BACKROADS AND BOBTAILS
A River Runs Through It (and so does Cletus)
by Bob Kornegay

In late summer the meadow is tinged with gold. The tall grass undulates, ocean-like, with the slightest breeze. It is a lovely meadow, a north Georgia mountain meadow. A river, the Hiawassee, runs through it.

Cletus Monroe and I are waistdeep in the river. Bankside trees and meadow flank us on either side.

A cloud momentarily covers the sun. Briefly, the meadow is darkened by shadow. The cloud passes, and the meadow brightens, from gloom to golden glory in an instant. It is a sight truly worth beholding.

Even Clete is impressed.

"Right purty pasture, ain't it?" he offers.

"Meadow," I correct him. "In the mountains it's called a meadow."

With that, Clete suggests I perform a physically impossible feat. Something involving a certain bodily function carried out in a straight-up, vertical ascent. Something gravity will not allow. Something I couldn't do even if it did. I don't have a rope.

Clete casts a fly into a deep pool and makes no further comment, other than a muttered, "Ain't no dadgum trout in this worthless dadgum creek."

"River," I interject. "In the mountains it's called a river."

Ensuing circumstances make it prudent that I pause and change my leader and fly, allowing a quite perturbed Mr. Monroe to proceed downstream, creating ample (and safe) distance between us. Soon, he is but a mere speck in the distance.

Moments pass. Between casts, I glance up and notice what looks like the mere speck's exiting the stream. Rapidly.

"Strange," I say to myself. "Do I see my stalwart companion at this moment dashing headlong across yon meadow? And what, pray tell, is that mad conglomeration of nondescript debris he seems to be leaving in his wake?"

My eyes have not deceived. Ladies and gentlemen, Cletus has left the river. Reaching the spot where I last saw him fishing, I find hard evidence. Rod, creel, and landing net litter the bank. A new trail, spontaneously and haphazardly constructed, now winds through streamside flora and cuts across the meadow in zigzag fashion.

And, yes, there is a debris field. Here, a hat. There, a pair of waders. Yonder lie shirt, pants, felt-sole wading shoes, and a bedraggled pouch of Red Man.

I cross the meadow, painstakingly gathering up these tell-tale shards of frenzied flight as I go. I follow the trail to the highway and cross into the woods on the other side. The path is lost in the fallen leaves of the forest floor. I stop and look about.

"Now where," I say to no one in particular, "did he go from here?"

"I'm right over here, fool," says a big hemlock tree.

No, wait. It's Clete, peering sheepishly from the other side of the giant conifer. He steps out, completely naked save the waistband of an absent pair of Fruit-of-the-Looms, lost, I later learn on the barbed-wire fence that runs between meadow and road.

With downcast eyes (the sight of a nude Cletus Monroe has stricken more than one good man blind), I toss my burden of discarded clothing at my old friend's feet. As he dresses, he offers a matter-of-fact version of an explanation.

"Snake," he says. "Big 'un. Stepped right on 'im. Jumped out of the creek and ran like a striped ape. Bumped into one a them round wasp nests there at the edge of the pasture. Got three in my clothes and got nekkid. Now you just shut up and let's go to the truck!"

Silently, we make our way back across the goldtinged, late summer meadow. Suddenly, with no warning, Clete blurts out with heartfelt disgust and loathing, "Wasps! Dadblasted wasps!"

"Hornets," I instruct. "In the mountains they're called hornets."

Now, how's Miz Vicki going to take it when I tell her these red marks around my neck were made by the elastic waistband from Clete's underdrawers?

(Email Bob Kornegay at cletus@windstream.net)