by John Hart
Tucking his chin into a scarf, Randolph moved quietly through the snow. A pack rode his back, and in it was a tarp and blankets and sheets of waxed canvas to wrap chunks of meat and keep the blood from dripping. The rifle weighed on his left shoulder, muzzle down to keep out the snow. At the road’s edge, he looked back a final time, but the house had faded into the fuzz of winter, and that was just as well. Herbert and Charlie were waiting, and the picture was all kinds of wrong.
“That’s it?” Randolph said. “That’s all you’ve got?”
He pointed at Charlie, who was a small boy, and easily offended. In his father’s waxed jacket, he looked even smaller, a quick-thinking but careless boy with a narrow face and dull brown eyes. “I can make it work,” he said. “You know I can.”
“Give it to me.”
Randolph took the boy’s rifle, looked it up and down, and handed it back in disgust. “It’s the .22. You brought a peashooter.”
“You don’t think I know that? Jeez.”
“What are you planning to kill with it, a squirrel?”
Charlie slung the rifle, but didn’t back down. “Dad sleeps with the carbine by his bed. You know how his eyes pop open at the slightest noise. He’ll be mad enough I took his jacket and his canteen. If he’d caught me light-fingered on his favorite gun, he’d have belted me black and blue, and then where would you be?”
The boy was right. Jax Carter was known for his temper, and had once beaten a man half to death over a jostled coffee, and that was outside the Baptist church on a Sunday morning. The borrowed jacket would cause Charlie problems. The gun might have gotten him killed.
“Besides,” Charlie said. “Look at this poor bastard.”
He pointed at Herbert, who carried a canteen, a near-empty pack, and nothing else.
“What about it?” Randolph said. “Where’s the twelve gauge?”
Herbert stayed cool in the heat of Randolph’s obvious frustration. Randolph was older, but they were the same size, and dead even in a fight. Over the years, they’d dusted up once or twice, but at the bottom of things were almost brothers. They’d been born two weeks apart in the same hospital, had the same steady hands and blue eyes and heavy-boned limbs. Randolph was stronger maybe, but Herbert was smarter, and everybody knew it. Teachers. Parents. It was the way he studied the world, the calm voice and level gaze. “No shells,” he said. “No point in bringing a gun with no shells.”
Randolph couldn’t argue with that. Shotgun shells were scarce as money, and those who had extra traded them like gold coins. He’d seen one shell buy wool mittens, a tub of butter, and a pair of used spectacles. Without shells you couldn’t hunt, and without hunting it was hard to eat. Randolph himself was down to five cartridges for the Springfield, and after they were used up, he didn’t know what he’d do. At night he prayed for springtime and summer crops and some kind of job. He could write and do his numbers and was as strong as any grown man in twenty miles. But jobs were like shotgun shells and rabbits and candy bars.
Charlie stomped his feet in the snow. “Are we really doing this?”
Randolph glanced at the house, hoping that his mother was too far away to see the .22, the missing scattergun. She would worry if she saw, but it was too late to call anything off. He raised his shoulders; spoke plain. “Everything else is hunted bare.”
“That may be true, but Willis Dred and his son still went missing in that damn swamp. There’s still those boys, sitting in the windows at the crazy house and drooling down their shirts.”
Randolph understood everything Charlie said. People had gone missing, yes, and people came back changed. In town, they talked about the colored folks and the deep pools and the mud like quicksand. Slaves had been hanged in those woods eighty years back, and there were some who thought angry spirits haunted the swamp from one side of it to the other. Why else did Willis Dred and his boy go missing? Why else did the Miller boys go in for five days, then come out speechless and drooling? Everybody had a theory, but the truth was that nobody knew the truth at all. Maybe there were deer in the swamp and maybe not, maybe Willis Dred killed himself in despair and took his son with him, maybe those Miller boys were already crazy and just looking for an excuse to show the world. Randolph had thought about it long and hard, and found those explanations as likely as any others. People were superstitious and stupid. Besides, there was a simpler truth.
“My mother’s liable to be dead in another month, and Herbert’s folks are the same. How ’bout you, Charlie? How’s your momma? Fat and happy feasting on ham biscuits?” The stare held, then broke in Randolph’s favor. He rolled his shoulders, adjusted the rifle. “We don’t have a choice, not one of us.”
* * *
The walk out seemed farther in the snow. It dragged at their feet, muffled sound. Fence lines were barely visible, as were the last three houses, as dim and gray as the one they’d left behind. All three boys lived in the northern neck of the county, on the final bit of decent dirt before the road ended and the swamp spread out to push against the distant hills. It was the poor part of the county, and only those who lived in it understood the reasons for any kind of pride. To folks in town, they were hardscrabble and ignorant. The coloreds, the poor whites—it was all the same to those who had fathers and cars and warm houses. Randolph understood his place in the scheme of things, but like others brought by choice or circumstance to the northern wilds of Raven County, he took pride in his place and in the people who shared it. They were rough and uncomplaining, and considered the town folk soft, what with their electricity and iceboxes and store-bought meat. If jealousy informed part of Randolph’s character, he chose to ignore it. He had friends, his mother. Besides, people in town were hungry, too. That was the great equalizer.
This terrible thing.
Whatever it was that ruined the whole damn country.
That brutal truth was hard to miss, even so far out. Great fortunes had failed; men in northern cities had leapt from high windows. For a long time it was just talk, but after that came misery, as if waves had rolled out from New York and drowned all the good in the land. Money disappeared. Storefronts closed. A few in town remained flush, but lines were blurring, and to Randolph that was fine. Let them sleep in the frost and wake to burnt mush.
For a moment, the emotion warmed him, and he realized that—yeah—maybe he was jealous. He was only fourteen but had lost two adult teeth. Scurvy, they called it, which was just a fancy word for “starving.” The thought weighed him down for long minutes, but faded when they reached the end of the road. Ahead was the track that led to Hush Arbor, where freed slaves and their descendants had lived since 1853. Randolph had seen it once when his mother went there to trade needles and thread for honey and extra seeds. Those who lived there spoke in a way that was hard to understand. They lived in a cluster of unpainted shacks, but had gardens, a church, a smokehouse. They’d been open enough, but those were better days, the time before. Trust was rare now, and lately—on the few times he’d seen coloreds on the road or in the woods that bordered the swamp—they’d stayed distant and watched with lowered lids. Randolph understood that, too. Take care of your own. Stay tight. He felt it now with Charlie and Herbert.
“How should we do this?”
Charlie asked the question on each boy’s mind. The track led to Hush Arbor, and no one who lived there would take kindly to white boys hunting the swamp. To the east was the river. They could turn right, cut through two miles of woods, and follow it north. Eventually, though, it would turn back to Hush Arbor. Randolph looked that way, then turned left. To the west lay the ruins of the Merrimon Plantation. The house had burned in 1854, but the foundation stones were plain, as was the well, the fallen barn, the shadowed outlines where slave quarters had once stood. It was the longer route into the deep swamp, but when Randolph started walking, the other boys fell in beside him. Another mile took them past the ruins, and Randolph led them through fields to the woods’ edge, then north. They followed the tree line for a
nother three miles, and when the last hill trended down, Randolph felt hard, slick ice beneath the snow. It was the low ground, the bitter edge of the swamp that covered more than fifty square miles. Beyond it and east was the river and more open ground. To the north was nothing but forest and stone and wind.
“I’m freezing.”
Randolph looked left, and frowned. There was a whine in Charlie’s voice that put his teeth on edge. “It’s winter,” Randolph said. “Winter is cold.”
“Naw, man, it’s more than that. Just looking in there is making my balls pull up.”
He meant the place where forest met swamp, and the boys stared long into it. The trees were bare and gray, the snow between them drifted so that ice, in places, made dull black streaks on the forest floor. This was the edge of the swamp, and still civilized. Farther in, the brush thickened until, at times, it made solid walls of thorn and vine. In warmer months, the firm ground disappeared, the mud and still water forming a maze so twisted, most any man alive could get lost. The boys had poked their heads in over the years: a little fishing, plinking at squirrels. Those had been brief flirtations—a dance around the edge—and the swamp had danced back. They’d seen bobcats and coral snakes, a bear once, glimpsed through the brambles. That had been the purpose, the whole point; but this felt different. They weren’t here for the thrills or escape. They were as desperate as boys could be, the swamp so vast, stark, and empty, it made each of them feel small by comparison. Randolph studied each boy’s face in turn. Charlie was clearly frightened, all his normal bluster scrubbed away as he shifted foot to foot and used a crusted glove to wipe his running nose. Herbert looked steady, his gaze resolved if not filled with the usual faith. “Herbert?”
Randolph put the question to his friend because he didn’t want to be the only one responsible. Snow was falling more heavily, the temperature dropping as they stood. After three hours’ walking, they were already half-frozen, and Randolph knew it could get worse. Wind was picking up, and the swamp loomed like a bad story. Randolph thought of missing men and boys struck dumb, a weight of questions, suddenly real. But if Herbert felt the same sense of reckoning, he declined to show anything but the easy smile for which he was known. He tilted his face to the snow and let it land on his cheeks. “Fine day for a walk,” he said; and that was it. Randolph nodded once, and stepped under the trees. A moment later his friends followed.
* * *
By two o’clock, worry wrapped them like a frozen blanket. They’d found no life, no signs of life. Other than the wind and the sound of their own steps, the swamp was as quiet as a grave.
“It’s not natural.” Charlie said the same thing for the fifth time. “We should have seen something by now.”
His words sank into the snow, and nobody answered. By Randolph’s best guess, they were three miles into the swamp, maybe seven miles from home as the crow flew. They’d covered more ground than that, though, crisscrossing north and south, bending through the silent swamp in search of a sign. They should have seen something by then. Charlie was right. Even in the hunted-out parts of the county, they’d have seen some sort of tracks or droppings.
“There’s not a goddamn thing.”
“Button it, Charlie.”
But staying quiet was not Charlie’s strong suit. Every few minutes, the words came tripping out.
Mother …
Shit.
Not a damn thing …
Randolph didn’t worry until the words actually stopped. Ten minutes into the silence, he finally looked back. “Where is Charlie?”
Herbert stood still, two feet away. Behind them, trees closed as if to shut out the light, and only then did Randolph realize how late it was.
Almost dark.
How did he miss it?
“Herbert?” A glaze covered Herbert’s eyes. His lips were blue and parted. Ice hung from bits of hair where they showed beneath his hat. Randolph squeezed his arm, but Herbert only blinked. “Jesus. Stay here. Don’t move. I mean it.”
Randolph looked back after twenty feet, unwilling to admit the unease he suddenly felt. Charlie was missing. Herbert wasn’t right. On top of that, the gray light was thickening to blue. It should be four o’clock, tops, but this felt like six, like light remained only because the snow held it.
“Charlie!”
He called out as he followed their tracks back through the snow. Nothing looked familiar. The trees were broader and denser and blacker. Snow had filled their tracks—though not completely—and the prints were black, too. There was no sound but his breath and the hush of snow.
He found Charlie after a quarter mile. He stood beneath a leaning oak, both arms at his sides and his mouth hanging slack. Snow mounded his shoulders and hat, and like Herbert, he was staring at nothing.
“Charlie, Jesus.” Randolph stopped beside his friend, but Charlie only blinked. Randolph followed the stare; saw trees and shadows and falling snow. His rifle was frozen against a log at his feet. Randolph bent to break it free, and felt cold steel through his gloves. “What are you doing, man? Come on.”
His friend blinked as if he’d been lost in some far place. His voice came, small. “I’m dying.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m freezing, Randolph. I can’t feel my legs.”
Charlie’s speech was slow and slurred. Randolph guessed it’s ’cause his lips were frozen, too. He pushed the rifle at his friend’s chest. “Just stay close, all right. I’ll take care of you.”
“I really can’t move.”
“Yes, you can. Come on.”
Randolph dragged his friend into motion. He stumbled at first, but Randolph caught him, and after that he seemed better. He was talking to himself again, the lips as blue as ice, but moving. Randolph stayed close as they trudged along the broken trail. Charlie fell twice, and when he got up ran a frozen glove across his eyes. It was almost full night when they reached Herbert, who was sitting in the snow with his back against a tree. “Get up. You’ll freeze.” Herbert didn’t move. Charlie settled to his knees five feet away. “Shit.”
Randolph knew nothing for sure except they’d all freeze if he didn’t get a fire going. He’d planned to do it an hour before sunset: get the tarp up, build the fire. In five minutes, it’d be too dark to see his hands in front of his face.
Two hours.
That’s what he’d lost.
“Stay here, the both of you.”
Working fast, Randolph gathered as much dead wood as he could find. It was slick with snow, but not rotten. Birch trees grew thick in the swamp, and he stripped off bark in sheets, piling it by his pack and covering it as he crashed through the brush and picked up more wood. He didn’t need much at first, just enough to get it started, enough to see. Kicking at snow, he drove his boot down to bare earth and scraped an area large enough for a fire. Neither friend looked at him or offered to help. Charlie was shaking where he sat.
Randolph fumbled at his pocket, but his fingers were thick and slow. The glove came off in his teeth, and he tried again, working heavy buttons until he got the pocket open. Inside were matches and a fire starter he’d made from wood shavings, kerosene, and candle scrapings. A ball the size of a peach, it lit quickly and burned hot, with lots of black smoke and spurts of blue. Randolph fed bark into the flames, then added twigs and bits of thicker wood. The wood sizzled and spit, but eventually dried enough to burn well. He added more, cupping his hands over the heat. When the fire was strong enough, he strung the tarp from tree trunks, giving them a space out of the falling snow. That done, he scraped away more snow, put down blankets, and got his friends closer to the flames. They could barely move; neither spoke. “I’ll be right back.”
Leaving the warmth, Randolph pushed into the gloom and gathered more wood. It took a long time, but he wanted a big fire, and needed enough wood to last the night. When it was done, he could barely move. The mercury was still falling. Ten degrees, he guessed. Maybe less.
“Please, no wind.”
/> That part worked in his favor. Snow fell heavily, but straight down. Clumps of it dropped from the tarp and high branches, landing like whispers in the darkness around them.
Randolph pushed close to the fire, holding out his hands and watching his friends in the dancing light. They looked better, with color in their lips, and eyes that weren’t so blank and staring. It was Herbert who spoke first. “That was strange.”
“What?”
Randolph wanted more, but Herbert shook his head. Charlie glanced up, but looked away fast. He pulled off his gloves and stretched his fingers toward the fire.
“Charlie?”
“I’m freezing is all, and that’s all I know.”
There was a lie in there somewhere. Randolph heard it in his voice; saw it in the flick of his eyes. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”
Herbert said, “The cold, I guess.”
And Charlie agreed too fast. “Yeah,” he said. “The cold.”
Randolph stared out past the fire. Full dark had come to the swamp, and he thought about how close it had been. They could have been caught out, separated and lost. He’d spent a hundred nights in the woods, a hundred nights in all kinds of seasons. Randolph Boyd didn’t get caught out. Neither did Herbert or Charlie.
Did we really lose two hours?
“Anybody hungry?”
Herbert asked the question, and Randolph saw Charlie start. Everyone was hungry, and Randolph knew that every pack was as empty as his. Blankets and waxed canvas—he’d checked. They’d hoped to be eating venison by now, with grease on their faces and every belly full. “Don’t joke, okay. I’ve seen the inside of your pack.”
Herbert reached inside his jacket and removed a sheath of jerky wrapped in weeks-old butcher’s paper. “From my mom,” he said. “The last of it.”