Robert Parker - Wilderness

It took them ninety-six minutes to complete the circle. No one was near the camp.

"Let's get closer," Newman said.

Crouched, they inched closer to the clearing and stopped finally, squatting beneath the down-swooping bows of an old white pine tree, silent on the thick mulch of needles around the foot-thick base of the tree. There was a cluster of stones grouped to form a fireplace, but there was no fire. The orange tent had its flap open. A pack board lay by the open flap. Around the fireplace there were several camp cookery utensils. Starlings were pecking at something in one of the pans. Three sleeping bags, still unrolled, spread out around the fireplace like spokes from a hub. The foil wrappings of freeze-dried food were scattered about the clearing. A half-full bottle of Canadian Club stood on the ground near the tent. Two pack boards leaned against the flat rock over which the stream flowed. Another pack board hung from a tree behind the tent. A ground squirrel skittered across the clearing. The sun slanted from the west now, behind them, and dust motes danced in its rays in the silent space. Fresh dirt and a mound of stones at the far edge of the clearing showed where they had buried the boy.

"What now?" she whispered.

He shook his head.

"Let's destroy it," she said.

He looked at her. Faintly, almost like an internal sound, a ruffed grouse drummed far off. The sound registered only at the edge of Newman's mind. "Okay," he said. "Let's do it."

He looked around him. "Get kindling, dry twigs, sticks, leaves, we'll pile them in the tent and then throw everything in there and set it going."

"What about a forest fire?"

He shook his head. "Woods are green. There's been a lot of rain. The tent is surrounded by dirt. Shouldn't spread far." "Aren't you going to get kindling?" she said.

"No. I want to be able to shoot when we step out there if they really were hiding and we missed them."

She nodded and gathered an armload of dry sticks and twigs. "Okay," she said.

He said, "Stay down. We'll scooch out behind the tent and cut a hole in the back and stuff the brush in that way."

"What if they're back that way?"

"Then we get shot at. But if they're not they won't see us. It cuts down the odds. If we go in the front way they can see us from every place." "Let's go," she said and handed him her knife.

He went to his knees, the carbine pushing before him in his right hand, the knife in his left, and crawled into the clearing. Nothing happened. He crawled to the tent. No sound. The starlings continued to forage in the cookware. He drove the point of the knife through the nylon fabric of the tent and sawed a hole. No one was inside. He peered through. There was an open sleeping bag, a roll of toilet paper, a pack, nothing else. He gestured to Janet and she pushed her armload of under into the tent. With the hunting knife he whittled some shavings and scraps of bark from one of the sticks. He crumbled several handfuls of the toilet paper. Then he took a butane lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the paper and shavings. The flame caught the paper at once, flickered at the edge of the shavings. A tiny spiral of smoke rose. Then the flame began to nibble into the wood in a tiny black-edged crescent. Newman moved more twigs and bark scraps closer. The fire spread.

"Let's get the other stuff," he said.

They stood up, Newman's eyes scanning the blank wood-line around them, and ran for the pack boards "Take that one on the tree," Newman said.

His wife shoved it into the tent. The flames were crackling now in the dry wood. The sleeping bag began to smolder. Janet ran to the other side of the clearing and picked up another pack board Her husband had two slung by the shoulder straps over his left arm. He held the knife blade in his teeth and the carbine in his right hand. He threw the two pack boards into the tent through the open front flap. Janet put the last pack board in. The sleeping bag was burning.

"Will the tent burn?" Janet said.

"It's nylon," Newman said. "It should melt, and when it does it will carry the burning meltage into the pile of packs and stuff. Or it should."

They turned and slipped back into the shadow of the woods. Behind them the tent fabric began to shrink and then coalesce. Holes appeared in it as burning trickles of melted chemical dropped onto the fire below.

The fire burned hotter. "Uphill," Newman said.

She followed him without a sound as they climbed over the tabletop rock and splashed through the stream that splayed across it. Behind them ammunition in the packs began to explode in rattling pops. The tent diminished into a seething wallow of chemicals and flame. The smell of it filled the woods, oddly foreign, an industrial smell in the pristine forest. The starlings flew away.

The upgrade was steeper now as they moved up the trail, Newman first, Janet behind him. Almost at once they were out of sight of the camp, though they could smell the fire and hear the ammunition rattling off.

Janet had the knife back in her scabbard. Newman had the hatchet stuck in his belt at the small of his back. He carried the carbine with both hands now, ready to fire. His hand tense on the trigger guard, listening for footsteps, fearing the sudden confrontation as the trail bent and the enemy came hurrying down toward the fire. But they met no enemy.

They stopped to rest.

"Why uphill?" Janet said.

"I figure they'd be looking for us downhill, and I didn't want to run head-on into them coming up the trail."

"Why wouldn't they be looking for us uphill?"

"Because we were downhill last they saw of us. Because like us, I bet their whole mental orientation is downhill, back toward the lake and the cottages and, you know, civilization. When we ran yesterday, which way did we go?" "Downhill," she said.

"Right. In my mind we're on the end of a long string that stretches back to the lake but not ahead. You know?"

"Christ, you think in such elaborate pictures."

"I know. And I know you don't. I see ideas, you think them. It's one reason we argue, I guess."

"Now what?" she said.

"Now we swing around through the woods and go back down past them."

"Why didn't we do that in the first place?"

"Because we had to get away. We were in a hurry. Now we're not. Now we can sneak slowly back and cut them off below. We can't let them get out of here. They know who we are. We have to kill them all. If any one of them gets away we're as good as dead."

"I know." "Four men," Newman said.

"I don't mind," she said.

Looking at her face in the slow-fading afternoon light, he knew she meant it. He felt the same surge of strength he'd felt before, looking at her face. The permanence of it, the hard resolve. She had an intensity of single purpose he'd never had. He could endure. But she could persist.

"You've always been tougher than me," he said.

She smiled at him. "That's because I've always had you to back me up," she said. "You never seem to understand that."

He patted her shoulder. "Well it's you and me now, babe," he said.

"We better start downhill before it gets dark," she said.

"Yeah. We don't want them ahead of us."

"What if they headed straight back for the lake as soon as they saw the fire?"

"I can't believe they would," he said as they began to work their way through the woods, swinging west of the trail and downhill. "They'd try to put out the fire. They'd try to salvage things. They'd look around for us. They'd get together and talk about what to do. It'would take them a little while to realize they're stuck out here with no supplies and a full day's walk from the boats. It's almost dark. They won't want to blunder around in the dark not knowing where we are. I say they'll find someplace to hole up and take turns standing guard and wait until morning."