Another hard, cold, interrupted night in the wilderness, and when Cork woke in the morning, there wasn’t a place on his whole body that didn’t hate him and let him know it. The cut the woman had delivered across his side stung like ants were feasting there. Cork could see that the tall man had risen early. He stood by the fire he’d long ago stoked to flame. The rifle hung from a sling over his shoulder. Cork smelled coffee and saw a pot sitting among the coals. For that alone, he could have called the tall man brother.
Cork was surprised to see that the cloud cover had broken, and its remnants were tinted by the rising sun with a burnt-orange hue. The tops of the pine trees were burnished with sunlight as well. With the clearing of the sky, the temperature overnight had dropped, and Cork could feel the freeze on his face.
The sour woman was coming from the woods, her hands freed from the tape that had bound them the night before. Lindsay Harris was stirring awake in her sleeping bag. Bird didn’t move a muscle.
Cork threw his blankets aside. “Mind cutting me free?” He held out his bound wrists.
The tall man cut the tape around his wrists and ankles. Cork slowly stood up, trying not to groan too audibly.
“Not a place for sissies,” the tall man said.
Cork walked to the fire and looked longingly at the pot where the coffee was boiling. “I’ve done the Boundary Waters all my life. If I’d been on a trip like this before, I would never have made another.”
“My father lived without electricity or running water the whole of his life,” the tall man said. “The nearest settlement was a two-day paddle. Like ironwood, his muscles and spirit. There’s a lot to be said for hardship.”
Mrs. Gray joined them, and cast a scowl toward Bird. “You should wake him up. We need to be gone.”
“There’s ice on the lake,” the tall man said. “We’ll wait for the sun to rise higher, warm the water some, maybe weaken that ice.”
“More delay,” the woman said. “We should have been out of here a long time ago.”
“Doesn’t do us any good, speaking of what should have been,” the tall man said. “We need to be talking possibilities.”
“It’s possible we’re screwed,” the woman said.
She spun away and went to the lakeshore, probably to judge for herself the truth of what the tall man had said.
Lindsay Harris crawled from her sleeping bag, and the tall man cut her bonds. She reached back inside her bag for her coat and boots, which she quickly put on. She hurried to the fire and stood with the men, her breath crystallizing in white puffs.
“Jesus, it’s cold,” she said.
“It will get colder,” the tall man said.
Lindsay looked up where the clouds continued to thin and break and give the sky over to great channels of blue. “Not today.”
The tall man nodded. “But tonight and every night after.”
“Then we need to get out of here,” Lindsay said, in a very practical voice.
“We’ll see how the lake responds to the sun. If the ice coating is thin enough, we’ll be able to move through without damaging the canoes.”
Bird made a sound, a long, painful release of air. He opened his eyes and said toward the sky, “I need to pee.”
The tall man walked to him and knelt. “Can you stand?”
“I can try.”
He gave Bird a hand, but it was a struggle and Cork stepped in to help. Between them, they got the kid to his feet. They walked him a short way into the woods and held him while he unzipped.
“If it wasn’t for this leg, we’d be at White Woman Lake now,” Bird said as he relieved himself. His pee steamed as it hit frozen ground. “It’s all my fault.”
“No one’s fault,” the tall man said. “Things just happen. You get knocked down. The real question is can you stand back up.”
Bird looked at the hands of the men who held him upright and said bitterly, “Not without help, looks like.”
“You’ve given it everything you can,” Cork said. “Let it go. We’ll make it out of these woods, one way or another.”
“It’ll be too late,” Bird said. “All of this for nothing.”
“There’s purpose in everything,” the tall man said. “Though we don’t always see it.”
Which struck Cork as something he might have heard coming from the lips of Henry Meloux.
“Done,” Bird said and zipped up.
They helped him back to the fire, where he sat warming himself and staring into the flames. The sour woman had begun preparing a breakfast of oatmeal and nuts.
“One more good meal,” she said to no one in particular. “Then we’re out of food.”
The tall man pulled cups from his pack and poured coffee for Bird, and then some for Mrs. Gray. He filled a cup for Lindsay. There was a single cup left.
“I don’t mind sharing,” he said, offering it to Cork.
The sun broke through the limbs of the pines, and they sat around the fire in dappled, gold light and ate.
“I hate aluminum canoes,” the tall man said. “But I wish I had them now. They’d cut across that lake without a problem.”
“Why the birch bark?” Cork asked. “They’re beautiful, but a lot of trouble, seems to me. Especially considering the circumstances.”
“See?” Mrs. Gray said to the tall man. She looked to Cork with satisfaction. “I told him the same thing. Bring the damn Grummans.”
“They’re brothers to me. Brothers with wings,” the tall man said. “They fly on water. And they’ve worked well enough before.”
“Before?” Lindsay looked up from her oatmeal. “You mean with my grandfather?”
“He was easy,” the woman said. “Not like you. Not like this.” She glared at Bird. “And he wasn’t with us.”
The kid’s head dropped and he stared at the ground.
“That’s enough talk,” the tall man said.
Cork had finished his meal. He stood and walked to the edge of the lake. The sun was high above the eastern shoreline, which lay dark along the horizon. Close in, the ice was a thin, white plating, but farther out, where the lake was deep, it was like lacquer over wood and the dark water showed clearly beneath. Cork thought that if they could get beyond the ice along the lakeshore, the canoes could probably move without a lot of worry about damage.
He heard the commotion behind him and turned to find Bird standing with the rifle gripped in his hands. The barrel was pointed at the tall man on the other side of the fire. The sour woman and Lindsay sat wide-eyed, looking on.
“Put the rifle down,” the tall man said.
“No. You stay where you are, Uncle Aaron. I don’t want to hurt you. You’ll all be better off without me. You can get out faster. You can still save the Manitou.”
“What? You’re going to kill yourself?” the sour woman said. It was clear she was fully on board with the idea.
“It’s the only way,” Bird said.
The tall man began to walk around the campfire. His eyes never left his nephew’s face. “You’re not going to shoot me or yourself or anyone. That’s not our way.”
“Stay back.”
“Shoot yourself, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Gray said. “Get it over with.”
Bird snugged the rifle against his shoulder. The crack of the round he pulled off brought the tall man to a halt.
“I mean it, Uncle Aaron. This is the only way.”
Bird’s attention was fully on the tall man, and he didn’t see Lindsay Harris stand silently and ease herself toward him.
Mrs. Gray said, “Sit down, you little bitch.”
The kid swung his eyes toward Lindsay and shifted the rifle barrel her way. “Stay back!” His voice was desperate, and Cork wasn’t at all certain that in his feverish state, the kid might not kill the woman they’d come all this way to secure.
“Bird,” the tall man snapped.
The kid’s eyes bounced between the tall man and Lindsay Harris. His breathing was rapid. He teetered on his feet. Panic was all over his face now, and Cork understood that he was probably capable of anything.
Then he heard it, a low, distant thrum. He said to the kid, “Wait, Bird. Listen.”
They all stood stone-still, and in a few moments, they heard it, too.
The tall man spoke quietly to Bird.
“A plane,” he said.