Skillful Death (55 page)

“I’m a scientist,” I say. I learned this word, and a few others that I probably won’t get to use. I hoped for this type of opportunity. “I study volcanic rocks.” I point at the earrings. I pull some more money from my pocket. “I’m making a chart.”
 

Now, I pull my big prop from my pocket. It’s a folded paper map with a bunch of little arrow stickers on it. It’s one of Bud’s old maps. He was using it to keep track of our river tours, but I’ve added stickers in rings through the hills. The arrows don’t mark anything in particular and they’re not labeled. People won’t tell you about a special place they know unless they think you’re collecting a list of tons of special places.

“Can you show me on the chart?” I ask.

I drape the map on her table and lay a small stack of bills on it. It’s not a fortune, but it’s what I think a scientist would offer for a small amount of information.

She moves for the money and I put my hand on top of it.
 

“And the earrings,” I say.

“Okay,” she says.

She points at a remote location on the map and I annotate it with my pen.
 

“Where else?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. She’s counting the money.

“Where else?” I ask again. I’ve pulled out a few more bills.

I get one more location from her and then I figure she’s out of useful information. After a little more prompting, she points me in the direction of another vendor who sells jewelry made from the same type of rocks. I follow the leads, going from store to store and talking to people until my leads begin to run dry.

It’s more difficult to find a ride back to my house, but a guy at the bus stop points me towards a cab.

“Not a cab. Too expensive,” I say.

“No, catch him. He lives near there. He’ll take you.”

The guy is right. I catch up to the cab driver before he pulls away, and for a small fee the guy lets me ride in the front seat. He drops me off within a mile or so of the apartment.

Bud’s still in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?”

“Can we speak English? I’ve been immersed all day.”

“Where have you been?” he asks again in English.

“I found these,” I say. I toss a pair of earrings on top of the map and then set a paperweight down. He pokes at the earrings and then picks up the paperweight. He turns it until it catches the light. It looks heavier than it is. The rock is porous and shiny. The surface refracts the light, making faint rainbows.

“I remember rocks like these,” he says.

“I know. You told me.”

“And you think they’re from my village?”

“I couldn’t say. I know they’re rare enough to be considered semiprecious, but they’re not commercially mined. I’ve got two locations where people claim to gather them.”

“This rock looks exactly like I remember. Rocks like this were loose on the banks of the creek where the mist gathered. I would very much like to see where this rock came from.”

I pull out my map and lay it over top of Bud’s.
 

“There’s supposedly a spot here, and here.” I point at my marks.

“But there’s no river near either of these spots,” he says.

“No
documented
river,” I say.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

Bud rented us a car for the day from a local guy. It’s exactly that—a car for a day. I don’t think it was running yesterday, and I’m pretty sure it won’t move under its own power tomorrow. We should have rented horses. The roads run dry miles and miles from the spot on the map we’re headed towards. We’re under a heavy canopy of trees pretty much as soon as we leave the car. It’s an orderly forest, if that makes sense. The trees are tall and well-spaced. It’s not like you have to duck through all kinds of low limbs and step high over underbrush. If forests were always like this, I wouldn’t hate them so much.

Bud likes to navigate with a compass, but it’s useless here. The needle just spins as you walk. Perhaps the rocks are magnetic. My GPS works, so we use that to give us numbers we can plot on the map. Bud thinks that the GPS is going to give out at any second. He says the trees will block the signal.
 

“Don’t count on that thing,” he says. “That’s how people get into trouble in the wilderness. They count on technology and it fails.”

“Do we have another choice?”

“We should be marking our path with blazes on the trees,” he says.

“Have you been?”

“No.”

“So what good does that do us now? Do you want to go back and start marking the trees?”

“No.”

“So we’ll just trust the GPS then?” I ask. I have a dozen batteries in my pack, and I’ve never seen trees block out signals from a satellite, so I’m not worried.
 

“I suppose we have to,” he says.

I hate fatalism. I hate when someone has reservations or misgivings and then they just accept what’s happening as if it’s impossible to change. I think a month or even a week earlier and my deference to Bud would have kept my mouth shut, but I’m all done holding my tongue. He’s my boss, but if we get lost we’re going to be equally lost. There’s no boss out here except the forest.

“No, we don’t have to,” I say. “We can go back to the car right now, when we’re close enough to find it just by following our footprints through the ferns. Then we can start to mark blazes on the trees, or come back tomorrow if you don’t think there’s enough time to start again today. We’ve been walking for a couple of hours, but it’s not like we can’t do it again.”

“I think we need to press on,” he says.

“Why?”

“I think we need to abandon hope of going back so we can commit to going forward,” he says.

“That’s crazy.”

“I understand why you’d think so, but I’ve been searching a lot longer than you have. I’ve come to this part of the world many times, and covered it by foot, and boat, and plane. Each time I’ve felt I could get close, I’ve also felt held back.”

“By what?”

“By the pull of the life I left behind, by my wealth, by fear of the unknown.”

“Let’s take a new approach then,” I say. “Let me see your map and compass.”

I collect his maps, compass, and put it together with my GPS and batteries. I take everything and stuff it into a small drawstring bag. The boss just watches as I swing the bag in a big vertical circle. I let go when the bag is on its way up and it flies way up into the branches overhead. I didn’t think it would work the first time, but the nylon catches on a branch and the bag is stuck up there. It was just like throwing a pair of shoes over a power line.
 

“All that stuff stays here and we move on. We’re fully committed.”

The boss nods and we march on, using only the sun to keep our direction.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

We’ve got a little food and water, so we stop for a snack as the sun sets behind the trees. I’m in pretty good shape, but it’s treadmill shape. My running is done in a straight line on a flat and level surface. I’m not used to stepping over rocks, and slapping bugs. My knees hurt, my lips are parched, and my neck aches.

I thought we still had a good chance of finding our way back to the car for a while. We were walking through ferns for so long, and with each step we left a dark green trail of bent over stalks. When the ferns cleared out and the floor of the forest was pine needles, it seemed like a blessing. I didn’t have to worry about twisting my ankle on a hidden rock. It wasn’t until much later that I realized we weren’t leaving a discernible trail.
 

Now that the sun is setting, I’m not even sure which direction the car is. Bud doesn’t care. He looks happy as a clam.

“How much longer do you think we need to go to get to that spot on the map?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, with a big grin.

What if he’s crazy? The thought occurred to me before, but I never really believed in the idea. It would certainly make sense. This guy can’t possibly be as old as he claims to be. He can’t have grown up as an orphan in the woods.
 

“I have a tent,” he says.

“Should we keep walking? We have lights,” I say.

“I don’t want to get lost,” he says and he laughs. It’s not funny at first, but I laugh anyway. Then I can’t stop. There is a certain humor to our situation. I’m lost on purpose with a billionaire, and I’m the one who threw away the GPS. What was I thinking?

“I’ll set up the tent,” he says.

He digs into his pack and pulls out a small nylon bag. It doesn’t look like much as he unrolls the fabric into a square on the forest floor. He doesn’t even have any poles. Maybe he’s going to string it up to trees, but he doesn’t have any rope either. Bud pulls out a small metal canister of compressed gas and hooks it up to the corner of the tent. As we watch, the gas inflates the tent’s skeleton and it grows into shape.

“That’s pretty cool,” I say. “Where did you get it?”

“I had it stashed in the bag we brought from Canada. I’ve never used it before.”

“I don’t suppose you have any more food stashed in there too?”

“Why don’t you gather some firewood and I’ll go get us a proper dinner.”

I just watch him as he pulls a knife and headlamp from his bag and heads out into the dwindling light. Where does he think he’s going to find something to eat? I slap a big bug on the back of my neck and wipe the blood smear on my pants. He brought a tent all the way from Canada, but neither of us thought to bring any bug spray.
 

I’m a little disgusted with myself. I like to think of myself as tough, but I’m starting to thinking that perhaps I’m only tough in certain environments. I’ve hardened myself to certain perils, but I have no defense against mosquitoes. Their little bites are infuriating.

I push myself to my feet and shake out my weary legs so I can collect firewood. Maybe the smoke will keep the bugs away.

Before I’ve collected enough wood for a decent fire, the boss is back and he has a furry gray rabbit in each hand. He’s holding their limp bodies by the hind legs.

“What, is there a rabbit store behind those trees?”

“They’re easy to catch this time of day,” he says. “I think the sun dazzles their eyes.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I think there’s a creek over there,” he says, pointing. “Grab the water bottles for me and I’ll fill them up while I’m cleaning the rabbits.”

“Sure thing.”

He’s gone for longer this time, and I get a fire started. I even found some rocks to make a circle. I’m not sure of the point, but I’ve seen people do it on TV, so it must be a good idea. I suppose the rocks are to keep the fire from spreading to the pine needles. The fire is nice, but it makes me nervous. If anything is lurking in the woods, it’s like a big advertisement of where I’m sitting. The fire is also destroying my night-vision and it makes so much noise that an elephant could sneak up on me.
 

I see the boss. He comes into the circle of light holding up two skinned rabbits. I expected them to look more bloody. From their color, they look almost like Thanksgiving turkeys. I’ve got a couple of green sticks that I push through the rabbits and I set them up on Y-shaped sticks I pushed into the ground. Our fire looks like a rotisserie.

The water that Bud brought back tastes like dirt.

“We should boil that,” he says, but our pan is so small it would take forever to process the water. We settle for dropping in some purification tablets. I think that’s what makes it taste like dirt.

“How long should we cook this rabbit?” I ask.

“For what?”

“To eat. How long until it’s cooked through?”

“It will be burned on the outside and raw inside, pretty much regardless of what we do. I’ve found it really difficult to roast rabbit over a fire. If you want it cooked through, it’s best to boil it in its own skin or wrap it and bury it under the coals.”

“Oh. Why did you let me put it on a spit over the fire then?”

“I like it burned and raw. I always have. It’s ready any time.”

I wish I knew why Bud was being so difficult.

The rabbit’s not as bad as he threatened. Maybe it’s because my stomach was so empty, but I find the meat to be really intriguing. It tastes wild and dangerous.
 

“I was thinking,” he says, “that maybe because of the magnetic rocks around here, this area hasn’t been mapped well. You saw how the compass was acting. You couldn’t keep a constant heading. If I were a cartographer, I might just gloss over this area.”

“Yeah?”

“So maybe there’s an undocumented river we haven’t visited.”

“It has to come out somewhere.”

“That’s true,” he says. He goes back to gnawing on rabbit bones.

It’s a little uncomfortable crawling into a tent next to the boss. We’ve been together pretty much constantly since Vermont, but we haven’t been sleeping in the same tent. There’s something too intimate about the arrangement.

In the morning, I wake up alone. He’s already out in the world somewhere. I push around the ashes and find a couple of smoky coals, but the dewy sticks don’t want to catch. The morning air is heavy and humid. I can see Bud’s footprints leading off towards the stream. I’m considering following them when he suddenly returns.

“I couldn’t find anything to eat,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I think we should start walking. Maybe we can forage on the way.”

“Okay.”

Packing up the campsite is a pain. You want to clean everything off before you stuff it back into your pack, but there’s nowhere clean to set anything down. Anything that touches the ground comes back covered in sticky forest dirt. And the damp air settles into my clothes. They’re heavy with moisture.

“I’d like to follow the stream,” he says. “It must feed into something.”

“Okay.”

He starts walking and I follow.
 

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“From what I remember, we were supposed to pretty much follow the same contour lines around the hill if we’re trying to get to the spot where they found those rocks. If we follow a stream, we’ll be going downhill, right?”