Frozen Stiff (9 page)

Derek shrugged.

She shivered, knowing he could be lurking outside the tent at this very moment. “What did he look like?”

Derek hesitated, then described him. The stranger was too much like a character in a late-night movie.
The kind where a scientist travels back in time and discovers a lost civilization. Crude deerskin pants and a poncho-type shirt, homemade boots, scruffy fur cap and gloves.

“It doesn’t matter what he looks like.” Derek finished, and glanced toward the cabin. “He’s trying to help us.”

“Said the spider to the fly,” Cody said.

“You’re just paranoid,” he said. “Because of that kidnapping.”

Cody sighed, remembering Ginny Martin, the curly-haired little girl who had been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night. The Martins lived only a few miles from Cody’s house. Even after a year, the family didn’t know what had happened to her. “And you’re too trusting of strangers.”

Derek quit trying to convince her that the man wasn’t a threat. He changed the subject by shining his flashlight on his new project. Part of a torn T-shirt was stretched tightly over a board and secured with old nails. He’d used charred firewood to sketch in the fjord, from Yakutat to Hubbard Glacier at Disenchantment Bay. “I made this map while you were sick.”

She saw an X at their first camp. “You were reciting what’s happened to us out here.”

“Yeah, the map goes with my story.”

“I bet one of the papers in Alaska would publish it.”

“You really think so?”

“Maybe even the
Californian
.” That was the big paper in Bakersfield.

Cody knotted her hair into a fist, which fell lopsided over one ear. Dried salt water mixed with sweat and dirt had made her hair coarse and stiff.

Outside, the sky had started to lighten up.
At least the storm’s over
, she told herself.
Mom’s found the note by now and a rescue party will be on its way at first light. All we have to do is build a fire and stay put until a pilot spots the smoke
.

Cody fell into the warm folds of her sleeping bag. “You still haven’t told me what the poacher said.”

“He didn’t talk. I did. I thanked him for the food.”

“Are you nuts?” She couldn’t believe Derek wasn’t more suspicious of a stranger in the wilderness. Especially someone dressed in skins. “No wonder your mom worries so much about you.”

“Maybe if you talked to him you wouldn’t be so scared.”

“I’m not scared,” she said quickly. “I’ll start socializing with poachers when the fjord freezes over.”

Derek sighed, settling deeper into his bag.

Cody wouldn’t talk about it anymore. In a little while they’d build a roaring fire. Under a clear sky, smoke would be visible for miles. “Yakutat.” She rolled it around on her tongue. Hot shower, hot meal. She’d sell her soul for the shower alone. No, a toothbrush. Brushing her teeth would even beat a shower.

“Let’s not wait on the fire,” she said. “Let’s get it going now.”

• • •

Cody huddled with her back to the fire pit, shielding her eyes from the heat and light. She’d pulled her knotted hair through the back of No Fear; the brim shaded her eyes. Maybe she’d rub mud high on her cheekbones. That was what Patterson did when he played football to absorb the beams off stadium lights.

She wished she had lotion to rub on her face. It was so hard and dry it felt ready to crack. She considered searching for edible roots, something that wasn’t toxic. She could boil and mash them, then spread them on her face. But by the time she went to all that trouble the rescuers would be there.

Now that the skies over Yakutat were rid of thunderstorms, their rescue was inevitable, probably within an hour, certainly before lunchtime, a thought that took the edge off images of a poacher dressed in dead animals.

At sunrise the sky spread soft-colored pastels; then a heavy gray mist muddied the palette. Even in a fire pit clogged with burning logs the smoke evaporated into the clouds.

If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes
, she reminded herself.

The water had risen another five or six feet since she’d been out of it. Luckily the terrain was steeper here than at their first campsite, and the tent was still high above the waterline. No sea life swam by, no otters, no porpoises. And few birds. Where were all the deer? There were more deer in Southeast Alaska
than people, she knew. She hadn’t seen one since they’d left Yakutat.

Now that she was sure help was on the way she’d stopped worrying so much about the tide. She kept glancing at the fjord, noting that the icebergs had vanished. They must be melting or drifting around another bend. She strained to see that the kayak was safely tethered.

“Where are the planes and helicopters?” she asked an hour later.

Sitting sideways, she stoked the coals with a stick. Fiery sparks sputtered around her boots, quickly snuffed out by the soupy mist. “Wouldn’t choppers fly in from Juneau to search for a couple of kids lost in the fjord? And there are lots of bush planes in Yakutat.”

She realized she was talking to herself. The sound of leaves crunching in the trees made her jump. “Derek?”

Instinct pushed her fingers to one of the logs, guiding them around the rough bark.
If it’s a bear, I hope it’s a black bear. I’d rather face a black bear than a grizzly any day. If it’s the poacher, I might still need a weapon
.

Slowly rising to her feet, she turned, letting her eyes focus on the vine-tangled woods, drab brown and muted green like military camouflage.

“Derek?”

Be quiet! Hold the log behind your back …
The instructions were coming from some other self, her survival self. Then, at the last second …

Staring this long was painful, but she didn’t dare blink.

She stood still, hands gripping the log. and waited.

Derek moved into the clearing. “What’re you doing?”

Cody tossed the log in the fire.
“Me?”
She noticed for the first time that he was back in his jeans, the cuffs tucked inside his rubber boots; three days and a fire must have been long enough to dry them. “You scared me to death. I didn’t know you’d left.”

Derek rubbed his hands briskly over the fire. “I thought you were sleeping, so I went to the cabin.”

“What for?”

He pulled a T-shirt scrap from under his sweatshirt. “I found some berries.”

She recognized the pink fruit, smooth and succulent. Salmonberries. “He left them, didn’t he?”

Derek shrugged.

“Did you see him?”

She looked nervously toward Yakutat.
Where is the search party?
she cried to herself. Then she turned to Derek and said aloud, “What does he want from us?”

He set the bundle in the dirt, the T-shirt becoming a platter. “
I
found the berries.”

Cody thought he was lying but didn’t argue about it. She snatched a handful of berries and ate them quietly. She needed to build up her strength. The juice had an odd taste, not as sweet as usual.

They aren’t ripe
, she thought, eating them anyway.

Derek pulled a strip of brittle plastic from his hip pocket. “Maybe we can make you some shades.”

Cody recognized the plastic from the cabin’s crude window. She turned it over in her hand. Maybe if she soaked off the years of grime, tucked it under No Fear, notched out a slot for her nose … She held it up to her eyes and looked at the flames; the light was definitely softened. But her vision was close to zero.

“Maybe if I can scrape off some of the yellow,” she said, hoping she’d never need them.

She was suddenly ravenously thirsty, as if her sunburn had spent the last three days sucking moisture from every pore. She lifted the cooled pot and drank what was left, guzzling each drop. Then she reached for the second pot, swirling it to cool the water.

Derek polished off his half of the berries and dug into the roots. Boiled roots? He couldn’t have found roots and boiled them. So the man had either given him the food or left it in the cabin.

“Maybe we’ll make sunglasses the way the Eskimos did,” Derek said. “I read about it at the lodge. They carved them out of wood, with slits in the front, so you can see out but light can’t get in. And we need a fishing pole. We could bend a nail for a hook.”

She had to tell him about the note and that she’d sort of cheated on the bet. She hadn’t
told
anyone where they had gone, but …

Derek took the empty pots and turned in the direction of the stream. “I’ll get more water.” He paused to look at a white-gray sky tightly knitted with weeping mist. “Then let’s start on a fishing pole. The fjord must be full of fish.”

She couldn’t let him go to the stream yet. “I have good news and bad news,” she said.

Derek turned, straddling the downed tree trunk, a pot in each hand.

“The good news is my mom knows we took the kayaks, that we were camping in the fjord. The bad news is I cheated on our bet. I left a note.”

He looked as if he’d just choked on a bunch of berries.

“So we don’t need a fishing pole.” It sounded like an apology, but the note was going to save their lives.

“I don’t have any good news,” he said. “Just bad news.”

Cody waited.

“I found the note … and tore it up.”

The stage was set for a fight, a knock-down, drag-out brawl.

Cody only swore once and tagged it with his name. It came out sounding like one word,
dammitderek
. “Why?”

He shrugged, looking guilty and sorry. “I thought someone might find the note before we got to camp out. People are always going into your cabin.” Then he disappeared with pots in hand, heading for the stream.

The mist turned to light rain, adding grayness to the already sullen sky. Shadows on the distant mountains deepened in the valleys. Up close the forest looked like what it was, a dense growth of trees and underbrush choking hundreds of thousands of acres. Farther away it was dead green, the color of lettuce forgotten in the vegetable bin.

Cody slipped into her yellow slicker.

No one knows we’re here
, she thought.

Except the poacher
.

Derek would continue to the stream for water; then he’d probably head to the cabin for nails: fishhooks. She should have gone with him, but she’d been so ticked off about the note.

The fire kicked up when the drizzle lightened to an annoying mist. Fire and smoke were still allies.

Would a search party start at the beach, on the ocean side? She and Derek had gone to the beach every day it hadn’t rained since he’d come to Yakutat. Their mothers knew the routine: hang out at Cannon Beach, a fifteen-mile-stretch with fifteen-to twenty-foot breakers that attracted surfers from around the world. Check out the fishing action, chat with the locals.

How many days would it take before the canvas bags holding their kayaks were missed? No one used them this late in the season. She had another thought: Her mom might even think they’d been kidnapped.

Now that Cody knew about the stranger, she couldn’t stay another night. They needed to pack up and get back in the kayak. No one could sneak up on them on the water.

Cody sank into the brush behind the tent to pee. That was when it hit her that Derek now had two pots—and they didn’t
have
a second pot. One had disappeared with her kayak and the rest of the gear. But she’d recognized the second one. It
was
theirs—one of a matching pair purchased at Mustache Pete’s General Store in Yakutat.

She’d just zipped her shorts when Derek returned to the clearing. She closed her eyes, waiting for them to stop stinging. Her eyes needed lots of rest; it still took time before objects farther than ten feet away were more than blurs.

She had to ask Derek about the second pot. Maybe it had fallen out of her kayak when it capsized and had washed ashore.

He was leaning into the tent when she moved up on him. “Derek? Where did—”

She stopped.

It wasn’t her cousin.

Slowly the man turned …

“What do you want?” she shouted.

He didn’t answer.

Make yourself big. Don’t let him know you’re afraid
.

It had worked with the bear.

Her eyes were fully focused on the man twenty feet in front of her. She realized he was wearing the crude deerskin clothes Derek had described. But all she saw was his mask. A dark patch tied over his nose and cheeks, butting into a white beard. His eyes were dark and threatening.

The man’s beard shook as if he was going to say something. Cody imagined a low, guttural grunt like that of a wild animal. That was what he looked like: an animal.

“Get out of here!”
she screamed, and stumbled backward, bumping into the woodpile. She was about to scream again when he clutched at his mask, as if he wasn’t sure he was wearing it. Just as suddenly he spun around and fled the clearing.

Cody stood stiff and alert. She kept her eyes on the trees and reached down to the woodpile. Her fingers found a board studded with nails. A scrap from the cabin.

If he came back, she’d let him have it, without a second thought.