Post-apocalyptic Bugg

A few weeks ago, I finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and loved it. The book was everything that I like in a book: a great plot, beautiful writing and a story that was in the words of a friend of mine who I loaned the book to “emotionally exhausting”.

But as I read the book and followed the story of the Man and his son (who remain unnamed throughout) I couldn’t help but to place myself in their shoes- two people with nothing left, walking aimlessly to what they pray is salvation in a dying world, and the whole time battling the elements, hunger and the cold, grey cataract of a world that is getting harsher by the day from taking their hope, morality and love from them. I was touched by the relationship and the singularity of the love between the Man and the Boy.

But I also knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn’t last twenty minutes in that world.

I’m not a survivalist. In fact, the very basic things that The Man does in the book would be lost upon me.  There’s no way that I would be able to devise a crude filter for my water, or hide in the brush, or know how to pack what so that if roving cannibal bandits happened upon me I wouldn’t be fucked if I had to ditch my stuff.  I imagine instead that an encounter with a bandit would go something like this:

Me: Hey bro, what’s up?

Roving Cannibal Bandit: Nothing, friend. I’d like to kill you and eat your kid.

Me: Oh shit dude!

Roving Cannibal Bandit shoots Jason Bugg and eats the kid.

Scene.

I don’t imagine that making Oprah’s Book Club.

But that’s how pathetic I truly am. I’m good at all kinds of stuff: trivia, writing about music, telling the occasional joke, giving directions around Asheville without having to know the street names, and coming up with fun little insults for waitresses at bars- you know, the stuff you don’t actually need to stay alive. I’m a non-essential human.

Case in point: starting a fire.

Our house (I think I’ve mentioned before that it is woefully under heated) was cold today, and I wanted nothing more than to build a nice fire for Jessie to come home to. So I spent thirty minutes in the yard gathering firewood and bringing it into the house, collecting and breaking sticks in the yard for kindling and building the neat little teepee from twigs in the fireplace. I followed Jessie’s method to the letter, even taking our dull hatchet outside and cutting up a few thick branches to create more kindling (I call this “transition wood”- pieces of wood bigger than your average piece of kindling but smaller than a piece of firewood).  Everything was perfect and the afternoon was lined up for Jessie to come home to a toasty house after a long day of teaching children.

This is going to be a beautiful fire I thought to myself as I twisted some paper to help welcome the flames into the house. I lit the paper and the kindling began to burn.  At first, there is something hypnotic about watching a fire. It’s rather neat to see the sticks turn into little red cigarettes and cigars, then dissolve into nothingness, to watch the fire grow and undulate in the air, to see the soft yellows and oranges and feel the heat that they create. It was a good fire. I blew on it, and helped nurse it along until it became a veritable inferno inside of the fireplace.

An hour later my fireplace looked like this:

My unnamed son, whom I am trying to save: Papa, I’m so cold.

Me: I know son, so am I.

Both my son and I die in the cold.

Scene.

All of that hard work and all of that hope was gone within ninety minutes of me begging with something Neanderthals conquered thousands of years (sorry Jesus freaks, it’s true) ago to continue. I was defeated.

I did everything I knew how to do and even tried some things I learned after a quick Google search on starting fires. I begged the fire and got mad at myself. I fired off a whiny email to Jessie and even updated my Facebook page with a rather self-deprecating status about my inability to create fire- the thing Tom Hanks bragged about on that island.  For a few moments I even questioned my Atheism and wondered if I embraced Prometheus if he’d magically appear and show me how the Gods conjured up this thing called fire.

But in the end, the fire wasn’t meant to be. I am cannon fodder for the Man in the story. I am proof of Darwinism after the world ends. I am non-essential.

A few hours later Jessie came home and created this:

Me: Hey bro, what’s up?

Roving Cannibal Bandit: I’m going to kill you and eat your kid.

Me: Oh shit, dude!

Suddenly Jason Bugg’s wife jumps out of a bush and kills bandit, builds a fire, changes the oil in the car and looks great doing it.

Scene.

As Jessie created that big, beautiful fire I went to the kitchen, did the dishes, created a spice rub (this time I added sage!) for some boneless chicken breasts and prepared green beans and rice pilaf to go with it. After dinner, Jessica bent me over and did me in the butt.

Well she probably didn’t, but she might as well have.

Is there are moral to this story? Perhaps it’s that I’m not one to be counted on after the apocalypse. Perhaps it’s that I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to gently caress Dan Haggerty’s luscious beard. I’m not sure. But the one thing that I am sure of is that when the end comes, I want Jessie building the fire because I’ve got a great idea for a barbecue sauce to put on the roast baby.

Until the end, my friends.

Be good.