Cataract City by Craig Davidson

The shaft tore nearly in half. He struck it again. The match-head went up in a hot spark and instantly burned out.
    I hated everyone who’d had anything to do with those matches. Whoever made them, sold them or thought they were good for much at all.
    Dunk handed them to me. “You try.”
    I tore one out and folded the book closed. The match felt worthless: flimsy, already damp with my sweat. It was the first time I’d ever really needed something to
work
. Sometimes your whole life came down to some silly little thing you never thought could matter, not in a million years. A stupid match.
    I hunched so far over the firepit that I nearly nosedived into it. If I lit the match as close to the paper as possible, the wind wouldn’t get a chance to snuff it. I ran it down the strip, flicking my wrist like I’d seen men do at the Bisk on their smoke breaks.
    It caught. Dunk cupped his hands around mine. Light broke between our fingers in golden spears so bright they seemed solid, as if they might snap like icicles. I touched it to the paper. Flame leapt from match to paper. Relief washed over me.
    Wind curled into the pit and between my fingers, silky-cool.
Whuff
.
    Darkness—or not quite. A half-moon burned at the paper’s edge, a fine orange band no bigger than a fingernail clipping. Then it went out.
    “Fucking
wind
.”
    “Scouts taught us how to light a
one-match
fire, right? We’ve still got two left.” Dunk was smiling. His teeth glowed like chips of phosphorus. It amazed me that he’d find anything funny about this.
    I blew on my fingertips to dry them, then tore out the second-to-last match. It
had
to light. Not because the law of averages said so, or because if it didn’t we’d be stuck in the dark with that cackling thing in the tree. No, the match had to light because we were two scared kids lost in the woods. The universe owed us that much, didn’t it?
    It flared on the first strike. I stretched towards the paper, fingers steady. Wind licked at the flame, blowing it sideways but not quite out. I held it to a ragged edge where the paper had been torn from the magazine, the threadlike fibres oh so flammable, please please
please
, and the match burned down to my fingertips as the heat intensified, becoming unbearable, please
please PLEASE
, and the flame took hold along that edge, timid at first but becoming greedy, devouring the paper and Dunk let out a giddy
whoop
as the fire burned up and up, releasing oily smoke, eating a hole through the crumpled face of a girl with a black bar over her eyes.
    We built the fire into a blaze, heaping wood up and laughing until we were out of breath, dancing a crazy jig round the flames.
    The burning wood fell inward with a soft, cindery sound that sent a great coil of sparks up to extinguish on the overhanging leaves. The coals brightened and dimmed in the wind. The baby bird peeped softly.
    “Do you think it’s hungry?” Dunk said.
    “I’m hungry.”
    “Me, too.”
    I found the bottle of vitamins in the backpack. Each was three times the size of the Flintstones vitamins Mom used to make me take at breakfast. They smelled like a barnyard, of hay and horses. It seemed wise to take them, like medicine.
    “Do you think we can survive on vitamins?” Dunk said.
    “We probably need other things, like … steaks and eggs and potatoes. Vitamins are just one thing.”
    “Popeye lives on one thing. Spinach.”
    “No, Popeye eats spinach to get strong so he can save Olive Oyl. He probably eats lots of other stuff—just not on camera.”
    “Oh.”
    I unwrapped the Three Musketeers bar, broke it in half and held the pieces out to Dunk. “You pick.” The chocolate was stale with a whitened waxy film but still, it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. Once the rush wore off I realized how hungry I still was, and thirsty, and scared.
    We lay down and stared at the sky. Dunk held the bird on his chest, wrapped in the rag. A red light flashed across the sky.
    Dunk said: