Robert Crews (23 page)

Crews smiled ruefully. “I've boasted about how I've coped out here, building the lean-to and the raft, and getting food. But I don't have any sense of direction at all unless the sun stays visible, and even then it's easy to be misled. The other day I went all around the lake with the idea I was going in a more or less straight line. I thought we were heading north when we started. But the slightest divergence, especially when you're never sure precisely where you are in the first place, the slightest deviation can grow with each mile.”

“He
had a map and a compass,” she said. “You haven't done badly with no help at all.”

That he was pleased to hear such sentiments did not lessen Crews's chagrin. He had taken what seemed to be the more obvious alternative when they went from the open field onto the long wooded slope: there was a much fainter trail to the left. But then the error might have come much earlier: back in the tall trees, long before they had emerged to disturb the game bird from its home in the brush, he had noticed, perhaps too idly, the suggestion of another trail leading away to the right. Tomorrow they would have to retrace their route to the nearer of the alternative trails, take it, and if by the end of that day they had no good reason to believe it the correct one, come all the way back and take the other.

He said as much to the woman. “And if neither of them is the right one, then we'll have to really start all over, go back to your old campsite.” He looked downstream, where the water became shallow, splashing around protruding rocks, a minor rapids. “Meanwhile, this looks like a livable place.” He crawled to the edge of the low bank and filled the thermos cup with water, wetting his hand. “It's ice-cold.” He gave her the cup and went back to fill the bottle. “Should be trout in here.”

She was standing. “I'd really like to take a whole bath,” she said. “I can put with up the cold water.”

Crews frowned. “I don't know…”

“I'll be okay. I really have to begin taking over my own care. Believe me, I
need
to. It's no reflection on you.” She smiled. “I'm all right, really. You've saved my life.”

“Well…”

“But I have to get hold of it.”

“But let me just see how deep it is,” he said, “and how fast the current is running.” He took off his jacket and dropped it on the bank. He stepped down into knee-deep water, which was so cold as almost to cause his legs to buckle. It came only to his waist in midstream. The current was brisk but not as forceful as it had looked. By the time he had waded back he was over the shock of the initial chill. But as he scrambled out he could say quite truthfully, “It's even colder than I thought. I wish you'd at least let me make a fire first.” He was so chilled he had to show his teeth. “It's icy even with your clothes on.” He squeezed as much water from his own as he could while continuing to wear them. “I'll get going on the fire.”

He went into the nearby trees. It took a while to cut a selection of branches from which to make the little firemaking bow. He had been improvident in abandoning the rig he had used at the lake but had foolishly counted on the sun to be available next time he needed fire, and it was inconvenient to tote anything that could not be contained in his pockets.

When he returned to the streamside, he saw the woman's dark-green knitted shirt, the one borrowed from him, was darker still because it was soaking wet.

“I see you washed the shirt.”

“Actually I used it for a towel. I hope you don't mind. I didn't have anything else.”

Crews knelt to assemble his apparatus. He needed her shoelace again, and this time asked her to take it out, if she would, herself. “You went in without your shirt?”

She gave him the lace, having removed it while balancing nicely on one foot. “I was naked. The freezing water seemed to help the wound, like an astringent, you know.”

He quickly completed the construction of the rig and put the tinder in place around the socket of the drill.

She said, “I've got an idea I'd like to try. Could I borrow the tool with the knife blade? I waded down to the rapids before. There are lots of fish that swim through the rocks there. The water's fairly shallow. It really looks like you could catch them with your bare hands, but I tried and failed. I'm just not deft enough. But what about making a spear? What do you think? Didn't the Indians fish that way?”

“I tried it early on, in the pond, and got too impatient when it didn't work. I probably didn't keep at it long enough. Also I didn't make a very good spear. But, sure, go ahead.”

“Any suggestions as to the design?”

He deliberated for a moment. “If you could make a barb of some kind, like a fishhook. You'll need something to keep the fish from slipping off after it's speared.”

“How about a long stick that has a little cluster of three or more branches at one end, like a hand almost?”

“That's a great idea,” Crews said.

“It's not original. I saw it in the movies or television. It was being done on some island, I think, by people in sarongs.”

“Terrific,” Crews said. “Just one minute….” He needed the knife for a couple of small alterations to the end of the drill and the socket in which it would turn, having finished which he presented the tool to her.

He watched her tall, slender figure go into the edge of the woods. Her hair was still loose. He hoped he was right in his assumption that if they had gone astray en route to the river, her husband would not be anywhere nearby. Crews had nothing but contempt for the man, and knew no fear for his own safety, but to shoot her in the back from a place of concealment would not be beyond the capacity of such a coward. Besides, it was a pleasure, really a joy, to see her graceful movements. She went too far in saying he had saved her life, but it was gratifying to know he had served some purpose.

He started sawing away with the bow. The process asked for more than muscle: making fire by this unlikely means required the intense concentration of all faculties.

Before he had succeeded in producing the first wisp of smoke, she was back, carrying a serviceable spear. At one end it had been cut just above the junction of three branches.

“How does this look?”

“That was quick,” he said. “I've been getting nowhere.”

“Should I try? And you go spear fishing?”

“The spear was your idea. The fire was mine. We should stick with our specialties.”

With the knife blade she sharpened the three branch ends to points and returned the tool to him. He sawed violently with the bow and drill until sweat from his forehead began to fall on that which he wanted to ignite. Taking a breather, he watched her walk along the bank to where the water rushed through the rocks. Balancing on one foot and then the other, she pulled off her shoes and socks, then bent to roll her jeans to the knee. She stepped into the current, which swirled around her calves. Soon she stabbed violently at something, but the spear came up dripping and empty. She did much the same several more times and then turned to look his way and shrug. He waved.

Like everything else performed with primitive implements, spear fishing was surely much trickier in practice than it seemed in theory. But he probably should have accepted her offer to swap jobs, having by now lost faith in the likelihood that fire could come from his current apparatus. He needed a base plate of drier wood. He looked up to see her raise the spear end triumphantly. A wriggling silvery fish was impaled on its points. She waded near enough to shore to deposit her catch on the nearest land. Crews thought it possible that the fish might writhe to the edge of the bank and fall into the water, but he decided to let her learn by experience.

Meanwhile, inspired by her success, he returned with vigor to his own efforts, to which he applied himself so obsessively that at first he failed to register that the sky was brightening. He dropped the bow and focused the mirror on the tinder. The sun broke through the overcast just long enough to get an ember going. It was like a special favor to him. By the time the cloud cover closed in on its temporary rent, he had made a hot little blaze.

During the same period she had mastered the technique and caught fish after fish. At one point she signaled to him with all the fingers of one hand and then shifted the spear to the other so as to display two fingers more. Apparently she did not know the way to signal numbers greater than five using only one hand, or did only boys do that?

When the fire was in a condition to go unattended for a while, he went along the bank to where her catch lay flopping. Now there were nine, and she caught the tenth as he watched. She waded in to shore and presented it to him on the tines of the spear. He added the fish to the lot on the grassy bank.

He gave her a hand with which to pull herself from the water.

“See what I mean?” he asked. “You're the fisherman in this—in this partnership.” He had almost said “family.” “I was just lucky the sun came out briefly. And by the way, it was over
there
. Which would mean that what I thought was north was actually way to the east.”

“But to be really sure about direction, just looking at the sun isn't enough, is it? You really need an additional point of reference.”

“Good of you to mention that,” he said. “But I still have a lousy sense of direction, the only sense that hasn't improved since I've been out here.”

“Maybe because direction according to the compass is a man-made concept. That is, there really is a magnetic pole and a force we call magnetism that affects metals, but what animals care about is light and heat and water and food. Your directional instincts have been fine about those things, even when the sun went in.”

“Now you're buttering me up,” he said, “so that I'll cook your fish on my fire.” He had brought along her shoelace and was about to return it but thought of another use. “Do you mind if I string some of these fish on it, to carry back?”

“Let me. You've got enough to do as it is.” She took the lace and began forthrightly to thread it through the gills and out the mouth of a fish that was still feebly twitching. “I can't decide what's more humane: letting them suffocate or killing them in some other way.”

Crews had known the same feeling. “I'm a coward about that. I just don't decide, which means they drown in air…. I see you know how to do that. It took me a while to figure it out.”

She sniffed. “Michael never caught anything. But he talked about stringing up his catch, and I remember a lot of stuff just from listening. Then I've cooked whole fish that you buy, and watched the fish-store guy clean them—I think you're supposed to call him the ‘fishmonger,' but I'd probably laugh if I did.”

“I'll bet you're a lot better cook than I,” Crews said. “I have got into the habit of just boiling or burning the food as fast as I can and gobbling it up.”

By now she had strung half the fish on the shoelace. “I can do one or two simple things, but
he
was the main cook: that is, when we weren't eating out, which we did a lot.”

Crews uncoiled some of his fishline. “Here. I'll take the rest.”

They walked back together, each with a sagging string of fish. He dropped his on the ground nearby and knelt to inspect the fire.

He looked up at her. “I've never before had this much food at my disposal. I think I'll go wild and try a new gastronomic treat. Do you know those Japanese restaurants where they bring a hot rock to the table and cook all sorts of things on it, fish, vegetables, thin slices of steak, and so on? I think I'll try that. Meanwhile I can put a lot of these fellows on to smoke.”

“Can I get the rocks?” she asked. “Nice big smooth ones?”

Crews missed her terribly even on such a trivial separation, when she was in sight the entire time. He had not realized he was so lonely until his loneliness was relieved. But she did everything so effectively that he welcomed the help. The rocks she brought back were just what he had had in mind. He put them into the hot coals. He constructed a smoking rack above the fire, hung on it a spitful of eviscerated fish, and threw on the green branches she had gathered.

“I'll let the rocks get good and hot,” he said. “You don't suppose you could find more fiddleheads?”

“I sure can look.”

While she was gone he filleted the remaining fish. After a time she returned from the woods carrying something in the denim jacket used as a bag. She dumped it on the ground alongside him.

There was a mixture in the outspread jacket, representing everything but fiddlehead ferns: some broad green leaves; some slenderer fronds; some delicate shoots that terminated in little bulbs. But most conspicuous were the pale mushrooms.

“God almighty,” Crews said, with more emotion than he would have expressed had he thought about it. “I'm not going to try those!” He paused. “You
do
know some are poisonous?”

“We—he had this book about stuff you could find to eat in the wild, I don't know why, because he didn't look for anything. We lived on those freeze-dried packets they make for campers. Anyway, these mushrooms look just like the pictures of the edible ones.”

“I've always heard there are bad ones that are dead ringers for the good kind, and only experts can tell the difference. We can't take any chances at all—I mean, apart from those that are forced upon us.”

“All right.”

“I don't mean to be disagreeable,” he said.

“You're just making your point.” She said this straightforwardly, squatting there next to her jacketful of vegetables.

He smiled at her. “Do you realize we don't even know each other's name?” He put out his hand. “I'm Bob Crews.”

Her handshake was warm, but the rest of her response came from a greater moral distance. “You're welcome to inspect my driver's license, there in the pocket.” She nodded at the spread-eagled jacket. “But if you don't mind, I'd rather not hear my name. He kept yelling it while he was trying to kill me. He made me hate the sound of it, at least for now. So if you don't mind calling me something else. I don't care what.”