1
[DAY TRIP]
“Blood Mountain, huh? Nice name. Very reassuring. Why do you think they call it that?” Grace asks. “Was Hell Hole already taken?”
Grace’s father—a big bear of man, six two, 240 pounds with a rapidly expanding stomach, thick chest, and heavy legs—forages in the trunk of the car, hauling out hiking boots, battered backpacks, water bottles, packages of energy bars, beef jerky, trail mix, Twizzlers. He ignores his daughter or simply doesn’t hear. For Grace, the distinction is meaningless. Same thing either way. He’s a quiet man. Not a lot bounces back.
Perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet, Grace bends her right leg and grabs her toes, stretching one quad, then switching to the other. She ducks her head to peer into the back seat, where her younger brother, Carter, sits slumped against the far door, face pressed against the window, openmouthed. A line of drool unspools down the pane.
She whispers, “Cart, yoo-hoo, wake up, we’re here, and there’s blood everywhere. All over the mountain. Kind of gross if you ask me.”
For an instant in his dream Carter believes his sister, imagines blood everywhere. Dark ooze—red thick rivers of sludge—every horror movie he’s ever seen—
And then he awakens, brand-new, his consciousness rising up to the surface from its dark dream place like a swimmer gasping for air. Up into the light, and rise and shine, sleepyhead. He leaves behind those bloody images, doesn’t even recall them now that he’s awake. Carter arches his back and stretches, elbows to the car roof, fists behind his ears. He yawns, looks toward his sister with a dazed expression. Blinking, he asks, “What?”
Grace watches him, amused.
The trunk slams shut.
Carter twists around blearily, sees his father through the back window. He offers a sleepy, two-fingered wave-slash-salute.
“I see you’ve returned to the living,” his father comments.
Carter blinks, still not fully awake. He yawns. “What time is it?”
To be exact, it is 7:23 A.M., but Grace answers only, “Time to go, bro.”
Sitka, the dog, doesn’t have to be told. Part shepherd, part who-knows-what, the unleashed, thick-furred, flop-eared mutt examines the edges of the forested parking area, sniffing intently, tail swishing, alert and full of energy. Here in the unpaved lot at the foot of Blood Mountain some ancient something in the dog’s DNA receives signals from the wilderness, neurons firing, her inner wolf awakened. Sitka pants noisily, mouth open in what for all the world looks like a smile.
“Sitka, come,” Grace commands in a voice that scarcely rises above a whisper. Instantly, the dog obeys. Sitka runs over, noses Grace’s leg as if to say, “I’m here,” looks up, receives a scratch on the top of the head, and circles back to check out the doings behind the open trunk of the car. The mishmash of old, new, and borrowed gear is strewn on the ground.
Mr. Taylor sits, his butt half in the trunk. His lips move as he runs a finger along the free map they picked up at the motel the previous night. He’s considering the trail, the distance and elevation. Vaguely remembers having hiked it years ago, but all trails blend together in the haze of memory. It won’t be a walk in the park, that’s for sure, but it’s not rocket science, either. Just a long, hard hike. He’s already insisted: “No phones. This is an internet-free day!” First they’ll travel into the forest on generally level terrain, then up—not super steep, he hopes, mistakenly—and down a different trail to stop at a glacier-carved lake, then loop back to the car. Put one foot in front of the other and follow the markers. He presses against his chest with the side of his fist. Acid reflux, probably. A little indigestion. He tastes a bitter aftertaste in the back of his throat.
Mr. Taylor questions if maybe his plan is too ambitious for a day hike. They’ve gotten a late start. He wonders if he’s physically up for it. If this is, in other words, another of life’s bad ideas. They tend to pile up. But he does not wonder long. He’s upstate with his two kids, a rare getaway, together in the great outdoors. Today they are going to burnish a memory. Just the three of them. A time they will always remember. His wife, their mother, wheelchair-bound and back at home, cheering on their adventure. So the father expertly folds the map accordion-style, an ancient skill, halves it lengthwise, and sets the map down on the bumper. It falls to the ground. He stoops to pick it up, shoves the map into his back pocket.
Sitka feels sure it’s going to be a great day.
But what do dogs know, anyway?
2
[CARTER]
Carter tries, he really tries, but his father walks so painfully slow. Every fiber in Carter’s eleven-year old, skinny, sinuous being shouts out, Let’s go, let’s go. He groans inwardly. They’ll never get anywhere at this pace.
“Wait up,” he hears Grace call. Carter turns and is discouraged to see his sister and father lagging far behind. He can tell from the look on Grace’s face that she feels stuck, trapped in the role of devoted daughter, trailing behind with Dad. Tough to be you, sister, Carter thinks, and keeps moving.
Carter can’t help himself. It’s like he has rockets in his hiking boots; Carter wants to zoom along the shady trail, a dirt-and-pine-needled track with tall trees crowding in from each side. Sitka feels the same way. The dog is in thrall with animal joy, always glad to be off-leash. Sniffing under rocks, ranging wide into the underbrush, exploring off-trail, leading the way, nose to the ground, catching scents, chasing after invisible creatures, looking back imploringly, taking off again. During this early stage, the ascent is modest, if at all. The trail begins by leading them deep into the forest before, at last, taking on elevation.
Boys tend to grow in two ways. The first group grows like stems to the sun, straight up in spurts until they are tall and thin, stretched like Play-Doh from the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads, just skin and bones swimming in shapeless T-shirts. Only later do these boys add weight to fill out their lanky frames. Other boys grow wide first, packing on extra pounds—soft and baby-faced and overfed. Only later, after growing “out,” do they begin growing “up.” Carter stands as a shining example of the first group. A flagpole with big feet, an untucked shirt, and a mess of blond hair sticking out from under a Dodger-blue baseball cap.
As he hikes, his body working harder now, each step demanding attention, Carter stops and grumbles and then, bored and irritable—Let’s go let’s go let’s go—he feels the onward pull, starts walking again, then forces himself to sit and wait for the dawdlers. Such misery.
Finally, Carter’s father relents, his face flushed, “Go on ahead, Carter. Don’t let me hold you back.” There is an air of irritation in his voice. Maybe a little disappointment. Then to Grace, more cheerfully, “You, too, honey. I’m good. I prefer taking it slow and steady.”
3
[KNIFE]
The angular man carries a squirrel by the tail and lightly tosses the corpse onto a flat stone. In his right hand he holds a slingshot with a thick yellow band. Sets it aside. The sling is store-bought and he is pleased with it. He coughs once to clear his throat but does not speak. The man has not spoken in weeks. He does not keep track of traditional calendars; time for him is day and night, eat and sleep, watch the moon slice thin and then come round again. Besides, there is no one with whom to speak, and he has not yet reached the point where he converses out loud with himself. He doesn’t even murmur to the birds overhead, though surely they speak to him in birdsong. No, he prefers the stillness and solitude of the deep forest. The only voices he listens to are the ones in his head.
He inspects the squirrel with a trained eye, flips it over. Rigor mortis has already begun to set in, the body stiffening, front paws curled as if still clinging to an invisible branch high up in the canopy. The body is still warm. A lead ball to the back of the head has done its work; the man admires the mark, a clean kill. There’s dried blood around the nose and mouth, perhaps a look of surprise in the eyes. Otherwise the animal appears unharmed, gray and white with yellow coloration around the face. Even dead, a thing of terrible beauty. Like the world itself, he supposes. Maybe even more beautiful because it is dead? He muses over this; the thought troubles him, so he pushes it away like a stray branch on the trail.
There is work to do. He removes a large knife, a Rowen SE-6, from his belt holster. A bit cumbersome for this task—a sharp paring knife would do on a small animal—but he’s traveled light today, leaving most of his supplies out of sight in Zone B. He has another emergency cache buried in Zone D, in addition to the main base in Zone C. After the last scare, when his camp was almost discovered by a random bushwhacker, he erased all traces of his former presence in Zone A. Rarely steps foot there anymore. And if so, lightly, swiftly. He thinks of the knife not as a weapon but as an elegant tool, designed for specific tasks. He sets the squirrel belly-down to the stone and with his left hand flips the bushy tail back over its body, pinching it firmly at the base, and slowly slices at the spot where the tailbone ends. He doesn’t sever the tail completely, instead leaves it loosely attached by the outer layer of hide. With the knife tip, he expertly flicks away random fleas, inaudibly cursing each single one as he slices between meat and skin. Satisfied, he flips the squirrel to its back, grabs its rear legs with both hands, rises to step on the tail with his heavy boot, and pulls straight up. The back hide peels off until it reaches the forelegs. Next he crouches down again and uses his fingers to probe and push between the skin and belly, separating the fur from the body until he can poke his finger clean through. He inserts the knife, sharp side up, and slices through the skin above the stomach as if cutting through holiday wrapping paper. Swift and tidy. Now the squirrel is essentially in three sections, with the creature’s raw pink torso naked on the stone, the fur pulled back over the forelegs and head, the two rear legs still covered.
He pushes the elbows of the front limbs back, peeling the skin away like pulling two limbs through the arms of a tight sweater. In similar fashion, he pulls the fur off the rear legs. The body has now been stripped bare except for the head. He removes the hands and feet at the joints, the steel of his blade effortlessly slicing through cartilage. As steel meets stone, the little hands leap off with a satisfying pop. He licks his lips, allowing himself to feel hunger for the first time in days, knowing his next fresh meal is at hand. He delicately pinches the thin membrane covering the belly and makes an incision, careful not to cut into the bile sack. It takes two fingers of his left hand to open the incision. He inserts the blade, moving slowly now, careful not to cut into the entrails. He cracks the soft breastplate, slices up to the head. Now with one masterful motion, he removes the innards from the body and tosses the guts to the side. He carves away any last pieces of digestive tract, cuts through the neck to remove the head. Almost done. He removes the small glands from the armpits because, he has learned from books, they can spoil the flavor. He cleans his knife in a handful of moss, holsters it again.
Another day as far from humanity as possible.
Copyright © 2019 by James Preller
