by Kelli Walker
And that seemed to please her.
“No sign of wildlife?” I asked.
Her eyes fell upon me again and my heart rate ticked up a notch.
Instead of answering me, she dropped her bag and the light directly where she was standing. Guess she was satisfied enough with the place. I made my way into the cave, crawling up the four feet of rock to get to its chiseled structure within the cliff that hung over the water. I hung my legs off the side while Val made her way back down into the water, immersing herself in its fluid form.
She spooned fistful after fistful up to her lips, drinking as if she was tasting it for the first time.
I figured if she hadn’t keeled over by now, the water was fine. So, I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up the edges of my pants. I slid from the edifice and jumped straight into the water, feeling its cool form rumble against my heated calves. The water felt so good against my raging muscles that I planted myself onto all fours and stuck my face in. I chugged the water as it rushed over my head, wetting my hair and my neck and anything else that had been dripping with sweat.
And when I came up for air, I found Val staring at me.
“So where are you from?” I asked.
“New York City,” she said.
“Did you grow up in the city?”
“No.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Not important.”
“Okay then. Well, I grew up in the city. It birthed me, it raised me, and then it gave me success. I owe everything to that city.”
“Not your parents?” she asked.
I fell silent as her eyes scanned my body.
“Mine neither. Don’t worry,” she said.
Those four words spoke volumes about the sadness she carried around. She bent over one last time and put her lips directly to the water as I contemplated her words. What kind of relationship did she have with her parents? Did she know them? Did they abandon her like my parents did myself?
I took a step towards her as she held her hair out of her face and I caught a glimpse of my answer.
She stuck her face into the water to clean herself off and her shirt rode up her back. Exposing the skin of her lower back to me. It was the smallest glimpse, illuminated only by the moon that hung heavily in the sky. But what I was looking at was unmistakable.
It was a thick patch of scar tissue.
It wasn’t until she rose up that I broke my trance, but the image was forever seared onto my mind. The thick ropes that blanketed her skin, and that was nothing but a three-inch piece of her lower back. I cupped some water and splashed it into my face as I tried to wash myself off. I sloshed it up my arms and even splashed it onto my chest, cooling my body down the rest of the way.
“How long do you think we’ve been out here already?” I asked.
Silence was the only thing I heard other than the rifling Val was doing in her bag.
“I feel like it’s been four hours or so. Have you heard anything on the radio?”
And still, nothing.
I turned around to see what she was doing, and I was met with a flickering flame. A fire so small I had to squint to make sure I was seeing things correctly, but the flame grew in front of my eyes. Val was removing the twigs from her backpack and building a small teepee for the growing heat to devour. But at the rate it was burning things down, she wouldn’t have enough to last fifteen minutes. I quickly stepped out of the stream and walked back into the woods, gathering larger logs I hauled back to the fire. I never stepped out of sight of that flame, but I walked all the way around it to gather as much would as I could.
Each time I set wood down at her side, I got to take her in from a slightly different angle. Being a businessman, people didn’t have to talk to me in order to figure them out. And the same went for Val. She was quiet and guarded, and after getting a peek at her back along with those four little words she practically spat at me, it was a wonder I could get her to talk at all. And with that quiet guardedness came loneliness. Which meant she probably didn’t have friends. No lovers, that was for sure. I’d bet my life on the fact that she lived alone, probably with minimal furniture given the type of lifestyle she preferred.
Her stoic eyes and her downturned lips she sank into when she thought no one was paying attention told me that her anger and sadness consumed her. At least, she had allowed it to. And judging by how comfortable she was in the wilderness coupled with her unwillingness to make small talk, she was an introvert. She preferred not having friends, and her survivalist expertise gave her the excuse she needed to stay away from people all together. Val had to be an expert in the field, however, in order for Grier to hire her to come find us. And for someone who was an expert in a field like ‘survivalism’, it meant she taught classes in order to provide for herself.
Something she would obviously resent because of her introverted demeanor.
Of course, all of those were deductions based on the few interactions I’d had with her. But I had a good feeling I was ninety percent of the way there. Her fresh anger stemmed from not wanting to be around people but having to interact with them to make money, but the longing darkness behind her eyes came from something different.
Something that probably had to do with those scars on her back.
“How’d you start that fire?” I asked.
I sat down in the cave as fresh sweat trickled down the back of my neck. Val looked over at me and I watched her movements. Slow. Predatory. Like an animal whose territory had been challenged. Another tick in the introverted box. But once her eyes gave me a one-over, that predatory stare melted into a pain that made me very uncomfortable.
A pain that made me remember my own.
I didn’t like pain. Especially her kind of pain. And my kind of pain. The kind of pain we carried around came from our pasts, and I didn’t like the past. I didn’t like history. I lived for progression. For moving forward. For advancement. That was how innovation worked. That was how my industry worked. And that was how coping worked. Putting more time in between the event that triggered the pain and the present time helped to ease the bleeding. Ease the tears. Ease the anger.
But not in Val. Not in the way she stared at me.
I didn’t like the past, and I didn’t like people trapped by their past. People like that were weak. Unable to cope. Unable to adapt to their surroundings. They were forever cemented in a time they couldn’t change. And if the thick scarring on Val’s back had anything to do with her past and her sadness, then she was trapped by something that wasn’t good.
Yet her pain seemed recent. It bled from her eyes before her gaze turned to the fire. And for a woman whose life skill was adapting to her surroundings, it was odd that she couldn’t adapt to the pain she was experiencing. Or had experienced at one point.
Had I been wrong in my assumption of her? Did her pain come from something else? Somewhere else?
I watched her as she gripped her backpack. She unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a piece of what looked to be steel wool and a cell phone battery. I watched with great curiosity as she peeled a bit of the steel wool away, then manipulated it so the two ends touched against the positive and negative charges of the battery.
Then, it sparked.
It was all the explanation she gave me, and it was all I needed. I watched her pack both of those things into a plastic bag, then she zipped it up and placed it back into the front pocket of her backpack. Val was a contradiction to everything I knew about life. She was the exception to every rule I had laid out about people I encountered. I thought people trapped in their pasts weren’t strong, yet here she was, being the strongest person I’d ever come across. I thought people who were introverted enjoyed being loners, but something in the look she gave me earlier made me reconsider that notion. I thought people who were experts in their fields wanted to spread their knowledge to others, but she shut me up every time I asked the simplest of questions to try and get to know her and what she did. All she want
ed was a quiet loneliness. A peace she didn’t seem to understand yet.
At least, I thought that was what she wanted.
Val was the first person I had ever come across whom I couldn’t read. And it both frustrated and intrigued me.
Valencia
Silas chucked another log onto the fire as the two of us sat there in the shallow cave. The sound of the bubbling water from beneath the surface of the island was soothing, and I silently praised the fact that Silas chose the silent route. I wasn’t good at conversation. At entertaining people at my leisure. We were well-hydrated and cleaned ourselves up a bit, but it was too dark to go hunting.
Well, not for myself. But it was too dark to leave some idiot behind while I went hunting.
I reached for my backpack and unzipped it. I pulled out two protein bars, then knocked one against Silas’ leg. He looked over at me and I held it up to him, urging him to take it.
“You haven’t eaten. This will help. Drink some water with it so it blows up in your stomach,” I said.
“Thanks.”
Our fingers brushed together and static electricity snapped between us. I pulled my hand away quickly, shaking it out before I wiped it off on my pants. The hair on my arm was beginning to stand on end, but I brushed it off as the static that had flowed between us. Anything else was unacceptable and something I refused to entertain unless it was necessary.
The sounds of crackling paper were heard as we ripped open our bars, and I noticed Silas scoot a little closer to me. That was the thing about the jungle. As nightfall came, the temperature plummeted. And while many people thought it was good to have all sorts of muscle out in the wilderness, it was actually the worst thing someone could have. Muscle took fuel, and all of that upkeep with turning over muscle sinew and keeping up energy levels emitted heat. Which burned more calories. Which took more food.
Muscle was also insulating. It could keep the core body temperature stable, but at the expense of the outer layers of skin and tissue taking the brunt of the wave or cold snap. The slightest toggling of temperature for someone stacked with muscle like Silas was sent them into a frenzied state. Profuse sweating if hot, which took more water. Or, constant shivering, which consumed more calories and took more food to replenish.
It also meant it took bigger sources of heat to get them to stop shivering.
I ignored the motion of his body and focused on the jungle around me. The sounds of crickets and fish jumping off in the distance brought a smile to my face. I chewed on the protein bar and closed my eyes, taking in the peacefulness of true silence. The city would never know unadulterated silence. No cars and no cell phones ringing and no horns honking. Just the lapping of the waves in the distance, the sound of Montserrat’s version of a cricket, and the occasional slither of a snake.
At any other given moment, this would’ve been a vacation for me. A somber moment to collect my thoughts and refuel my body before getting back into the noisy, demanding, real-world calamity that was New York City. I opened my eyes and stared at the fire, watching as the flames licked upward. Fire was mesmerizing. I had been obsessed with it as a child. Especially when I learned how to make it on my own.
My mind drew me back to a memory that benefitted me none to remember.
“Dad?”
“Huh?”
“I’m cold. Can we share a blanket?”
“Get off me, girl.”
I went tumbling to the floor as tears rose to my eyes. I looked up at my father as his eyes lobbed closed, and a few minutes later he was snoring and drooling on himself. The temperature in the house began to plummet, so I got up to go toggle with the system. But when I walked down the hallway and looked up at it, I saw it wasn’t working.
I reached over and flicked on the light switch, but nothing happened. And more tears rose to my eyes. Not again.
Daddy forgot to pay the electricity bill.
My hands trembled as I walked over to the fireplace. I knelt down in front of it while my father snored on the couch. I tossed some sticks I found in the corner and picked up a few of my favorite books to toss in there as well. If I left the house and Daddy found out, I would get spanked. So, if I wanted to get warm, I had to use what was around me.
After tossing the rest of my books into the fireplace, I went in search of matches. I opened all the drawers, being careful not to wake up Daddy. He spanked me whenever I woke up him. My jaw trembled with the chill setting in my skin and I was just about to give up. Until I opened the last drawer and saw a small box of matches sitting there.
I opened it up and found onto three left. Three chances to get warm that night. I sighed and walked over to the fire, then knelt back down and pulled out the first match.
I was really going to miss my books.
“Did you hear that?”
Silas’ voice ripped me from my trance. And it was a good thing, too. A nine-year old girl should never have to burn her favorite books to keep warm just because her coked-out father snorted away all their money.
I listened intently before my eyes widened. Tumbling off in the distance, the dull roar of an approaching storm yanked me off my feet. I scurried out of the mouth of the cave and jumped into the water. I closed my eyes and sniffed the air, then felt a shiver rush down my spine.
A storm was coming.
The sound of thunder rumbled yet again and I whipped back around to see Silas. His legs dangled from the mouth of the cave as he looked at me with a blatant curiosity. I probably looked like a wild animal to him, but I didn’t care
Montserrat was about to test our resolve.
I looked off in the distance and watched the thick, dark clouds covering up the stars. The moon hung low in the sky, and judging by the distance we had maybe an hour to prepare ourselves. A thick darkness would soon settle over the jungle, making it impossible to see our hands in front of our damn faces.
And the clouds were coming straight from Antigua.
I clamored back up into the cave and took stock of our wood. My stomach did somersaults as the thunder rumbled stronger on the horizon. We didn’t have nearly enough wood to keep the fire going through a volcanic storm nor did I have enough food in my backpack to keep us fueled through something like that. The storm would delay the helicopter ride, especially since it was hanging over that island. And with a storm came downed communications.
Meaning the radio and GPS tracker wouldn’t work even if they were already in the air.
“You get wood to get us through the night, and I’ll get us food,” I said.
“Excuse me, what?” Silas asked.
“That storm is hanging over Antigua and Barbuda. That helicopter isn’t going anywhere and they have no way to contact us. We’re on our own for the night. We’ve got maybe an hour before that storm hits.”
I dug through my backpack and grabbed my flashlight. I clicked it on and found my machete, then grasped it within the palm of my hand. The only two things I’d need to find us food, but I had to be quick about it. If the rain flooded my flashlight, I’d be shit out of luck in terms of getting back to the cave.
I jumped out of the opening and back into the water before I stepped up onto the shore.
“You’re not going alone. I’m coming with you.”
“Do as I say, Silas!”
“You’re going to get yourself killed, Val.”
“See, there’s where you have it wrong. You think you understand this jungle, but you don’t. You think you understand how this works, but you don’t. You don’t conquer the wilderness. You become one with it. Because the second you think you’ve got it figured it, it deals you a hand that almost kills you. Trust me, I know. I’ve almost met death several times. I don’t know what this misplaced machismo is you’ve got going on, but it’s going to get us both killed. So do as I say and stop questioning me. I don’t need a savior. I need a partner.”
My eyes fell onto him as I whipped around and I watched him visibly pant. Whatever I had said, it angered him. In the mo
onlight that hung above us, his nostrils flared. His fists clenched at his sides. His sweating muscles throbbed and glistened for my viewing pleasure.
Shit. I was going to have to get a lot of food for that man.
“You, wood. Me, food. As much as you can haul, and as much as I can find. Now go. We don’t have much time.”
“Will we be here all night?”
“Yes, Silas. We will be here all night. This storm will make us ride it out. Now if you don’t stop talking and start hauling wood, we’ll be dead before sunrise.”
Then I aimed my flashlight into the woods and began my hunt for food.
Silas
I heaved dry logs over my head and threw them into the mouth of the cave. Sweat poured down my back and drenched the undershirt I had on. And at the same time, I was shivering. The temperature was quickly plummeting and Val was nowhere in sight. Even though I kept myself distracted with the logs of wood I scouted out, I still found myself worrying. In the clothes I was in, I felt as if I was freezing. And Val wasn’t wearing much more than I was. Plus, the water we decided to camp out beside was going to make us colder once the wind of the storm began to pick it.
And it was really picking up.
I gathered my arms full of twigs and walked through the water to dump them into the cave. The storm overhead was rolling in, and the thunder began shaking the ground underneath my feet. A couple of times I looked over at the volcano, convinced it was about to erupt.
Then, the flashes of lightning began.
The smell of rain approached and Val still wasn’t back, and suddenly my worry for her safety consumed me. I ran out and grabbed the last two longs I could see in the moonlight, then ran them back to the cave before I turned my sights elsewhere.
“Val! Where are you!?”
I looked overhead and watched the stars shroud themselves one by one. I ran back to the fire and fed its flame, watching it grow and illuminate the small space that surrounded me. I couldn’t let that fire go out. It was our only source of heat to get through the night. I reached down and grabbed a fistful of twigs I was standing on and tossed them into the flame, my eyes dancing with the fire licking up towards the cave’s ceiling.