Robert Parker - Wilderness

"What do we do," Janet said, "when we see them?"

"We shoot, or I do. You keep the pistol for back-up. It's not very accurate at any distance anyway. If we can get all four of them we're home free. If we can't we keep after them. Even if they get to the lake, remember they got no boats. It will take them a long time to walk around that lake."

She nodded. The lightning came more swiftly after the thunder now. The storm was getting closer. Newman took a book from his pack and thumbed through it. Then he stood up.

"Where're you going?" she said.

"I'm starving. I'm going to see what we can get for food."

"What's the book?"

"A Field Guide to Survival," Newman said. "I slipped it in the pack before we left." "In case Chris got killed," she said.

"Yes, or separated. It's got pictures of edible plants."

"If we get out of this," she said, "you can open a Boy Scout camp."

He nodded. "Here," he said, "you take the carbine, give me the.32.

I'm just going around behind the rocks."

He put the hood up on the nylon jacket, put the.32 in his pants pocket, and went out into the rain. In the stream behind the rocks were cattails. He pulled a dozen out, root, and all, and brought them back into the shelter. He gave Janet back the revolver and with his jackknife cut the roots off the plants and peeled them. Then he put the twelve tubers into the ashes of the fire.

"Are they any good?" Janet said.

"Book says they are sweet and delicious," Newman said.

"I'll bet," she said.

He settled back with the carbine, watching the trail while the cattail roots roasted in the coals. Occasionally he tested them with the blade of his knife to see if they were done, and finally, when the knife slid easily in, he decided they were. He poked them out of the ashes with the knife blade and gave six to Janet. They were too hot to handle so they let them lie on a flat rock while they cooled, and Newman stared at the trail.

"You really mean that," Newman said, "about being tough because you had me to back you up?"

"Yes."

"I never fully got that sense, or the sense that you were aware of it." "I don't know why," she said. "It seems perfectly clear."

"But you're always so manage-y. You're so…" he stopped and stared out at the rain-soaked trail beyond his screen of white-pine boughs, "so separate. You never seem at all dependent."

"Because I don't hold your hand or lean on your arm or run on about how much I need you?"

"Some of that wouldn't hurt," he said.

"It's not the way I am."

"Why not?"

"I suppose it has something to do with fear, fear that if I'm dependent on anything or anyone I can't control my life. It's a control issue, as they say at the consciousness groups."

"You can control me," he said.

"That scares me too. It's like the old Groucho Marx joke. I wouldn't want to depend on anyone I can control."

"Would you be more affectionate if you couldn't control me?"

"Maybe."

"But if you couldn't control me, wouldn't that scare you and make you hostile?"

"Maybe."

"Jesus Christ," he said.

"I love you, you know," she said. "I love you and I am committed to this marriage and to you. If I don't show it the way you do, that doesn't make it wrong."

"I know," he said.

"If I should love you more, maybe you should love me less. The weight of your need is heavy. The pressure of your thwarted romanticism is not pleasant, and you don't miss any chance to remind me that I'm not loving enough."

"I know."

She picked up one of the cattail roots and bit into it. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "Well?" he said.

"Sweet and delicious," she said. She chewed it methodically and swallowed.

He stabbed one with the blade of his jackknife and bit off half. He chewed.

"Never trust a field guide," he said and ate the other half.

"See," she said. "You don't like these damned roots and neither do I.

But they're the best we've got and so we'll eat them and make the best of it."

"Half a loaf is better than none?"

She made a noncommittal gesture with her hands. "If you wish. The point is most of the time we enjoy each other very much. Be happy with that. Wanting more than you can have will spoil what you've got."

He reached out with the knife blade and stabbed another root and ate it, chewing ostensively.

"Right now," he said, "I want to kill four men."

She didn't say anything and the rain came down in sheets.

The rain stopped at three-twelve in the afternoon. The sun did not appear and the temperature dropped slightly. At three-fifteen he said, "They'll come now; we better be out and in a good spot."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because they must be freezing their ass and soaking wet and hungry as hell and the first chance they get to get the hell out of the woods and get back to civilization they'll take."

"You don't think they'll be looking for us?"

"I think they'll keep an eye out, but I'll bet now they want out. They know who we are. They can get us later."

With the knife he scraped a hole in the floor of the shelter and kicked the coals of the fire into it and covered it with dirt. They slipped into the knapsacks. He looked around the small warm space once and then they left it. They went down the trail thirty yards to a place where a tree had fallen across it. They sprawled flat behind the fallen tree, to one side of the trail. Behind them the trail turned sharply east.

He took out the compass and looked at it, turning it until he could read it. He looked southwest through the trees. Through a break in the trees he could see mountains.

"Look," he said. "See the top of that mountain? It looks like sort of a cockscomb on top?"

"It doesn't look like a cockscomb," she said.

"Well whatever it looks like to you. Study it, get it imprinted. You want to keep walking so that the mountain is about half right of you.

So that you'd half-turn your head so to see it. Halfway between straight ahead and directly to your right."

"Okay." They said nothing else but lay still watching the trail.

The wet woods dripped steadily.

Frank Marriott came first. He wore a blue plaid shirt buttoned to the neck with the collar turned up. It was wet through and his hair was plastered to his skull. In his right hand he carried a revolver with a big handle. The one he had shot Hood with. It swung at his side now, barrel pointing toward the ground. His eyes moved right and left as he came, looking in the bushes. He was walking as if his feet hurt.

Newman brought the carbine up and aimed. And waited. The blue plaid shirt seemed to enlarge as it sat on the splayed trident of the front sight. Wait, he thought. Wait. If you shoot now you'll only get one.

Wait until there's more than one to shoot at. The blue shirt got bigger. Wait, wait, wait, wait, and his finger squeezed the trigger shut and the bullet made the material of the shirt jump as it hit Marriott in the chest. His finger squeezed again and Marriott fell backward. The gun with the big handle fell out of his hand. Behind him Richie Karl jumped for the woods to the left of the trail. Farther back the huge man and Adolph Karl stepped into the woods to the right and dropped to the ground.

Newman said, "Run," and Janet and he scrambled on the ground toward the turn in the trail. Behind them Richie Karl raised the shotgun and fired over Marriott's body in the direction the shots had come from, pumping the shotgun as fast as he could, spraying the area with an ounce and a quarter of lead shot with each pump.

As Newman and his wife reached the turn they both stood to run, and something slapped Newman in the back of the left arm. And tugged at the triceps. Then they were around the bend of the trail and running.