the end of the world as seen from southwest virginia
by Matt Starr
I’m holed up in this Little Mountain Town an hour from both Kentucky and Tennessee, a place that God forgot (even though there are more churches here than anything else), while my girlfriend pursues career prospects in Biotech. The entire area, for all its small southern charm and natural beauty, is like something out of an Appalachian noir: It is haunted by the ghost of coal, lodged in the throat of the opioid epidemic, leaving just enough space to breathe. There are swaths that look stuck in the past, other, more scattered sections, firmly rooted in the chaos of the now. Sometimes it helps me to remember that I grew up somewhere much like this in North Carolina. A place that’s unsure of the way forward.
Our first day here, I witnessed a domestic argument. A woman, late twenties, emerged from the driver’s side of a red car parked behind our apartment building. A Big Gulp fell from her lap and burst into a splatter of soda and ice crescents onto the pavement below. She was pursued by a pale, reedy man who’d jumped out of the passenger seat. For a minute or two they made erratic, roaming gestures, cut unintelligible shapes with their mouths. Then she reentered the 0-something Ford Focus, hit the automatic locks.
“Let me get my shit!” he hollered, over and over again, yanking at the door handle.
I considered intervening, but I didn’t. A man who put me in mind of Frank Zappa walked past them with glass in his eyes. Gave me a look like “Same shit, different day, am I right?”
***
In my dreams I’m running all the time. My old therapist used to tell me my nightmares were unconscious manifestations of what I was too scared to face in my conscious state. There was The Possible Rapture and Tornadoes and My Dead Dad. But now there is just the running. I run IRL too, but it’s a lot different. In my dreams I don’t weigh hardly anything at all, and there’s no particular destination. I don’t remember the rest. Either I’m running toward something or away from something, and I guess it doesn’t really matter which. All’s I know is I’m moving without the impression of gaining ground.
Sometimes my girlfriend wakes me up because I’m screaming, and our dogs are embarrassed for me.
***
Every day here is a different expression of blue, some deeper than others, stained across the close sky as though the ether has been cut open and left to bleed. This is as good a place as any to pre-game The Apocalypse. Covid is the backdrop of this moment in time like the Blue Ridge mountain chain is the backdrop of this town: something impossible and overwhelming that you just grow numb to after enough time has passed.
People are dying in great gruesome waves Out There, but life here is slow. There’s a lot of porch sitting or else sidewalk smoking. Congregating at the Dairy Queen. Optional mask wearing. Everybody carries hard living in their shoulders, moves like I talk: long and drawn out. They pass through this world like they’re waiting –– waiting for whatever’s coming.
We go out for a hike at the state park nearby pretty regular, walk the dogs past families celebrating birthdays under picnic shelters, Gen Zers trying to get some pics for The Gram. The trail curves upward in a question mark toward a rocky slope that overlooks the Little Mountain Town, all spread out down there in a raised mural of rough textures. There’s the Grill & Chill. The hair salon next to our apartment. The historic hotel on the other side. The smoke shop. The tattoo parlor that flies a MAGA flag.
I look for hope in the mountains beyond. I ask them, “Why can’t you say anything? Why can’t you talk like you used to?”
But they never respond.
On the walk back to the car we always pass this statue of a Sasquatch that our dogs don’t trust, an homage to the area’s Bigfoot mythos. It is long, hulking, ludicrous. And I wonder how people can entertain the idea of that which is beyond belief. But I reckon it’s not too much of a stretch. I guess every place has its monsters.
***
One night after a visit to the state park, I dream this dream: I’m running (surprise, surprise) through this endless expanse of space yawning toward oblivion, and this time, there is actually something on my heels. I couldn’t tell you what it is. Maybe it’s a yeti-thing or an arguing couple or a virus that’s too small to see with naked eyes. Is it the shell of what I once was, hollowed out like a jumpsuit of skin, empty, hell-bent on catching up? Whatever it is, I’m running, and it isn’t. Yet it is still right there, so close I can feel its heat.
There’s this sound that bounces off the outcroppings at Natural Tunnel State Park, another place we go, when the train passes through the darkness below. Like windchimes that have no memory, singing lamentations. That’s the only thing I can hear in this dream.
***
A typical day is like this: My brilliant girlfriend goes to work. I tell myself I’ll chip away at the Project Management work on my plate once I finally decide to roll out of bed, but I just end up reading about Politics for an hour and getting Mad. I drink too much coffee. Our dogs, in snug coils on the couch, look at me like “Why are you here?” I would like to know, too.
This morning there is an explosion in Beirut. As a younger man, I may have processed such an event –– something that has no direct impact on me –– by drinking my brain into blackness, but now I take comfort in ice cream. I head to the Dairy Queen down the road, order an Oreo Cheesecake Blizzard. A Small, no, make that a Medium. When I get to the window the cashier turns the cup upside down, then right side up again, confirming the dessert’s inert thickness. I can feel myself longing for the sweetness, though I know it will melt away as soon as it comes. The cashier gives me a vacant once-over as she hands me the Blizzard. There is a longing in her eyes, too, but it’s not the same thing.
Later on that evening me and my girlfriend take the dogs to a Scenic Highway Overlook to watch the sunset. She tells me about all the interesting Biotech things she’s doing at work as our dogs sniff timidly at new smells, do their business. I’m trying to listen, really, I am, but it’s difficult. I can’t focus on anything except the horizon. Clouds pall the rising and falling runs of the mountains in vast sweeps of gray insulation. Cottony yellow seeps through like liquid from the creases of a closed fist. You do your best to hold on to it, but you’ll never be able. No matter how hard you try.
***
Everything feels like it’s building toward something else. Something bigger, more ominous. You start to worry you’ve gone mad for entertaining such a line of thought, but then your suspicions are what you consider confirmed.
Take tonight, for example:
I’m out for an easy five miles while it’s still light, not really in a hurry. If I go up to the high school for a couple laps then head to the Community Center for a few more, I’ll be able to live with myself for a little bit longer. I’m not even half a mile on when the sirens cry through the streets of the Little Mountain Town. The man who reminded me of Frank Zappa is a shade of sheetrock dust, slumped on a bench in front of the tattoo parlor. And he is sinking, slipping from one state to another like something that sloughs its epidermal layer. The paramedics scramble to administer the Narcan, and when they shoot it up his nose he tears back into this world with a throaty breath and half dollar eyes. In seconds his color is returning and he’s asking them what the fuck happened. They are looking like they don’t want to tell him.
People are walking by. People with strollers and dogs or else only their wayward thoughts, people nomadic and purposeful alike. Few, if any, seem very moved by what’s transpiring.
Some might call this whole thing an omen, and I’m not particularly superstitious, but I turn around, decide to finish my run in the other direction. I figure I owe the man the dignity of not being a spectator to his misfortune, at least. There’s a fairly trafficked walkway that runs along the busiest road in town, leading to the Community Center. I hop on it as I’m passed by trucks that definitely wouldn’t make inspection, wandering faces that will only ever see me as I am right here, right now.
When I turn the corner, brain fuzzy with adrenaline, I don’t realize what it is I’m looking at. Not at first. Thirty feet before me is a black bear, the first one I’ve ever seen in person, right there in the middle of the path. It is perched on all fours, frantic and lost, beady-eyed. I freeze, unsure of whether to be calm or loud or both at the same time. The animal doesn’t look violent, but I can’t confirm that impression with any confidence. All’s I know is it’s beautiful and terrifying, round-faced, narrow-muzzled, lankier and more angular in backbone than I imagined. Have you ever been out in the country at night with no stars? The bear’s coat was cut from that great tapestry of abyss.
It is my dumb luck that has brought me here, I think, and it will be my dumb luck which dictates what happens next.
In one lash of the head the black bear sees me, and suddenly I feel as light as I do in my dreams. The animal takes one emotionless step in my direction, two, and my legs are water. But then, inexplicably, it lopes off the other way, startled by a truth that only it understands. And I find myself more bewildered than anything. Doesn’t it know that it could rip me to shreds if it wanted to? Split me in two like one of those gorgeous, ridiculous Mortal Kombat fatalities, paint the sidewalk with the intricate threads of my anatomy? It must not. No, it just runs and runs and runs. Maybe it’s wise to something I’m missing. Maybe it knows what I’m afraid to admit: that nobody’s coming to save us.
Matt Starr hails from a place that once gave the world towels, bedsheets, and arguably the most popular NASCAR driver of all time. You may have seen his work in Barren Magazine or Empty House Press, but if you haven't, that's okay, too. Matt published Hell, or High Water, a thin book, in 2018, and Prepare to Meet Thy God, a definitively thicker book, earlier this year. Follow him on Twitter at @illmattic919.