asheville, nc

Two days ago I started second-guessing myself.

It started when I fished out the cash sock from my backpack. The billfold inside has become scary thin. Looks like there’s a few things I’m not going to be able to get to. Buying a $300 dingy and floating down the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans is at the very top of a list of pipe dreams. If I’m going to move to a city and sustain myself until I get a job, plus pay first months rent and a deposit, I’m going to have to stop travelling. Like, two weeks ago.

Where am I going to move to? Why all the travelling? I’m not going to be able to swing it this time. I’m going to run out of money. I’ve been an idiot with my money. Moving to Atlanta is a bad idea. This girl . . .

. . . and so on. I was driving myself crazy.

I went into a rundown grocery store on a Cherokee Indian reservation and found cheap gaudy white thick-framed made-in-Taiwan sunglasses, covered in a half inch of dust. $1.99. They made me happy. I never took them off. They took the edge off.

The Australian girl and I, travelling in her van now for eight or nine days, we’re camping in the Great Smokey Mountains. She has a tent and a gas cooker and we’re eating well and there’s much less mosquitos to bite here than in South Carolina. We rent inner tubes and ride down the river that runs through the campground. It’s beautiful and fun and I’m laughing the whole way. A three foot waterfall dumps me head-over-heels (or “ass-over-tits”, which is apparently the far superior Australian equivalent). My new sunglasses are washed away into oblivion. I should have taken them off. I go back to being despondent Dean.

The next morning I wake up early-ish. I resolve to kick my blues. The woods are gorgeous and peaceful and I grab my towel and head upstream for a swim before breakfast. Maybe I’ll even catch sight of my sunglasses hung up in some reeds like Baby Moses.

From the riverbank I hear mewling. It’s little kitteny mewling in the river. I jump down into the bank and I see a little white sausage of a baby puppy, eyes still closed, trailing an umbilical cord and flailing around in the leaves. There’s another one with it’s head stuck between two rocks, submerged to the neck in the quickly moving river. Both are making a lot of noise.

I move the rock and snatch the puppy. The other one, too.

What to do with some dickhead’s half-assed attempt at a cliche puppy drowning? I stare blankly at them, writhing and just-born and mewling in my hands. My mood darkens.

Along the riverbank there’s an alcove made by some tree roots. I look inside and see a pure-bred beagle looking back up at me, shaking and scared. Under her tail, half of a pink squirming puppy is pushing it’s way out of her body. I don’t believe in anthropomorphism, but her eyes look up at me in that sad beagle way and clearly say; “Fuck.”

Since she started the dialogue, I answer back.

“You need to take better care of your shit. Do you have any idea where I found these?” The babies get tossed back in. They dial in on her and stop making racket. My mood improves.

I go further upstream and find the deep pool I was looking for and I swim in the frigid water. It’s fresh and clean and crisp and it wakes me up. My mood improves.

I get out of the water and find a small parasite in my crotch gorging itself on my blood. I pop it and it leaves behind a purple welt that has yet to go away. My mood darkens.

I gather my things and my hands are numb from the water and I drop my camera. It slides down the smooth river rock and into the water. Plop! There will now be no more pictures from my trip. My mood darkens.

Before leaving the campground we inform the rangers of the puppies. We spend the rest of the day hiking to a viewpoint along the Appalachian Trail.

My mood continues to go up and down.

It’s par for the course.