Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  “I’d like to follow the stream,” he says. “It must feed into something.”

  “Okay.”

  He starts walking and I follow.

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “From what I remember, we were supposed to pretty much follow the same contour lines around the hill if we’re trying to get to the spot where they found those rocks. If we follow a stream, we’ll be going downhill, right?”

  “I’m not too focused on finding the rocks,” he says. “I’m willing to accept the premise that we might be close to the village. The rocks were just a signpost. I’m looking for the destination.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He stops.

  “You still don’t sound convinced.”

  “I have no strong opinion,” I say. “I’m out of my element. You know about hiking and camping. You know about these woods. I’m willing to go along with whatever you think is the right approach. I’m committed. I don’t need to be convinced.”

  He nods.

  We hike without talking for most of the morning. In a way, I think it’s better. I think we’re moving faster because we’re not lost in conversation. We find the stream and follow it. It’s not very big—you could jump across it if you had to. The water is clear. It’s got a clean bed of gravel and sand, and it flows between moss-covered banks. The stream gets a little wider when another creek joins it. Bud has us cross to the other side while it’s still easy to do so. The forest gets a little thicker. The trees aren’t as tall and we have to bend and duck below limbs. Bud moves us away from the banks a little, where the walking is easier.

  “We’re headed too far south,” he says. “I’d like to turn east before we find our way down into farmland.”

  “That sounds good,” I say. This is me trying to sound convinced.

  Bud leads us on a tromp through the woods. With no stream to follow, and with the sun hidden behind the thick foliage overhead, our hike seems a bit like wandering to me. The ground has flattened out and it’s marshy, so we’re weaving around wet spots and jumping between mounds.

  “I want to move uphill so we can get out of this bog,” he says.

  “Yes, I agree,” I say. If you put a gun to my head, I would say we were walking in circles. Bud led us downhill along the stream, then across a flat bog, and then back uphill. I wouldn’t be surprised if we met with the same stream again and followed it downhill. This is the same thing that happened when we first arrived. It was my idea to come to Belarus, but then Bud took over and planned all the boat trips. Now I’ve had an idea about hunting for the rocks like the ones from his childhood stories, but Bud has taken over the hike.

  “Look!”

  He’s pointing towards trees. There are trees in every direction, but he’s pointing towards trees.

  “What am I looking at?” I ask.

  “Right there, through the trees,” he says. He tugs at my sleeve and then rushes forward, knowing I’ll follow him. Why he thinks he has to rush, I have no idea. It’s not as if the trees are going anywhere.

  He gets to the edge of where the forest becomes very thick and he stops.

  “See? Bamboo!”

  “Oh?” I ask.

  “This could be it,” he says.

  “We talked to that guy, remember? It was like our second day here. He said that some varieties of bamboo grow here. Remember?”

  “Not like this, though. I’ve seen some in my travels, but it’s always that tiny, stunted stuff. This is huge, like I remember from my childhood. See how tall it grows? And how thick? It’s as tall as an oak.”

  “It’s definitely thick.”

  “It won’t be easy, but we have to go through this bamboo. Maybe we should camp here and start fresh in the morning.”

  “It seems a bit early.”

  “We can’t get caught in the bamboo at night. The rats will eat us.”

  Bud is so excited. I’ve never seen him like this before.

  “Where shall we camp?”

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Bud leads us uphill, following the edge of the bamboo, but staying out of the thick grove. He finds a spot that’s nearly flat and he sits down to inflate his tent. Apparently, he only had one of the compressed air canisters because this time he’s filling the tent with his lungs. It doesn’t take long.

  I collect wood and rocks. I’m going to set up an even better fire. I’m hoping to keep it warm enough to keep away the morning dew. I swear, it took until noon for my clothes to dry out.

  “How did you catch those rabbits last night?” I ask. I’m looking for something to do. As far as I can tell, it’s still afternoon, and I’m starting to get pretty hungry.

  “I just speared them,” he says. “You find a warren and wait. When they show up, you either spear them or club them. I got one coming out, the other coming home.”

  “Huh,” I say. So you just find a warren. What the hell does a warren look like? That doesn’t even seem like a real word. I’ve seen plenty of squirrels. Maybe I can kill a squirrel with a rock.

  I use my knife to sharpen a dried stalk of bamboo to a point and set off. I figure as long as I stay close to the edge of the bamboo, I can find my way back to the camp. Just in case, I mark little ticks on the trees as I walk. If you pick a young enough tree, and line it up with the last mark you made, it only takes a second to mark your trail. At least I think my system will work. I won’t know until I try to follow it back.

  I’m still wearing my backpack, but I took out the sleeping bag and a bunch of the heavy stuff, so I feel light and free as I walk through the woods. Honestly, part of the freedom is probably because I’m not with Bud. I’ve never before felt especially encumbered by him, but over the past few weeks we’ve spent more and more time together. It’s starting to feel like we’re one person.

  When I stop to cut a mark on the next tree, I pause and listen. It sounds like footsteps in the leaves. I heft my bamboo spear in one hand and hold the knife in the other. I wait for the sound again so I can pinpoint the direction. It’s a squirrel. He’s about ten feet from me, sitting on his hind legs and twitching his tufted ears. I raise my spear and pull my arm back slowly.

  I hurl the spear at a spot between the squirrel and the nearest tree. I’ve guessed correctly about which direction the squirrel will bolt, but I’ve really underestimated his speed. That squirrel is halfway up the tree before the spear even leaves my hand. My bamboo spear sticks in the ground.

  I hunt and hike for a while. I think I was looking for some time alone more than I was expecting to come back with dinner. There’s still plenty of daylight left so I casually follow the border of the bamboo instead of using my marks. I hear something from my left and I pause again, thinking it’s probably another squirrel. The noise stops when I stop.

  When I start walking, the noise starts again.

  It’s coming from the direction of the bamboo, and I wonder if it’s a weird echo from the tall stalks. It doesn’t sound the same as my footfalls though. I’m walking mostly on dirt and moss and the noise sounds like someone walking on dry leaves.

  “Bud?” I call.

  There’s a response far off, not in the same direction as the noise.

  I decide to walk faster. I’m almost jogging up the hill. My curiosity gets the best of me to so I grab a small tree and come to an abrupt stop. This time I hear three distinct steps after I’ve already stopped.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  There’s no answer from the bamboo.

  I duck and turn, trying to see between the green leaves. I can almost see a face in there.

  “Hey Bud?” I call.

  “Yeah,” he yells. It sounds like he’s just over the hill.

  “Come here, will ya?”

  “Yup,” he says.

  I wait, unmoving, afraid to even blink. I hear Bud trotting over the hill and shuffling down to my location.

  “What is it,” he asks.

  “There’s something in the bamboo. Can you see that
face there?”

  “No,” he says.

  I stay put and Bud starts a slow stalk in the direction I’m looking. He crosses through my field of view and I lose the face.

  “Hold on,” I say.

  Bud keeps moving. I move left and right, but I can’t find the face again. All I see is green bamboo leaves fading into the darkness of the thick stalks.

  “Yup, something was here,” he says.

  “Really?”

  I catch up to him in the fringe of the bamboo. One of the leaves cuts the edge of my ear. It’s like a paper cut. I hate those.

  “Footprints,” he says.

  I don’t see anything where he’s pointing, but I see the outline of five toes in a patch of mud nearby.

  “Barefoot,” I say.

  “We better be careful tonight,” he says. “Anyone who can live in the bamboo is a dangerous sort.”

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  While I was out being stalked, Bud has somehow foraged a whole dinner. He has a little pig roasting on the fire, he’s steamed some baby ferns, and he tossed a salad of greens and edible flowers. The flowers smell great and have a peppery taste. I can’t believe the dinner. Bud could start a restaurant out here and charge a fortune. Everything is delicious.

  Right after he eats, Bud settles in for a nap. It’s still pretty early, so I don’t have any problem taking the first watch while I read a book by the fire. Until I dumped out my pack, I forgot the book was there. It was stuffed beneath extra socks in one of the compartments. I don’t want to waste the batteries in my headlight, but firelight is not the best to read by. It flashes and flares too much, and you have to find a way to get the light on the page without blinding yourself. Plus, I’m twitching at every noise. It’s unsettling to think that someone is crouching in the bamboo, watching me from the dark. I keep reading the same page, not able to track the plot.

  “I’ll take over,” Bud says, and I nearly toss my book into the fire.

  It’s not much better inside the tent. Somewhere on this trip, I lost my confidence in Bud. I might have even started before we left Vermont. When I heard his life story—heard about all the starts and stops—I saw his flaws all at once. He had been a mythic figure to me, with his impossible riches. And then my estimation of his character plunged. So as I’m in the tent, trying to get some sleep, I’m still twitching at every noise. Sleep is just the troubled blinks between dark premonitions.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  Even with the bigger fire, my clothes still feel damp in the morning. I kept the fire up during my watches, but Bud let it die down. He said that letting the fire die down let him see deeper into the woods. I look over near the edge of the bamboo, but I can’t see any footprints. If someone visited us last night, I can’t find any trace of it. Bud comes over and looks too, but he gives up quick. He wants to get moving.

  We pack up and make sure we’re wearing long-sleeves. The bamboo leaves are sharp as razors. Bud’s got a machete. He must have bought it back when he bought us the knives. He takes the lead and cuts a pretty good path. It seems like a lot of work to cut our way through the bamboo, but it gives us a nice clear trail to follow back if we need to. You can’t see the sky or the sun, and we have no compass. You could get lost in a heartbeat.

  Bud cuts a good, straight path. Looking back, I can see our trail stretching out behind us in a perfect line. I take over for a while, but I’m slower and sloppier. You have to cut down against the leaves and keep the blade close to the stalk without getting it caught. A practiced hand makes it look easy. I make it look torturous.

  The rats are everywhere. Some don’t even scurry away. They just sit there and watch as you walk past. These rats have round, pink ears and thick tails. Their little noses are pointed. I almost step on a nest of squirming babies, but Bud pulls back on my shirt and points down. The babies are the color of a pencil eraser.

  Bud kills one of the big ones. Back home, my old apartment building allowed for pets up to twenty pounds. I don’t think this rat would have made the limit. He only kills it because it won’t move. It stands there, on its hind legs, and just looks at us. Bud nudges it with his machete and it bites at the blade. After a warning, Bud swings the blade and nearly takes the rat’s head off. He kicks the body to the side. It’s oozing black blood as I pass.

  “It might have smelled the pork in my pack,” Bud says.

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know why else it would just stand there.”

  “Maybe it’s never seen a predator before,” I say.

  “You could be right.”

  Bud pulls a bottle from his pouch and takes a swig of water. He offers me some, but I decline.

  I check my watch, but the second hand isn’t turning. “What time do you have?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. My watch stopped.”

  “Me too,” I say. Bud didn’t look at his watch, so he must have noticed that it stopped earlier. It’s interesting that he didn’t think to mention it.

  “Should we take a break?” I ask.

  “Let’s press on.”

  Bud drives us on and on. I take over again, but he relieves me after almost no time. I can tell he’s frustrated with my speed. The light eventually softens. It will be dark soon.

  “Should we try to set up a camp?” I ask.

  I can’t imagine how we could clear enough space to set up the tent. The stalks are thick on the ground, and tightly spaced. Even if we could hack down enough bamboo to clear a space, we’d still have to worry about the jagged trunks. Given enough time, we might be able to lash together a platform of the stuff, but that might take all night.

  “I say we keep going,” he says. “We’ll use our headlights and try to make it through the bamboo tonight.”

  “Okay,” I say. He’s crazy. I’m exhausted and he’s more than a century older than I am, if you believe in that sort of thing.

  He barely slows as the green glow gives in to the night. When it’s my turn to hack at the bamboo, I’m so slow I can hear him stop and wait for me to cut. There’s a tendon that runs up my arm to my elbow and it burns with each stroke of the machete. My left arm is untalented. When I try to switch hands, I’m afraid I’m going to hack into my own leg. My shifts are short. The boss taps me on the shoulder before too long and he resumes the lead. I’m nearly asleep on my feet.

  When morning comes to the bamboo, it’s so gradual that I don’t even notice the ambient light until I see Bud turn off his headlamp. Mine has been shut off for an hour. I’ve just been following Bud. He hacks out a clearing and we sit on our backpacks while we have a snack. I pick some shoots and chew on the green stalks. They taste good, almost sweet, and the fibers clean your teeth as you chew.

  “How far do you think we’ve gone?”

  “I have no idea,” he says. “I’m sure we’re on the right track though.”

  “Didn’t you say that nobody ever survived in the bamboo?”

  “Yes.”

  I hear the sound of people. Perhaps they’re children—the voices are so high. They’re chattering, off in the distance. I start to stand, but Bud puts out a hand to stay my movement. He puts a finger to his lips and I hold my breath. The bamboo muffles distant sounds but it seems to amplify any sound that’s close. My own breathing is enough to drown out the distant voices.

  “Knife,” Bud whispers.

  I just look at him. He has the machete.

  “Get out your knife,” he says.

  I nod. My bag is at my feet. I grab the knife out of the side pocket. Bud makes a couple of whacks at the bamboo and hands me a spear before making one for himself.

  The voices are growing closer, but I still can’t make out the words. They’re all talking at once, so I can’t tell what anyone is saying. They seem to be spreading out. They’re approaching from multiple angles. Bud is kneeling and tucking his pants into his socks. I start to tuck mine too, even though I haven’t yet figured out why he’s doing it.

  I hear a rustle behin
d me and I turn to see a rat. He’s hopping down the trail we blazed, coming towards me. He sits up and puts his little rat hands to his mouth. His whiskers flicker and he makes a chattering noise.

  It dawns on me—the voices are from rats.

  I turn to say this to Bud. He has his spear raised and he’s staring at three big rats who have flanked us. They’re creeping slowly towards him and each one stops as Bud points his spear. It’s like he’s playing a game of red light, green light with them. Green light—the big one on the left takes a step. Bud swings the point of his spear. The rat is still too far to stab at. Red light—it stops. Green light—the one in the middle slides closer and I see a glimpse of its big front teeth. Red light—Bud jabs at the middle rat.

  I turn back to my rat.

  GREEN LIGHT—it’s almost at my feet. I jump back and jab down. The rat screams as my spear splits its back. In the distance, I hear the pack scream back. Now I can hear them all moving towards us. Behind me, Bud lunges and stabs at his three attackers. He spears one and slices the other two with his machete.

  “They’re coming,” he says.

  I bring my boot down on the head of the rat in front of me. His screams are finally silenced.

  “Should we run?”

  “Where? We’ll be at even more of a disadvantage if we’re in the thick stuff. At least here we have enough room to swing a knife.”

  I nod.

  We stand back to back and wait. From the chatter, it sounds like they’ve formed a semicircle. The first few come in with slow, tentative hops. I kill one and Bud kills two more. The knife I have isn’t very long. Bud has a longer reach with that machete. I have to jab at them with the end of my spear. I see another one coming and I take a step forward to thrust the spear at it. It’s a mistake. My spear is deflected by the stalks of bamboo and I only graze the rat. He scurries towards me as I pull my spear back. He nips my finger before I find him with the knife. I nearly cut into my own hand. He stops moving when my blade severs his spine.