Chapter 4: The Snake Pit

Have you ever been on an adventure of the mind? That is to say, have you ever used drugs that expand your outlook? Or instead, have you ever looked down into the pit of insanity, only to just get away before you were pulled down by a writhing mass of boa constrictors that a second ago was your hand touching the edge of the slimy pit wall? I just did, and am barely surviving some of my worst paranoid nightmares, to boot.

A couple of Tuesdays ago, while checking out a new bike shop, I bumped into a buddy of mine, Vincent, a graduate student in geography at the University of Tennessee. He had just finished digitizing the topography of the Frozen Head wilderness area north of Oak Ridge and wanted to take some friends there for a hike. Always interested in exploring the outdoors, I agreed to meet him and his friends the next Saturday at a grocery store near the entrance to Frozen Head.

It’s hard to believe only a few days have passed since our great adventure transpired but the blackness that has traveled up my right arm to my shoulder stabs me in the head with pain as a reminder that the end of my adventure is yet to come.

“Hey everybody, this is James,” Vincent said, introducing me as his friends piled out of a green and white Nova. I walked over to greet them.

“Hi, I’m Lee,” the driver said, shaking my hand, “I live down the block from Vincent.” Lee has red hair, a slim body and glasses. You know, he doesn’t really have red hair, not red like a fire engine, nor red-orange like a pumpkin that you see on some redheads. His hair is more like a golden auburn than red.

Vincent pointed to a couple getting out of the back seat. “This is Jim and Susan. Susan’s a nurse so she insisted on bringing a small first-aid kit.”

Jim walked around the car to greet me. “Nice to meet you, James. I understand you’re a writer.”

“Some people accuse me of that,” I retorted. “I have a column in the Oak Ridge newspaper.”

“Well, we’ll have a lot to talk about. I’m getting my master’s in English lit at UT.”

“Good for you,” I responded flatly, trying not to show the short, stocky fellow that I had no use for those who simply studied the written word.

“And this is Bruce,” Vincent added, as a blond-haired man taller than Vincent reached out and shook my hand vigorously.

“James, I’ve read your stuff and it always entertains me. I especially love it when you trash the government,” Bruce said in an overly loud voice. “I bet you could tell us some stories about what you know but can’t write about.”

“Yeah, but I’d have to kill you afterward,” I replied wryly. Bruce nodded his head and laughed.

Vincent patted Bruce on the back and pushed his way in between us. “Well, James, I hope you brought the goods.”

“Yessirree Bob,” I said smiling, “right here in my goodies bag.” I slapped my hand on the daypack slung over my shoulder.

Vincent turned back to his friends. “Well, guys, if you want to grab some snacks before we go, hit the store. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have mushrooms and water for lunch and I don’t know about you but that’s not even going to whet my appetite.”

We arrived at the wilderness area parking lot just as the sun was topping the ridge nearby. Vincent gathered us around the map he had spread out on the hood of the Nova.

“Okay, the main trail goes this way…”

“Hey, guess what,” Bruce interrupted, “I brought a compass.”

“Great,” Vincent replied with obviously strained patience after having to put up with Bruce’s constant babble on our way over, “but I hope we don’t have to use it. Anyway, the trail just goes up one side of the creek and down the other. I thought it would be more fun if we cross the creek here and climb up the cliff there.” Vincent put his finger on a point where the topo lines were bunched together. “From what I can tell, we should be able to follow this old feeder creek bed to the top. Once we get there we can break for lunch. Does that sound like a good idea?” Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Hey, Vincent,” Lee said in an inquisitive tone.

“What?”

“Will we be able to trailblaze like this, you know, in our condition and all?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. The way I figure it, we’ll start tripping after we cross the creek. That way we can enjoy the scenery as we climb up the canyon. By the time we get to the top we’ll be ridin’ high.”

“Cool.”

“James, if you’ll do the honors,” Vincent said to me with a bow of his head.

I put my daypack on the car, unzipped the front pouch and pulled out a plastic bag full of dried psilocybin mushrooms. “Ta-da,” I intoned as I dropped the bag on the map. “Everybody gets three buttons and five stems and I get ten dollars a head. I think that’s reasonable.”

“Ahem,” Lee said, clearing his throat mockingly.

“Well, that’s everybody but the driver. He gets a five dollar discount for providing the ride.”

“Thank you,” Lee said, as he picked up the bag first, “don’t mind if I do.”

“Since I’m the one with the map, I’ll pass on the big stuff and just eat one button,” Vincent said. “Lee, you and Jim can split my share if you want.”

“Okay,” Lee said, adding another couple of stems to his palm.

“No thanks,” Jim responded, “I don’t feel so good. James, how about you have my share?”

“And someone can have half of mine,” Susan blurted out in her mousy voice.

I looked at each one of them. “So we’ve got a bunch of wimps here today? Okay, I’ll lower my price to five bucks each and that’s my last offer.”

“Oh no, that’s not it at all,” Jim replied in an offended voice, his hand held up in protest. “I really am sick. I almost didn’t come today. I’m perfectly willing to pay the ten dollars. I just don’t want to be throwing up for the next hour.”

“Okay, I’ll only charge five dollars for you and your wife and you can split one of the portions between you.” I felt stupid negotiating a deal because I’m not a drug dealer by any means but I still had to recover what I’d paid for the mushrooms.

Vincent folded up the map while everyone took their mushrooms and gave me their money. “Well, guys, if we want to get a good view by lunch, let’s start eating those ‘shrooms and get out of here. And before we get started, don’t forget to double tie your shoelaces. I don’t want to carry someone out of here because you tripped over your own feet.”

If you haven’t experienced the effects of a hallucinogenic substance, then you might not understand what mind expansion is all about. We’re all so used to walking around surrounded by the filters and walls we’ve build around us that we forget what life was like when we first became conscious. After all, as soon as we’re born, we spend much of our time dividing the world into symbols of Safe and Unsafe to protect ourselves from potentially dangerous outside stimuli and hardly take time to explore our mind when we become self-conscious. As we get older, we take the simplistic, symbolic world we created in the crib and rework the symbols to each new experience. Depending on how well the nature/nurture rhythm has kept us in balance, our symbols may or may not match those of others in our society. When you go through a mind expanding experience – a trip – as an adult, you pretty much hang onto the old symbols you’ve created but you may reshape them slightly; otherwise, if you try to replace or completely redefine them during your trip, which usually only lasts a few hours, you find yourself in a pretty strange land at the end of the journey, like hopping on a Concorde jet and going to a foreign country where nobody knows what you’re talking about. So, if you want to have a good trip, make sure your symbols are in sync with the other travelers. That way, everybody knows the road symbols and can spend time enjoying the scenery instead of getting lost on a dead-end road because of misinterpretation.

We had just gotten to the edge of the creek when out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving. Because I wear glasses, my peripheral vision is a well-defined, although fuzzy, landscape and is the first place my mind lets go. I knew the effects of psilocybin usually kick in within about fifteen minutes so I jumped on top of a boulder, trying not to step on the miniature bright-green plant world growing there, and jerked my head around to survey the surroundings.

“Something the matter?” Vincent asked, when he noticed I had stopped following him.

“No, nothing. I thought I saw something.”

“Hey, James i-uz tripping, James i-uz tripping…” Bruce sang out.

“Oh, shut up, man,” Vincent snapped.

“Okay, okay, keep your cool.”

“Yeah, Vincent, he must be right,” I said. I waved my hand in front of me in the classic vision test and saw the fading image of my hand and arm pass across my vision. “Yeah, I can see tracers. He’s right.”

Vincent looked around the group. “Anybody else?”

“We’ve been tripping almost since we started,” Jim replied. “Must be ‘cause we’re both so small.” Or stupid, I thought.

“Me, too,” Lee added.

“How about you?” Vincent asked Bruce.

“Well, how do you mean? I mean, I feel sick to my stomach and my throat feels funny.”

“Naw, you’re still getting over the toxic junk in the mushrooms. You’ve got a while to go.”

“What about you?” Lee asked.

“Oh, it always takes me thirty minutes to an hour before my buzz starts. Besides, I didn’t take that much. Anyway, if anybody feels like they’re really tripping out, let me know. We can always stop or go back if we have to.”

“I thought you wanted to go up there,” Bruce said, looking at the cliff a half-mile past the other side of the creek.

“Yeah, well, that’s my plan. Okay, I’m ready to go if you are.”

“Go for it,” I replied as I jumped off the boulder.

We spent the next thirty minutes jumping from rock to rock, trying to find a dry way across the creek. Vincent and Bruce had no trouble with their long legs but the rest of us struggled to make the same giant leaps over swirling, eddying currents that seemed to drop into bottomless pools of deep green water.

“Oh, shit,” Susan exclaimed. We all turned to see she had slipped into a three-foot deep pool.

“Here, I can help you,” Lee said, extending his hand.

“No, that’s all right, we can manage,” Susan responded firmly, grabbing Jim’s arm. Jim tried to grab her other hand but fell in beside her.

Bruce snickered a little bit and then started laughing uncontrollably. Pretty soon, we were all laughing as if someone had decided the bowl of humor was empty and turned on our laughter faucets to fill it up. Bruce reached for Vincent to keep from falling over and knocked both of them into the water. Lee and I both stepped back on the rock and fell on our butts from laughing so hard. You could tell all of us needed this moment as a kind of icebreaker. Up till then, we had carried the stresses of the world with us. Getting wet was like washing the outside world into the creek and uniting us into a single unit.

A thought struck me. “Hey, Susan, since Jim has the backpack, does that mean the food is wet?”

“No, it means we’re going to have creek sandwich soup for lunch,” she said, laughing.

“Oh,” Lee continued, “so instead of Frozen Head we’re going to have thawed thanwiches.”

Jim climbed onto the rock and threw the backpack down. “More like water-pressed than watercress, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, it’s almost time for a break, anyway,” Vincent said as he helped Susan and Bruce out of the water. “Let’s just go straight across the creek since most everybody’s wet and dry out on that big rock on the other side.”

“Oh, so we’re going to have Frozen Head sun-dried sandwiches for lunch?” Bruce asked jokingly.

“Something like that,” Vincent said.

As we rested on the rock, letting our socks and boots dry out, we munched on some apples and raisins. Although I wasn’t hungry, I enjoyed the sensation of eating. Every bite was like injecting the best spices in the world into each taste bud on my tongue. In my mind, I could see the taste regions of my tongue (like a picture out of a seventh-grade science book) send different signals to my brain. My jaw muscles felt like the chugging pistons of a locomotive, rotating my mouth up-and-down, back-and-forth, pulling the food in like drawing in the miles of track a train eats up each day. I could sense the food travel down my throat like dirt through a worm and pass into my stomach, which I could feel gurgling and groaning with delight. Meanwhile, the sun pierced my skin, trying to drive into my bones but was held at bay by layers of cells ready to burst apart and harmlessly scatter the sun’s rays. The nerves of my butt and feet felt a thousand little ants and unknown creatures nibbling on me. I kept seeing the bugs out of the corner of my eye but when I turned to look they were gone.

Vincent laid out the map. “Well, we’re not where I thought we’d end up but I think I can get us to the top this way. I’ve tried to visually pinpoint the way we’ll go but I can’t quite see how the whole trail will lay out because of the trees up ahead. From what I can tell, though, it looks like part of the cliff collapsed not too long ago so we should have plenty of exposed roots and trees leaning over to grab onto.”

“Hey man, hug a root,” Bruce said laughing.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to trace my roots,” Jim said to Susan.

“And I’ve always wanted to dig up any dirt about your past,” she added.

“We’re not going to climb a rock slide, are we?” Lee asked to no one in particular. “I really don’t see why we can’t take the original path. After all, we’ve got all day. Who knows, maybe we’ll have more fun going that way. Maybe we’ll discover a new life form…”

“And maybe you haven’t looked at what’s between us and that part of the cliff. It looks like a solid briar patch between here and there.”

“It didn’t stop Brer Rabbit, did it? If he can hop in the thicket with a fur coat on, surely we can climb through with our boots.”

“Well, I’ll give you the map if you want to try but I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix shorts and thorns.”

“And there’s nothing worse than a woman thorned,” Susan said, giggling.

I suddenly felt a wasp on my back. “Hey, get it off,” I said to Vincent quietly so as not to disturb the stinging insect.

“What?”

“The wasp.”

“Where?”

“On my back. Hurry up,” I whispered desperately.

“I’ll get it,” Bruce yelled out as he slapped my back. “Got it, it’s gone.”

“Thanks,” I said with relief.

“There was nothing on your back,” Vincent said in a puzzled voice.

“Well, he thought there was and that’s what counts,” Bruce said as if Vincent was a little boy and Bruce the first-grade teacher.

“I wonder how long it took for this creek to carve out this valley. I bet there’s one plant here who’s passed down the story of this place from one seed to the next, just waiting to tell somebody. You know, if we took the first path, I bet we could find it. I bet we could get the story of the century. Hey, James, what would a story like that be worth? A thousand dollars? A million?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “someone would have to believe the story would be sellable first. You could maybe try the National Enquirer or some place like that.” I noticed I was discussing rag mags in a serious tone and shut up.

“Yeah, it’s a thought but we’d have to take the other trail to get the story.”

“Lee, if you want to go that way, help yourself,” Vincent replied in exasperation.

“No, no, that’s all right. I never wanted to be a millionaire. I’ll just follow you like a good follower and not complain.”

We put our boots back on, making sure we double tied them, like a hockey team lacing up skates for a game, each one of us looking at the other’s feet to see who was not prepared to go on.

“Bruce, why don’t you pick up the rear this time and let me talk to Lee and James for a while?”

“Sure, I’ll keep Jim and Susan company.”

“We’d like that,” Susan said warmly.

Vincent immediately jumped off the rock and starting marching into the trees. Lee fell in behind him. I did my best to clamber off the seven-foot high rock and catch up while Bruce helped Jim and Susan down. We set off in such a clumsy fashion that I felt we were newborn ducklings waddling off the shore to follow our mother into the water – like good ducklings, we lined up behind Vincent and sailed smoothly along as soon as he set the pace.

The woodland floor was fairly flat and even next to the creek and I knew Vincent wanted to make good time before we got to the cliff so I didn’t interrupt the ensuing conversation between Vincent and Lee. Instead, I let the bubble of their words float out of their mouths and go over my head. In the bubbles, I could see they were comparing the trees and plant life of the present-day woods around us to ancient flora.

“You know,” Vincent’s words said over his shoulder and past Lee to my ears, “that pink plant by the creek…”

“Queen of the meadow?” Lee confirmed.

“Yeah, it looks like it’s been here all along, or been pulled straight out of the fossil bed.”

“Hey, I wonder if its seeds can talk.”

I imagined what the animal life must have been like back then and what they would think of us funny-looking animals walking on two legs. Something rustled in the branches above my head and I shuddered to think what it was – a saber-toothed tiger, perhaps – and kept my head pointed to the ground. I concentrated on watching the ground go by beneath me and wondered how long we’d go before we had to step off this people mover and get on the escalator. I couldn’t figure out why the maintenance people let all the branches, leaves and rocks get on this thing. After all, they’re paid to clean this place up. Well, I thought, typical government workers, spending more time on break complaining about their low pay than doing their job while the rest of us bust our butts to pay the taxes to feed their lazy kids who end up on welfare and then become politicians. When’s the government dependency cycle going to end?

Before I knew it, we were on the escalator but it was not a smooth ride. We had to keep stepping aside to let big boulders pass by. And the handrails were terrible. They were like bedrails, only they were hanging down all crooked and covered with dirt and sand. I remember someone telling me that bedrails were originally designed to look like snakes who guarded the sleepers from evil. You know, that handrail looks like a snake but I know it’s not cause none of this is real.

“Ah, fuck!” I shouted as the handrail seized the back of my hand. I shook my hand from side to side. The handrail let go and fell to the ground. I looked around for it but it disappeared like the other bugs and vermin I’d seen all day. Dizzy from all the shaking, I slipped on the rock that was stuck in the escalator underneath me and fell down. Suddenly, a tidal wave came rushing up the escalator, shot through my hand like it was a keyhole and enveloped my body with pain.

“What’s the matter,” Vincent yelled back.

“I don’t know if I was seeing things but I could swear I saw a snake hanging from James’ hand just now,” Lee replied.

“It was definitely a snake,” Jim added, “and I believe it’s behind that fallen tree.”

Vincent walked over to the tree and peered into the cavity left by the pulled-up roots. “Shit, it’s a poisonous snake, probably a copperhead. I can see the rattler, for sure.”

“I’ve got a snakebite kit in the backpack,” Susan said to Jim.

Jim and Susan fumbled around with the bag while I tried to figure out who had stopped the escalator so high up and so close to the edge of the cliff. “You know I’m going to sue the government for all it’s worth on this one. Whoever designed those handrails put a little too much life into them and didn’t properly label them.”

“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked as he leaned over me. “You’ve been bitten by a snake.”

“Yeah, that’s what they’ll say, just to avoid a lawsuit.”

“Man, are you fucked up or what?”

“Excuse me, Bruce,” Susan said politely. “James, let me see your hand.”

“Hey, don’t touch the evidence. I don’t want the police to say it’s was tampered with before they got here or else I’ll never have a chance to win.”

“Okay, whatever you want. Jim, what do the instructions say?”

“Uh, I can’t find the kit. Are you sure you brought it with you?”

“Oh, gosh, you’re right,” Susan said, knitting her brow with worry. “I took it out when I put the sandwiches in.”

“Hey, I was a Boy Scout when I was a kid,” Lee added.

“And?”

“Well, I remember something about making incisions.”

“Does anybody have a spare scalpel then?” Susan asked perturbed. “No? Well, we need to at least keep his arm as low as possible. James, how do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been fucked over by the government one more time. Not only did that handrail attack me but it injected a special serum concocted by the CIA at a lab in Puerto Rico that’s going to kill me ever so slowly. Fuck!” I said as a jolt of pain throbbed up my arm. “And it has this built-in rhythm of pain to keep me from thinking straight and prevent me from sharing any more of their secrets with the public. I’ve got to get to the office and write down all I know before I die,” I said as I stood up and fell back down.

“Okay, guys,” Vincent said authoritatively. “If we hurry, we can get to the car in about thirty minutes. It’s pretty much downhill all the way to the creek and we can just run through the creek. I don’t think we’ll care if we get wet this time. The Oak Ridge hospital is about forty-five minutes away so we should be able to get James to the hospital in a little over an hour if we hurry.”

“The venom will have already run through his bloodstream by then,” Susan responded with an edge of despair in her voice. “If he has an allergic reaction to the venom…” Her voice tapered off.

“Well, we’ll just have to get there as fast as we can. James, can you walk?”

“Oh, I’ll run if I have to. I’ve got to write down everything I know before their poison gets me,” I said as I stood up on new legs. No matter what, I wasn’t going to let their secret government money get the best of me before I had the last laugh. “If I don’t make it to a typewriter, will one of you write down what I say before I die?” I asked. Staring back at me were a bunch of forlorn faces who, unfortunately for me, were probably too afraid to face Big Brother.

“Hey, I’ll help him,” Bruce said.

“Good. Okay, let’s go.”

We seemed to get to the creek “Star Trek” style – poof and we were instantly transported waterside. Bruce practically carried me over the creek and guided me up the other side to the car.

“Here it is,” Susan said, pulling the giant-sized pill out of the back seat.

“I’m not swallowing that!”

“No, it comes apart. See?” Susan said, separating two suction cups.

“To save time, Susan, why don’t you cut him open in the back seat while I drive us to the hospital, if that’s all right with you, Lee.”

“Hey, I’d rather you drive, considering the condition I’m in.”

Susan and Jim slid into the back seat while Vincent, Bruce and Lee squeezed into the front seat.

“You’ll just have to lay in our laps, I guess,” Jim said, patting his hands on his knees.

I climbed over Jim, sat my butt in the middle and lay my head in Susan’s lap. “Mommy, may I take a nap? I’m tired,” I said to ease the worried look on Susan’s face.

“No, you definitely don’t want to sleep right now. Instead, I want you to let Jim hold your right hand while I try to make two incisions over the puncture wounds and suck the venom out.”

“Well, if you insist, but I’m afraid the government did one thing right for once and efficiently planted the death poison deep in my hand. They knew you’d try to get it out.”

“It’s worth a try, James,” Jim added, concernedly.

“From a fellow lit lover, that means a lot,” I said, trying to conceal a laugh.

Susan gave me a couple of aspirin from her first-aid kit and after I swallowed them she told me to bite down on her leather keychain. I didn’t know why until she pushed the point of the knife into my hand. I almost bit my tongue off through the leather as she made two cuts across my swollen hand and sucked the lustrous flowing blood into a cup. My peripheral vision started getting darker as she filled up the first cup and started on the second.

“Hey, where did the clouds come from?” I asked as the darkest storm I ever saw spread over the car. All of a sudden, everybody disappeared and I was standing in a courtroom.

“James, are you there?” a female judge asked.

“Well, you all are trying to kill me but I’m still here.”

“He’s passed out,” the bailiff said. “Try to wake him up.”

I noticed I was holding a stack of papers under my right arm that was hurting my shoulder. I tried to put the stack down but it seemed to be stuck to me. The harder I tried to drop the papers, the stronger the pain became. “Okay, so you guys are trying to torture me. Well, it won’t work. I’m going to expose your shenanigans as long as I live, that’s all there is to it,” I said to the judge sitting high above me.

“He’s not asleep but he’s babbling on,” the bailiff said.

I continued to argue with the judge for quite a while but she acted as if I was mad, always answering my inquiries and accusations with polite comments and concerns. After I don’t know how many minutes passed, the room began to brighten and Bruce was walking me to a door.

“Tell the nurse he’s been bitten by a venomous snake,” Susan said to Vincent as he darted through the door ahead of me. “Bruce, take him to the nurse’s station. Jim, you and Lee join me in the waiting area.”

Bruce held me up against a counter.

“What is your name?” a woman in a white uniform asked me from behind the counter.

“James Hinson,” I replied automatically.

“Do you have any insurance?”

“I don’t need insurance to argue my case in court. I’ve got all the insurance I need right here,” I replied smartly, pointing to the stack of papers under my arm.

“He’s been babbling on like this ever since he was bitten,” Vincent said impatiently. “I don’t think we have time to fool with the paperwork. Is there a doctor who can see him?”

“Yes, Dr. Adapantha is waiting for him right now but I’ve got to get a quick medical history before we can administer any medication.”

“Look, his doctor is Dr. Samuel Morningstar. He lives here in Oak Ridge. I’m sure you can find his number in the phone book.”

“Fine,” the woman snapped back. “Bill, will you please put Mr. Hinson in a wheelchair and take him to room number five?” she asked a young, burly guy standing next to her.

“Yes, ma’am,” the man answered in a Tennessee hillbilly accent.

As he wheeled me down the hall, I noticed that roaches were all over the place. “Don’t you guys have enough help around here to get rid of these bugs?”

“Well, sir, because of the government cutbacks, we do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

“Government cutbacks? That’s just a lot a political bullshit the politicians are feeding you while they pocket the cash. Don’t you know that?” I blurted out to this big white thug who probably played high school football but was too dumb to go to college.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, you must be James Hinson,” an olive man in a white coat said to me as I entered the room.

“I assume you’re going to interrogate me with that,” I said, pointing to the stethoscope around his neck. “Isn’t that more appropriate in a hospital than a courtroom. Or are you just going to check my heartbeat every now and then to see if the poison has kicked in?”

“Ah, yes, the poison. Please let me examine your palm.”

“My palm? What are you, a palm reader?”

“No, not your palm. I mean, uh…your hand, yes, that’s it.” The man held my right hand and turned it over. “It looks like you have two large places on your hand that need attention.”

“What are you, a doctor? Can’t you see you’re supposed to find out what I know before I die so you can kill my sources, too? Jeez, what kind of idiots do they hire here?”

“A doctor, yes. I am called Dr. Siran Adapantha. I specialize in nuclear medicine and you need attention to your hand.”

“What?” I shouted. “They injected me with nuclear material! Boy, that just takes the cake.”

“What’s going on?” Vincent said as he walked up behind me. “I can hear James shouting all the way down the hall. Doctor, do you think he’s okay?”

“Okay, yes. He needs attention. I will get a nurse to get attention to his hand.”

“Can’t you see we took care of that, doc? We had a snakebite kit in the car so we just cut him open on the way.”

“Snakebite? Oh, yes, I will get the nurse for the snakebite.”

A moment later a nurse returned with Doctor Adapantha. “Doctor Adapantha is a visiting resident from Pakistan and does not speak English real well so I’m going to help him with the snakebite,” she said to me, as I rolled my eyes, not believing that this whole thing was happening to me. Only last week, I had written a column listing the number of times the uranium processing plant had illegally dumped radiation-hot water into a local creek and here I am now with nuclear poison in my arm and a doctor who can’t speak English. The government folks sure had taken their time planning this revengeful torture.

“Unfortunately, the instructions in the snakebite kit we found are written in Spanish but the doctor says that at this point, he will need to remove the damaged tissue anyway,” the nurse added in her blasé government tone as she prepared a needle on a tray. I shook my head at how well this had all been planned out. “I’m going to give you a local anesthetic so the scalpel cuts will not hurt.”

I cringed, shrinking back into the wheelchair. “How do I know you aren’t going to put more poison in my arm?”

“You’re just going to have to take that chance, aren’t you?”

After my arm fell asleep, the nurse cleaned the top of my hand. The doctor then sliced into the swollen surface of my skin. Not used to the site of my body being cut apart, I passed out while wondering why the government was using the excuse of a snakebite to implement the old Indian torture method of removing my skin.

“I see we’re getting better,” the nurse said, as she knocked on the door and walked in. I looked at her with a blank stare. “Are you still seeing bugs on the wall? I understand you’ve had quite a night.”

“That’s what they say,” I said groggily, having just woken up. I stared at my right hand for a moment, which was covered with a bandage. Then I panicked. “What happened to my arm?” It was black from my wrist to my elbow.

“Well, after the doctor operated on you, we gave you penicillin to prevent infection because the hole was so large…”

“What hole?”

“Doctor Adapantha removed tissue about a half-dollar in size and a quarter-inch deep. Anyway, as it turns out, you’re allergic to penicillin which has caused the capillaries in the skin of your arm to burst, giving you one giant hematoma.”

My God, I thought, they decided not to remove my skin because the nuclear poison was working too well. I’m going to die after all.

“Uh, what time is it?”

“About eight a.m. Would you like some breakfast?”

“No, that’s okay, could you bring me a pad and pencil instead?”

“Sure, but I thought you were right-handed. Won’t writing be a little difficult?”

“Yeah, but I’ll manage somehow,” I said, as I told myself that I don’t care, I’ve got to get this all down on paper before the blackness in my arm takes over my body and kills me.

Chapter 5: Back to Reality?

Then, I noticed Betty had been talking. “Huh . . .” I said, as I turned back to look at her.

“I said it’s only natural that you’re a little apprehensive right now. Even so, I’ve got to have some idea why you think you’re here. C’mon Lee, give me a break. Tell me your gut feelings.”

I laughed at the workings of my mind and replied, “My stomach hurts and gas is building up in my intestinal tract. I’ll probably need to urinate in an hour or so and . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said you wanted to know my gut feelings.”

“Lee, Lee, Lee. Are you always this difficult?”

“Can’t you tell he’s upset?” Karen answered.

My shield of humor was doing no one any good but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Ellen, a friend of mine from Knoxville, has accused me of living in a world where I thought only other people were absolutely happy. I remember we were sitting on the steps to the front porch of a house that had recently been torn down by a wrecking ball.

“Don’t you get it? You’ll never be happy like a goddamned idiot,” Ellen yelled in my face. She shook her head and walked a few steps away from me. “If you want that kind of happiness, then you better start smoking a lot more pot.”

I stared down at the floor. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with Karen, Betty or any of the stuff around me. I wanted to be with my friends who respond to me the way I want them to. All I needed was my imagination and something to write on and my friends would be with me. The question was, Which friends did I want? Someone with whom there was no chance of controversy.

Chapter 6: Hint of an Itch

In a dream the other night, Fredirique left me. I still don’t know why but…well, that’s history now. At least she told me, “I love you,” as I walked away from her.

I’m still freaked out. I mean, here we are leaving each other and she tells me those dreaded three words after the fact, like on a dare or something (as if I didn’t know it already but ours was a relationship where it went unsaid).

We met about five years ago while I was on TDY in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Josef, my business partner, and I shared a hotel room in the seedy part of uptown to save money. We were in town to set up wastewater flow monitors in the sewer overflow pipes along the Susquehanna River to give the city a model of how much raw sewage dumps into the river during heavy rainfall. We worked from dawn to dusk along the river. Almost every day Josef would talk about his girlfriend and how she was really cool but she really wasn’t his girlfriend so I wasn’t supposed to talk about her because she worked in the corporate office and didn’t want people to know she was dating him.

Naturally, I questioned what was really going on because he never seemed to talk to her on the phone or kept in any constant communication with her. Every once in a while he got a letter from her. I read one and she seemed to go on in the he-said, she-said, mode about work. For all I knew, he simply had a crush on her and she didn’t know it.

Late winter in Harrisburg is weird. One day it’s cold as hell, with menacing charcoal clouds threatening to hurl snow at you and the next day the sun is shining and people are jogging the Riverwalk in shorts. I never knew whether to have spring fever, cabin fever or hay fever.

Josef, about five-foot, six, with a near-perfect triangular upper body, suffered from spring fever. He knew he had an attractive body and wore tight T-shirts to show off his chest. Therefore, when the weather was warm, the female joggers tended to look our way when Josef popped out of a manhole, his red hair sending up a spark and his slightly sweaty shirt setting off the flare. He would look around with a sheepish grin. Then he quickly assessed the nearby females as high maintenance, low maintenance, or no maintenance.

If the woman wore designer togs, a perfect hairdo set off by expensive jewelry and jogged provocatively to get our attention, she was high maintenance – a guy would have to spend a lot of money and time to keep the relationship going. If she wore basic shorts and a 10-k run for charity shirt, looking straight ahead as she jogged in Olympic form, she was low maintenance – she just wanted a guy around for the companionship stuff and could handle the rest on her own. If she looked like a whale out of water, she was no maintenance – he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

Josef prided himself on having a low maintenance girlfriend. I wondered if she would agree.

After several weeks of listening to him go on about her, I asked him why he hadn’t asked Fredirique to come to Pennsylvania. He hemmed and hawed with excuses like, “We don’t waste our money on frivolous trips.” Finally, after his having had to go back to corporate headquarters to pick up some more flow monitors, he asked her to come up and she told him she’d fly up to see him in mid-March.

The day Fredirique arrived, about six inches of snow lay on the ground. I continued to set up the flow monitors along the river with a worker from a local temp agency. Josef took the morning off to go to the airport. After picking up Fredirique, Josef dropped her off at the hotel. He and I finished up early for the day.

I can’t say I remember the exact moment I met her. All I recall was this sudden ball of energy lighting up the hotel in the waning dusk hours. From the moment she showed up, Fredirique stole the show, as it were. Everyone in her presence rotated around her like planets around the sun (the unlucky ones ended up like moths in a flame…crash and burn). The funny thing is she’s not the kind to grab attention. She just comes by it naturally.

That night we went out to a Chinese restaurant. During the meal, I found that she and I shared the same taste in music, one common thread in the fabric of our lives. Josef and Fredirique weren’t exactly lovebirds throughout the evening but I sensed a physical attraction between them that simmered like a cup of coffee ready to be consumed – once the caffeine rush set in, look out. I politely ended the evening early, knowing she had not flown to Harrisburg to see me.

The three of us took off the next day and headed over to Valley Forge, winter headquarters of the Revolutionary Army. Fun was had by all. We joked and laughed our way over the ol’ campgrounds. Thinking back, I don’t remember any exact conversations, just having fun jumping up and down on monuments, making crazy poses for the camera and truly enjoying the camaraderie – a pleasant platonic afternoon.

We decided to spend the evening in Philadelphia. We did a little shopping and eating before heading over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You might remember the museum steps from the movie, “Rocky,” when Rocky jogs up the steps and does his triumph dance. Of course, we did the same thing, followed by climbing on the lawn sculptures. Josef and I stripped our shirts off and posed next to the Greek gods (thank goodness the pictures didn’t turn out). For our nightcap, we headed over to the club area where we hit a nice jazz nightclub.

“Hey,” I said to the waitress, “we’re from out of town. What’s there to do around here?”

“Oh, there’s this great forum tomorrow. The children of all the great civil rights leaders will discuss where we are today.”

We all agreed that sounded real neat.

“So where are you guys from?” the waitress asked us.

“Alabama,” we chorused.

The waitress turned and walked away from us. We never saw her again. Welcome to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

We gave up on the club and caught the French movie (complete with English subtitles) of Gerard Depardieu’s performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. I cried at the end – a great performance.

The next morning, we gave Fredirique a big breakfast sendoff (I remember the paper placemats for some strange reason, mainly because of the corny pictures of tourist stops in southern Pennsylvania). Afterward we had a snowball fight to remember, slipping and sliding down the hotel hallways, dodging snowballs while throwing them back as we fell on our behinds in the snowdrifts.

Josef didn’t talk about her as much after she left. It was as if her recent presence was a recharge for his silence battery. He wasn’t exactly whistling while he worked but he was definitely more fun to work with. We finished the project in a couple of weeks and parted our ways. He headed to Indianapolis and I headed to our corporate office in Huntsville, Alabama.

Although I worked with Fredirique in Huntsville for the next year, we never really saw each other. We were just two more young people working for a young company, keeping busy (too busy). She traveled a lot while I settled down.

Oddly enough, we didn’t hit it off until I left Huntsville. Not exactly “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but something like this: I once had a school girlfriend – we never saw each other after school but we couldn’t do without each other at school. In the opposite vein, when I was sent to Knoxville for six months, I always had my mind on what I could do to impress Fredirique but I didn’t want to be with her, necessarily. I don’t know, this whole thing’s been odd. After all, I have a wife I love dearly so I certainly have no intention to pursue a like relationship with Fredirique. At the same time, I savor my friendship with Fredirique like a good bottle of wine or an out-of-the-way antique store.

While in Knoxville, I wrote her and her friends several stories. She always seemed encouraged by my letters and my tales of Knoxville life. She even inspired me to make a book of my writings. Of course, I knew that part of her enthusiasm and inspiration was just the warmth of her persona shining across the miles. She’s just that way. At the same time, I was willing to accept that energy as my own. You know what I mean…faith is another word for it. I trust that she accepts me the way I am and she reciprocates that trust.

I had another dream about her last night (well, it’s all been a dream, in a way, but this was a real dream). I had told my wife I was going for a walk. A little way from my house, I met Fredirique. We talked for a bit while walking further away from the house. Just as naturally as ever, Fredirique slipped her arm through mine (the guilty part of me made me mentally look back at the house to see if my wife was looking). I continued to talk while she looked up to me with trusting eyes – an odd sensation, to be sure, because II felt like we were meant to be in that situation forever – Platonism personified. But then, whenever we’re really together it feels that way. Fredirique is everyone’s best friend.