Ozzie watched Tammy and tried to stand quietly, but his heart began to pound loudly. A warm flush overcame him as she brushed close to him, his body tingling and burning from deep within, so much that it scared him. It was a burning sensation he had never felt before. He wanted to run, to move, to somehow get rid of that feeling, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Tammy moved around him, leaning against Ozzie’s back as she did, her warm breath falling softly on his neck. She walked right before him, stood there and presented herself to him. Ozzie felt the strongest need to move, as if an earthquake would erupt from within if he didn’t. He stared at Tammy’s body, her eyes drawing him closer in an inevitable embrace. Ozzie stepped forward and dropped his head on her shoulder, his lips on Tammy’s neck. Tammy uttered a deep moan as they closed their eyes at the same time, surrendering themselves to nature’s will.

***

Rose slipped the DVD into the player in Angelica’s living room and pressed play. Within seconds, Ariel entranced the girls as The Little Mermaid sealed them in an isolation bubble that was impenetrable to the kitchen conversation. Angelica poured coffee into Rose’s cup and poured herself a glass of lemongrass tea, into which she stirred some honey and two droppers of echinacea tincture. She sat next to Rose at the kitchen bar.

“So, are you all packed?” Angelica asked.

“Oh yeah,” Rose answered. “Even packed a bikini if I can get up the nerve to put it on. Maybe at night.” Rose laughed.

“Now Rose, stop it. You have a great body and you know it,” Angelica placed her hand on Rose’s forearm to offer reassurance, although she couldn’t imagine why Rose would need any. She needn’t worry. Indeed, Rose was beautiful as well as smart. The sheen of her black hair matched Angelica’s, though Rose kept hers shorter, never letting it drape over her shoulders. Like Angelica, Rose had inherited her mother’s green eyes and they seemed to be able to see inside you, what you were thinking, what you were feeling. They gripped and held their prey until truth was revealed, and only then softened their grip.

“Hey, you wanna take some of my sunscreen with you?” Angelica offered.

Rose laughed. “I’ve got my sunscreen already packed, silly. But don’t worry, it’s SPF 50.”

Angelica frowned at Rose. “Please tell me that you don’t put those chemicals on your skin. Do you even know what’s in it?”

“Now who’s being silly?” Rose asked. “It’s FDA approved, sis. You think they’d approve it to use on children if it wasn’t tested? Safe?”

Rose cast her green eyes at her country bumpkin sister in both a loving and condescending way, as if to say, “Poor Angelica. Didn’t want to go to college and learn about scientific progress. Instead just kept her feet stuck in the mud back in the hills, going backwards in time instead of forward, clinging to Grandma’s Cherokee traditions.”

Rose had fond memories of the mountains, but going to Athens and meeting so many new and enlightened people and professors at UGA had liberated her from the parochial views on religion, family, and science that had clouded her thinking as a child. Once she stepped out of that circle and opened her eyes, she found she couldn’t move back, even when her parents were killed shortly after her graduation and she was so worried about Angelica. Instead, she had hoped to lure Angelica away, even offered her a place to stay in Athens. But Angelica was as stubborn as her Cherokee ancestors had been two centuries before, Rose reasoned, staying entrenched on her land, handcuffed by ancient religious beliefs, and refusing to surrender herself to progress.

“Are you taking the echinacea tincture that I gave you to boost your immune system?” Angelica asked. Rose reached into her purse and pulled out the small bottle. “Every day,” she said.

“Good. Because wasn’t that peanut butter sold in the stores FDA approved? You know, the stuff with the salmonella?” Angelica asked, without looking at Rose.

“Now wait a–” Rose began before Angelica interrupted.

“And wasn’t that spinach approved...the bags coated in e.coli?” Angelica turned and looked Rose squarely in the eye. Angelica despised confrontation and almost never raised her voice, the only exception being if one of her dearest beliefs was challenged. She knew there was much of the modern scientific world she didn’t know and didn’t care to know. But she also knew what she did know, and that was the natural world and the Bible.

“Come on!” Rose said, glancing over her shoulder to see if the girls had been disturbed. They stayed under Ariel’s hypnotic spell, so Rose continued. “Those are rare exceptions, Angelica. Accidents do happen, you know. The world isn’t perfect!” Rose didn’t like having to defend herself and preferred to squash questions as they arose so that she could then control the progression and content of the discussion.

“Nature is,” Angelica said.

“Is what?”

“Is perfect. There’s no waste. Everything is in God’s landscape for a reason.”

Rose rolled her eyes.

“Do you think people went out in the sun a hundred years ago...two hundred years ago?” Angelica asked. “Did you know that they knew how to protect their skin? Do you think there was widespread skin cancer back then?”

Rose was tempted to take the bait, to challenge Angelica to a debate. Instead, she chose to sit back and let Angelica have her moment.

“So tell me, little sister, what’s in your magic skin potion?”

Angelica smiled, happy that any contention was over.

“Well, as Grandma would probably say...”

Both Angelica and Rose smiled, remembering the way their grandmother never followed recipes with precise measurements, instead relying on cute and cryptic phrases.

“A pinch of carrot seed oil, a hunk of beeswax, a smidgen of Shea butter, a dash of zinc oxide and some drops of vitamin E and lavender oils,” Angelica said. “And then, I melt the oils, beeswax and butter in a double boiler and—”

“You mean in your cauldron over the fire pit, right?” Rose said with amusement. Angelica brushed the comment aside and continued.

“AND...I let it cool a bit, add the oils and zinc oxide. Then I push it into a container and, voila!

Angelica walked to the sink window that overlooked the forest and retrieved a newly made container of sunscreen.

“Here,” Angelica said as she placed it in Rose’s hand and narrowed her eyes on her, “Take it and use it. And here’s a bottle of yarrow spray too. Directions are on it. Stop dousing your body and your food with chemicals, Rose.”

Angelica walked back to the sink.

“Oh, before I forget,” Rose began, “here’s a gift card for McDonald’s in case you want to take the girls in town for lunch and a play date, seeing as Clayton finally got a McDonalds.”

Angelica turned her head slowly and bore her eyes directly into Rose’s. “I most certainly will not take them to McDonald’s, Rose. Please tell me you don’t take the girls to eat fast food!”

“Oh c’mon!” Rose exclaimed. “You gonna tell me that’s all unsafe too? You don’t see their parking lots littered with dead bodies do you, little sister?”

Angelica cast a disapproving eye as Rose embellished the words “little sister” with as much sarcasm as she could.

“Stop calling me little sister. You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

Rose crossed her arms and put on a smug grin.

“It isn’t just the nutrition Rose, or lack of nutrition,” Angelica said. “You KNOW how horribly those animals are treated in factory farms, and that’s where their meat comes from.”

As Rose opened her mouth to address that last remark, her cell phone buzzed in her purse. She reached in the side pocket and looked at the iPhone’s display. “It’s John,” she said. “Hang on a minute.”

“Hi, John.”

“Hey, Rose. So...you w –to –ar–vacation a little ea–?” John asked.