Cameron Dawson

or “One night in Pit Camp”

The evening swims with music and laughter.  Stories are told.  Jokes are made.  Dom is toasted…  Legends are born.  And as the night wears on, the libations and melodies slow to a low hum.  Slumber becomes imminent as lids grow heavy and each retires to two shared tents.  Dan and Cam to the yellow tent.  Greg and Stuart to the blue.  Beer has been had and songs have been sung, but the music is far from over.

When all has settled in, the camp eases into a modest tranquility.  The impending storm is foreshadowed within the blue tent by a sneeze here, a blown nose there.  From the yellow, a cleared throat.  And then, no more adjustments.  No more deliberate movements of any kind. Only the minute flex of nylon bags as each player’s breathing finds its cadence.

For a time, all is calm.

And then the blue tent is unsettled by the first utterance of a low growl, as of a distant creature establishing territorial boundaries.  One after the other, the warnings continue.  They must.  Peril is near.  The daring threats grow with rhythmic persistence until, finally, the challenge is answered in kind.

The yellow tent, however, provides its own answers.  Its silence is broken by a prolonged creek, as of a forgotten door slowly waking an ancient hinge.  And then, as Yin to Yang, comes a percolating whisper; easily mistakable for a sigh.  It sounds pensive.  Perhaps even a bit… wistful.

The indiscreet sounds of the yellow tent meet the fearless arguments of the blue to swirl in the middle of camp.  The night is bathed in the hypnotic poetry of four great winds. A night creature close-by gives a quizzical look, and then bows its head in approval… and reverence.

The harmonic forces within the blue tent build.  A murmuring, almost soothing, croon from Greg.  A dangerous snarl from Stuart.  With each breath, the effort becomes subtly more… desperate.  Finally, both halves of the duet are in full-swing; a true rhythm is achieved.  Stuart’s tongue has settled unconscious across the opening of his trachea to permit begrudging passage while the relentless leviathan that is his diaphragm forces surge after surge through this reluctant portal.  Can this tempest be smothered?  No, it can not.  It WILL not!

Greg lies in his ritual pose of slumber.  His face a mask of serenity as his uvula dances through a forest of moonbeams.  Flying insects circle his gurgling aperture, drawn like Odysseus to the Sirens.  They are entranced by the smell of whiskey and pickled garlic.  They don’t try to resist, for even if it was possible, why would they?  Occasionally, one is lured too close and dashed upon the rocks.  Greg takes a pause to swallow.

Nearby, the pressure is growing and the yellow tent proudly swells as Cam’s lower half exhales long, thoughtful phrases of unforgivable odor.  His sleeping grin is unseen, but his satisfaction is all too palpable..  The source should exhaust itself, but somehow it does not.  It continues… and each sentence is vaporously punctuated by Dan’s crescendos of lustrous fermentation.  The resonance of his seething mist is so deliberate, it is as if to say, “Challenge accepted!”

As the peristaltic volleys rebound in the small space, the seams of the yellow tent are pushed beyond tolerances. Its small window bends toward opacity.  Moonlight projects disturbed rainbows as the scorching cloud deposits its venomous particulate.

And then, a midst the cacophony, somewhere between asleep and awake, Dan breathlessly mutters, “good lord…”

In the middle of camp, at the apogee of two dire forces, a tenuously placed cooking pot is finally resonated from its perch.  The sharp report of metal on stone stills the melee.  The camp is blanketed in a deafening silence as the orchestra abruptly ceases.

After a moment, Greg turns to Stuart.  “Did you just say something?“