47

HE GOT THE WATER BOILING AND POURED INTO IT ONE OF the food packs he’d bought at Hoigaard’s. His mouth watered at the smell, and he stirred the noodles with a stick, having left all the utensils at the camp. But he had the cups, metal cups, but for his plastic one, and minutes later, when the dehydrated muck that was Chicken Divine—that’s what had been printed on the package—was done, David was struck by what he had to do.

This would be the hard part.

Janie first, because he knew what she was suffering was not physical, not in the way it might be with Max. But he was afraid for her, and dealing with either of them now was almost more than he could bear.

And he knew, absolutely knew, that he must not communicate this fear. Not to Janie, anyway. But it would be hard not to.

And so he skidded back on his rear, the space under the overhang even warm, and just coals burning in what had been his fire, and he got behind Janie and drew her in her bag up to him, between his legs so that he cradled her, and said, “Janie, it’s David.”

She was still curled in a ball. He did not try to take her hands from her face—she’d cupped her face in her hands—but only held her, and he felt sick, all over again, and wouldn’t think about it, and said, again, “Sportnik. It’s me. I’m going to take care of you. But you have to listen to me now.”

He still didn’t move, only held her, and in his mind, so as not to weep, he imagined stabbing the short, thick one, and when it got really sick, what he thought to do, he started over again, just stabbing, and he had to relax his arms, because he’d begun to shake, and then he was crying and couldn’t help it, that shitty hysteria getting the better of him, and he couldn’t manage it, it was really coming at him, rushing, like a train, like some black mass inside him, his heart kicking up with it, and he thought, It’s not about you now, David.

Stop it. For Janie.

And he did. He took a deep breath. Okay, that was better, he thought. He would think nothing, nothing at all, but that he was going to get them out.

(Kill them, a thought said, kill them, all three, and by God, something in him swore, he’d do it, too. But there came with the thought the realization that he had killed one of them already. It shocked him.)

He imagined moving again, and the three of them in the canoe following, and the highway, getting to it, and someone there to help them, and he held that image in his mind like some koan, and worked it, that thought, as he supposed Catholics did prayers on a rosary, and fixing his mind on each step, thought hard on making it happen, until he was calm again.

All right, he thought.

“Janie,” he said. “You have to eat now. Will you eat this for me?”

He sat like that for what seemed an hour, and then began to stroke her hair as he had when she was really little, when she’d come to live with them, and she’d cried, and said those silly things that had made him love her, this peculiar girl.

“Ratty was down by the bank one sunny morning,” he began, and even as he did, he knew she was listening.

And he went on, making it all up, and he knew she was aware of it, that he was making it up, and he went on like that for some time, now and then this catch in his voice, so he had to stop, and when he got stuck at one point, and he thought it was all useless, that he’d failed, and he was spiraling into a despair that did not mind death, saw it as nothing, she reached out and put her arm around him, pulling her face to his side, and she began to cry, and he cried with her, and when there was nothing left in her, she slept, her head against his side, and it was all taking too long, and it occurred to him that it was a very bad sign that Max had not stirred, the worst, which made him want to check on him, the thought of which terrified him.

And the food had gotten cold, but what matter, only he was freezing from underneath, the stone cold under him, and he slid over to Max’s bag, Janie still cradled on him, and he, with great reluctance, reached out and touched Max’s neck, and was relieved to feel his pulse there.

What time was it? he wondered. Eleven. It seemed he’d been doing this forever.

Time had assumed some new and other proportion.

In the space under the ledge, each minute seemed endless, because he could not force any of this, couldn’t force Janie to eat, or Max to wake, yet time passed too quickly.

He had to move, he thought, but he couldn’t set Janie down, move her aside, because if he did, could he bring her out later?

He’d heard about someone going catatonic, and when people hadn’t acted fast enough, the damage, for some reason, had been permanent.

And there was the possibility of infection. She was torn.

But he would have to deal with that later.

So he sat and held her, and hummed, songs he’d forgotten he even knew, “Old Paint,” and “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and campfire songs, and then, while she still lay with her head against his chest, averted, so she wouldn’t have to look at him, she said, “I’m hungry,” and David set the pot on the coals again, and in minutes had his plastic cup full of hot soup, and held it to Janie’s mouth, the Chicken Divine, this stew, not much more than warm, and she ate it, spilling some on the bag, but David nearly ecstatic, and Janie, her voice full of false bravery, said, “That tasted like chicken wallpaper paste.”

David gave a laugh, but then he was afraid he was going to lose it again. He stroked her hair, fine silken hair, pressed her shoulders.

What could he say, or should he say now? Anything? Nothing?

Should he act as if it hadn’t happened?

And then he struck on the only true thing he could say.

“There’s no use saying what happened didn’t happen”—and here Janie hardened against him—“but we’re still us, right, Sport? You’re still my Sport, right?” he said.

Janie only clung to him.

“Listen,” David whispered, leaning over her. “I’m going to get us out of here, but I need your help. Do you think you could help me?”

And that she hesitated not one second to nod made him swallow hard.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Do you want more?”

Janie nodded and he poured the cup full again and gave it to her.

And in him was this: He was almost desperate to say, I’m sorry.

But would things have been different if he’d been there with Max and Janie? They might have just killed all three of them then, surprised them at the fire.

And so he said nothing.

He waited until Janie’d gotten the soup down, and then bent over her and, squeezing her harder, said, “The first thing you can do to help is to promise me, whatever happens, you’ll listen to me. Because—” He wanted to say, Because it is going to be hard, harder than you can imagine getting out, but he couldn’t say that. “Because I need your help to get us out. Even more than I needed your helping me out at the house. Okay?”

David squeezed her again.

“Sport, I knew you were.”

And she nodded. Okay. So she had, too, and it touched him. Truly.

“So whatever happens, if you feel like crying, or if it gets . . . if it gets really hard, I’m going to say to stop it, and you’re going to have to. Can you try?”

“I can do it,” she said.

“All right,” he said, and then told her he had to check on Max, and Janie said nothing, and he told her he wanted her to go and fill the smaller aluminum pot with water, but to be absolutely careful, she had to go down in the direction the snow was coming from.

“Snow? It’s snowing?”

“It’ll melt,” David said, this tone of false reassurance in his voice he disliked. So he added, “And if it doesn’t, we’ll be okay anyway. Okay, Sportnik?”

He pulled her hood over her head and handed her the pot, and she moved awkwardly, hesitating at the opening of the sink, terrified, the sort of diaper he’d put on her chafing at her legs, but worse, reminding her.

She held there, like a would-be parachutist in the door of an airplane.

And then she was gone, and David carefully took the lower end of the sleeping bag Max was on and slowly turned it around, so Max’s head was higher, his feet lower, and he was nearer the fire, or the coals really, and since there wasn’t enough light, David had to draw the canoe back farther, and now, with the brighter light outside, he saw that one of the patches in the hull had torn almost completely, and that the Duluth pack’s holding the patch down was the only thing that had saved them.

Had the patch gone there at the esker, where he’d broken the paddle . . .

The thought made him shudder.

Maybe, he thought, if they just stayed here until the rangers knew they hadn’t made it out on time, they’d have a better chance?

But no—how long, in this kind of weather, and burning wood, and making smoke, could they put those men off? Not days, that was for sure.

No, they’d have to move.

David slid back, and with the new light, was afraid to look at Max. He bunched up the Duluth pack, thinking to press it behind Max’s back so he could get him sitting. It was a hopeful thing to do, assuming at all that Max would be able to sit. And if he couldn’t?

This was going to be the worst, David told himself, reaching for Max.

He turned Max onto his back and immediately saw the blood. He thought he might vomit, seeing it, he’d been bleeding from his left temple, and when he looked vaguely up at David, David saw the sclera of his left eye was red and his pupils unequally dilated— the left eye a pinprick, and the right now wide, appropriate to the relative dark.

“Max,” David said.

This, he told himself, again, was going to be the worst.

“Max,” he said, louder, and having to nearly shout, he knew what he’d feared was true. Time now seemed all the more awful, because it was working against him. He’d managed to get them off the island and moving, but this—

“MAX?!”

Max nodded, then sat abruptly and vomited bile, vomited, and vomited, until the whole enclosure reeked of it. This wasn’t good, either. But maybe the problem was a concussion?

Max tried to get to his feet, confused, almost hysterical, but David got on his knees and held him down.

“Stop moving!” he shouted. “It’s low in here, don’t stand up. You’ll knock your head.”

He got Max to sit, then swung the Duluth pack around and behind Max’s back, so he was propped up.

Max tried to focus on him, seemed to know what had happened. But then he began to talk crazy again, something about his business partner, and some patient, and he was giving orders and flung his arm out, and looked down at it, and seeing David, said, “What are you doing here?”

At that moment, Janie was back with the pot. David gave her a stern look, and taking the pot, told her to follow his tracks up the island and bring back more wood. She’d see it there, all cut.

He didn’t want to ask her to do it, but he had to. He had to get her outside and away.

“Go,” he said.

“All right,” she said, a frightened tone in her voice, and she was gone again.

“She cut me off,” Max said. “Won’t listen to a thing, and then she says it’s my problem,” Max said, and then his face bunched up, and he was ranting, and crying, and David struggled to hold him down, Max’s arms smacking powerfully into the rock overhead, and David both trying not to be struck by Max and trying to keep him from hurting himself, Max kicking in the sleeping bag, David not letting him climb from it, until Max had exhausted himself, and he finally stopped that, and David coaxed him to lie down again, and then Janie was back.

He told Janie to feed the fire and went out and gathered handfuls of snow in what was left of the overfly, and brought it back inside, and told Janie she was going to have to hold the snow against the side of Max’s head, where the swelling was. Could she do that?

She was going to have to do it with her bare hands, and she did that, and David scrounged through the supply bag and saw, with a crushing dismay, that the seam sealer he’d used to make the patches on the canoe had been stepped on and the contents squeezed out, gluing the sides of the supply bag together.

David could almost be sure he’d done it himself, he’d been the only one moving things here, and he cursed himself for not putting the sealer in his pocket.

Now what?! he thought. How was he going to repair the canoe?

“What?” Janie said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, but he scooted outside, didn’t want her to see him freaking out.

Outside he turned his face up into the ashy-smelling wet snow and pine scent. And the rush of the wind in the pines was telling him something, and he knew what he needed was right in front of him.

But fuck all! What was it? He told himself he didn’t have time for this.

His mind raced, trying to think what he could use to repair the canoe. Just more ripstop? No, wasn’t safe—he’d seen that already. Pack canvas? No. Leather, from the tops of his boots? But even if he did, how to seal the goddamn mess?

And the most frustrating thing was, even as he was standing there, he just knew it was right in front of him. And he glanced up at the trees—what was he seeing there, in those pines?—then turned to the west.

If they were coming, they’d be coming from that direction.

He walked a circle in the wet snow. Looked up the spine of the island. Wet greenstone, snow, on either side of the path tall pines, speaking something he couldn’t get.

He lay his hand on the bow of the canoe, the smooth varnished wood under his hand, cool.

And then it struck him what it was. Pitch!

He’d never used a wooden canoe like they had here, so hadn’t thought of it right off, but all canoes had been wooden, or birch bark, at one time, and the seams sealed with pitch.

Pitch. Pine pitch—that was it!

He felt a spring in his step, and he went into the pines off the path up the ridge, the limbs heavy with snow, and the ground crunching underfoot, and the smell of resin strong, and he got out his knife, and with excitement, went from tree to tree, cutting off the sap balls that collected where the bark had been chewed by hungry deer, or porcupine, or where the wind had broken branches, the same sap balls he’d chewed when he was younger, and spit out, because they were so strong tasting.

Bobby’s guide had shown him that, had grinned when David spit his out.

He put one in his mouth now and chewed, and found he was, just then, grinning.

How could anyone in his circumstances be happy?

But here he was, just for this moment, happy, until his memory included Max, and he remembered how Max had liked to tell jokes back then, and had laughed with the other men, and had clowned around. All of which seemed cleanly, simply, and so painfully . . . what was the word?

What he’d loved about Max. When he was silly like that, himself. Sometimes, in his grandfather’s voice, he’d made droll comments that’d had his friends laughing almost hysterically, comments David hadn’t understood until later. Things are going well for me, like a saint in this world, he’d said one night. And on another, If you can’t bite, don’t show your teeth.

Now, perched low in a pine, he thought about that last thing. Well, he hadn’t just shown his teeth. But against the three remaining men?

He had one pocket full of the pitch balls, and he began to fill the other pocket, for a second thinking he was ruining his jacket, and then thinking it mattered not at all, and he went at it, focused, and free, just for now certain of what he was doing, running, but then, digging at one of the pitch balls, noticed, in the light, the red tone to his bare hand, and the rim of red under his nails, blood, and he tried not to look at it, but that ruined it.

He’d torn all the blisters in his right hand, and his left wasn’t much better.

He’d been out . . . thirty minutes at most, but when he came in, Max lifted his arm.

David braced himself for the worst of it, but all Max said was, “I’m thirsty,” and David dipped into the water Janie’d brought in, then held the cup to his mouth.

He drank, and did not vomit. David had cleaned that up with dried pine needles and tossed it all in the snow outside, and it smelled, now in the sink, only of must, and damp, and cold stone.

He blew on the coals. Janie had stoked the fire, and it was just right. He set the pot on the three rocks the other campers had used for the same purpose. When the water was warm, he told Janie, “Go into the corner, over there, and wash yourself.” She wouldn’t look at him, so he added, “Janie, this is one of those things.”

“All right,” she said.

He caught her arm as she was turning. “Don’t be embarrassed to ask for help . . . if—if you need it, okay?”

And like that he handed her the remainder of the chambray shirt—David had cut the entire back away from the body—and she tugged her arm free, and David scuttled outside and into the damp, snowy air.

He filled the other pot with snow again, then ducked back in, pressed a handful to Max’s head, making sure Max was near enough to the fire so that his body temperature didn’t drop too far.

Moments later, Janie was at his side, but he was surprised to see she still had the sling around her hips, under her pants; she was very matter-of-fact-seeming now.

“You’re all right?” he said.

And for the first time Janie looked at him in a way he couldn’t read, and said, “A girl’s gotta have some privacy now and then.”

This amused David. And he was, selfishly, relieved, only he was wrong to be relieved, but then the moment was gone.

“I think this might just do it,” David said, “if you could keep the snow here.”

Janie scooted in. She took the ground pad, folded it under her, and held the packed snow to Max’s head while David dropped the pitch balls into the pot, just a remnant of water in it boiling.

“I’ve got to go out again,” he said. “Don’t let what’s in here get too hot. And if it starts on fire—because it could, see? Don’t throw the pot out. What’s in here’d go up like gasoline. Just cover it, so no air can get in. Okay?”

David set the lid by her. “Understand?” Janie said she did. “When it’s all melted, set the pot beside the coals, okay?”

“Where are you going?”

“There’s some birches on the west end. I’m gonna get a few feet of bark. It’ll take thirty, forty minutes.”

He did not say what she should do if something happened to him out there, but it was clear enough, anyway.

“See ya, Sport.”

“See ya, Flash,” she said as he was going out, and he was, again, amazed at her. She hadn’t called him Flash in years.