Barbarians by Corey Lee
It was like clockwork, the way the sun fell behind the horizon leaving only the breeze of encroaching night. Although, I suppose it’s clockwork that reflects our position around the sun, not the other way around. Either way, the air had begun to chill. I hiked back to camp after a few hours of fishing. Ben and Lewis were playing cards on the surface of the cooler, asses on stumps. There was no fire.
“Y’all build that fire yet?” I asked, hoping that the empty ashen patch of black dirt and clumps of last night’s campfire was some sort of decoy.
“Nah, not yet,” Lewis answered, slapping down on the stack of cards. “Ha! Forgot I had that queen!”
“Weren’t you guys gonna get the fire going after lunch?” I reminded them.
Ben sighed. “We were, but all of the wood around was wet from the rain last night. Didn’t want to start a fire with wet wood. We thought we’d give it some time, then go back out and get some dry stuff.”
I was following this train of thought. “Well, did you?”
Ben shook his head. “Forgot.”
There are times when you feel conflicted, pulled in two mental directions; it’s a kind of frustration and confusion where you can’t tell if your friends are so stupid that they’ve had all day to do one thing and managed not to do it, or if you’re so stupid to expect any proactivity from two people who have never been camping before and hatched a plan to do it because living off the land seemed like such an “underrated aesthetic.”
“Y’all wanna get one going, then?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. After this game,” Lewis said like I was his mother asking him to come down for dinner in the middle of a video game.
“Well, it’s getting pretty cold out. Gonna be much harder to get a fire when the wind comes in.”
It was discouragingly long before Ben’s “Uh-huh” in reply.
I set my fishing rod beside the tent, walked over to the cooler and dropped the stretched-thin plastic grocery bag of fish beside it. Ben and Lewis continued staring down at their pile of cards.
“Can y’all put these in when this round’s over? I’m gonna take a quick nap.”
I didn’t wait for a response. My hammock called. It was tied high between two tall trees whose branches didn’t begin until about twenty feet up. I had to jump to get in. Once I did, a few swings back and forth rocked me to the point of near dizziness and the faintest hint of vertigo, but the pleasurable kind, like that of a carnival ride or driving quickly downhill. I looked up at the sky, which by now was not only fading to night but also graying with fire-extinguishing clouds.
…
I woke up twitching at the pips of rain on my forehead. It could have been any time of night by then. I leaped down from the high hammock, slipping in the mud behind the tent and scrambling to my feet like a baby bird failing its first attempt at flight from the nest. Ow.
I ran over to the center of our campsite. Of course no fire, and no attempt to start one. Ben and Lewis were no longer playing at the cooler, either, but my bag of fish, much to my dismay, was exactly where I left it.
“Come on!” came out like a whine.
I stomped through the wet leaves to the front of the tent and flicked the sheen flap surface of the zipped-up entrance. I figured it would make the loudest noise. If I could angrily knock on the front door of a tent I would, but that’s not how it works.
When I unzipped the flap, Ben and Lewis were carrying on their card game, grinning like dumbasses as an electric lantern lit their uneven playing surface.
“What the fuck, guys?!”
They stopped to look at me.
“What, the fire?” So Lewis did know.
“It’s raining,” Ben sharply added.
A facetious “Thanks…” was all I could muster.
“What’s the deal, man?” So Ben did know.
I can’t believe y’all convinced me to do this shit. And you know what? Something told me you both would do fuck-all to get through the weekend. I’d have to do everything. I knew it. Everyone just loves the idea of being one with nature and living in the woods like barbarians until they realize they don’t know how to fucking do it because society has advanced to the point where we don’t need to know how to fucking do it. But boy is it a cool idea! As long as we’ve got someone who can drive us all to the state park and pitch the tent for us and bring fresh fish to the camp for dinner and know that a campfire is the only source of warmth when the fucking sun goes down like it does every day. Do either of you even know how to make a fire? Jesus, you neanderthals are so stupid, you’re even bad at being neanderthals. Fuck!
All I really said was “Sorry.” I took a deep breath and wiped the rain from my face and zipped the tent closed. “It’s just… it’s been a long day. And you didn’t put the fish in the cooler.”
“Oh, man. I’m sorry,” Lewis began. “The rain took us a little by surprise. Here, I’ll–” he stood up to seemingly take care of it, but I put my hand up to stop him.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure?” Lewis said.
“I’m sure the fish will still be good for tomorrow,” Ben added.
“It’s alright,” I admitted, resigned as I took off my shoes. “I don’t even know how to clean a fish.”
Corey Lee is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles, California. He was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Narrative Studies.
23 May 2025
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