From the Dark, Book Three

The hook

“Could you move over a little, babe,” said the young man.

He held a stick over the fire with one hand while trying to wave the smoke away with the other.

“It’s like wherever you go, the smoke goes with you.”

“You mean you want me to take a face full of smoke instead of you?” said the young woman, his wife, who had been near him but who now moved away from him.

“No, that’s not what I was meaning. I mean that you could come over on this side which is further away from the smoke and maybe I can still sit here with my main squeeze looking out on nature and enjoying the purity of all that is out here in the wild.”

He smiled.

She frowned.

“You sound like you’re mocking me,” she said.

She sat stiffly now where she had been warm, cozy and pliable before.

“I didn’t say that, Christy—”

“But you meant it!”

“I didn’t mean it either. Look, its no secret that I haven’t camped out much in my life before. I’ve been a city boy the whole time. It’s been cars and movies and going with friends to the malls. Anything of a more rustic and wild nature we reserved for the once in a while trip to the zoo.

“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like it out here. I do. Especially being out here with you.”

He got up and went over to her. Grabbing her around the shoulders he tried to pull her in close. But she wasn’t cooperating. She was still stiff and sat erect like a statue.

“But you haven’t sounded like you enjoy it,” she said. “It’s been one complaint after another since we came out here, Gerald.”

“Well, yeah,” he said with a grin. “Maybe I have complained a little. If you’re trying to set up a tent and you find there’s not enough stakes to do it—in a new tent, mind you—then I’m going to complain a little. It’s not a reflection on you, babe, but on the people who manufactured the thing. I bought it and assumed that it was all there but it’s a little too late to go exchange it when we’re out here away from any civilization. And we need a tent to stay in, unless you want to sleep out under the stars.”

“It’s been done before.”

“I guess so but we won’t have to. You have to admit that I got it up even without all the stakes. Some sticks and a sharp rock. That did it. Kind of primitive but it gave me a bit of pride to somehow be in solidarity with the first cavemen who crawled out of their caves and thought there might be something over the hill they would be interested in. Some skins and makeshift stakes and they had a tent for road.

“Not light and easily transportable like ours here but good enough for the job. And all done with the materials at hand, just like I did.”

He started to make grunting sounds.

“I hope you brought enough meat,” he said smiling again and he leaned over and gave Christy a peck on the cheek.

She was still not having any of it.

“But that wasn’t all of it, Gerald,” she said. “You complained that this place was too far from people.”

“Well, it is isn’t it? You and your family may like that sort of thing but to a guy whose been in the city his whole life surrounded by people all the time, it’s a little funny to come someplace and find no one. It doesn’t seem natural.”

“But that’s one of the beauties of camping out,” she said. “You get away from people, away from civilization, and you see nature as it was meant to be not how it is when it's cornered and caged into some kind of antiseptic place where you look at it as if it were something from some other place.

“Here we are a part of it. We are in nature.

“You smell that air? It’s clean. There’s no exhaust fumes in it at all; no pollution. Just the smells of the wild, of grasses and trees. Of nature.”

Gerald inhaled and started to cough.

“It may be pure and all that but my lungs are used to the pollutants so they’re not taking this stuff all that well.”

“You see,” she said, “More complaints.”

He grabbed her again but this time with both arms and he brought her in close to him.

“Look, babe,” he said, “that I might be somewhat tense about being out here probably’s from the hunter gatherer in me coming out. I need to protect my woman against everything that might come along and out here without the police or anybody else we’re kind of at the whims of anyone who might come up and want to do something bad.

“Puts me on my guard.”

He looked around with his hand to his forehead. It was exaggerated.

“You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you? A man and a woman out by themselves terrorized by an ax wielding, knife wielding, gun wielding, long fingernail wielding maniac. You can’t just turn to the police and complain if one of those crazies shows up out here.”

“You can’t do that all that well in the city either,” said Christy defensively. “If they show up there it’s always going to be too late for what the police can do for you.”

“But with people around you’re going to be safer—”

“Really? They’re going to come to the rescue? You see that much in the big city, Gerald?”

“What I’m saying is that I just feel safer in the city. That’s all. And it’s not necessarily because of people either.

“You remember that story about that guy who went to Alaska and stayed with those nice, cuddly grizzly bears. He found them friendly and playful and he even took his girlfriend up there to live with him among those wonderful, lovely animals that had become his friends. ...

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