Matt and I lived in a garage for a summer. We didn’t complain. It was a nice garage in a nice setting. It was one in a row of garages in a green metal-framed building housing an office for an environment camp, a workshop, and us. We were working for the University of Tennessee trapping bears for research in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Behind the garage door you would find two bunks on the left, a single cot on the right, shelves and fridge against the back wall where a large black Norwegian rat would make it’s presence known on occasion.
We were unencumbered summer students who didn’t mind the accommodations and loved the fact that we had a small charcoal grill, Clash tapes, and fold-out seats for evening meals in the parking lot immediately outside our roll-up door.
Frequenting the workshop to our left was the maintenance man for the environmental camp. His name was Ron.
We were excited to find out that Ron, of all the staff of the environmental camp that we perceived were liberal wackos, was a down-to-earth born again and again Christian. He was kind, helpful, and willing to talk to us at days end while we were relaxing by smell of our cancerous briquettes.
So kind was he that he invited us to have a meal at his house where his wife would supply us with something other than hormone-injected and unnaturally-formed beef patties or tube steaks. We set a weekend date.
We either showered in the camp’s dorm or took a cold bath in the mountain stream which was a stones throw from our domicile. We donned our best military surplus pants and collared shirts and drove the few miles outside the national park boundary.
Ron’s white farmhouse could have been the subject of a Thomas Kincade painting. It was at the end of a bucolic lane in a mountain valley. Barns dotted the hills and a small stream sauntered under a foot bridge in their freshly cut lawn. You wanted to breathe in deeply when you stepped out of your truck in hopes you could carry the scene with you in your lungs.
Inside the house was just as country as you can imagine; hand-knitted throws over a floral couch, dark wood paneling, creaky wood floors, and a porcelain white-skinned Jesus in a powder blue robe framed in gold.
Butter beans, greens, corn on the cob, and fresh sliced garden tomatoes as deep red as Jesus’s own blood were on the table. Ron’s wife was pulling a cast iron skillet of steaming cornbread from the propane fueled oven. Country ham added the protein.
Ron’s wife was the perfection of Pentecostalism. Her braided brown hair framed her clear glossy face oiled from the stove before her. Oven mitts gave way to the long sleeves of a white shirt tucked into a denim skirt dragging the kitchen’s linoleum even in the un-air conditioned July house.
As we ate and after we ate she talked. She talked of Jesus. She talked of fiery eyes. She talked of Jesus with fiery eyes and serpents. She talked of fire and dreams of fire. The food and warmth of the house and strange talk mesmerized me and made me uncomfortably sleepy. Judgment, and lakes, and fire came from this gentle smooth-skinned woman.
We yawned and thanked and excused. Slowly we pried ourselves away into the dark lawn and the familiar vinyl smell of our truck seats that we wanted to breathe in deeply and carry with us in our lungs. Matt and I were silent as we drove back to the garage.