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Second Prize, 1999 Student Short Story

My Night in a Compost Pile

Ash Howe

Dirt and grease showered me with every jerk and twist of the steel pliers.

"Hey," my boss shouted, "you're gonna rock that whole car down on top of you if you don't take it easy."

I opened my mouth to say something smart, but just then the transmission let go of its greasy perch and came down the transmission jack with a thud. Pain shot up my arm as I freed my sandwiched thumb.

When I stood up, my boss was looking at me with a funny grin. I'm not sure if he was amused with my grime-speckled image, worried about my oozing thumb, or concerned with the protruding veins in my neck.

I didn't ask. I was late for wilderness survival class and ready to get out of the shop anyway.

I was 15 minutes late when I arrived at the locked classroom. On the door was a small map with a location mark. Mr. Rasmussen, our teacher, wanted us to use compass bearings to find the place.

But I knew where it was and didn't want to mess with a compass. I could make it on time if I rode my bike and didn't clean up or go get my survival pack.

The next minute I was flying down Coyote Creek Trail. It was smooth, with easy curves and just enough grade to make pedaling effortless.

Low branches rushed at me, while fallen leaves courteously parted for my humming bike wheels. I leaned hard into the turns, soaking up the freedom.

I was making good time but shouldn't have tried to ride through Coyote Creek. My tires got stuck in the mud, and I went in the water. When I got to the other side the breeze felt cold through my clinging clothes.

I won't survive

I slid around the corner into the firebowl clearing and wiped the tears from my windburned eyes just in time for Mr. Rasmussen's fire-starting lecture. Soon students had produced several little flames from pitch and wood shavings.

Our fires didn't get the chance to grow warm, though, before Mr. Rasmussen stood up with obvious purpose.

"I hope all of you have brought your survival packs," he began, giving me a disappointed glance. "You will remember that I promised we would stay out all night sometime as sort of a final test. This is the judgment day. This is your opportunity to use the skills you've learned to supply your needs tonight."

The excited chatter of the class slowly faded as everyone left for the campsite. I just stood there gazing down at our smothered fires, debating whether I should ditch or try to rough the elements with nothing except a pair of pliers and a rusty bolt.

I was about to make my escape when I felt Mr. Rasmussen's eyes on my back. Turning, I could see him waiting at the edge of the clearing. I didn't want to deal with questions, so I obediently grabbed my bike and followed the group.

The sun was low and glowing when we began shelter building on the leaf-laden slope. Time flew as we threw ourselves into the task of gathering and arranging sticks and leaves.

In agreement with my architectural tendencies, my shelter became quite elaborate. It took on a dome shape with twice as much crawl space as the other shelters.

When the stick frame was finished, I was supposed to cover it with one to two feet of leaves. This was more of a job than I'd estimated-especially in the impending darkness.

After an hour of embracing and dumping what I hoped were leaves, I noticed that my shelter was barely covered enough to hide its stick skeleton. Mr. Rasmussen advised me to add a few more layers, but I was tired of gathering damp leaves and ready to curl up for the night.

I did curl up-but not for the night. My beauty sleep lasted about 30 minutes (while my blood was still warm from leaf reaping). After that I couldn't get warm enough to sleep again.

I pulled leaves up around me and folded into a tight fetal position, but nothing worked. Cold air circulated in my earthy mansion, trying to squeeze out every drop of body heat I could produce. It made me wish I'd followed Mr. Rasmussen's instructions and made a mummy-type shelter.

I shivered toward the opening of my hut and looked into the blackness. Across the camp I could see a little fire around which several talking and giggling bodies huddled.

A few yards to the left I spotted someone in a blue polar fleece with a flickering flashlight gathering leaves in a large trash bag. When he'd filled the bag, he turned and headed for someone's sparse little shelter near the fire.

As he passed the fire, I could tell that it was David. He dumped his cargo on the needy inhabitant and went for more.

For several minutes I watched David go about the camp helping others with their shelters. Soon he came my direction with his St. Nick bag and pink-nosed grin.

"This is creme," he announced with a cloud of hot breath. "I found these dry leaves in that open place over there."

He proudly emptied his treasures and told me to pull the leaves in and cover myself with them. After making a sympathetic comment about my trying to stay warm in such a large shelter, he went on with his work.

The leaves were soft and warm, but something hard and cold cut to my heart.

Why am I the recipient of charity? Why aren't I out there helping? Why am I unprepared and uncooperative? If this really were the judgment, would I be found shivering in greasy rags and lost in the corner of an earthly mansion?

I lay there for some time, with nothing to do except let my mind play with these questions.

The judgment

For some reason my imagination always seems to develop the worst possible option. And this being no exception, I soon visualized the whole judgment scene in vivid detail.

I could see myself clawing for a grip as I slid off the path of life into the lake of fire. I stopped myself when I began to cry out for the sticks and leaves to fall on me.

The cold must have been getting to my head. I sat up and looked at my watch. It glowed 12:05 a.m.

"That's it," I decided. "I'm not going to spend the rest of the night cultivating insanity inside this compost pile!"

I burrowed out and groped around for my bike. I didn't want to be seen by Mr. Rasmussen or the other students, so I headed off in a direction I hoped would bring me to the clearing.

But after three pedals, I realized I wouldn't be able to ride through this area. Lifting the bike over a stump, I proceeded to push and then carry it. Soon the brush was so thick that I had to lift the bike over my head to push through.

My upward climb gradually leveled and then began to descend, but the brush was all the thicker and well above my head. At one point I thought I would have to turn back, but driven by all the frustrations of the day, I set my jaw, gripped the cold cro-mo steel bike frame, put my head down, and charged the brush like an angry bull.

Branches snapped, cloth ripped, bike spokes chimed, and I emerged on the far side of the thicket, only to find myself sliding down a steep gorge with the bike in hot pursuit. A fallen log stopped me, and my fallen body stopped the fallen bike.

Down below I heard rushing water, and all around me I felt the long stems of poison oak.

It was a struggle to retrace my avalanche path. I headed back toward camp a little southish, hoping to intersect the trail a safe distance from Mr. Rasmussen and his happy campers.

I was sure this plan would work better than the shortcut idea, and was comforting myself in success as I broke out of the thicket to see the open trail. But with two more steps, my jubilation froze. What was that low growl?

Instantly my mind flashed the trailhead sign that read "Warning: Mountain Lion Sightings in This Area."

A lot happened in the next five seconds. First my heart raced at the sight of a big black creature jumping out at me, then it sputtered at the relief that it was only Scout, and finally it stopped in the presence of the dog's owner.

Mr. Rasmussen's shadowy face and wild beard, whitewashed by the moonlight, gave him the image of a weathered patriarch. Add a staff to his right hand, and he could have passed for Moses standing against the desert winds.

I couldn't believe it. For all my wandering, what were the chances of my landing at the very spot Mr. Rasmussen decided to go stargazing?

As I pedaled the lifeless trail back to civilization, Mr. Rasmussen's disappointed words stuck in my mind. And as I stood outside the locked dormitory door realizing I wasn't going to sleep any better than the leaf-burrowing bunch I'd left behind, a thought pierced my numbed brain.

Maybe courage is as much preparation as it is performance.