Acre Under a Green Sky

Red dog is a gravel-like gob used for paving in coal mining country. There are mines in Pennsylvania that have been burning for years. Red dog is the slag-like result of those fires. The road running through and around my grandfather's farm was an old red dog road. Years of travel had pounded the stone into a rust-colored dust as fine as a woman's rouge. The horses hooves brought up clouds of the stuff; and when the horses galloped, it looked like the road caught fire. Garry, Danny, and I used to cover our bodies with the red dust to play Indians.

There are mountains of red dog not far from my grandfather's farm. The mountains of red dog were off limits to us. Slides had been known to bury whole trucks while carting off the stuff or perhaps they were bringing the red dog in. I never knew exactly how those mountains came to be. It was a vast, desolate moonscape large enough to hide a small town. In many ways it was like a giant crater with mounds and hills of red dog at the base; all intertwined with random, heavily traveled paths for the trucks –– some spiraling up around the sides of the crater. The red dog must be dumped from roads very high up to form the cascading sides of the crater. A broken down shack stood at the gated entrance at the base of the crater: but I never saw a soul in or around it, and the gate was never chained or locked. Garry and I often walked the two miles from the farm and passed through that chain link gate, and no one ever tried to stop us.

Every time we went to the mountains of red dog, the place was totally deserted and deathly still. We would explore and climb the perilous mountains. You climbed the steep sides of the crater on all fours; hands and feet, the ground giving way under you at every step until you either made it to the top or slid all the way down to the bottom. It was a challenge. It was fun, and it was forbidden.

After a few unsuccessful climbs up the mountain, we were sitting on the ground eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drinking water from my cub scout canteen. Garry had only recently taken up smoking Pall Mall cigarettes he stole from his father; and as it was still a novelty, he made quite a production of pulling a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with his father's flip-top Zippo; and then trying out different ways of holding the cigarette. He said I smoked like a girl, but I was the first to actually inhale and blow smoke out my nose. That really impressed him, but it made me drunk and dizzy.

"You still smoke like a girl. If you're not careful, you'll end up like Rod Eagle."

"A bank teller?!"

"No, dummy! He's queer! Him and Angel been at it since they was kids. Likes to diddle with little boys, too. Anyway, that's what Estelle told my Mom."

"It's not true!"

"Well, he never tried nothing with me."

"Me either!"

"Still, I guess Estelle knows what she's talking about –– living right next door and all."

"She doesn't know anything. She's dead."

"Well then –– knew! She knew what she was talking about."

"It's a lie! It's not true, and you know it."

"I don't give a fuck. I'm just telling you what I heard. Here! Hold the cigarette like this –– like a cowboy."

"Estelle's always making up stories about people –– you know that."

I didn't care if Rod was queer or not, but I hated mean-spirited gossip. I was like my mother in that respect. The only thing worse than mean-spirited gossip was careless gossip, and Garry was a master of that.

Later that afternoon, Garry and I were enjoying our conquest of one of the higher mountains when far below us a red pick up truck pulled into the crater and parked behind a smaller hill hidden from the road but not from us. A young man and a young woman got out of the cab of the truck and took off their clothes. And then they made long, languid love on the bed of the pick up truck. The sun was bright and warm, and their naked bodies appeared as white as ivory against the blue cover they had put down. After the initial shock of recognition, Garry and I watched without saying a word to each other. We were awestruck by these two creatures –– these spirits of Red Dog Mountain. They were breathtakingly beautiful in each other's arms; lithe and muscular in turn, unabashedly carnal; but never sordid or rushed. Our distance from them bestowed a kind of dreamy, innocent cast on the scene as if it weren't quite real. Finally, they lay quiet in each other's arms for what seemed a very long time –– he, on his back with her head on his shoulder; her body curled toward him with her knee bent over his groin. And then they dressed. And then they were gone.

"You could hang a wet towel on my dick right now," Garry said, "This thing ain't ever going down."

"Me, too. But wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it the most beautiful thing you ever saw?"

That afternoon, I learned that an hour of love can live in your memory a lifetime.