carver

by Neil Hilborn




 

Accordin to our maps
we were more than halfway there. 
My hands were frozen into claws 
around the climbing rope. The cold 
was crawlin into my legs, bitin me 
through my clothes, and I just knew
that if I let go I’d slide all the way down the mountain 
back to New York. Shiverin in the cold I opened my eyes 
and all there was was that rope 
disappearin into the blizzard. 
   
Let me take you back three years. 
I was workin for Sam Carver, 
puttin up posters for his speeches: 
Sam Carver! Adventurer Extraordinare! 
Has seen all known continents of the world! Now, 
Mr. Carver said that Americans had a right to everything 
to the West of us–he called it Manifest Destiny 
and I just couldn’t get it out of my head 
like it was a hymn to the lord and Sam was the mouth of God, sayin 
“Go west, my son. Go west.”

So when Mr. Carver said he was going to California, 
I told him I was the kind of woodsman 
that could chop down a tree with a stick and a sharp rock. Hell, 
I could start a fire with a piece of wood and some wet moss. 
Y'see, I grew up in the mountains of Kentucky 
where just breathin is like pullin a tornado into your lungs 
and spittin out the debris, where sunset is like all the gunpowder in the world 
goin off in reverse on the horizon. 
Mr. Carver said the sunsets in California 
were like the Pacific closin its eyes, and when he talked 
the distances collapsed until China coulda been as close as Baltimore 
and he talked all the way from the eastern seaboard, 
shrinkin the Great Plains into a patch of dirt under our feet.

Accordin to our maps we were more than halfway there 
when Sam said that God spoke to him, 
told him to turn south, turn south. 
Some of us thought we was goin the wrong way, 
especially when we started climbin that mountain, 
but he just kept repeatin: “South. We’ve got to go south.” 
And I’d'a trusted that man as long as I still had teeth in my head, 

but then there was that rope, disappearin into the blizzard. 
Manuel yelled back through the snow: 
“Richard! There’s blood coming out of my shoes!” 
I ripped off his boots and his feet were rottin 
from the bottom up, burnt black like firewood 
with coals glowin in the center. He asked us to shoot him right there, 
but a Christian man can’t kill no one, so we built him a fire and just left him there.

I was leanin back on the rope, 
pullin Johnson up an ice shelf, 
but when he came up over the lip his leg snapped. 
I ran up to Carver and said “Charles’s leg damn near broke off!” 
but all he said was “Well, 
he’ll just have to get it put back on when we get to California.”

Then the meat ran out. 
I caught myself starin at McNabb as he laid down in the snow. 
I’d never been so hungry. 
When Sam smiled I saw the gates of heaven clangin shut 
and he said providence wanted us to eat, 
wanted us to have this 
and we bit into his raw and frozen thighs 
and his blood tasted like every single word of Manifest Destiny 
spit out in a howl from the devil. 

The last thing I saw before I passed out was Carver, 
headin west, with two human legs slung over his shoulder. 
He was just whistlin, walkin to California.