It was a good bargain, so Neal dutifully scraped his face every day and felt better for it. One of the challenges of living a primitive life was keeping clean, and a beard would make it more difficult, a repository of sweat, dirt, and dead little bugs. Besides, this was his big day of the week, the day he went to town, and he always liked to show the locals that he had it together. It was a point of pride. He put on a reasonably clean denim shirt, jeans, and jacket, and then his brand-new black Stetson. It was Saturday, his big day in town.
He started his hike to the Mills’ house. He didn’t have to look back over his shoulder to know that the coyote was trotting a good distance behind him.
Far back in the mountains an old man lay in the brush watching a rabbit in the clearing a few feet in front of him. The old man was naked except for a breechcloth made of pounded sagebrush. His long hair was white, as were the few scraggly whiskers that hung from his chin. He was a small man, well under five feet, and his copper skin was stretched tautly over muscles that were still lean and tight. The old man lay perfectly still as the rabbit lifted its head, twitched its nose, and sniffed the air.
The old man was not concerned. He had taken great care to stay downwind of his prey and he had watched the rabbit for many days, learning its habits. Meat was hard to come by, the rabbit was a wary prey, and his own reflexes were not as fast as they had been in his younger years. The old man recognized that the days when he could survive on speed and strength were long gone; now he must make do with experience and craft.
The rabbit put its nose to the ground and hopped slowly toward the bush. The old man released the string of his bow and the tiny arrow went through the rabbit’s neck. The rabbit twitched and kicked in its death spasms and then lay still. The old man got up, took the rabbit by its feet, and headed back to the cave to begin the long process of skinning it with a sharpened piece of flint.
Getting food was a full-time effort and would only get harder. The old man was sorry that summer-that time when the Creator stayed close to the earth and warmed an old man’s bones-was coming to an end. It was so much easier getting food in summer, when it was easy to dig roots, gather pine nuts, and pull up big clumps of desert grass. Then there were mesquite beans and the reeds that grew along the creek banks, and it was good for an old man to sit on a rock in the sun and grind the beans and nuts into a paste, or sit by the creek and make soup from the reeds and grass.
And there were lizards and rats and birds to catch. And rabbits.
But his favorites were the grasshoppers. The old man remembered the time before he was the last of his people, when he and his brothers and sisters would take their sharpened sticks and dig deep pits in the earth. Then they would form a big circle and pound on the earth with their sticks, driving the grasshoppers into the pit, where they could be easily caught. There were many ways to eat grasshoppers: crush them into a paste, boil them in a soup with sweet grass, roast them on a rock in the fire, or set them out to dry in the sun. Or if they were very hungry and their father was not looking, they would simply pop a live one into their mouths and chew.
But those were memories, and now there were no brothers or sisters to help and it was harder to catch the grasshoppers. And soon the snows would come and he would have to stay in the mountains away from the white men and it would be very cold. He had to kill many rabbits for their warm fur as well as their meat. And perhaps soon he would take his bow and his sharpened stick and try to kill a mountain sheep, because he no longer dared to sneak down into the valley and take one of the white man’s calves. Not when he could be easily tracked in the snow.
Shoshoko, “Digger”-that was his name, although he had not heard it spoken in many years-picked up his sharpened stick and headed back toward the cave.
Neal thought that shopping was a wonderful thing. He hadn’t thought this when he lived in New York City, three blocks from a grocery store, or even in Yorkshire, where the grocer and butcher were a pleasant twenty-minute stroll away, but he sure as hell thought it now, after two months of having to procure, preserve, and store food. Now he thought the cans of Dinty Moore beef stew stood among humankind’s highest achievements, right up there beside the pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Hormel chili. He had also developed a high opinion of the Jolly Green Giant’s cans of green beans, peas, and those peach slices floating in the sweet, sticky juice-especially the peaches, after a day or so in a canvas bag in cold, rushing water.
And what genius, Neal wondered, had come up with peanut butter? Could it really have been some dork named Skippy? Never mind, it was a major cultural advance. Let the food critics, the health food nuts, and the yuppies whine and scoff at canned food. To Neal canned food meant freedom, the ability to live at arm’s reach from civilization and still survive. Canned food let him live in his cabin and have plenty of time to read great books, fish, and take naps instead of spending all his time scratching in the dirt, or hunting, or guarding his crops from vermin.
Steve Mills thought so too.
“I’m happy to see,” Steve had said when he saw how Neal had stocked his larder, “that you’re not one of these purists we get up here who arrive with their Whole Earth catalogues and plans for a geodesic dome. They figure they’re going to grow their bean sprouts and their organic vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Only thing is, nature never read Diet for a Small Planet, so the deer and the rabbits and the bugs eat the whole crop instead of restricting themselves to their socially responsible share. Then one of these ‘alternative life-stylers’ kids named Sunshine or Raven gets an ear infection that herbal tea can’t cure, and so I find myself hauling them to the doctor in my air-polluting, gas-guzzling truck so he can write them a prescription for some nonorganic chemicals they can’t pay for anyway, so half the time I end up writing a check from the capitalist profits I make from selling my murderous, unhealthy red meat. And about the only thing that grows naturally up here that the animals don’t like is dope, so these purists are stoned half the time anyway, unless they have the sense to sell it instead of smoking it. So they end up either starving, dirty, malnourished drug casualties or wealthy capitalists running bales of marijuana into Reno in custom vans that cost more than my whole house. So I’m glad to see that you like Dirity Moore stew.”
Joe Graham had a different take on the purity issue. “You heard that saying about not taking the easy way out?” he’d asked Neal. “Sometimes the easy way is the best way. A lot of smart people have put in a lot of time making things easier. People who tell you not to take the easy way out are the same people who’ll then get on a plane to the West Coast instead of taking a covered wagon, which would be a lot harder.”
Neal didn’t care much about the philosophy of the whole thing. He just wanted to live in the cabin, not see people unless he wanted to, and read books. So he stocked up on his favorite canned food, bought a six-pack of bottled beer, and picked up his week’s supply of newspapers.
Steve Mills pulled his truck up alongside the sidewalk. He’d been down at the gas station, stocking up on surreptitious cigs.
“You ready to head back?”
“Why not?”
Neal slung his pack into the bed of the pickup and hopped into the passenger seat.
“Thought I’d work on my fluid intake at Brogan’s for a minute,” Steve said.
“Sounds good to me.”
Brogan was asleep in his chair. Brezhnev was asleep at his feet. The flies on the window screen were awake, though.
Brogan cracked an eye open as the door shut. “Help yourselves, leave the money on the bar, and remember that Brezhnev can count,” he said, then shut his eyes again.