The Kudzu Cafe

A Huff Post 50 Literary Selection: The kudzu on the mountain behind the café lay as thick and as luxurious as could be found anywhere in the middle Appalachians. It covered the trees, bushes, utility poles, the wires, and even the open rocky slopes. The green leafy vines seemed to grow right out of the rocks that were only seen in winter when the pillow-like growth of summer became a flat sheet of grey-green in late fall. In the June high tide, waves of green would come crashing down the mountain as summer poured into the deepest hollows of the Clinch Mountains. During this yearly ebb and flow, a flotsam and jetsam of refugees move in and out of the Kudzu Café: an exotic island in a kudzu sea.