Way Out

Way Out

By Dougy the Studious

Way out in the forest amid its infinite silence, a man small and gainly made his way through dense underbrush.  Before long he reached a road, looked to left and right twice, as if uncertain of his whereabouts, then set off with such energy that, before one could have said “Robinson Crusoe,” he had disappeared from sight around a distant bend. A few minutes later he reappeared at the same bend and strode past the very spot at which he had left the woods without giving it a glance, then on and out of sight beyond another.

         An observer watching, smiling to himself, and meditating there between these two curvatures of path about the identity and motivation of this odd traveller, would have found his contemplations abruptly and rather fearsomely ended. A huge bear, of a variety in Canada appropriately named Grizzly, and a particular member of that species of gigantic proportions and uncommonly gruesome features, emerged in precipitous suddenness from the very spot where less than ten minutes prior the sojourner had disappeared. Oh, horrors! What calamity must have befallen our luckless hero? The sequence of events seems clear and obvious, his demise at the claws of this hugest of living beasts a certainty.

         But, before the observer would have had time to rush from his hiding place to offer his aid, Great Bruno faltered in its frenetic pace, glanced once behind it as if reviewing events, turned about with electric swiftness three times, growling and snorting, its eye red as Narcissus, rose up in rage on its hind legs, waving his front in the air with insane frenzy, and then, to the observer’s utter astonishment, crashed down with its entire length in the path by the very spot at which the traveller had first burst from the tangle of undergrowth.  

         Could it be? Surely this little caricature of a man had not vanquished, in such short order, such a violent adversary! I rushed from my retreat then to discover first whether the monster breathed or not. Having reassured myself of his eternal silence, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me (being slightly rotund in my person and not fleet of foot) down the road and around the bend. What I beheld took my breath. Not a soul could be seen for a mile or more along the lonely path! This could not be! Not a quarter hour had elapsed since the traveller’s passing, nay, not ten minutes, and yet no movement along the miles of pathway before me indicated the presence of a passerby. All slept, quiet and still as the world must have lain the first hour of its making. He must have—Oh wonder of wonders! Oh impossibility!--managed to overcome surprise at the interruption of his travels, lay hands on some sort of tool of defense from the meager selection that the raw woods might niggardly provide, lay madly about him with strokes of terrible destruction enough to mortally wound the behemoth, and then continue blithely on his way with such alacrity that in minutes he had covered a distance unlikely to have been as effectively crossed by even the fleetest of nags.

         Had this selfsame observer rushed to the nearest village some miles from the spot at which he now stood wondering, and had he entered the first tavern his steps led him to, The Windless, he would have been equally astonished to see the subject of his confusion peacefully at table, a quart of ale at's elbow and a clay pipe in hand, pulling now and again at the stem and emitting billows of fragrance in streams toward the low ceiling already blue with the relentless smoke. With him, to one side, his back to the room, sat an old man dressed not in any clothes less formal than the man with the pipe, for informality of costume would have been an understatement by way of description. Had the observer then taken the time and interest to sit at a table close enough to overhear the conversation ensuing, he would have heard these words.

         “Noow, Ach found mesef wassled oon af a soodun bee these hooge bar! Ach thouchgt noothink but rached antoo meen sheart ant pooled oot a kneef—tha oon thit yau ha gaeven ov mee whan ee was a buoy—ant leapet indernath has aerms ant mooth ant drave thought kneef dap antoon hees flaesh. Ach cum richt har tae tael thee fairste ant knowch antand tae gae tael mach mither mae taelen tow. Shae weel nat belaf ov mee, ee daersae!”

         The other nodded and nodded and intermittently clapped his hands as if in glee. The first suddenly lifted his quart, drained it, looked into it to make sure no drop remained, then with a patting of the other man’s back, and a glance at the observer, rose to part. He was gone. His story told, his appetites sated, his audience regaled, he disappeared once more into the hours of his days.