Robert Crews (24 page)

“Of course,” Crews said sympathetically. He was still concerned that he might have been too harsh with her about the mushrooms, even though he had been quite right. “Let's see….” He smirked. “I've been married so often, all the women's names I can think of have been used up.”

“How about ‘Friday'?”

“Pardon?”

“As a name,” she said.

“As in ‘Thank God, it's … '?” He laughed. “Okay, Friday it is, then. Now, these greens, what do you think, should we cook them or eat them raw?”

“I've already tried a little of one of these.” She held up the sheaf of bulbed shoots. “Some kind of wild onion, I believe.”

“I remember those things from when I was a kid. I didn't think they were supposed to be edible.”

“Maybe these are a different species. They're not bad.”

“I'll chop them up and use them as a condiment,” Crews said. He tore a fragment off one of the broad leaves in her collection and chewed it briefly. It had a mild flavor, in the area of romaine, but was fairly tough. “This should be cooked.” After similar tests with the remaining greenery, he decided, “These will make an okay salad. Are they plants you saw in the book?”

“I wish I
had
read the whole thing. Unfortunately I only looked at the part on mushrooms.”

“I'm sorry about them,” said Crews. “We'll get back to civilization and find that they not only were edible but of a rare variety highly prized by gourmets, and I will be proved a fool.”

“No, you won't!”

She said this with so much feeling that Crews hastily assured her he had been kidding. “It wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about food. You should be warned that among my distinctions is an unerring instinct to pick the worst establishment from a selection: I even managed on occasion to find lousy restaurants in France—which by the way were not tourist places but where French truck drivers ate. You see, my then wife—” But this was not the time for such reminiscences. “The stones should be hot enough by now. The fish will cook fast once they're started.”

He used a pair of green sticks to probe for the rocks, which were buried just inside one edge of the fire above which the smoking rack was mounted. The embers were so hot that the sticks were immediately dried out and ignited, but, working quickly, he worried the two stones out to free ground. Their appearance had not changed, but he could feel the intense heat as high as his face. They were searing the sparse vegetation beneath them.

The waiting fillets were stacked on a clean rock nearer the woman than he. He tried her name on for size. No doubt it would take a while to sound natural. “Okay, Friday, if you'll hand me the fish, we'll have a go at this. Unfortunately, I don't have any oil or fat. I'm hoping the surface will just be so hot the food will seal up when it hits it.”

She brought him the fillets, and he rapidly dropped three of them onto each stone, skin down, snapping his fingers back before they were singed by the ferocious heat. The fish cooked so vigorously, with loud sizzlings and copious smoke, that no sooner had he deposited the last than he returned to turn the first piece over. He had had the forethought to provide himself with two crude spatulas, lengths of a broad branch, each shaved flat at one end.

The first fillet broke in two on his efforts to lift it, but no further, and it left most of its skin behind to blacken and burn. But perhaps it was the oil from that skin that cured the surface of the stone so that, when turned and charred on the reverse, the fish did not stick.

He grinned at Friday. “It actually works!”

They ate off two clean stones that were flat and broad enough to serve as plates, but Crews found reason to complain of his own lack of foresight.

“It didn't occur to me that these cold rocks would chill the food so quickly. I should have asked you to cut some bark for plates.” He was gobbling the fish as fast as he could, before it lost all heat, and speaking between bites. “On the other hand, if it was too hot we wouldn't be able to pick it up. Forks would be nice, too. It shouldn't be hard to carve something that would do.” This thought had never come to him when he was alone.

“I'll try,” Friday said, eating much more deliberately, and so gracefully with her long fingers that silverware might have been an encumbrance. “Meanwhile, this is delicious. I wouldn't even use salt if we had any.”

“I wonder if there's something in the stones, some minerals maybe, that give the salty effect, because it's there, or anyway the illusion thereof.” He was eating the middle fillet from the stack of three: it was still warm. “This is as close to stark reality as I've ever come, and still I wonder what's real and what isn't. And the only way I've learned to do anything is by trial and error. You waste a lot of time and effort like that, but when you've got nobody around to teach you anything … Until now I haven't even had anyone with whom to compare notes.”

The clear stream flowed vigorously just beyond them. It was sufficiently fast-moving to provide what were probably trout, yet shallow enough to wade across should the need or wish come to visit the forest on the far side. It was full of food, and its water was cold and sweet. Likely it flowed toward the same lake the shore of which they had left that morning. If they had not yet found the river, at least they were not really lost within their piece of wilderness. The route from the lake could always be retraced, and they could start over. Meanwhile dinner was very good, and he could see just the spot to construct a lean-to, for which the adjacent woods would provide excellent materials.

“If it's okay with you, we'll stay here for the night. There'll be enough time, for a change, to make a decent camp.” He was even enthusiastic. “I've learned a few tricks on how to make things somewhat comfortable.” He squinted at the sky. “The weather looks good, but I have a feeling rain's going to come along later on, and a good tight roof might be in order…. I'm about ready for salad.”

He had not gotten around to boiling the big leaves, which Friday had pushed aside, along with the mushrooms. She had torn the rest of the greenery into pieces, sliced the wild onions over them, and tossed the mixture in her jacket.

“Not bad,” Crews said, masticating. “It would only be ruined by oil and vinegar.” The onion got stronger in the aftertaste, or perhaps it was just that his palate was no longer inured to strong flavors.

Friday ate every shred of her portion, then went to the bank of the stream, leaned down, and rinsed her hands. She crawled back on her knees, a movement he found endearing, something she might have done at a picnic.

But she did not return his smile. She stared across at the dark woods on the other side of the water. “Whenever I let myself think about it—which is just about every time I get close to accepting that it happened—I begin to worry about where he might be.”

“I haven't forgotten him,” Crews said hastily, though in fact he had been trying to do so. “But if he was where we saw that smoke yesterday—and we've spent the time since in veering away from due north—then we're farther from him than ever. On his side of the lake, there isn't any high ground for miles. We made that little fire last evening, but he wouldn't have been able to see our smoke from wherever he was in the woods. He'd have had to come out to the shore to get the right perspective. He's unlikely to have followed us all day to here. If he's got a compass and map, he knows how to get back to the canoe. I believe that's where he'll head. I keep saying ‘we,' though it's possible he doesn't know you've joined forces with me. Do you think he might just take the canoe and leave?”

“I would no longer be surprised by anything he did,” Friday said bleakly. “Unless it succeeded.”

Crews took a chance and asked, “Is that more or less what you were telling him when he took a shot at you?”

She stared sharply at him for a moment, but then softened and said, “More or less. I was wrong—and I don't mean just because of what subsequently happened. I said cruel things to him sometimes, but you have no idea of how hard it is to live with someone for whom you've lost all respect.”

Crews sighed inwardly: he had certainly heard enough on that subject at second hand, but he was not violent with the women who told it to him. He got physical only with men, and then invariably with those capable of damaging him. At least he was not nearly so dishonorable as he could have been.

“After a while,” Friday said, “the person you despise most is yourself. You shouldn't let it go that far.”

Crews was uncomfortable. He could only mutter lamely, “Well…”

“We'd get to a campsite, and I'd gather firewood and fetch water, and he'd shoot his gun at things,” Friday said. “That infuriated me more than his women ever did, because at least they paid for their fees. He owned a health club until, of course, it went under, taking most of my savings with it. The bank wouldn't lend him a cent. His typical response as business got worse was to expand, open another branch.”

“I'll bet you have your own profession,” Crews said.

“I'm with a brokerage, in sector analysis.”

“And whatever that is, I'm sure you do well at it.”

She modestly lowered her eyes. “Okay.”

“No,” he said, “better than okay.”

“I'm a vice-president, but only one of several. Let's say I earn a living.”

Crews picked up her denim jacket, which had served as tablecloth, and shook it out. He returned it to her. “Let me get this over with: I don't know anything much about any kind of work. A person like you will probably find it difficult to understand that somebody like me exists. About all I can say for myself is that I've never really lived off a woman—if that's any kind of criterion for anything. But I did live off my father until I was way beyond childhood, and in fact long after he died, so I can't call myself a model of independence.” He was suddenly aware that he had always responded favorably to women who had made a go at a profession, while he resented successful men.

Friday stood up and put on her jacket. “I'm wasting good weather on my whining,” she said, staring into the sky. “I think you're right about the coming rain.”

“Can you smell it too?”

She smiled intimately at him. “I think so because you do, and you're usually right.”

Crews realized that he should simply accept the commendation, but the experience was as yet too rare to accommodate readily. So he had to say, “Except when I'm wrong.” But that sounded like a rebuke, so he quickly explained about using one's nose in the wilderness. “I think maybe smell has a lot to do when you think it's rather some sixth sense. I've learned to breathe harder, by which I mean both deeper and faster, but mostly it has to do with, as it were,
listening
to what the nose tells you. I've tried to take my cue from the animals. Did you notice that deer? For a split second before he took off, his nostrils quivered. He was trying to smell us, even though he could see us well enough, but we were downwind.”

“You saw
that?
He was just a blur to me.”

“Because you weren't prepared for it,” Crews said. “When you're out here for a while on your own, you develop the state of mind animals have: you expect to be surprised at any moment. You go about your business, but you're always on guard. Being alert is a thing of the nervous system. It doesn't affect you physically until the moment for action comes.” He laughed. “I'd be amazed if you found any meaning at all in those remarks.”

“I think I do know what you mean,” she said. “It's like karate. Until you actually make a move, your mind and body are supposed to be in a state of utter relaxation. Then, even while a punch is in the process of traveling toward its target, during that millisecond the fist is resting serenely, only to become like steel at the instant of impact. I hadn't realized that technique has some basis in natural principles. So much of it seems artificial, the ritual and all.”

“You do karate?”

“My purse was snatched. I resisted and got my wrist broken for my trouble. I was sure I could have fought him off if I had known how: he was not that big. So I took karate lessons when my arm was okay….” She was looking at the fish smoking on the rack above the fire. “I wonder if the smoke wouldn't be more concentrated if a little enclosure was put around it? Maybe a little lean-to, closed in at the ends. Want me to collect the materials?”

On all previous occasions Crews had used an unenclosed fire, which meant that the fish had to be positioned so that the prevailing breeze blew the smoke their way. It was not that he had failed to think of erecting a wind barrier; it was rather that he had not taken the trouble, what with all else that always needed to be done. But he had a partner now.

In no time at all, Friday had surrounded and roofed the fire in green foliage, through the multifold interstices of which rose the fragrant smoke from the moist wood atop the hot coals, having first bathed the fish on the spit.

Crews meanwhile began to build the structure that would shelter them overnight, the grandest one yet, almost seven feet long, more than four feet high at the ridgepole, and at least five feet wide.

Friday pitched in when her own project was completed. She invariably volunteered for any job he would have, working alone, postponed as long as possible, such as sinking the uprights into the earth, which required dogged excavation with an improvised and inefficient trowel of wood, through roots and rocks, and then leveling them by eye, a miscalculation in which, however minor at the outset, would be magnified as the structure rose with each joint untrue. But she was also more patient than he in the interweaving, the rudimentary thatching, of the freshly cut pine boughs that would, not by luck but with care, make the roof-walls shed rain.