The thunderstorm drained all the color out of the East Tennessee countryside. Johnny Johnson squinted and turned the truck’s wipers on high. The frantically beating wipers couldn’t keep up with the sheets of rain. Gray clouds cloaked the mountains. Lightning hit a far peak and its thunder rumbled across the valley. A severe thunderstorm warning covered most of East Tennessee.
The road looked like engineers turned a black snake loose. The standing joke was that your butt would pass your head when you drove in the mountains. This one was more twisty than most. It wrapped around the clear, cold mountain streams and was built on an old lumber railroad bed. Johnson started humming Ronnie Milsap’s classic Smoky Mountain Rain. Multicolored leaves littered the road, making it slicker than greased owl crap. He took the curves extra slowly. No sense of ending up in the old Missionary Baptist Church graveyard at the age of 44.
Forty four. He was tall, muscular and slightly balding. Gray hair had frosted his head like the Newfound Gap in the wintertime. He looked into his rearview mirror and saw his dad’s eyes. When had he turned into his dad?
She’s somewhere in the Smoky Mountain rain.
Johnny turned into Cascades Texaco and Laundry. The truck sputtered to a stop in front of the pumps. Rex, the store dog (but owned by everyone in the area) came out to greet him.
“Hey old boy.” Rex was a Blue Tick Hound — much like the University of Tennessee’s mascot Smokey. Rex bayed and nearly beat Johnny blue with his tail. “How are you doing today?” Rex didn’t answer. Rex never did.
He noticed the Cocke County Sheriff’s car in front of the convenience store. Sheriff Jimmy Burrows was a good man but didn’t up here often. “Something big must be up,” Johnny thought. He finished pumping the gas into the old Chevrolet Silverado truck and screwed on the fuel cap. He noticed a crowd inside the store and decided to go inside to get himself an RC and a Moon Pie.
“Hey Jennie.” Johnny said to the cashier. Jennie was the daughter of the store’s owner Samuel Oliver. She was the pride of the family and would eventually take over the store and laundromat.
Jennie’s normal radiant smile was replaced by a grimace that betrayed the seriousness of the situation. The sheriff was talking to a group of people. Johnny noticed a couple in trendy hiking clothes. The wife had bloodshot eyes and the husband looked like he was in a state of shock. His stomach sank. He’d bet two tickets to the UT/Alabama game there was a lost child. The Sheriff saw him come in and said, “Johnny, I think you might be able to help.”
I’ve had a change of dreams I’m coming home.
Johnny Johnson had left the Smokies right after college. An appointment to Annapolis led to a career in the Navy. As a member of the Navy SEALS, he spent time in the deserts of Iraq and then the mountains of Afghanistan. But somewhere along the way, he had had a bellyful of war. He found something healing about the mountains; the cool mountain streams healed his internal wounds. His dad worked as a Park Ranger after two tours in Vietnam for just the same reason. Now it was his turn. So he bought a small cabin near Cosby, Tennessee from a nice widow and dropped off the face of the earth.
The mother screamed, “MY BABY!”
They had been on the Ramsey Cascades trail when the storm had hit. The little girl had taken a wrong turn into the rhododendron. Johnny knew that grown men had disappeared forever in the thick brush. “How can I help, Sheriff?”
“Find her, Johnny. Do some of that SEAL stuff you’re so famous for.”
Johnny grimmaced. SEAL stuff. If the portly sheriff only knew what he was saying.
“OK. But I need some supplies.” Johnny looked over at the worried parents. “I’ll find her. You’ll be holding her soon.”
Rex bayed at the door.
I’ll find her no matter what it takes.
The search party met at the trailhead in the former community of Greenbrier. Once a cove, the area had reverted back to a forested bottomland. Johnny parked his truck, put on his rain gear and turned on his satellite phone. “I heard you are a former SEAL. Bet you can do some bad *ss stuff, can’t you?” The well-meaning boy tweaked Johnny’s last nerve.
“Yes, I can kill you with my thumb.”
The teenager looked at Johnny, not knowing if he was serious or not. He erred on the side of caution and ran to join the others. Johnny chose to go it alone. The rain was noisy enough. He didn’t need needless chit chat while looking for the little girl. He gazed at her photo. Samantha Ray sure was cute. A little over four and a half feet tall and brunette. Her glasses were thick and she had a pretty smile. Her front tooth was missing. Samantha was wet, cold and probably scared out of her mind. Johnny looked at his black Timex. Time was wasting.
Johnny turned and ran up the trail like a Kenyan marathoner.
Rain began to fall harder. Lightning danced in the clouds, threatening to strike anyone down who dared to be in the mountains. Johnny looked for signs. He found an aluminum can. Then he saw signs of footprints — probably from the parents. He looked for broken branches. Johnny saw fresh bear tracks. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Smokey Mountain rain keeps on fallin’
I keep on callin’ her name
About two miles up the trail he found his first clue: Broken branches in rhododendron. Johnny marked his location on his GPS and headed off the trail. Fifty yards later, he found his next clue: The girls glasses. As thick as they were, the poor kid must be blind as a bat. She could not have made it far. He stopped and listened. Nothing but the muffled sound of the stream and the rain. Thunder rolled. Johnny called out, “SAMANTHA RAY!” He paused. And then he called her name again.
He thought he heard a cry.
More thunder. Johnny ran along a ridgeline. If her feet had slipped, she would have fallen down forty feet. He looked for any signs of color. Nothing. He stopped again and called, “SAMANTHA RAY!” More bear tracks. This was not good. He picked up a large stick just in case.
And then he heard it again.
Johnny turned ninety degrees and headed toward a small outcropping of rock. There he saw the little girl curled up in a ball. And a small black bear trapping the girl in place. “HELP!”
Johnny made himself as tall as he could. He screamed at the bear and waved the stick. The young bear spooked easily and ran off in the other direction. “I think you lost something young lady.” He held up her glasses and smiled.
Scratched, bruised and sobbing, the little girl fell into Johnny’s thick arms.
Later that evening, Johnny Johnson sat at the diner next to the Texaco station. The storm had passed and beams of the sunset burned through the retreating clouds. The family walked into the restaurant and the Samantha Ray ran over and gave him a hug. The parents quickly joined her. The mom kissed Johnny on his stubbly cheek, “Thank you. You saved my little girl.” The dad shook his hand and said, “Let us buy you dinner. Can we join you?”
Johnny smiled and said, “Sure. I’d like that very much.”
And while they laughed and ate, Ronnie Milsap’s classic came on:
And she’s somewhere in the Smoky Mountain Rain.
