A Week in the Woods (16 page)

It was his very own campfire, his first, and Mark would have liked to sit there in the cheerful warmth of it all night long, glowing with pride. But he couldn't, at least not just yet. He had other work to do.

* * *

At first Mark didn't know where he was. And he didn't know what was making that sound. Then his memory flooded full. He knew where he was, but he still wasn't sure about the sound. He snaked a hand up out his sleeping bag to reach for his flashlight.

It was the space blanket, rustling and crinkling in the breeze. When his campfire had died down to embers, Mark had spread the plastic blanket over his sleeping bag and pack to keep off the morning frost. He had put small rocks along the edges to hold the covering in place, but one corner of the blanket must have pulled loose as he slept.

Mark didn't want to move. He had been warm and perfectly comfortable. And Mark especially didn't want to be awake, because that meant he'd have to get back to sleep, and it had been hard enough the first time. But now that he was awake, he had to move. He had no choice. He needed to use the bathroom.

The bright flashlight hurt his eyes, so he shut them tight. Then he peeked at his watch. Three thirty. Sitting up in his sleeping bag, Mark shone the light around his campsite. Not much to see. A few pieces of leftover wood next to the fire pit, his jacket and boots there beside him, his yellow frame pack next to his sleeping bag, and where he'd been lying down, a sweatshirt he'd folded up to use for a pillow.

And within easy reach, a sturdy piece of maple branch, about five feet long. It was a club. In case of a bear. A black bear. The kind Mark had read about. The kind of bear that stood three feet tall at the shoulder, and stretched six feet from nose to tail. The kind that had four massive paws with three-inch-long claws on each one. The kind that could run thirty miles an hour and climb right up a tree. The kind that lived in the mountains of New Hampshire. That kind of bear.

Which was the main reason Mark had had trouble getting to sleep.

And thinking of bears, Mark shined his flashlight beam out into the woods. He was looking for his yellow stuff sack. After eating a Snickers bar for dinner, he had put his five remaining candy bars and four remaining energy bars into the bag, along with his soap and toothpaste. Then he had used his dental floss to hang the sack from a pine branch. It was fifteen or twenty feet in the air, and it was a good distance from where he planned to sleep. Because that's what Mr.
Survival had said you should do with things that smell nice or taste good when you're out in bear country.

Out as far as his flashlight would shine, Mark could just barely see the outline of his bright yellow stuff sack, swinging in the wind.
No bears,
he thought. Then he added,
Yet.

The ice crystals from where he'd breathed on his sleeping bag flaked off in a tiny shower of glitter as Mark squirmed out, slipped into his freezing cold boots, and then walked twenty feet away from his campsite.

A minute later he hurried back toward the warmth of his sleeping bag. He was about to take off his boots. And stopped.

A sound. It was close, coming from uphill. Coming his way. And not quietly now. Something heavy, snapping sticks as it came forward.

Mark dropped his flashlight and grabbed for his club.

And then out of the darkness, a voice called to him, hoarse and rough.

“Mark—it's okay. It's me. I need . . . help.”

“Mr. Maxwell?!”

Mark grabbed his flashlight and trotted toward the voice. “Mr. Maxwell . . . where were you? I tried . . . I tried to . . .” And then Mark saw him.

Mr. Maxwell squinted and turned his face from the glare of the flashlight. Visibly shivering, his hat was gone. His hair was matted down, wet with sweat, with steam rising off his head into the freezing air. His face was pale as a full moon and twisted by pain, his lips purple.

“It's my . . . ankle,” he said, grunting as he took another step. His voice wasn't much louder than a dry whisper.

Mark aimed his light down at Mr. Maxwell's boots, and then trained the beam on the right one. A black leather belt had been wrapped five or six times around the outside of the tan hunting boot and buckled tightly
into place. The pant leg above the boot top had been partly torn away and Mark could see scrapes and a deep bruise on the exposed skin.

Moving quickly to his side, Mark grabbed his right arm, said, “Hold on,” and then helped Mr. Maxwell walk the last ten yards.

At the side of the outcropping, Mark said, “Sit here.”

With Mark's help Mr. Maxwell eased himself down slowly until he was sitting on the ground, his back against the rock. Ten seconds later Mark said, “Lean forward,” and when Mr. Maxwell did, Mark wrapped the space blanket around his back and over his shoulders. Then Mark unzipped his sleeping bag and tucked it around him like a blanket, pulling it down to cover his legs as well.

Taking off his stocking cap, Mark pulled it onto Mr. Maxwell's head. It was too small to go all the way over his ears. Mark said, “A person loses most of his body heat from his head. You said that in class, remember?”

Mr. Maxwell smiled weakly and nodded. “Right.”

Mark pulled on his jacket and his headlamp, walked over to some fallen trees and quickly gathered an armload of sticks. Then he looked around the edge of his fire pit until he found the two wads of birch tinder he hadn't used earlier. Using a stick, he stirred the ashes of his campfire to see if there might be a live ember hiding there. Nothing.

So Mark pushed the warm ashes to one side, laid the tinder in the center, pulled the striker bar and the hacksaw blade from his jacket pocket and in thirty seconds had a fire kindled. Twigs, then sticks, then small branches, and then a couple of larger sticks. An occasional gust of wind blew the smoke back toward Mr. Maxwell, but mostly the fire pit was well shielded by the outcropping.

Glancing at Mr. Maxwell in the firelight, Mark was scared. He looked awful. “Hey,” he said, “you must be thirsty!”

Mr. Maxwell nodded, so Mark grabbed the unopened liter bottle from his pack. “Here. But make it last, okay? I've only got a little more in the other bottle. But I've got some food. Back in a minute.”

Mr. Maxwell watched the headlight bob through the darkness as Mark trotted out to his hanging stuff sack, saw him lower it to the ground and then trot back.

He fished into the sack, then holding out one of each, Mark said, “Energy bar or Snickers?”

Mr. Maxwell said, “Energy, please.” The water must have helped, because his voice sounded more normal.

Unwrapping the bar for him, Mark said, “Okay. But eat slowly. Because if you chew it smaller, it gets absorbed faster, right?”

His mouth already full, Mr. Maxwell nodded. The
bar was gone in less than a minute, so Mark said, “Better have a Snickers, too. I have five of them.”

Mr. Maxwell didn't refuse.

Mark broke up some thicker dead branches, and soon the warmth of the fire was helping to cut the chill. Some color had returned to Mr. Maxwell's cheeks. He looked a little more like a science teacher and a little less like a ghost.

Mark said, “Is your ankle real bad?”

Mr. Maxwell tried to smile. “Well, it's not good. I'm pretty sure it's broken. Didn't unlace my boot to look.”

“How did it happen?”

“Me being stupid, that's how,” said Mr. Maxwell. “I tracked you to the place on the loop trail where it goes up to the ridge. Then I saw you went straight. So I figured you were taking a short cut across, and I wanted to get to the trail before you did. So I didn't track you. I went across above you on the mountain, because I was afraid that if I got too close, you'd hear me and hide or run off and really get yourself lost out there. So I got to the trail, and I figured I was above you, so I started hurrying down. Which is two mistakes at once—hurrying when I was alone, and hurrying downhill. I knew I was tired and dehydrated, and the light was getting bad, but I hurried anyway. Just a lot of stupid stuff all at once. And all it took was one stretch of steep trail, and one rock that wasn't steady, and one
big fat boot coming down too fast and too sloppy. The rock tipped and I went down hard. My foot got wedged, and then another rock fell in on top, a big one. That's the one that hurt me. I couldn't lift it off. And I called out your name four or five times, and then I guess I passed out for a while. It hurt pretty bad.”

“You didn't hear me call back?” asked Mark. “Because I heard you yell. At first I ran away, downhill. And I'm sorry about that. But then I called back. I even blew my whistle and went back uphill looking for you. But I figured you must have headed back down to the camp. I walked east so I could get back to the main trail. That's how I ended up here.”

Mr. Maxwell said, “I did hear the whistle. And I yelled my head off, but my throat was too dry and my voice didn't last long. You must have been downwind of me and too far away.” Mr. Maxwell shook his head and made a wry face. “Besides, I figured maybe you heard me, and then lit out to get as far away from me as you could.”

There was an awkward silence. Mark got up and put two more pieces of wood on the fire. Then he asked, “So how'd you get your foot loose?”

“Pure dumb luck,” said Mr. Maxwell, “that's how. It was almost dark, and I was in a lot of pain. But right there, right next to the trail, there were some young maple trees. And I looked at the rock pinning my
ankle, and I could see that if I had a lever, I could pry it up enough to get my foot out.”

“But deadwood breaks too easily,” said Mark. “I've been breaking up maple all night for firewood.”

“Who said anything about deadwood?” asked Mr. Maxwell. “I used a live maple, about eight feet long.”

“You broke off a live tree?”

“Nope,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Didn't break it. Cut it. With this.”

Mr. Maxwell stuck his hand out from under the sleeping bag. He was holding the tool. The knife.

“Oh,” said Mark. He felt his face turning red.

“Here,” said Mr. Maxwell, tossing it to Mark, “open up the saw.”

“The saw?” said Mark. “Sure. The saw.”

Mark turned the tool over in his hands a couple times, then pulled at one of the blades. It was a file. “Oops,” he said, pushing it back into the handle. “I always get the file and the saw mixed up.” Mark fiddled some more and then pulled out a blunt, serrated knife blade. On the third try he found the saw and pulled it out until it clicked all the way open.

“That's a great little saw,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Ripped through four inches of green maple tree in about fifteen minutes. Then I knocked off the branches, lopped off the top, got a smaller rock to use for a fulcrum, and zip, got myself free in three minutes flat. Nothing like a simple machine. And then later, I
smelled wood smoke and started working my way toward it. Figured it had to be you.” Nodding at the tool, Mr. Maxwell said, “Better close that up.”

“Sure,” said Mark. He pushed at the back of the saw blade. It wouldn't move. “Guess it's stuck.”

“You have to unlock it,” Mr. Maxwell said.

“Right,” said Mark, but he didn't know where to push to make the blade close.

After he'd fiddled with it for about ten seconds, Mr. Maxwell said, “Here.” He held out his hand and Mark gave him the tool. With a simple motion of his thumb, Mr. Maxwell pushed down the lock catch and snapped the saw blade shut.

Mr. Maxwell looked at Mark in the orange firelight, and quietly he said, “Mark, I know it's not your knife. It's got Jason's name scratched on the handle. I went to my truck to tell you I knew, but you weren't there. I wanted to tell you that I understood why you took the blame that way. But you weren't there. And I'm not mad at you for running off. You should have told me the truth, that it was Jason's knife, but I understand why you didn't. I've been pretty nasty. And I'm sorry. This is all my fault. All of it. I'm going to make sure you don't get in trouble. None at all. And I hope you can forgive me.”

Mark's chest felt so tight he could hardly breathe.

Mr. Maxwell said, “And you don't have to say anything. Better if you don't. So that's that.”

After the silence had stretched to twenty or thirty seconds Mr. Maxwell said, “Say, do you think I could have another Snickers bar? I'm still pretty hungry.”

“Sure!” Mark jumped up and got him one.

Talking with his mouth full, Mr. Maxwell said, “So how come you got onto the loop trail in the first place?”

“Well, you see . . . I wanted to get back to the campground before dark. I guessed everyone would think I was lost. But I'm not, because I've got my compass and Mrs. Farr gave us all a map. But if everyone
thought
I was lost, then it would turn into a big deal. And that would ruin the whole week for everybody. And I didn't want that.”

Mr. Maxwell didn't try to talk. It would have been hard for him at that moment. And not just because his mouth was full of candy bar.

He'd had this feeling many times during his life as a teacher. Only not so much recently. This feeling of quiet awe at the basic decency of people. And especially children, how they understand about right and wrong. He'd seen it so many times, and then he would forget about it. About how if people are given half a chance, they do the right thing. Sitting there with his ankle throbbing, Mr. Maxwell felt certain he wouldn't forget it again. He was glad for the swirling wood smoke. It gave him a good reason to let his eyes water a little.

When he'd finished the Snickers, Mr. Maxwell saw the piece of maple branch on the ground beside Mark's sleeping area. He reached out from under the sleeping bag and picked it up. “What's this, Mark?”

Mark said, “That's my bear stick.”