Dan Versus Nature (27 page)

“Like this?” I say, mirroring Hank’s position as best I can.

He nods. “That’s good. Just point the toes of your back foot away from your body a bit. Turn the front foot about forty-five degrees.”

I pivot my feet a little.

“That’s right,” Hank says. “Excellent.”

“Barbecue and a good brawl,” Penelope says to Charlie, gnawing off a piece of squirrel. “There’s something so Hemingway-esque about it, don’t you think?”

Charlie smirks. “I have a feeling this is going to be more
Blood Meridian
than
Old Man and the Sea.
”

“Now,” Hank says, raising his fists. “Get your hands up. Make sure your thumbs are outside of your fists, otherwise you’ll break them.”

I clench my hands into fists and hold them up in front of my face.

“Just like your left foot, your left hand leads,” Hank instructs me. “You can jab with it”— he demonstrates —“but it’s also for blocking. The right hand, the stronger arm, that’s what you’re going to hit with. All right, so, I’m gonna be you in this scenario. You be the bully or whoever and pretend to take a swipe at me.”

I take a weak punch at Hank. He lifts his left forearm, blocking my strike.

“Right here,” Hank says, extending his right arm and giving me a light tap on the chin with his fist. “You’ve got your opening. If you do it correctly, you should only have to do it once. A bully will generally back down if he gets hit, because he’s not expecting it. He — or she, it can be a she, I guess — usually only preys on the weak.”

“Are you saying it’s OK to hit a girl, Mr. Langston?” Charlie asks.

“Well, no.” Hank blinks uncomfortably. “You shouldn’t ever hit a girl — unless, you know, your life is in danger. Then, I suppose, all bets are off.” He laughs. “But, really, come on, when was the last time you were bullied by a girl?”

Charlie and I avoid each other’s gazes.

Hank clears his throat. “OK, let me take a shot, and you try to block it.”

He swings at me in super-slow-motion. I lift my forearm and block his punch, countering with one of my own, stopping well before I come in contact with his head.

“Perfect,” Hank says, nodding. “There you go. That’s all you need.”

“Yeah, but,” I say, “if I’m ever actually attacked, I seriously doubt we’ll be fighting in slow-mo. Can we speed it up a little? I’ll take a more realistic punch at you, and you block it, then you take one at me, so I can see the block-return-punch thing at a more true-to-life speed.”

“Right,” Hank says. “Sure. OK. Just tell me when it’s coming so I’m ready.” He laughs. “The last thing I want is a broken nose here.”

“Fight, fight, fight!” Penelope chants, waving a squirrel skewer in the air. She looks over at Charlie. “Come on, Charlie. Where’s your spirit? Cheer them on. Fight, fight, fight!”

But Charlie is glued to his camera like he’s about to capture a shot of the rare and elusive Philippine warty pig.

I take a deep breath and get into my boxer stance, my heart racing.

This is it. Time to put up or shut up.

“OK,” I say, swallowing. “Get ready. It’s going to be fast. Here it comes.”

I leap at him, taking a powerful swing, putting all my weight behind it.

Hank isn’t expecting such a forceful punch, and he jacks up his hairy arm instinctively, blocking my heavy blow expertly, just like I knew he would.

Then, he automatically comes at me with a hard right, firing it out like a piston.

That’s when I close my eyes and lunge forward.

Throwing my face toward his fist.

First there’s a crunching sound, like someone stepping on a bag of cornflakes. Then a flash of light as my head snaps back, then screaming pain that shoots up my nose and straight into my brain.

“Ahhhhh!”
I cry, stumbling back, my hands grabbing my face.

“Holy-crap-what-the-hell-just-happened?” Hank shouts. “You . . . you
leaned into it
! Why-did-you-do-that-you-weren’t-supposed-to-do-that!”

“Jesus Christ!” Penelope says, leaping to her feet. “I was just kidding about wanting to see carnage, guys!”

The blood streams from my nostrils like a faucet turned on full blast. My hands are gloved in red.

“That does not look promising,” Charlie says.

Click, click, click.

I stare at Hank. “I thick you broke by dose,” I say, all nasal.

“Hemorrhaging like that would certainly suggest so,” Charlie offers.

Hank snatches up his water filtering sock and gently holds it against my face. “I’m so sorry, Dan, I — you came at me so fast, and I . . .” He’s shaking his head, his eyes wide. “I don’t know what — I can’t believe . . .”

“Why’d you hit be so hard?” I say, my voice muffled by his sock.

“I wasn’t trying to! I — I just . . .” Hank stammers. “You came forward and . . . Did you trip or something?”

“You thick it’s
by
fault that you hit be?” I say, knowing full well that it was. That this is what I’d intended all along — what Charlie and I had discussed. Though, not exactly this. Not the horrible pain or the busted, bleeding nose. More like a crack on the cheek or a smack to the ear.

At least, that’s how Charlie had charted it out in the
pugilism
-planning phase.

“No, of course not!” Hank splutters, still holding his blood-soaked sock to my nose. “I’m not . . . blaming anyone . . . It was an accident, obviously. I’m just . . . trying to figure out how it happened.”

“You struck him in the face with your fist,” Charlie explains. “There’s little mystery to it. We all witnessed the blow.”

Hank shoots Charlie a look. “Thank you, Charlie. Yes. I know
what
happened. I’m just trying to discern
how
it happened.”

“Baybe it was an unconscious thing,” I snuffle. “Baybe you wanted to get be back for accidentally shooting you with an arrow.”

“No!” Hank insists, shaking his head. “Not a chance. That’s ridiculous. I did not consciously
or
unconsciously attempt to hurt you. I would never do that.”

I don’t respond. To do so would acknowledge Hank’s innocence and accept his apology, which Charlie explained would lessen Hank’s remorse. I feel like sort of a dick for leaving him hanging, but I’m not about to throw all of my hard work down the drain.

It’s all for the greater good. For Mom. To save her from the avalanche of emotional pain that will come when Hank inevitably disappoints her.

Let’s just hope Erin finds guys with crooked noses sexy.

It’s difficult to draw when you’re rocked by bouts of shivering. The graphite tip of my pencil skitters across the page, the smooth, curved line I’m attempting to make becoming a long, jagged stroke. My skin is all gooseflesh, and my shoulders are scrunched up tight to my neck. I erase the line, shake out my hand, and try again.

I probably should have stayed inside the shelter this morning, warm and protected in our debris bed. But I woke up with what felt like a bayonet in my skull, my nose throbbing, sending pain pulsing across my face.

Also, my ass started burning again. So I was getting it from both ends.

I got up, applied the last dregs of the Calamine lotion to my itchy nether regions, and got to drawing to try to keep my mind occupied.

I shift on my rock, my butt bone sore, my nose a thrumming ache. I touch the bulge on my face. It feels like I’ve grown a small piece of fruit above my lips.

It took a long time to get the bleeding to stop last night. Once it finally did, I washed up in the brook, using Hank’s other sock to dab cold water on the wound in an effort to keep the swelling down. It did not work.

I try to breathe through my nostrils, clogged and wheezy.

The one good thing about having a broken nose is that it’s made the poison ivy rash in my ass seem like a feather tickle.

I return to my work. Between the pink-stained sky and the blanket of ground fog acting as a reflector, there is just enough light to allow me to see what I’m drawing.

On the page, a giant Werebear emerges from the Dark Forest, sent by the injured Night Goblin to hunt down Sir Stan and Princess Erilin. The beast silently approaches our sleeping lovers, twisted up in a blanket on the ground, their limbs entwined —

“That’s damn good, bud.”

I jerk my head up and see Hank looking over my shoulder.

“That’s the kind of thing I
thought
you drew.” He nods at my drawing. “Comics and stuff.”

Ah, crap. He wasn’t supposed to see this.

“This stuff is stupid,” I say. “It’s just to blow off steam. It’s so cliché.”

“I don’t know,” Hank says. “I like it. I see that you’re incorporating some of our misadventures into your story. Is that Penelope sleeping there?”

“Penelope?” I look down at my sketchbook, at the picture I’ve drawn of Princess Erilin and Stan. “That’s not . . . Penelope.”

But it so clearly is.

Hank laughs. “If you say so.”

I blink at the dead-accurate image of Penelope, the Desert Princess interloper.

Oh my God, what have I done?

Hank limps over to the log beside me and gestures at it. “Mind if I have a seat?”

“No,” I lie, slapping my sketchbook shut. “Go ahead.”

Hank settles down with a groan. He glances up at the clear sky.

“Looks like we’re in for a nice day,” he says. “Once this fog burns off.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“It’s peaceful,” Hank says. “So early in the morning. Like the whole forest is still asleep. The animals. The trees. The fog on the ground . . .”

“Baby Robbie’s dead,” I say abruptly. “I watched his heart flatline yesterday.” I hold up my wrist, flash him my gone-black ID bracelet.

“Jesus, they show you that?” He grimaces.

“I don’t know why I’m saving this.” I tug the tiny baby sweater from my pocket. “I guess he can wear it in his casket if we have a funeral for him at school.”

“Again, I’m
really
sorry about that. And about . . .” He nods at my face, suppressing a wince. “So, uh, how’s it feeling?”

“Hurts like a bitch,” I say. “And it’s hard to breathe through.” I struggle to snuffle in some air for emphasis.

“I really screwed things up,” Hank says, running his hand through his bed head. “I just . . . I feel horrible about this, Dan. About this whole trip. I feel like I’ve made a mess of everything.”

I shrug and stare at my dad’s busted Timex, loose on my wrist.

“I really wanted this to be a good thing for us,” Hank continues. “A bonding thing, like your mom intended. Boy, did that go south, huh?” He laughs bitterly.

I fake a laugh, too, just to fill the awkward silence.

“When I met your mom,” Hank says, “I remember thinking: Here is this amazing woman. Smart, kind, attractive. Someone I felt so lucky to be with. And she had a son. And I thought . . . I thought, ‘If this all works out, if this thing clicks and you actually get the chance to be a part of this family, don’t you mess it up. Be present. Be involved. Be the kind of dad you wished you had.’ That’s what I told myself.” He shakes his head. “Not exactly going according to plan.”

My chest tightens, the back of my throat going thick. I wish it were easier for me to be an asshole — wish it came naturally to me, like it seems to for the Rick Chuffs of the world. Then I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling so guilty. So squirmy and greasy. Like I need to bathe in the brook.

“So,” I hear myself saying, “you, uh, didn’t get along with your dad?”

Hank gives a half smile. “I’ll tell you a story.” He reaches down and picks up a stick and pokes at last night’s ashes. “So, I’m not usually up this early, right? Not a morning person, for sure. I’m more of a night owl.
The Tonight Show,
The Late Late Show,
and all that.”

“Me, too,” I say, and immediately regret it.

“Well, not my dad. He was an early riser. Up at four thirty every single morning. Didn’t matter what time he went to bed, four thirty came and he was bounding out of bed — putting on his running shorts, his cross-trainers, so he could go for his morning jog. Rain, snow, windstorm. Didn’t matter. Four thirty and he was up and on the road.”

“That’s pretty dedicated,” I say. “Though it sounds like my idea of hell.”

Hank chuckles. “Tell me about it. So, anyway, there was this time, when I was about your age. A little younger, actually. Thirteen or fourteen. I can’t remember. All I know is that I was desperate to try to connect with him. Show my dad that we had something in common. So, for a few weeks, I joined him in his morning routine. Dragged myself out of bed at four thirty. Did the run with him, nearly throwing up every time. Then we’d have cereal together at the kitchen table: All-Bran and skim milk. No sugar. Tasted like little cardboard rabbit pellets.” He laughs weakly. “We’d drink black coffee and read different sections of the paper — all of this in silence. If I’d comment on something I’d read, he might grunt, but that was about it. Eventually, the sun would come up and blink through the window, and my dad would fold his portion of the paper, put his dirty dishes in the sink, and head off to take a shower.”