Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [92]
Luck strikes at only the third garage. He finds an army-surplus pup tent and a down mummy bag rolled tight and smelling like poultry and must. A brown greasy World War II knapsack collapsed onto itself like the carcass of a goat or small deer left to the elements for a couple of seasons. Also a damn unexpected prize, a jungle machete, rusty from tang to tip. All of which goes to show what great rewards come from pausing to plan.
That afternoon, when Bud started figuring he needed gear for the journey up the mountain, he headed first to the grocery, and then the Western Auto. Buy a fat warm sleeping bag and an assload of matches and one of those wonderful little nesting cooking kits no bigger than a baby moon hubcap that, when unpacked, reveals a half dozen shiny vessels for boiling and frying and poaching. And, at the center, a precious metal cup with folding wire handles to drink your coffee from. All fine, until the thought emerged from the general milling inside his head that there might be bad backwash from such a shopping trip. This time, unlike the fishing rod deal, he very much shouldn’t want to call attention to himself as a novice mountaineer. So, how to satisfy his needs anonymously? It took but a second to come up with the correct answer, and yet he wondered how slack-minded bootlegging had made him. Why hadn’t pilfering been his first idea?
Back home, Bud stuffs the stolen knapsack with his food and gear. Best if his truck stays in town, so he dodges alleyways and empty lots to the shoreline. Keeping to the trees, he walks until he finds an unchained canoe. Paddles on and on across the spooky black lake to a narrow cove. Starts walking up the mountain.
Survival. That’s what it comes down to. Like, in Argosy and True. Every month, along with swimsuit girls, some story tells about how you’re lost in the Arctic or the Amazon, and a polar bear or a jaguar rears up out of nowhere and opens its monster jaws to crunch your skull like a mouthful of popcorn. But real quick, you push the muzzle of your .45 deep into its pink mouth and pull the trigger, and red stuff blows out the back of its head onto the snow or the litter of the jungle floor. Or it could be coral reef and great white shark and some kind of underwater sling gun. All the same difference.
It’s cold and dry here. Dead leaves everywhere. Dark too, at the moment. But these bears are well known to nap all winter. As do snakes. After the first frost, the woods are safe as church. Which Bud rethinks immediately. Surely safer than church. Lifeless as these woods are now, all the blood must flow in summertime, whereas Jesus’s blood covers the world every day of the year.
The trail pitches hard upward, and it being the middle of the night, Bud soon stops and tries to camp. The woods become so expansive in total darkness, yet Bud goes fireless by choice. At least in the sense that he chooses to quit burning up his too small supply of matches trying to light sticks that don’t want to burn. Best save at least enough to equal the number of cigarettes he’s brought along. And forget about trying to set up the tent. Without wasting his batteries, he can’t hardly see the palm of his hand waved in front of his face. He sits in the dark and eats half a pack of cold red Valleydale wieners and puts the rest in his knapsack for breakfast.
When he lies down to sleep, every distant sound amplifies and warps. Wind in the trees and creek water over rocks. Voices mumble conspiracy against him. Bud huddles in his bag on the cold ground and feels it trying to pull at him. The heat of his body soaking into the earth like water.
How did fucking life reach this fucking pitch? Not even stars to offer light, and his legs crunched together by the mummy shape of the bag till he feels constricted like a