"Morning Aunt Sarah," Ike called out as he walked past her trailer.
She sat in her rocking chair on the porch he had built for her last summer. She was a tiny woman well into her eighties who fiercely maintained her independence.
"Morning, Isaac. How are you doing today?"
"I'm fine. As a matter of fact, I feel so good I'm going for a walk up the holler."
He pointed up the creek flanked by a steep hill on each side that disappeared into the trees.
"There isn't a thing that's changed since the last time you hiked up there. People don't live up hollers like they used to."
"Actually Google Maps shows that the hillside slumped last winter and dammed up the creek. It looks like there might be a swimming hole up there now. I thought I'd check it out."
"Your mama told me that you have a job with the state this year."
"Yep, I'm working for the highway department. They got me picking up dead animals and litter off the roads in the county."
"Seems like your daddy could have gotten you a better job than that."
"I didn't ask him to, Aunt Sarah. I wanted to do it on my own."
Sarah laughed and shook her head.
"You're like every other Armstrong I've met, head strong and determined to do everything your way."
"It didn't seem right," Ike shrugged, "to play the 'my father's a judge card'. I wanted to get the job on my own merits."
"I find it hard to believe that no one where you work knows that your father's a judge."
"I'm sure they do, but they don't treat me any different than anyone else. That's what I want."
"It's already getting hot. Why don't you come up on the porch and I'll fetch you some iced tea."
"I'm not really thirsty right now, but I'm sure I'll be thirsty when I return. Can I beg one from you then?"
He hated telling her no. She had to be lonely living all alone despite the standing invitation to come to dinner with Ike and his parents every Sunday. Her husband had died years ago and all of her children had moved out of state looking for jobs. That was the sad state of affairs in Eastern Kentucky after the coal industry had collapsed. The old people stayed and the young people left for jobs in other states. His dad said it was foolish for him to stay.
"Well, be careful of ticks. They're bad this year."
"I will," he promised as he shouldered his day pack and walked the path leading up the holler.
Ike's dad pastured a couple head of cattle up here every year and they kept the weeds down so ambling up the creek would be easy until he began climbing to the ridge at the back of the holler. After that he had no idea what he would face.
When he crested the low ridge, he scanned the green chaos below. A wild profusion of trees and vines lay before him. He was sure other men had passed this way before, corn had been planted and cattle grazed, but he couldn't prove it by what he saw. The green had taken over. Two creeks led off below him separated by a low ridge. After consulting the map on his phone, he took the holler to the left and splashed down the center of the creek to avoid the crown-of-thorns vines and the blackberry brambles blanketing the hillside. It was a hot, sunny morning; in the shade the syrupy air slid in and out of his lungs thick with humidity and the redolence of flowers and decay. For a moment he wondered is he had stepped into a fairy world where man no longer ruled.
He hoped the pond was worth the two and a half mile hike over rough country through scrub trees, thorny vines and kudzu. His canteen sloshed with each step. His water was half gone and he hadn't reached the pond.
Despite the heat and humidity, Ike found himself whistling. These old mountains had cast their magic on him once again. He ached for them during the year at school where everything was so flat, so crowded and so dull. At school, he yearned to see hills scraping the bottoms off winter clouds the way they did at home, but the sky at school was as dull, flat and gray as everything else.
He missed the high lonesome sound the whistle made as the train climbed out of the valley headed east. He found no trails at school leading up a mysterious hill or down a holler waiting to be explored. There were no arrow heads to be found in rock shelters on the hills, or long gone farms to explore marked only by the standing field stone chimneys and in the spring by daffodils planted by a nameless wife along cabin walls long gone.
His papaw, Amos, claimed when these hills had soaked into you, it was where you wanted to be. You could leave for a while, but the hills pulled you back. Ike no longer wanted to leave.
"I want to get you out of these hills, son," his father had told him, "go to college in Lexington or Louisville. There's nothing left around here except old people and abandoned coal mines."
Being a good son, he had gone to school in the plains beyond, and he had tried hard. People seemed grumpier outside of these old hills, and everyone was in a hurry. His accent marked him as a hillbilly.
Before long, the hillside leveled out to overgrown bottom land and the holler widened to twenty yards across. He followed a deer trail alongside the creek and made deeper progress into the fold between hulking mountains where the late morning sunlight was only now evaporating the dew. As the air grew warmer in the intense sun, cicadas began their long raucous calls adding to the low drone of the insects while red birds and blue birds trilled from deep in the brush. Around a bend in the creek, he discovered the new pond hard up against the steep slope on the far side and much easier to approach on this side.
A woman nude from the waist up sunned herself on a smooth bit of shelf rock beside the pond. He caught his breath at the sight as she drew in her sketchbook unaware. Her breasts were perfect. They were high, full, and pale. She belonged there not so much adding to the beauty of the scene as being the beauty that adds color and life to everything around her. Lust coursed through him, but awe replaced it almost at once. She was beyond beautiful.
He considered walking up to her without any warning, but that seemed cruel. She had as much right to be here as he did. Instead, he chose to whistle as he broke a couple of twigs to announce his presence from cover and watched her slide her blouse on and button it before he emerged from the thicket.
"Hi!" he called, "can I approach you?"
That drew a sarcastic grin from her.
"Of course you can, silly."
He walked up and sat on the flat rock across from her.
"I didn't want you to think I was weird or anything," he said as he slipped off his day pack and stretched his shoulders. The closer he got, the more beautiful she was. Her eyes were an intense blue that he might fall into if he gazed too long.
"What would you have done if I had told you no?"
He removed his U of K baseball cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"I would have begun talking to you about thermodynamics. In no time I would have convinced you that I was a dull, harmless harmless geek, but if you still said no, I would have gone home and come back another day."
"Where's home?" she asked.
He pointed back up to the head of the holler.
"It's back over the ridge at the mouth of Glory Branch off Stillwater Creek. I think I'm still on my papaw's land."
"Are you an Armstrong?" the girl's smile faded, "I'll get off your land if you want me to."
"Why would I want you to do that? You're not doing anything wrong. My papaw don't like people hunting on his land, but that's about it."
"Why are you here?" she asked.
"I saw on Google Maps a pond had formed, and I was wondering if it would make a good swimming hole," he glanced over the pond, "it looks deep enough and the water looks clear. What's your name, by the way?"
