Robert Parker - Wilderness

Karl swung his empty 45 at Newman's gun hand and hit it, and both weapons, one still loaded, skittered across the lake top and sank.

Newman's right hand hurt. It was a numb pain. Karl lurched forward through the water and tried to knee Newman in the groin. Newman turned in time and took the knee against his thigh. Karl clawed at Newman's face with his left hand. With his right he hit Newman in the throat.

Newman made a choking noise and staggered away from him. Karl punched him again and Newman half-turned and staggered away another step. Karl jumped at him and landed on his back and wrapped his arm around Newman's neck. The impact made Newman drop to his knees. Newman tucked his chin in and Karl couldn't get his arm under Newman's jaw and against his throat. With both arms Karl squeezed.

Newman felt the pressure build in his head. His sight glazed red. He heaved himself upright, Karl still hanging on. With his feet spread, knee-deep in water, Newman reached up and pried one of Karl's fingers free and bent it backward until Karl let go of his neck. He made a massive shrugging motion with his shoulders and back and dumped Karl into the water. His heart was pounding and the blood thumped in his head. Karl stood up. Newman got hold of his neck with one hand and his shirt front with the other and began to bend him backward, pulling on the shirt front, pushing on the neck. Karl was a big-boned, angular man. But he was exhausted and he was out of shape. Newman bent him backward slowly. Karl tried for Newman's groin again but was off-balance and struggling and there was no force to the knee. Again Newman took it on his thigh. His right hand squeezed into Karl's neck.

He could feel the cartilage and tissue move under his fingers. He dug in. The bench presses were paying off. The years of repetitions with two hundred-pound barbells-ten reps, wait, ten more reps, wait, ten more reps-had left him with strength that Karl couldn't match, and here, desperate and frightened and bursting with anger, the strength finally mattered. His pectoral muscles bulged, the triceps indented at the top of his arms. The muscles of his forearms were rigid against his skin, his neck was thick with effort. The trapezius muscles swelled his shoulders.

Karl was choking. He made slight cawing sounds as Newman bent him back. The bandage on Newman's left arm was undone and napping. The wound had begun to seep blood and it trickled down his arm. Karl scratched and clawed at Newman's face, trying to gouge his eyes. Newman increased his pressure. He grunted and then exhaled explosively, the way he did when he lifted weights. Karl gave way. He went backward into the water and Newman came down on top of him, his hands still locked on the throat and shirt front. He pressed Karl back against the bottom of the lake. The bleeding wound in his arm made the water near him slightly pink. Karl's legs thrashed and his hands stopped digging at Newman's face and went to Newman's hands. Under the water he tried to pry Newman's grip from his neck. He dug at Newman's fingers, but Newman increased the pressure. Pressing down more. He could feel the swell of strength in his back and shoulders, feel the force in his arms. There was triumph in the feeling, as his muscles swelled and held. Beneath the water Karl made no sound. He arched his body, thrashed his legs, dug with his fingers at Newman's grip. Newman remained as rigid as a boulder. Sweat stood on his forehead. He bit his lower lip with effort and it drew blood and that dripped down his chin and added its pink tinge to the water already touched with the blood from his wounded arm. His eyes were closed. In that position they held. Karl's struggles slowed. They stopped. He was still on the bottom. Newman still held him against the pebbled bottom while his arms no longer clawed but hung limp and moved slightly in the eddying water, held him several minutes after it was necessary, held him after he had died, held him as if he were unable to let go and would hold him until the lake rose in spring and covered them both. Then slowly his body began to unclench. He relaxed his hands, though he still bent forward pressing lightly against Karl's chest. The trapezius muscles eased, the cords in his forearms smoothed. He rocked back, away from Karl's body, and sat on his haunches, still astride him. He took in air in a long shuddering breath and let it out through closely pursed lips in a slow hiss.

It was fifteen minutes before Newman could stand. His body shook. He staggered as he turned toward shore and began to wade. The blood trickled down his left arm and his chin. There were more scratches and gouges on his face. And five parallel red scratches on his chest where Karl had dragged desperate fingernails just before he died.

He got to shore and found a rock near the bank and trembling sat down on the rock with his back to the bank. His wet, half-naked body was cold. There was a small breeze. It was September. He shivered. He clasped his arms around him and sat, trembling with exhaustion, shaking with emotion, shivering with cold. He sat that way for an hour, until Janet came out of the woods and found him.

Bundled in his down vest and nylon parka, but still shivering, Newman waited in silence while Janet found the canoe. He was almost entirely inside himself as they paddled it out onto the still surface of the lake and headed straight across toward the cabin. His arm hurt as he paddled but he showed no sign of it, and the pain barely registered.

Halfway across they let the canoe drift and dropped everything but the first-aid kit and the clothes they wore overboard. The carbine was the last thing. He didn't like to drop it. It was compact and shapely. It felt good in his hand. He held it barrel-down for a moment at arm's-length and then let it go. It slid smoothly into the water and sank.

"It's funny," he said.

"What is?"

"To be without a gun. I don't feel right." She smiled. "You didn't need a gun at the end." "I couldn't shoot," he said. "I wanted to. I knew I had to, but I couldn't, not up close, with him looking at me." "You did what you had to," she said.

He shifted the paddle as the canoe began to veer off course. Even with the wounded arm he was so much stronger than she was that the canoe wouldn't hold straight if he didn't compensate.

"And you did it alone," she said.

The sun was directly overhead, and there was no wind. The lake was slick and the canoe moved over it as if without friction.

"Without me," she said.

He could see the float in front of the cabin now, and the small wharf that slanted up from it. The foliage had begun to change and there were scatters of gold and red in the shoreline forest.

"When we came back from Korea," he said, "we came into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge and they tied in the ship's speaker-system to a disc jockey in San Francisco, so that before we even saw land we heard American radio, and commercials, and when we went up the bay we could look up the hilly streets into San Francisco and see American buildings and people and cars." His voice was as flat and still as the surface of the lake. She looked back at him over her shoulder. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking past her at the dock. She turned back and dug in her paddle.

They left the paddles in the bottom of the canoe when they docked. His arm hurt when he had to put weight on it to climb from the skittish canoe. On the dock they stood together. He looked back across the lake. On the far side the woods were unbroken and uniform, patches of color blotching the green. The lake remained smooth and calm. It had healed over the wake of the canoe as it had closed over the carbine, as it had closed over Adolph Karl.

"It's pretty," he said.

"Yes." "From a distance," he said.

"Looking back," she said.