Michael Bunker - WICK

The ground Clay traversed grew increasingly rugged, and the fine mist turned first to tiny sleet pellets, and then into snow as he trekked through the forest. He was looking for something—he knew not what—but some kind of natural shelter of rocks or trees wherein he could hide from the wind and snow. He didn’t like his chances of building another lean-to and fire bed in this weather, and he knew he felt better and warmer when he walked, so head and face down he trudged into the forest looking up now and then to see if his place of rest had been found.

All of this time, Clay had thought he was walking north, but he was actually walking east-northeast—away from his goal, and deeper into the forest. The snow started to stick and his thoughts stuck together too, but he had a fresh fish in his pocket and water in his backpack, and he believed that all he needed was shelter in order to find his happiness again.

A couple more miles and he crossed a snow covered road of some sort. Small, probably a logging road or a fire road , he thought. It didn’t seem to head anywhere better than where he already was. He guessed (wrongly) that the road headed back west so he just crossed over it and kept walking back into the forest on the other side, maintaining what he thought was his northerly route. After a while, walking as straight as he could manage in the conditions, the wind died down and the flakes turned into the big wet kind. The Inuit have a name for this kind of snow, but Clay didn’t.

The whole country began to look beautiful and peaceful to him, and he paused for a moment to look at it more closely. The hills rose around him, more sharply here, and he marveled at the charms of the place. He recalled, very vividly, a memory of the distinctive and poignant quiet he had known in the winter, in the woods, in Ithaca. Cheryl had been at his side as they watched the flakes fall and one caught on her nose as he bent forward to kiss it off. Now, Clay looked out over the countryside and saw the snow settling in the branches in their beautiful crystalline purity and grew lost in the moment even as God looking down from his heavens would have seen him lost in the white of the world.

He saw a remarkable hill a hundred yards to his right, and it struck him that this might be just what he was looking for. As he got closer, he made out at the top of the hill some huge rocks and boulders, and he ran toward it and shouted into the sky. He skipped most of the way with his hands thrust into the air in victory, like Rocky ascending the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Coming up to the low hill, he climbed it quickly and confidently and found a small, somewhat sheltered area behind a large rock. He clumsily attempted to cross himself in celebration—not even knowing why or what that genuflection really meant. He wasn’t religious, but if he got through this and found his way home, he promised to praise Clive and Veronica and all of the other gods for the rest of his life.

He rested for a few minutes, tasting the cold with his tongue and embracing the vitality brought on by adrenaline and the chill now bracing his back, then he pulled off his backpack and set himself the task of trying to start a fire. He gathered together some twigs and a few scattered needles and leaves and piled them along the base of the rock. Then he pulled off some lint from his wool blanket, just as he had done the previous night, and confidently arranged everything in order so that all would be at hand when it was needed. He fished the matches out of the pack, noting that he only had seven or eight left. “This ought to be easy,” he said to himself aloud and immediately regretted it. Though he was confident after the previous successes that all should go well for him again, he’d already learned not to take that success for granted.

Striking the first match, he had barely touched it to the small roll of wool fibers when the breeze, swirling around the rock, blew the match out. Clay cursed, and then tried again. This time the match blew out immediately, never even reaching full flame before it was snuffed out by the wind. Clay turned his back from the direction he thought the wind was coming and struck the third match only to have it blow out when a stiff, frigid blast snuffed the flame again.

He never started the fire. His hands were too cold to fully cup around the flame and his fingers too stiff to do anything more than the perfunctory motions of striking. He tried every possible combination of wind blocks with the remaining matches, but each, in turn, was blown out by the wind. Clay slumped back against the rock, cursed loudly once again, then huddled into himself trying to think of what to do next. His stomach ached in response to his hunger and his mind was muddled by the cold.

He went through his options. Back to the forest road… but where did it lead? That road seemed (to him) to be heading in the wrong direction, and what if it just went on interminably into the forest preserve? There was no “pro” except that it was a road and that the walking might be easier. Look for another answer . Back the way he came? All the way back to the pond? There was a house or something there! But what were the chances he could find his way back? He looked over the low rocks in front of him and couldn’t even see the footprints that had followed him the last few yards up the hill. He’d come miles, and if he did find his way back (which was doubtful), who says that he’d find any help there? Besides, Clive had infected Clay with an onset of paranoia, and in his cold and cloudy thinking he figured he’d just as likely find trouble going backward as forward. Keep walking? That seemed to him to have the greatest promise. The geography was getting more rugged, which meant he could find a good shelter or a cave. To his thinking, he might find a home or cabin or safety and warmth by accident walking towards home and Ithaca as easily as he would find it going in any other direction.

Climbing back down from the hill, he was a much different man than the victorious one who had taken it by infantry charge only minutes earlier, and he was met with the enormity of his defeat upon clearing the base of the hill by a frozen gale of snow and cold that caught his breath away with its intensity. For the first time the words formed in his brain, and the reality of it crystallized before him. I might die .

The next few hours were away and beyond all that Clay had ever imagined a blizzard could be, and lightly clothed and almost past shivering, he struggled forward against the wind and piercing snow, step by frozen step. His mind was not functioning properly, and he heard voices around him but could not find the strength to search for them. He heard Clive say “Nor’easter,” but some part of his mind knew that Clive had never said “Nor’easter” to him, and that Clive was somewhere in Nova Scotia drinking cocoa by a hot fire. He heard Veronica lecturing him about fleeing and cowardice, and he knew that, too, had not happened, but in his mind the manifestation of this lecture was as certain as the blizzard, and crueler and infinitely angrier. He heard Cheryl, but could not make out her words, and his mind visited Jack London’s books and Andy Taylor’s Mayberry, and tales of political intrigue and philosophies of the imminence of death. His mind seemed to swirl out of control and rise up from his being and surround him on every side.

He did not know, and had no way to figure, how long he had been walking, and he began to keep time by how far down he still had feeling in his legs, and how much of his face and hands still reacted to stimuli from his brain. Still, he kept struggling forward. Once, he discovered that the thing that always seemed to happen in the books about blizzards or climbers on Mt. Everest was actually true. Without knowing how he had gotten there, he was lying down. He began to feel warmer and sleep started to steal through him. His mind was of two parts—the one side against the other—arguing in his head that he should both go to sleep and get the hell up and start walking. The dreamlike state that was stealing upon him made everything light and beautiful even as the small voice in his head screamed that his body was shutting down and that if he went to sleep he would never wake up.