As the red twilight settled in and the mist gathered and the temperature fell, Zeb made a small fire on top of a slab of metal so he wouldn’t burn the place down, inside the building so the smoke would hit the ceiling and disperse. No telltale column. He got himself a little warmer that way. Then he did some cooking. Then he ate.
“Just like that?” says Toby. “Wasn’t it a little abrupt?”
“What?”
“Well, it was … I mean …”
“You mean it was meat? You pulling a vegetarian?”
“Don’t be wicked.”
“You wanted me to say a prayer? Thank you, God, for making Chuck such a fuckwit and having him provide for me in this unselfish though truly unintentional dumbass manner?”
“You’re making fun.”
“Then don’t go all old Gardener on me.”
“Hey! You’re old Gardener yourself! You were Adam One’s right-hand man, you were a pillar of …”
“Well, I wasn’t then. A fucking pillar. Anyway, that’s a whole other story.”
Bigfoot
It wasn’t that easy, of course. Zeb cut small chunks and used a rusted-wire skewer, and also gave a lecture to himself — This is Nutrition, capital N! You think you’ll make it out of here without Nutrition? Nonetheless, there were some swallowing issues. Luckily he’d had a lot of practise in distancing himself from things that went into his mouth, most recently the grub at Bearlift — some of which probably was grub, a popular protein-enhancer in dried and ground form.
But his first tests of that nature had come earlier, one of the Rev’s instructive punishments being that those with potty-mouths should be forced to eat the contents of said potty. How not to smell, how not to taste, how not to think: it was like the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil blind, deaf, and mute monkeys who sat on the miniature oil drum on his mother’s dressing table with their paws clamped over their upper orifices, providing a role model for her that she was happy to follow. Have you been sick? What’s that on your chin? He said, You’re a dog, eat your own vomit. He pushed my head into the … Now, Zebulon, don’t make up stories. You know your father wouldn’t have done such a thing! He loves you!
Slam the trapdoor on that one, roll a boulder. More to the point was how to stay warm. There was some crumbling tarpaper in the corner, not much use but some. He spread it on the floor, hoping it would act as a heat-retaining vapour barrier. Dry socks would have helped; he made a little teepee of sticks, draped the damp socks over it near the dying embers of his fire, hoping they wouldn’t scorch. Then he heated several medium-sized stones in the coals. He bundled his cold feet inside the down vest, unfolded the two space-age reflecting survival blankets, his own and Chuck’s, scrunched himself up inside them, added the hot stones underneath. Keep the core warm, that was Lesson One. Keep the feet from dropping off, always a good plan going forward. Remember that hands without fingers are not much use for tasks requiring small-muscle skills, such as doing up your bootlaces.
Was there grunting outside the bunkie in the dim hours, was there scratching? No door on the place, anything could walk right in. Wolverine, wolf, bear. Maybe the smoke kept them off. Did he sleep? He must have. It got light soon enough.
He woke up singing.
Roamin’ here, roamin’ there, roamin’ in my underwear,
I got a sweetie covered in hair,
She’s all pussy everywhere …
Some hoarse, twisted stagtime bellowing event. Energizing, though. Instant man-cave bonding. “Shut up,” he told himself. “You want to die frivolously?” “Don’t much matter, nobody’s looking,” he riposted.
His socks weren’t dry, but they were drier. What a fool, he should’ve taken Chuck’s socks from his gone but not forgotten fishbelly feet. He put the socks on, folded up the survival blankets, and stuffed them into his pockets — damn things would never go back into their little envelopes once you took them out — packed up his Practical Pig toolguy trinkets and the remains of his picnic, then took a cautious look out the door.
Mist everywhere. Grey as an emphysema cough. Just as well because now the flying visibility would be low, a good deterrent for airborne snoopers. Though not so good for Zeb himself because now he wouldn’t know where he was going, as such. But surely it was a case of follow the yellow brick road, minus the bricks and with no Emerald City at the end.
There were only two possible directions: northeast to Norman Wells, rough going on a decaying track jumbled with glacier-dumped boulders; or southwest to Whitehorse, through the chilly, misty mountain valleys. Both of those destinations were far, far away, and if he were making odds he wouldn’t have bet on himself. But the Whitehorse route hooked up on the Yukon side with a real road, one that could handle motorized vehicles. More chance of a hitchhike pickup there. Or something. Or other.
He set off through the mist, keeping to the degraded gravel surface. If this were a movie he’d be fading to white, then gone, and the credits would be rolling up over him. But not so fast, not so fast, he was still alive. “Enjoy the moment,” he urged himself.
I love to go a-wandering, along the bums of sluts,
And as I go I love to sing, although they drive me nuts.
Fuckeree, fuckera, fuckeree, fucker ah hah hah hah hah ha …
“You are not taking this seriously,” he scolded. “Oh shut up,” he replied. “I’ve heard that a lot.” Talking to yourself, not so positive. Doing it out loud, even worse. Delirium had not set in, however; though how could he be sure?
The mist burnt off at eleven a.m. or so; the sky turned blue; a wind began to blow. Two ravens were shadowing him, high in the air, dipping to eyeball him, passing rude remarks about him back and forth. They were waiting for something to begin eating him so they could pitch in and grab a snack: not so deft at making the first incisions, ravens, they always hunted with hunters. He ate a Joltbar, he came to a stream with a washed-out bridge, he had to choose: wet boots or crippled bare feet? He chose the boots, removing his socks first. The water was cold, with an X for Xtra. “This freezing sucks,” he said, and it did.
Then he had to choose between putting the socks back on and getting them wet or the dubious delight of hiking in boots only, sure to accentuate the blister he already had. The boots themselves would soon be borderline useless.
“You get the picture,” he says. “On and on. It was that kind of thing all day, with the wind blowing and the sun shining.”
“How far had you gone?” says Toby.
“How to measure? Out there, miles don’t count. Let’s just say not far enough,” he says. “And by then I was running on empty.”
He spent the night hunkered down between two boulders, shivering like a timber despite the two crackly metal survival blankets and the fire he’d made from dead willow and creekside mini-birch.
By the time the next pink sunset had come round he’d run out of food. He’d stopped worrying about bears; in fact, he was longing to meet one, a big fat one he could sink his teeth into. He dreamed of little globules of fat sifting down through the air like snow, the pellet-shaped kind of snow, not the flakes; he dreamed of it settling down on him, into his bodily creases and crannies, plumping him up. The brain was 100 per cent cholesterol, so he needed the boost, he hungered for it. He could visualize the inside of his body, the ribs encasing a hollow, a hollow lined with teeth. If he stuck out his tongue in such a fatfall the air would taste like chicken soup.