Robert Crews

by Thomas Berger

  They started into the field in single file, wading through grasses that were usually no more than knee-deep, from which rose the occasional plant only slightly taller, not enough for cover. The wildflowers, somewhat disappointing on his earlier trip, were more profuse now. At a distance those of the same hue seemed to be massed into floating islands of gold, orange-red, or purple, but when approached separated first into confetti and finally became distinct blossoms, some a foot or more from any other. But there were also kaleidoscopic areas shared by many colors.

  At one such place, without breaking his regular stride, Crews broke off a little flower of dusty blue. An irritated bee chased his hand for six or eight inches before turning back to more serious work. The sun was warm on his back. The woman was behind him, walking in his swath. He often glanced back at her, should she forget or neglect to signal him. Her eyes were always down. The twig was gone from her hair now. He would have liked to replace it with the blue flower.

  On the other side of the meadow they entered wooded, rising ground. Once they were well within the trees, on the gentle slope, he halted, took the cap from the thermos on his belt, and swinging the container on its loop of fishline, poured some water. He offered the cup to the woman. She gulped greedily at it.

  “You must be hungry, too. When we come to a likely spot, I’ll do some fishing.” He refilled the cup. “I’ve been thinking. We need a contingency plan. If we run into this guy, I’ll keep his attention on me as long as I can. You take off and head for cover. His attention will be diverted. He’ll have to deal with me. You should get a few seconds anyway.” She did nothing to indicate she had heard what he was saying.

  He took the lead again. In silence they gained the crest of the hill, where he paused to look down onto a valley that was familiar to him, as was the cliff behind it.

  “Down there, over on the lake side, is where he took my raft. I had previously seen him up there.” He pointed at the cliff, higher than where they were, and on their right. “I yelled and waved, then I climbed up. But he was long gone. He must have come down somewhere else, circled around, and grabbed the raft. It was coming apart, but I guess it held together awhile.” He was still in effect speaking to himself. “You were hiding someplace? I only wish I had known it then.” He stepped so as to face her. Her eyes fell. “If we don’t encounter any rougher going than we’ve had so far, it should only be a couple more hours. I went by raft, so I don’t know the ground between here and there. But you do. Can you remember any obstacles?”

  She shook her head.

  He took the can from his pocket. “Let’s have a look at that wound again.” She lifted the jacket and the hem of his shirt, which she wore tails out. It was hard to say whether the scab had claimed more of the raw flesh. He sprayed the area and then lowered the shirttail himself, to determine whether it cleared the wound. “It’s knitting up,” he told her. “Lucky his aim wasn’t better.” Her eyes rose, full of anguish. “Forgive me,” he said. “Dumb thing to say. I was just trying to make conversation…. Let’s get going. We’ve got lots to do before dark, and you can never tell what problems will suddenly come up. I’ve never yet found one thing in nature that I could have predicted.”

  A sudden burst of sound came from the trees just ahead of them on the downward slope, and instinctively he recoiled. A small deer, a doe or not fully grown fawn, unantlered, was sprinting uphill, at an angle to them. Each instant less of it could be discerned through the intervening trees, and in a moment it had vanished altogether.

  The hike to the end of the lake probably took more than the two hours he anticipated, even though the route was without serious topographical barriers, the terrain being mostly level, not densely forested, and marked by only one narrow stream, shallow enough to wade across. But just where the lake’s “end” could be identifiably located was another matter. He had been so disoriented on his previous trip of exploration that he had encircled the shore while believing he was traveling in a straight line.

  He tried again to speak with the woman. “This is really important. Can you take your mind back to before your husband was shot?” They were now among the pines just behind the beach. “Do you remember anything we might look for? Any kind of landmark? So much of the shore is the same in one place as it is in another. You did come out to the water?” He squinted at the sun. “I’d say it’s late afternoon, and we’ve been going north, more or less, all day. While the light’s still good, maybe we should go out to the lake and have you take a look. Maybe you’ll recognize something.”

  She stared through the trees at the sparkling water. “I took a swim. I was hot and dirty after the hike in from the river, where the current was too strong to safely swim in, or anyway that’s what Michael said, I wonder why now, because it didn’t look like it. So I hadn’t had a bath since leaving Fort Judson. He wasn’t that good a swimmer himself to help me, he said, if I got in trouble. I was actually touched by his saying that. He wasn’t usually so protective—anything but, in fact. Once—” She stopped herself.

  “River?” Crews asked. “You came by the river, on a boat of some kind?”

  She was still abstracted. “Godforsaken place. You get there by a little plane. Nothing much is at Fort Judson but this outfitter who rents the canoes.”

  “Where did you leave the canoe?” Crews asked. “How far away is this Fort Judson? How far from your camp was the river?” That there was a human settlement of any kind that could eventually be reached from this wilderness, which to him had grown to seem infinite, was exhilarating.

  “I hated it all,” she said. “I don’t mean that: it was beautiful. I just hated my being there.” Tears came to her eyes, and she turned away.

  “If we can get to the river and find the canoe—you must have left it someplace there for the return trip? … But it’s getting late in the day. I’d better make camp. Otherwise it’ll get dark before you know it, which always happens quicker when you’re lost, I couldn’t say why, except all the normal things have to be looked at in a different way. Everything’s new. That’s really hard to get accustomed to at first. It’s like being a child again, only not so comfortably.” He was still addressing her back. “I’m going to build a lean-to. Can you give me some help? Collect a lot of pine boughs?”

  He prowled until he found a deciduous tree from which to cut a fishing pole, then gave her the tool. “I’m going to try to catch something. It’s time you had a meal. I’ll go right over there, where you can see me all the while. If anything unusual happens, anything at all, or you just get lonely, just give me a yell.”

  She showed some slight spirit. “I want to do my part.”

  “Fine,” Crews said. “Look, if you want: we’ll need two forked sticks about this high, and thick enough to hold another stick or pole between them.” He made explanatory gestures. “Then pine boughs can be put against the frame to make a tent-shaped structure, you see. Don’t worry if it doesn’t seem terribly substantial. It’s only going to serve as a decoy. If this guy shows up, we won’t be sleeping there.” He had just got this idea and was proud of it, but if she really understood what he was saying, she displayed nothing that could be called a reaction.

  He went to the lake at the place he had indicated, a grassy point that extended only eight or ten feet into the water but broke the uniformity of the shoreline. He attached one of the artificial flies to his line, and extending the pole as far as possible, jerked the fake insect along the surface in a fashion he had never tried before, testing another of his ideas. This one worked. In about half an hour he caught two fish, one of a reasonable size for a meal, the other hardly larger than a minnow.

  Remembering the torch with which the woman had discovered him in the cave, he asked for her matches, but she had none left. He had neglected this matter until the sun was too low in the sky to furnish rays strong enough for ignition when reflected from the mirror.

  The remaining means of making fire from scratch were flint and steel and the bow and drill,
both known to him only as depicted in movies, probably inauthentically at that. He chose the latter as being least incredible.

  He cut and bent several lengths of limber branch before finding one that would serve. From the end of a dead log he split off a flattish section of very dry wood. He prepared an ignition-attracting wad of stuff from the pods of dead weeds and fragments of desiccated bark. He went to the woman, who was doing a good job of accumulating materials for the lean-to.

  “I need to borrow a shoestring.” Without waiting for a response, he knelt and began to unlace the running shoe on her left foot. She wore thickly knit athletic socks that were, at least in the part covered by the shoes, wondrously white for anything to be seen in the woods by someone like himself who had been lost there so long.

  He found a sturdy dry stick to use as drill. He put one end of it into the depression he had gouged in the flat piece of wood, and spun it therein by means of the little bow of which her shoelace made the string. There were the usual fits and starts, the miscarriages inevitable with all primitive efforts—he had neglected to provide something to hold against the end of the drill to steady it vertically while pressing down on the horizontal member of the apparatus—and before ignition came, two drill sticks and one bow cracked under the strain, but her shoestring held fast, and finally a blackness appeared in the socket and his nostrils caught the first faint bouquet of burning wood. More grinding produced a wisp of outright smoke, bits of tinder were pressed against the infinitesimal spark, and he not so much blew as breathed heavily on it…. The spark went out, as did a succession of them, but at last one was snared and fed and reared to be a genuine flame.

  They had been able to see the killer’s campfire at a considerable distance, but the criminal had no reason to conceal his presence by keeping his fire to the minimum. Crews’s purpose was to attract as little attention as possible. By now he had learned a good deal about the fuels in his patch of the world, and though he could not have identified many woods by name, he knew which gave the most heat with the least smoke. He dug a little pit in which to contain his modest blaze and limit how far its radiance would extend when darkness came. He was still taking a chance, for however sparse the smoke, the odor could surely be detected at a great distance. But it was to counteract that risk that he planned the decoy lean-to.

  Making fire had taken so much of his attention that he was not aware the woman had not only assembled all the materials for the structure but had almost completed the construction thereof when he turned to that task.

  “You were able to do this just from a description?” He walked admiringly around the little structure. “It beats the first one I made, I’ll say that.” She shrugged in apparent indifference, though his praise was sincere. “It’s a fine job. Now come on and eat some dinner. There’s only one course, but at least it’s fresh.”

  She came and sat near the fire while he grilled both fish on the same stick. He restrained his usual impatience and took more care with the cooking and thus did not char the larger. Owing to the difference in size, the same could not be said for the smaller, but that was the one he gave to himself. He had found a birch and cut from it a section of bark to serve as plate for her meal.

  “Forks are in short supply in this establishment,” he said. “But at least let me cut it into pieces that are easier to pick up.” He warned her against burned fingers.

  She was able to eat very little, and he did not press her on the matter. There would be other meals. What she probably needed most at this point was rest. It was apparent to him that the effects of shock, postponed during the time she ran for her life, had accumulated throughout the day she had been under his protection. Taking the longer view, this could be seen as healthy. Nevertheless he would worry.

  He led her into the thick underbrush behind the clearing in which the lean-to stood. “I don’t think he’s anywhere near here. Where we saw smoke was off in the other direction. I watched the lakeshore all day long. If he was heading this way, he’d have had to come out to the water at one point or another. But we’ll play it safe. We’ll make a place for you back here. I’ll find somewhere to conceal myself nearer the lean-to: if he does come, that will naturally be his focus.”

  While she was fashioning a kind of burrow within the bushes, Crews cut some pine boughs to keep her off the ground. He took such equipment as he might need before dawn from the pockets of his tattered jacket and presented the garment to her for a cover against the chill of the night.

  “No matter what, don’t make any noise,” he said. “I’ll be on guard all night. He won’t get past me if he comes, but he won’t come. You’ll be all right here.” He had plumped up some of the boughs to serve as pillows, but the weight of her head had compressed them. What wretched accommodations he had provided. Tomorrow he must heat water so she could wash her face. He timidly took her hand, which was lifeless but at least did not recoil. “Try to get some rest. I won’t be far away.” He was reluctant to leave her.

  She seemed to be weeping quietly, obscurely, her face on its unbruised side, her dark hair across it. He left her, pulling the bushes together as he went out to the clearing. In what was left of the twilight, she could not be seen.

  Crews had always been pretty good with his fists, giving as good as he got, even with larger opponents, probably because alcohol removed the inhibitions against violence that restrain the sober. But he was not drunk now, and his adversary was a cold-blooded murderer, not some acquaintance whom he had offended at a party or an intrusive stranger in a bar. He required as deadly a weapon as he could quickly fashion without looking far in the near darkness.

  He was too squeamish to run a crude spear into a man’s back from ambush, but would be capable of using a club. He fashioned the caveman type of bludgeon, lashing a hefty rock into the split end of a stout handle.

  He had extinguished the fire with water long since. In a stand of dense-grown brush twenty yards from the lean-to he took up a post from which he could see both that structure and the place beyond the other end of the clearing where the woman was concealed. For a while, at the beginning of his vigil, he feared that the absence of all light would confine him to such sounds as he could detect, but in time two-thirds of a moon appeared in a half-clouded sky, and enough of its illumination reached the clearing to identify shapes with a night vision that seemed better than it should be, but perhaps that was due to the same will that kept him awake and alert till morning.

  8

  CREWS SAW NOTHING UNTOWARD ALL NIGHT and heard only the noises made by the smaller nocturnal creatures, scurryings, flutterings, the hollow cry of an owl, and once the shriek of something obviously being killed, perhaps by the same bird that had hooted. He shivered in the thin shirt and could not take the warming measures he had used when on his own, so will was applied to that matter as well.

  When dawn came, he went to the woman, taking care first to call out, so that she would not be frightened by the disturbance of the bushes.

  She was awake. Her eyes were without luster.

  “I hope you were able to sleep.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Let’s have a look at the wound.” He was gratified to see that she had not only worn his jacket but had fastened the buttons all the way up.

  She returned the garment to him now and pulled up the tails of the remaining clothing. The scab was even uglier. The antiseptic seemed to have fed the infection, but he told himself that it was the usual case with any kind of disorder of body that things got bad only as a means of gathering the requisite force to recapture good health—just as the reverse could be true, as with his mother, for whom each remission served as prelude to a more desperate phase, until he got to the point at which he dreaded hearing bad news that posed as good.

  “I’ll get a fire started and heat some water, enough anyway to wash your face with. I know how to make a container of birch bark: you wouldn’t think that could be put over flames, but it can. Water can actually be brou
ght to a boil in it.” He raised his eyebrows. But nothing served to lift her morale.

  In fact, his own could have used a boost. He had not slept in twenty-four hours, and during the same period had eaten only the one tiny fish and the remainder of hers, and the larder was empty again. A worse problem was that he had no idea where they were. If they had passed the midpoint of the end of the lake, every step they took would bring them closer to where they had last seen evidence of the enemy’s presence. The woods beyond the clearing, in the direction Crews believed was generally north, looked exceptionally dense. Not only would the going be rough, but straying a few feet per mile off the proper course could result in missing the river altogether.

  He went to the lake to clean up a bit, splashing water on his hairy face and scrubbing his teeth with a forefinger. He was trying to work up the courage to look at himself in the mirror, something he had not done in days, when she came out on the grassy point to join him.

  “This is it,” she said. “This is where I took the swim. There’s where I left my clothes, right over there.”

  “Then your camp must be nearby,” said Crews, standing up. “Just point which way. I’ll go and do what has to be done. You don’t have to come.”

  She shook her head violently and set off on a diagonal course through a grove of young trees that within thirty yards opened into a little clearing, half the size of that in which they had spent the night but unlike the latter no dead end: a clearly defined trail led out of it toward the presumed north.

  But there was no corpse in view, and in fact no camp, though it was obvious that one was not long gone. He poked a stick into the ashes of a cold campfire. On the earth beyond was a rectangular outline from which the normal top layer of nature’s mulch had been cleaned. At each of the four corners the ground had been pierced for a tent peg; the holes were still neat and sharply cut.