Shenandoah Colors

It was a cloudy autumn day in Virginia during the Civil War.  As Stonewall Jackson made his second sinew up the Shenandoah Valley, a Confederate spy from his ranks spotted a strange object in the sky.  The man’s curiosity piqued, so he stealthily strolled away into the woods to get a closer view.  When he came to a clearing there was a meadow and behind it arose a hill in the forefront of an Appalachian range.  There above the hill he identified the object’s location and came to realize that it was only a kite.  But upon careful observation he noticed that it was not just any kite; it had the insignia of the Union Army on it. 

Suspicious of the kite's flyer, he diligently crept through the meadow of tall grass and surmounted the hill.  A delicate breeze was blowing when he reached the top.  Careful to remain unnoticed, he came closer to the spectacle by sprinting from the trees he was hiding behind, then looking out from behind them.  They were ancient trees that could see far away to the east, to a landscape that served as a causeway for courageous armies. 

Then he saw the kite’s owner, and what seemed like a coincidence from providence opened up the skies, flooding the land with glorious sunlight as he looked upon the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.  The wicked streams of her hair  waved precariously in the wind as she dexterously worked with the line of the kite.  The kite itself seemed to undulate through the atmosphere as if it were trying to conquer the colorful mountains behind it.  Leaves of red, orange, yellow, and the occasional green danced around her in the lament of October’s waning days.  The incredulous image of the enemy woman was made even more distressing by the fact that her skin contained the same pigment that had sent armies across America to defend ideologies; skin that enchanted him with magic at every hem of her tight beige dress; skin that, unlike his own, resonated with the shadows cast by the very same clouds billowing eastward that afternoon. 

A weakness overcame him- not one that he was accustomed to.  He felt enslaved by the woman’s serpentine motion, swaying as she did on the hill brushed by wind gusts from the south.  She ran over the grass with the carefree grace of a child, and even though his status as a pro-slavery Confederate told him not to think it, his heart possessed his mind with the urge to run out there with her despite the color of her skin. 

Instead, he listened to reason and broke from the trees with a stern countenance, upholding his rifle with an uncertain strength.  His legs may have looked rigid and muscular, but they were weakened by the prospect of firing on such a magnificent specimen of nature.  At no time in the last two years had he even come close to feeling the lightening sensation offered by woman, for he had served under his regiment and been involved with long and bloody battles during all that time, making all his memories of the war disappear when he saw her.  It was like amnesia for the dispossessed. 

He came to a stop and surprised the woman by demanding that she detain her kite, for this land was in Confederate control and she should not be glorifying the enemy in it.  She turned around and saw the rifle pointed in her direction, so she cowered and released the kite in order that she may hold up her arms.  The spy’s eyes did not follow the kite as it flew away, but instead looked upon her and perceived that she was older than he’d imagined, probably even older than himself.  But this didn’t detract from her beauty; she was like an olive that, despite being older than other vegetables, still shone as robustly, and perhaps even more so, than all the other edible ornaments in a Mediterranean garden.   

He asked her what she was doing and she responded that she was flying a kite.  Not just any kite.  It was given to me by my daughter- she made it herself.  Why are you flying it here?  We’re taking over this land.  Are you sure?   Yes ma’am, movin’ up through Maryland... As they spoke, they unconsciously moved closer together; two people from a broken nation commencing to stitch a gushing wound that had left the Confederate man fighting for something he didn’t really stand for.  Upon compliments, smiles, and more discussion, their chemistry made any opposition between them vanish.  The woman suggested they’d get a better view of the valley if they walked further up the hill, to a spot where a golden oak tree stood.  Underneath the swaying branches they found a comfortable little niche, where they lay their bodies and coiled up together like the opposing forces of a yin-yang.  The man felt her warmness sizzling in the cocoon of his uniform.  An intoxicating glance at the cleavage above her blouse did little to dampen the storm churning in his stomach.  The breeze blew open the nest of her bosom and subsided in it regularly, just like the wild ribbons of obsidian hair revealing the contours of her oily face.  A feeling of overwhelming desire catapulted him into a state of unfamiliar longing; the type of feeling that no rationalization could describe, only the ambiguity of madness. 

Together with him, under the oak tree on the hill, she felt a sensation of detachment from the ground, the type of sensation that, like a drug, casts oneself into metaphysical heights, where the sense of gravity is lost and the chandelier of memory shatters on the ground the way a mirror would.  His archaic face, a face weathered by years of labor in the cotton fields of Alabama, moistened by the sweat of old-fashioned Southern labor, warmed her thighs and wet her lips for the clenching of his hands.  Her longing drank him up like eyes channeling color, coiling inside his protective embrace, the red leaves swooning around them now, reminding him of all the blood he'd shed.  One of them settled on his knee when she reached for his belt. 

At once his mouth fell upon hers and the floodgates burst open and cascading waterfalls of passion drenched them in symphonies of bliss which evaporated from the sky the few remaining clouds that had blotted out the sun, so that the angels of God or the pantheons of the natives could celebrate the harvest of the leaves of sex under the oak tree, which stood as a shrine of emancipation golden and almost Corinthian on that hilltop above the valley under the Appalachians, the mountains beating drums for a chorus on high while the strings of the wind blew arias of sexual release.  That two people so apparently different could share such love during a war caused by the very differences that had separated them persuaded the mountains and the trees and the decaying leaves of autumn and the birds watching from the branches so that they all joined in the momentum of the tantric chant, so that nature’s rhythm sent seismic waves of love upon the surrounding lands of fear and death.  With the grass blowing and their chests heaving and the leaves falling, the aching crevasse of Virginia’s navel cracked ‘neath the mounting strain of the divide that separated two forces of morphology, one an elevator of progression and the other a chute of conservation, and the ground wept for the remembrance of times past, when humans could make love to each other despite the color of their skin, the orientation of their sexuality, or the heritage of their bloodline. 

He touched her neck and she took off his belt and he slid his hand over her breast and she moaned while he unbuttoned her blouse and threw it into the air so the breeze caught it and the birds flew and eventually the blouse and his trousers and her bracelet and his butternut shell jacket and her undergarments and even the kite she’d flown lay splattered about them randomly like an abstract painting.  Shadows of Elysium fell across the meadows as he caressed her supple body, a body that spasmed under the penetrating seduction of his movement, so that grasshoppers and beetles and even the crows and the trees started hearing the unusual music that nature hadn’t orchestrated enough of, the music of two humans making love in its own backyard, not inside some impenetrable house built to conceal its omniscience, but in the garden of a true setting, a natural palace of beauty and wonder; their bed on the ground of a transparent room instead of a wooden one- a seraphic nest under the oak tree.  And when she grabbed his muscular arms and slid underneath his member she sank into that transformation, not caring how dirty she was or if any creatures were watching, for she knew that they’d seen it already, that sex outdoors was the only place that could possibly make it seem like it actually mattered, that it wasn’t meant to be censored, that humans seemed to mistakenly be ashamed of their naked appearance despite the fact that every other species didn’t give a damn.  Deep inside her his thickness sent waves of excitement up her spine and somewhere off in the distance a gun went off, not like the ones of the war ravaging the land, but the guns of a psychological derailment that blistered the physicality of their 19th century holocaust.  Together they sizzled and rattled the foundation of nationalism so that it regurgitated from its rigid frame the illusions of detachment and integrated all that was around them- the music of the Earth, inviting not their ears but their genitalia into a river of imperial love.  When he kissed her nipples and she told him to go faster a single star might have twinkled above the red white and blue firmament where rockets glared after ignitions in the bowels of war had illuminated the sky and the two segregated governments for at least once in those four years of agony, fear, and death remedied the cause by offering a glimpse of the future; the future of an ambitious, progressive country that wanted to be perfect but never really succeeded because nature’s only perfection couldn’t be molded by the arms of a nation, only by the black and white unconditional arms of love. 

The grass was blowing and he held her legs up higher so he could move deeper inside her and she moaned, might have even cried with delight and he told her how soft she was and how good her wetness felt around him so she found the rhythm herself and moved underneath him to accommodate his advances and together they felt whole, complete, as dipoles of consecration grazing the frontier of Shenandoah Valley with the leaves falling and his chest heaving while her breasts wobbled and sent a fury of excitement up his spine that had erupted from the source of life.  And the golden leaves fell and they matched her hair now disheveled all about the ground and her bliss was secure as his abdomen protected her and his rugged face dipped to consume her mouth once more and now she cried and he groaned and something from the deep rang out and flooded the evening, whitened out the darkness of the abyss, an upsurge like the crescendo of a symphony spurning the crows to fly out of the trees and follow the wind blowing the grass and the leaves in cacophony and everything was beautiful everything was Good the white man the negro even divided America fighting and coming closer to Union with leaves of red brown orange yellow so it was like even Color itself had been smashed to smithereens during their coming as her chest heaved and he came and his chest heaved and she drowned him inside her and their eyes met while the leaves fell and he collapsed on her golden breasts with the bombs bursting in air and the grass blowing, his chest heaving, the leaves falling, her voice panting, the golden leaves falling...