2.(53-54) Cookout in Forest Primeval

Slim Novel 2 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

53. A Cookout We Shall Go!

Kimura feels emotion stirring. Until now, for him, Nature has been neat. In Japan if one wants to experience Nature, one goes to a national park where all is tightly arranged and scenic. Never has he experienced Nature as here now in the north Bronx where entropy – a tendency of everything toward disorganization – seems more evident than in Japan. Walking beneath the old elevated train tracks, Kimura glances to his right, across the road, and sees stores and behind them apartment buildings. Now crossing the wide Gun Hill Road, which east-wests at right angles with Jerome Avenue, he sees ahead to his left what Longfellow in Evangeline called “Forest Primeval”.
   And what a forest! Different from California whose forests he’d seen driving south from San Francisco. Here, trees are oak, birch, Norwegian pine, and the atmosphere is brooding post glacial – cool and dark – with large blue-gray granite rocks jutting up, and dark sepulchral gloom befitting the ancient geology.

   Ali points at the EL train tracks ending as they walk past it. “There's Woodlawn Station, beyond is still Bronx! I see surprise in your eyes. All foreigners think da Bronx is just one long jumble of apartment houses. Dey don’t realize we got wilderness. Even deer and coyote!”
   Ali looks to her right across the wide, now empty of EL tracks to a cemetery bordered by a spiked metal fence. “Woodlawn Cemetery! Edgar Poe’s buried there. Dontchyaknow he was part a da Bronx? His cottage at Fordham is still kep’ up in Poe Park. Wonder what Ole Edgar’d say if he could see us today?” She stops and points her finger at a narrow forest path going off Jerome Avenue to her left and heads into it, her walking making scrunching sounds in the snow. The path passes under forest cover where sunlight is mostly blocked by overhead tree branches full of snow. It is sharply colder; Kimura’s fingertips and nose are numb.   They walk along the body-width path sinking into the soft snow up to boot-ankle level. Ali explains the path was made by the Mosholu Indians.
   “Four hundred years ago dis was Injun country; now they're gone and we live here and all dat’s left of ‘em is this beaten down sod path and the funny Mosholu name.” Ali loves the American Indian culture and hopes this hiking will put Kimura in touch with its spirit.

Fifteen minutes on the trail and he notes the trees are less snowed over.  Now the sunshine gets down to the ground and is melting the snow.   Ahead he sees a glacial rock. It brings to mind the circa fifteen-thousand-year-ago instant in time when the rock was left here by a retreating glacier. They reach the rock and Ali leans back on it continuing her patter. “I call dis rock, Morlock Rock, like from H. G. Wells's The Time Machine.”

54. Cookout

Ali leads Kimura to the far side of the rock. In a snow-filled fire pit that has a rusty old cooking grill she digs the snow away and packs newspaper and piles twigs atop the paper. Then she takes out the fry pan with Alfonze’s potato-onion-bacon shreds and fills the blackened small coffee pot with snow opens the tin can of Campbell’s Pork & Beans. All of these she places atop the rusty old cooking grill. “You da man, Kim. Like in dem Neandy days, make fire fo yo woh-man.” She hands over a cigarette lighter and squats by the pit waiting for him to light a fire. He snaps the lighter and a flame appears. He puts it to the edges of newspaper sticking out from under the twigs. First, small flames; then, as the paper heats, it bursts into bigger fire, drying the moist twigs that catch fire too. Ali expertly feeds it and soon a roaring, crackling warmth pleasures them. She throws on wood planks and logs that previous cookout hikers had gathered. Next she directs Kimura to hold the rusty old cooking grill on one edge, grabbing the other edge, and they set it over the fire pit so the jumping, sparking, smoking flames rise around it, heating the coffee pot, the fry pan, and the Campbell's can. She spreads sections of the unused newspaper and they sit in front of the cozy fire with their backs against the sloping rock.

   The juicy pork & bean mix bubble-boils out of top of can, the fry pan is smoking a pungent fragrance of sizzling onion, bacon and potato shreds; and the coffee pot is starting to bubble over, adding strong java tones to the air. Ali with gloved hand picks up the boiling, bubbling-out pork & beans can from the grill. She hands Kimura a spoon. “Let’s eat the Campbell’s pork and beans first, Hon. Blow on your spoonful; it’s boilin' hot.” They dip in. Pork pieces are few and far between, which is OK, thinks Kimura, since it takes fewer murdered pigs and the hot beans in spicy tomato sauce are just right,

   The coffee pot is perking loudly and Ali puts it to cool on the snow. She gets out two onion rolls, slicing each one into halves, and makes them into sandwiches with the fried bacon-potato-onion shred mix, and then hands one to Kimura. A bite into it, a chew to get it to his taste buds, and he knows the feeling of being alive. Really alive. This instant of life experience will be the rare remembered one to his dying day. Later, as a reporter at the Battle of Guadalcanal – starving, sick – his life will be saved by a powerful desire to survive, energized by his recall of this hobo sandwich from its taste-bud mental imprint. Ali will be saved from suicide later by the perfect memory of this moment of utter enjoyment.
   If one can experience ne plus ultra body happiness once, why not again? Such happy moment memories give power to one’s will to live through the worst.

   Ali vents the pressure of thought: “Do ya feel what I feel, Kim? Somet'in’ in the wind? A tinglin’ b'neath skin, and a mind full a everyt'in'-is-possible ideas?” 
   He nods agreement although he does not feel what she feels.
   She continues, “Look! You’re thirty, I’m twenty and both healthy so wit’ luck we each make seventy. But our youth – what we got now – it’s a one an’ only. ‘What's da point?’ you may ask. For most boobs, it's a zero point. They are born and remain slave to nation, race, religion, mumbo jumbo beliefs foisted on ‘em by parents, country, whatever. An’ mos’ly a belief in immortality of personality – soul. And becuz a that, each lives a lie that prevents giving value to the one unique life we're born into.  Worst is the mass programin' dat says one must never think outside Society’s box, must never speak out as I do now.”
    Ali leans forward toward the fire and reaches out her arms. “Oh, Kim! Because I’m lucky I can say it. I had my Uncle Guy to teach me the Scientific Method, and by using its logic I learned what is false. For an example, take immortality of one’s soul and a crummy god dat looks like us, and a moral law dat if you break it you go to hell. All of it is da bunk!  Wisdom is to learn the basic falsehoods dat make up dis civilization! Wisdom is to realize dis life as one’s one and only! Each second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year of my life is my last – my one and only! So every day this knowledge presents me wit' final chances to enjoy. And, having become wise by studyin' da masters from Socrates on down, why should I avoid da best in life or limit m’self to what da dumb Received Opinion says a nice free or slave, white or yellow or red or brown and twenty girl ought to do or not do in a place like dis?

   “Nietzsche speaks right to me when he says Nuthin’ is forbidden: no knowledge, no system a thought. I study ‘em all, try everythin' dat I think good for me and come to my own decisions 'cuz I’m a New People person.”

   Kimura puts his arms about Ali and draws her close. She sobs quietly against him.  “You and I, Ali-san, we are the New People. Our kind will lead the way out of the mess that this civilization has made and at least, before we die, we can each think: I have done as much as possible to enjoy this life and to advance knowledge. And we enjoy every moment to the utmost. Let us not lose each other. Our kind are rare! If we become separated we may never again find our like again. It may be our one and only chance.”

   She has calmed and nods her head and wipes her eyes.
To read next, click 2.55 Thanatos - Death in Snow