still here
Dani returns to the shack. She drops a worn gladstone bag onto the wooden floor. It lands with a heavy thud. For no reason at all, Eddie assumes she’s brought back a bag of cannon balls wrapped in cotton. Eddie doesn’t know much about 19th century munitions, but he has visited battlefields in the past and has a cousin who dabbles in reenacting the civil war. He looks more closely at the bag and discovers the initials U.B. stamped together with an odd symbol that appears to be a triangle intersected with a diagonal line. Eddie has seen Freemason symbols, and this is not one that he remembers.
Dani: We won’t be here much longer. You hungry?
Eddie: What’s in the bag?
Dani: Not food.
Eddie: It looks old.
Dani: Yeah, you’re not hungry?
Eddie: Haven’t thought about it.
Dani: Don’t start. We have walking to do.
Eddie: To where?
Dani: Back on the trail. There’s nothing here for us.
Eddie: We’ll get lost in the fog.
Dani: We can’t stay here, it’s a park, some civil war shit.
Eddie: Do you think we’re the only country that allows its citizens to celebrate traitors and hoist the enemy’s battle flag to sell used cars?
Dani: Do you think I give a shit about that?
Eddie: What’s in the bag?
Dani: A severed head.
Eddie: Okay.
Dani: Let’s go.
Eddie: No, but really, what’s in there.
Dani: Told you.
Eddie: A severed head. A human severed head?
Dani: The best kind.
Eddie: Open it.
Dani: (incredulously) You want to see a bloody human head?
Eddie: That’s not what’s in there.
Dani: I like you and everything but don’t touch this bag, ok? It’s off limits. Seriously. None of your business.
Eddie: Fine. Is it heavy?
Dani: I’m not talking to you about the bag.
Eddie: Fine. I used to want one just like that when I was in college. I thought it would be cool. I got a paratrooper’s side bag instead. Probably would have been cooler to have just a backpack. I can carry it if you get tired.
Dani: Forget the bag. No more talk of the bag. Okay?
Eddie: Got it. It is kinda weird though, you have to admit.
Dani: I’m going. Feel free to tag along or stay here and rot.
Eddie: Do you know the way out?
Dani: Yeah, there’s a tree.
Eddie: The tree that led us here?
Dani: No, that’s the bird tree.
Eddie: Bird tree.
Dani: The two birds, they stay there. That’s how you know.
Eddie: I just saw a tree in the fog, standing alone.
Dani: Go back and look.
Eddie: I don’t remember where it is, and the birds won’t be there. Birds fly.
Dani: These birds stay. It’s a picture. It’s in your mind. One bird is always up in the tree; the other bird is hovering in mid-flight just above the ground. They stay that way. It’s a message.
Eddie: It’s a picture.
Dani: Yeah.
