by Don Calame
It’s the first time Hank has ever yelled at me. And I wasn’t even trying to annoy him this time.
“Are we clear about that?” Hank says, his neck red, his hands shaky.
I nod from my seat on a log. “Yes.”
And just like that, all of the anger drains from Hank’s face. “OK. Good.” He takes a deep breath. “Now, how are you feeling? The Benadryl cream helping?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say, glancing down at the sweatpants Hank loaned me. “Still, you know, a little bit . . . tender. But definitely improving.”
I thought I’d be able to get away without mentioning the utterly humiliating fact that I’d been stung on my dong. But after the adrenaline subsided, I found the whole “situation” down below getting more and more painful. I tried to ignore it, act casual. And I’d thought I’d been doing a pretty good job — till Penelope asked me why I was walking like a rancher after a three-day cattle drive.
“You sure you’ve applied Benadryl everywhere?” Charlie had asked. “Wasp stings are not something you want to ignore. An allergic reaction can cause permanent neurological damage; a person can lose all feeling in the affected extremity.”
The confession came fast and furious after that bit of news. There are places you might not mind losing feeling in. And then there’s your Charles Xavier.
“Shall we join the others?” Hank says, extending his hand.
I grab hold and he hoists me up.
We walk over to the stand of trees where Max is explaining to Barbara, Penelope, and Charlie how to build a shelter.
“. . . as many of these,” Max says, holding up a long, straight stick, “as we can find. A little longer is fine, but this length is best. The straighter, the better.” He reaches down and picks up another branch, this one with a fork at the end. “We’ll also need six support poles. Again, as straight and thick as you can find.”
Barbara looks around. “The weather being as nice as it is, shouldn’t we be worried about finding food and water before building shelter?”
“Normally, you’d be right,” Max says. “But in the bush, the situation always dictates your priorities. With our little . . . setback”— he glances at me —“we lost some valuable time. If we’d kept pushing on toward the river, we likely wouldn’t have had enough light to scavenge by, so right now our priority needs to be our shelter. The temperature drops pretty dramatically in the Frank at night. We’re talking into the thirties. That’s potential hypothermia territory. You can live three weeks without food. Three days without water. But in the freezing cold, only three hours without shelter.” He sizes each of us up. “Barbara, why don’t you stay here and help me prep the building site. The rest of you get scavenging. Stay in pairs, and don’t stray too far. It’s really easy to get really lost, really fast.”
Hank turns to me, but before he can ask me to be his stick-finding buddy, I turn to Charlie: “Shall we?”
He frowns. “Don’t you think you and Hank should pair off? This could be the perfect occasion for you to share some of your more atypical predilections.”
“Predilections. Right,” I say. “I could do that, if you want to spend the next two hours alone in the woods dodging Penelope’s sneeze spray.”
Charlie sighs. “You make a good point. All right. But if I’m to be expected to lay my hands on Mother Nature’s detritus, I need to get outfitted first.”
“I think we need to step things up,” Charlie says, a bundle of sticks cradled in his long-sleeve-cloaked arms. He is wearing a full-on beekeeper’s outfit that he’s brought, complete with wide-brimmed hat, screened veil, heavy-duty gloves, and a neck-to-ankle white cotton suit. “It’s time to raise the bar.”
“What are you talking about?” I squat and grab a thick, forked branch. “We’ve thrown some great material at him: emollient, cilia, confabulation, aesthete, evanescence, liberation —”
“I’m simply saying that I believe we may have misjudged our enemy. His resolve is much stronger than I’d anticipated. Haven’t you noticed? Everything we do, Hank responds by being even more parental. He’s only lost his cool once — when you ran off and got your penis stung.”
“What are you trying to say? That everything we’ve done so far was pointless?”
“Not completely. I think we’ve laid a fairly decent foundation. Hank’s cracks are starting to show. But if we’re actually going to pull this off, we have to shift things into a higher gear.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?”
Charlie grins at me. It’s an evil grin — made all the more unsettling flashed from behind the gauzy black tulle of the beekeeper’s veil.
As Max predicted, the temperature has dropped pretty dramatically now that the sun is down. Big clouds of steam escape my lips with each breath. It’s not exactly freezing, but I can definitely feel the bite in my fingers and the tip of my nose.
Charlie and I are attempting to open Max’s “emergency provision” canned chili using a couple of sharp rocks we found.
The cans of chili and the bladder of water Max brought are our only backup supplies. He said he doesn’t like to use them on the first day but given that we’re a short walk away from a river, he feels it’s better for us to eat well tonight so we can be fresh and ready to conquer the wilderness tomorrow. “We’ll spend most of the day fishing and restocking our reserve supplies with dried and smoked fish.”
Amazing how Max can lug emergency rations all the way into the bush but not an emergency can opener. The least he could have done was let us use his knife. But when Charlie and I suggested it, he just laughed.
“If you’re not willing to open the cans without tools,” Max explained, “then it’s not really an emergency.”
I pound my stone into the top of the can, making tiny pockmarks in the aluminum but doing no real damage. The same cannot be said of the skin on my palm. I shift the rock to my left hand, flex the fingers on my right, the knuckles feeling like they’re locking up.
“I’m sure glad we don’t have to live like this all of the time,” I say, studying my lack of progress. “It must have sucked being a caveman.”
“Indeed,” Charlie says. “All those cans of Hormel scattered about and poor Cro-Magnon with no electric opener.”
I glare at Charlie. “You know what I mean. Having to get through life without the simplest tools. Like a can opener. A screwdriver. A MacBook.”
“If you ask me,” Charlie says, “it was a superior existence for them. Everything was more elemental. All the primitives were concerned about was food, water, sleep, and sex.”
My gaze flits over to Penelope, who is squatting over a pile of kindling, sending sparks into it by striking the back of Max’s carbon steel knife against a piece of quartz. Her jeans pucker just enough at the back to reveal the lacy edge of her red bikini bottoms.
“I would’ve thought you’d have hated the Stone Age,” I say. “All those germs and no hand sanitizer for thousands of years!”
“Ah, but I wouldn’t have known about the germs, now would I?” Charlie says, slamming his rock into the chili can top. “I do believe Thomas Gray was right when he said ignorance is bliss. However, I’ve been plagued with an unusually high intellect and thus do not benefit from the blissful state of most of my peers.”
I open my mouth to argue but am interrupted by Penelope’s triumphant cry.
“Got it!” she calls out, leaning forward, puffing tiny wisps of breath into her mini pyre.
“Gentle, now,” Max says as he helps Hank and Barbara layer leaves onto our shelter. “Don’t rush. If there’s one thing I want everyone to take away from this week, it’s that patience pays. Our modern existence may seem to tell you otherwise. That you have to ‘get it yesterday.’ But this attitude only fosters laziness. Entitlement. The natural world teaches otherwise. Mastery takes time. Endurance, stamina, fortitude, perseverance, persistence, patience. These are the pillars of accomplishment.”
“Persistence, my ass,” I mutter, slamming my stone down on my c
hili can. “We are never going to get these open.”
“Success!” Charlie shouts, his stone piercing the top of his can, a spray of brown sauce coating his face and his glasses.
“How the hell did you do that?”
He holds up his rock. “It’s all in the wrist, my friend.”
“OK, Wristmaster.” I chuck my can over to him. “Since you’re the expert, why don’t you finish opening the others? I’ll go help Penelope with the fire.”
Charlie glances at her. “Do you really think that’s such a good idea?”
“What do you mean?” I stand and brush off my stinging hands.
“It means you and I both know why you snuck off to relieve yourself rather than alerting the group to nature’s call,” Charlie says. “We’ve got a long list of pranks to pull off, Daniel, but all of them require total commitment on your part. If you’re feeling shy, inhibited, or self-conscious because of some harpy . . .”
“I know why we’re here, Charlie,” I say. “Nothing’s going to get in the way of that. Trust me.”
A half hour later and Charlie has the five opened aluminum cans sitting in the fire. He’s brought a vast supply of seasonings that he’s carefully measuring out and stirring into each portion like a mad scientist.
When I suggested we just eat the chili cold from the can, Charlie scoffed at me.
“Can you really be that naive, Daniel?” he said. “Have you never heard of botulism? E. coli? It is absolutely imperative this food be heated to the appropriate bacteria-killing temperature. Not to mention adding the correct amounts of antimicrobial spices. Trust me. You and your colon want me working my magic.”
Meanwhile, Max is showing us how to fashion a bow and arrow from a bootlace, some sticks, a bit of tree sap, and the top of a can.
“Now, if you don’t have the luxury of a can lid,” Max says, folding the metal over and pounding it with a stone, “you can chip a small rock to a point.” He folds the lid again, does some more pounding. “Or you might look for a shard of bone. Alternatively, you can just sharpen the tip of the wooden shaft and harden it in a fire. But some kind of arrowhead works best because it gives the arrow a little weight, makes it fly farther, straighter, and deadlier.”
He bends the metal yet again and hammers it flat.
Penelope’s gaze keeps wandering over to Charlie. Finally, she gets up and crouches next to him before the fire. “What the hell are you adding to these, anyway?” she asks, poking one of the chili cans with a nearby stick.
“Could you not?” Charlie says. “You’re going to knock it over.”
“Not really a student of physics are you, Charlie?” Penelope says, continuing to prod the can. “In order for me to upset this cylinder’s equilibrium, I would have to apply substantially more perpendicular force. If you want, I could calculate the can’s center of gravity as well as the static equilibrium/torque and learn exactly —”
“What I really want”— Charlie bats Penelope’s stick from her hand —“is for you to stop touching my cans.”
Penelope laughs. “Well, I guess we know what it takes to upset your equilibrium.”
I don’t know why, but I get a little pang in my chest watching Penelope and Charlie exchange barbs. Is Charlie right? Is Penelope distracting me from my purpose?
I wish I could give back Penelope’s stupid potential-plane-crash kiss. I’m sure that’s why she’s in my head. I’d always imagined my first kiss was going to be with Erin, and Penelope took that from me.
I turn back to the others, tuning out Charlie and Penelope.
I force myself to focus on Max. Watch as he dips the flat end of the metal arrowhead in some melted sap and secures it into the slot he’s cut at one end of a stick. He reinforces the tip with some thread he’s pulled from his shirt.
“And voilà.” He holds up the arrow for us to admire. “After supper each of you will make one. Then, if we have time, I’ll demonstrate how to shoot. And if we’re lucky, tomorrow we’ll bag ourselves some game to go along with our fish.”
“Dinner’s on,” Charlie calls out, the chili bubbling like crazy in the cans. He uses a folded-over stick as tongs and carefully carries a can over to Barbara, placing it on the ground beside her.
“Why, thank you, Charlie,” Barbara says, wafting some of the steam toward her nose. “Smells . . . interesting. Nice. Asian, almost. What’s in it?”
“Just a few things,” Charlie responds, his chest puffed up proud. “Little oregano. Dash of cinnamon. Pinch of ginger. Touch of clove. Bit of garlic powder. For taste, but mostly for their antibiotic properties. Now be extremely careful. That food has been heated to a bacteria-annihilating two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Just in case any of you were worried,” Penelope says, laughing.
Charlie shoots her a withering stare, then proceeds to place a can beside every one of us except Max, who, apparently, doesn’t require as much fuel as the average person to function.
“Well, cheers,” Max says, raising his handful of nuts and leaves, which he gathered between erecting the shelters and the bow-and-arrow demonstration.
I bring the steaming spoon up to my mouth, tip it toward me, and take my first sip of the food — or try to. The pain is searing and instantaneous, the chili nearly cauterizing my lips shut.
“Jesus!” I shout, jerking my head back, my tongue flicking the burn.
“I warned you,” Charlie says. “I’d let it cool if I were you. Though not for too long. Boiling kills botulism bacteria but not the spores. As the temperature lowers, the spores will begin to germinate, grow, and then excrete toxins.”
“Yummy,” Penelope says. “You ought to write ad copy for Campbell’s Soup, Charlie.”
“All I’m saying,” Charlie states, “is that we should eat the food as soon as possible.” He glares at Penelope. “You, on the other hand, are welcome to wait until your chili is festering with Clostridium botulinum.”
“Oh, I don’t think you should do that, honey,” Barbara says.
“If I wasn’t so hungry,” Penelope says, staring down Charlie, “I would wait. Just to prove how wrong you are.”
“Hey, be my guest.” Charlie throws his hands in the air. “I’ll particularly enjoy when your cranial nerves shut down and you can no longer speak.”
Penelope shakes her head. “It’s so sad — how you pretend to know so much but really know so little. It’s common knowledge that properly heated food can be safely eaten up to two hours after it’s been cooked. But then again, what do the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control know about these things?”
“OK, OK,” Hank says. “How about we all just enjoy our botulism-free meal and —”
Suddenly, a loud scuffling sound comes from the darkness to our right.
I jump. “What the hell was that? A wolf?”
Max looks over to where the sound came from. “Probably just a squirrel or a fox. Whatever it is won’t bother us.”
I squint, peering into the dark of the woods. “Are you sure? It sounded . . . bigger to me. Like . . . maybe . . . a wolf.”
“It’s nothing you have to worry about.” Max takes a bite of his roughage. “Most of the wildlife in the Frank will steer clear of humans.”
“Unless they’re provoked or threatened, or you get in between them and their young,” Penelope offers. “Then, all bets are off.”
“True enough,” Max says. “However, we are not going to do any of those things. Whatever it is may have been attracted by the smell of our food. But it won’t come any closer. Not with all of us here and talking.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But what if it does?”
Max laughs. “I can tell you this: Statistics show that you are ten times more likely to be killed by the neighbor’s dog than you are by a wild animal.”
“And over a million times more likely to die of a lower respiratory infection, influenza, nephritis, or septicemia,” Charlie says, raisin
g his spoon.
Max blinks at him. “Right.” He shakes his head. “Anyway. All this to say, you’re actually safer out here in the wild than you are in your own home.”
I try to settle back and enjoy my piping-hot chili, but all I can picture is a wolf jumping out of the woods and biting off my face with its spiky fangs.
A boring-ass hockey game, a wasp-stung wiener, and a gruesome wolf mauling.
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
“What are we doing out here?” I whisper to Charlie as we creep from our hut.
“We’re upping the stakes,” Charlie says, the full moon casting a blue light on his face. He pulls a small red spray bottle from the pocket of his jeans. “As I said.”
“What is that?”
“It’s our coup de grâce.” Charlie starts misting my legs with the spray.
“What the —?” I jump back, raising my arms. “I thought you said leaving Baby Robbie was our coup de grâce.”
“This is our backup coup de grâce.” He steps close again and starts fogging my entire body.
A wave of cesspool hits me. “Jesus Christ.” I gag, jamming my nose into the crook of my elbow. “What the hell are you spraying me with?”
“Stick out your tongue,” Charlie demands.
“Absolutely n —”
He lunges at me and squirts the liquid into my mouth.
“Plllugh.” I spit and sputter. It’s horrible. Salty and warm, like what I imagine ball-sack sweat might taste like. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Keep it down,” Charlie whispers, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the hut. “You’ll wake everyone up.”
I lick at the sleeve of my T-shirt, the terrible tang coating my taste buds, trickling down my throat. “What is that crap, Charlie? And why did you spray it in my mouth?”
“It’s the doe-in-heat urine,” he says, showing me the label. “Deer can smell your breath for five miles.”
I blink at him, my skin tingling. “Wait a second. Code word invigorate?”
Charlie smiles. “Exactly.”
“But we bought that to use on Hank.”