The Fourteenth Protocol

Chapter 4

4

“You can’t see America from the interstate,” Alyssa McTee’s mom would always say. From the time Alyssa left Atlanta, she glued herself to the rural roads and vowed to never use the highway. She pushed the thick-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of her nose and touched the play button on her phone tucked inside the docking station in the VW Beetle. Another Indigo Girls song harmonized across the car speakers as her fingers tapped in rhythm. She shifted in her seat to adjust the frumpy dress. Most girls her age were wearing tight-fitting skirts, but Alyssa never seemed to show any interest. Not that she had anything to hide in those loose-fitting dresses. Actually, she was quite trim. Although, according to her, no one would notice it. Lifeless hair drifted across her forehead. She tucked it back behind her ear and glanced in the rearview mirror only to see an image of her mom staring back at her. Having reached her early twenties, Alyssa now knew she really did look like her mother at this age. In fact, Alyssa had looked like her mom at all ages. The likeness was in the blue eyes and straight hair. There was a photo from 1969 of her mom, dressed in true Woodstock attire at the age of six. The long straight hair, little leather bandana, and bell-bottom jeans truly captured the era. The resemblance was striking.

Alyssa needed this vacation. Work had been pressure-filled the past few months, and she needed to get out of there and go see something—something different. And she needed to be alone for a while too.

Never one to speak up at meetings, she more or less followed the crowd, except in the way she dressed. Her normal attire hid her figure and probably hadn’t exactly helped in the guy department. Still, this trip had been good for her wandering spirit—a spirit inside her that she attributed to her mom. Sitting in that cubicle at work didn’t exactly capture the essence of a free spirit on the open road. Her mom never said so directly, but Alyssa knew that deep inside her mother, there was something wanting to come out. Her mom had somehow lost herself along the way through life. Alyssa was determined that wasn’t going to happen to her. She wasn’t going to look back and wish she had done something really great with her life. Regrets are the food of conformers, she thought, and she didn’t like regrets.

Wandering the rural roads through the southeast had been her outlet. Her obsession for funky coffee shops had inadvertently created an odyssey of sorts. Alyssa’s first idea was to drive—simply drive. Go out and see something of the country. Wind her way into small towns, find the town square, eat at a little corner diner, see if there were actually any waitresses named Flo, and maybe make just one friend along the way.

Then the trip kind of took on a life of its own. She had stopped in what she thought was the coolest little mom-and-pop coffeehouse she’d ever seen. It was a little place not far from Helen, Georgia, on her way out of the state. It was called simply Sweetwater Coffeehouse, and sweet it was. Soft velour couches, rustic planks on the floor, and an aroma, something reminiscent of hickory-smoked barbeque folded into roasted coffee. Apparently the guy in the shop next door made the pottery mugs himself. Real local charm with not even a hint of tourist-ish-ness. And better still, not a hint of corporate. Alyssa had done something there she normally wouldn’t. She had ordered a scone.

“What the hell is a scone anyway?” she asked the barista. This pastry looked nothing like the scone-things she’d seen at the big chain coffee shops in town. No, this was homemade, fluffy deliciousness.

Alyssa looked around at the place as if to check if anyone was watching her. She was on her own. For the first time in her life, she was on her own. It made her feel so at peace, so in charge of herself. A candle lit inside her, and the delicate smoke that wafted off of it was pride.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t even thought of work since she left her apartment near Little Five Points in Atlanta. In that coffeehouse, a few things changed for Alyssa. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something settled inside her. She felt like she knew who she was. She thought about that picture of her mom. Her mom would be so proud of her right now. She was on an odyssey. Her mom would have never had the nerve to do this, not after she got married anyway.

Alyssa knew this would be a trip she’d never forget. She’d go out and find the country. Literally find the people of the country. Find her roots. And maybe find just a little bit of herself that she thought was lost. Somewhere in the untapped subculture hidden within the coffeehouses of this country, she’d make peace with herself.

And she would discover more than that along the way. One thing struck her as funny. Unlike all the coffeehouses she had been to in Atlanta, the baristas in this one, near North Georgia’s Sautee Valley, didn’t have even a single body piercing or visible tattoo.

“I guess it’s hard to find true grunge in the North Georgia mountains,” she said.

Alyssa took the last sip of coffee goodness. She glanced over at the stone fireplace. Man, it would be so nice to curl up here on this couch on a freezing day in front of the fire. She took one last glance around, swearing to memorize the scene. A small poster clung to the old stone mantel. There was something so relaxed about its design and the way the fonts and colors drew your attention.

Tammy Lynn’s Bluegrass Pickin’ Party and Hog Roast

— Pineville, Kentucky.

If you’re looking for authentic Kentucky flavor and tradition, head to the mountains at the height of bluegrass season and enjoy America’s finest bluegrass festival and hog roast!

Alyssa stared at the poster a minute. This was America. If you wanted to meet the people, you had to be where they worked and lived.

Maybe it was the caffeine talking, but she stood up with a new resoluteness. She was sick of being scared, sick of being shy, and sick and tired of being sick and tired. She wasn’t going to live the same demure, quiet, proper existence she had always known.

Alyssa walked out the swinging wooden door and got into her car. When she put the key in the door, she realized it—she hadn’t locked the car door when she pulled up to this place. To Alyssa, not locking the car door was akin to walking into a coffeehouse and ordering some fluffy, fat-laden coffee flavored with pumpkin-mango-spice, crème-hazelnut, froth-de-blah-blah. You just didn’t do it. She smiled. Not locking the car door was a strange experience for her. Never did she remember not locking a car door in Atlanta. The Little Five Points area where she lived was like a haven for car-pilfering thugs who mixed in with the peace-loving, hippie crowd. Nonetheless, she hadn’t realized when she pulled up to this little place, way out here in the North Georgia mountains, that a comfort level like that would drape across her. It felt like a warm blanket soaked with safety, confidence.

She backed out and glanced down at the map on her smartphone. Thinking better of it, she put the map down. It’s not an adventure with too much of a plan. No plans, no agenda, no schedule. Just discovery, she thought. That bluegrass festival might be nice though. About the only thing she knew was that she’d weave her way north, glued to the back roads.

So she headed up the road into whatever it would bring. The world lay at her feet, and she wanted to drink it in. She pushed her way north through tiny Georgia towns with names like Cornelia, Walhalla, Pickens, Travelers Rest, and Landrum, slowly drinking in the smell of pine trees and simple quiet of life outside the city. As long as she was far away from the interstate, she was happy. After all, interstates were for suckers, for conformers.