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By Root 1324 0

disconcerting little frenzy. All along the road were billboards and large hand-lettered signs in praise of Christ: GET A GRIP ON YOUR LIFE – PRAISE JESUS, GOD LOVES YOU, AMERICA, and the rather more enigmatic WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU DIED TOMORROW? (Well, I thought, there would be no more payments on the freezer for a start.) I turned around and went back into town. It was 5.30 in the afternoon, Bryson City was a crypt with sidewalks, and I was at a complete loss. Down a small hill, beside the rushing river, I spied an A & P supermarket, which appeared to be open, and I went down there for want of something better to do. I often used to hang out in supermarkets. Robert Swanson and I, when we were about twelve and so obnoxious that it would have been a positive mercy to inject us with something lethal, would often go to the Hinky-Dinky supermarket on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines during the summer because it was airconditioned, and pass the time by doing things I am now ashamed to relate – loosening the bottom of a bag of flour and then watching it pour on to the floor when some unsuspecting woman picked it up, or putting strange items like goldfish food and emetics in people’s shopping carts when their backs were turned. I didn’t intend to do anything like that in the A & P now – unless of course I got really bored – but I thought it would be comforting, in this strange place, to look at foodstuffs from my youth. And it was. It was almost like visiting old friends – Skippy Peanut Butter, Pop Tarts, Welch’s Grape Juice, Sara Lee cakes. I wandered the aisles, murmuring tiny cries of joy at each sighting of an old familiar nutrient. It cheered me up no end.

Then suddenly I remembered something. Months before, in England, I had noticed an ad for panty shields in the New York Times Magazines. These panty shields had dimples on them and the dimples had a name that was trade-marked. This struck me as remarkable. Can you imagine being given the job of thinking up a catchy name for dimples on a panty shield? But I couldn’t remember what it was. So now, for no reason other than that I had nothing better to do, I went over and had a look at the A & P’s panty shield section. There was a surprising diversity of them. I would never have guessed that the market was so buoyant or indeed that there were so many panties in Bryson City that needed shielding. I had never paid much attention to this sort of thing before and it was really kind of interesting. I don’t know how long I spent poking about among the various brands and reading the instructions for use, or whether I might even have started talking to myself a little, as I sometimes do when I am happily occupied. But I suppose it must have been quite some time. In any case, at the very moment that I picked up a packet of New Freedom Thins, with Funnel-Dot Protection™, and cried triumphantly, ‘Aha! There you are, you little buggers!’, I turned my head a fraction and noticed that at the far end of the aisle the manager and two female assistants were watching me. I blushed and clumsily wedged the packet back on the shelves. ‘Just browsing!’ I called in an unconvincing voice, hoping I didn’t look too dangerous or insane, and made for the exit. I remembered reading some weeks before in The Independent that it is still against the law in twenty US states, most of them in the Deep South, for heterosexuals to engage in oral or anal intercourse. I had nothing like that in mind just now, you understand, but I think it indicates that some of these places can be doggedly unenlightened in matters pertaining to sex and could well have ordinances with respect to the unlawful handling of panty shields. It would be just my luck to pull a five to ten stretch for some unintended perversion in a place like North Carolina. At all events, I felt fortunate to make it back to my motel without being intercepted by the authorities, and spent the rest of my short stay in Bryson City behaving with the utmost circumspection.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park covers 500,000 acres in North Carolina and Tennessee.