WHERE NO MURDERED GHOSTS CAN FIND ME

The bar was dull and I was feeling even duller. It was Friday night. And then me, Mark, and Tracy said " Fuck it! Let's go to Fayetteville right now! " Felt that spontaneous adrenaline mix with our blood. The highway was alive, and so were we. I-40 blackness and driving again with one of my closest friends of all time. It was six o'clock in the morning and the sun was coming up in the hills and mountains in Washington county. The sky was light blue and pink. Mark and I were still cracking jokes as we pulled into town and past the university. Goddamn, I love this town. We were too scared to wake Preston's parent's up by knocking on his door, so we drove around in delirium looking for Laura's house to crash for a few hours. After atleast a half an hour we were in the door and sleeping in her roommate's empty beds. Preston woke us up around 9:30, and it was breakfast, beer, gas, and cigarrettes before getting back on the road and heading to his cabin in the secluded and gorgeous hills of Newton County. Whiskeytown, Lucinda Williams, and the undeniable greenness of summer. Preston flying around every bend. Those Ozark highways that I love so much. Land so beautiful it makes you want to cry. Wide open fields, massive rolling hills, and deep river valleys. Thought about the years my sister lived up here along with my mother too. Wished that they could be there today. Remembered being in love and driving up here at age sixteen...


Finally met up with some more friends at Bob's Super Market in Jasper, and headed towards Murray, the tiny hill community where Preston's family has been slowly building a beautiful cabin on the Little Buffalo River for the last ten years. Arteries of dirt roads wind you through the hills and homesteads that lead to Murray, a community rumored to be a hideout for Frank James and other outlaws from that bygone era. I suspect some modern day outlaws are still hiding out there today. This is the type of place the government doesn't come to unless they are there burn your Marijuana crops and take you to jail. We have been coming lucky enough to come out here to swim, explore, and raise general drunken hell for several years now.

This is Chimney Rock and the high cliff on the left is where we've been known to leap from. Terrifying!

The sun was blazing and we were hot, so we loaded into the back of Thomas's truck and headed to the Chimney Rock swimming hole, about fifteen minutes from the cabin. The water was a bit low, but still pretty cold. The last time I was here it took fifteen knee shaking minutes of very real fear for me to finally jump off of the massive cliff and into the river. Preston was the only person to make the plunge this time around. No suprises there. I shot beautiful silent video clips of our drive through the woods back to the cabin.

That's the cabin in the distance.

Evening slowly began to fall, and it was trivial pursuit and beer drinking in the cabin. I was suprised to hear a question about John Walker Lind, the young American caught fighting for the Taliban several years back. Another interesting question: " What song did members of Congress break into on the steps of the Capitol in September 2001? " God, I can still remember watching them sing " God Bless America " on live television and all of that uncertain eeriness right after 9/11. Our team lost after we missed our chance for the yellow pie piece while Mark and I stepped outside to walk down to the outhouse, an occassionally terrifying act. I've always had this ineffable fear that either a cougar or a wild man is going to jump out of the dark and rip me into pieces while I'm sitting in the fucking out house along the edge of the woods. That, or perhaps a getting bit by a black widow sleeping under the toilet seat. Yikes. But we made it out unscathed. The game was over, but the night was just beginning. Cheap beer, wine, and whiskey drinking followed. Sitting around the table and " shooting the shit", as they say. "Chewing the fat." " Getting tanked. " You know, " burning the candle at both ends. "

The secret spot in the daylight.

But we eventually got restless and again piled into Thomas's truck to head to a secret look-out spot that only Preston knew about. The trees, fields, and roads were washed in a full moon's light. No shirts, and cruising the back roads in the back of the truck. A long steep road up the side of a hill. Preston says " This is it! " and leads us through the woods before coming to an opening and stepping out into one of the most spectacular views I've seen in a long time. Fog laying down in the valley and hills kissing eachother in the distance. Five of us sitting on the small cliff in disbelief. Me wishing that Lydia could be there to see what I was seeing and to kiss my face.

The scene of the crime.

I also thought of Roger Hoover and how much I know he would love this area. The night looked like what I suspect his next record will sound like. " Quite a haunting affair, " as he put it. So we put in the Whiskeyhounds, followed later by Bruce's Seeger Sessions, the perfect rural midnight sound track. Drove back across the valley and walked into a wild blueberry field under the lowering moon. Dear god, where was my baby on a night like this one? Probably sleeping. By this time we were all feeling pretty intoxicated from the night and the liquor, but Preston was REALLY feeling it, in infamously classic fashion. General hysteria and debauchery would follow. Ask me about it in person some time and maybe I'll tell you a funny story. Then again, maybe not...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We totally met that dude from Napoleon Dynamite in Fayetteville.


Leaving the swimming hole with Mark "Abu" Strain!