Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [104]
Snow tastes pretty good a tablespoon at a time, but not more. Birch twigs broken off and frayed at the ends occupy five minutes of taste buds if scrubbed between teeth and gums and against the tongue. A single sprig of balsam is interesting, but study it too long and the symmetry and repetition of the needles makes a pattern that gets as creepy as snake scales if you don’t put the brakes on in your head and make it stop vibrating.
At some point, Sally quits paying strict attention to the direction they’re looking. Among all the possible turnings, she starts curving back to Maddie’s house, making a big circle.
Midmorning, the sun is out strong, and the snow and ice melt fast. Grey-brown everyday floods back. Which is good for travelers. Though a little sad after the brief transformation of the world into something white and brilliant and new. Now mud seems muddier, and Sally’s hoofs make sucking sounds, step by step. Whereas before, it had been a clean four-beat rhythm of crunches. Lunchtime, they don’t even build a fire. They take turns eating peanut butter two-fingered from the jar.
NOVEMBER MOUNTAIN WEATHER. Without warning, it’s snowing and you’re about to freeze to death, and then twenty-four hours later, sunshine and your coat thrown over your shoulder. Slogging now, the trail muddy with snowmelt. True, part of any trip is slogging, but you don’t have to like it, you just have to get through it. One foot in front of the other.
The old boys had sent Bud on his way with his clothes and blanket dry from the fire, and a hobo bundle of considerable food and a big square of dirty Visqueen and four lengths of nylon rope to make shelter. Also a map drawn on the inside of a flattened cornmeal bag. Assurances of mild weather for at least three days, and many good wishes for finding the kids.
They made a halfhearted offer to send some men with him, but Bud would not hear of it. They’d saved his life, and that was more than enough. Now he needed to move fast, cover ground. The boys mumbled about backs that hurt and hips and knees that had catches in them. Get old, no guarantees you won’t break down and do more harm than good. Though what feats of endurance they once accomplished. They said that one of the fellows, back when he was eighteen, carried a fifty-pound sack of flour on each shoulder over Laurel Gap to his mama, cut off by spring flooding that had washed out all the roads to her cabin. Twenty-five miles and thousands of feet of elevation gain and loss. Took him less than eight hours.
Bud said, Well, hell. I guess that was a walk. And the old man who’d done it said, I was about crying that last five miles.
Bud keeps going, seeing what he can see. But every step, the mountain expands, like huffing into a balloon, except the balloon’s more like a big sheet of newsprint crumpled into a ball. Nooks and crannies in every direction. When he’s covered a few miles, Bud stops and eats cold leftover pancakes rolled around cold sausage and dark smears of apple butter. Sun blazing and the sky blank and blue, but a little snow still in the cups of leaves and ankle-deep patches in north shade. Bud isn’t sure how to finish his mission anymore. The old boys know him now. Every one of them could point fingers at him in court.
But so what? Do things right, no bodies and no weapon, and everything will still fall clear. Don’t think about that sad Lit business. It got emotional, and naturally there were flaws. Get feeling betrayed and all trembling scared, blood to your elbow, you’re prone to misjudgment. Case in point, the depth of the woods around here. Apparently, they go on and on, and these hillbilly fools wander way into them to a remarkable extent. So bury deep and don’t ever deny being up here. Just trying to help, looking for the kids of your sadly deceased wife. Survived