by Nick Cole
He told himself to calm down. To stop.
Just do this. Don’t think too much about it.
He crept toward the frowning entrance of the cave. There was a short drop inside. On the floor below, he could see a shapeless mass in the dark. The cave smelled of animals. He listened. He heard nothing. He waited, watching the shapeless mass. His vision narrowed as he stared hard, willing the details to be revealed.
He blinked and looked away as his vision began to close to a pinpoint. His heart was pounding in his ears.
Stop.
He crawled back out onto the ledge.
The drop was a good two hundred feet into the rapids.
I’m not really going to do this, am I?
Mind over matter, Boy.
He played the rope out, tying it about his waist.
They don’t make this stuff anymore. Airborne Ranger gear, Boy. Best ever.
You’d said that, every time you brought it out, Sergeant. Every time we made a trap or a snare, you said that.
I was proud of what had once been. Proud that someone had made parachute cord. I had no right to be, Boy. But I was proud all the same.
The Boy searched the underside of the ledge.
A few feet below the edge and off to the side, a rugged little pine jutted out from the rock wall.
It’s all I have.
To the west, large clouds, gray and full, rolled across the high peaks.
More snow tonight.
It will be very cold.
He climbed down the cliff face.
He loved to climb.
For a boy who had been born crippled and could not run as others did, climbing was an activity where the playing field leveled.
He had always climbed.
The Boy clung to the side of the rock wall. He spent more rope than he would have liked securing it to the pine. But he had to.
When he’d climbed back onto the ledge his muscles were shaking.
I need water and I’ve forgotten to bring the bag.
What else am I forgetting?
He felt fear rise again as he cupped a handful of snow and put it in his mouth.
In just a moment I’ll have to do this.
Stop.
Mind over matter, Boy.
I don’t mind. It won’t matter.
That’s right, Boy. That’s good.
A strong wind came off the mountain peaks above and whipped long hair into his green eyes.
He brushed it away.
What else am I forgetting?
When he picked up the first pole it felt too light.
It felt hollow like he could break it across his knee.
He laid it down just in front of the cliff’s edge, pointing toward the frowning mouth of the cave.
The second pole felt heavier. He placed it at the entrance.
When he went back for the third, it felt lighter than the second and he switched it out. ‘I’ll want the heaviest one first,’ he thought.
Crouching low and entering the cave, he felt the rope pull taut at his waist.
It won’t reach. I won’t be able to get close enough to make the most of the spear.
He undid the rope about his waist and changed to a slipknot.
This is how it works, he told himself.
Change of plans, he’d heard Sergeant Presley say.
Change of plans.
He laid the loop of rope at the base of the second pole.
When you fall back to this position, you slip the rope around your right wrist, Boy.
What about the left?
I can’t trust that side.
What else am I forgetting?
Stop, he told his heart.
Stop.
He crept into the cave, the tip of the spear dead center on the sleeping mass.
There was a moment.
A moment to think and to have thought too much.
He felt it coming. He’d known it before at other times and knew it was best to stay ahead of such moments.
He drove the spear hard into the mass.
An instant later it was wrenched out of his hands as the bear turned over. He heard a dry snap of wood echo off the roof of the cave as he retreated back toward the entrance.
For a moment, the Boy took his eyes off the bear as he slipped the loop about his wrist and grabbed the spear, making sure to keep the trailing end of the parachute cord away from the end of the pole.
In that moment he could hear the roar of the bear. It filled the cave, and beneath the roar he could hear her claws clicking against the stone floor as she scrambled up toward him.
When he looked up, following the blackened tip of the spear, he found the grizzly’s head, squat, flat, almost low beneath the main bulk of her body. She roared again, gnashing a full row of yellowed fangs.
He jabbed the spear into her face and felt the weapon go wide, glancing off bone.
He backed up a few steps and planted the butt of the long pole in the ground.
The grizzly, brown, shaggy, angry, lurched out onto the ledge. It rose up on its hind legs and the Boy saw that it might, if it came forward just a bit, impale itself on the pole if it attacked him directly. He adjusted the pole right underneath the heart of the raging bear.
The bear made a wide swipe with its paw smashing the pole three quarters of the way to the top.
In the same instant that the pole was wrenched from the Boy’s grip, and as if the moment had caused an intensity of awareness, he felt the slipknot, its mouth still wide, float from off his wrist.
Stick to the plan, Boy! You can’t change it now.
He’d heard that before.
His back foot, his good leg, planted at the edge of the cliff, the Boy raised the final pole.
The bear on hind legs wallowed forward.
The Boy checked to make sure the parachute cord was really gone.
It was.
The moment that hung between the Boy and the bear was brief and startlingly clear. To have questioned what must be done next would have been lethal to either.
The Boy loped forward and rammed the pole straight up and into the chest of the bear.
‘There is no other way but this,’ he thought in that moment of run-
ning.
‘No other way but this.’
He felt the furry chest of the bear meet his grip on the pole.
He pushed hard and felt the arms of the bear on his shoulders. He felt a hot breathy roar turn to a whisper above the top of his head.
His arms were shaking.
His eyes were closed.
He was still alive.
He backed away from the belly of the bear, letting go of the pole as the bear fell off to one side.
He was covered in a thick, cold sweat.
There was no other way.
Chapter 16
In the moments that followed the death of the bear, routine took over, ways the Boy had known his whole life.
Bleed the animal.
Don’t think about how close you came to her claws.
The knife at his back was out as he stood over the carcass, finding the jugular, his good hand shaking, and then a quick flick and blood was running out onto the granite of the Sierra Nevada.
Don’t remember her hot breath on top of your head when there was little you could do but go forward with the pole.
Next he made a cut into the chest. Working from the breastbone up to the jaw, he cut through flesh and muscle. When the cut was made he took out his tomahawk, adjusted his grip once as he raised it above his head and then slammed it down onto the breastbone several times. Soon he was removing the organs. Heart, lungs, esophagus, bladder, intestines, and rectum.
My hands are shaking, Sergeant.
It’s just the cold, Boy. Just the cold. Keep on workin’.
It is cold out and getting colder, which will be good for the meat, but I still have much work to do.
Walking stiffly, he descended the mountain and returned to camp. He gathe
red his gear and when that was done, he began to coax Horse to get up one more time.
Horse seemed stunned that the Boy would even consider such a thing, but before long, whispering and leading, patting and coaxing, the Boy had him up and on his legs.
“I’ll carry everything, you just follow me. We’re going someplace warm.”
Late afternoon turned to winter evening as he led Horse up onto the mountain. Halfway up, as they worked side to side across the gray granite ledges, snow began to fall, and by the time they’d reached the top, the Boy was almost dragging Horse. Never once did he curse at the animal, knowing that he was already asking too much of his only friend. And for his part, Horse seemed to suffer through the climb as though death and the hardships that must come with it are inevitable.
At the top, the Boy dropped Horse’s lead and began to collect what little firewood he could find. Soon there was a small fire inside the cave. He led Horse into the cave, expecting more protest than the snort Horse gave at the scent of the bear.
The fire cast flickering shadows along the inside of the cave and though there was a small vault, the cave was neither vast nor deep.
It’ll be easier to keep warm, Boy. That’s good.
The Boy put his blanket over Horse, who’d begun to tremble. He fed Horse from a sack of wild oats he kept for the times when there was nothing at hand to crop.
Horse chewed a bit and then seemed to lose interest.
That’s not good.
The Boy left the sack open before Horse and returned to the carcass of the bear.
Snow fell in thick drifts across the ledge as the wind began to whip along the mountainside.
‘It has to be done now,’ the Boy thought to himself.
But I’ll need wood. The fire has to be kept going.
In the dark he descended the mountain, working quickly among the howling pines to find as much dead wood as possible. Every time he stopped to look for wood in the thin light of the last of the day, he felt his weak side stiffen.
When he’d collected a large bundle of dead wood, he tied it with leather straps and climbed the mountain once again, almost crawling under the weight, as the scream of the howling winter night bit at his frozen ears.
I am so tired. I feel all the excitement and fear of the fight with the bear leaving me.
Nearing the ledge of the cave, he thought, ‘I could go to sleep now.’
And for a long moment, on all fours, the bundle of wood crushing down upon his back, he stared long and hard at the rock beneath his numb fingers, thinking only of sleep.
Back in the cave he fed the wood that wasn’t too wet to the fire, watching the smoke escape through some unseen fissure in the roof of the cave. He held his cracked and bleeding fingers next to the flames.
You’ll need that skin, Boy.
The Boy knew what that meant.
He’d known and planned what he must do next without ever thinking it or saying that he would do it. But if he was to have the skin of the bear, then what needed to be done would need to be done soon.
The bear was too heavy to drag off the ledge, back here into the cave near the fire.
That’d be the easy way, Boy. Never take the easy way.
He held up a handful of oats to Horse. Horse sniffed at them but refused to eat as he turned his long head back to the fire.
Okay, you rest for now.
Outside the storm blasted past the ledge. Everything was white and gray and dark beyond, all at once.
When he found the snow-covered bear, he began the work of removing the skin.
He completed the cut up onto the bear’s chest. He cut the legs and then began to skin the bear from the paws up. His strength began to fail as he worked the great hide off its back, but when he came to the head, he made the final cut and returned to the cave to warm himself again. He took a handful of the oats, watching Horse’s sleeping eyes flutter, and ate them, chewing them into a paste and swallowing.
Returning to the wind and the night, he dragged the skin into the cave and laid it out on the floor.
I can work here for a while and be warm by the fire.
But he knew if the meat froze on the carcass he would never get it off the bone.
For a long time after that, he crouched over the bear, cutting strips of meat. When he’d gotten all the usable meat he washed it in the snow and took it back into the cave. He spitted two steaks and laid them on the fire.
Into the cold once again, he cracked open the bear’s skull for the brains and took those inside, placing them near the skin.
For the rest of the night he worked with his tomahawk, scraping the skin of flesh and fat and blood. When all of it was removed, he stepped outside, carrying the waste to the edge of the cliff and dropping it over the side.
The storm had stopped.
It was startlingly cold out. His breath came in great vaporous clouds that hung for a moment over the chasm and the ice-swollen river below and were gone in the next. The stars were close at hand. Below, the river tumbled as sluggish chunks of ice floated in the moonlight.
He washed his hands in snow, feeling both a stinging and numbness on his raw flesh.
He stood watching the night.
Clouds, white and luminous, moved against the soft blue of the moonlit night. Below, the river and the valley were swaying trees and shining shadows of sparkling granite. ‘I am alive,’ he thought. ‘And this is the most beautiful night of my life.’
DAWN LIGHT FELL across the ledge outside the cave. The Boy looked up from the skin he’d worked on through the night. The light was golden, turning the stone ledge outside the cave from iron gray to blue.
He felt tired as he returned to the skin once more, rubbing the brains of the bear into the hide.
“This is all I can do to cure it,” he said aloud in his tiredness, as if someone had been asking what he was doing. As if Sergeant Presley had been talking to him through the night. But now, in the light of morning it all seemed a dream, a dream of a night in which he worked at the remains of a bear.
But I have not slept.
“There is too much to do,” he said aloud.
You done everything, Boy. Now sleep.
The Boy lay down next to the fire and slept.
Chapter 17
In the days that followed:
He rubbed ash from the fire into the hide of the bear.
He smoked meat in dried strips.
He swept the cave with pine branches.
He had to lead Horse down the mountain to drink from the river at least once a day. He could think of no method to bring Horse enough water.
Winter fell across the mountains like a thick blanket of ice.
The Boy constructed a thatched door to block the entrance to the cave.
At night he stared at the wall and the moving shadows in the firelight.
By the time he’d collected firewood, watered Horse, and foraged enough food, the daylight was waning and he felt tired.
In the night he enjoyed listening to the fire and watching the shadows on the cave wall.
Winter had come to stay, and it seemed, on frost-laced mornings and nights of driving sleet, that it had always been this way and might continue without end.
Chapter 18
One night, as the wind howled through the high pines, he took Sergeant Presley’s bundle out of his pack.
He stared at it for a long moment, listening to the wind and trying to remember that autumn morning when he’d found it next to the body.
Take the map and go west, Boy. Find the Army. Tell them who I was. Tell them there’s nothing left.
In the bundle was a good shirt Sergeant Presley had found and liked to wear in the evening after they had bathed in a stream or creek and made an early camp. That was the only time Sergeant Presley would wear the good shirt he’d found behind the backseat of a pickup truck they’d searched in the woods of North Carolina.
Red flannel.
This my red flannel shirt, Boy. Sho
re is comfortable.
The shirt would be there.
The map. Sergeant Presley’s knife. The shirt.
He undid the leather thong on the bundle and tied it about his wrist.
The soft cloth bundle opened and out came the shirt, and within were the knife and the map. And there was a leather thong attached to a long gray feather, white at the tip, its spine broken.
He laid the knife on his whetstone.
He laid the map on another stone, one he ate on by the fire. He left the broken feather and its thong in the bundle.
He held the shirt up and smelled Sergeant Presley in a draft coming off the fire.
He took off his vest and put on the shirt.
It was comfortable. Soft. The softest thing he’d ever felt. And warm.
He sat by the fire.
When he took up the map, he stared at it. He had seen the map many times, but always when it was laid out, Sergeant Presley was making a note or muttering to himself.
The Boy unfolded it, laying it on the ground. It was large. It was both hard and smooth. In the light it reflected a dull shine.
He stared at the markings.
Above Reno he read:
CHINESE PARATROOPERS. DUG IN. BATTALION STRENGTH.
Over Salt Lake City, in the state of Utah, he read:
GONE
Over Pocatello, in the state of Idaho, he read:
REFUGEE CAMP FIVE YEARS AFTER. OVERRUN BY SLAVERS.
Above this, across the whole of the northwestern states, was a red circle with the words “WHITE SUPREMACISTS” written in the center.
Across Omaha in big letters was the word “PLAGUE,” and then a small red face with X’s for eyes. There were red-faced “X eyes” listed over place names all the way to Louisville, in the state of Kentucky.
At Washington, D.C., he found an arrow that led into the middle of the ocean. Words were written in Sergeant Presley’s precise hand.
MADE IT TO D.C. IT’S ALL GONE. BUNKER PROBABLY HIT EARLY IN THE WAR. NO REMNANTS OF GOV’T AT THIS LOCATION. TOOK ME TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE IT HERE.
On the back of the map the Boy found names.
CPT DANFORTH, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO