She said, “This is way against the rules, but …”
Cherry pushed the restraining bar up and over our heads. We now sat unrestrained on a slender bench dangling above a rocky chasm. And rising. Cherry crossed her legs and pointed to the ground, growing more distant every second.
“Look at the world, Ryder,” she said. “What’s it doing?”
No way I was looking down. “I don’t know. Rotating?”
“It’s falling away.”
A gust of wind made the bench quiver and I grabbed the edge of the seat. Cherry smiled serenely and put her hands behind her head.
The lift took us higher than most surrounding mountains, providing a panoramic view of miles of rugged, rumpled green. Cherry sighed, the good kind, where fresh air replaces bad thoughts, tight muscles unfurl and, for her at least, the world falls away.
Reaching the peak, I jumped off to feel the joy of solid ground pushing back against my feet. It was a short walk to Natural Bridge, the park’s namesake, a magnificent natural arch carved over millennia by wind and rain, twenty feet wide, a hundred long, flat on top. We stood near the edge and scanned the mountaintops.
“I can’t figure out how it works,” Cherry said.
“How what works?”
“When the world starts to drive me nuts – like the past three weeks – I jump on the skylift and it’s truly as if the world falls away. I’m above it all, at least for a while. I feel better. Cleaner. You studied psychology. Does that seem crazy?”
“What do you mean?”
“The skylift’s just a glorified carnival ride that lifts me a few hundred feet. Nothing’s changed. But it makes me feel different, better. Why is that?”
“You surrender yourself to the metaphor,” I said. “Making the journey a symbol for escape, being above it all. If you’ve prepared yourself to believe strongly enough – to trust the metaphor – your subconscious allows it to happen.”
“I needed someone to tell me that. Thank you.”
She smiled and turned to the view. I wanted to hold her hand. Not in any romantic fashion, but to verify the presence of another human being standing beside me in the sky. But when I opened my hand and moved it toward hers, I felt a thrill rise in the pit of my belly and realized that perhaps there could have been a passing touch of romance in my heart.
And then a following wave of folks from the lift – two dozen German tourists – came down the trail chattering and taking pictures. The spell was broken and we returned to the world below.
“Here’s my plan,” Cherry said as we climbed into her ride. “The FBI’s back in the picture tomorrow and I’ll be running errands for Dark Lady Krenkler. I’m going to drop you by your cabin so you can check on your doggie. Then we’re going to my place for supper.”
“I don’t know if I should—”
“The hell with the world, Carson. I want to stay up in the sky a while. Have supper with me.”
She’d never used my first name. I can’t explain it, but at that moment I would have jumped headlong from the nearest cliff had she asked.
“The sky it is,” I said.
Mix-up wasn’t at the cabin, but I hadn’t expected it. Cherry gave me directions to her place and boogied. I showered away the day and changed into a fresh white cotton shirt, barely used cords, brand spanking new socks. I put out fresh food for Mix-up and changed the water. When I looked into the woods and felt my gut begin to hollow out, I took a few deep breaths and thought of Cherry beside me in the sky where she had felt free, at least for a few minutes.
When I drove off for her home, directions in my lap, I passed my brother’s home. He was on the porch and reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up.
I twice passed the drive to Cherry’s house and would have taken a three-fer if I hadn’t finally swerved into the gravel drive I’d initially thought an ATV trail. Unruly vegetation bordered the lane, as though Cherry enjoyed making visitors brush shoulders with nature. I followed the track several hundred feet, stopping in a graveled parking strip at the rear of a two-story log cabin with a steep metal roof of green. I pulled next to Cherry’s cruiser, beside it her muddy and jacked-high Jeep.
“Come on ’round front,” I heard Cherry’s voice yell.
My heels found limestone slabs forming a walkway to the front of the cabin, passing a massive stone chimney set against square-cut logs chinked with gray caulk. Looking ahead, I faced a breathtaking mountain panorama of verdant forest studded with massive rock cliffs and outcroppings. The impression was of rock-hulled ships pressing their bows from beneath the green.
I turned the corner to find Cherry above on the cabin’s broad porch, drifting lazily in a swing, one hand on the chain. Music fell from the open windows, a woman singer with a plaintive voice singing a rock song rooted in madrigal. Cherry wore a dress, white and simple, the neckline square and open, the hem at her knees. The effect was limited by a ball cap touting Ruger firearms, but it still took a second to start breathing again.
“How about a cool brew for a warm day?” she asked.
“Sweet idea.”
She padded inside, her feet bare, her sandals beneath the swing. I returned to inspecting the view. The cliff’s edge was directly before Cherry’s porch, twenty feet of scruffy grass ending in a dozen feet of dark sandstone. Beyond lay only air.
I crept as near the edge as my skittish heart allowed, looking far down into dense treetops parted by a slender thread of creek. Adjoining cliffs rose from the valley, sheer cuts of sandstone between hillsides angled just enough to hold vegetation. I found myself holding my breath as if underwater, not knowing why.
“Watch that first step, Ryder,” Cherry’s voice called from behind me. “The second one doesn’t show up for four hundred feet.”
I returned to the porch, where Cherry was setting down a tray with sandwiches and bottles of beer. “I was sure I had some duckling à l’orange left over from yesterday,” she winked. “But all I found was sandwich stuff.”
“You really ought to put a barrier at the edge of the cliff,” I suggested, picking up a half-pound of roast beef and cheddar on rye. “A fence or a rock wall or something.”
“I know where the edge is,” she said. “And a fence would block my view.”
“It’s a helluva view. I’ll give you that. And a real fersure log cabin.” I tapped my knuckles on the door frame, as solid as concrete.
“Built thirty-three years ago by Horace Cherry, my uncle on my father’s side. My father passed away when I was seven. Horace never had kids, and always took a shine to me. When he died, three years back, he left the place to me, knowing I loved being here as much as he did.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“I have a lot of relatives, but I was an only child.” She smiled wistfully. “I’m the last Cherry on the tree.”
“Everyone around here seems someone’s kin in some way.”
“When there’s only a few dozen families who inhabit a three-county area for the first hundred years after a place gets settled, everyone’s kin to everyone’s kin, in some way or another. That’s changing, but not as fast as everywhere else. A writer once called Appalachia the most foreign of American cultures.”
“Foreign?” I said. “Isn’t it Scots-Irish, mainly?”
“And English, and plenty of Germans. Yeoman