The Appalachian Chronicles: Shades of Gray

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  I closed my eyes and slowly sank into an imaginary world, a world that was much like the one I had day-dreamed of hours ago while standing in Thomas’s shower with hot water running down my back – that gentle massage that somehow caused me to envision a place where it was easy to persuade people to live in harmony. Living in harmony, why not? I took deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  Dissolving comfortably into semi-consciousness, the sounds outside my tent, the smells inside, and the hard feeling of the uneven earth beneath my supine body faded. As I lay there, I felt relieved that I had not allowed the loneliness of the early hours of the morning to cloud my thinking. I congratulated myself for managing not to become a more stereotypical Southerner – a kind of bigoted demon one often reads about in second rate novels.

  It was in that sleepy state that an inexplicable image returned – a young Max and the large woman were standing in the kitchen of my childhood home in Charleston. I wanted to speak to Max and the woman, but the image faded and I began reliving another moment from the same part of my past. I was lying on a couch, and I felt a distant, yet convincingly real and gentle touch of a woman. My youthful head was in her aged lap, and the base of her heavy palm lightly touched my temple as she ran her thick, arthritic fingers though my soft and tangled hair. Her dress was simple, clean and light blue; and, a faint smell of bleach drifted about the room. I heard her humming a soothing tune that seemed to fill a void left behind by someone that was lost long ago. Her fondness for me was obvious, as was the sense of security and perfect comfort that she gave to me.