Native American rituals and legends described here are not accurate representations of past or present culture.
*****
Mary Louise was the first to awaken, sitting bolt upright, gasping for breath. "Goodness!" she moaned. "I think I just—"
I opened my eyes in time to see her lift her skirt and look down at her panties. She touched herself briefly and pulled her skirt back down. It was too dark to see, even with the occasional passing headlights of other cars, but I suspected that she was sopping wet.
My own underwear was soaked and sticky, and I knew I had come in my pants.
"GodDAMN!" Tommy groaned. "If these dreams get any better I'll just stay there and hope never to wake up.
Jennifer giggled. "Wet dreams all around. Four simultaneously. We should send that to Ripley's Believe It or Not."
She rubbed her face against my cum-soaked dick. "Was it good for you, Sweetie? Or should I say, 'Husband?'"
"'Good' is not the word I would use," I said, bending down to kiss her. "More like...spectacular? Cataclysmic? Earth-shattering?"
"All three to the tenth power," Tommy sighed. "And then some."
The privacy screen retracted and Vholes stuck his head over the back of his seat. "Did you have a pleasant nap, children? Sweet dreams? I'm glad you're awake, because we are now approaching Nashville. Now if Mr. Sanchez would be so kind as to take us to the airport? I believe I saw a sign indicating that we should take the next exit."
Jennifer sat up and whispered into my ear. "Airport? Don't you have to show ID to get a ticket?"
I nodded. "I'm sure Vholes knows that. He'll have something up his sleeve. You'll see."
When the limo cruised into the long-term parking lot and sighed to a halt in a space near the back, Vholes and Sanchez got out of the car and closed the doors. Vholes walked around to the driver's side and took Sanchez's hand for a brief shake. I pressed the button for the passenger window and eased it down an inch or two, praying that it wouldn't squeak.
"Now I expect to be away for some time, Mr. Sanchez," Vholes was saying. "Quite some time, I suspect. And until I return, you will be on vacation. At full pay, of course."
"But Mr. Vholes, sir—" Sanchez began.
"No, no, I quite insist. You deserve it. Now I want you to fly home. And you must, and I cannot stress this too much, MUST pay for your ticket with cash."
He extracted a sheaf of bills from his jacket and peeled off several of them. "Even so, there's a risk..." Vholes drew a deep breath. "I must ask you, Mr. Sanchez, for the sake of these children, if you could see your way clear to forgetting you made this little trip. In case anyone should ask."
"Sure, Mr. Vholes. It never happened."
"You were at home all day, too ill to report to work so I had to chauffeur myself, as you have known me to do from time to time in the past. Now, when you find that you feel up to it, fully recovered from this illness, as it were, I would like you to take a vacation."
He began shuffling more bills out of his stash. "To Hawaii. With your lovely wife, of course." He shuffled more bills, hesitated, and handed the whole stack to Sanchez. "Stay there at least a week. Two if you like. Keep track of your expenses and if this is not sufficient to cover your costs you can collect the difference from my office."
"Thank you, sir," Sanchez said gratefully. "The wife will love that. Just call me whenever you get back and I'll fly out here to meet you, if you like."
"Most excellent, Mr. Sanchez. And I thank you. Now the departure gates are that way..."
They walked off toward the airport and stopped under a streetlight some hundred yards away. They shook hands, spoke briefly, and Vholes returned to the car. He got into the driver's seat and started removing documents from the glove compartment, along with another packet of bills.
As he ducked back out of the car, he said: "Collect your belongings and wait here, children. Please don't leave anything behind. I shall return momentarily."
We gathered our backpacks and moments later a late-model Cadillac pulled up beside us and stopped. The window whirred down and we saw Vholes inside. "Get in, children. We still have miles to go before we sleep."
When we went through the exit gate Vholes handed a ticket and several bills to the cashier and we rolled on through. "A lesson here for you, children: When you leave your vehicle in a parking lot, do not leave the time-stamped ticket inside it. It's an open invitation to thieves."
We drove across town and parked at the back of a crowded Wal-Mart parking lot. "Time for a rest-stop, children. But do not get lost. We will all stay together."
We all made a bathroom stop. I went into a stall and changed my shorts, which were chafing miserably. I wished that I could take a shower. While I was attempting to wash my face at the automated sink, Tommy came out of another stall with a sheepish grin on his face.
"Dude! My drawers look like a hippo used them for a snot-rag. And he had the flu."
"Way to gross me out, Dude. I really didn't need to hear that. I got my own problems."
After the pit stop we each grabbed a shopping cart and Vholes directed us to the camping section. We loaded up a bunch of camping gear, all the high-end stuff, and then we filled the other carts with food while Vholes picked up an assortment of clothing and other items. A large ice chest completed our supplies.
Vholes paid the cashier and we left the store. Rather than heading back to the Cadillac, however, Vholes led us to the employee parking lot, walking down a long row of parked cars and looking at each one carefully. He finally chose an older-model SUV, laid his hands on the door handle, and muttered a few words. The doors unlocked, the engine started, and we loaded the supplies into the back, and got in, Vholes in the driver's seat.
As we left the parking lot, Tommy said, "You really need to teach me how to do that, Mr. Vholes."
Vholes looked over his shoulder at us. "Perhaps I shall, some day. You seem to have the potential...quite extraordinary, actually. Although I doubt that this particular skill would be of much benefit to you in the future, there are other things...But we near our objective, children. We should arrive at just about sunrise. Couldn't be better, actually. Now I must concentrate on driving, for the roads are tortuous at best. You should relax and nap, if possible. We will have a long day tomorrow."
We drove a long way on steep, winding country roads, steadily climbing into the Great Smoky Mountains. When we skirted Gatlinburg and crossed the North Carolina border, Vholes said, "Almost there, children. Can you feel it? Exciting, isn't it."
In fact my heart was pounding with anticipation as we wound ever higher into the mountains toward a place I did not recognize, but instinctively felt that I had been before.
Jennifer was flushed and sweat beaded on her upper lip despite the air-conditioning. Mary Louise was seated on Tommy's lap, her arms around his neck. "We're going home, love," she whispered to him. "To the place we belong. Together."
We passed through Cherokee, North Carolina, seeing a sign for the small Eastern Cherokee reservation and continued on to Bryson City on the banks of the Tuckasegee River. Soon we came to a historical marker identifying the site of the ancient Kituwah Mound, and Vholes stopped the car in a grove of trees near a fork in the river just as the sun was rising. "We will camp here, children. If you would be so good as to unload the car and begin to make camp, I will be back shortly."
"We can just camp here?" I asked, yawning. "Won't someone come and make us leave?"
Vholes shook his head. "The land once again belongs to the Cherokee Nation. We bought it back at huge cost a few years ago. I will speak with someone at the reservation to be sure we won't be disturbed. When I come back we will go to water, then you may break your fast."
We quickly unloaded the car and Vholes drove away. We selected a spot for our campfire, sorted out our gear, and set up three large tents. Before we were finished a battered pickup truck rumbled to a stop near our campsite. It had a license plate with Cherokee symbols on it.
"Tsa-la-gi-hi A-ye-li," I read. "Cherokee Nation." On the rear window was a large sticker reading "War Pony."
"Here we go," Tommy said grimly. "Somebody already here to tell us to move."
Vholes got out of the passenger door of the truck, nodded to the driver, and the truck drove away, displaying a bumper sticker that said, 'My Heroes Have Always Killed Cowboys,' leaving us in the foggy silence of the mountain dawn. "Good. We're all set then. And I am assured that we will have privacy for what we need to do here."
"Where's our car?" Tommy asked.
"I donated it to a good cause," Vholes said. "We will have no more need of it. Now, let's get rid of these constricting clothes, shall we? And we shall go to water before the sun gets any farther along on her journey."
We looked at each other. "You want us to go naked?" Mary Louise squeaked.
"It would be for the best, dear. But if you wish we can leave our underwear on for the moment."
I shrugged and pulled off my shoes, socks and outer clothing. Tommy followed suit, and after some hesitation the girls stripped down to their bras and panties.
Vholes rummaged in a pile of Walmart bags and passed us each a pair of moccasins before removing his own suit, pants and shirt and stuffing them into an empty bag. He looked even more skeletal without his clothes, clad only in baggy shorts, his thinning grey hair blowing about his shoulders. A leather pouch on a greasy thong hung around his neck.
As we approached the river bank, Jennifer breathed, "This is the place! It has changed, but it is the same place we went in the dream. I can feel it...it speaks..."
We all felt it calling to us and goose pimples rose on our nearly nude bodies. Following Vholes, we waded into the chilly water and faced east, pulling off our underwear and tossing it onto the river bank. Proudly naked before the Creator we faced the fog-shrouded sun and sang our morning song before ritually submerging ourselves seven times.
As we stood, streaming water, Vholes began another song, one I had never heard in this world or any other, and the powerful medicine of it sent chills down my spine and blurred my eyes.
We waded out of the river and Vholes picked up his leather pouch, opened it, and offered a pinch of tobacco to the earth. He then assembled a small stone pipe, stuffed it with tobacco and other herbs and lit it. He blew puffs of smoke to the north, west, south and east in turn, then to the sky and earth, and waved the last puff across his body before passing the pipe to me.
I repeated his actions, passed the pipe to Tommy, and when the others had completed the ritual Vholes took the pipe back, knocked the dottle onto the ground, and stowed it back in his pouch.
We went back to the campsite and while the girls began rooting around in the heap of supplies, trying to organize things, Tommy and I went in search of fallen branches for firewood.
