Robert Crews (7 page)

The compress did so much for his knee and his general well-being that he decided to renew it when it had grown tepid. This time, however, with an intent to get hotter water more quickly, he found and dropped into the fire a larger stone, and kept it in the coals so long that had it been iron it would have turned white. He had prepared his tongs for the new and heavier burden, pounding the ends of the sticks between two rocks so as to fashion them into paddles. He was also ready to move quickly in bringing the hot stone to the water in the cup lest it burn through the now thin paddle ends, even though the wood was so green as to exude sap when he struck it.

The effort concluded in a damaging failure. The incendiary stone immediately burned itself free of the sticks, but not so soon as to fall harmlessly to the sand. Instead it fell within the cup, but off-center, and where it struck the inner wall of plastic, it burned through. Meanwhile its effect on the liquid was violent. Had Crews not instantly emptied the steaming contents onto the ground, the water would probably have boiled away within seconds, leaving the stone still hot enough to melt the bottom of the then dry cup.

After a momentary dismay, however, he determined to remain positive. The vessel was only half ruined. It was capable of holding about five-eighths of its original capacity and also could still serve as a scoop for digging. And he had learned a valuable lesson. Even in his situation, fire could not be seen as unconditionally friendly. There was no element in his current existence that could not become inimical, in fact lethal, without warning. It was in vogue nowadays to say the same about daily existence in any city, and Crews himself had said as much, sometimes to justify his drinking. Was it better to be mugged when sober? (That, in spite of all, he never had been the victim of such a crime was beside the point.) But this was quite another universe, one in which any advantage could be nullified without warning and without moral significance.

By now more than half of another day had passed, and the clouds that had been visible in the far western sky were moving closer. He could not think of a way to protect a fire from rain—any roof over it would burn—but suspected that a blaze that was hot enough might survive a mild downpour. At least it was a theory worth putting to the test. He must replenish the supply of wood and if possible find some means by which to keep it dry. He remembered the birches, but he possessed no knife or other cutting implement. Next time he was lost in the wilderness he would at least bring a straight-edged razor and not a useless piece of electric-powered junk.

He wasted time in searching for a rock with a sharp edge until it occurred to him that he could sooner make one. In the woods he located a couple of hand-sized chunks of stone and struck them together until one cracked and separated into two pieces each of which was serviceably keen around most of its circumference. They were tools of not the most efficient form, but they could, when used with purposeful repetition, eventually pound an incision in a birch trunk sufficient to permit the peeling away of a strip of bark.

In this crude fashion—much of his effort consisted in slamming the rocks against a tree reluctant to part with its integument until battered into submission—he eventually girdled several birches and collected what looked like enough half-cylinders of bark to roof a woodpile when flattened and placed in a shingled arrangement.

Next he put the rocks to service as axes. When held at an angle, the sharp edges could chop thicker lengths of dead wood than he had been previously able to attack, though the crude implements would be ineffective against the stouter branches needed to build a shelter sturdy enough to stand against the bear or possible other menaces. But of course he expected to be rescued long before permanent fortification was required.

By the time he had accumulated a waist-high pile of firewood that was of respectable quality and shingled its topmost layer with the birch bark, the afternoon had seemingly become evening, so dark was the sky when seen from the woods where he had decided his fuel supply would be less exposed to the elements than on the beach. The same could be said for himself, except for the possible greater danger of the bear when among the trees, which was presumably where the animal lived.

With the rising of the wind, he began to doubt the validity of his prior theory that flames could resist foul weather if burning fiercely enough. His morale had been strengthened by the successes with the magnifying mirror and the make-shift axheads, but it fell now as he returned to the beach and saw the whitecaps on the lake and felt the unobstructed force of the gusts that swept in from the water.

All at once the rain appeared without an introductory drop, great angry sheets of it, instantly transforming the fire into cold charcoal, soaking him and his miserable possessions, which he frantically gathered up for the dash into the woods, but, swept by the great broom of wind, he did not know what he had and what he left behind. That protection could be found in the trees was an illusion: the branches served only to channel more water onto him while others, tormented by the wind, whipped his face. How did bears and other wild beasts cope with rough weather? Probably in cozy caves. But the nearby terrain was flat, and he did not dare explore farther afield at this moment, lest he lose the lake and supply of fresh water as well as a situation more easily seen from the air.

He found rocks to secure the birch-bark tiles with which he had covered the woodpile, but before he could get them in place all the bark had been blown away and the stacked wood was drenched. In searching for a place of refuge in the gathering darkness he lost the rest of his goods, but the clothes had been soaked and the picnic hamper was empty and torn and the fishing-rod case was useless.

At last he stumbled and sprawled, but in so doing he found himself in a place of shelter inadvertently created by natural forces: an old tree trunk, fallen at an angle, against which other dead materials had collected, branches and leaves, on the leeward side of which accumulation a desperate man could burrow. He cowered therein throughout a long night in which the wind grew ever more furious in voice and act, bellowing, detonating, felling timber, increasing the volume of rain until the earth had become storm-tossed ocean.

He dug as deeply as he could under the log, heaping himself with forest litter. It was far from being dry but warmer than his bed of the previous night, and he had no fear of the bear in such weather. After a while he was even able to sleep.

C
REWS AWOKE AT FIRST LIGHT, BUT HE HAD
been often briefly conscious throughout the hours of darkness. The storm had exhausted its rage and the winds had blown away, leaving the air still full of water, some dripping from the trees, more falling as a steady soaking rain which felt benevolent with the memory of the tumult of the night before. The naturally created lean-to had provided some small protection or anyway the illusion thereof: there was a distinction, but not one that mattered under prevailing circumstances.

Without the sun there was no means by which to tell time, and no way of drying the wet clothing that was being further soaked by the falling rain. He could not make fire for any purpose whatever till the sky cleared. No aircraft would be flying in this weather, so there was no point in going back to the beach, where he no longer maintained a campsite. He had no home at the moment but the dead leaves and brush that had collected on the side of the fallen log away from the wind. But his knee seemed somewhat better as he tried to retrace his route in seeking refuge from the storm and find the possessions he had dropped. Eventually he collected everything but the damaged picnic hamper, which had probably been hurled away in one of the cyclonic blasts that had also felled several of the trees within his range of vision. He had heard some of the commotion during the night but had apparently slept through even more, knowledge of which he found reassuring: he had by combined instinct and accident taken the most effective hiding place that the forest offered against the assault of nature.

There had been only two choices the day before, and they had not been changed by the storm: wait for rescue on the shore of the lake, where he could be best seen from the air, or choose a direction and hike out of the wilderness. If he stayed near the lake he should fashion better means by which to make his presence conspicuous. He had to think of some way to keep a fire going in inclement weather. He needed better shelter if he was to spend another night in the outdoors. If he chose to walk, he required some kind of footgear, and his route should be determined according to some scheme. In terrain such as that which presumably lay before him whichever the direction, it would be easy to travel in circles. In any case, he needed food. He had not eaten for two days, and while he was not yet in the condition called, in civilization, hungry (as when one who has missed dinner lurches into an all-night diner), his new rationality told him he would soon require nourishment. He could not survive forever on only the persistent metallic taste in his mouth.

In lieu of making a decision, he decided to reconnoiter the adjacent area of the forest. He had penetrated the trees only fifty yards or so from the beach. Exploring a bit farther would not be imprudent.

He went only another hundred yards before emerging from the woods into a clearing in which stood the bare, broken, dead stumps of many trees, some with fallen trunks beside them, others standing alone. The devastation, which under other conditions might have been seen as ugly disorder, could only mean that human beings had been there. The stumps were pointed like sharpened pencils, not broken off jaggedly as if by winds. Why they were not of uniform height, if the chopping had been to gain lumber, and why so many of the fallen trees had not been hauled away, was of no substantive concern. He was not in a position to be offended by vandalism when the vandals were fellow men. Even if they were no longer on the scene, their trail in reaching this place could surely be traced back to where they had come from.

Civilization must be reasonably close by, even if, as was probable, the visitors had used vehicles. In such a region, distances were gauged by another measure than that of city taxi-cabs. He might be in for a long hike. But he would be thrilled to make the effort. The worst thing about being lost in this way was seldom knowing what to do beyond the emergency requirement, which was invariably of a negative nature: finding protection against drowning, freezing, starving, or an attack by a wild animal. At last he had an altogether positive task. Once he reached a main road, he would probably be picked up by a car or truck long before he had walked as far as a town.

He decided to keep going now, abandoning the few possessions parked back by the fallen log. Hiking would make him warm enough not to need the other articles of damp clothing. His knee was without pain today, and his bare feet were not uncomfortable, especially now that the ground was wet … and growing wetter, much more so than could have been caused by the recent rain, which anyway had almost stopped. In fact he was ankle-deep in a swamp, which soon gave way to an outright pond. He stopped to get his bearings. Now his knee
had
begun to hurt, and he was nowhere near anything that could be a trail or path, let alone a road. He backed out of the water onto the soaked earth and leaned against one of the pencil-ended stumps. It was almost waist-high and had been neatly carved to a ragged point by someone using what must have been a rather small ax or hatchet, judging by the size of the chop marks.

Across the pond, perhaps forty yards away, was a floating field of lily pads, and while he watched, an enormous horse-like creature emerged from the woods, waded into the water, and began to feed on the aquatic plants. It had a small rack of velvety horns, obviously not full-grown. Crews needed a moment to identify the animal as, probably, a moose.

He remained motionless against the stump. He was not likely to see a living moose, as opposed to a cartoon version, soon again. He had no plans to return to the wilderness once having escaped from it, but he would treasure the memories he had accumulated here: the bear and now the moose … and next the two beavers he saw swimming to shore. One of them, sleekly fat but agile, was leaving the water when he suddenly understood who it was that had gnawed the trees down and stripped away the bark.

There would be no human path or trail to find, at least not one associated with the naked tree trunks at hand. The beavers—perhaps, given the devastation, a whole tribe of them—had done this work. He made a motion of chagrin, which was followed quickly by a report so loud that for a heart-lifting instant he took it for a gunshot but then recognized that the leading beaver had leaped back into the pond, smartly slapping the water with his big flat tail. The two glistening heads disappeared beneath the surface. The moose too, for all its size and ungainliness, could move rapidly. It hurled itself from the pond and penetrated the woods with a crash of branches. Before he could sigh, Crews was alone again.

In a moment he looked for compensation for the disappointment. He now knew of the pond's existence. Maybe fish would be easier to catch there than in the lake. Also, where did ponds get their water? If in this case the source was a stream, perhaps it led in a direction taking which, on a makeshift raft, one could eventually find fishermen or campers.

But the rain had started up again and soon was falling in volume, discouraging further exploration. He turned and headed back to the log that was his new home…. Such was his intended destination, but he had no landmarks by which to be guided. The cone-gnawed stumps were indistinguishable from one to the next, nor were the living trees of the forest behind them any more helpful. Sometimes he had walked in shallow water, which retained no tracks. For every fallen tree trunk that looked familiar, there was another nearby that seemed even more so until he took another perspective on it. Crews had a poor sense of direction even when driving a car on paved country roads marked regularly with route signs.