Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [98]
—Fuck if I’m not fucked now, Bud says aloud.
The trouble is, the mountain encompasses so much more territory than Bud would have guessed, never having climbed one before. From town, looking at it way in the distance, flat against the sky, the mountain seemed simple and compact. Not really that big a deal to wander around and cross paths with the kids. On it, though, the mountain encompasses more space and is way more three-dimensional than Bud imagined. The confusing landscape goes every which way. Near-vertical pitches climbing to side ridges and falling into countless coves. Bud lifts his necklace into his mouth, sucks on the tooth, then licks the serrations until he tastes iron. Even an idiot knows that if you need to climb a mountain, the way is up.
Time passes, and Bud persists. At altitude, every kind of bad late-fall weather crosses the sky. Rain, and then freezing rain. Later in the afternoon, sleet hisses against the frozen rain in the trees and the dead icy leaves on the ground. Finally, heavy snow before dark. Big wet flakes falling straight down, an inch an hour.
With neither tent nor campcraft to get him through the night, Bud walks on in the dark, shawled in his wet sleeping bag. It hangs sodden and heavy across his shoulders, and the wet feathers stink. Might as well be carrying a dead body through the aftermath of a flooded henhouse. He casts it aside.
His gear has dwindled mainly to his leather jacket and one wet wool blanket, the machete, and the flashlight. He shivers uncontrollably, and admits to himself he’s flat lost. Snow lies ankle-deep and keeps coming.
With his batteries almost spent, Bud decides to walk in the dark five hundred steps, feeling the ground with his feet, wishing and hoping and praying that when he thumbs the flashlight switch he will have stumbled onto a path. He does it over and over, and each time, he stands stunned and confused to see in the beam only blank forest, except for his own receding footsteps rapidly filling with snow. Nothing but random oak and poplar trunks, no sign of track or trail or other mark to indicate way of passage.
Bud’s arms fall to his sides, and he stares bewildered at the circle of light puddling around his feet. The symmetry fascinates him, until he notices that the light, which had been white, has turned yellow, giving the snow a quaint look, like old-time photographs. He watches it dim and go dark. Rattling the flashlight does nothing.
One fuckup over the line. You could collapse dead, face in the snow, and nobody know it. Eventually, all that would be left would be some mossy scrag of spine and skull laid out nose down like a shot hog. Thinking this, Bud just hangs his head in the dark, wondering if he has strength left to keep going and find shelter, maybe a rock overhang. Sit huddled all night eating anchovies. Probably that’s nothing but hope, and he’ll be dead by dawn.
But when Bud looks up, he witnesses a miracle. Way up ahead, at the saddle of a ridge, a tiny spot of light glows through the woods. Thank you, Jesus.
MAKING FIRE FROM sparks is a lovely and fragile art. Of necessity, the early movements are delicate, the materials fine as hair and fingernail clippings, shreds of dry leaves. Whether by bow or flint and steel or even a scant few matches, the second you achieve a spark in tinder, you lean close to it and breathe on it from your throat like a sigh. If you purse your lips and blow, everything goes black.
Done carefully and with luck, maybe a flame no bigger than the tip of a finger lives for a few seconds. Then, when the tinder begins to catch, an old man with his long hair on fire, crumple a few more whole leaves and place twigs above the flame. Nervous as pick-up sticks in reverse. Judge wrong, the sticks collapse and snuff the flame. Do it right, and the