A Quest to a Mountain

TO READER:

I need help with punctuation, grammar, and diction (overall improvement needed). Please  read this, I just spat it out my mind it's for a grade and I want to improve,

Thank you, read on.

Centuries ago, a husband, wife, child, and slave pioneered to the oak-covered Appalachian peaks that belonged to the Cherokee Nation. Building a small hearth-warmed log cabin; the family was content. They were safe from the wild’s critters and warriors within their home. One day, the Indians lured the man from the home and into the encroaching woods where the Indians then slaughtered him. But, unbeknownst to the Indians, their prey was a notorious Colonel, a leader of devoted soldiers. And he was revenged thoroughly, blood for blood. The juice of humans was not spilt for nothing, for after the battle other settlers came to the area and settled Morristown, which evolved into Asheville. The town has grown immensely since then, with a state University and hypnotic drum circle, breeding grounds for hippies. My story starts in the latter.

Leather being beaten with hands, spoons, fists, and foreheads; the leather, wrapped tightly around a wooden base and secured down with fraying string, from either use, or as an aesthetic. The banging of this top-most leather, results in an earthy rumble emitted from the vibrations, a drum. And knocking these drums all around us, were the Asheville natives. Amongst the belligerent babbling drummers and long-haired-everywhere dancers, dykes, and fairies, stood my company and me. We were enveloped in the fumes rising from the entertainers, or so they thought they were, was a mixture of sweat, pale ale, and mountain air; it was like thrusting your nostrils into the hair of Cherokee matriarch.

It was invigorating, the cool mountain air and the rumbling of the drums awoke in me a spirit that lived only until the end of that weekend. And this spirit wanted to leave the drum circle and find shelter in the University of Asheville. So, I made the executive decision to move our caravan to the mountainous safe-zone. I wanted to gather the party, but I noticed a missing member, Noah Arita! My eyes searched furiously for my best-friend, it seemed as if he had been absorbed into the mutating limbs of the cloud of dancing hippies. I panned left, right, then left again and spied him; locked arm-in-arm with a swirling monk-like figure that was sprinting around in circles ever faster. Grabbing the boomeranging boy, we dashed off to the car and headed for the University.

Up, up, up we road, road the road that we were told by the GPS. Ensnared with primitive desire for senseless fun, the two of us parked, jumped from the vehicle, and then sprinted to Noah’s step brother’s dorm and met up with him. We huffed, puffed, and expelled stank breath onto him, Roger, and divulging the events that had transpired. He thought it was an average night at Asheville so he, called an Uber. I, not knowing exactly where our quest would soon take us, posed the question, “Where are we going, Roger?” His reply: a sly white-toothed grin and a wink. Approximately five minutes of greetings ensued, that being my first time meeting the man, followed by a honk of the black sedan that had arrived, probably five minutes before.

The seats inside: bountifully bouncy leather, the woman driver: nothing, practically mute, her hair was the only thing I remember, it being dark and slick enough to consume the sun, smelled of patchouli.

Patchouli, the scent of immigrants and hippies since the ‘60s: pungent, powerful, and groovy. Along those lines, that’s how the house-show went to the point. The aroma of hippy stench and Brut deodorant attacked my olfactory senses like an ambush in Vietnam! The scent swooshed off everyone, it was like the plague; everyone had it, and pretended they didn’t. The energy in the basement of this house was electrifying, my arms and legs could not keep up with the influx of punk-rock hysterical tunes that were bellowed from the stage that sat like a pedestal in the basement. Small talk, big talk, political talk, it’s all the same there, there’s punches being thrown and punch being drank. The grime and sludge that was carried in from the bottoms of our sneakers was sleeping vacant in a putrescent puddle right in front of the stage, it was a small buoy between the fanatic listeners and the anti-establishment Bernie-loving band, an oxymoron to everyone except themselves. Besides all the hippy-dippy bellbottom pants and the flowing dress shirts, there was an exotic variety of colorful fashion that spoke as much about the lifestyle of Asheville as it did about the wearer. There would not be just a man wearing a red shirt, it would be a half-man half-donkey wearing a flowing, rose, zigzag-pattern shirt that he found at a Goodwill just hours prior to arriving at the party. His name, unknown, his movements were surely not.

The basement gig was busted after two hours, cops came, then people dressed as cops came, the whole party was done after that. So our fellowship of the mountains moved back to the dorm room, along with a handful of lucky cowgirls who just so happened to be lassoed into our extravagant frivolous aura. Old party gone; and in its place anew, another now existed, it entailed: my best friend, his step brother, three ladies, scrambled eggs on the side, and myself. We were telling stories all around and the originals spoke to the newcomers in pairs, until the entire room was just pairs of people laughing and flirting. The night soon ended and all of us had a grand old time, the true heroes, however, were not present.

Time passes, memories are made, but those are pricey. The lives lost in battles with Cherokee Indians were the cost; memories were the item.