The Apple Tree

The Apple Tree by Victor M. Depta I should have known I'd have to go to Logan County by myself, Mom telling me sure, son, I U be ready, you just phone me real early, and telling me in the next breath that Nancy was squawking for her to go to the Eagle's Club, and Nancy, she could wear down a rock, but they'd stay only an hour or two, no way more than that, Mom said, because she knew what it was like traveling Route 10, that road would make a snake sick, and she wouldn't want to do it with a flip-flopping head and a churning stomach , so she wouldn't drink but a couple of beers. Sure. When I called die next morning, she didn't answer, probably asleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms away from the Ehone. I didn't go Route 10, anyway, ut up to Charleston on Interstate 64 and down 1 19, Corridor G, a limited access freeway, to Chapmansville. And while people bitch about freeways being bormg -I personally know diat Interstate 40 from Memphis to Knoxville is a green chute in summer and a gray one in winter, and me like an amoeba on a yardstick-the ones who gripe have never done much driving in West Virginia, especially in the southern part, Routes 3, 10, and such, where during the week death looms every minute and a half in the shape of a fourteen wheel coal truck, die monster surprise on a curve where the asphalt edge is broken like gray, caked mud, the two-foot shoulder luce a crippled crow's, and escape is to fly off through the trees and down a hundred yards into Big Coal river. Or driving on a narrow stretch, luce frayed electrician's tape, on which the trucks grow larger and larger, a bolt of heat lightning, Saint Elmo's fire, a giant oval grill of a maw. A gnashing, guttural whirlwind, with thirty tons of coal at its heart, hurls by, a foot from the passenger's door. Witiun a minute or two, the same Armageddon rolls up and hurtles onwards. And National Public Radio, which nobody on Seng Creek or Barker's Ridge can get die signal of, talks about C&O's exorbitant rates and the state's colonialized economy. No shit. A lot of good it does to tell everybody in Charleston and Huntington about coal trucks. Routes like 10 and 3, and you can multiply each by a dozen, all following die railroad tracks luce poor relations on gouged out mountain paths about the nes; such routes don't allow for sightseeing . A driver who takes his eyes off die road for more that two seconds wUl likely end up as a dead part of the scenery, a smear of blue Toyota on the rock-face to the left, or a pill bug among the trees down below, its wheels idling in the rhododendron. Driving on Route 10 is about as interesting as a holding pattern on a tangle of fisnline, unless, I suppose, you brought your Ferrari from the Grand Prix or were into eye-gluing video games. Corridor G, though, leisures its way through the mountains luce a beige, silk ribbon on a woman's hat, an old woman's, Victorian and regal, perched atop her thin-haired skull, shad53 ine her wrinkled, gravy-faced, tootiiless, hollow-cheeked, wan smile. I've seen women like that on Stratton Street in Logan, hatless of course, tiny and anxious , and have wondered what they looked like at home, especially this time Nashville crap on the radio, which I turned off quick enough. I drove on in silence wondering if I could ever praise death, ever become as helplessly beautiful in spirit as what I looked at, and not some mntii floor, seventy-year-old iden- !"VSí*;fe -Tv'' V \\ tn¿í/ of year, autumn, and if they were startled almost into tears as I was on Corridor G, able to look for seconds at at time at the deatii glory. I wished I were Ustening to a mandolin or banjo, even a dulcimer, something dignified, and...