Nowhere Wild

by Joe Beernink

  Safety. Rescue.

  The next river was a steeper, upriver run, requiring more portaging around rapids and shallows on marked trails used in the not-so-distant past. Jake swung the canoe up over his head on the portages, while Izzy carried his pack. At the end of the trailhead leading to the final lake, Jake set the canoe down and raised his aching arms over his head in victory.

  “What?” Izzy asked as she halted her scan of the water ahead to look at the boy dancing a little jig.

  “We made it!”

  “Looks like another big lake.”

  “Sure. No more damn portages, though. We’ll follow the shore all the way around to Laroque, and we’re there.”

  “Can’t we just go straight across?”

  “Too far in this canoe. Wind gets bad out there. We’ll hug the shore. Safer that way.”

  “Can we make it tonight?”

  “Tomorrow, early, probably.”

  Izzy cracked a smile—the first smile she had made since he found her. He couldn’t help but smile back. He did another silly dance to celebrate.

  “Let’s go before you embarrass yourself any further,” Izzy said. Jake stopped dancing as she chuckled at his expense.

  “We’ll be home by this time tomorrow,” he promised.

  Izzy’s smile faded. “We’ll see.”

  They slipped into the canoe and paddled through the afternoon. Jake dug into his memories for the exact geography of the lake to avoid getting lost in some back channel. The sun had long disappeared when he finally pulled them up onto a narrow strip of beach, surrounded by thick jack pines and reeds. He made another small fire, ate another fish caught by the now-silent Izzy, and smiled. Nothing could stop them from reaching Laroque the next day, short of a massive storm. The weather seemed to be holding. Izzy did not seem to share his enthusiasm.

  He tossed and turned that night. The anticipation of the end of the journey was too much to contain. He would paddle into Laroque, victorious—a survivor of an incredible trek—an accomplishment no one could ever deny.

  As the night crawled by, his excitement was tempered by one other, unforgettable fact: tomorrow, for better or worse, he would also find out what had happened to his father. That issue forced doubt into his brain and stirred an uneasy stomach.

  CHAPTER 32

  Izzy

  “Let’s go.” Jake pestered Izzy for the third time since his predawn shake of the tent. Izzy knelt by the lake and splashed water onto her face.

  “Give me a minute,” she mumbled. She stretched her back. Two days of lying in the bottom of the impossibly small canoe had crimped her like a staple. Her hamstrings had locked tight sometime during the brief night. She stood, made her way over to a nearby tree, and used that to lean against while she stretched her calves.

  The first streaks of light lit the horizon to the east.

  “What time is it?” Izzy switched legs.

  “I don’t know. Four, maybe. Let’s go,” Jake said.

  “Just wait a second, would ya? I need to stretch.” The night on the ground had been uniformly uncomfortable. Izzy longed for even the comfort of the old pine bough bed back at the cabin. She spat on the ground at the thought.

  “What about breakfast?” Izzy asked as she finished her stretches.

  “We’ll catch something once we get moving. I don’t want to waste any light today. We’ve got a long way to go.”

  “Want me to paddle for a bit? You can fish?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Jake picked up the paddle from the canoe and held it close, as if he was worried Izzy might fight him for it. Fine. She rolled her eyes, then looked around the camp for something—anything—that would work as a paddle—a broken tree limb, or an old board washed up on shore. Her search was fruitless. She let out a sigh, checked to make sure they hadn’t forgotten any of their gear, and hopped into the bow as Jake shoved off.

  Jake paddled them into a mild chop and turned right a minute later. It was still so dark that Izzy could barely see the shore.

  “You sure this is safe? Shouldn’t we wait another fifteen minutes?”

  “We’ll be fine. I can hear the waves on the shore. The sun will be up shortly.”

  A slight breeze blew off the starboard quarter, forcing Jake to make occasional course corrections to prevent being blown out to the center of the lake. As the sun finally brightened the sky to the east, Izzy spotted whitecaps out on the center of the lake. Her stomach roiled at the thought of another day in a seesawing boat. The western shore blocked the wind though, and as long as they stayed in its lee, the waves seemed manageable.

  Izzy dug out the fishing rod, checked the knot on the lure, and began the search for breakfast.

  “Wouldn’t want to be out there today,” Jake said as he noticed the waves.

  “No.”

  “When the wind really kicks up out here, the floatplanes can’t land in Laroque. Hopefully they’ll be there today.” Izzy snapped her head around.

  “Jake, there won’t be planes there. I told you. The flu. It was really bad. Everywhere.”

  “Someone will be there.” Jake scanned the water ahead of them. Izzy knew better. If there was anyone there, they weren’t likely to be friendly. She checked behind them. Still no sign of Rick. Had he given up? Let her go? Her hopes began the long, slow crawl up from the pit of despair she had lived in for so long. If Jake was right . . . and there were people in Laroque . . .

  “What’s that?” Jake’s question broke her train of thought. He pointed forward to a long, dark mass just off the starboard bow. Izzy reeled in her line as Jake maneuvered around the half-submerged branches of a large log floating in their path.

  “Just driftwood,” Izzy said. She reached out, grabbed one of the broken limbs, and rolled the log over.

  “My dad called logs like that ‘keel wreckers.’” Jake said. “They can tear the bottom out of a speeding boat or the floats off a plane just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We”—he tapped the canoe with his fingers—“probably don’t have to worry about that. Might dump us though. Let it go.”

  Izzy held on to the log for a moment. “It’s burned.” She pointed to a long black scar running up the side of the trunk.

  “Campfire, maybe?” Jake disregarded her concern.

  Something struck Izzy as odd about this log. The bottom was broken and splintered. The exposed wood had not yet been worn down by seasons of weather and waves. Izzy studied the log for a moment, then released it as Jake resumed their course southward.

  The farther south they went, though, the more burned timbers they saw piled up on the shore, stacked by the waves like the walls of a fortress. Hundreds of others bobbed in the shallows. Broken pieces of fire-burned wood turned the shore black. A lump formed in Izzy’s throat. Jake’s face, which had, not so long ago, been filled with excitement, blanched. What they saw had but one explanation.

  Jake pushed back in to the shore, slowly navigating the tangle of deadwood. They approached a small peninsula, where the logs in the water were so thick that Izzy could have walked across them like a logger riding a raft of timber down a river. As they passed the escarpment, the sight beyond took Izzy’s breath away.

  The trees were gone. A river, its southern shore darkened by a clog of burned sticks and charcoal, formed a barrier that had somehow held back the flames. To the north, the green that had become so familiar continued unabated. To the south lay a black-and-gray wasteland. Sooty mud separated misshapen, telephone-pole remnants of isolated trees.

  A few humble patches of grass, somehow bypassed by the fire, floated in a sea of destruction. Izzy scanned the horizon for an end to the burn. More charred hulks of wood dotted the landscape to the west and to the south. In the gloom of an overcast sky, it was a moonscape on earth: a muddy, blackened moonscape.

  Jake beached the canoe next to the river, slipped on his boots, and wandered into the burned-out forest. Izzy did not venture away from the shore. Dark mud, mixed with burned leaves
, slivers of wood, and clumps of charcoal, clung to Jake’s boots. After a few steps, the weight of his boots increased to the point where he had to strain to lift them. He turned around.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked her, as if she would know.

  Izzy shook her head. He wasn’t asking what had destroyed the landscape. He was asking how it could have burned so much without someone stopping it. He was asking why people hadn’t been there to stop it.

  “The flu,” she said finally.

  Jake appeared not ready, or not able, to accept her story. He expected to arrive in Laroque, to be welcomed, and then to fly home. Izzy knew better. There had been a time right after her parents had died, when denial had taken over. It had taken days for the reality to sink in. Weeks even. She, however, had seen the flu happen. She’d been through it. She’d seen the dead. Every time they went into a house to salvage something, the dead had been there, a reminder of a dream that wasn’t. When the food ran out, reality became the only thing that mattered. Starvation destroyed everything, including hope.

  Jake had not been through that. He would have to see it with his own eyes to believe it.

  Jake picked his way through the mud to a small patch of grass a few meters from shore. He bent down to pluck the bloom off a ground-hugging wildflower. Izzy stayed on the gravel, stepping carefully over more of the downed timber. There were other signs of life here—deer tracks, bird footprints, and the peculiar drag of turtle carapaces carved into the mud. But the forest was gone.

  Izzy followed the shore, avoiding the worst of the mud.

  “You think it’s still burning?” Izzy asked.

  “Doubt it. Looks like this happened last year. See these plants with the little flowers? They only grow in the spring. They’d have burned off if this had happened this year. Besides, it’s been too wet this year for this to burn. Way too wet.”

  “Oh.” She and Rick had been on the far side of the lake on their trek north. They had seen none of this. All they had seen was snow and ice, in every direction.

  She walked a little farther down the barren beach and stared inland. A small red fox tracked her progress from behind a fallen tree, a short distance away. Grime coated its fur. It stood with its head low, suspicious of any sudden movement and ready to scurry off should Izzy approach.

  Izzy headed back to the canoe, meeting up with Jake just short of the bow. Jake dislodged the mud from his boots by slamming the soles together. The fox jumped at the sound, bolting westward with its tail between its legs. It stopped twice to see if it was being pursued. Izzy lost sight of it as soon as she clambered back into the canoe.

  Only a few kilometers separated them from Laroque. With each stroke of Jake’s paddle, Izzy’s fears of what they would or wouldn’t find there grew. She kept those fears to herself. There was no point in worrying Jake any further.

  CHAPTER 33

  Jake

  Jake’s eyes darted back to the shore after every stroke, searching for an end to the destruction. Around every rocky outcrop, he expected to see the return of the green forest, but upon rounding each corner, they discovered only a greater expanse of charred land.

  Twice they pulled in to shore: once to cook and eat a small whitefish Izzy caught, and once for a bathroom break. Each time, Jake climbed to the top of the tallest object around—a rock or a half-destroyed tree—and scanned the distance. Each time he was rewarded with an unending panorama of blackened mud.

  Twenty kilometers of rough shoreline and bobbing driftwood passed before Jake spotted the first signs of civilization. A concrete slab with a stone hearth and a few mangled pieces of tin roofing poked out of the dirt where a cabin had once been. On one edge of the slab were the burned and rusted remains of a mattress, box spring, and metal frame. A stainless-steel sink and melted copper pipes lay on another part of the slab. Jake didn’t stop to investigate.

  A little farther, beyond a group of charred stumps, the scene repeated. This cabin still had one rock wall standing, and behind it was an old cooking stove, the outside oxidized by fire and weather. Three more lots near that one were equally destroyed. A tricycle lay on its side near the water, the rubber burned off its wheels, its melted plastic seat draped over the seat post in a ghoulish form.

  The shore turned east and formed the familiar man-made breakwall, over which Jake had flown so many times on his way to various hunting camps. A road ran along the shore, protected by a break wall of tar-covered wooden pilings and rocks. Another stack of scorched logs buried the outermost rocks. Jake worked the canoe around the spit. The docks for Laroque hid from the northerlies on the southern shore. Jake ground his teeth as they rounded the tip and the village came into view.

  There were no planes tied up to the dock. There wasn’t even so much as a rowboat there.

  The burn stopped at the road that encircled the downtown—stopped, or had been fought off, he wasn’t sure. Splintered stumps bracketed the small community. The buildings farthest from the village center were scorched, their paint blistered and peeling. Fire had destroyed the roof of one building, but the rest of the town center remained standing. A lone pine tree between two preserved buildings was all that remained of a once-thick forest.

  Jake let their momentum take them alongside the dock. He fended off a direct hit with the blade of his paddle.

  “Tie us off,” he instructed as Izzy jumped up from the bow onto the dock. She grabbed an old rope from a post, looped it around one of the canoe’s struts, then secured it to a rusted cleat. Jake tossed Izzy his pack and hopped up after it.

  He stood slowly and surveyed the area. The silence of the downtown crawled under Jake’s skin. To his right was the gas station that serviced the boats, floatplanes, and vehicles that normally crowded the dock. Thick black shrouds covering the pumps crackled in the morning breeze. A white sign with blocky red lettering hung nearby: GAS’N’FLY. The lower portion of the y threatened to snap off in the next big gale.

  “This can’t be real,” he said.

  A little more than a year ago, this small town had bustled with hunters and fishermen every summer day. Floatplanes pulled up to the docks at fifteen-minute intervals from dawn to dusk on the weekends. The counter at the small diner never stopped serving breakfast. The smell of frying bacon filled the air, creating a lineup that went out the door on busy weekends. Today, the only smell was of wet soot and churned lake water. The only sounds were their footsteps.

  Jake drifted toward the general store. Izzy followed a short distance behind. Outside, the door of a large ice cooler hung open. Dirt, leaves, and a puddle of stagnant water filled the cooler instead of ice. The metal cage for propane tanks stood unlocked and empty. The window of the store’s entrance door had been smashed, the glass left in a billion pieces that crunched underfoot. Jake swung the door open and peered inside.

  The store stank of urine and scat. The few man-made items left had been flung about the floor. Shredded cardboard boxes had become nests for mice and rats and whatever else had called this place home the last few months. Anything edible or organic had already been eaten by the animals. Pressure built in Jake’s chest. He backed out of the store and moved on down the road.

  The rest of the businesses—a hair salon, the diner called the Fisherman’s Grill, and a hardware/bait-and-tackle store—were in similar states of disrepair. Thick black dust covered the tables and the counter in the restaurant. A few of the chairs had been tipped over or pushed aside. The pantry was empty. Not even a sugar packet remained behind the counter where Geri, the ever-present waitress, had worn the linoleum thin with her constant back-and-forth shuffle. Whenever Jake had passed through town, Geri had always given him a fresh-baked oatmeal cookie. Jake looked at the empty counter, salivated at the thought of a cookie, then slid back through the door.

  The hulk of an old bulldozer squatted a hundred meters from the docks. The fire had destroyed a tree just a few meters away, but not even the rubber hydraulic hoses were burned on the yellow machine. Just b
eyond the dozer, scorched remnants of the forest continued as far as Jake could see to the west, north, and south. A few more concrete slabs lifted out of the mud like tipped gravestones. Chimneys, hearths, and rusted stoves formed silhouettes against the gray sky.

  But it wasn’t the bulldozer that drew his attention. To the south, a cluster of wooden crosses stood guard over a depression in the soil. Dread rose through his spine as he approached. He slowly counted them. Thirty-five. The sight of the crosses pulled the visions of the graves he had dug for his mother and grandfather to the forefront of his mind. He checked the names scrawled onto the crosses in black marker. Chuck Red Eagle, the owner of the Fisherman’s Grill, and his wife, Linda. Tom Hudson, and two of his kids. Years before, Jake had played hide-and-seek with those kids, while waiting for his dad at the store. At the end of the line was Geri Denny. Jake closed his eyes. The pressure in his chest flared and burned. He remembered Geri’s always-smiling face, her blond bouffant hairdo, and her raspy smoker’s voice. His stomach twisted and his fingers tingled. Thirty-five graves. None had been here when he had flown out to the cabin. He turned back to look at the town, covering his mouth with his hand.

  This was not how his journey was supposed to end, standing before a row of grave markers. His father was nowhere to be seen. The village of Laroque was abandoned, scraped clean of human life. Fifty people had lived here once. Now there were only thirty-five crosses, with the names of the dead already faded by the weather.

  A cramp tore across his stomach. Jake doubled over in pain as bile flowed from some deep reservoir. He coughed and spat onto the ground.

  This was not how it was supposed to end.

  This was how it had started.

  Jake sank to his knees, and for the first time since Amos had died, the tears fell.

  “Jake—” Izzy began talking, but Jake heard none of it.

  Until that moment, his trek had a beginning and an end. As tough as the intervening days and weeks had been, he had thought it would be over once he reached this village. Everything—months of planning, months of watching Amos fade away—had had a purpose. Weeks of freezing days and colder nights had been warmed by his determination that he would make it this far. He had never considered the possibility that this wouldn’t be far enough.