Chapter 5, 89r7

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
-Loren Eiseley

“There are moments, above all on June evenings, when the lakes that hold our moons are sucked into the earth, and nothing is left but wine and the touch of a hand.
-Charles Morgan

To get to the lake house you must negotiate your landmarks.
You will take the interstate an hour and a half west out of Nashville and then North on a winding two lane country highway, another half hour, and then onto a tiny, wiggley, hilly road and you’ll find yourself swimmimg through the lush Tennessee Hills. You’ll go past the corn and cow farms and The Two Rivers bar and into the sleepy town they call Big Sandy, which is not big (Pop. 498) and has a rocky shore line. Big Sandy welcomes you with a large, decaying white sign with scrawled, peeling, painted black letters declaring:

“You Can’t, God Can”

Then you’ll see the boarded up Family Dollar store, two small gas stations across the street from each other, one sagging and shut, a closed gift shop, Dick’s Hot Rod Shop, a woman with a moustache selling a few goats and turkeys, a functioning Cash Saver next to a Dollar General, pickups and a couple of horses and an Amish carriage full of unhappy kids in the parking lot. A license plate on one of the F150s says:

“God, Guns & Guts
Made America
Let’s Keep It That Way”

There are some muddy all terrain vehicles parked on the grass in front of six lonely old houses and rusty trailers.

(I think there must be a law here that everybody, men and women alike, have to be 600 pounds and wear camo.
The Police Department is one guy called Chief James. I call him Jimmy, thinking we’re buddies now since he pulled me over a few times and he joined me when I went to court. Not sure he appreciates that Jimmy business. Weird that I know the entire police department. He has a really nice shiney police car.)

Now you go past the Kelli’s Café, The American Legion and the abandoned house boat, over a 10 foot long concrete bridge and you make a right. Now you’re on Lick Creek Road.

You will see:

The crumbling, abandoned Phillip 66 station dying in a gulley.

The Trump and rebel flags billowing in the wind.

The Confederate lunatic’s house where he sells wood out of his yard, and has many of those colorful southern flags, standing like sentries, along his front yard. He used to have a sign facing the street that said “SPEED LIMIT’S 30! YOU GO OVER, I’LL SHOOT YOU.”
Jimmy made him take it down.

A ripped square banner covering the entire side of a barn that reads

“Jesus in 2025, The Only Answer!”

A burned down house, bricks charred and scattered next to an empty black mesh animal cage. Turn left.

An abandoned trailer with an abandoned aluminum fishing boat and an ancient porcelain sink growing at a forty five degree angle out of the red and rocky clay. There’s a fat pontoon of propane sitting on two cinder blocks.

And if you should miss these markers and keep going you will see another Trump flag and a flag that says “Busch Beer”.

And then an old camper with a pickup in front and a wooden sign over the garage that says:

“JIM’S

CAMPTALKALOTOFSHIT”,

the dirt driveway marked by 3 foot tall reflectors cemented into Maxwell House coffee cans.

God put these landmarks here to warn you to tighten your Bible Belt.

You can’t miss our place.
We’re right on the edge of humanity.

Now get out of your car.
Turn around and open up your kinked, frazzled soul. Time will stop and you will be lifted out of your shit like a baby embraced into the staggering beauty and endless sky of Kentucky Lake, the pelicans dancing crazily far above you, the trees taller than Manhattan, the cirrus ice crystal clouds moving slow and easy above the green, green, green, green undulating Wildlife Refuge hills, the Neo-Synephrine breeze, an intoxicating perfume sweeping the memories out of your fucked up head and gently letting you slip away like a kite.
Up and out of yourself.
Impossible formations of energy unfold you and you are set free.