fishing
expedition to failure. I was telling my son about Thom’s view of me when I
appear after long absences. He started to tell me different cultures and their
perception of lightning and direction.
I decided, just for fun, to dig into this a little. I
didn’t want to put any special meaning on this. It was just something to
research and do. I was hearing Thom relate his conscious-unconscious, as he
tried to address my absence; or my existence in his mental world. Am I a trickster?
Somewhere in Thom’s conscious-unconscious or psyche, I
exist in a northern direction when I am absence. He perceives the place where I subside as a
mystery, because he has no clue what I am up to. It is a mystery.
I am taking liberties here because, who knows what goes
on in Thom’s mind when he is under the influence. He says the weirdest things
to me. I shake my head and take it. What can I do?
When I appear to Thom, I am symbolic of lightening. I
assume he thinks I am random, unexpected but when I appear, the air is alive
with activity. This weird energy he senses, lifts him off his picnic seat of
old age, and thrust him into action to go do something. I pretty much strike
Thom, not in the literal sense.
Maybe Thom thinks I am the flash of the Thunderbird’s
eye?
Thunderbirds move contrary to everything else.
Everything else is under the influence of direction.
Thom and I have a very odd relationship. He expects
nothing of me. We function as scouts. The problem with being a scout is you get
in predicaments, gather information on what you see, then someone wants you to
hand that work over to make someone else’s life easy.
I looked into the direction thing. The Chinese notes
North to represent the Rat. I am a Rat. The Celts believed North represented
Earth, Home, Security, and fertility. Right again. The Feathered Serpent of the
Southern regions is the God of Lightning. Tribes of North America viewed North
as wisdom and thought. Depending on which tribe you based this information on.
Each one is slightly different. It means other things as well.
I was still curious about this mysterious North Thom
believed I returned to. Maybe, Thom thought I was a Viking?
I was now a part of Thom’s internal mythologies. A
person’s body is surrounded by a spiritual reside that rubs off and is absorbed
by another. You become a part of them, symbolically living in their internal
landscape of dreams.
I thought Thom would be waiting at that picnic table,
and I would never appear again. My spirit would have moved on to the mysterious
North in his psyche. I would be lost from this world, running back to that
mysterious place where I came from.
I began thinking of Thom’s age. One day, I would go to
pick Thom up for an adventure. I will find an empty picnic table. Thom’s body
will give out and his spirit will subside to some directional place I will not
be able to go to. It will be a mystery to me. I am sure where ever Thom will
be, he will be standing in Demeter’s golden field.
Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore, Lightning of the North
