I’d been dreaming of hiking with my children. They were laughing, fighting, just in front of me. 

My son walked up on a sun-bathing snake on a boulder. He grabbed the snake just under its head and snatched it up. It turned into string. We began seeing snakes everywhere. We’d snatch them up, laugh, and they’d disappear in a mist, leaving only string.

Then, in the middle of the trail, I saw an enormous coil, a rattlesnake with rattles as big as my forearm. My son laughed and ran for it. The snake rose up over my son. The sky turned mustard yellow and caught fire. I lurched to grab my son.

And I awoke.

I lay still on the floor of my bedroom. Both of my shoulders hurt from the hard floor. My pillow was nothing but a pillowcase stuffed with towels. From the bed above me my son licked his lips in his sleep. My daughter stirred a bit.

Since I gave up custody and moved to Huntsville I didn’t get to see them much. Getting custody all those years ago was every bit as emotionally brutal as giving up custody, but it had to be done. I’d lost my job in Birmingham and had an offer in Huntsville. I certainly didn’t have the money for a court fight let alone a place to live. Through the generosity of a friend I was staying in a spare bedroom, so there would be no real sense of home for them. 

It was important to me that we did things together, though selfish in a personal sense more than important in a parental sense. So early that morning, I determined we’d go for a hike on Monte Sano mountain. I threw granola bars and chips into a beat up backpack and off we went.

Arriving in the parking lot we were listening to one of my various 80s cds – okay, I was listening, they were rolling their eyes at me in the groove, singing, “I can feel… no sense of measure… no illusion as we take… refuge in young man’s pleasure… breaking down the dreams we make….. real…”

A Hobo

I rolled out of the car and popped the trunk. The kids were slow to get out. They were grumpy from being up so early and having had to sleep in a bed together. From the rear of the car I saw them looking at each other. The boy said something; the girl gave me a sidelong glance.

I retrieved the backpack from the trunk and decided to grab a few extra water bottles. I heard someone approaching me from behind and I turned casually. 

Huntsville is not short of its fair share of bums. From the Shell off of Hobbs Island road to the Texaco across from Alabama A&M, the Publix on Slaughter road to the Wavaho in Bailey Cove, and all points in between, there were bums. And they were not shy.

“Mornin’,” he said. He had the distinct smell of dirt. Not “dirty”, but earthen dirt.

“Mornin’,” I replied. He was an elderly black man with a wiry gray beard and pale blue eyes of age.

“I don’t suppose I could lean on ya for a smoke, friend?” he inquired of me.

Thankfully I had recently quit smoking and could honestly respond, “Nossir, I don’t have one.”

“Heh, well good for you friend!” he said.

He waved me off with a shake of a crooked finger and took a dogleg course from his approach.

I continued putting extra water bottles in the pack. The kids were standing next to the car watching his departure.

“What’d that hobo want, dad?” my son asked.

“A cigarette,” I replied.

“You don’t smoke any more dad, do you?” my daughter asked, as she watched the old man shuffle toward the picnic area.

“No sweetie, I don’t.”

The trunk slammed shut and we started toward the trailhead.

I said, “You know, I usually take Old Railroad Bed around to Bluff Line, but today, let’s start at Bluff Line and come back the other way?”

“Whatev’s” was the sullen reply.

Atop Monte Sano mountain there used to be a town called Viduta. The residents of Viduta took a trail down to Huntsville-proper for supplies. The Vidutans, presumably on their way down the mountain, would dump their trash and garbage (my mother informed me there’s a difference) at what eventually came to be the start of the Bluff Line trail. Just off to one side there was a great horde of glass, milk bottles, medicine bottles, soda bottles, ketchup bottles, creamer bottles, and baby bottles. To the other side a cache of ancient rotted textiles, one hundred fifty year old denim and buttons, rags and just the seams of garments worn daily until the greater part of the whole was no longer useful.

I dipped under the huge tangle of brush to shuffle through the discarded glass. Every time it rained new glass revealed itself. I relished finding the odd Coricidin bottle for slide guitar. I never learned to play slide guitar, but I knew if I ever found that one bottle I’d be the next Sonny Landreth.

My son called out to me from the trail. Something like: “DAaaaad!” A staccato punch followed with a decrescendo indicating impatience. “There’s a pair of jeans or something in the mud.”

“Eww, gross”

Rising out of the low thick brush I saw my son poking a shard of denim in the mud with a stick. It hung on a splinter and he started waving it at his sister. She screeched in disgust.

“Pardon me, friend,” spoke a voice from just in front of us.

I remember wondering, “How in the heck did he just… appear?”

I did a reality check. I looked at the kids, the trail, the dump to the left with specular glints and the dump to the right with matted cloth, and then to the hobo in front of us.

Exasperated, I coughed, “ehhhh…”

With no pretense he asked, “Maybe I could lean on yah for a bottle of water?”

Again I looked around double checking reality.

“I saw you putting a few extra bottles there in your pack…” he said, straightening his arm, with a crooked finger on the end, toward my shoulder.

In recalling the situation I was aware that the kids had instantaneously gone from 2-5 yards on my 9 o’clock and 2 o’clock to my immediate 6:30 and 5:30.

He was wearing what appeared to be a faded green flannel shirt, collar bent, faded gray or green trousers, and beat-to-hell muddy boots. Under something like a faded boonie hat he sported a wiry wild white beard and a thin mustache with a canine, a few cuspids, and bicuspids, missing. He was thin, his eyes pale blue, his skin the color of burned toast, and across his shoulder the web of a strap holding a heavy canvas bag on his back.

I must have been standing there, blinking at him, for a moment too long – just a moment too long – because he said: “Water? A bottle of water?”

I was a particularly uneasy man. I had been able to convince myself, over time, to take action against obvious, blatant threats. I remember sizing this old man up; compared him against perceived threats, evaluating his physical stature / presence, tactical advantages he may have versus my relative youth and agility, reality versus perceived evaluation of the situation, sundry outcomes and future impacts each may have on the relationships I had with my children at the time.

“Uh, sure,” I replied, and slowly removed my backpack.

I honestly did not sense this man was a threat, but the coward within me was apoplectic.

Recalling the incident now is like looking at my back through a tunnel, the hobo blocked by my silhouette.

My silhouette handed him a bottle of water. The hobo smiled kind of… knowingly at me. 

“Thank you friend – I won’t forget your kindness.”

With that he walked past me.

I said nothing to the children. I simply put my pack back on and moved forward.

A few strides down the trail and my son said, “Dad… he’s gone…”

An Altar

I am not one to stay on a trail. I like to think over the years I’d successfully demonstrated to my kids that while one would like to color outside the box, one must always know where the box is – one must understand the limits of the box before one exceeds the box… know the rules so you can break the rules… intelligently.

As is my wont, I banked and headed up the large rocks that made up a run-off creek bed. My children had become accustomed with their father going off trail and without protest headed up the mountain with me. Less than a quarter mile we came to a dried up waterfall.

Small in that it was only maybe twenty feet from the currently empty plunge pool to its dry overhang. Within its modest undercut was a large, square rock. Maybe three and a half feet tall, five or six feet port to starboard, and probably three feet wide. The children, behind me, stopped moving. The scene before us resembled something of an altar within a grotto. Remembering it now it seemed as tho’ the air itself stopped moving and gelled around us.

Fueled with the unreasonable expectation that my children needed to see me as unafraid of anything I started toward the undercut and its dirty tan altar. The children stood unmoving on the plunge pool rocks. Behind the altar I found something curiously unsurprising – soot and ash from a fire and a pillow. 

“Cool!” I said, just a notch or two less than a frightened tone.

The girl was the first to move. She was a good climber and was almost instantly by my side.

“What is it daddy?”

“Looks like some bum has been camping out here – see, there’s his pillow” I said, pointing.

The boy at that time was still full of eleven year old boyhood cowardice. Most pre-teen boys may seem fearless, but that’s only when they don’t know they’re in danger or what they might be doing is dangerous. If they’re faced with real danger they’re every bit as cowardly and fearful as a doe.

The boy slowly moved to the creek bank, then up along the back wall of the undercut.

“Whose is it, dad?”

“I don’t know, maybe that bum we saw on the trail.”

My son began to scan the trees and said, “We should probably go. What if he comes back?”

He began to wring his hands.

I looked out over the altar and marveled at the wonderful view before us. The leaves had changed and I remember looking out over the valley. In the distance I saw the Saturn 5, standing twice as tall as any tree, an obelisk to man’s ingenuity, fearlessness and what was at one time a bright and shiny future of acrylic chairs, flat screen control panels, flying cars, and space travel, now lost to government waste and a military industrial complex.

I remember thinking, “What a great view…”

The boy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I asked if they’d like to take our lunch there. 

“Dad, no. No dad, what if he comes back?”

“Well then, he can have my granola bar, I suppose,” I responded reassuringly.

“He can have some of my chips, daddy,” my daughter said, already reaching for my pack.

We sat on large rocks in front of the altar and ate. My son looked around nervously, chewing slowly. Like a doe chewing cud. Up, down, grinding side to side. Head on a swivel, watching bank to bank.

I recall my daughter recommended we leave a bottle of water next to the pillow. We left that and a ziploc bag of chips. My son led the way down the creek bed, not once looking back.