Hold Fast (16 page)

“Shit, old man, this is goin to be all right.”

The dumb nut was starting to sound like me.

Later on we got straightened away and had something to eat. Vienna sausages in the blue cans — the old standby. But then no kettle for the tea. We had to do something about that. I couldn't find not one thing to use, so we ended up eating a full can of peaches so I could take the can and make a kettle out of it. Had to open it with a pocket knife too. Might a known we wouldn't think of buying something simple like a can opener. Then I fixed it up with a piece of rabbit wire. Out with the tea bags and of course no water. It was half an hour before we found a brook and got back with some water. But we had our tea. No sense being in the woods and not having tea. Can drinks and junk is all right for a picnic, but to make it either bit like you're really in the woods, then you gotta have the tea.

There was nothing like it. Tea in the woods somehow tastes ten times better, anyway. The two of us having a mugup by the open fire, the air a bit cold and frosty, us being on our own. All of it put together, it made me feel right on top of the world.

Iguess Curtis did pick up a few things about catching rabbits. I tried to teach him a bit as I went along. It meant starting right from scratch. I doubt if he ever seen a piece of rabbit wire before in his life, or what a good rabbit's path looked like, that kinda thing. The first slip I set out, I asked him to go cut me a standard — a stick to tie the slip onto — and he comes back with an old dead stick, old man, that wouldn't hold a shrew, let alone a rabbit squirming all he was worth to save his neck. I tried not to laugh, but I had to.

After he watched me set out a few, I found a good path for him and let him tail one himself. I had to fix it over; he had it too low to the ground and too small a loop for the time of the year it was, but other than that he done pretty good for the first time.

I had a great time, myself. It really felt good to be back at it like that. Only thing was I missed Dad. When I thought about it after, I knew then that was the main reason I didn't have very much patience with Curtis. I was thinking too much about Dad. What I wouldn't a give for him to a been there. But I didn't let it play on my mind
too much, because I knew what would a happened if I did.

That first day in the campground was the fifth of November. In Newfoundland that means Bonfire Night. Or Guy Fawkes Night, whatever you mind to call it. It's the anniversary of the time he tried to burn down the English Parliament in the 1600s. I think that Newfoundland is about the only place in North America that celebrates it any more. See, it wasn't so long ago that we was a colony of Britain.

I couldn't let November fifth pass and not have a bonfire, no way. Me and Curtis lit a small one just as it was getting dark, there in one of the campsites. We had to keep it small and then dout it before it got too dark because we couldn't take any chances on cars seeing it from the road. If they seen flankers coming up through the trees someone might just run up thinking it was a forest fire or something.

It wasn't much like what I was use to. Pitiful, it was. If I'd been home we'd a had some fire. Last year the one me and the boys had was the biggest of all the fires in Marten, and there must a been at least twenty or more around the place. We cut boughs for a week after school and we collected up about a hundred car tires and throwed in along with that. Nothing pitiful about that fire. You couldn't get within not ten foot of it, it was giving off so much heat.

There I had to settle for a lousy little campground fire. And where it got dark so early, we was all finished with it before supper.

We dug out something to eat, and then we fooled
around and played cards till about nine o'clock. With the power shut off, it was a good thing we'd brought candles. And there's nothing either like living next door to two useless cans.

We squirmed down into the sleeping bags then, and blew out the light. We shot the bull in the dark and thought about trying to get to sleep. It was going to be a frosty night, a good one on rabbits. And, I was hoping, a good one for us too. By six o'clock in the morning we'd know if the sleeping bags was as good as they was cracked up to be. I knew how cold it would get by that time.

We really should a been good and sleepy. We'd been on the go a lot the last coupla days and what with the security guard snooping around the night before, we didn't get much of a rest. We should a flaked out right away. But, no way sir. We was almost as wide awake as we'd been all day.

In the dark, I wondered just how brave Curtis was about the whole thing now. Maybe he had some second thoughts about running away?

“Scared?” I said, trying to root something outa him.

“Shit no,” he said, as fast as that.

I spose I had to believe him. Even though it was black as tar in the room (there was not a window anywhere in the whole place), there was nothing really to be frightened of.

Curtis had turned on the transistor radio I brought with me. I had stuffed it into my knapsack the last minute before we left. We was listening some of the time to the top ten, but what we was really waiting for was the two minutes of news every hour. Sure enough, we made it to the ten o'clock news.

“There is still no word on the whereabouts of the two fourteen-year-old boys missing since yesterday morning from their home in St. Albert. Officials of the RCMP, however, indicate that they have received two separate reports from drivers who have picked up boys meeting their description hitchhiking east on the Trans-Canada. One driver reported to police that he had let off two boys in the Grand Falls area at approximately one-thirty P.M. yesterday, but no further reports on their possible whereabouts have yet been received. Anyone traveling in the Grand Falls area recently who may have information helpful in locating these boys is asked to contact the nearest detachment of the RCMP.”

So. We had the Mounties on our tails. Like I thought. We was safe enough, though. Mrs. McKay was in England now, and they had no trace of us past Grand Falls. Unless, of course, the security guard at the terminal got smart. Even then, he didn't have a clue where we might a gone.

“You worried?”

“Shit no,” again.

“They haven't got one clue about where we are, not one. We could be in South America for all anybody knows.”

“Let em suffer.”

That's what we was doing all right, letting them suffer. Especially Curtis's old man. Good enough for him. He deserved to suffer for a change. Find out what it's like to be getting the dirty end of the stick. Having to take it now instead of dishing it out. That'll make the old man think twice. Make him learn the hard way that this stupid yelling and roughing up won't work all the time.

And then I started thinking — who was I to be talking? A fellow who lied black and blue and stole somebody else's car. I might as well a said it — “stole.” That started playing on my mind. The sooner I could get it back on the parking lot the better. Only we couldn't do it right away or we'd mess everything up.

What the hell, I said to myself, forget about that for now. We're here away from everyone like we wanted, and we're darn well not going to let anything stop us from enjoying ourselves.

“Whata we goin at tomorrow?” I said to get myself thinking about something different. There was no need to talk very loud. The room was pretty narrow. We was right next to each other in the sleeping bags.

“We'll look at the slips.”

“Maybe we'll set out a few more. And have a bloody big feed on all the rabbits we're going to get.”

“Right on, man,” he said.

“Now you're talking.”

“You got it.”

“We're all set.”

“Right you are.”

“Proper t'ing.”

“Proper t'ing. Proper t'ing. Proper t'ing.”

And I turned over laughing, snuggled down in the sleeping bag, and went to sleep.

When we woke up the next morning everything outside was white with snow. I stopped the door open with a broom handle to let in some light, and got back in the sleeping bag where it was warm. I guess the sleeping
bags had proved to be what they was cracked up to be, all right.

It couldn't a been much below freezing outside, but the snow was dribbling down in big, wet flakes. It was a beautiful sight to see.

“It looks awful nice, but it's screwing up our chances for a rabbit, unless one got in before it come to snow.”

Curtis took one look outside through his half-opened eyes and then sunk back down in the sleeping bag and covered up his head.

I shouted at him, “I said, this ain't so good for rabbits, this kinda weather. It covers in the slips.”

He didn't move an inch.

I could a let him stay there I spose. There was no real reason for him to be getting up yet. It was just that I was wide awake. And all this cold wet stuff outside and him so comfortable and me looking for a bit of fun. Well, it looked like it could be a laugh.

I eased up off my back and leaned out through the door still in the sleeping bag, and grabbed up a small bit of snow and packed it together tight. I laid back on the floor again and real quick like I shoved it down through the top of the sleeping bag onto the bare part of his neck.

You talk about the roar! He jumped about ten feet.

“You frigger!” he yelled, squirming around like mad to try to get the snow out. “You frigger!”

He hauled off and belted me with his arm. I jumped outa the sleeping bag and then on top of him, and that turned it right into a full-scale wrestling match.

In the couple of months we'd known each other, we never once wrestled or anything. We never joked around
and had a few cracks at each other like you'd think two fellows living in the same room might. Curtis was never the kind of fellow who you carried on with like that.

Thirty seconds wrestling with him and there was no trouble to see why. It only proved to me what I knew all along — that there wasn't much on him anywhere that could pass for muscle, even if you stretched the truth.

“Now, whata ya goin to do?” I had him pinned to the floor, one knee on each of his arms and me sitting on his gut.

“Get off me, you ape!”

“What can ya do about it?”

He twisted and turned, kicked and shoved, but he couldn't budge me. All it done was move him closer to the door. I reached out through and got some more snow. I held it up in my hand above his face and sprinkled it down on top of him. He jerked his head from side to side, and tried to spit it back at me.

Up to then it was pretty much all fun. But he didn't get off on this new game too well. So I stopped it and then let him throw me over. I mean I could a kept him there all day like that if I'd wanted to. Only I figured it would be better if I let him have a chance back at me. Just because we was friends, that was all.

He struggled and struggled as hard as he could and I didn't even work up a sweat. We tumbled back and forth over the floor. A few times till he thought he had me, only then I got serious and sent him flying back on his arse in one quick move.

But he was determined to get revenge somehow. He ran out of doors just like he was and grabbed a full handful
of snow and fired it in at me. Only I ducked and he missed.

He had a shirt and pants on because he'd figured it might be cold in the sleeping bag during the night, but he had nothing on his feet. Him barefoot in all that snow, pelting it in at me.

At least I had socks on. But no shirt, because I'm no good for sleeping with a shirt on, unless it gets really cold. I managed to dodge the first couple, but then he got lucky and started getting in a few hits on the bare back, so I took off out the door after him, snow or no snow.

He ran off across the road, what you'd call pretty nifty, because there was rocks and sticks under it all. And like a stun arse I was right behind him, scooping up what snow I could as I ran. Getting a few good smacks at him with it too.

Cripes, we ran the whole way, right around the string of campsites. Knows it wasn't nar bit chilly! Cold enough to freeze your nuts off. One fellow in his bare feet, the other one with a pair of socks and pants on but no shirt or nothing.

We stopped when we got around and had it out — one dyin big frosty snowball fight. It was a great bit of fun. It was cold all right, but I didn't mind that. All that snow coming down in those big, fat flakes. Lodging on my bare head and shoulders and gut and melting. Like I didn't give a shit about anything. And Curtis either and what the hell. It was some darn good.

When we gave it up, we was wet all right, not soaked now like you would be if it was raining, but still pretty wet in places. And cold! We got what snow there was in the
room out and then hauled off the wet clothes and scravelled into the sleeping bags. Cripes, it felt like it would take my feet a week to thaw out. Not just cold, my son, like the icicles they was.

“See, that was all your fault,” I laughed and shivered at the same time.

“Not the idiot, are you?” he said.

“Me, the idiot? My son, you're the one who needs hes head examined.”

And the feet freezing and us shivering and laughing, all in those blessed arctic sleeping bags.

When we got up again, about an hour later, we done it with a bit less of a fuss. I was right anxious to see if the slips had anything in them, so I couldn't stick it out in the sleeping bag any longer. We both got up and hauled on the change of clothes we each had brought along. Lucky thing we did bring something, or we'd a been in a bad state then. We hung up the sleeping bags as best we could, to dry off a bit where the bottoms of them got wet.

Once we was dressed and out moving around we didn't find it near so cold. We grabbed a piece of hard bread each to chew on and took off then to where we set out the slips the day before.

It had stopped snowing and I could feel it turning milder. What was on the ground probably wouldn't last long. There was a coupla inches of snow down in places, not really enough to cover in the slips, but enough that they probably would need some fixing up. I had my fingers crossed that at least one rabbit found his way in before the snow got too deep.