Roman Cesaro - Fallen Into Darkness

The clerk immediately pulled the basket off the counter, halting Robert’s response.

“We get it, here’s your cash. Bag it up,” Robert said, trying to conceal his anger.

The clerk stared directly at the men as he slid the cash off the counter and onto the palm of his hand. Fanning the twenty-dollar bills, he tilted his head toward the outside light from the window and panned over the paper bills with his one good eye. Satisfied, the clerk placed the money into his pocket, bagged the items, and then slid them halfway across the counter to Robert and Kyle.

“Thank you and come again,” the clerk said sarcastically.

“What a deal,” Robert said, as he grabbed the bags close to his body, holding tightly with both arms.

“Yeah, what a deal. I would have given my right eye for this stuff,” Kyle said, as he looked directly at the clerk’s glass eye.

The clerk held up his middle finger and pointed to the exit.

Robert and Kyle walked back to the campsite down a nearly vacant Main Street. There were no moving cars, no electric lights, and only a few people out walking. At the end of the block, they turned the corner at a large old brick building on their way back to camp. Around the corner, they found themselves staring directly into the face of a horse, mounted by a man in uniform. They stepped back and saw that it was a police officer, with his hand on a pistol holstered to his leather belt.

“Not from around here, are you?” the man on the horse asked in an offhanded tone.

“Nope, just passing through,” replied Robert.

“Just keep on passing through.”

The officer watched them walk away toward the river and disappear into the bushes and small trees. They set the dry goods on the picnic table and Kyle got to work preparing to boil some of the food. Robert handed the towels to Beth, explaining that they could use them as diapers. She unwrapped the sleeping baby and put the blanket she had been using to hold her child onto the ground. Beth cleaned the baby as well as she could and wrapped her in a clean towel. Richard had found a working faucet at the campsite. Beth used the clean water to rinse the soiled blanket.

She had just finished rinsing her hands when Kyle announced that the food was ready. They ate small portions of boiled rice and noodles, then Robert removed the equipment from his raft so he, Beth, and the baby could have room to sleep. After covering themselves with the tarp, they immediately feel asleep.

With his eyes still closed, Robert sensed dawn’s morning light and decided to get up to start the day. He moved the tarp, startling Beth, which in turn startled the baby, and the baby’s crying woke the others.

“Don’t tell me, I know. I’ll get the fire going,” Richard said to Kyle.

“I’ll check the lines for fish,” Kyle replied.

Robert looked at the two saplings that he had chopped down to make into bows for hunting. He was ready to get started on them. He burnt the end of a pencil-sized stick, and used the charcoal to mark dimensions on the oak staves. Robert retrieved the paracord from the backpack and unraveled it the length of the staves. He folded the paracord in half and marked the midpoint of its length with the charcoal pencil. Placing his hand around the stave just above the midpoint and then just below it, he made two additional marks to define the bow’s handgrip. He held each stave at one end and peered toward the other end, slowly rotating the wood. He needed to identify the curvature of the former sapling to find the future front and back of the bow. Each stave had a slight curvature along its length. The convex side would be the belly of the bow, and the opposite side, its back. This natural recurve would allow for some eventual set in the wood from the stress of being in the strung position. Robert was ready to start carving the belly of the bow away first, by working from the grip toward the tip.

Robert found a gap in the slatted wood planks of the picnic table. He inserted a stave into the gap, wedged it there, and used the gap to hold each stave like a vice. Starting at the bow’s handle Robert held his knife with both hands, blade perpendicular to the wood, and pulled the blade back. The knife released thin shavings of wood. With each pull of the knife, he removed more wood as he got closer to the bow’s tip. He did this to allow for an even bend to the wood. The stave began to have a taper from the thickness of the handle toward the thinness of the tip. After he roughly carved the staves, he peeled away the remaining bark. The wood just underneath the bark of the stave would be the back of the bow. Satisfied, he decided to stop and allow the wood to dry further before doing any additional carving.

Kyle proudly brought back three large catfish. The smell of the cooking catfish from Richard’s campfire teased their hunger. They shared small portions of rice, beans, and pasta, the catfish adding the missing flavor to their meager breakfast. Beth ground some dry cereal into powder, mixed it with water, and fed her crying baby.

With their morning hunger temporarily suppressed, they decided it was time to get ready to leave. Kyle got the map out to identify their next destination. It would be Great Falls, a much larger town than their current location and it had a military base. The military base would be an uncertain variable. Robert expressed his concern and reminded them that a large group of people with weapons could be dangerous. There were also five dams to portage around within about ten miles, starting at Great Falls. They agreed to drop Beth off somewhere on the riverbank, near the city, then continue downstream without an excursion into the town. Getting around five dams would take time, and could take all day. They planned to stop just before the city, and at daybreak, pass through Great Falls and get around the dams. If the current was swift, they could make it to just outside of Great Falls, and camp there for the night.

Before they left, they took advantage of the faucet at the campsite. After filling all the water bottles, each person had their turn trying to clean their bodies as best they could with the cold water from the camping spigot. Beth rinsed out her baby’s nighttime diaper and placed it flat on the raft to dry as they floated downstream.

This section of the river had many curves. Small islands divided the waterway at several points, offering a riddle as to which side was best to pass. At midday, they came to a road crossing the river in front of them. Beth recognized the bridge spanning the water. It led to a small community near the highway that went into Great Falls. They stopped under the bridge for shade and decided to try using their remaining cash to get more food. Richard took the opportunity to smoke. The tendrils of cigarette smoke wafted around Beth and her daughter. She glared at Richard as she moved further away to cleaner air.

“Let’s not stay here very long,” said Robert. “I don’t think we should build a fire. We don’t need the attention that would bring.”

“You have all my cash,” said Richard. “I’ll wait here while you’re gone. Get what you can.”

“Somebody has to stay awake,” Kyle said, looking at both Richard and Beth.

“No problem, I have to watch the baby. I can sleep as we float if I really need to. By the way, there should be a little store close by on the right side of this road.” Beth pointed upward, toward the bridge.

Kyle nodded and then prodded Robert with a small stick. Robert hesitated and walked back to the raft. He reached to the floor of the raft and retrieved his pistol.

“I should carry this from now on. It needs to be a habit for me,” Robert said, as he tucked the pistol into his pants, concealing it with his shirt.

The two men climbed the steep embankment and stood on the road. They looked back down and motioned for Richard and Beth to move further underneath the bridge because they saw them from the bridge.