Appalachian Galapagos Read Free

giant bear of a man, his thick beard fell against a barrel chest.
    Frank returned his gaze to the river. The strangeness of returning to the place where he had grown up was anachronistic. He should feel at home. Even now, as he watched his old friends, he could almost believe that he had never left. Almost. Even though the boys had treated him like he had just been on a long vacation, it was still different. He saw things differently. And it wasn't just his perception. He was different. Frank was a product of his own environment and for years now, his environment had not been within the Smokey Mountains of Eastern Tennessee.
    And he wasn't sure he liked himself for it.
    Like when they had picked him up from the Holiday Inn. He had been standing in front of the entrance in his waterproof Hi-Tec boots, brown cotton Duckheads , and an L.L. Bean jacket when he had heard his friends approach. They must have been a block away, but David Allan Coe singing X-rated country music preceded them like a redneck siren, a soundtrack to their beer-drenched lives. As Frank waited for them with a nostalgic smile, he realized just how damn much he missed them.
    An old Ford pickup, bondo and rust-colored paint holding the rattling mass of Detroit metal together, skidded to a stop underneath the green and yellow awning. Frank's smile evolved into a grin as he realized that it was the exact same truck he remembered partying in when he was a kid. The same truck that he had shown Renee' what his thingy was used for. The same truck he had driven pell mell through the tall trees of a Jacob Mountain pine nursery, three dead deer in the back and a sheriff hot on his trail. The same truck he had called his second home throughout his teen years.
    Right up until the truck pulled up, Frank had been standing next to a tight young Asian girl who had been giving him a definite fuck me stare while waiting for a cab. But as Jimmy and Lukas fell out of the truck in an avalanche of empty Budweisers and man giggles he could feel her heat turn frosty. The friendly hugs and kisses of his best friends made it even more difficult to explain, but he was home again and that's all that mattered.
    Yeah, he was home.
    Jimmy walked up beside him, studied the angry rapids, and nodded before cracking open his can of beer. "Hell yeah, let's do this!"
    Lukas was already pulling the aluminum bass boat from the back of his truck. His black hair whipped behind him as he worked. It was a haircut that went out of style in the late 1980s. They called it a mullet—short on the sides and top, long in the back like a tail. Only professional wrestlers, porn stars, and country singers seemed to wear the style now.
    And of course, Lukas.
    "You're goddamn, right. The river ain't never goin ' to get any better than this."
    Frank watched his friends for a brief moment, smiling softly at their little kid-like excitement, and let his eyes drift slowly to the rushing water of the river. Normally, the Hiawasee was pretty tame with families floating languidly down the center on rented rafts and inner tubes, or old men fishing along the edge for the elusive southern trout. The rains had been cascading for a week, however, and now the laziness of the creek had turned hyperactive, the water hurling by like a jet, the mist from the churning rapids sending his blond hair whipping around his head.
    Frank took a long look at the aluminum bass boat and the mound of beer and sleeping bags and beer and food and fishing supplies and beer and knew that what they were going to do was stupid. In fact, it bordered upon the retarded.
    He turned as he heard Lukas giggle and watched Jimmy push at his own belly button through his shirt, a big smile underneath his furry mustache, bobbing his head up and down in innocent joy. Frank grinned and glanced over at Lukas who was jerking out yet another case of beer from the back of the truck. The feeling of belonging was in a slamfest with his real desire not to do what he