Craig Davidson - Cataract City

The woods changed. Where before there was only the sound of our footsteps and breathing, now there were sly rustlings from all angles. Yet if I were to turn and peer into those black pools linked by long shadows, I’d see nothing. Whatever stirred would pause, hold its breath, melt into the landscape until I turned away — at which point it would stalk us again. A sense of desolation settled within me: a cold, slimy stone lodged under my lungs. There was nothing happy about the woods, I thought, especially at night.

We unpacked our belongings under a sweep of elms. What had seemed like plenty that morning now looked pitiful. A chocolate bar, a dirty flannel blanket, a book of matches from a club called Pure Platinum, a nudie mag and a gun and two empty Coke cans.

We built a ring of rocks. Dunk tore pages out of the magazine. I stacked a teepee of sticks over the paper. Five matches in the matchbook. The match-heads were a dull crumbly red. The striking strip was shiny-smooth.

We huddled over the firepit to keep the wind at bay. Dunk ran a match down the strike-strip. The paper shaft bent. The match didn’t catch. He pressed the match to the strip with his thumb. It burst into flame. A fragile flame cupped in Dunk’s palm. I held my breath as he touched it to the paper.

The wind snuck between us. Whuff . Darkness. Something rustled in the tree above, followed by a deep-throated cackle that ascended through several octaves before tapering to a weird shattering sob.

“It’s a bird,” Dunk said. “A stupid little bird .”

He tore another match. “Get close,” he said, scratching it on the striking strip. The shaft tore nearly in half. He struck it again. The match-head went up in a hot spark and instantly burned out.

I hated everyone who’d had anything to do with those matches. Whoever made them, sold them or thought they were good for much at all.

Dunk handed them to me. “You try.”

I tore one out and folded the book closed. The match felt worthless: flimsy, already damp with my sweat. It was the first time I’d ever really needed something to work . Sometimes your whole life came down to some silly little thing you never thought could matter, not in a million years. A stupid match.

I hunched so far over the firepit that I nearly nosedived into it. If I lit the match as close to the paper as possible, the wind wouldn’t get a chance to snuff it. I ran it down the strip, flicking my wrist like I’d seen men do at the Bisk on their smoke breaks.

It caught. Dunk cupped his hands around mine. Light broke between our fingers in golden spears so bright they seemed solid, as if they might snap like icicles. I touched it to the paper. Flame leapt from match to paper. Relief washed over me.

Wind curled into the pit and between my fingers, silky-cool. Whuff .

Darkness — or not quite. A half-moon burned at the paper’s edge, a fine orange band no bigger than a fingernail clipping. Then it went out.

“Fucking wind .”

“Scouts taught us how to light a one-match fire, right? We’ve still got two left.” Dunk was smiling. His teeth glowed like chips of phosphorus. It amazed me that he’d find anything funny about this.

I blew on my fingertips to dry them, then tore out the second-to-last match. It had to light. Not because the law of averages said so, or because if it didn’t we’d be stuck in the dark with that cackling thing in the tree. No, the match had to light because we were two scared kids lost in the woods. The universe owed us that much, didn’t it?

It flared on the first strike. I stretched towards the paper, fingers steady. Wind licked at the flame, blowing it sideways but not quite out. I held it to a ragged edge where the paper had been torn from the magazine, the threadlike fibres oh so flammable, please please please , and the match burned down to my fingertips as the heat intensified, becoming unbearable, please please PLEASE , and the flame took hold along that edge, timid at first but becoming greedy, devouring the paper and Dunk let out a giddy whoop as the fire burned up and up, releasing oily smoke, eating a hole through the crumpled face of a girl with a black bar over her eyes.

We built the fire into a blaze, heaping wood up and laughing until we were out of breath, dancing a crazy jig round the flames.

The burning wood fell inward with a soft, cindery sound that sent a great coil of sparks up to extinguish on the overhanging leaves. The coals brightened and dimmed in the wind. The baby bird peeped softly.

“Do you think it’s hungry?” Dunk said.

“I’m hungry.”

“Me, too.”

I found the bottle of vitamins in the backpack. Each was three times the size of the Flintstones vitamins Mom used to make me take at breakfast. They smelled like a barnyard, of hay and horses. It seemed wise to take them, like medicine.

“Do you think we can survive on vitamins?” Dunk said.

“We probably need other things, like … steaks and eggs and potatoes. Vitamins are just one thing.”

“Popeye lives on one thing. Spinach.”

“No, Popeye eats spinach to get strong so he can save Olive Oyl. He probably eats lots of other stuff — just not on camera.”

“Oh.”

I unwrapped the Three Musketeers bar, broke it in half and held the pieces out to Dunk. “You pick.” The chocolate was stale with a whitened waxy film but still, it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. Once the rush wore off I realized how hungry I still was, and thirsty, and scared.

We lay down and stared at the sky. Dunk held the bird on his chest, wrapped in the rag. A red light flashed across the sky.

Dunk said: “Plane or satellite?”

“I don’t know. Which goes faster?”

“I’ve never been in a plane,” Dunk said. “Or a satellite.”

“We took a plane to Myrtle Beach on vacation,” I said. “And to Disney World.”

“I used to ride my bike to the Point, where the river bends out before the Falls, y’know? I watched the planes come in. Some you couldn’t see until they were just about on top of you. They came out of the clouds real low, a big whooosh and there they were. Sort of like sharks, you know? A shark coming at you in the water — you can’t see it until it’s just about in front of you. The grey planes looked especially like sharks. Scary but kind of cool.”

The baby bird went up and down on his chest with each heavy inhalation. “Hey, Owe?”

“Yeah?”

“You think it’s true what Bruiser said?”

“About what?”

“Those dogs.”

“In the satellite?”

His face was still held by the sky, but I could tell this was pretty important to him. Could be he’d been sitting on it all day.

“Maybe, Dunk. I don’t know … but not for sure.”

“No?”

“How far is another planet from here? Real far from where we’re looking, but maybe not. And a satellite goes pretty fast. Maybe they just drifted through space and landed on another planet.”

“You think they could have?”

“Why not? A planet we don’t even know about. Maybe it’s sunny all the time there. Maybe the water’s red.”

“Red?”

“Or purple or gold. Anything but blue. Maybe the sun is blue. Maybe meatballs grow on trees.”

He laughed. “Meatball trees.”

“Or maybe it’s a lot like here, but a long time ago. Like back in caveman times. Or … or nobody and nothing. Just the two of them.”

“I guess they’d be scared.”

I bent my knees and wrapped my arms around them. “But they’d already travelled through space, right?” I said, resting my chin on my kneecaps. “They climbed out of that broken satellite and breathed that fresh air and I bet it was pretty great. Mahoney said they were mongrels, right? They never had someone to feed them. They could hunt and kill and drink water from streams.”