Питер Геллер - The River

Stunned. He turned to Jack, who still had a hand on her head, trying to calm her. But Jack was looking at the walkie-talkie shattered on the rocks. As if he himself couldn’t believe he had knocked it there.

“Sorry,” Jack muttered. “Fuck.”

“What?” Wynn blinked. “What was that? I was just telling him—”

Jack held up a hand. He was shaking his head as if to clear it. “We don’t know, but now he does.”

“We don’t know what ?” Wynn said.

“What if he did this, Big? What if it was him who tried to kill her?” Jack was trying to keep his voice low. Wynn stared. Jack said, “I’ve been thinking about it the whole way back here. While we were carrying up, paddling. Pierre said he lost her the night the fog came in. Bullshit.”

Wynn looked over his shoulder back at the woods as if someone might be listening. “What?”

Jack whispered fast. “We heard them on the beach. Arguing, remember? They were shouting at each other. In the fog. You heard it.”

Wynn had never seen Jack so agitated. “He said he lost her the night of the fog. Maybe he meant the night after.”

“That’s not what he said. I asked him that, remember? To clarify, and he backed off.”

“Well.”

“I’m telling you, the guy was lying from the start. I got that hit, I should’ve paid attention.” Jack looked down at the blood-soaked rag in his hand, blinked. He blew out. “I mean, okay, we can’t be sure of anything, but if he was the one who did this, now he knows we found her and she’s alive.”

None of that made sense. Wynn didn’t speak after that. While Jack cleaned her up Wynn did his first-responder assessment, working from the head down. She had bruises on her abdomen. Her left shoulder appeared to be dislocated. They’d have to get to that. Full sensation and movement in fingers and toes. Her back, thank God, seemed to be okay. There was old vomit on her rain jacket, probably from the convulsions and nausea of a concussion. She drifted in and out of consciousness. They needed to get her stable. She was mostly soaked and had gone past shivering. She needed heat, liquids, rest, right now.

Now Wynn understood why Jack had been so testy, why he’d insisted on taking the fishing rods, the survival pack, the rifle. In case. In case they found just what they’d found. Still. The man had clearly been injured and upset, almost in shock. Some accident had happened, Wynn just wasn’t sure what, and the man Pierre had missed her in the fog somehow. There were a dozen possibilities. Bear attack. Mother moose. The woman could have gotten lost in the fog in the woods and climbed a tree to locate the lake and fallen, cracked her head on a rock. Or: the two drunks. Not the most savory of dudes. They could have spotted the couple’s canoe from a distance and stalked them. Seen their camp before the fog rolled in. Creepy. He shook it off.

He cleaned up her head. She began shaking hard. That was good in a way. They didn’t have much first aid. They traveled light in that regard—they were boys. Sometimes on climbing trips they took a small bottle of iodine, some SecondSkin glue, and a partial roll of duct tape. Now in the emergency box they had a couple of packs of gauze, one bandage, the iodine, duct tape, Neosporin. They cleaned her head the best they could; it was a diagonal gash to the skull but not deep, maybe three inches long.

They needed to get her warm right away.

“Make a fire,” Wynn said. Jack nodded. They had to warm her up, her core. They had bouillon cubes in the survival box and a few packets of ramen. They’d get her close to the fire and wrap her in the emergency blankets and whatever else they had and feed her hot liquids until the shaking stopped.

Jack shoved away through the tall weeds and Wynn doused the cut with iodine. She was half conscious. He washed the blood off her face. No more cuts, good. She was maybe watching his face, her eyes were slits, they blinked and she moaned. He found a needle and stout thread in the box, he’d packed it for gear repairs but knew it would work as backup for sutures, and he sewed up the cut where she lay. Her body shook in waves and she groaned, but he knew that with the dislocation and the crack to her skull the other pain would mostly mask it. Relative anesthesia. He shivered. “Done,” he said. He patted it with gauze and bound the gauze to her head with the bandage.

Wynn glanced up at the sky: a solid overcast now, moving fast south. Fuck. He prayed it wouldn’t rain. Well, if it didn’t, the clouds could work for them and hold off the frost. He didn’t think they’d move tonight—she wouldn’t be ready, they’d have to camp here. The two emergency blankets were waterproof and they’d cover her, and he and Jack would keep the fire going and do the best they could. He held her head while she shook and he didn’t turn but he could hear the crack and pop of the fire. For the first time Wynn looked at her. Not at the sum of her injuries but as a person lying in the weeds beside him. She was maybe early thirties, dark hair in a braid, hazel eyes, what he could see of them. She was lean, and she had even teeth, unbroken. A strong jaw, also in place, strong dark eyebrows. She looked tough. She must have been tough to survive the two days exposed. If they could get her through this part and she had no severe internal injuries, she would make it. What Wynn told himself. When the danger of hypothermia had passed he would have to reset her shoulder.

The fire cracked and popped and hissed, and when the wind eddied back toward the woods he could smell the smoke and it smelled like life. Maybe the first time he’d ever thought that. Jack was beside him, and Wynn said, “I don’t think anything’s fucked with her spine. Just in case, we’ll carry her together.” He didn’t have to tell him that he’d take her head and shoulders and Jack would support her hips. “On three.” They carried her. They could feel the shudders moving through her and they laid her on a Therm-a-Rest inflatable sleeping pad on a bed of sand Jack had cleared and smoothed by the fire.

Therm-a-Rest? It was green, Jack’s. Wynn glanced at him.

“I got yours, too. And the tent.”

“Damn.” Wynn almost laughed but it came up like a cough. “No wonder the pack was so heavy.”

Jack stuck his arm in the blue dry bag and pulled out the nylon cylinder of a stuff sack. A sleeping bag.

“Holy shit,” Wynn said. “You brought the whole camp.” In the bottom he felt both their bear sprays. Whoa. Wave of relief. Their sleeping bags were light, but they were water-resistant down. The fire was hot, they kept the woman back a couple of feet. They stripped off her wet pants and underwear and her rain jacket and wet sweater but her wool undershirt had wicked dry as she’d lost heat and they left it on. They wrapped her with the sleeping bags but left the side facing the fire open so that the heat could get inside her bed. Jack had pushed smooth stones into the flames so they’d heat up in the glowing embers, and when they were hot they’d let them cool to warm and use them like hot pads. He’d also thrown the one battered pot in the bag, and he trotted down over the cobbles to the lake and filled it with lakewater and set it on two rocks by the flames.

They squatted beside her and waited for the water to boil.

“You knew it’d be like this,” Wynn murmured.

“I didn’t know. Still don’t. What happened. But I know the dude was lying. And thinking about it now, he did not want us to come back up here. He only gave us the walkie-talkie so he’d know if we found her.” He raked coals under the pot. “Sorry about that part,” he said again. He meant slapping the radio out of Wynn’s hand. He’d never done anything like that.