by Joe Russell
Dave realized that he had been zoning out when he found himself being hugged by Taylor, who was telling him thanks again and goodbye. She did the same to Sandra, then turned to be on her way. As she got back in her car and continued west, Dave and Sandra walked back to their truck. Dave returned his tow rope to the plastic crate in the back, then climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“That could have been bad,” Sandra said gravely as Dave buckled himself in. “I’m glad they decided to leave like they did. Could have been ugly... I didn’t like the way they were looking at her, and at you when you approached them.”
“Yeah, me too,” Dave said flatly, the adrenaline finally wearing off. “What was she doing out here? I mean, props to her for coming out and all, but with all the dangers out here, she shouldn’t be out here alone.”
“I know, babe,” Sandra said, taking his hand on the center console. They were driving now, heading east. “I don’t like it when you come out here by yourself either though, even if you’re outfitted like a one-man army. Too many creatures, both with four legs and two...” She sighed, “She’s a student at WVU. She came out here first thing this morning to get a good hike in.”
“Well, like I said, good for her wanting to get out and do something positive like hiking at least,” he said. But good thing for her that we came along when we did, and good thing for those guys that they moved along like they did, Dave thought to himself, as he pulled his Ruger SR9C 9mm pistol out of his waistband holster and placed it back in the center console where he kept it when driving. “Let’s get to that diner,” he said aloud, changing the subject. “I’m starving after that hike, and your sister and Jersey Mike are probably there already.”
Sandra rolled her eyes, but smiled and squeezed his hand affectionately as they began descending the mountain toward the valley below.
Chapter 2
East of Spruce Knob, West Virginia. Present Day.
Sandra’s sister, Jen, sat at the booth in the local diner. It was typical, she thought, looking around at the room. Peculiar rural artifacts and artwork were hung from the wall at seemingly random spots, but it had a nice feel. Comfortable, in a country kind of way. The food couldn’t be too bad by the number of cars in the parking lot, either. She had been amazed when they pulled up about twenty minutes previous, seeing what must have been half the vehicles within a fifty-mile radius of where they were right there in the parking lot. There was an odd assortment too, ranging from an old four-wheeler to a fairly new BMW, and everything in between. The folks in the restaurant were equally assorted as well, she thought to herself as she gazed around and sipped her sweet tea.
She turned to see Mike, her boyfriend, reappear from the hallway at the end of the dining area. It wasn’t easy to miss him, at least here in this little diner that time forgot. His baggy clothes and flat-brimmed cap stood out in here more than a farm animal would, she mused. Still, there was more to him than that, even if her family couldn’t… or didn’t want to see it.
“Food still not here?” he said, as if it just might be hiding under the napkins on the table.
“No, not yet,” Jen said, trying to be patient. She looked up at the clock. Twelve little roosters were arranged in a circle, and both hands of the clock were pointing to the rooster where the twelve should have been. Even growing up in a relatively rural area, she didn’t understand why so many people, especially in the country, thought that farm animals made such awesome decorations. Especially roosters.
“They’re fifteen minutes late,” she said to Mike, coming out of her little daydream.
“Well, knowing Dave, they’re probably fighting Indians or something,” he snickered at his own joke. Jen smiled, because it could almost have been true. Sandra had mentioned to her that they couldn’t go hiking without Dave warning her about Magua from Last of the Mohicans. From the stories she’d heard, Jen got the impression that Dave, like most men, was much more of a boy on the inside than most people ever got to see. He was definitely serious when he needed to be, though, she knew that. She’d heard those stories, too.
She was a little surprised when he had agreed to come on this weekend excursion. Dave and Sandra did this kind of stuff all the time, and she enjoyed it as much as they did, but Mike, well, wasn’t the most outdoorsy person. Her parents had asked her why she wanted to date someone who was so different from her. After all, they say that opposites attract, but not in regard to fundamental things such as… well, everything. Sandra had expressed a similar concern, but in her gentler way, and Dave didn’t say much at all, but his raised eyebrow every time he looked at Mike said it all. Mike certainly was the black sheep while in their midst, but he had a good heart and that’s what mattered. Plus, she loved the idea of dating a college guy. She was almost eighteen and about to graduate high school, and he had just finished his freshman year at Shenandoah University in Winchester.
Jen and half the restaurant turned to look when the door opened, and a young couple walked in. She half raised her hand, and after a second or two of scanning the small crowd, she caught Sandra’s eye. Sandra was usually hard to miss in a crowd. Despite her petite stature, her long blonde hair usually stood out. Sandra and Dave made their way over to Jen and Mike. The two were sitting across from each other at the four-person booth, and Dave paused awkwardly. One step ahead of the game, as usual, Sandra quickly but casually took the seat beside Mike, and Dave happily sat next to Jen. Those two actually got along really well, but as Sandra knew and Jen too, Dave wouldn’t want to sit next to Mike. Dave wasn’t really a jerk, not at all. He was actually really nice to pretty much everyone he knew, once he got to know them. Dave’s biggest social flaw, from the perspective of a progressive extrovert anyway, was that he didn’t trust strangers, especially people that were different from him. Not too much different in this way from a protective family dog, Dave just needed some time to sniff and observe someone new before turning his back on them and going back to sleep. He was almost never rude or nasty, just more reserved and cautious until he became comfortable, and only those who already knew him well knew this about him. He recognized that this quality certainly led him quite often to be unfairly judgmental of people, especially those he didn’t even know, but it had also paid off more than a time or two. If he were ever to be confronted by this hypothetical progressive extrovert, he would simply argue that there’s no harm in having these feelings toward people, as long as it didn’t cause him to actually treat them any differently. After all, if the practical upside of having people earn your trust first was that it caused you to keep a vigilant eye on the world, and that sober mindset served as an automatic security system for you and your people in a so often dark world, wasn’t that a good thing? Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but if given the mandatory choice, shouldn’t our loved ones come first? And wasn’t loving someone not necessarily the same thing as trusting someone?
As confident or self-righteous as he was, Dave knew he walked the line with Mike. No, Mike wasn’t really from New Jersey, the state that all conservatives in the entire Southeast United States can agree to dislike. He was from Woodbridge, Virginia, and as much as he loved his home state, Dave thought that the western part of the state along Interstate 81 and the eastern part along Interstate 95 may as well be different countries, especially some of the more urban DC suburbs.
Dave had grown up outside of Leesburg, Virginia. Northern Virginia, or Nova, had generally been the fastest growing and richest part of the country for the last fifteen or twenty years and was considered to include the counties of Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun, where Leesburg was the county seat. However, even this far North, Virginia was a traditionally red, southern state with Leesburg, of course, having been named for an ancestor of General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy. This made for an interesting social dynamic and in Dave’s opinion, driving through the county from east to west would show a thirty-mile transition from the 95 side of the state to the 81 side. From eastern Leesburg to Washington, DC, it
might as well have been northeastern New Jersey in its urban culture, hence Dave’s nickname for Mike. To him it was nothing but rich neighborhoods and developments fueled by one of the nation’s richest economies. It was home to multiple government defense contract companies, large private firms of all types, and government offices; some of which were not openly visible to the public. This massive concentration of wealth and economic opportunity created a daily mass-migration of middle class workers during business days. In the morning, the eastbound lanes of Virginia 7, U.S. 50, and Interstate 66 were slammed with commuters from as far west as the Shenandoah Valley around Winchester heading to work, and it was just as bad returning west at the end of the day.
West of Leesburg, however, the scenery began to change quickly. Or more accurately, hadn’t yet changed as much. Western Loudoun had its share of new mansions and the very wealthy, but for the most part, it was still undeveloped farmland. It was an area of old money, rich with vineyards and horse farms. It was this area that Dave had grown up in. His family wasn’t rich, but had been in the area for over fifty years, before the dirt was worth its weight in gold. It had been a nice place to grow up, rural but not quite the boondocks, and without the unfortunate effects of the poverty that usually afflicted those areas.
The area had changed a lot, even in his relatively short lifetime. When he was a kid, Leesburg was nothing more than a big town, not too far from the city to the east and rural farmland to the west. In a sense, this was still true, depending on one’s perspective. To someone who was born and raised in the city, it was not a city but the suburbs of one at best, and anything west of town (yes, town) was the boonies. However, from the perspective of a country boy like Dave, who lumped in the suburbs with their city itself, Leesburg was the edge of the city, and although western Loudoun was still technically rural, its proximity to the city made him feel like he wasn’t really out in the country as much as the immediate scenery would suggest. Plus, being one of the richest areas in the country, it was hard to feel like you were out in the country when the roads were filled with cars that cost more than some people’s homes, and the rolling hillsides were scattered with ten-million-dollar mansions where the hay bales had once been. Dave didn’t think it was a bad place to be. If he wanted to live near a city, or “in the suburbs” as others would put it, it wasn’t a bad area at all. There was very little crime, and the landscape was still beautiful in most areas, if you could look past the development. It was also only a short drive to the Blue Ridge mountains, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Alleghenys in eastern West Virginia; all regarded as some of the most beautiful parts of the country.
The problem was that he didn’t want to be in the city and as much as he loved his hometown, it had changed a lot and was no longer an ideal place to make his home. However, he didn’t want to be too far from his family, who still lived in western Loudoun county, outside of Purcellville. It was for this reason, that he found living where he did to be a great solution. Their home outside of Middletown was about an hour’s drive from Purcellville where his parents lived, and not much farther than that from the city. As a project manager for a regional construction contractor, he didn’t want to be too far from the city because it brought constant growth, which made all the difference in his line of work. Winchester, where he worked, was ten minutes north of Middletown on Interstate 81. He found it to be a good compromise, in the sense that there was enough wealth and development to have a good job in his field, but was located in the north end of the Shenandoah Valley on the opposite side of the Blue Ridge from Loudoun County and the rest of Nova. It was no wild west frontier, but crossing over through Snickersville Gap on Route 7 from Loudon to Clarke county gave him both the distance he needed from the population density and an almost tangible sense of satisfaction. The valley was now his home.
The waitress who had already taken Mike and Jen’s orders stopped at the table to refill coffee cups and give menus to Dave and Sandra. Dave glanced at the menu, but knew what he wanted already. Every diner in America served a breakfast with a couple of eggs, bacon, toast, and home fries. That was what he ordered and to no one’s surprise, Sandra ordered the sausage gravy over biscuits. At this point it was past noon, but the diner served breakfast all day, and breakfast food was Dave’s and Sandra’s favorite.
A few minutes later, the waitress returned to bring Jen and Mike their food. After all, they had arrived and ordered long before the other two had arrived. Jen hesitated, like she wanted to wait until everyone had their food to eat, but Sandra insisted that they eat while their food was hot. Mike dug into his cheesesteak without a second thought, and Jen submitted and began cutting up her pancakes.
The front door of the diner opened and in strutted three young men, although Dave could hear them before he could see them. They were talking loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear. Dave saw a few older people, presumably locals, give disapproving sideways glances in their direction and it reminded Dave of Clint Eastwood’s character from Gran Torino. Dave smiled to himself. Again, with the Clint Eastwood. The funny thing was that once in a while, Sandra would scold him for looking at people like that himself, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was amusing himself by observing other people’s reactions, he probably would have been doing it now. The young men passed their table on the way to sit down at their own and Dave saw two of them eying Sandra and Jen as they passed. As they walked by, their gazes bounced to Dave, who gave them a look like a German Shepherd on a front porch watching a stranger pass by on the sidewalk. There was no law against checking out another man’s wife, but there was also no law against glaring at someone to let them know that you saw them doing it.
Dave’s attention turned away from the three a second later, when the waitress came back yet again to serve his and Sandra’s food. It was then he realized how hungry he really was and dug right in. Dave normally had a decent appetite, partially because of how active he was, but it was especially prevalent today because of the hike he and Sandra had done that morning.
The group continued to eat their meal with little conversation. Jen asked how their hike this morning had gone and Dave gave her a good summary. When they were most of the way done, it occurred to Dave that he and Mike hadn’t spoken a word to each other since he and Sandra had arrived and felt a twinge of guilt. He didn’t hate Mike and he really didn’t have much of a reason to dislike him personally, other than his own jaded attitude against people in general. He figured that Mike had somewhat of a hint that he didn’t care too much for him, at least as Jen’s boyfriend, and guessed that Mike wasn’t trying to make conversation with him more out of nervousness than anything else. The problem was, he didn’t think he and Mike really had anything in common at all and the times they had attempted conversation, this had only become more apparent. The truth was that although Dave stereotyped people around him all the time, he wanted to give Mike a chance if he was going to be dating Jen. He had no idea what she saw in Mike, but he was here, at least for now, and Dave knew he should try to play nice. He wasn’t the type to be blatantly mean or even cold with almost anyone, unless it was a special circumstance like what had happened earlier back on the mountain. But given the differences Dave believed he and Mike had, this was going to take some effort. Maybe that’s why he didn’t argue too much when Jen and Sandra started planning this weekend trip to include all four of them.
“How’s the cheesesteak?” Dave asked Mike. His attempt at conversation might have been a little lame, but he was trying. On second thought, talking to other guys about food usually wasn’t a bad place to start.
“Good,” Mike answered, his mouth full of it. Mike finished chewing, took a long sip of his coffee, then asked the group, “So, what’s the plan for today?”
Although Mike didn’t directly address him, Dave was generally the leader of this expedition, at least in technical terms. Dave replied to Mike’s question, looking around and speaking to address the whole table. “I think the sooner we get started
, the better. Since we don’t have to be home until Monday and can spend all day tomorrow out in the woods, we just need to get a little start today.” He paused to take another sip of coffee. It was typical diner coffee; not as bold as he preferred, but great with breakfast food. He continued, “If we park our cars back near the overlook on the ridge, we can hike out on the main trail, then take a side trail to the west at some point, descend into the valley, and find a place near the creek to camp for tonight.” He looked at Sandra and gave a devilish grin. “Then tomorrow, we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Sandra glared back at him playfully, wrinkling her nose. They really were opposites in some ways. Sandra planned for specific events or circumstances, such as what they would do on a particular weekend, or how they would save up for their next vehicle. She was a stickler about their savings, at least the kind you kept in the bank. She was the one who kept all their important papers in specific drawers, maintained the shopping lists, and backed up their pictures after each family outing.
Dave was a planner in his own way. Actually, although he didn’t quite care for the term in its pop culture sense, he was definitely a prepper. It wasn’t something that he talked much about, at least not publicly. His favorite quote of all time might have been Teddy’s ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’. Although he believed this philosophy generally applied to all aspects of life, it was most literally applied to physical safety and the measures you take to ensure it. He figured there was nothing wrong with wearing the clothes, driving the car, or living in the home you truly liked and appreciated, but wearing lots of jewelry, driving the most expensive car you could possibly afford, living in a bloated mansion with no personality, and screaming ‘look at me’ by posting about all of it all over social media, was not only vain but also foolish.
