Training Log Archive: hughmac3

From Chapter 4:

The moon had set, and the Pleiades; and it was the eleventh hour when I began my clockwise circumnavigation of the enclosure, the fence my right-hand longitude, my paces latitude. Night winds did not wail, nothing went bump in the night, there was no apparent need to be wary and so I commenced a cadenced pace count to what I now considered a tribute to my sailboat, Larke, with a ditty I'd heard long ago in a high school play, a Gilbert and Sullivan tongue-twister. I'd gone to the play to see my then-girlfriend perform. Later she told me the song was not about a boat, but about her. Called me a dumb jock.

I went home that night – not feeling welcome at the cast party – and looked up the play – Ruddigore - which wasn't really a play. It was something mysterious called a libretto, apparently a parody of melodrama, complicated as hell and a foolish thing to attempt by a small high school's drama club. My girlfriend had played the part of Rose, happily flouncing around in eighteenth century costume - the center of much male attention. Smarting from the “dumb jock” comment, I had memorized this ditty and had been unable to forget it for ten years:

She is such a smart little craft,
Such a neat little, sweet little craft,
Such a bright little, tight little,
Slight little, light little,
Trim little, prim little craft.

My every-other left foot hit on smart, then again on neat, and then I varied it to adjust to the different meter. It was hard to explain, but each repeat gave me pretty close to twenty-five yards I'd used the cadence on mindless hikes, parades and marches. It was a welcome old friend this night in the dark; and I whispered the words to myself. A clamorous owlet heard me and whooped twice. I heard a fox shriek over and again, but off in the distance. I felt the need for brief moments of light; and I shielded the flashlight beam and shined it briefly after each sequence. After two repeats of my mantra, my left foot connected with something unnatural, and I felt it snap. It was not a twig, not a branch, not anything that belonged there. My flashlight beam showed me a fine olive-drab wire, stretched off to my left and running ruler-straight to the fence. I hadn't seen one of these for eighteen months or so. It was not a good thing to see – for it was bad news. It was a tripwire.

C • Tripwire 1