Cut Off

by Jamie Bastedo

  I stood there clutching my tent bag, feeling like my life had never happened. Never mattered to anyone.

  Suddenly the dark cloud inside me lifted. I dropped the tent and laughed. Laughed!

  In rehab-speak, for sure I was “manic.” Pit of despair one minute, over the moon the next. Carrie warned us about this at our solo briefing.

  I chucked my pack to the ground. This is it, Indio! I thought. No Woody, no fence. Look out, Internet, I’m coming home!

  It seemed so easy. Hoof it to Whitehorse, get back online.

  Until I started running.

  One problem. I had no clue which way to go.

  William had “trust-walked” me out here, aka, arm-in-arm with me in a blindfold again. Except for a little meadow downstream, the trees were thick all around me. The few mountaintops I could see all looked the same.

  I crashed off in one direction and got tangled up in fallen trees. I tried another. Same story. I kept running every which way until I felt something warm and wet inside my shirtsleeve. I rolled it back to see I’d gouged my arm. Then I stepped on a fresh pile of bear shit and realized I’d left the pepper spray in my pack.

  And get this. The whole time I’d been crashing through the woods, I could hear Woody’s psycho dog barking like he was right on my tail. Weird! His bark seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  Instead of getting hopelessly lost or eaten by a bear or mauled by a crazy blind dog, I limped back to my campsite and set up my tent.

  It took forever but, once the tent was up, I felt a bit better. Nothing like a couple microns of nylon to protect you from bear claws. Or wolf fangs. Or mad trappers. Lying alone in that tent, I got this feeling I was a trespasser, that some power in that dark forest resented my very presence.

  I dove deeper into my sleeping bag.

  That’s when I noticed the moaning.

  It was hard enough to sleep when the sun was up past freakin’ midnight. But that night my mind was in overdrive. The shakes had come back. I was lying there, trying to ride it out, when that moaning got louder. Like an old woman in pain.

  It came from the creek.

  The more I focused on the sound, the more it changed. Now some crazy person was outside my tent, gargling. Then singing in the shower. It kept changing: a locomotive, the bass line from a guitar piece I hated. A madly ticking metronome. One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three …

  “STOP!” I shouted.

  I stared at a squirming mass of bugs dancing on the tent’s ceiling. My head felt like an overblown balloon, ready to pop.

  Then came the strangled cats, an army of monsters.

  Everything got stirred together in a crazy soup of noise. I wondered if it was hallucinations from my concussion.

  I wrapped my down vest around my head and pressed my hands tight over my ears.

  Now it was voices, whispering at me.

  Uncle Faustus: Prométeme, prométeme.

  Brent at the hospital: Who’s Loba? Who’s Loba?

  Woody: Sink or swim. Sink or swim.

  My father: Segovia, Segovia.

  I exploded out of the tent. I peered up and down the creek. That horrible feeling returned, that I didn’t belong here, that something lurking close by wanted me dead.

  I stared at whirlpools of water, frothy waves, logs bobbing in the current. I zeroed in on rock after rock, trying to find the villain, the source of those insane sounds.

  There, that one!

  I barged into the ice-cold water and attacked a turd-shaped boulder in the middle of the creek. I shoved my hands underneath it and pulled. I lost my grip and tumbled ass backwards into the water. I attacked it again, grunting, panting, crying over the rock until it finally broke free from the bottom. I hoisted it to my hips and heaved it to shore.

  I stopped and listened.

  Segovia, Segovia …

  I leapt on more boulders, clawing them loose, tossing them out of the creek.

  One huge boulder rolled back on my foot and crushed a toe. “AAGH!”

  I must have been at it for over an hour when I heard a new voice.

  “So, what ya doin’, eh?”

  I looked up at William. That lottery-winning smile.

  I felt like a complete idiot, up to my waist in the creek, my hands covered in slime. “I … uh … thought this was supposed to be a solo,” I said.

  “I’m your designated driver.”

  “What?”

  “You get lost or go wandering off, I steer you back.”

  “You mean my prison guard.”

  William pulled out a pack of tobacco and rolling paper. “Just doin’ my job.”

  “So, what are you doing?”

  William rolled a quick cigarette in one hand then gave it a happy sniff. “Hey, don’t worry. The tobacco’s organic. And the company’s a hundred percent Native-owned.”

  I stood up and wiped snails and gunk off my hands. “But, like, nicotine? Drugs? Aren’t we in rehab here?”

  “That’s your job. Already did my time.” William lit up, gazing at the mountains. “Mountain climbing’s a drug. Shootin’ rapids is a drug. Moving rocks, too, I guess, eh?” He laughed.

  I looked at the jumble of rocks I’d chucked all over the place, like someone had thrown a grenade in the creek. I’d changed the sound of the water, all right. All I could hear now was laughing. “I was just—”

  “Rearranging the furniture?”

  “Well … there were these weird sounds and … yeah.”

  My neck hairs bristled at the sound of a long drawn-out wolf howl.

  William thwacked his beaded vest, then pulled out a yellow iPhone just like mine.

  I froze, forgetting how to breathe. There in William’s hand, so close I could leap up and grab it, was a portal to another world.

  My world.

  He glanced at the call display, frowned, then stuffed the iPhone back in his vest.

  “Who was it?” I asked, barely able to form the words.

  “Huh? Oh, nobody.”

  “Do you … uh … suppose I could borrow that thing sometime? You know, like, call my mom, maybe.”

  “Umm. Don’t think so. Lousy signal out here. Camp phone’s best.” William looked at me funny. “Ya gonna stand in that creek all day?”

  William built a huge campfire while I ripped off my soaked jeans and hoody and hung them in a tree. Wearing nothing but blue boxers, I sat across from William on a log by the fire.

  I was surprised how comfortable I already felt with William, even though, technically, he was one of my jailers. I still twitched inside whenever I looked at the bulge in his vest where he kept his iPhone. But the warmth of the fire on my wet legs took my mind off it.

  William broke off a hunk of baker’s chocolate and offered it to me.

  “You steal this from the kitchen?” I asked.

  “Who, me?”

  “Another drug, right?”

  “Pick your poison.”

  We sat in silence sucking our chocolate. The creek just sounded like a creek. I heard the rush of wings above us and a duck came bombing through the trees.

  William turned to watch it land in the pond. “Didn’t Carrie tell you to try going buck-naked if you’re gonna swim out here?”

  “To enjoy the psychotherapeutic benefits of being one with the elements, you mean?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “She did. I guess I got caught up moving rocks.”

  “Hmm. Maybe the trick isn’t to fix the rocks.”

  “They were driving me nuts.”

  “That’s what I mean. Fix how you hear’em.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing.

  “It’s Indio, right?” William said after a long pause.

  “It’s Ian, actually.”

  “Right, but all your forms say—”

  “Must be a typo.”

  “Hmm,” he said with a big question in his eyes.

  “Look, I changed it, okay?”

  “Sure. Ian it i
s.”

  William folded his arms, still looking at me funny. “Just curious,” he said. “So, what kinda name is that?”

  My stomach tightened. “Which?”

  “Indio.”

  “Nothing special.”

  “So where’d ya grow up, anyways?”

  “Guatemala.”

  “Guata-who?”

  “Let’s say Latin America.”

  William nodded, puckering his lips. “I knew I heard an accent. So you speak Latin, eh?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting me. “Uh … no. Spanish. Just think Mexico, only one stop further south.”

  William looked up at a passing raven and stroked his chin.

  “You … you do know where Mexico is,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Guatever. I know this place best.”

  “This?”

  William twirled a finger at the mountains all around us. They looked dead and dark under a blanket of clouds rolling toward us. I heard thunder way back behind the peaks. “You’re taking us in there?” I asked.

  “Yup. Hand in hand with a marching band.”

  “And Woody?”

  “Yup. Carrie, too. We’re all … How did she put it? Licensed wilderness therapists.”

  “The rapists.”

  William laughed. “That would be us.” He looked up at the mountains. “There’s nothing to fear out there, except for …”

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette.

  “Except for what?”

  William slowly turned and looked at me, eyes wide. He shot smoke out of one corner of his mouth. “Except for … You sure you’re ready for this?”

  “Like, never. C’mon!”

  “There’s nothing to fear except for … the beast you see in the mirror.”

  “Jesus!”

  William’s face lit up and he slapped me on the back. “No. Not Jesus. You!”

  HAS-BEEN

  LIFEBOAT JOURNAL, DAY 10, THIRD AND LAST DAY OF SOLO

  I’m kicking round this campfire

  Won’t ever let it out

  Kicking round this campfire

  All this silence makes me shout.

  There’s voices in the creekbed

  Voices in my head

  Screaming, Indio, where are you?

  They say that you are dead.

  I don’t know where I’m going

  I wish that I could blog

  I feel like such a has-been

  Just sitting on this log.

  DEBRIEF

  It was Carrie who came to pull me off solo. I’d never seen her out of her tracksuit, but that morning she was all bush woman with her plaid shirt, braided hair, and a bandana around her neck. I noticed her fruity scent was mixed with a heavy dose of bug dope.

  “That’s quite the campfire ring,” she said as she sat down beside me on a log. I’d constructed an elaborate windscreen of piled rocks that included a stone slab to keep stuff warm and a woven willow clothesline to dry my socks. Building this rig, journaling, cooking, and William’s daily check-ins, kept me sane for my three-day solo. He’d slipped me an extra box of matches on his last visit, “so you won’t starve to death,” he said.

  Next to my nightly panic attacks, the journaling was the toughest part. It was weird how I could bang off a thousand-word blog post in ten minutes, yet it took me hours to write a few paragraphs in my journal. I had to wrestle with each word and didn’t like some of the shit that rose to the surface.

  In the end, I filled about twenty pages of rants and ramblings, spun a couple of poems, even made a few crude sketches—the bombed-out creek, the porcupine that chewed my hiking boot, the grizzly bear I never saw, the face of that Mayan mother murdered in front of our Xela home.

  When I was feeling especially crappy, I’d jot down a few bars from a favorite guitar étude. I was surprised how much that helped.

  Maybe someday I’d pull some juicy bits out of that journal for my blog. I could see it: The Making of a Mountain Man.

  I offered Carrie a cup of Labrador tea, which William had shown me how to make. “A fistful of leaves per cup,” he told me. “Not too strong or it’ll kill you. Good for hangovers.” I’d made about ten pots of the stuff before I got it right.

  I held my breath as I watched Carrie take a long sniff, a cautious sip, and then … a big smile.

  After tea, it was the usual barrage of questions. Rehab time.

  “So, what would you like to tell me about your solo?”

  I tossed Carrie my charcoal-smeared journal. “You can read all about it in my latest blog.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, as she glanced through it then quickly handed it back to me. “Nice.”

  That’s it? Nice?

  I clutched my journal with both hands as steam rose to my ears. I slowly squished it into an accordion. After I’d wracked my brain, squeezed out all those words, dug up all that shit, it wasn’t worth reading?

  “Well, screw it then!” I said and tossed my journal in the fire.

  “Hey!” Carrie said, “What are you doing?” She jumped up, grabbed it out of the flames, and whacked the burning cover on her jeans. “You know you don’t have to share a word of this with anyone.”

  “But … I thought I was writing it for—”

  “For you, Ian. Only you. If there are some things you want to share, great. But it’s really a tool for you to explore your stuff, to help you deal with it.”

  “What stuff?”

  Carrie always took these heavy pauses when she was in her therapy mode. Even closed her eyes.

  Drove me nuts.

  “Well, in camp you’ve already shared a bit about your father, your trouble adjusting to school in Canada, your car accident …”

  All things I wrote about.

  “… and the lady who passed away in front of your—”

  “Passed away? She was shot in cold blood! One of my dad’s trigger-happy guards.”

  Carrie nodded slowly, opened her eyes. “Who was she, Ian?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Could she be related to you?”

  Jesus! I’d never thought of that. “No way,” I said.

  “So … why do you find her death so disturbing?”

  “What’s disturbing is all your questions.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I opened the journal at the Mayan woman’s face. I’d squashed some berries and flowers onto the page to make the reds, blues, and yellows of her traditional blouse. Her long hair was black as charcoal, because that’s what I used. Her skin was brown from the inner bark of a tree. My sketch was burned in one corner but her face was intact, full of fight against my father’s gold mine.

  In my picture, she couldn’t see the bullet zinging for her head.

  Carrie pointed a twig at a black hump behind the woman’s shoulder. “Is that a baby on her back?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yup.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Tell my dad that.”

  “You’re quite the artist.”

  I slapped the journal shut. “No, I’m not.”

  Long pause. “What was the best part of your solo?”

  “Sleeping. Once the birds shut up and I figured out a blindfold. It’s insane, this midnight sun!”

  Carrie laughed. “Last night was the solstice.”

  “The what?”

  “The summer solstice. June 21st. Longest day of the year. You won’t see stars again till August.”

  “August?”

  “For sure. We’ll be well down the Keele River by then and you can—”

  “Forget it. I’ll be long gone. I’ll be cured in a week.”

  Carrie smiled. “We’ll see.”

  We’ll see, all right, I thought. I’ll be gone once I have an escape plan. Soon I’ll be back online!

  Carrie closed her eyes again. “And so, Ian …”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the toughest part of your solo?”

  “Writing. I just don’t g
et it.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m such a good blogger. I can do it in my sleep. Really, I can text in my sleep.”

  “Interesting.”

  I could tell she didn’t believe me. “They call it sleep-texting.”

  “Uh-huh.” Carrie poured me another cup of Labrador tea, took some for herself. “Why do you think writing is so hard for you, Ian—on paper, I mean?”

  “Missing a keyboard, I guess. It feels so weird, scratching away on paper.”

  “Hmm. Makes sense. They really are different species.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A blog is very public. You’re basically sharing ideas and opinions, mostly head stuff. You’re reaching out to anyone on earth who’s plugged into the Internet, most of them anonymous. Right?”

  “Yeah, but I have a lot of online friends! They eat up my blogs. They expect at least one post a day.”

  “Uh-huh. Now, on the other hand, a journal entry is very private, very personal. Mostly heart stuff. Totally unplugged from the electronic universe you’re so comfortable in.”

  I stood up, suddenly suffocating in Carrie’s therapy bubble.

  She looked up at me with her cheerleader eyes. “Will you grant me one last question?”

  I hit the fire with a long stick, sending up a tower of sparks. “Including that one?”

  Carrie laughed. “What do you think you learned during your solo?”

  “Well … I learned how to make Labrador tea. Is it any good?”

  “It’s perfect, Ian. I drink this stuff every morning with my granola and yogurt. Lots of vitamin C. But I mean, what did you learn about yourself?”

  “Not much.”

  “Nothing?”

  I stared at the dancing flames, remembering how I’d crashed through the woods, chucked boulders out of the creek, that horrible feeling of something out to get me, William sharing his chocolate by the fire. And last night, lying in my tent, listening to the wind ripping through the pines, feeling super alone but … somehow not so lonely.

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff out here that can mess you up, even kill you. But it’s not a big power thing like when there’s people around.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like my dad. Like Woody. Total power trippers. Control freaks.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I spent a lot of time alone as a kid, just me and my guitar, locked in my room. But it’s different out here on solo. There’s no locks. Nobody trying to control me. Sun, wind, clouds, birds.” I looked down at my chewed boot. “Porcupines. Everything just … is.”