Lydia Millet - How the Dead Dream

He tried to honor it with a thought but was dull with fatigue. No strength left to hang the tarp or the mosquito net, so he wrapped the net around his head and torso and lay down, breathing thickly through it, on the bench he had slept on in better times. He and Delonn were both cocooned.

He had to shift his arms often to hold the netting away from his skin, for the mosquitoes landed on it directly; and trying to fall asleep in this awkward defensive posture he saw poor Delonn waking, screaming suddenly at the recognition of his flayed back and ragged scalp. He lay on his thin bench in constant terror that Delonn might not be entirely gone from his ripped body, that by accident or laziness he had halfbutchered him. It was a fear that he was lacking a center, or he was a murderer.

He got up finally and pulled out one of his hairs. With the flashlight he found the guide's lips, now blue; over them, with great care so as not to touch them, he placed the hair. In the morning he would be sure… but almost touching the lips he feared he might also be dead, that deadness enfolded both of them.

How could it not? They were so close.

With the first light he woke, nervous and shivering though it was far from cold. Already the air was humid and he saw flies buzzing over the package. Their presence actually reassured him.

He had relaxed his hold on the netting during the night and been bitten on his arms and his face. He itched from the swellings, compelled to scratch at them right away.

The river was lovelier than he had seen it before, its water slow and gold with a blue haze over the surface. Trees hemmed the sky and made it small but there were pink clouds over the tree line to the east. Around him on the still boat were the sounds of crickets and birds; the water rippled and sucked at the underside of the hull.

He was starved.

He drank water straight from a jug and found a small can of black beans with a pull-tab, which he tipped into his month and guzzled. Quickly it was over; his stomach was heavy; he put the can in a plastic bag and looked at the tentwrapped package with its oval of face showing. He checked the hair on the mouth, which was still perfect. The hair and the flies: he had not been wrong.

There was a gap between the lips, however, as though they were beginning to pull back off the teeth. The sight of it jarred him. He pulled the fabric sharply to one side so that the face was covered. He was almost antagonistic toward Delonn now, or at least Delonn's body. It had become an opponent, and a stubborn one.

He took a deep breath to steady himself. He tried the radio, though he was not convinced he was operating it correctly. He heard only static. Then he climbed off the boat again, jumping down onto the muddy bank, and untied the ropes from the strangler fig, fumbling with the guide's expert knots. Back on the boat, feet braced and arms trembling, he jerked twice on the cord and the motor started with a violent spit.

He exhaled shakily, grabbed hold of the wheel with wet palms and steered away from the bank.

Stay a course down the middle, he told himself, fewer snags there and greater depth. He did not want to let go of the wheel to grab the water jug or dig food out of the sacks; he did not want to cut the motor. So he stayed at the wheel steadily, wiping the metal with his shirt sleeve where his hands sweated, urinating once off the side of the boat. He was almost dozing at the wheel, his eyelids heavy in the heat of rising noon, when he heard something scrape loudly and the motor whined. The boat lost speed.

He walked to the back to look down. He had seen Delonn raise the propeller once or twice, why he had not known, but he knew it could be done. He leaned past Delonn at his feet, reached down and heaved it up. Two of the blades were sheared off and a third was broken. It must have hit a rock, he thought. Nothing could be seen through the turbid brown.

The current would still carry them downstream, but he had no way to steer. And the prow of the boat was pointed toward a bank already, moving steadily toward an eddy in the shallows. He glanced around in a panic and saw a white oar on a pair of hooks along the side. This he grabbed and grappled with and held out as they drifted; he stuck it over the side without judging distance, stuck it out and pushed away fiercely: and the boat slanted lightly away from the bank again.

For a while he used the oar on both sides of the boat, keeping afloat straight down the middle of the channel. It was tiring and his arms ached. As he rounded the meander with the still pool, where Delonn had offered him a swim, a large bird flapped over his head without warning; his hand slipped. The oar slid swiftly through the oarlock and into the water.

He watched it float away, hit a ridge of rocks and catch there as the boat moved downstream and left it behind. The boat stayed straight until it knocked into a low branch and slid up into a tangle of brush. A stick, he thought, and balanced tenuously on one of the side benches to reach up. After a struggle he was able to break a long branch off a tree and use it to push the boat off the bank, but the slant of the boat was hard to manage, the stick was awkward for steering, and at the next meander, where a short clay-red cliff rose on one bank, the boat lodged itself in the mud wall of the cliff.

He sat there for some time, listening to birdcalls and looking up at the clear blue sky.

When the current failed to dislodge the boat he decided to get into the water and push; he had to swim around and force it off the bank. He peeled his shirt off and then his grimy jeans, perched on the gunnel and slid into the warm water gently. Feet in the mud, he pushed against the side of the boat until it seemed to loosen; as he pulled himself up a hard thing in the water slid down his calf. The cut was not deep but bled right away, freely. He left bloody footprints on the deck, which gratified him-as though someone else had finally acknowledged his injury. The blood collected into a thin ribbon.

River sand had gathered in the crotch of his boxer shorts and the crotch hung heavy like a sling, so he slipped out of the shorts and hung them from one of the shelter poles. For a while the boat moved nicely downstream; but then the river curved and despite his exertions it drifted into the bank again. He dropped into the water and pushed; again it drifted. Finally he was sick of the boat and furious.

He tied it to a tree and threw a fall pack of food onto the bank, the water filter, his tent and sleeping pad and flashlight. He went to Delonn and touched the tent fabric at the shoulder. He laid a tarp over the body, covering the face, and tucked it carefully beneath.

He was sorry for Delonn but partly envied him too.

He clung close to the bank, wary of losing his bearings if he strayed too far into the jungle. At times there was no trail and the vegetation was thick where the trees were set back. He had to beat his way through. At times he had to stray from the bank, careful to keep the water in sight. Soon he had cuts on his arms and knees; he allowed himself small sips of bottled water but was eager to conserve it, and his head ached from dehydration. In the late afternoon he found himself at the edge of a large marsh that extended north from the river's edge.

He stood uselessly, despairing. The marsh reached far away from the river, too far to see-miles, clearly. He tried stepping in and sank up to his knees; he almost lost a boot trying to pull his foot out. Better to swim the river, he thought. The river was not swift, but was the other bank a marsh too?

The further from the river he walked the further the swamp seemed to stretch. He got anxious. The sun was behind the trees. Finally he chose a hummock to set up his tent and struggled manfully with the tent poles until they held up the nylon. Inside he took off his bungee-cord belt and army pants, heavy with moisture, and sat down on his sleeping pad with his bare legs stretched out. He dabbed at the cuts with alcohol pads from Delonn's first-aid kit; then he found he was shivering and wrapped himself in his sheet. He had been wrong to leave the boat, clearly; for sooner or later, after the snags and the holdups, the spins and the drifts, it would have reached the coast.