Nowhere Wild (7 page)

Jake rolled over in his sleeping bag and winced. A sharp rock or a stick, somehow unnoticed when he'd set up the tent the night before, centered on one of his vertebrae and threatened to dislodge it. Jake shifted his position again, but whatever comfort the bag had once provided could no longer be found.

Six days of hard travel had left every muscle tight, every joint sore, and every callus raw. His body didn't want to get up, and neither did his brain. Though he'd been exhausted the night before, sleep had not come easy, nor had it been deep. Every noise outside the tent triggered worry of a bear or wolf attack, or of a raccoon stealing his food. He had camped a thousand times, but never alone. On no other trip in his life had he ever been so completely and utterly alone. That truth kept him awake even when the ground wasn't rocky, and the woods were quiet.

Sleep or no sleep, it was time to get moving. He pulled on his boots and exited the tent.

Days of sunshine had finally surrendered to sullen skies with a misting drizzle. The tops of the trees swayed and bent. Leaves curtsied as water dripped and splashed to the ground below. The drip of rain off his hat brim added to lack of sleep put him in a mood fit to match the foul weather.

Amos had warned him that the trip would be hard, and Jake had
heard the words. Hearing and listening, however, are two different things. He had always believed, right up until the moment Amos had died, that the two of them would be able to do this trip—that somehow, with spring, his grandfather would regain his strength, and together they would make it out. Now, less than a week into the three-week journey, he knew exactly what his grandfather had known. Life here was
hard
. For the first time, doubt crept into his mind. With this doubt came more fears that something horrible had happened to his father. If Dad couldn't make it out . . . Dad, with his twenty years' experience in the bush. Strong, fit,
Dad
. Jake searched for another explanation as to why his father had not come back for them. There had to be another explanation. Yet Jake could think of nothing.

Jake stood by the canoe. The rain hitting his shoulders felt as if it would pound him into the forest floor like a hammer would a tent stake. His feet, however, weren't swallowed up by the earth. With a little effort, he moved them. His father, Jake reasoned, wouldn't have stopped until or unless he could no longer move. Jake wouldn't either. And, if his dad was still alive, Jake would find him.

His gaze turned southward. Somewhere ahead, not too far, was a river. That river would get him out of the bush and allow him to get back in the canoe and rest his exhausted legs.

He cleaned up his camp and moved on.

Two hours later, he slid the canoe into the river. The flow headed north. Jake pointed the bow southward and worked his way against the current. The water, not so long ago ice and snow, was freezing cold. Paddling upriver was faster than breaking trail through the bush, but not by much. Twice, Jake pulled in to shore to lift the canoe around rocks that funneled the flow into a chute no wider than the canoe was long. Each time he got out, he lamented the loss of time and the extra effort required to travel the distance.

The banks steepened as the river sawed its way through a ridge.
The speed of the current increased. Jake dug in with his paddle, propelling the canoe from eddy to eddy. The rain from the clouds above mixed with the mist generated by the moving water beneath him. The channel tightened further, till, from the center, Jake could touch both banks at once with his paddle. In some places, the water moved so quickly that the paddle could barely gain any traction. Instead, Jake poled the canoe with a piece of driftwood. The steep sides slid ever higher as he pushed forward.

Get out while you can. Scout the line
, Amos's voice warned.

But Jake could see a curve in the river coming, and with the way the ridges seemed to be dropping nearby, he knew that once he was past this bottleneck, the river would open back up. He pushed on.

Ahead, however, in the middle of the curve, a jumble of broken logs held back the flow, blocking his passage completely. The pile breached the surface nearly to Jake's height. Water boiled around the logs, surging between the gaps. Broken branches swung and twisted as the pressure whipped them back and forth. Soon the weight of the water built up behind this dam would overcome the strength of the wood, and the whole mess would shoot down the little canyon like a runaway freight train.

Jake rammed his driftwood pole into the rocky riverbed to steady the canoe. The sides here were too steep to climb. To turn around and head back to a more friendly start to the portage would mean losing an hour's hard-earned gains.

He eyed the pile. It would only take a minute or two to scale it, dragging the canoe with him. On the other side, the slow open water of the backed-up river would be almost pleasant to paddle after so many days fighting the bush.

Jake pushed closer to the pile. The canoe lifted as water seethed from a gap below the surface. He steadied himself by grabbing at one of the logs. The continuous spray had stripped the bark, leaving
the wood slick. With one hand on the log, he grabbed his pack with the other and slung it over his shoulder.

The pack secure, he held the forward strut on the canoe with his free hand and transferred his weight to the log. It bent under the extra burden, dipping perilously close to the frothing surface. Relieved of its passenger, the canoe bobbed even more and threatened to break free of Jake's tenuous grip. He clamped his fingers down on the aluminum until it felt like he would crimp the metal. He shifted his feet, searching for solid footing. The log bent farther under the additional weight. Even over the roar of the water and hiss of the spray, Jake heard the wood crack.

Jake nearly jumped back into the canoe right there and then, but just as he started to move, the water lifted the bow out of the water and pushed the canoe toward the pile. Jake pulled with all his might, and the canoe slid onto the pile next to him, until only the stern remained in the current.

The pile, which he could now see was almost like a tiny island, was longer than it was tall by a factor of five. A dozen trees jammed into the thin cut in the rock. Loose branches filled some of the gaps. Weeds and grass stems piled up within the muddle. Tree trunks jutted up at odd angles, forming a three-dimensional maze.

Amos's words of caution fluttered through Jake's brain again. He could still go back down the pile, back along the river, and find a place to start a more normal portage. But the open water beckoned, tantalizingly close. He leaned forward, tested the next logical footstep, and inched ahead.

The canoe squeaked a protest each time he moved it. Twigs and splintered wood scratched at its bottom. Jake lifted it as best he could to avoid the sharpest of sticks, but he didn't dare try to carry the entire mass. He leaned on the canoe while finding his next foothold on the slippery wood.

Halfway across the pile, he came to a tree lodged straight across the gorge. A narrow gap under it appeared easier to pass through than the jumble of branches above. If he used the canoe as a bridge, then pulled it back up from the opposite side, he'd be able to reach the other side of the gap without even getting wet.

He barely paused before sliding the canoe into the hole beneath the tree.

The bow bobbed and jerked as the foaming water whipped it one way, then another. He steadied the craft and pushed it farther into the breach. The fit was tighter than he'd expected. The gunwale barely fit under the obstructing tree, but he managed to steady the boat, and then climbed in.

Halfway across, the pack on his back snagged on the stub of a branch, stopping him in his tracks. Jake's pulse raced. He worked his arm up over his head and gently pried the offending branch upward off his pack. Above his head, the tree trunk shifted, but held. He removed his pack and food canister and started forward again. Three times the canoe bumped up against the trunk, and twice the trunk moved, only to slide slowly back into its original position.

Getting out on the far side was no easier. Jake tossed his pack onto a stable part of the pile to lighten the load. He stood in the bobbing canoe, fought for balance, then leaped across the remaining gap. As he landed, his left foot slipped on a slick log and shot backward into the water. The canoe was propelled backward as well, the current spinning the bow to the left, out of his grasp.

Jake scrambled to his feet, turning to grab the canoe before it slipped completely out of reach. The fingers of his left hand latched on to the bow, but the branch he held on to with his right broke and gave way. Jake pitched forward into the freezing water. The flow tore at his legs. His mouth filled with water. He coughed, gulped more air, and held it deep in his chest as the suction pulled him under the
canoe. The canoe began to roll. Jake searched with his right hand for something—anything—to use to pull himself back up above the water. He curled his legs, pressing his knees against the gunwale. More water poured over him and into the canoe, forcing him down, deeper into the pile. His lungs burned. His right hand finally found a handhold. With a kick of his legs, he broke the surface and launched himself into the branches above. The branch bent and torqued toward the water. With his every movement, it sank lower into the water. But as it sank, the tree it was attached to rolled and pulled him clear of the hole in the middle of the pile. Jake rode the tree as it completed its roll. By the time the roll stopped, he was even with his pack, perched on a solid part of the pile, and out of immediate danger. He dropped down next to his pack and put his hands on his knees.

Jake shook from head to toe. Only his tenuous grip on the canoe had saved his life. It had all happened so fast. Had his right hand missed that thin branch, he would never have made it. Had the tree not rolled just the way it did, he would have been trapped underneath it. He was lucky to be alive, and he knew it.

But he also knew his life had just gotten a lot harder. For under that tree, his canoe, now filled with water and pinned down by the flow, was lost. He'd seen canoes submerge before—on one guiding trip, two clients had flipped in a rapid and buried the bow under a waterfall. It had taken six of them—and a bunch of ropes—to drag it free. Even if he could get the tree off the boat—which was a big if considering he had only a little hatchet and his machete—and even if the pile didn't collapse in the meantime, he'd still have to lift a massive amount of water to free the canoe. By himself, he'd never be able to do it.

Jake cupped his face in his hands in a silent plea. After a moment, he tried to push the tree off the boat, just in case the force of the
water's flow would somehow lift the canoe. But the tree, having settled into a new equilibrium, barely moved. The canoe sank deeper.

He had no choice. He couldn't stay there. Every minute he stood on the logs was another minute they could all break free and crush him as they tore downriver. He grabbed his pack. The logs under his feet shifted. A loud crack shook the pile. He glanced back at the canoe one last time, buckled the pack up tight, and slid over the next set of logs.

Beyond the pile of logs, the steep sides of the gorge slowly dropped lower. Jake worked himself along a narrow ledge, holding on to the roots of trees which had grown into small fissures in the rock. He pulled himself over the top of the gorge after ten minutes of careful navigation. He collapsed at the top, shivering and shaking. After a moment, he crawled back to the edge and tried to think of another way to free the canoe. With a chainsaw, safety ropes, and a crane, he might be able to get it free. He had none of that—just his inadequate hand tools, and sopping wet clothes he desperately needed to dry.

Jake forced himself to his feet, turned and stumbled inland, looking for a good place to start a fire to warm his chilled body. His father's words again ran through his head.
Shelter. Fire. Water. Food
. But now, he added another critical word to the mantra.
Canoe.

Finishing his journey would be impossible without one.

The storm lasted five days. On the sixth day, the temperature drifted upward to just ten degrees below freezing, which felt almost balmy to Izzy. Rick set out at first light to check his trapline.

“Don't go too far,” he said as he zipped up his parka.

“Okay.”

“Keep the fire going.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said bitterly.

“Get some more moss for those gaps.”

“I'll see what I can find.”

“And restock that woodpile. It's going to get cold again tonight. I'll be back by dark.”

With that he disappeared, and she finally had the cabin to herself.

It was a relief to have him out of the cabin—out of the cabin and away from her. After that first time, once Rick had crossed that line, he had shown no mercy. He said he loved her. He told her that this was what people who loved each other did. He said it would get better . . . feel better . . . eventually.

Lies
. All lies. The pain was brutal . . . searing her from the inside out. She hurt . . . everywhere, in a never-ending kind of torment she couldn't ignore, but couldn't bear to think about. In the dark, she tried to think about Angie, but pleasant memories could not break
the surface of her anguish. She tried to think about her parents, but all she could remember was the horrible way they had died, and how alone she now was. Alone, but
not
, in the worst possible way. He told her how much he needed her. How he was so happy they were together. How he hoped they would always be together.

The words hurt almost as much as the act that followed them.

For all of Izzy's desire to be strong, the act of being strong seemed more than she could bear. Stepping out of the cabin felt like breaking out of jail. But there was no escape from this prison.

Snow had piled up nearly to the roof, wrapping impenetrable walls of white around the cabin to the east and west. The wind still ripped across the lake, like a sentry standing guard. She could not outrun that. She could only survive, or not survive.

It took Izzy an hour to dig a channel through the deep bank to the door of the outhouse to dump the pail they had filled during the storm. Finding firewood required going inland to where, under the shelter of tree branches, the snow was barely knee deep instead of over her head. Digging out already downed trees was impossible. She had no choice but to search for dead branches still hung up above the snow and reachable.

By noon, barely half the woodpile had been rebuilt and Izzy was exhausted. Five days of rest should have allowed her time to rebuild her strength and energy, but the five days had not been restful. Not for her. She tried not to think about it as she worked, but every time she came back to the cabin with another load of wood, her sense of panic rose. Every time she opened the door, she feared he would already be back.

She ate her meager portion for lunch as she ogled the rest of the drying meat on the rack. They were still rationing the deer as if it alone would have to last them through the winter. Rick knew exactly how much remained. His orders were strict, and Izzy still
remembered what a truly empty stomach felt like. She made do with her ration.

She wandered farther inland after her lunch, her trail marked with the small hatchet strapped to her wrist. Even with the snowshoe tracks, it was far too easy to become disoriented and end up walking in a circle. In the first two weeks at the cabin, when the snow wasn't quite so deep, they had gathered wood from close by. Now she had to go farther each day. When Rick was around, he'd chop down an entire dead tree. She didn't have the energy or the power to do that.

The ground rose as she trudged north. At first, the shallow grade offered little resistance, but after ten minutes the rise grew steeper until she reached a gravel ridge as high as a six-story building. The trees stopped just short of the slope. She climbed the incline, struggling to maintain a foothold on the ice-covered dirt. The hatchet swung freely from its rawhide strap, banging into her ribs as she ascended. Only a thin layer of snow covered the top, as if the bulk of the ridge had frightened the wind into going up and over and holding its white cargo to dump on their cabin instead.

An impressive view greeted her from the top of the esker. To the north, the ridge sloped steeply downward. Trees fought back against the force of the predominant winds. To the east and west, the ridge ran to the horizon. To the south, toward the cabin, she could just see over the tops of the snow-covered trees below. The lake extended as an expanse of white beyond the limit of visibility. The slightest wisp of gray-blue smoke drifted out of the cabin's metal chimney, reminding her of the need to feed another stick into the fire. Rick wouldn't be happy if it was out when he returned from hunting.

She stood on the ridge as the sky grew. For the first time in months, she could see beyond her immediate surroundings. Last summer, being caught in the open had been something to fear. Here,
from the top of this ridge, the size of the earth frightened her. The northern sky dwarfed the tiny, isolated cabin. There was nothing left beyond this desolate view—nothing to go back to. The flu had only been the start of the destruction. People had done the rest.

After the flu, Izzy had followed Angie wherever she went, stumbling through day after day of grief, oblivious to anything but her loss. Her mother. Her father. Her friends.

All dead or gone.

Neither of them had even had the energy to go to the store to get groceries. Rick saved them then. He found them food and gathered supplies. When the remaining survivors began to hoard what they could, the stores had emptied
so
fast. The flu had killed so many—yet it took only a few weeks for the survivors to eat what was left. Thompson, dependent on trucked-in food and fuel, had been forgotten.

The trucks would come back, the weakened flu survivors all said. The trucks never did.

No one rationed what they had. The food had always come. Everyone ate three meals a day until one day there was barely enough for one. A discovered can of tuna, long hidden in someone's pantry, seemed like a banquet fit for a king. Those had been the good days.

Then the starvation began. The true starvation, where the energy it took to find food exceeded the return from eating it. Every house had been ransacked. The people who could leave, left, and never came back. No one ever came back. Those who stayed, changed. Good people—people who would have given the shirt off their back in the good times—protected what they had until it, too, was gone. Hunger changed them all.

But Rick again had saved them. He took them out of town when there were no other options. Angie had been there, pulling Izzy
along, telling her it would be okay. Telling her that they would make it, one way or another.

Izzy glanced back to where the thin curl of smoke betrayed the location of the cabin, and the bed inside.

Angie, why didn't you stop this?

Her sister remained silent.

More memories. Memories of conversations—whispered conversations between Angie and Rick that Izzy had been too stricken to hear to when they happened. The whispers grew louder now. Now, she heard them clearly.

“Don't you ever—”

“Never! You understand me?”

“Never!”

And then she realized Angie
had
done her best to stop it. Izzy knew, in a moment of clarity, what had happened to Angie.

That day.

That day Izzy had killed the deer. Rick and Angie had been gone. Angie had left Izzy alone for the first time in forever. And Angie had been so upset, so different, after she came back. Izzy had always thought it was about the deer. Angie became distant—angry. Not with Izzy. With Rick.

Rick had . . . had done the same to
her.

Oh, Angie! Poor, Angie!

And yet Angie had stayed. She had stayed; had gone through
that
for weeks after that day and said nothing.
Why would she have done that?
In the instant that followed, Izzy knew why.
Survival
. Angie had done that, with him, to survive. To allow
both
of them to survive. The realization came in gigantic, body-shaking sobs. Her sister had done the unthinkable. And then she knew she would have to do the same, because Angie had done it for her. For Izzy not to survive would be to dishonor Angie's memory, to waste her sacrifice.
Izzy's duty was to survive, and then to escape—or everything Angie had suffered through would be for nothing. Izzy couldn't do that. Not now that she knew it all.

She stumbled over to a cluster of gnarled trees that had shied away from the predominantly northerly gusts. Instead of giving up altogether, the trees had done what they could to survive. Living in the depths of the ravines, away from the wind, would have been easier. But that was not their lot; that was not where their seeds had fallen and taken root. And though their life was hard, their roots grasped at the shallow soil, held tight to it, and the trees survived. Where others with thinner roots would have fallen in the slightest gust, these trees had fought the cruelty of the extended winters and lived.

Izzy put her hand on one of the branches. The branch barely moved. It resisted her pressure. It had adapted. It had grown strong where it could.

From this ridge, she could see the curvature of the earth. No one was out there. No one was looking for her. No one would save her.

Escape would be completely up to her.

She stood on that ridge for a half hour, watching the clouds move, until the chill of the day settled through her clothes. Rick would be back soon, and she had work to do. She would have to do that work, and more. She would have to recover her strength. She would have to learn how to hunt for her own food. She would have to learn how to navigate the wilderness. She would have to find a way to make her own supplies and tools. But worst of all, she would have to bide her time. She would need to survive in that cabin until she could survive out here by herself. In the snow, she would be too easy for him to find. In the summer, however, when the days were long, the weather warmer, and food easier to come by—she could go then. Back to Thompson, and whatever—whoever—was there.
And if there was no one there, she would go south and keep going, until she found . . . a new life . . . away from him.

She worked her way back down the esker, grabbing an armful of branches from a hung-up deadfall as she returned to the cabin.

Rick was waiting by the door when she arrived. A long, silver canoe lay on the snow next to the cabin.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.

“Getting firewood.” She held up the collection of branches as if he couldn't see them. “Where'd you get that?” She tipped her head toward the canoe. She dumped the sticks unceremoniously on the pile inside the cabin. Clumps of snow dropped onto the floor.

“Did you have to go all the way to Winnipeg for it?” Rick ignored the question about the canoe. Blood covered his hands. A freshly skinned and gutted rabbit lay on the kitchen table. A dead ptarmigan lay next to it, its head at an odd angle to its body, its feathers flayed with spots of red.

“No . . . just had to find wood not covered up by the snow.”

“How long were you gone?”

“Not long . . . ,” she said with a bit of hesitation. Rick simmered.

“What did I tell you before I left?”

“You told me to get wood and find some moss.”

“And what else?”

“And . . .” And she remembered. The stove. She glanced at it.

“You let the fire go out.” He grabbed her by the collar of her coat and dragged her over to the stove. The coals were gray and cold. He pushed her face against the cold metal.

“You feel that? You feel how cold that is?” The cast iron sucked the heat from her exposed skin. He pulled her up and glared at her.

“I'm sorry, Rick. I didn't mean to . . . I thought about it while I was out there. Really I did. I just wanted to get as much wood in here as I could, in case it storms again.” Izzy's stomach churned.
Fire, out here, was everything. Without it, they wouldn't last a night. Not in this cold.

Rick paused. “We can't let it happen again. You understand?” His anger slowly subsided.

“I know, Rick. I know. It won't happen again.”

Rick's grip on her collar relaxed. “There's another half hour of daylight left. Get out there and get some more wood. I'll get this bloody thing relit.” He picked up the flint and striker from the mantel, growling and cussing as he did so.

Izzy pulled her coat tight and rushed out the door, back into the cold, deep snow, barely giving a passing thought to the canoe by the door.

Summer couldn't possibly come soon enough.