Robert Crews (28 page)

When Crews helped her up she could not put weight on her right leg. He lifted her in his arms. She was lighter than he expected. He carried her near the fire, where she first tried again to stand before being lowered to a sitting position on the ground.

She shook her head at him. “And you say you need
my
help!”

“As much as ever,” he said. “This could just as easily have happened to me. Thank God it didn't: you're easier to carry than I would be.”

She gingerly felt her extended right leg, wincing in anticipation, grimacing when her fingers reached her knee. “I maybe broke or tore something here, and my foot hurts too much to touch.
Damn it
. Of all things to happen.”

“What can I do for you?” Crews asked.

“You ought to leave me here.”

“You could blame me for not reminding you of the trench.” He squatted next to her. “It's nobody's fault, and it doesn't have to change anything. I'll make you a crutch to get around on, and if we decide to head for the river before you feel better, I can carry you at least part of the way, horseback-style. If we find the canoe, well and good. If not, I'll make another raft.” He stood up. “Or we can just stay until you can walk normally. We were just saying what a nice place this is.”

“And I'm not totally incapacitated,” Friday said earnestly. “There's lot of things I can do sitting down: preparing food if you provide it, keeping the fire going, drying or smoking stuff.” She looked around. “Would you mind handing me my left shoe and one sock? I won't be wearing the others for a while.”

He brought them to her. “I think we should use splints to keep your knee and ankle from moving and making the damage worse. It's probably a sprain or torn ligaments. At least we don't have to set any broken long bones.”

She pulled on the sock and grimaced. “I'm not all that fragile! You should have known me when—” She caught herself. “Sorry. You don't need any more of my whining.”

“But I haven't heard any,” said Crews. “You're the one who knows karate. Your good leg is probably still a lethal weapon.”

He went into the trees before he said more. He had been almost at the point of confessing that he was in love with her, but she might have taken such a declaration as a response to her vulnerability, and perhaps it was. Crews did not understand himself since he had become honorable.

F
RIDAY'S FOOT HAD TURNED BLACK BEFORE
the day was out. Crews built the splint arrangement only around the knee, and since any other kind of fastening might have been uncomfortable against her skin, he used strips torn from the bottom of his T-shirt.

Employing the Y-topped crutch, she was more mobile than she probably should have been. He performed the longer-distance chores, the fetching of materials, the fishing, and the collection of edible vegetables, but she did the cooking, much of the on-site work of home improvement, and the laundering of clothes. She displayed unfailing good humor. She was even amused to reflect that this was as domestic as she had ever been: in town, she and her husband had eaten most meals in restaurants or by takeout.

In fact, though she apparently did not suspect as much, Friday was not much of a cook under the prevailing conditions, tending either to overdo fish by whatever method or, if using a spit, to burn it. She was better at construction work. Sitting on the ground, bad leg extended, she fashioned doors for either end of the shelter, Crews having provided the branches and boughs and also some long tough grasses to use as lashings, the fishline supply having dwindled to what might be needed for its proper purposes. Friday's finished products, intricate grillworks of intertwined twigs, evergreen foliage plugging the interstices, were neatly framed to fit the triangular openings.

Once the doors had been hung in place on hinges of twisted grass, and been much admired by her companion, she applied herself to the matter of better-designed beds.

“The same thing that was done with the doors,” she said, “only with heavier stuff: a frame, crisscrossed with branches, supported off the ground on little Y-shaped stakes driven into the earth. The platforms can be crude so long as they're sturdy enough to bear the weight. On top we'll pile the same boughs we used before, but we'll be off the ground.”

This work took several days. A moderate rain fell the first night of the new roof and not a drop penetrated to the interior, but it had not yet been tested in a real downpour. Then came a period of sunshine of such heartiness that after a while it seemed eternal. Fire could be made on demand with the magnifying mirror, and after a few sunny days everything inflammable had thoroughly dried.

In his rovings, Crews had at last found a cluster of birches, and from the bark Friday had made several vessels in which water could be fetched and drunk or used for cooking. They ate more fish, mushrooms, and wild onions, but the supplies of the last two were diminishing, and they both would have welcomed another main course than the first. Crews had eaten little else since the crash. So when he had filled the last of Friday's orders for building materials, he applied himself to the matter of diet.

“There used to be a guy who made a name for himself by finding edible things in the great outdoors. Do you remember him, and if so, anything he said? I guess it's too early in the year for nuts and even fruits: anyway, I haven't found any.”

“Yeah,” Friday said, “I think I do, but I was a kid then…. But wait a minute: you can make tea from pine needles.”

“That's not what killed Socrates, was it?”

“Hardly. At least it didn't hurt my brother and me, though we didn't like it much. But what did we know? We didn't like mussels either, nor even asparagus, and all kinds of other stuff.”

“Your family will be looking for you now.”

“It hasn't been that long yet. They all live in different parts of the country, and I sometimes don't get in touch for months.”

He and she were lying side by side in the dark, in the new and improved lean-to. This had become their time for the conversation they could not always find room for during their daylight labors. “Dick Spurgeon's family and those of the other two fellows must be suffering,” Crews said, “not knowing what happened. But maybe it's better that they continue to hope than know the truth. I'm not eager to get back with the bad news. I've got nobody of my own. That's not self-pity but simply a fact. I guess my next of kin are some cousins, but they cut me off years ago, for the best reasons.”

“Michael's got nobody, either,” Friday said. “He was raised in foster homes. He wouldn't talk about his parents. Maybe he never knew them. He made something of himself, you can't take that away from him. He got athletic scholarships for college, then he worked at a series of crappy coaching jobs before he could get the health club off the ground.”

Crews writhed whenever he had to hear about her husband but was certain that any negative response of his own, however sympathetic to her, would be misguided. “Why don't we try the pine-needle tea tomorrow? I haven't had a hot drink since I got here.”

Friday was quiet for a while. Then she asked, “Do you dream?”

“Once in a while I do, and it's almost always about food. But the details are sometimes odd. What I'm eating in the dream, with great relish, might be something I never cared for: chicken livers, for example, or shredded raw carrots.”

“I don't dream at all,” said Friday. “Not once. Never. I always used to dream a lot. I even had nightmares on occasion. What's funny is that it seemed to happen when I was happiest, or thought I was.”

He was sorry to hear this. He had begun to entertain the simpleminded hope that she was as happy now as he, and that her reluctance to leave their home behind was not based on physical infirmity. “It's the law of compensation,” he told her. “If you've had a living nightmare, you don't need the make-believe for a while.” What he did not mention was the possibility that she had had unconscious premonitions of disaster. She could live in a dreamless present now because she was looked after by someone who would lay down his life for her.

“Tomorrow I'm going to finally finish the spoon.” She had been whittling at the utensil whenever he could spare the knife. “Should I start a second one or next try a fork? With one complete set, we could share them.”

“The fork,” Crews said. “Remember, my offer stays good. Anytime you feel like starting for the river, I can carry you piggyback.”

“It won't be much longer.” She had been saying that for a good week. The discoloration was fading from her foot, but to his observation she was as disabled as ever.

“I hope I did right in immobilizing your knee that way.” He had finally removed the splints. “You don't think that made it worse?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn't be as far along as I am.”

“Maybe you should try bending it a little. Hot compresses might help. It can't be right to let it stiffen up from disuse.”

“It's getting better, really.”

“I'm not in a hurry to get going,” Crews assured her. “You must never think that.”

“I don't,” Friday said.

They exchanged good nights, but he stayed awake for a while. It was one of those nights that were so quiet he could hear each of her breaths.

Next morning he rose first, as usual, and went into the woods to relieve himself. With so much space available, this still seemed preferable to fashioning a fixed latrine. He took his morning bath in the stream, the chilly waters of which he had never gotten used to. He was less modest than he had been earlier on, but that was mostly due to Friday's discretion in staying inside until he was done—to do which she had to look out eventually, and when he was late in drying himself and dressing, she probably saw him naked, as he so frequently had seen her. He never got really dry, because he had no proper towel, but he scraped off with the edge of his hand such visible drops as he could reach and walked about in the air, which was now usually warm and not humid.

He filled one of their birch-bark vessels with water and started a fire. By the time the water had come to a boil, Friday had limped about on her morning rituals, the forked crutch in her armpit, after which she gathered pine needles.

The tea on first sip was weaker than Crews had anticipated, so he let it steep longer, after which it was rather stronger than he wished, though the steaming liquid, only faintly colored, looked like so much hot water.

“Sort of like witch hazel.”

Friday was not so quick to abuse the decoction. “I think it takes getting used to.”

His third sip was more potable and less astringent, so perhaps she was right, and the warmth of the drink was ingratiating. He toasted her with his birch-bark cup. But she was preoccupied. “Are you still worried about not dreaming?”

“I didn't sleep that well,” she said, holding her own cup in two hands. “I know I haven't fooled you: my leg has been okay for some time. It's another of those things I haven't been able to admit to myself.”

“But you're doing it now.”

“In words only. If I keep the crutch in place, I can actually put all my weight on the leg, and I can bend my knee all right, though it's a little stiff from lack of use. But I have to keep hold of the crutch, though not for support. I just have to know it's there.”

“You've tried to walk without it?”

“I fell down.”

He got to his feet and reached for her. She pulled herself up with the help of his hand. The crutch lay on the ground. “Leave it there. Start walking on both legs. You can always grab me.”

Fingertips against his upper arm, she gingerly imposed weight on her right foot, which was still bare, though the inflammation had faded to a shadow. Crews had slipped his arm back to a position from which he could swoop it around her waist in an instant should she fall, an event that would not have made him despair, even though the exercise was his idea. But then he was at odds with himself in all that concerned Friday, whom he wanted to rescue but also to keep a kind of prisoner.

She walked carefully, no longer touching him, both hands out for balance. “I'm doing it,” she said softly. She still had a slight limp, but that was due to the running shoe and sock on her left foot. Turning to smile at Crews, she faltered but did not fall. Nevertheless, he seized her in the crook of his elbow, with such force that she was lifted off the ground. He lowered her as quickly.

“Sorry,” she said. “My knee's a little stiff.” They resumed walking.

“I just thought of this,” Crews said. “If that outfitter at Fort Judson rents out canoes, then other people than you and—” He refused to name her husband. “Other camping parties must sometimes come down the river.”

“There was supposed to be a party that left the day before us,” said Friday.

“It's likely we'll see some other people before we're on the river long. This should be the heart of the camping season.”

Friday halted abruptly and stared at him. “Do you think he's still looking for me?”

“I wouldn't know. I stopped worrying about it after the first few days.”

Tears welled from her eyes, and her shoulders were heaving. Crews put both arms around her. Against his chest she said, “Maybe it was an accident. He wasn't deliberately trying to shoot me. He just turned with the gun in his hand and it went off. I panicked and ran, and he chased me not to do me harm but to catch me before I got lost in the woods. After all, he didn't shoot me again. He could have, but he didn't. He would have if he wanted me dead.”

“I thought I heard two shots,” Crews said. “I suppose the second could have been the echo of the first. I was on the lake at the time, and sounds are funny near water.” Bolstering her new theory did not serve his own cause, but he would do what he could to assuage her pain, because not only did he love her but he had come to have some grasp on what that love entailed.