Straight and Narrow

Wake up ya dummy.

Richard jolted upright in his army-navy thrift store cot—he never camped without it—his rapid breathing only slightly outpacing his heartbeat. He leaned on one elbow, his body twisted and awkwardly lifted off the cot. He frantically rubbed his forehead with his free hand.

He squinted and blinked wondering, where am I?

The cot squished as he moved and the aluminum railing was cold and wet to his touch.

For the first time he heard the rain pounding the tent’s canopy and the wind whipping the canvas siding. A bead of water running down his forehead alerted him that he was soaking wet.

He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth. His forehead formed peaks and valleys as he raised his eyebrows. None of it erased the throbbing in his head.

The blackness inside the tent choked him.

Benji, he screamed internally. His mother named him Benjamin, but I won’t call him that.

He tried to whisper the boy’s name, but his voice wouldn’t allow it. Trying again, he said the boy’s name, but his voice was hoarse, a hoarseness that always seemed to be there.

Nothing came in response.

A strike of lightning lit up the tent. Everything was blurred to Richard’s eyes, but he saw that Benji was unbothered, asleep in his cot.

Then he saw the tent pole, blurry but obvious, the aluminum rod that holds the tent upright, the single most important component, was bent.

If the tent pole collapses, his boy would have no shelter.

The throbbing in his head intensified with the thunder.

He reached around his cot for his boots. It was when he placed his feet on the ground that he realized they were already on.

He cleared his throat and said, “Benji, I’m going out to find something to keep the tent up,” the hoarseness thickly coating his voice like grease in an engine.

A muffled “uhhh” was all he heard.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw the blurred shapes of his cot, of Benji’s shoes, and found the lining of the tent door.

As he stood from the cot, a crinkly blanket he slept with in the night fell to his feet. His raincoat. He started to feed one arm through but stopped when he felt the damp, heaviness of his clothes and tossed it aside.

Benjamin was warm and dry and half asleep when he heard his dad unzipping the tent. A couple of frustrated grunts had preceded it as he tried to find the zipper in the darkness.

Richard stepped into the stormy night and zipped the flap shut and shouted above the rain, nature’s white noise, “I’ll be right back.”

Benjamin didn’t hear him. He was back asleep.

Richard couldn’t see much but he heard the rain pounding the tarp above the tent and the pine tree limbs rustling each other from the gusts of wind.

“I’ll find a tree trunk to stick in the tent pole’s place. Then we’ll be fishing tomorrow morning.” Speaking to himself helped him in stressful situations, as if he was telling himself what God told him to do.

He could think clearly again and the first thought he had was about the boat. It was across from the campsite on a sandy bank, tied off on a big rock. They could sleep in a sunken tent but couldn’t fish in a sunken boat.

Between the boat and tent was forest but it had been thinned, making it easy to navigate in the dark without fear of tripping over fallen trees or vines.

Richard started that direction, but his leg slipped away from him and pulled him to the ground. The object he slipped on clanked against another.

A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky lighting the campsite, the path ahead, and last night’s beer bottles. The thunder that followed sounded like a giant tree splitting in half rather than a big boom.

“Damn beer bottles.”

Before the light faded back to darkness he caught a glimpse of the lake shore, spotting a white speck on it, and said, “At least the boat’s still there.”

The rain fell harder now and began to pool in areas making it seem to be coming from above and below him. He shivered wondering if it was really spring and wished he had brought the raincoat.

The thought crossed his mind to warm up in his truck, wait out the storm to see if it lightens up. Then his mind shifted to what was in the toolbox. But they couldn’t fish in a sunken boat, and he brushed the thought aside and headed for the boat.

After hurriedly stumbling through the thinned forest, he made it to the shoreline. He stopped to catch his breath, rubbing his arms, and in the darkness imagined puffs of white smoke escaping with each exhale. The boat and what was in the compartment behind the seat were still afloat.

It was too dark to get into the boat without the possibility of falling into the water. He could swim but the choppy waters and his state of mind might be his doom.

The boat was tied off to a triangular chunk of white and pink granite, which he easily found. He grappled onto the rope and followed it to the boat.

He jumped from the shore onto the carpeted deck of the boat. It had two plastic windshields, meant to protect the driver and passenger of the boat when running. He used them to steady himself. He berated Benji for doing the same thing, saying, “Boy, don’t use the windshield as a handrail, you’ll break it.”

As he jumped down into the hull, his boots dropped into a couple inches of water. “Shit, that’s not good,” he said.

He took hold of the driver’s-side windshield to pull himself to the steering wheel console. Maybe he had been too hard on the boy, he thought.

Moving his hand around the dashboard, he searched for the button with two wavy lines. Once he found it, he punched it and water shot out of the back of the boat in a three-foot arc into the lake.

Richard sat down and opened the compartment behind him. He reached in and felt around inside the compartment, finally pulling out a can. Not cold, but it’ll quench his thirst all the same. A smile stretched across his face as the can cracked open and a malty scent hit his nostrils. “Thank God for the bilge pump,” he said.

He sat for a moment in the pouring rain, guzzling the warm beer as if it were a bottle of water.

A bolt of lightning darted from the sky and struck land frighteningly close by. A thunderous boom instantaneously followed that traveled all the way up his spine.

It appeared to hit near Benji, he thought. He stared at the can in his hand, wishing for a moment he hadn’t remembered the compartment and what was in it and emptied what was left—just a sip—into the lake. He placed it on the bottom of the boat and slammed his boot down on the can. The frigid water splashed his face.

He pulled himself up using the steering wheel and then used the two windshields for balance as he headed to the front of the boat. He lost his balance but latched onto the rope to get back to land, back to the tent, back to Benji.

Lightning stretched across the sky, lighting his way back to the tent and his truck that was parked just before it. He saw from a distance that the tent was intact, lightning hadn’t struck it. Then he reminded himself he needed to find something straight and tall to support the tent, before the main pole collapses.

He thought of his toolbox and his tools and the hatchet. Yes, a hatchet would come in handy. He headed to the truck and opened the toolbox. In it he saw his leather tool belt, circular saw, and a foam ice chest. His hand found the lid of the ice chest.

As he drummed his fingers on the lid of the ice chest, his fingertips created dimples in the Styrofoam, and he forgot why he even opened the toolbox.

He opened the lid and pulled out a bottle. Unlike the boat compartment, this one was still cold.

What was it I came for? he asked himself.

The hiss when twisting the bottle cap made him forget the rain gushing down his face, and he drank it, undisturbed by its skunky aroma, as if he were in the Sahara Desert.

He was about halfway through it when something exploded, much like the thunder before. But it wasn’t thunder. It was pitch black.

Then he heard breaking branches. He couldn’t see it but knew, not far away, a tree was falling. The sound of branches snapping grew louder and the earth shuddered as it crashed down, breaking glass and crushing steel.

Hope no one was in that car, he thought to himself, they’ll need a hatchet to hack their way out.

He thought of Benji in the collapsed tent and then pictured him stuck under the fallen tree. Would he even be able to help him if he were stuck?

He stared at the beer bottle, wishing instead it was a can he could crumble. Then he threw it back in the foam chest and slammed the toolbox shut.

“The hatchet ya dummy!”

The toolbox reverberated shut when he tried to open it too quickly. He got a firmer grip and opened it again. Digging around his tools wasn’t easy. Everything in the toolbox was wet and he didn’t have the light to see if he was reaching for a hatchet or a hacksaw. A tin knocked over, and small metallic objects rattled against the tools. Screws, nails, and nuts worked their way to the bottom of the toolbox, like sand poured in a jar full of rocks.

The rain started falling harder and his clothes felt heavier. The wind rocked the lid of the toolbox back and forth on its hinge. He could even hear the tarp of the tent whipping from the wind.

Somewhere someone laughed, a witch’s laugh.

Benji was in the tent alone.

“The tent pole ya dummy!”

He slammed shut the toolbox and ran for the tree line, ducking into the forest. “There has to be something I can use,” he assured himself.

The lightning happened more frequently again, and he searched the forest when light was provided.

He came across a young birch tree that appeared dead, most of the branches had already been stripped from it but still stuck in the earth. The perfect height, straight and narrow.

It moved slightly when he pushed his body against it. He stepped back and kicked it, surprised by a fleeting sense of joy that followed although the tree still stood. He kicked it again and again, but it remained firmly planted in the ground.

He leaned against it aware for the first time how hard he was breathing.

All this time in the wet and the cold and all he found were a couple of beers and a headache, which pulsed more than ever at the thought of holding the tent pole upright all night.

If I hadn’t distracted myself, I would have found something and would be asleep, in dry clothes, on my cot, next to my boy, Benji, he thought and wished, to be there for Benji.

He started trekking back to the tent, content with holding the pole in place if needed when he stumbled over something on the ground. A fallen tree. He picked it up and swung it around. Straight and heavy, a young maple maybe.

Moving quickly, he dragged the young maple behind him, its lifeless branches snapping off as it brushed against other foliage.

“I’m coming Benji.”

Back at the tent, he expected it to be caved in on itself. That surely the pole would have collapsed by now, in this rain, in this wind.

The young maple thudded to the ground, and he unzipped the tent door.

He could see now, better than ever.

Benji’s leg still dangled off his cot. His cot was dry. The tent pole was perfectly straight.

The tent flap slipped out of his hand.

A light rain touched his face, his arm, his neck.

Richard wondered how long it had been since it happened last. The hallucinations that put him in rehab.

What happened then? When he frantically changed the locks in the middle of the night, saying, “The mean man is back.”

Yvonne told him that morning. That he was going to be a father and that she was going to name him Benjamin, after his dad.

Why didn’t he tell her?

She didn’t know his dad. He died when Richard was a teenager. Liver disease they said.

She didn’t know how a smile could turn so mean at night.

She didn’t know he called him dummy more than anything else.

She didn’t know the devilish sound a belt made as it whipped through the air or the cackle of his laughter after it struck.

She didn’t know the man he was.

The man I must never be, he told himself.