Drunk Worms

Every year on April 21^st for the past four we would hike out into the hills surrounding Gainsville, pitch a tent near a creek and stay out there for three days and nights or until our low quality cans of beans and jerky ran out. It started out as just another casual idea tossed out from our adolescent minds, but it caught fire and in the spring of our first year of high school we threw ourselves out into the brambles and briars and lasted one night in the imposing wilderness. We fancied ourselves skilled woodsman, on the same level as Paul Bunyan and our huntsman ancestors. The pedestal we had built ourselves on was swiftly knocked out from underneath our scrawny feet when we found that we couldn’t keep a fire going long enough to cook the can of baked beans I had lifted from my family’s pantry. We resigned ourselves to sloppy cold beans that night straight from the tin. Our tent was in shambles so we spread out our sleeping bags and hung the tent above us like an idiots canopy, strung out between two trees and barely wide enough to cover us from the tiniest threat of rain. When it got dark we lay there together, staring up at the stars and listening to the sounds of nocturnal creatures that came out to start their lives. We didn’t say anything as we lay there flat on our backs, still bundled up in our workpants and winter fleeces. He had smuggled a bit of rum from his dad’s liquor cabinet in a plastic water bottle, and we passed it back and forth in silence. I hated the taste, so I just sipped it. I could tell he felt the same way, and after a bit he sat up and dug a hole in the loose sand and poured it down. “For the worms.”

We woke the next morning with the sun creeping up over the trees, so we stretched, ate another cold can of beans, packed up the tent and sleeping bags and went home. We went back the next year to the exact same place. We had a fire going just long enough to cook our food the first night, and then not at all the second. We had brought fishing poles this time in hopes that maybe running through that little trickle of a stream there would be some sort of fish. After four hours of sitting with the pole in my hand and my nose in a book I gave up. We didn’t know how to gut a fish anyway.

The next two years were the best we had out by the creek. We had a fire every night and only once did it rain, but not enough to make us want to pack off. We went once before we graduated, and stayed out for a full four days before the food ran out. We promised each other we would keep the tradition alive, that we would come back every year for as long as we could stand the taste of beans.

We’re older now, off at college and away from home. He called me the other day and told me he was leaving America. I wished him the best of luck and asked him if he could still stand the taste of beans. He laughed and we said goodbye. I left my room and walked outside, a small bottle full of rum nestled in my coat pocket. I wandered by moonlight to the creek that snakes its way through campus and dug a hole in the cold ground. I poured it out, all of it. “For the worms.”