Blue Ridge

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

This is an installment in the

Rebecca

series.

Blue Ridge

By Royce F. Houton

Summer has a reliable timetable for taking up residence in the Virginia Tidewater -- the low-lying coastal region through which rivers and creeks wind like serpents, emptying themselves eventually into the lower Chesapeake Bay where it kisses the Atlantic Ocean. Locals call it Hampton Roads, shorthand for a cluster of pretty substantial cities at the southeasternmost corner of Virginia that includes -- but is not limited to -- Virginia Beach, which is the state's largest city with a significant summer tourist industry as its name implies; Portsmouth; Chesapeake; and Norfolk, where I have lived with Becky Parsons for the past year and a half.

Summer traditionally starts with restrained increments in May that gather in frequency, heat and duration until it finally settles in full time around late June or Independence Day. The summer of 2024 arrived suddenly with all the subtlety of a home invasion.

More often than not, it's sweltering here from July through mid-September, especially when the air drifts on the prevailing southwesterly air currents, picking up all the steamy output the sand flats, farm fields, swamps, bayous and mud bogs in rural Southside Virginia and the North Carolina low country can yield. But by mid-May of 2024, muggy heat that can soak through an undershirt and dress shirt in less than five minutes had settled in with no intention of moving along.

Becky and I loved spending time outdoors. We took turns living at her house in Norfolk's somewhat patrician Ghent neighborhood, which had a very private back yard that allowed us to wear the minimum when we like -- sometimes not even that! -- and my beachfront house on a sandy strand in Norfolk's Ocean View area, the southern shoreline near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. We could be adventurous outdoors there, too, but it required more vigilance because the shoreline itself is public access for about 30 feet from the high tide waterline, meaning joggers or dog walkers could (and almost have) surprised us in compromising situations.

But weather this miserable made anything outdoors -- from barbecues with Becky's daughters and grandkids to making out -- unappealing to say the least.

By the first week of June, we'd both had enough.

"This frozen Margarita is

not

doing the trick," Becky lamented as we reclined on chaise lounges on her deck just after sunset. We had hoped to take in a meteor shower in the northern sky provided we could see through the gray, hazy humidity that made the stars indistinguishable and rendered the moon a silvery blur.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled into her eyes when I looked over at her. The same was true on the untanned skin of my bare chest. The cloth bunched around the drawstring of my sleep shorts was already soaked.

I nodded sympathetically at Becky. "You're right, Becks. This sucks."

"We expect this for July and August, but the calendar says it's still more than two weeks before summer starts. Kids aren't even out of school yet," she said, taking a gulp of her fast-melting Margarita. "Fuck climate change."

"Is it too early for us to get out of this swamp to higher altitudes for a few days?" I said.

"Why not? Neither of us has to punch a clock. What you got in mind?"

"There's this little village I love up in the Berkshires if you feel like it."

She scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

"Don't feel like airports or an all-day drive," she said.

"Blowing Rock?" I was referring to a lovely mountaintop community in far western North Carolina, not far from Boone. It's among the highest points in the Appalachians.

"Too far. Too crowded."

"Homestead? Greenbrier?" Those are old luxury hotels and resorts in the Alleghanies, both about a six-hour drive if not longer. The Greenbrier is just across the state line in West Virginia. She knew that and shook her head.

"I want private. I want woods and hiking trails. I'd be happy if we didn't see another soul the whole time."

"Blue Ridge?"

That's our closest mountain range, just a little over three hours up Interstate 64. We've hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail in Nelson County a little west of Charlottesville. It's got some history between us, too. It's where our friendship turned into our initial courtship. Years ago. Before life interrupted us.

Becky nodded and flashed her thumbs-up.

"Let me see if I can find us a place to stay that gives us woods and is private, where we might not run into another soul and that I can book for as early as tomorrow," I said, fishing my iPhone from my pocket. "That about cover it?"

We looked over a half-dozen AirB&B properties, and while they were charming, they were in or on the periphery of communities like Bedford, Roseland, Lovingston, Amherst or Schuyler, and Becks vetoed them. When Becky said "woods," she was evidently thinking of something

way

off the grid, not some tourist village with wide flagstone paths suited to golf carts that felt like summer camp for the Medicare crowd.

I drilled down and found some local vacation rental agencies that had photos of cabins well off the beaten path. Many of them looked forlorn, even trashy. Others, though, looked more like what Becky had in mind. We settled on a luxury one-bedroom log cabin dating to the 19

th

century in the area near Crabtree Falls and Montebello. It had been outfitted with every creature comfort imaginable, even a detached sauna, and was well out in the woods not far off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Best of all: it was available starting the next day, a Wednesday, with check-in starting at 3 p.m.

"Book it and let's start packing," Becky said, tossing the watery dregs of her Margarita over the deck railing as she rose from her lounger and retreated inside to air conditioning and a chance to shower off the sweat that now glued her oversized N.C. State Wolfpack t-shirt to her curves that never failed to command my attention.

I booked us for four days -- through Sunday morning -- then followed her indoors as soon as I got the rental confirmation. There's room for two in that shower.

▼ ▼ ▼

Meeker Cabin was secluded. Maybe more than secluded. It was so hidden away down a succession of gravel and unpaved lanes that it took us nearly an hour to find it. Losing cellular data coverage not long after we turned off I-64 onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, rendering GPS navigation apps useless, didn't help. When we finally arrived, Becky was beaming. It checked all her boxes.

That was particularly true with the 25-degree drop in temperatures and the cool, fresh breeze. It was 94 and sticky when we left Norfolk a little before noon. The afternoon high here had been 76. By the dinner hour, it was down to 69 with a forecast overnight low of 56 under an unobstructed canopy of stars.

She spread her arms and twirled around in the clover-covered meadow that doubled as the cabin's front lawn, a clearing that sloped gently downward to the west and afforded us a view of the Shenandoah Valley below. This, she said, "is the right way to feel alive."

I carried in our one bag of luggage with all our clothing and grooming needs along with two bags of groceries we had brought from home and opened a bottle of Cabernet while she explored the grounds a little more. When she returned to the cabin, I was waiting on the screened porch in one of the two oversized wicker chairs with the wine and two stemmed glasses I found in a kitchen cabinet. Rather than take the other seat, she curled herself onto my lap and kissed me.

"Wow, what's that for," I asked.

"This," she said, glancing around her at the cabin, the meadow, the darkening woods. "You read my mind."

"Remind me to read your mind more often," I said as I pulled her to me for a kiss that lingered on and on -- long enough for her to feel me stiffening beneath my camping shorts where it pressed into her.

"Mmmm. Nasty boy," she purred against my lips.

It had occurred to me on the drive up here that she was braless beneath her loose-fitting, floral-print cotton dress that flowed from her bustline to mid-calf in length. What I hadn't realized until now was that she wore nothing else beneath it, either. She took my right hand, guided it midway up her inner thigh, pushing up the hem of her dress as she did, until finally my fingers sensed her warm core.

"And my naughty girl," I whispered back as I nibbled and kissed her neck.

I had covered my hand in her wetness and teased her bud to her first climax before she stood, pulled the dress over her head in one swift movement and stepped out of her sandals, leaving her naked. I used the time to shed my shorts and boxers before Becky again took her seat, this time astraddle me.

"Now fill your naughty girl's drenched pussy," she growled.

Dirty sex talk was out of character for Becky. She was never shy about letting me know what she needed when we make love, but she was a believer in showing more than telling. When she did use words, they were general and demure: "Yes, like that!" or "Longer, slower strokes." But something had flipped a switch within her in the cool, late-spring gloaming at an altitude a few thousand feet higher than our almost sea-level Hampton Roads home. Her sex was almost drooling as she sank herself fully onto me without pause and began grinding her mound hard into my pubic bone. She crested twice in less than 10 minutes from that alignment without us ever uncoupling, each time shuddering and wailing in her release. Then she ordered me out of the chair and positioned herself crouching in the seat, presenting her backside to me. She came once more in synch with me as I emptied myself deep inside her..

Drained, we slumped into the chair together, gently peppering each other with kisses as the sun's last, faint hues retreated from the sky and the Milky Way filled the heavens.

It may have been fifteen minutes. It may have been an hour or more. But at some point, I awoke, sore from the awkward position in which Becky and I had fallen asleep in each other's arms, scooped her slim form into my arms and carried her to bed. We slept almost around the clock, waking naked and hungry as wolves to a Blue Ridge sunrise.

▼ ▼ ▼

Our first full day was intentional laziness, something we unashamedly treated ourselves to. After I whipped up a massive traditional breakfast of thick bacon, scrambled eggs, toasted English muffins and cinnamon oatmeal (it's an apostasy to Virginians, but neither of us love hominy grits), we spent the morning reading the books we brought with us. The closest thing to industriousness was a leisurely drive to Schuyler.

"The Waltons" weekly dramatic series was appointment television in Becky's home during her high school years. Her parents and widowed grandmom, who lived with them, were arrayed before the TV well advance of its airtime on Thursday nights in the 1970s and '80s. She was touched by the sweet innocence of a fictional mountain family in stories set during the Great Depression that were informed by the childhood of "Waltons" screenwriter Earl Hamner in Schuyler. Hamner's childhood home was saved from decay, preserved and stands now as the unofficial "home of the real-life John Boy Walton."

Becky lost touch with the series during her years at N.C. State and later as a young wife and mom. But something drew her back to the series, first as Lifetime Network reruns and then via streaming. Being in Hamner's homestead reconnected Becky to her family's past, though that of the Waltons.

"Being here, seeing this, it makes me feel like I felt my freshman year in high school at home with mom, dad and Bee Maw in our den. They'd share the couch, and I'd sprawl out on the carpet in front of the TV. Sometimes, Bee Maw would pop some popcorn the old-fashioned way using Crisco shortening in this old cast iron pot. Sounds sappy, but being there, quiet, riveted to that show and trying not to let it show when we started getting teary-eyed... we felt connected as a family in a way I don't believe we ever did after that," she said.

Becky drifted slowly through the Hamner house, stopping to stare at things she had never seen before as though she recognized them. I hung back, watching quietly as she drank in every detail, lingering in one room after another until a young volunteer docent with "DOLORES" on her name tag let us know she was about to close up for the day.

We took our time on the drive back, which is good considering the narrow, serpentine county roads of the region are not conducive to getting from point A to point B in a hurry. And the ride was a pensive, peaceful, introspective kind of quiet. Becky, I assumed, was reflecting on the reverie of her youth the Hamner House had evoked. I was just appreciating the 360-degree beauty of the Blue Ridge foothills.

We stopped for an early supper at a locally celebrated family restaurant that had earned a reputation for superb farm-to-table cooking with beef, poultry, pork and fish sourced from the region's farms and streams. And the contented quiet continued as we made our way back to Meeker Cabin as best we could without guidance from our phones.

Silence is not the default setting in our relationship. Sometimes, it meant some unresolved disagreement was hanging over us. Sometimes, it meant one or both of us was worried. But most of the time, it was either exhaustion or -- in this evening's situation -- a shared sense of peace. But I would always be a little suspicious of extended periods of silence when we traveled because that's what happened many years before after a traumatic night that shook Becky to her core, that changed her for a time, and that ruptured a romance we were about to consummate.

But not tonight.

Becky reached her left hand across the center console and softly grasped my right hand, sitting by the gearshift. I looked at her and she was smiling at me.

"I love you," she said softly, giving my hand a gentle squeeze before returning her gaze to the fields, hills and wooded highlands we were passing as the car climbed the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, back to Meeker Cabin.

▼ ▼ ▼

"I know we both love our books, but we can't sit around on our asses today the way we did most of yesterday," Becky said as she sipped a hot mug of coffee.

"A good day to get on the trail, seems to me," I said.

"Yes. Which of these do we want?" Becky said, poring over a handful of brochures about scenic overlooks along the Parkway and foot trails through the wooded, sometimes steep terrain. "Here's one for the Appalachian Trail up to the top of Humpback Rock. Here's one that takes us along Crabtree Creek and Crabtree Falls that looks pretty close by. It's about three miles."

We studied them and decided not to commit to anything too demanding. Three miles on foot in someplace as flat as Norfolk was nothing like the challenging inclines the path could take at an elevation of 2,700 to about 3,000 feet, where the air is cool but thinner. We opted for Humpback Rock.

We parked at the scenic overlook along the Parkway to access the trail and what the brochure said was about a 40-minute hike and a climb of about 700 feet over what was packed soil in some spots, loose gravel in others and craggy-edged stone in others.

Forty minutes my ass.

Maybe if you're 25, in great shape and accustomed to climbing trails like this. Not retired, wearing jogging shoes and lugging several bottles of water that left us, winded with our legs quivering from exertion in the 80 minutes it took us to reach the summit. But that hour so at the stony pinnacle made it all worth it.

The 360-degree unobstructed view on the clear day at noon was breathtaking. To our north lay the great, undisturbed expanse of protected federal land within the Shenandoah National Park. To our east lay Rockfish Gap and, over the horizon, Charlottesville. To the west was the verdant valley as the mountain descended into Augusta County and Waynesboro. The unflagging cool breeze that rose up the western slope bore the intoxicating perfume of pines and maples and dogwoods and oaks; of honeysuckle and wild rhododendron that it gathered along the way.

"I could stay here all day," Becky said, bunching up the hoodie sweatshirt she had brought along and using it as a pillow as she lay on her back on the massive rock, taking in undiluted sunshine.

I sat beside her, my Scots Irish flesh too lacking in protective pigment to remove my hat, sunglasses or long-sleeved t-shirt or risk having more precancerous lesions painfully excised from my skin on my next dermatologist's visit. But the brisk air balanced with the warming sun were just about perfect.

"And I'd stay here with you," I said. "At least until one of us has to pee."

The descent was even trickier, at least near the top. Sharp ledges of rock required cautious, deliberate footing by tenderfoot hikers like us without the proper high-topped leather footwear for this sort of terrain. A hasty step and an unfortunate slip could leave one of us with a nasty gash. That's the last thing we were looking for.

But sometimes what we aren't looking for finds us.

On the trail a few hundred feet ahead and below us, we heard loud, urgent, fearful voices. While the words weren't clear, it seemed like a shouted warning. Then, seconds later, what sounded like a child's scream and then frantic shouts from adults.

Becky and I rounded a turn in the trail to see a man and woman bent over a child. In the distance, to the right, a commotion as something large and black scurried into the underbrush.

As we reached them, Becky was the first to see blood spewed on the leaves and rocks and the terrified face of a badly injured boy of perhaps four or five. The man and woman, his panicked parents, were trying to comfort the child and unsure what to do. The man was vainly trying to dial 9-1-1 on a cell phone outside its service range. The woman tried to use her hand to close a gaping wound on his forearm.

Instinctively, Becky's experience as a nurse took over. First, she told the frantic parents of her medical training and experience to reassure them and back away so she could tend to the child. The harder challenge was comforting the child who inconsolable, thrashing, screaming and hemorrhaging bloo. Becky caressed his face, smiled at him, brushed his curly blond locks from his face and assured her that she knew what to do and that he was going to be all right. She had done that for years at the largest trauma hospital in Hampton Roads. Children were always the hardest injuries for her, but that was also when she was at her best. The boy calmed down, reassured by the confidence of the nice lady who called herself Miss Becky.

The child had been mauled by an adult black bear, we learned from Todd, the child's father. They had happened upon the mother and her two cubs on the trail, and the boy, Jackson, began walking toward one of the cubs, as if to pet it. Black bears will usually give humans wide berth unless they perceive a threat, and little Jackson's move toward her the cubs constituted a threat to the mama bear.

Either the animal's claws or its teeth has torn a long and deep wound from midway down the inside of Jackson's right forearm almost to his wrist. It appeared, from the blood loss, a vein or artery had been breached, Becky said.

"I need something like a belt or maybe shoelaces," Becky said, calmly but with businesslike urgency, the way a surgeon would call for a hemostat in an operating theater. I knew what she was doing; I had seen her do it before. She needed to fashion a torniquet and apply it to Jackson's deeply gashed arm the arm immediately.