by David Boyle
Hayden rotated his shoulder. “Yeah, this is new. Must have hit something on the way down.” He stuck his hand out, and Charlie handed over the paddle. “Least it wasn’t a tooth.”
Charlie started paddling. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”
Hayden looked to the islands. The big evergreen was definitely thinning near the top. And while the trees on the little island might have blocked Ron’s view, Wheajo had most likely been watching the whole time. He could almost hear the lecture. “Remember what I said about sticking around. You know, after?”
“Yeah,” Charlie grumped, stroking.
“I’ve changed my mind.”
*****
A risky, even foolhardy endeavor, by the time they reached camp they’d convinced themselves that the broranges had been worth it. In all they’d collected nearly three dozen of the delectable fruits, 27 of which remained. Considering that they had, at most, two days left to work, the fruits in the boat would easily last the remainder of the trip.
They filled an empty dump bag with their hard earned prizes, certain that without animals on the island there was no need to take further precautions. Reenergized, if far from rested, they were soon back to paddling, this time to the big island.
Elated by the progress, Hayden and Charlie were able to see almost to the top of the evergreen, the slot requiring the removal of but a short cluster of branches near the top and three big limbs at the midpoint. Wheajo was still hard at work, his uniform seeming almost to glow in the sunlight bathing the summit.
“How’s it goin’?” Charlie yelled, giddy with how well their preparations were proceeding.
Ron sank the ax in the tree, sweat dripping from his nose. “This is too much like work,” he groaned, sagging back on his harness. “And what was all that across the lake?”
“You saw that?” Hayden asked.
“Not everything. Too much shit in the way,” he said, waving at the branches. “But I figured it had to be you guys. What happened anyway?”
“Come on down and we’ll talk. And holler up and tell Wheajo to come down too.”
Ron shook his head. “I wouldn’t mess with Wheajo if I were you. Whatever you guys were up to got him all excited.” He glanced up into the tree. “Let’s just say he’s not a happy camper.”
“I told you,” Charlie said, wringing his hands. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yeah, and I heard you the first time.”
Ron started down, Wheajo still busy chipping away at the sky. The slot along the trunk was lined with stubs, some cut nearly flush, the majority protruding upwards of five inches. Except for a few crucial locations, most would likely be left as they were.
“Aw oh,” Charlie said, dropping his gaze, his eyes shifting.
“Something the matter?” Charlie didn’t answer, and instead dug a small plastic-wrapped leather pouch from his fanny pack. “What’s that?”
Charlie tore off the wrapper. “Nothin’ I hope.”
“Uh huh. Except it doesn’t look like nothing. What is that anyway?”
“It’s a rope saw. I bought it a coupla years ago for a bear hunt that never happened, and I just never got to usin’ it.” Simple enough, two wooden handles connected with a serrated wire, Hayden said he’d never heard of a rope saw.
“Sounds like a good idea, though.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said, snapping the wire taut. “It’s just… Hell, it probably doesn’t even work.” He and Hayden picked through accumulated branches for something to test it on, Ron somehow managing that particular moment to reach the ground.
Head-to-toe grimy, wood chips sticking to his face and arms, nobody seemed even to notice. “Some greeting,” he said, working his fingers. “Sorry to interrupt your fucking party, but what’s so damn important?”
Hayden found a piece that would work. “Charlie’s looking to try out his saw.”
Ron swiped at his shirt. “You’re kidding, right? A saw?”
“It’s not a for real one. Well… maybe it is. Kind of.”
Ron knew a garrote when he saw one. “I’ve been busting my ass with that stupid axe, and you’ve got a rope saw I could have been using?”
“Forgot I had it.”
Ron skipped out of the way as a bough came clattering through the branches. “You forgot?”
“Don’t go gettin’ on my case, McClure. It prob’ly won’t even work.” Charlie looped the wire around the limb, and Hayden pinned it with his foot. After a couple of pulls to figure out how much tension to apply, Charlie eventually worked the wire through the limb. “Another foot or so longer would help. That and chippin’ away the bark. But get everything situated, and yeah, I guess you could say it works.”
Hayden caught the pained expression. “Forget it, McClure,” he said, rolling his shoulder. “We’re almost done anyway.”
“Makes you feel any better,” said Charlie, “I’ll take out whatever branches are left.”
Ron capped off the canteen. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Two of the three limbs were already on the ground, Charlie busy sawing the last of them when Hayden finished his story. “So basically you missed getting eaten because of a herd of dinosaurs?”
“Guess you could say I got lucky.”
“You got lucky? You mean we, don’t you?
“That dust-up I had with Wheajo the other day got me thinking. About a lot of things actually. And maybe you knew this, but I came to realize how everything we do here can end up affecting everybody else. Before that, hell, one place or another was all the same. Except that it’s not. Screw up at home, and it’s you who normally ends up paying. Screw up here, and you can end up dead, along with everybody else.
“And now you’re telling me you got lucky. Well guess what? You were lucky yesterday too. So if I’m you, I’m asking myself: How long before this streak of mine runs out?” Ron got to his feet. “It’s great about the broranges. It really is. But how do you think Tony or Mark would react if we came back without you? Or how you dying would affect me or the guys in this tree? And what about your family?”
A branch crashed down nearby.
“I have Ron, and—”
“Not that Wheajo would give a shit, other than by getting yourself killed you’d have jeopardized everything we’ve been working for.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Do you?” Ron said, gazing up when he heard crackling. “Do you really?”
“Ron, I promise I’ll—”
“Forget it, I don’t want to hear any more.” The top of the evergreen started over. “Heads up, Bull!” Wheajo’s hammering ended when a fifteen-foot section of the summit snapped and toppled over. Ron cupped his mouth, “Timberrrr…!” The leafy spike spiraled past Charlie and crashed noisily to the ground. “Won’t be long now. Once Charlie takes that limb out, the hardest part of this fucking job should be over.”
Hayden said he hoped so. “And Ron?”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t…. I mean…. Hell, I just did what comes natural.”
“I know. You do stupid shit all the time.” Ron wagged his finger, looking his friend square in the eye. “But no more.”
“Absolutely.” Hayden nodded. “You’ve got my word on it.”
“Good. Now let’s get to work.”
They’d grown so used to the calls of dinosaurs that neither noticed the increasing number of animals. The lengthening shadows had brought not only cooler temperatures, but the multitudinous dinosaurs that took daily refuge in the forests. The southern shoreline was soon teeming with them. No predators though.
They’d be out after dark.
Wheajo made his way down to Charlie, who, having recently felled the last branch, sat resting on an adjacent limb. Below, Hayden and Ron were busy dragging cuttings along the trail, work that would likely take hours.
“I bet you’re happy to have that over with. I know I am,” Charlie said, massaging his hands. “Put a gun to my head and it wo
uldn’t matter. Been a long fuckin’ time since I was this tired. My hands, my back. They’re killin’ me….” Wheajo wasn’t listening, his focus on the latest of Charlie’s cuts.
“May I?” he asked.
“The saw? Yeah sure….” Charlie handed Wheajo the wired handles. “Got more to cut?”
“In principal no, though there yet remain points of interference.” Even where the stubs were almost nonexistent, many sites retained tongues of wood ripped from the branches when they fell.
“Guess some of these are pretty long.”
Charlie stepped Wheajo through the process. “The important part is clearin’ away the bark. This thing ain’t the best to start with, and cloggin’ up the teeth can pretty much kill it. Start at the wood from the get-go and it should work, well… about as good as it’s able.”
“A most useful tutorial,” Wheajo said, and headed up the evergreen.
Charlie loosened his safety line. “And Wheajo? Try goin’ easy on Prentler later. He got the shit scared outta him today.”
“Indeed. And you?”
“Oh yeah. Big time.”
Scratched, filthy, and too exhausted even to admire the day’s efforts, Charlie slumped beside the trunk as soon as he hit the ground, Ron traipsing back from the cove only seconds later. “Be with you in a minute, McClure. I just need to catch my breath.”
Ron snickered. “The way you look? Hell, you need way more than a couple of minutes. Just go on back to camp. And take Dumbshit with you. How far did he fall anyway?”
Charlie shrugged. “Fifteen, maybe twenty feet.”
“No wonder he’s limping.” The pile of cut boughs was down to a workable level. “Really Bull, you’re only in the way.” Ron turned. “Prentler…?”
“What?” came a voice through the trees.
“Get Mr. Bunyan here back to camp and get a fire started. I can finish up here.”
Hayden stepped from the trees and into the clearing. “Don’t tempt me, McClure.”
“I’m serious. I can handle this.”
Hayden paused. “Why so generous?”
“Simple. I hate climbing,” Ron explained. “However long this takes, I’ll clean up if you do the high altitude stuff come tomorrow.”
“Is that all? Sure, I can live with that. Come on, Bull. Let’s get out of here before he changes his mind.”
Hayden had the fire blazing; Charlie lounging in a pocket he’d carved in the sand, the trees on the big island little more than silhouettes against a darkening sky, a roar bellowing in the distance when Hayden heard the clunk of a paddle and the whispered hiss of a canoe grinding against the sand.
He was admiring the sky, the fire’s flickering glow soon playing upon the curved bow of the Tripper. A roar bellowed in the distance. “What were you doing that’s so important it couldn’t wait until morning?” he asked, and caught the bow.
“The site was excessively congested and needed to be cleared,” Wheajo said, stepping out. Ron leaned back on his seat, after which Hayden dragged the canoe onto the beach.
“I thought you were going to take care of that.”
Ron slipped his paddle under the thwarts. “I thought I had.”
Tired and sore, Ron and Wheajo sat resting against driftwood backrests while Hayden and Charlie tended to the meat and assorted nuts roasting on and by the fire. Hoping to avoid an ugly confrontation, Hayden confessed to having instigated the trip. Wheajo was not at all pleased about the excursion, yet welcomed the addition of fruit to their otherwise Spartan fare.
Accustomed to dinosaurs roaming about the lake, only now, in the quiet of the evening, did the honks and roars attract even a modicum of attention. There were no predators nearby, and nothing they hadn’t already heard before.
Having started at sun up and worked throughout the day, Ron and Charlie decided to turn in early. Wheajo checked on Hayden and, after treating his wounds for hopefully the last time, seemed also more than ready to call it a day. Hayden was concerned that Wheajo might not be up to playing watchdog, and bade the alien a good night with the stipulation that he’d assume the first watch.
Hayden searched about the fire, and after breaking up what pieces were ready to burn through, added more from the woodpile. It didn’t take long before the new stuff was sputtering, pale blue jets shooting through either knot holes or fissures until the wood was fully engulfed. Finally satisfied with the fire, he dug a lounge chair in the sand to aid with the upcoming vigil.
The sky was filled with stars, a crescent moon creeping toward the horizon. He didn’t know the asterisms anywhere near as well as Mark did, and the ones he did weren’t there. Another sign, even without the dinosaurs, that they really weren’t in Kansas anymore. Besides which, there were so many stars in the unpolluted skies that what constellations he did know would have been swamped by the sheer numbers of them.
A meteor flashed across the sky.
First one of the trip. A good sign, hopefully.
He remembered the cool August evenings, him and Mark in lawn chairs, sipping beers and watching the Perseid meteor shower. So long ago. Centuries, it seemed.
The still air and the darkness had Hayden feeling suddenly very much alone. And the memories began creeping in. He’d forced himself not to think of home, and until now he’d been mostly successful. The loneliness was always there, however, just below the surface. The longing for his Anna Mae and his beloved little Trina.
He covered his eyes as the doubts trickled, then flowed, and eventually flooded in. He wondered how Anna Mae would react, her husband off on another of his stupid trips, and just never came back. Vanished, him and his idiot friends, literally into thin air. Who’ll raise my Trina…? How will they ever get along without me?
He hadn’t listened in intentionally, but he remembered hearing Anna Mae harping on the phone to one of her girlfriends about how she didn’t need him for anything. ‘Or almost anything,’ she’d giggled. ‘But then, how often do you need someone to fix a clogged drain?’ Her laugh was infectious, and he could hear it, even now.
“Could be we’re about to find out, Luvums,” he sniffed, glancing about the darkness. “If this doesn’t work, I won’t be back.” Hayden ached to hold her, to feel the soft warmth of her breasts against his chest. To kiss her all over, and feel her kissing him. His heart felt as if it would burst, the overwhelming sadness made all the more unbearable knowing he was powerless to change his situation.
He’d had a good life. And in the last few years it had been great. He’d bought a new home, a new car. And as much as he hated to admit it, he actually enjoyed what he was doing. So long as S&M needed engineers, Hayden was confident he’d always have a job. The cries of some far off animal spirited across the lake. “A job?” he scoffed, staring at the stars. “Here the only job that counts is staying alive.” He closed his eyes, and saw his daughter curled in her bed, her Lammie Pie wrapped in her tiny arms. All that was missing, was him.
Slowly, mercifully, sleep supplanted the all-encompassing loneliness.
32
Sprawled a few yards from the waterline, Hayden flinched when something grabbed his arm. He shook the sleep from his eyes, blinking. Wheajo was there, spear in hand. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.” His heart still thumping, Hayden dropped his head on his arm. “Go away.”
“Another time, perhaps.” Wheajo shook him again. “We have guests.”
A stir of recognition. “Again?” Achy and fuzzy-headed after a long sleepless night, Hayden elbowed himself up off the sand. He opened an eye, then two. “Where?” Wheajo motioned toward the cove. Still trying to clear the cobwebs, he made out the sounds of splashing, and gradually the far softer grunts. He fumbled for his glasses and wiped them on his shirtsleeve. Five duckbills were crossing the gap at the big island’s middle, and by the changing pattern of sunlight in the trees farther down, more were definitely on the way.
Hayden yawned and sat up. “Wonderful. Any idea what they’re up to?”
“
They appear intent on the site of our previous occupancy, though I have yet to determine the reason.” There was an uneasiness in Wheajo’s voice, as if he’d overlooked an important detail. “Come. With a more direct perspective we can perhaps ascertain their intentions.”
Hayden started to his feet. “Okay, just—oh jeeze!—just give me a minute.” He felt like the tin man after a rain, sore and achy in places he didn’t know he had. The beach was okay for a nap. But the whole night? Hayden bent sideways, wincing at the pain in his spine. He’d remember not to do that again.
Working his shoulder in ever widening circles, Hayden found it hard to believe how much the slashes on his chest had healed. Ugly sure, and a great segue to the stories he had to tell… if only they’d stop itching!
The scabs were like dried leeches, all pinchy and puckered-up gnarly. He snagged an edge with a nail—if his mother had said it once she’d said it a million times: ‘Don’t pick!’—and ripped it loose. It’s okay, ma, he winced. He could see her, standing on the porch in her favorite flower print skirt, wagging her finger, ‘Don’t give me that, young man’, and going on about how Uncle Zeb had got the septic and died. Fun times, those, he mused, flicking the bit into the water.
Nearby, smoky wisps curled up from the fire pit; Ron and Charlie still zipped up in the tent and complaining about each other’s snoring.
A splash sounded, a yellow blur scurrying into the depths when he turned. A fish had hit the surface. His scab no less! “You little shit…!” Hayden peered into the water, then along the tree-lined channel to the lake. A big ripple was expanding fifty yards off the end of their island, finned backs cutting the surface farther out. And past the outermost island, flocks of birds, like clouds of winged confetti, swarmed and strafed the lake.
