by Wm Breiding

1.
Old Bones

Payne Lake, Alabama, November 7th 1987:

My campsite last night was odd. I had been forced to retreat to Florence Marina State Park, just across from the Alabama state line and a new time zone. The marina was a section of the Chattahoochee River widened out into a reservoir and boating campsite by a lock and dam named after Walter F. George, also known as Lake Eufaula. It was big, rich and function-oriented.

The map indicated that Providence Canyon, GA, my intended destination, had overnight camping. It was a miniature Arizona up in those secluded Georgia hills. Beautiful canyons stretching out toward Alabama. Upon inquiry the ranger, sitting in his green pick up scowling at the scenery, gave me an unfriendly and emphatic NO. Rand McNally had been wrong when it denoted camping at this site. This was unfortunate; it was late and I needed to set camp. There was little chance to wander the canyons. I had been expecting to spend that night and the entire next day exploring these deeply etched, vermilion and cream canyons, just west of Plains, Georgia. Instead, I was forced to drive back down into the low lands and hitch up at the nearest camping joint.

I was driving through this ritzy marina trying to convince myself it wasn't so bad. I heard friend John Fugazzi in my head saying, "Oh, William! It's a nice change of pace from all that rustic isolation . . . families, boats, RVS, coke machines!" Even a clubhouse. Viewed John's way it seemed a little less upsetting, a little more appealing. I thought: maybe girls?

I set camp farthest from the rest rooms. Everyone had circled their RVs and campers around them like a wagon train under siege. I settled in an area not often used, a branch off the main trail, with no fire pits.

During preparations for dinner I was being continuously bugged by something in my peripheral vision. A few yards off to my left, a pine tree, and a dull white splotch. I decided to take a good look. Hammered to the tree through its center with a 16-penny nail was a skull. One of the strangest, small horned mammal skulls I've ever seen. The antlers were very fine, almost delicate, perhaps as thick around as your little finger. They gently sloped up from the skull about five inches, then curved over the eye sockets to a fine point. Beautiful.

As I was turning to walk back -- the beef stew was sizzling on the Coleman one-burner -- I saw the back bench of the trestle table. On it was a small length of chain -- braided into a hoop. I thought to myself as I picked it up and unbraided it, who was this guy?

There was still light left when I finished the chow. I decided to go see if the lake was interesting.

As it turned out, it was. Despite the fancy boats and the club house, the general store and the loaded RVs, the rest of Lake Eufaula was left very primitive. South Georgia and Alabama have very sandy soil. The small lake beach was like the white sand you might see further along over as the Gulf Coast or in the tropics -- pure and very fine, except when it gets wet: it turns to mud. I tried to find the meeting place between sand and mud as I walked. Mostly my cowboy boos just got covered in mud, and then the sand stuck to them. But it was pretty and worth the struggle.

Rounding a bend in the lake, I came across a dumping ground. A great garbage heap, set back up in a hollow, just off the shore. Naturally I was drawn to it to see what was there; at the same time thinking yeah, but they don't show you these things when they sell you the postcards.

It was mostly kitchen garbage; beer and liquor bottles, baked bean cans and crusty catsup containers. As I was returning to the beach I saw a dull flash of white in my peripheral vision. It was another skull. With a missing jaw. By the snout structure my guess was that it had belonged to a dog. I picked it up, inspected it, and kept it.

Carrying the skull, I wandered down along the beach. Ducks squawked and flapped away. Sounds of distant people. I came to a huge freshly fallen tree leading from the bank of the shore into the lake. It was passable, but I decided against it, instead went to inspect its roots. There at the upended tangle were the remnants of an old disused road, covered over with a deep bed of undisturbed pine needles. It was getting fairly dusky so I decided to take this road back to the campsite, as it seemed to lead in the general direction.

I came upon a sort of bayou on the far side of the road, away from the river. It was secluded and surrounded by heavy, leafy foliage. There were ducks floating stone still around its edges. The water was an umbrageous, burnt green. It was odd, weird feeling, like something out of a dark fantasy novel. I half expected to see small gnarled humanoids pop out of the bushes, or some lost, disoriented children who had stumbled through a magic doorway. I sat and peered into the still, impenetrable water, and then up at the deepening sky, trying to figure out why this place was so strange. As I got up to go, a large white bird flew from hiding among the trees. I stood breathless for a moment as it glided into the dark blue heavens and out of my vision.

I had been walking for a while when from a distance I saw a blue thing lying on the russet pine needles. Further along I could see a string of toilet paper, and beyond that something dark.

As I approached, I saw that the blue thing was a rumpled T-shirt, the dark thing a sock. Hmm, I thought, who's been doing what back here? Inspecting all of this, I nearly missed the main attraction sitting next to the shirt, it blended so well with the pine needles in the advancing darkness.

Under normal circumstances I would have fiddled around with the shirt, kicked it about, seeing if there was anything of interest below. When I saw the half decomposed severed head of the deer, cut off just at the base of the head, with full antlers and empty eye sockets, I forgot entirely about that blue T-shirt, and what might lie beneath it. (Or maybe I didn't want to know.)

I just stood and gawked at the thing. A severed head of a deer. With antlers. Half decomposed. So that was about a week ago in this weather. I looked around. The body? Didn't see it or smell it. Poachers? Or my weirdo at the campsite?

The old road did lead back to the camping area -- not very far across from where I had parked the Dart.

I sat smoking a cigarette at the trestle table in near darkness, looking at the chain, the dog skull, the skull nailed to the tree. I cogitated over the dark little bayou and the severed deer head, and thought about humans for a while. It occurred to me that in all of the out of the way places I had been recently, I had found the weirdest signs of human activity in a rich, densely populated park, buzzing with the giggles children and sounds of family recreation. I knew that I was the only one that I had seen any of this -- except maybe that other guy.

I put the dog skull on the hood of the car for protection and went to bed. After a fitful night thinking of southern maniacs and the strange powers of nature I rose early, made coffee and drove off. Miles later I remembered the skull sitting on the picnic table where I had been pondering it in the early morning dusk. I had fully intended to keep it as a souvenir, but at the last moment had forgotten it, perhaps intentionally, leaving it for the next loner to run across and think about, and then discover the other skull nailed to the tree. I wondered if he would also discover the remains of the deer on the old road and penetrate beyond the other side of the fallen tree.

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