MUMSKET
(c) 2010 D. Ed. Hoggatt
Winter in Washington and western Canada can vary from cold, cold rain to freezing rain, to a snow-blinding blizzard. The needed equipment for this new Buddy-inspired trek was, it goes without explaining, very different from the trip to the Atlantic coast. With all that Buddy felt was necessary, there was little room for the two unlikely partners to sit.
When the van rolled under the totem-inspired entrance gate to the primitive lodge grounds, Aaron sat up. He hadn’t expected everything to be so beautiful – like a postcard from history. He imagined Meriwether Lewis and William Clark leading horses and a few calloused and cold men through woods like these on their way to the Pacific Ocean on a mission from their president. That would have been miles south of here, but the terrain seemed appropriate for such a vision. In his own technologically progressive world, he couldn’t believe such a place of natural beauty still existed. Still, he was smart enough to know that the cold winter landscape of Lewis and Clark was no place for a “fragile” wimp like him. He was extraordinarily out of his element, and the anxiety of this realization washed over him like a waterfall.
They still had two miles to travel, weaving left and right through the snow-covered trees. A plow had cleared the road inasmuch as a driver could tell where the road usually was, but a layer of packed snow remained, covered with a fresh dusting of pure white snow from the early morning. Occasional lights lit cabins from within as smoke trailed every which way from chimney tops. It reminded Aaron of some artwork he had seen at the mall; at the time he had thought it looked unrealistic – fake – but now, he realized, the artist must have set up his easel at this exact spot in order to catch the mood.
Snow weighted the boughs of the cedars that lined the road. The flexible limbs scraped and teased the ground. Aaron couldn’t see any signs of animal life from his window. He felt guilty looking at the beautiful, yet treacherous, scenery from his perch in the heated van.
The light snowflakes that had been falling for hours quickly turned into flakes that looked more like the soap suds from a bubble bath. It made the landscape more beautiful and more ominous at the same time. Buddy turned off the unnatural music coming from the tape player so he could concentrate. The windshield wipers continued to tap out a beat even when the music had stopped. Ahead, a tree limb had broken with the weight of the snow. It was blocking the road.
“You can take care of it,” Buddy commanded. Aaron slid from his toasty seat and crunched through the snow. The limb, larger than he had thought, had smaller limbs sticking out from various places, and it seemed to claw at the frozen snow on the road. It did not want to move. It seemed to scream as it carved a hundred grooves into the ice underneath.
Aaron thought he heard something move in the tree behind him. He turned to look, but the snow blinded him.
“Hurry up, Stupid,” Buddy shouted. “I’d like to get there before the bottom drops out of this storm.”
When Aaron returned to the van, he brought a lot of the storm into the van with him. The wind bit wildly and snow blew in.
“Stomp the snow outside, you idiot!” Buddy screamed. “It’s bad enough that you’re all wet without you trampin’ it all over my van.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize! What am I gonna do to teach you? Don’t apologize when I tell you somethin’. Just take what I tell you like a man.” Buddy’s speech trailed off as he refocused his attention on the road.
It took ten minutes to go the last half mile.
Rustic wasn’t the right word to describe the lodge. Raunchy was more like it. For Aaron, who was expecting a cozy log cabin with wisps of curly white smoke rising from a pristine rock chimney, it was especially disappointing. Buddy honked the horn and, in a minute, two huge men ran out to meet them. They each wore heavy camouflaged coats and coveralls with fur-lined hats, ski masks, and heavy rubber boots. Aaron didn’t have any idea what the men looked like and couldn’t have picked them out in a police line up.
As the two gave high fives to Buddy and each other, Aaron watched the steam rise off their voices. His own breaths produced thick clouds, as well.
Buddy yelled across the van at him. “Start unloading, Kid. I’m gonna check out the digs.” Aaron wanted to cuss him out. He had a few vulgar words swimming around in his head he thought would be appropriate to the occasion. But on second thought, that would just get him into trouble with three large, and probably drunk, men. Besides, Aaron had prided himself on the principle that he did not curse in public. Sometimes when he was alone, but never in public.
“I guess I’m the flunky again,” he muttered aloud to himself when the others went into the plyboard shack. The sound of his voice fell flat into the snow at his feet. “It figures Buddy’d bring me along just so he’d have someone to pick on and boss around.”
A noise floated out of the woods – like the noise he heard when he had moved the tree out of the road, an eerie whisper. Aaron stopped to look, but the air was too thick with snow for him to see anything. White turned to gray as dusk descended on the day. He dropped the olive green army duffel that belonged to his stepfather, and crunched into the center of the rutted and icy road. He could tell when they pulled in that the road made a turn here. A turn to the left. Along the road, built very close to the road, were about twenty identical plyboard shacks, each with its own van or SUV, and each with its own smoke belching from a short metal stack. Some of the windows were already lit with lanterns from the inside.
Aaron looked back toward the duffel he had dropped. It was covered with a half-inch of snow already. It hardly looked like more than a lump of earth. He would look similar if he continued to stand in one place.
Very quickly, as quickly as the man had been spat onto the rocks in New Hampshire in the spring, the snowfall stopped. The last flakes, very large, three-dimensional flakes, floated on soft air currents. Some looked as if they would park themselves in mid-air. Aaron, still looking toward the cabin, had no idea what was coming behind him.
What began as a whisper steadily grew louder until it was a lion’s roar. Aaron spun slowly to face the sound. He was standing in the center of the gravel, squinting to see through the grayness. Was there a scream within the rumbling?
He had no chance to react. Before he could turn to run into the cabin or at least duck behind the van, a wall of snow was upon him like a tidal wave. It struck him like exploding concrete at ninety miles an hour, and his stinging eyes were quickly frozen. As he flew backwards with the force, snow filled his ears and the roar-rumble was muffled. Snow crammed into his nostrils and mouth. When he breathed, the frozen stuff was sucked into his lungs, and he choked. He would quickly suffocate if the phenomenon lasted much longer. His brain flashed with pink and blue pixels. Pixels that were both beautiful and sharply stinging until he felt like his head would split in two.
Everything happened in the time it would take a bullet to shoot through the barrel of a gun. Aaron had little time to think, but in many ways it all happened in slow motion. He felt every bit of it. He felt when his back and head struck the tree trunk, and he felt his body suddenly become limp. The snow had returned, a gentle, thick curtain of the stuff, but Aaron had felt the brunt of it. He rolled onto his side, heard and felt the grit of broken bones. He had no oxygen or the energy to call for help. Straining for any breath he could find, his vision slowly turned black from the outside in. He slipped into a deep, blinding sleep.
(c) 2010 D. Ed. Hoggatt
Winter in Washington and western Canada can vary from cold, cold rain to freezing rain, to a snow-blinding blizzard. The needed equipment for this new Buddy-inspired trek was, it goes without explaining, very different from the trip to the Atlantic coast. With all that Buddy felt was necessary, there was little room for the two unlikely partners to sit.
When the van rolled under the totem-inspired entrance gate to the primitive lodge grounds, Aaron sat up. He hadn’t expected everything to be so beautiful – like a postcard from history. He imagined Meriwether Lewis and William Clark leading horses and a few calloused and cold men through woods like these on their way to the Pacific Ocean on a mission from their president. That would have been miles south of here, but the terrain seemed appropriate for such a vision. In his own technologically progressive world, he couldn’t believe such a place of natural beauty still existed. Still, he was smart enough to know that the cold winter landscape of Lewis and Clark was no place for a “fragile” wimp like him. He was extraordinarily out of his element, and the anxiety of this realization washed over him like a waterfall.
They still had two miles to travel, weaving left and right through the snow-covered trees. A plow had cleared the road inasmuch as a driver could tell where the road usually was, but a layer of packed snow remained, covered with a fresh dusting of pure white snow from the early morning. Occasional lights lit cabins from within as smoke trailed every which way from chimney tops. It reminded Aaron of some artwork he had seen at the mall; at the time he had thought it looked unrealistic – fake – but now, he realized, the artist must have set up his easel at this exact spot in order to catch the mood.
Snow weighted the boughs of the cedars that lined the road. The flexible limbs scraped and teased the ground. Aaron couldn’t see any signs of animal life from his window. He felt guilty looking at the beautiful, yet treacherous, scenery from his perch in the heated van.
The light snowflakes that had been falling for hours quickly turned into flakes that looked more like the soap suds from a bubble bath. It made the landscape more beautiful and more ominous at the same time. Buddy turned off the unnatural music coming from the tape player so he could concentrate. The windshield wipers continued to tap out a beat even when the music had stopped. Ahead, a tree limb had broken with the weight of the snow. It was blocking the road.
“You can take care of it,” Buddy commanded. Aaron slid from his toasty seat and crunched through the snow. The limb, larger than he had thought, had smaller limbs sticking out from various places, and it seemed to claw at the frozen snow on the road. It did not want to move. It seemed to scream as it carved a hundred grooves into the ice underneath.
Aaron thought he heard something move in the tree behind him. He turned to look, but the snow blinded him.
“Hurry up, Stupid,” Buddy shouted. “I’d like to get there before the bottom drops out of this storm.”
When Aaron returned to the van, he brought a lot of the storm into the van with him. The wind bit wildly and snow blew in.
“Stomp the snow outside, you idiot!” Buddy screamed. “It’s bad enough that you’re all wet without you trampin’ it all over my van.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize! What am I gonna do to teach you? Don’t apologize when I tell you somethin’. Just take what I tell you like a man.” Buddy’s speech trailed off as he refocused his attention on the road.
It took ten minutes to go the last half mile.
Rustic wasn’t the right word to describe the lodge. Raunchy was more like it. For Aaron, who was expecting a cozy log cabin with wisps of curly white smoke rising from a pristine rock chimney, it was especially disappointing. Buddy honked the horn and, in a minute, two huge men ran out to meet them. They each wore heavy camouflaged coats and coveralls with fur-lined hats, ski masks, and heavy rubber boots. Aaron didn’t have any idea what the men looked like and couldn’t have picked them out in a police line up.
As the two gave high fives to Buddy and each other, Aaron watched the steam rise off their voices. His own breaths produced thick clouds, as well.
Buddy yelled across the van at him. “Start unloading, Kid. I’m gonna check out the digs.” Aaron wanted to cuss him out. He had a few vulgar words swimming around in his head he thought would be appropriate to the occasion. But on second thought, that would just get him into trouble with three large, and probably drunk, men. Besides, Aaron had prided himself on the principle that he did not curse in public. Sometimes when he was alone, but never in public.
“I guess I’m the flunky again,” he muttered aloud to himself when the others went into the plyboard shack. The sound of his voice fell flat into the snow at his feet. “It figures Buddy’d bring me along just so he’d have someone to pick on and boss around.”
A noise floated out of the woods – like the noise he heard when he had moved the tree out of the road, an eerie whisper. Aaron stopped to look, but the air was too thick with snow for him to see anything. White turned to gray as dusk descended on the day. He dropped the olive green army duffel that belonged to his stepfather, and crunched into the center of the rutted and icy road. He could tell when they pulled in that the road made a turn here. A turn to the left. Along the road, built very close to the road, were about twenty identical plyboard shacks, each with its own van or SUV, and each with its own smoke belching from a short metal stack. Some of the windows were already lit with lanterns from the inside.
Aaron looked back toward the duffel he had dropped. It was covered with a half-inch of snow already. It hardly looked like more than a lump of earth. He would look similar if he continued to stand in one place.
Very quickly, as quickly as the man had been spat onto the rocks in New Hampshire in the spring, the snowfall stopped. The last flakes, very large, three-dimensional flakes, floated on soft air currents. Some looked as if they would park themselves in mid-air. Aaron, still looking toward the cabin, had no idea what was coming behind him.
What began as a whisper steadily grew louder until it was a lion’s roar. Aaron spun slowly to face the sound. He was standing in the center of the gravel, squinting to see through the grayness. Was there a scream within the rumbling?
He had no chance to react. Before he could turn to run into the cabin or at least duck behind the van, a wall of snow was upon him like a tidal wave. It struck him like exploding concrete at ninety miles an hour, and his stinging eyes were quickly frozen. As he flew backwards with the force, snow filled his ears and the roar-rumble was muffled. Snow crammed into his nostrils and mouth. When he breathed, the frozen stuff was sucked into his lungs, and he choked. He would quickly suffocate if the phenomenon lasted much longer. His brain flashed with pink and blue pixels. Pixels that were both beautiful and sharply stinging until he felt like his head would split in two.
Everything happened in the time it would take a bullet to shoot through the barrel of a gun. Aaron had little time to think, but in many ways it all happened in slow motion. He felt every bit of it. He felt when his back and head struck the tree trunk, and he felt his body suddenly become limp. The snow had returned, a gentle, thick curtain of the stuff, but Aaron had felt the brunt of it. He rolled onto his side, heard and felt the grit of broken bones. He had no oxygen or the energy to call for help. Straining for any breath he could find, his vision slowly turned black from the outside in. He slipped into a deep, blinding sleep.
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