The ground swelled and fell and the green was bright in the near places and grew hazy on the hills farther away. Gradually, the rises in the earth became more pronounced and the valleys between them more dramatic. The occasional foothill became a steady stream of growing hills until finally they were mountains. Such was the terrain that moved under the two bikes as they rolled Northwesterly through South Carolina, across the pencil of land that made up the Northeastern corner of Georgia and then became North Carolina.
Each time they rolled over a peak or along an elevated road, the scenery became more and more breathtaking. Jazz found herself trying to imagine how many centuries it took to form these mountains and valleys. She wondered if they were this pristine and awe inspiring to the Native Americans who were here in 1700, 1200 or in the year 2 A.D. Somehow, the mountains, though there for all mankind to enjoy, seemed to be there for the purpose of making her relationship to this man who’s belt she could feel under her hands all the more important. She thought, “These Mountains are so massive and magnificent, yet they are only a small place on this gigantic planet and this planet is so small when compared to the universe. It all makes us humans seem so tiny and insignificant. Yet we have a burning need to be important, to be worthwhile. We form bonds with other humans and we cling to those relationships in order that we can be a vital part of someone’s life. Thus our need to be significant is fulfilled when another human makes us so. Without the love and affection, but mostly the need, we feel from another person, life would be meaningless, useless.” She made up her mind that she would express these feelings to Sudz when they had a quiet moment together again. “Tonight,” she told herself. “Tonight, I’ll tell Sudz how I need him and he needs me, even if we have to talk of such things right in front of Nadu.”
For a fleeting moment, she felt a mild resentment that Nadu was traveling with them. She wanted to be alone on the planet with Sudz, just two humans making their way through life, loving each other and depending on each other. Then she pushed that feeling aside and looked over at the Indian girl riding so comfortably along beside them, her hair working a few strands out of the confinement and flapping in the wind like a cartoon character. She felt a twinge of guilt that she had ever resented the presence of such a sweet and beautiful creature as Nadu. She was happy that she had come to know her and hoped that she would have her as a close friend for the balance of her life.
She also felt a stab of guilt for the way she had conducted herself last night. She knew Nadu’s pup tent was only a few feet from the pop up camper she shared with Sudz. She knew the girl would hear any unusual sound, yet she had made it a point to let the girl know everything that was going on between herself and her lover. She had made all the sounds of passion she could muster, trying to invade the girl’s mind with mental pictures of her and Sudz. She hoped she could eventually turn Nadu’s thoughts into desire and she wanted to be there when Nadu lost that innocence she was clinging to. She wanted to share that moment.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook off her thoughts. “After all,” she reminded herself, “Nadu didn’t answer my question when I point blank asked her if she was a virgin. The girl is a young adult, has been to college, and has lived in a world of peer pressure. Surely, she isn’t still a virgin.”
Nadu looked over at her as they raced along a rare straight area of roadway. When she saw that Jazz was staring at her, she smiled politely at her friend. Jazz wrinkled her nose and returned the smile. She really liked Nadu. She looked at the smooth dark skin and the way her loose clothes were plastered to her body in the wind. Nadu wasn’t skinny, nor was she overweight. She had softness, a roundness about her that was both youthful and comfortable, like the softness of a mother’s arms. But Jazz knew that underneath that soft looking exterior there were muscles that were capable of strong marshal arts moves. Her agility and ability when she stopped Mickey from further harming Merritt had become well known throughout the biker group.
Presently, Sudz raised his hand to get Nadu’s attention and pointed to a turnout where they could stop for a rest. Nadu nodded agreement and the bikes slowed together and eased off the narrow highway onto a section of shoulder that had a rock wall for tourists to stand and look over. They parked the bikes and dismounted. Sudz made a big production of stretching his legs, pushing his back with his hands and making loud groaning sounds. Jazz passed by him and went to the rock wall to admire the valley before them and the mountains beyond. Nadu joined her, carrying a small bag she had taken from her leather saddle bag.
“That was a long stretch of road we just covered,” Sudz called out. “I’m stiff.”
Nadu pulled a banana from the bag and offered it to Jazz. Jazz accepted it with a smile and returned her gaze upon the scenery. “Look,” she told Nadu, “It looks just like there’s a forest fire on the side of that mountain. See?”
“Yes,” said Nadu. “That’s how they got the name Smokey Mountains. The white clouds cling to the trees and look like smoke rising.”
“You are so fortunate to have grown up around all this beauty,” Jazz looked at Nadu.
Nadu peeled her banana and pulled a third one from the now empty bag. She turned and offered it to Sudz, “Want a banana?” she called. Sudz came forward to take the offering. Nadu said, “Yes, I am fortunate. I don’t think I could enjoy living anywhere else for very long.”
“Where are we?” Jazz asked, watching Nadu bite a third of the banana off.
Nadu chewed the large portion of banana a few times to make it small enough for her to speak, then said with her mouth still full “Maggie Valley, North Carolina. We are very close to my home in Cherokee. It’s an Indian Reservation.”
“How much farther?” Sudz asked.
“If we drove straight on, we could be there in 40 minutes or so,” Nadu answered. Then she asked, “Do you hear that?”
The other two listened. Below them, in the valley, came a sound like a steady wind blowing through the treetops. “Yes,” Jazz said, “What is that sound?”
“Just below us there is a mountain stream. The water is crashing over the rocks and making that roar. The streams are the most beautiful places in these mountains. They are sacred to my people. They represent cleansing and they are the places where I do my rituals for purification.” Nadu said and took another large bite of the banana.
“Yes,” Sudz said, “You know I noticed that you were standing in a moving stream back at the park when that deal with Merritt interrupted you. Was that a ritual you were doing?”
“Sort of,” she smiled. “That wasn’t the full ritual because all those people were around and the water was not moving very fast.”
“Is it important that the water is moving?” Jazz asked.
“Oh yes,” Nadu said. “It is sort of a religious ritual and sort of a natural thing as well. We believe that moving water takes all the bad things that happen to us, including all the bad feelings, and washes them down the stream if our hearts truly want to be purified. Our religion is very much like the Christian religion, you know. You’ve heard of baptizing, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” Jazz’s eyes lit up, “Like in the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou.”
“I suppose,” Nadu said. “We believe the Great Spirit, which is God to you, is in everything He made. Everything has a spirit all its own yet each spirit is connected to all other spirits because they were made by Him. The spirit of the water touches the spirit of the sand and is cleansed by it. Then the spirit of the clean water touches the spirit of the person who wants to be cleansed and cleans that person’s soul then returns to the sand to be cleansed again. I try to find a body of moving water as often as I can and I am renewed by the spirit of the clean water. Every day, if I can.”
Sudz guffawed, “I try to take a shower.”
His joke was ignored by the two women. Nadu continued, “Have you ever noticed that when you admit you have been wrong that you feel clean inside, as if dirtiness has been lifted from you?”
“Yes,” Jazz answered.
“It’s like that in the ceremony. I enter the water and ask the spirits of the water and the sun and the air, even the trees, to take away all the bad I have in me and leave me feeling whole and clean and guiltless.” Nadu paused to let her words sink in.
Jazz nodded and was obviously lost in deep thought. Nadu continued, “Just thinking about it makes me want to go down there right now. Would you two mind if I went down to the stream for a little while before we continue?”
Jazz spoke before Sudz had a chance to object to the delay, “Of course not. In fact, I’d love to see the stream myself. Would it be okay if we came along?”
Nadu swallowed the last of her banana and put the peeling into the bag. She let her face break into a sly smile and looked from Jazz to Sudz and back again. She said, “Well, I don’t mind if you don’t. I guess we are close enough for that.”
Sudz and Jazz exchanged glances of puzzlement. They took the keys from their bikes and secured the bags from possible predators and made ready to descend the steep slope toward the sound of the water.
Once they rounded the end of the rock wall, the ground gave way to a very steep grade. The trees grew straight up but their roots entered the ground at severe angles and much of the roots were exposed from years of erosion. Large boulders littered the grade and they used them to climb down the face of the mountain. They picked their way carefully, often holding onto trees or hanging vines or each other. The deep shade made for very little undergrowth and the ground was bare of grass much of the time. The ground was wet and slippery in many places where ground water seeped from the hillside and ran down before them. There was an odor of dampness and fungi. Sometimes other odors permeated the air. With each few yards of progress, the sound of the water became louder and more inviting. Sudz and Jazz found themselves trying to see the water long before it came into view.
Nadu asked, “Do you smell that kind of pungent odor now and then? That is the smell of bears. There are lots of black bear in these hills.”
“Are they dangerous?” Jazz asked.
“Not likely,” she said. “There are very few incidents of bears attacking humans and then only in places where tourists have been feeding them.”
Sudz chimed in, “Sort of like the alligators back home then. They only attack people where people have been feeding them and they lose their fear of humans.”
Before they reached the stream, they saw a doe deer and her twin fawns in the distance. The threesomes saw them first and were moving casually away, seeming not to be overly fearful of the three humans. Finally the stream came into view, bordered by more undergrowth than the hillside had. The ground leveled out and they walked on muddy earth and smaller boulders.
The sun filtered down through the treetops and sparkled on the rushing waters. The stream was filled with large rocks and small ones in a wide variety of colors and textures. The water crashed over them, slithered between them and seemed to fight with them for the right to rush on down the stream. The deepest part of the stream was no more than knee deep and much of it would barely cover one’s ankles, yet the power of the fast moving water was evident. The temperature had dropped dramatically the moment they left the roadside and were under the shade of the trees. Now, near the water, it dropped again, as if the water served as an air conditioning system.
The three stood looking at the stream for a long period of time. It was such an awesome sight to behold. Each of the three seemed lost in their own private admiration of the wonder before them. Finally, Nadu moved forward and stepped onto a flat rock that had a thin layer of water running over it. She had stepped out of her shoes and the cold water enveloped her feet and foamed around her ankles.
“Is it very cold?” Jazz called, noticing that she had to speak rather loudly to be heard over the water’s voice.
“Very,” Nadu called back. “Mountain streams are always cold.”
Jazz rushed forward, kicking off her shoes as she did. She found a rock she could stand on and dip a foot into the water. She squealed at the frigid shock of the stream and withdrew her foot. She looked back at Sudz and yelled, “You got to feel this, baby.”
Sudz moved forward also. He leaned down and dipped his hand in the stream and was amazed at how cold it was. Jazz yelled again, “Take off your boots.” Sudz considered it.
Nadu moved a little upstream, stepping from one rock to another. She found a boulder sticking out of the water that was even with her waist and found a deep spot of water near it. She stepped onto another large rock that was just above the water level and glanced back at the other two. They were lost in their game of feeling the icy water and picking up small stones to examine them. Nadu took off her blouse and draped it atop the large boulder. Then she unbuttoned and unzipped her pants and dropped them. She stepped out of them and put them atop the blouse. Then she casually removed her panties and deposited them as well. She braced her hand on the boulder and carefully stepped onto and underwater rock, working her way into the deeper area. Soon the icy water was swirling between her thighs and the next step down would put it around her waist at the deepest part.
Sudz had noticed first that she was naked. He bumped Jazz and nodded his head toward Nadu. Jazz was transfixed on the girl. She wasn’t sure if she was shocked that Nadu had stripped off her clothes or amazed that she could stand the icy water as she did. Either way, she found that they couldn’t take their eyes off her.
Nadu faced the direction from whence the water came and raised her hands toward the stream. Arms stiff she opened her hands as if inviting a child to come into her arms. She lifted her face toward the filtering sun’s rays and began to chant the ancient song of cleansing. The low volume chant grew louder and her knees began to bend and straighten, like a bounce that was in time with a non-existent drum beat. After a few minutes her knee bends became more and more pronounced until she was splashing her bottom on the water’s surface, then dipping into the water up to her breasts. Finally, she held onto a rock and lowered her head until her head and body were submerged. She stood up straight then and her jet black hair clung in long strips down her back and chest. Her arms were straight up now, fingers pointing toward the sky and her back arched.
Sudz’s trance was broken when he noticed that Jazz was stripping off the last of her clothes and tossing them onto a rock. He laughed at the woman’s exuberance as Jazz excitedly followed the path Nadu had taken into the stream. He grinned at the sight of the two women, Jazz with her lily white abundance of curves and Nadu with her soft brown charms.
Jazz was only a few feet behind Nadu when she turned to leave the stream, her ritual over. “Wait!” Jazz screamed. “I want to learn to do that.”
Nadu burst into laughter and held out her hand to give Jazz something to hold onto until she reached the boulder. Sudz could hear them shouting to each other, grinning and laughing at Jazz’s reaction to the coldness. Nadu stepped to one side and directed Jazz to step down onto the flat rock she was on. Jazz eased her foot down three times before she could allow the other foot to join it. Once the water was up to the middle of her thighs she hugged herself and screamed at the top of her lungs. Nadu laughed with her.
Jazz turned and motioned for Sudz to join them. He shook his head from side to side and she put her hands on her hips as if angry. He thought about how good it would feel if he could submerge himself. “Why the hell not?” he said aloud and began to wrestle with the laces on his boots.
By the time he made it out to within a few feet of the girls, Nadu had shown Jazz how to perform the ritual dance and Jazz was ready for the baptism. Nadu held onto Jazz’s arm to make sure the rushing waters didn’t knock her off balance and Jazz bravely dipped her head under water. She came up screaming but threw her arms above her head to point skyward, just as instructed.
Jazz turned to see if Sudz was still watching and if he saw what she had accomplished. She found him standing only inches from her and screamed with delight. She and Nadu joined each other in gales of laughter and exhilaration. The sight of Sudz super white body, shivering like a jack hammer made their laughter even wilder.
Jazz tuned to Nadu and yelled “Can we fit three on this rock?” Nadu answered by extending her hand toward Sudz to help him with his balance as he tried to step down into the deeper water that swirled around the girls legs. The fact that her eyes surveyed his body as he took her hand was not lost on him or on Jazz. Jazz impulsively squealed again and hugged Nadu, almost toppling the two off the rock in the process.