Craig Davidson - Cataract City

I sat cross-legged, knees hugged to my chest, listening to terrible wet retching sounds from the trees. Dunk walked out wiping his lips. The skin around his eyes was butter-yellow and his hands were shaking.

“Must have been something I ate,” he said, and managed to laugh.

The sun tilted over the scrub and tinder-wood, glinting off shards of granite in the rocks but not giving any heat. I was so thirsty. I wiped sticky white paste off my lips and smeared it on my jeans. I ducked behind some bushes and unzipped my fly. The colour of my urine shocked me: dark yellow, like I was pissing tea. I didn’t know if I was sick or if it was the extra vitamins my body was getting rid of, the ones it couldn’t use.

Dunk breathed heavily, bending over and bracing his palms on his knees.

“We should get going, Owe.”

“I’m so thirsty.”

“Me, too. Maybe there’s a stream soon, like the one we crossed yesterday.”

I thought about that stream with its Chia Pet rocks and muddy bottom. I wouldn’t have drunk from it then, but if that same stream were running in front of me now I’d guzzle it dry.

We packed everything up, though there wasn’t much left. The baby bird lay on its side in the rag, peeping softly.

“Must be hungry,” Dunk said. He picked it up.

“What does a baby bird eat?”

“No idea. Let’s go.”

He walked ahead, hopping over rocks and stomping through low bushes. I had to pump my legs to keep up. Even if Dunk was sick — and he was, at least as sick as me — it wouldn’t slow him down. He had that same machinelike intensity I’d seen the day we’d met in the schoolyard. He’d keep pushing until his body broke to pieces. It didn’t matter if his opponent was another kid or Mother Nature herself.

The sound of rushing water was so sly at first — an almost imperceptible gurgle that knit with the rustle of the leaves. Dunk pushed an armload of whiplike willow branches aside and there it was.

The stream was much narrower than the one we’d crossed the day before. It was clear with an undernote of heavy blue, which might have been the darkened reflection of the sky on its surface. It bent like a gooseneck around an outcrop of ragged-edged rocks and continued on through some willows.

It looked like heaven.

We stood by the bank, dumbfounded. Dunk turned and gave me a sideways smile.

“It’s probably okay to drink,” I said.

“Aren’t we supposed to boil it?”

“That’s only water that’s not flowing, like a pond or a lake.”

It was as if, since there were no adults around, we had to try to act like grown-ups and make the grown-up choice. Which was stupid because we were kids and we’d make a kid’s choice: we would drink the water no matter what.

We dipped our Coke cans, our hands trembling with anticipation. It was all I could do not to plunge my head in the stream. I tilted the can to my lips and tasted the water behind my molars: clean and sweet with the residue of Coke at the bottom of the can.

Had water ever tasted this good? Had anything ? It hit my stomach like iced lead. I threw some up, took two deep breaths and forced myself to keep drinking. The buzz inside my head subsided.

We drank until our bellies were swollen and let go of giant, watery belches. Dunk wet his fingertips and let a few droplets fall into the baby bird’s mouth.

We hopped over the stream, water sloshing in our guts. I was still starving but I felt a thousand times better. I spotted a heron downstream, balanced on one leg like a ballerina. White tail feathers and a monstrous air sac pulsating from its blue breast. Seeing me, it made a hoarse stuttering cry full of pips and croaks like rust in a pivot. It muscled itself into the air, arrowing into the lightening blue, and a part of my heart went with it, wanting to see what it saw, to know if we were near a house or a road or if — as I feared — there was nothing but marsh and scrub and hungering bugs.

Late in the afternoon we entered a glade of enormous maples and oaks. It was dark and heavy in there; the forest greenness tinted the air. I ached all over and my ass stung and my thighs chafed with every step.

My foot had been bothering me the last hour. I sat on a tree sawed in half by lightning and unlaced my sneaker. A blister had spread across my heel, the dead white skin at its edges milky like fish gills while the flesh inside was tender-pink.

“That’s a doozy,” said Dunk.

I pulled the sock on gingerly. Socks, matches — items you generally possess in such abundance that you forget how valuable they are.

Isolated raindrops pattered the ground. Soon the sky opened and rain sheeted down. Water collected on the leaves, draining into the glade in ragged streamers. Rain hit the back of my hand and ran between my fingers. A wave of despair rocked me; I concentrated on the things tying me to the world. My favourite movie was E.T . The number one song on 97.7’s Top Nine at Nine countdown was “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” My bed at home had a Star Wars bedspread with a grape juice stain on C-3PO’s face.

We came upon an anthill that looked like a miniature volcano. It rose to a tall spouted opening, from which ants poured in abundance. They chained down the hill in the chlorophyll-green light, moving in dark shining braids like soldiers on the march.

“You figure the bird eats ants?” Dunk asked.

How would I know if a baby bird ate ants? Besides which, grubbing around in an anthill while the sun went down was a waste of time, and I said so.

But Dunk insisted. We got down on our knees and tried to catch a few. The hill’s caldera crumbled the instant my fingers touched it. Ants poured out in a mad frenzy, racing up our legs and down our sleeves. It was funny — their legs tickled as they picked along the soft hairs on our arms — until they started to bite.

I’d had no idea ants could bite —sting , to be exact. Fiery needles stabbed me. Dunk and I jumped up, shrieking and swatting ourselves. Ants were everywhere: my chest, my armpits. Each individual bite wasn’t so bad — yellowjacket stings were much worse — but they peppered me all over.

“My back!” Dunk said. “Slap my back!”

I did, raising puffs of dust from his T-shirt. He did the same for me. After what felt like an endless battle the stings lessened. I peeled my shirt off. My sweat-stung skin was dotted with inflamed bumps that itched like the devil. My body was smeared with ant anatomies: their thoraxes and antennae and abdomens and legs squashed all over.

“Holy hell,” Dunk said, breathing raggedly. “That was a baaaaad idea, Kemosabe.”

“I told you it was a dumb idea.”

“No you didn’t,” Dunk said with a bewildered smile. “You said you had no clue.”

“It was stupid.” I was spoiling for a fight by then, uninterested in logical arguments. “ Moronic ,” I said, a word I’d heard my father use in conversation with a drywaller who’d gypped him.

“Well, sor-ree ,” Dunk said. He slanted his head at me quizzically — but the slant held an edge of menace.

“It’s not funny, man. My dad always says, Measure twice, cut once — which means think before you act.”

“Yeah? My dad says don’t be a fuckin’ pussy.”

“Your dad doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Dunk’s chin jutted. “He knows as much as your dad does.”

“Then why isn’t he in an office at the Bisk instead of on the line? Why doesn’t he smell of aftershave instead of Chips Ahoy?”

Dunk rounded his shoulders and stuffed his bird-free hand in his pocket, where it balled into a fist.

“I’m not my dad, Owe. And you’re not your dad, either.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. His arms quivered all the way down to his fingers; the hand that held the bird shook it in its sock nest. Looking back, I can tell Dunk had to summon every ounce of self-control — otherwise he’d’ve punched the living shit out of me right then.