Yesterday in the country graveyard I look down at one of the graves with a Civil War star on a pole sticking up out of the wet dirt and I lose my breath.
No way.
The soldier, his name. Jesus God.
You ready for this?
His name, it’s written right there in the stone.
You ready?
Christian Apple.
Man, oh man.
That is too good to be true.
That is so fucking punk rock. Am I wrong? But he was probably a country kid, barely old enough to shave, and off he went/ Christian Apple/ to fight for the Union/ to kill him some Rebs.
I look over at Arle and she is way over there looking at another flag star grave, standing on the dirt laying upon the bones of a different country boy soldier. I want to holler at her about Christian Apple, but I don’t. I’ll surprise her with it. I will give this to her as a gift of sorts, like some kind of real-time beautifully hip and historical swirl of honor and giggles. Hey here baby, come look at this.
Then she’ll read the marker and BOOM: Christian Apple! What a name! She will smile, laugh, feel my spirit slamming into hers as we navigate this new reality of fearing the virus and staying away from other humans and spraying the goddamn kitchen table with lemony chemical shit so we can disinfect ourselves from the kids who are the only other people who ever touch it besides us and what is happening/what the hell is happening, please?
She has Angus on the leash, on the choke collar because he’s a puller. It’s drizzly/ gray/ Dickensian dank. Above us the mountains that guard Sugar Valley form a parallel run moving east and west.
You wanna know something? People from out west look down on these mountains.
“Those aren’t mountains,” they like to say. “Back where I’m from we’ve got mountains. These are just hills or little Indian burial mounds or something.”
Pfff.
Then I hit them in the jaw with my flat black spray-painted motorcycle helmet. They never see that coming. Little cowboy babies.
Or if I don’t do that then I just tell them the other thing.
“Well, truth is these mountains are way way older than your mountains.” That’s what I say and it IS the truth. “Your mountains are just teenagers peaking out, but these, THESE are the Appalachians and they are older than time, dude. This is where the Earth began.”
That last part is not true, of course, but when you are hellbent on revenge you make stuff up.
“And another thing,” I tell them. “These hills were once as high as any Rocky Mountain is today. It’s true.”
Again, I don’t know if that’s true or not. And I don’t care either. I am defending a lifestyle here. I am defending Bill Monroe AND his mandolin, plus scalding the hair off of a dead pig with hot water cooked on an open fire on bright October mornings, AND wild gobblers blowing off steam in the shadow of the shadow of a moonshiner ghost.
AND Christian Apple.
Arle moves closer with the dog and I wait for my moment, acting like I’m still looking at other graves when I can’t stop looking at Apple’s. I can sense her just outside my sphere. She’s lingering, taking her good old Appalachian time. She is a real native of all this: born and raised with Appalachians staring down at her every move since the day she was born.
This, I will admit, turns me on.
Red-headed/ German/ Irish/ English/ long-legged/ multiple Civil War soldier descended/ deer huntin’/ pee-wee football playin’/ baby raisin’/ dog lovin’/ meat eatin’/ hard workin’/ self-made sexy-ass beautiful soul of kindness unless you cross her in which case you might find a can of Appalachian Jack’s Mountain Woop Ass opened up all over you like yellow jackets at the fallen Choco Taco.
This is love and I can own that and I will, I do. I own it here, you as my witness, just when I thought I would never love again: along she came and away we went.
Okay, she’s only like ten feet away now, but I can’t take it anymore. I need to let this out of me. It is stinging my insides, this diamond I swallowed. I need to spit it into her pretty little country paw.
“Look at this,” I tell her as fake cool as I can muster. “Look at that name.” I point at the only name on the stone at my feet.
She looks over casually. I’ve got her so good! She is maybe a little bored or whatever. But she is gonna flip out when she sees this name, just like me.
She stares at it.
“Look at that name!” I command her. I’m standing there grinning/ she GETS me/ we are in this together, no matter what happens/ if she got the virus I would still take care of her in our quarantined house and it would just be me and her and I wouldn’t be afraid of getting sick too because that’s not what this is about, is it? Marriage is love and love is two people willing to go to the viral wall together, man. Hand-in-hand. Maybe I don’t kiss her on the lips when she is hacking away or whatever, but you know what I am saying, right?
I am so pumped right now/ so IN LOVE with this find of mine/ and that is the kind of, I don’t know, independent joy?, that can very quickly set the walls of a man’s inner house afire, especially out here today in all these fresh Appalachian breezes, all spring manure and musky Earth.
I stare at her like a creep. Like a drunk guy in a bar staring at my wife and I want to hit him with my flat black spray-painted motorcycle helmet.
She doesn’t look at me.
I love you, I tell her in my mind. I fucking love you so strong, Arle.
“Yeah, I saw that already when we first got here,” she says flatly.
Angus starts to take a shit on the end of the leash in her hands. I know, that sounds like a lie but it’s true.
My guts flop over in my guts. I was expecting something else entirely. I mean that’s what I’ve been telling you up ‘til now, right? You know what I was saying too, don’t you? I had a legit thing happening inside of me and it was taking me away from all this virus blues.
Christian Apple. 137th Pennsylvania. I think they might be one of the few regiments in the entire Civil War who didn’t lose a soldier in combat. Just disease. Just illness. Viruses, I’m sure.
But I had fallen in love with this guy out here so suddenly.
“Look at that name!”
She is watching Angus relive himself instead, the southern ridge looking down on her, down on their native daughter.
The deer up there raising a fist at her.
“Solidarity, sista,” they whisper.
The wild turkeys scratch out her name on the leafy forest floor.
A R L E
A bobcat on a mountain rock glares down at us and wonders what she’s doing with me.
“You could do so much better, Mountain Sister,” he growls, but it is lost in the ghost of a gust that has been kicking back and forth out here for centuries now.
I am still smiling because I am an idiot. I think maybe she is joking with me.
Christian Apple, I want to tell her. But it is becoming increasingly apparent even to me that she has been down this path before and she was untouched by the finger of this magic. His name, for all she cares, is Joseph Miller. Or Henry Bierly. Or Samuel Musser. Nice names, all, but common in these parts. Not so punk rock. Not so hip in the eyes of the wildly unhip.
She is moving away now. Back towards the car.
I watch her go, the way she sways, that country lighting out back my barn.
She is smarter than me and prettier than me and kinder than me and just more than me and the mountains know it.
The dead here know it.
Christian Apple, if he didn’t know it before/ he knows it now.
I get so caught up in my own things, you know?
The dead beneath these broken graves, they know nothing of our poking around. We come here looking for connection, I guess. Or I do. But to what? The past? Some kind of glory or something? I don’t know. But I know she goes with me. To all of them. And she goes because she is looking for something too. Not just doing it for me, dude. Not just graveyard walking for her tried/true man.
Fuck no.
I can feel her digging up this dirt with her eyes, same as me. We scoop it all up, pile after pile, until we hit the snappy rocks, hours later, except they’re not the snappy rocks. They’re the bones. The snappy bones out in the daylight once again.
Oh, those happy happy bones, we fling them up out of their holes/ too long in the dark/ and they run around like puppies/ clacking into each other/ pecking at each other’s ears/ popping straight up into the springtime sky on account of this is unbelievable/ we are free and alive again!
She lets Angus in the back of the Honda where he mucks up my seats with graveyard mud and then she climbs in the passenger side up in the front and checks her phone.
“Go to her,” I hear him whisper. I already know who it is. So do you. It’s obvious but it is what it is so whatever.
“Christian?,” I say. “Christian Apple?”
“Stop saying my name, son!” he cries. “I’m about to put two barking irons up to your thick head and trade spots with ya!”
I stare at him. He is taller than I thought. He has a mustache but no beard. He is old. Not like he was as a soldier, but old like when he finally died long after the war.
“Ummm, okay, Hi!, I just wanted to say thank you for your service and I wish….”
“SHUT YOUR PIE-HOLE AND GO TO THAT LADY AND TRY TO TREAT HER RIGHT, YOU TINY FAT GRAVE ROBBER!!” he roars.
I shudder as the mountains shake.
I run to the car and hop in and start it, skid us across the deep shoulder mud, and out onto the Winter Mountain Road towards town.
I’m breathless/ dumbfounded/ afraid/ what just went down?
Arle looks at phone, never looks up.
I peek at the screen and right away I can see she is looking up the name of a different soldier whose stone we just came across. In the rearview I see Christian Apple standing in the road back there watching us disappear from sight.
You want to put on some music?, I manage to ask her. She fiddles with her phone. Johnny Cash comes on.
We hit a dip in the road, soar like the Dukes of Hazzard.