The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind by David Guterson

Tumpline. “Did you say something about blackberries?”
    “I guess so.” My jaw felt tight. “I don’t know.”
    Tumpline let go a sigh of disgust.
    “Maybe we better just forget about it,” he said, shaking his head at me sadly.
    He twisted himself free of his pack and laid his gun down. The others followed suit. One of them wore camouflage pants; his gut hung down over the lip of the waistband like a cow’s udder. I looked for his eyes, but they were three-quarters hidden under pasty lids. Pimples and sores festered across his bare back; thorn cuts—mottled streaks—crisscrossed his forearms; dark blotches stood up where the mosquitoes had nipped him. He looked uncomfortable, as though his body composed some private form of torture.
    The second one sprawled out over his pack with his rifle next to him and stared silently at the tops of the trees. Crisp blond hair rose out of his head like the bristles of a stiff brush, greased into a whipped tuft at a widow’s peak that grew slightly off center. He looked to me like a gigantic choirboy—someone who had grown absurdly large but had changed in no other way since the age of twelve. A scatterof blond peach fuzz clung to his chin; his cheeks were frosted with nearly invisible cottony whorls: otherwise he looked twelve and no older. He went shirtless beneath his combat vest and his muscles—the chest swelled too far, the neck cords thick and squat—seemed unreal and disproportionate, like sacs of air beneath a layer of plastic skin.
    Tumpline, though, was the bulkiest of the three. He had a lumpy, stubborn appearance—everything about him was huge but unsolid. His sideburns, a deep black-orange color, grew long and pointed toward the corners of his mouth. Sweat glued his hair down over one ear; the grains of his beard stood up like a mat of dark seed grass attached to his face. His lips, blistered and meaty, reminded me of night crawlers. He had gleeful, large-socketed eyes.
    It occurred to me that, for some reason, big men always stuck together. They like it that way. They understand each other. Nobody else knows how they feel.
    The fat one picked up my rod. He pushed up the bail arm, tightened the drag down, and began to practice his casting moves under the trees.
    “You got that all wrong, Frank,” Tumpline said. “You’re supposed to use that near water.”
    Frank mumbled something to himself.
    “Ain’t that right, Big Guy?” Tumpline asked me.
    “Sure.”
    “Sure,” Tumpline agreed. He picked up a few of the playing cards and held them out for the blond one to see.
    “Cardsharks,” he said.
    “Cardsharks,” said the blond one, still staring off into the treetops.
    Tumpline dropped the cards, one by one, in the dirt. “Ever been to Reno, Big Guy?”
    “No.”
    “What about him?”
    Lane shook his head at the forest floor.
    “Never been to Reno,” Tumpline said—to himself, or to no one. He picked at a molar and looked over our camp for the first time.
    “Where’s your catch at, Big Guy?”
    “I didn’t catch any.”
    Tumpline’s plump, raw lips parted. “Big Guy,” he complained. “Big Guy, come on now. Do I look like an asshole?”
    “No.”
    “Sure he does,” the blond one threw in. “He looks like an asshole.”
    His eyes never moved from whatever he had noticed in the tops of the trees.
    “Now wait a minute.” Tumpline scratched at the root of one sideburn with an index finger. “Just a minute here. I don’t believe this. You hiked the fuck up here—am I right?—I mean you hiked all the way the fuck up here ”—he stood and flopped his arms at the sky; his mouth moved but no words came—“ … it’s all too incredible, Big Guy,” he finally said. “I mean it’s just too fucking-A incredible.”
    The blond one stood up now and unzipped his pants calmly. “I told you he was an asshole,” he said, and took a leak with his back to us.
    “You.” Tumpline was pacing now. “You— Little Big Guy. I want you to