Robert Crews (12 page)

He placed the three remaining smoked fish in plastic bags from which he had emptied the previous contents and stowed them in the tackle case, slinging it across his chest on the strap. Crossing that was the strap of the cylinder that carried the disassembled rod. All was neatly packaged on his person, and he was refreshed by the meal, though hardly stuffed. He looked forward to getting home, eating the rest of his food, and working either on a pair of shoes in which to hike out of the wilderness or on the improvement of the lean-to.

Now he knew where fish could be caught. Next time he would arrive earlier and stay longer, catching enough trout for the smoking of a portable supply of nourishment that could sustain him on a long walk to civilization. He had already learned how difficult it was to live off the land. He would pack enough smoked fish to live on even if he found nothing else to eat en route. Any fresh food he did find he would use immediately, reserving what he carried for emergencies.

He hiked back home through the failing light, and while once again the distance traveled seemed greater than the route out, it was a breezily clear evening, and having his neat shelter to look forward to, with the remaining smoked trout as either bedtime snack or a breakfast to anticipate, he felt, of all things, an impulse to whistle. For an instant he was shocked by this urge, which seemed almost rude. He was an intruder here. He who had made a social career of being offensive now worried about behaving improperly in a milieu of plants and animals. That was good for a laugh, but not having laughed in so long a time, he found an example hard to produce. What emerged was rather a croak, appropriate enough on nearing the pond, where the night before the sounds of the resident frogs had contributed to the din that, with the mosquito attacks, had kept him awake. In answer now he heard a couple of
plops
, the first evidence of the beavers since he had moved onto their turf. The animals had been lying low throughout his lean-to building, minnow seining, and other activities, but felt free to get back to normal when he was gone all day.

It was great to get home. Simply to see and touch the few of his possessions he had not worn or carried on the fishing trip was reassuring. He unslung the rod and tackle cases and stowed them in their places at one end of the structure. At the other end, as pillow, he put the duffel bag that contained such clothes as he was not wearing.

He was not quite ready to retire, but neither had he sufficient remaining energy to deal with the bed of boughs that had been so uncomfortable the night before. He sat down on one of the nearby stumps and ate a smoked trout, slowly, savoring every morsel, including the now brittle brush of tail, and when he was done, he proceeded to eat the other two fish as well, though not with unalloyed satisfaction: thinking of the bear, he believed he was safest when he kept no food on hand to attract the animal. This consideration added a problem to the matter of accumulating enough smoked trout to sustain him on the projected hike out of the wilderness. He was too tired to think further on that subject or any other. He put on an extra shirt against the expected chill of the night and lay down in the lean-to, on the boughs, and immediately went to sleep, disregarding the possibility of a renewed attack by mosquitoes.

Whether or not any marauder visited him during the night, four-footed or winged, he woke in the morning without evidence of having been molested. No doubt the breeze had kept the mosquitoes away. It had chilled him somewhat, as he could remember as if from a dream, but not so painfully as to have brought him to full consciousness. He had nothing on which to breakfast, but he was learning to accept an animal-like way of life in which you ate when you could and kept going until you found the next meal.

Yet he must resist a similar state of mind regarding his predicament in general. There could be no further postponement in drawing up a comprehensive plan of action that would take account of his needs and his aims, along with the possibilities of successfully addressing both. The needs took precedence, but he had made a good start with food and shelter. No doubt he could better his previous performances in both areas, especially if he decided to stay in place until he was found. He had not been effective in signaling to aircraft, but not for want of trying. It was hard to say what else could be done. Keeping a fire burning at all times, so that at the first sound of an engine damp wood could be hurled onto the flames, would be impracticable. Touching off a forest fire would presumably bring attention but with a sudden change of wind the fire might eliminate the need for rescue by burning him alive.

He had to be frank with himself: he did not believe he would ever be rescued if he remained where he was. At the same time, and despite the discouraging panorama of unrelieved forest from the top of the pine, he was convinced that, with protection for his feet—or even, if they continued to toughen up, without—he could walk back to human society.

He was therefore startled when he asked himself which he really wanted to do, stay or go, and could not for an instant give a hearty or even an honest answer. But the moment was soon gone, and he began seriously to plan for the hike.

For the smoking of a supply of fish, he found a number of robust stones and from them built a larger and sturdier version of the simple arrangement he had used alongside the trout stream, and gathered the dry makings for the fire to come. He cut green twigs for the spits and fresh boughs from which to make smoke. He traveled upstream to the place where he had caught the trout the day before and, after having no success now with several of the gaudier flies, tried the drabbest, and caught one fish after another.

He had a good day, returning with ten trout. He had taken care to clean them on the spot and not back at the pond, where the offal might attract unwelcome visitors. After the preliminaries, he put the fish on to smoke and attended to the business of making sandals. The knife on the newly discovered tool made an easy job of cutting the birch bark to size, and the little auger head on another of the blades effectively pierced holes around the margins of the soles, for the thread that would lash them to the socks. As thread he had a choice of those spools of synthetic line from the tackle case. He took the finest, which still was stiff enough not to require a needle.

He had weighted down the bark under heavy stones for more than a day, but since it nevertheless retained a stubborn tendency to curl, he heated water again in a container made of the same material and straightened the soles-to-be in the steam therefrom. He sewed them onto a pair of socks. The result was close to what he had projected. He could walk in or on what he made, and even more comfortably if wearing them over a second pair of socks. How long the bark would stand up to the wear and tear of a long hike was another matter. Therefore he cut out and perforated two pairs of replacements that could quickly be stitched on if needed, without stopping at the nearest birch.

To sustain him in his labors, he ate two of the trout after they were cooked through but not yet fully smoked. This food tasted even more delicious than it had the day before, and he was again warmed with that rarest of feelings for him: a well-being not simply physical but moral as well. Food, when he could get it, was now his sole indulgence. It did for his spirit what, way back before alcohol became a way of life, the first drink of the evening had done. At first, the latter had been beer, usually taken at the college-town tavern with the scarred tables and fellow students who waited on them with more apparent care and less efficiency than the professionals of cities.

He was suddenly too hungry to restrain himself from eating another of the trout and another after that, which left only six on which to make the hike. On the other hand, he might reach civilization much sooner than it would seem from the pine-top view. How far could one see from such a height, anyway? Even if as much as twenty miles, he could surely walk that in less than a day. He dismissed the consideration that twenty miles would not necessarily bring him to civilization, and he ate still another of the fish, reducing his supply by half: he was well aware of that fact, but he was hungrier now than when he had eaten the third. He made a heroic effort to stop at that point, more than he had done with the drinking. The fact was that he had always been at a loss with women when cold sober. He had noticed this girl, a waitress, before Spurgeon had. It was he who had brought her to Spurgeon's attention: that's what hurt.

“You don't mean the little redhead? I hope you know she's married to a campus cop.”

Crews grimaced. “Of course I don't mean Ewie. This one's new. She's kinda short and round. I don't mean fat. I should have said a round, sweet face, long dark hair, round eyes.”

“Doesn't everybody but Orientals have round eyes?”

“No. For example, Evvie doesn't. Hers are flattened ovals.”

“I don't look at her that much,” said Spurgeon. “I don't like real pale skin with freckles, or old women, or ones married to local guys.”

Spurgeon's way was always to resist whatever he was told, even when it was totally banal—
Rainy? What does “rainy” mean exactly: raining? About to rain? Just got done?
How much more tiresome he was then, if the subject at hand was the opposite sex.

“Evvie's no more than twenty-five or -six, for God's sake, your sister's age.”

“You want my sister,” Spurgeon said gleefully, extending a hand and rubbing two fingertips together, “you got to go through me, and it won't be cheap.”

Crews shrugged but was actually offended by that sort of joking. Spurgeon's sister, Dee, was a motherly sort of young woman who had seemed older than she was until, paradoxically, she became pregnant. She was married to a man with a small office-supply business that Dick predicted would go nowhere. Already, as a college sophomore, he considered himself an authority on commerce, and in fact time had not long afterward proved him right. It was no doubt due to the same sort of ego that he was fearless with girls.

“Has she got a name?”

“Look,” Crews told him, “don't make too much of it. I just noticed she was new. I just wondered if you had seen her.”

Spurgeon tossed his head, his signal for an assertion of moral superiority. “I can't afford to hang out that much at the Hole.” He was at college on a scholarship from some fraternal organization to which his father, a municipal employee in a middle-sized city, belonged, and Dick worked at full-time jobs every summer. He was not exactly poor, though it was true he did not have Crews's allowance. Nevertheless it was snide of him never to miss an opportunity to remind the latter of the financial difference between them.

… Crews could see no advantage in this reminiscence. He was beset by practical problems, and reliving old experiences that would only make him feel more inadequate could serve no purpose. As it happened, he had eaten more of the smoked fish while so distracted. Now his supply had dwindled to three: obviously he could not travel far on those. Also he was beginning to worry that he had overeaten again. He was so worried, indeed, that to calm himself he ate one of the remaining trout.

Dick Spurgeon could not afford to hang out at Cal Cutter's, immemorially known as the Black Hole, yet he went there immediately on hearing of his roommate's interest in the new waitress and not only struck up a conversation with her, but proceeded to date her “incessantly,” he claimed, for a week. He even professed to have fallen in love, piously assuring Crews, “And you know, I don't say that lightly.”

“For Christ's sake,” said Crews. “Why do I have to listen to this?”

“Because,” Spurgeon said, with a smile he believed “debonair”—another of his favorite terms at that time was “lugubrious,” and he really misused both—“you brought us together.”

“How lugubrious of me.”

“Come on,” said Spurgeon. “I'm serious. You know there
is
such a thing as love. It's not all just sex.”

“And you're in love with this Nina?”

“You don't have to say ‘this,' like you never heard of her.”

“Well, I never did till just the other day.”

“Well, you do now.” Spurgeon's indignation was tongue-in-cheek. He could not possibly have any deep emotion about Nina. He was incapable of genuine feeling with regard to anything but his intention to become a millionaire by the age of twenty-five. Since he would not get his B.S. until he was almost twenty-two, he decided not to waste still another year on an M.B.A. In fact, as a sophomore he had begun to doubt whether even completing the undergraduate program was the best he could do with that time. His favorite mode of operation, at least in theory, was the bold move. No doubt he had put it into practice with Nina.

Crews thought her common, had no further interest in her, hated to hear her name on Spurgeon's lips. “I wish you every happiness together,” he said.

“You're jealous,” said Spurgeon, grinning into his face. “You saw her first, and could have made your play. But you didn't. She can't even remember seeing you.”

Crews had met Nina once in Spurgeon's company, but as briefly as possible. For that matter, he was pleased she had not noticed him earlier. “You're having delusions of grandeur. I made some slight mention of this new girl at the Hole. I didn't have any reason to speak to her. You're with her now, that's great by me. I've got nothing against her. She's okay-looking and, you say, very nice. Congratulations.”

Crews got drunk for the first time, alone at home, except for a maid in a distant room, when he was twelve, trying to determine for himself what was so great about the wine given his father that Christmas by a client. Having neatly slit and withdrawn the lead-foil cap, he removed the cork without deforming it much with the screw. With the first few sips the wine was wretchedly sour, another of the unpleasant things adults ingested, but improved somewhat when he persisted, though it never got what could be called good. He drank about a third of the bottle, then brought its contents up to the original level by the introduction of tap water, pounded the cork home with the heel of a shoe, and reapplied the lead cap. He returned the bottle to its horizontal diamond-shaped bin in the wine cellar, taking care to lift as many of the other bottles as was necessary to fit his in bottommost, where, if what his father said was true, it would acquire many years of precious aging before being tasted by anyone else. Maybe by the time it was finally opened, the water he had added would have turned to wine. In any event, he was under the influence, legs wobbly and brain and face overheated, and while he did not get legendarily sick to the stomach, he did not care for the feeling he had, went to sleep as if anesthetized, and woke up with a taste in the mouth that reminded him of how mildew smelled.