Find the bum

When Allan took his final inhale, the cherry on the joint burned to its cream-toned crutch, and ash-tainted air rushed to the back of his throat. The rank taste made him purse his lips and lap at his mouth like a dog. As his tongue flipped around his gums, it streaked across his teeth, where he thought he felt the ridges of decaying enamel. In between pinched fingers, he raised the joint in front of him for inspection, but he was downwind, near a smoky campfire, and things were challenging to see.

Allan had the makings of what Sara wanted in a husband. Tall, six feet, athletic, he dressed better than most men his age. You wouldn’t suspect he had a weed habit. He was handsome, with a steady job. He stood out in a crowded room. His expression was inviting, and he could carry on a conversation if he wanted to. His eyes and forehead moved like a comedian's when he was in a good mood. But Sara saw what others didn’t; there was a hard side to his face, and something in him was unsettled. It seemed he became more neurotic the longer she knew him. He let his imagination lead him through the darkest possibilities of his future and used the fictional outcomes as evidence that he was doomed. She worried about his sleepwalking. 

Sara had goaded him into going on the hike, and he never stopped grumbling about its ensuing misery. She thought that he would be a foghorn if he were a cartoon. To make matters worse, the day before their departure, she walked in on him masturbating on the toilet. His threadbare boxers were around his ankles. She saw him give the final tug on his penis and drop his phone; she backed out of the bathroom and shut the door so fast that she didn’t see what was playing on the screen. With his limp dick, many inches above the water in the basin of the porcelain bowl, Allan felt like he was in a jail cell, and his punishment continued when he broached the subject with Sara. He spewed nonsense to her, trying to recover the ground he felt he’d lost in the relationship. In what ended up being his ultimate justification, he blamed her for making him masturbate because they didn’t hook up enough. Their multi-day adventure through the San Bernardino mountains did not start well. 

Allan struggled to see the joint in front of him, but what he could see of the camp looked good. There was a picnic table, a fire pit, and their tent. It was a chilly but agreeable temperature, and they’d spread some of their clothes on the table to air out. The time he’d spent smoking alone felt necessary but came with a blend of guilt and shame. He stood alone next to the fire, wondering what he was avoiding. The sentiment morphed into worry that rang in his mind like an alarm when he realized they were miles away from the next campground. 

He moved out of the way of the fire’s smoke quietly, like the soles of his boots were felt. Prowling was the only way to keep his attention on the more important thing; listening. Shadows around him were making noises. Sensing danger, he whipped his head to a rustling he thought he had heard. The dead joint dropped from his hands and fell to the ground. There was the crackling wood, the creaking of wind shook trees, and maybe, he thought, something else. Had the weed made him paranoid, or was his response a natural form of protection? The trail out of their camp disappeared into the black beyond. He tried to listen out there; listen for it, but his breathing had become labored and swallowed up the noise. His nose whistled when he inhaled. When he exhaled, he felt blood rush to his fingers. The moment had taken hold of him.

It was Sara’s father’s blue tent. She told Allan that she used to stare at its grey interior when they camped in Yosemite, and in the roof’s crinkles, she’d see the mountains she’d one day climb. He had not yet determined what the tent was trying to teach him. Staring at the outside of it, in the dark, stoned, he thought it was frighteningly thin. He recalled that they had to stake it into the ground so it wouldn’t fly away. It didn’t seem like a shelter at all. He wished he were a skilled bricklayer so he could erect a more sound structure and negated the thought as being entirely illogical in nearly the same moment. He didn’t use to get like this, but he didn’t know what to do or how to act. He was a lake that had lost its water. The first words he spoke after smoking made him nervous. It was like he didn’t know what his voice would sound like or if he could talk at all. 

“Hey,” He said, unzipping the tent’s thin flap of a door. 

Sara put down her guidebook and gazed at him. Behind him, she saw the flickering fire. 

“You need to put out the fire before you come in.” 

At hearing her command, Allan felt a hundred eyes on him. He felt like he had made a mistake, was in the act of making another mistake, and that jackals were waiting in the wings to tear him apart no matter how he moved. The emotion morphed to anger at Sara for giving him orders. He was uncomfortable. He was always uncomfortable.

“Right now?” He asked.

“Unless you’re going to go back out, yea,” She said, “I’m not going back out.” 

The tent door was flapped wide and Allan, crouched, looked at Sara’s stern face. She wore no makeup, and her features looked blotchy and thin. Her eyes, which he’d never thought about critically before, seemed too narrow, and her hair was matted and wiry. She must have noticed him judging her. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” 

The imaginary circle of predators that surrounded Allan got a step closer. He was far more aware of the fictitious threat than his facial expression as he projected his ugliness onto his girlfriend. His only way out of the hole he was digging was to tend to the fire. Unconvincingly, he told her that he wasn’t looking at her “like anything” and left the tent. He stood over the sputtering fire, wondering how he was supposed to put it out. It was like he was looking for an on-off switch. It took him a while to remember that he’d watched Sara put the one out the night before by scattering its ashes. He stumbled and found a large enough stick he could use to complete the task. As he watched the last embers flame out and turn to dust, he felt completely vulnerable. There was only moonlight now, and Allan had convinced himself somebody was stalking them. 

Inside the tent, he strained to act normal in front of Sara, explaining tomorrow’s route. It was fifteen miles to the next stopping point, with even more elevation than they had completed that day. He could tell that she wanted him to engage her. She wanted him to ask how she felt about the trip and what she was looking forward to next. That type of curiosity was what Allan used to offer, and it would be nice for him to do it again, but he couldn’t stop worrying about what he thought he heard outside. His mind cycled through doors of possibilities trying to match the sound to its image. He couldn’t quite place it until he did. The sound stuck to an image. He was certain it was branches scraping on a backpack. 

And It was getting louder. He shot his eyes to Sara to see if she’d heard it. 

She was looking at him like rotted fruit.

“Why are you being so quiet?” She asked. 

Allan looked up at the tent's gray interior, thinking it looked like wrinkled aluminum foil. He didn’t know what it meant. He wanted to ask if she’d heard the sounds but didn’t want her to think he was crazy. No, he couldn’t let her believe he was acting weird. She’d already expressed her dissatisfaction with his habitual use of weed, and she’d even told him once that his constant negativity was borderline paranoia. 

He begged to be sober and looked at her, “Sorry. I’m just tired.” 

Outside their tent, sudden, like something from the sky, they heard heavy feet dragging and strong breathing. A jolt of nerves shot up Allan’s spine. Sara’s face folded until it was scrunched in an aggressive panic. She closed her guidebook and shifted her body into a seated position. 

The monster outside was getting closer. 

“Is someone there?” Sara shouted. 

Allan’s heart raced. This was exactly why he didn’t want to do this shit. He’d told Sara that something bad could happen out here. Getting murdered was one of the many reasons he gave for opposing the trip. Another he liked to harp on was money. They spent a few hundred dollars on equipment and supplies to walk in nature and sleep outside. Bullshit.

 None of that mattered now—a man’s gravelly voice answered Sara. 

“I am here.”

Allan felt trapped in the tent, like a fat pig waiting to be slaughtered in its pen. To his alarm, Sara unzipped and exited the tent shoeless. He had to follow her. 

A barrel-chested man with a scraggly beard and a cowboy hat stood near the picnic table. The size of his hands was terrifying. His knuckles carried hair like a woodsman’s forearms. Allan thought he looked like an ex-football player who might have CTE. His pack stuck out above his head three feet, and tin cups dangled from its sides like a bum’s possessions off a shopping cart. 

“Who are you?” Sara said, rising from the tent. 

“There you are.” The man’s face cut into a grin showing off his gray teeth, “Just you two here?” 

Allan stood next to Sara. His knees were shaking.

“What do you want?” He blurted.

The man shifted his weight to his back foot and admired his dirty hands, “I didn’t mean to scare you. Just hiking the B section and thought I might be able share camp.” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sara said. 

The man nodded and then tugged at his matted beard, “Ok, little lady. Ok. Then let me get a few minutes in front of the fire before I go? Get the flame up again. Let a geezer kick up his feet.”

The man moved his beady gaze between the campers. Allan judged the danger and thought saying no once more would aggravate the man. He felt Sara looking up at him from under his arm, which he’d wrapped around her. He couldn’t tell what she wanted him to do. 

“I won’t bite.” The man said. 

They settled around the campfire. The man made himself at home and sat on the ground with his legs stuck out straight, leaning against his pack. Seeing him under the light of the fire made the situation worse. He was not a contributing member of society hiking the PCT like them. He was a filthy bum whose pack was full because it contained the contents of his whole life. His face was burnt copper, wrinkled from the sun's heat; his beard was multi-colored and raw like the coat of a sick animal. 

The bum carried a one-sided conversation like a mental patient at a podium in front of his peers. Allan and Sara were caught in a tense place, trying to appease the man and wish him away, like children hoping to avoid the temper of their drunk father. It worried Allan that the man claimed to be alone. He weighed whether it was better than being with other bums. He thought of the possibility of another bum stalking the shrubs outside the camp, ready to execute a desperate scheme. He determined that bums were shifty, unpredictable, and did not live by the same rules as him and Sara, alone or en masse. They should not have welcomed the man at their campfire. 

Soon, the bum’s soliloquy meandered into silence. He was transfixed on a spot of ground a few feet to Allan’s left. He got to one knee in a jerked motion and hurried towards them. His eyes didn’t break from the spot where Allan’s joint was. The bum picked it up and gave it a smell. 

“You got any more of this?” 

Sara craned her neck upward at Allan. He had a half-ounce in his left jacket pocket, an agreeable amount to your daily pot smoker, and a gold mine for wild bums like the one before him, willing to get high on anything. Allan felt under siege. It was a slippery slope giving bums things. If you give a bum a nickel, he’ll ask for a dollar.

He acted on instinct, and decided to try to make a deal.

“I’ve got some,” Allan said, grabbing the weed from his pocket.

The bum’s eyes salivated at the sight of the filled zip lock that Allan held over his head like a celestial token. The moment stretched like putty. 

Allan felt Sara ready at his side. She was fitter than him, and even without her shoes on, he wondered why they didn’t just run away. The bum wouldn’t be able to catch them. There was cowardice in Allan. He suddenly thought of Sara walking in on him jerking it two days earlier. He was a starfish on a jagged ledge, drowning in his indignities. 

He pushed through his doubts and presented his deal to the bum.

“I’ll give you this, but you have to leave camp,” Allan said. Then repeated himself to be clearer, “If I give you this, you have to leave camp.” 

His knees were shaking, but he spoke steady enough. As they waited for the bum’s response, Allan heard rustling behind them. The sound was unmistakable. It was the same noise they’d regretted hearing earlier; footsteps. 

Allan spun around. 

The second bum was shorter and more ravaged looking than the one by the fire. He wielded a hunter's knife in front of him, was hunched back, and wore an eye patch. A birthmark shaped like crossbones covered the side of his cheek, and his upper body rounded like a rat sitting down to eat. He snatched the bag of weed from Allan and forced the couple closer to the bum by the fire, who kept talking. 

“Just bad luck, kid.” He said, grabbing Sara and yanking her toward him, “I smelled that weed from the trail and knew it was going to be mine.”

Allan was nearly on top of the fire, and he could feel the heat on his leg.

Sara was struggling in the arms of the bum and couldn’t wiggle from his powerful grip. He had one arm dug into her stomach, pulling her toward him so that her ass was snug against his crotch. Any time she squirmed for freedom, he got harder. His other hand was around her throat, occasionally dropping off so he could squeeze one of her tits. Allan yearned to help Sara. He wanted nothing more than to rescue her from the unfolding savagery, but his feet seemed cemented into the earth. The fire at his leg grew hotter and hotter. 

Sara was screaming at him, “Allan! Allan!” 

He was on fire. 

“Allan, you’re on fire!” 

Allan began jumping up and down and kicking his leg, desperately trying to get the flame off his pants. Sara took her jacket from her shoulders as she lept from the tent. Allan screamed as she quickly beat the flame out. Within a few moments, the ordeal was over, and Allan inspected his leg to ensure that he hadn’t been burned. Sara was breathing hard. He did not want to look at her.

“What were you doing? You walked into the fire.”  

Allan was reeling from what had just happened and began walking around their camp in circles. Where were the bums? Was it all a dream? His eyes searched, but there was only the picnic table, the fire pit, and their tent.

Again, Sara asked him why he’d walked into the fire, but he couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t tell her that a one-eyed, rat-faced bum forced him there with a knife. None of what he imagined happened. There were no bums. He never tried to make a deal. 

He was only standing by the fire, just like before. Sara looked at him like he was a stray dog. He had become unpredictable. The shame stacked atop his shoulders. What was worse? Getting caught tugging it or walking into a fire? Both were insurmountable. They stood outside her father’s blue tent in silence for a while. He was uncomfortable like always. He wondered if what he’d experienced was a sign of what was to come or if he’d just gotten too high. He shrank into his thoughts. Sara thought he looked shorter than his height. She walked toward the tent and told him to come. She wanted to help. He took a step to follow her, then froze. What was that, coming from the shadows?