Chapter 18: Serving Somebody




      "I'm so done with camp food," FM concludes as we drive north in the spring green tunnel of the Blue Ridge Parkway. "Next week you're coming over for Sunday supper!"

"What should I bring?" I entreat, delighted to be ordered around.

"A bottle of wine and a salad. I'll make refrigerator biscuits."



     Food had been wretched on our field trip, the only exceptions being her bottle of Chianti and my Hershey's Special Dark that we cracked into rectangles after the midnight wrestling match. Even the pitfall traps had a pitiful yield, with only a few fire ants and blister beetles toxic to even the stoutest of birds. I was wishing there was a Gibson-Henry College course in camp cuisine as we turned east into the pine barrens along Interstate 64 heading into the gathering grey of the piedmont.



     "Let's have some music," she declares, clicking on the dashboard radio and tuning away from the teacher's AM pre-set. "I hate this oldies crap from the sixties."

"Hate's a big word," I opine as she finds an FM station playing a funky new song called Gotta Serve Somebody. "What about Dylan?"

"I could never go out with someone who likes him," she declares to a rising flush in my cheeks.

"Yeah," I agree, hoping she doesn't glance my way. "Stuck in the sixties."




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