Perhaps it was the lingering influence of the book, perhaps simply the time of day, or
maybe nothing more than the unaccus-tomedness of being in a town, but Hiawassee did
feel palpably weird and unsettling--the kind of place where it wouldn't altogether surprise
you to find your gasoline being pumped by a cy-clops. We went into the motel reception
area, which was more like a small, untidy living room than a place of business, and found
an aged woman with lively white hair and a bright cotton dress sitting on a sofa by the
door. She looked happy to see us.
"Hi," I said. "We're looking for a room."
The woman grinned and nodded.
"Actually, two rooms if you've got them."
The woman grinned and nodded again. I waited for her to get up, but she didn't move.
"For tonight," I said encouragingly. "You do have rooms?" Her grin became a kind of
beam and she grasped my hand, and held on tight; her fingers felt cold and bony. She
just looked at me intently and eagerly, as if she thought--hoped--that I would throw a
stick for her to fetch.
"Tell her we come from Reality Land," Katz whispered in my ear.
At that moment, a door swung open and a grey-haired woman swept in, wiping her
hands on an apron.
"Oh, ain't no good talking to her," she said in a friendly manner. "She don't know
nothing, don't say nothing. Mother, let go the man's hand." Her mother beamed at her.
"Mother, let go the man's hand."
My hand was released and we booked into two rooms. We went off with our keys and
agreed to meet in half an hour. My room was basic and battered--there were cigarette
burns on every possible surface, including the toilet seat and door lintels, and the walls
and ceiling were covered in big stains that suggested a strange fight to the death
involving lots of hot coffee--but it was heaven to me. I called Katz, for the novelty of
using a telephone, and learned that his room was even worse. We were very happy.
We showered, put on such clean clothes as we could muster, and eagerly repaired to a
popular nearby bistro called the Georgia Mountain Restaurant. The parking lot was
crowded with pickup trucks, and inside it was busy with meaty people in baseball caps. I
had a feeling that if I'd said, "Phone call for you, Bubba," every man in the room would
have risen. I won't say the Georgia Mountain had food I would travel for, even within
Hiawassee, but it was certainly reasonably priced. For $5.50 each, we got "meat and
three," a trip to the salad bar, and dessert. I ordered fried chicken, black-eyed peas, roast
potatoes, and "ruterbeggars," as the menu had it--I had never had them before, and can't
say I will again. We ate noisily and with gusto, and ordered many refills of iced tea.
Dessert was of course the highlight. Everyone on the trail dreams of something, usually
sweet and gooey, and my sustaining vision had been an outsized slab of pie. It had
occupied my thoughts for days, and when the waitress came to take our order I asked
her, with beseeching eyes and a hand on her forearm, to bring me the largest piece she
could slice without losing her job. She brought me a vast, viscous, canary-yellow wedge of
lemon pie. It was a monument to food technology, yellow enough to give you a
headache, sweet enough to make your eyeballs roll up into your head--everything, in
short, you could want in a pie so long as taste and quality didn't enter into your