I’m 10 years old.
The air is frosty, there is a good four to five inches of snow on the ground. On the drive up we squelched through muck and slush, tires slipping on the uneven surface. The road got progressively worse as we travelled north. We’ve been bumping up and down on a gravel track for about half an hour. Deep in the forest the car slows and we stop beside a small cabin.
‘Okay girls we’re here, everybody out.’
We explode from the car, some of us with bladders bursting.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’
‘It’s the outhouse, behind the cabin.’
Others stay behind, pull sleeping bags and rucksacks from the car, a squirming mass of excitable young girls. This is our prize for being the best patrol in the troop. A weekend camping trip.
It’s the middle of February.
Inside the cabin Annie is laying a fire and Toni is opening the doors to the bedrooms. Toni gets one room and Annie gets the other. We arrange our sleeping bags on the rag rugs in front of the fireplace. Somebody sneezes as the dust whirls in clouds above our heads. We run around, inside and out, exploring.
‘Shut the door!’ shouts Annie who is bent over a pile of damp firewood and Zippo firelighters. Eventually she gets fed up and shoos us all outside. The snow squeaks as we tromp down to the riverbank where the water runs clear and cold. We stand back from the edge and flop over backwards transforming ourselves into snow angels.
Later:
The knife in my hands is sharp, it cuts through the wood easily. I’m happy with my stick, once it’s whittled down it will be perfect for the marshmallows and hotdogs that I will later impale. I’m thinking about this when the blade slips and I catch the knuckle of my finger. The cut is deep and the blood flows freely in the ice cold. I can’t feel any pain, my fingers are numb. I hold my hand up, first aid lessons kicking in. We’re girl guides, always prepared.
‘I think I need a band aid’ I say, entranced with the flap of skin that flops over the area where my knuckle used to be.
Toni grabs me and I keep my hand elevated, squeezing tightly.
At the side of the cabin there is an old water pump. It’s slightly rusted, the handle stiff from disuse. It takes Toni a while to get the pressure up, pumping the handle until water spills from the faucet. Great gusts of ice cold water from a hundred foot deep well. I stick my hand under and the cold freezes my hand immediately. The blood runs away, soaking into the ground underneath.
Later:
Beans and eggs cooked over a calor camping stove. We split the chores evenly. Two of us cook, two wash up, two to dry. Then it’s time to go back out into the cold, we’re making fishing rods now. Stout sticks tied off with fishing line from Annie’s kit.
‘You’ll need bait’ says Annie.
Down at the riverbank the ground is partially thawed. In the dark with our flashlights we search. A few minutes digging and the bucket is full of nightcrawlers. We throw our lines into the river, not expecting anything to happen. One of the girls shouts.
‘I’ve caught something!’
She plants her feet firmly and Toni is there to help her land her catch.
An eel, black as the night sky above us. It flips and flops greasily on the riverbank, slithering back to the water.
‘Throw it back!’ someone cries.
‘Yuck!’
‘Let it go, poor thing!’
THWACK!
Annie is standing over the eel, a baseball bat in her hand. In the moonlight we can see a dark smear on the wood. The eel has stopped moving. She picks up the dead thing and carries it back to the cabin. We are quiet, sickened. We can’t look at each other, stare instead at the patch of snow that runs black with blood. In the distance we can hear the whoosh of the water pump.
Later:
We sit around the fire, sticks held over the flames. We’ve eaten all the hotdogs. Most were half cooked, raw on one side and burnt on the other. Now our sticks are stuffed with marshmallows that dribble and ooze over the flame. We’ve all dropped our food into the cinders, but the three second rule applies so a quick dusting on our jeans and back onto the stick. The room smells of woodsmoke and burnt vanilla. Gradually we slide into our sleeping bags, our mouths sticky with melted sugar and ash.
In the morning we wake to the smell of cooking. Annie stands over the small camping stove frying slices of eel for breakfast.
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Friday Flickr Fiction inspired by ‘Hands‘ by Flickr user CinDLin. Also taking part this week: The Gurrier, Teaandcakes, Littlegoat, aquafortis and Chris.
Suzie pushed her way to the front of the crowd. People stumbling, filthy and panicked. Her coat pulled tight around a skinny frame protected her from the touch of skin on skin. They stumbled into her, screaming and tearing at themselves. Many still sporting the injuries they’d received. Black eyes, torn lips, bruised and battered. The crowd moved slowly, there was no organisation. The mob pushing up to the front against the wave of people pushing back, trying to get through. All around her they stared with dead eyes. Suzie felt nothing. She pushed along with the rest, moving inch by meagre inch closer to the gate.
Me, a big ol’ 767 and 209 other souls. I have to say I love 767’s. I especially love 767’s when they reach cruising height and the engines cut right back to nothing. That’s when the fun begins. As the Tayto ads say ‘There’s always one.’ In this case ‘the one’ tends to be a passenger who sits up suddenly and does a bit of a prairie dog in their seat, bouncing round and panicked. 