“Voy a protegerlos,” —I will protect both of you, Karen said as assuredly as she could.
Tía said it was time to eat before the pork got cold and they all dug in making, well, pigs of themselves, regardless of its really greasy, gamey taste. The storm’s force blew in during the late afternoon.
»»•««
They kept mere embers burning in the hubcap, which cast a surprisingly bright glow inside their confines; their every movement creating monster shadows on the walls. They had the flashlight, but the only time they used it was when venturing out as the call of nature demanded. They’d return soaked and there was nothing to dry off with.
To help Tía when she needed to go was an ordeal for Karen. She wrapped a split-open plastic bag around her knee held in-place with duct tape and had to scoot out of the shelter on her butt over the saturated ground. She had to keep her leg straight. Once at a satisfactory distance they did their business and ended up with gobs of wet TP. Soaked to the bone, they returned and sat side-by-side wrapped in the hammock, hoping their body heat would dry them. It didn’t.
Karen thought about Tía, concerned for her. She really did feel like an aunt and Karen liked that. Mom was an only child. Dad had a younger brother in Oregon. Karen could barely remember him it had been so long since he’d visited. Cheyenne’s and Socorro’s aunts were as important as their parents, always involved with them. She envied them.
Before long, drips fell from the roof. Occasionally a trickle developed and they’d shift the roofing around to redirect it. It only grew worse. It was better than huddled in the blowing rain under a tree, but not by much.
The air was warm, but their perpetual wetness and the winds chilled them and there was nothing to cover-up with. Karen was afraid Tía’s fever would worsen and her fears were confirmed.
Later in the night they munched on more pork. Karen was hit by a surge of nausea. Pulling herself out of the shelter, she puked in shuttering convulsions as rain pounded her. She felt fine after that, but Tía had Lomara mix three teaspoons of ground charcoal with water and made her drink it. After a time Karen felt hunger pangs, but had no temptation to tear into cold, tough greasy pork.
The ground beneath them turned spongy. The leaves on which they sat were soaked. To pass the time Tía told more stories as they spent a very wet and uncomfortable night fighting trickles and drips.
Tía told them that fachotes were persons trying to pass themselves off as being in a higher class. A joke was that people from Granada, the old Spanish colonial capital, known to be fachotes, ate their beans and rice on china plates with knives and forks, so the neighbors hearing the cutlery noise thought they were actually eating meat.
Jay and Karen ground up charcoal and replaced that in the filter. Tía talked them through cleaning the boar’s stomach. They turned it inside out and she told them they could boil water in it by hanging it from a tripod over coals and dropping in hot rocks. It was a backup for the plastic bottles since they’d lost three to meltdown.
The wind blew unabated in shelter-shaking blasts. Trees crashed to the ground with crackling snaps and pops. Limbs and entire tops snapped off—scary indeed. At other times the rain slacked off, never quite stopping, and the wind blew in long steady blasts with the rushing sounds of trees swaying in unison. The rain increased as new storm bands augered through, sometimes beating so hard it felt like their flimsy shelter would be pounded into the ground. At one point she and Jay, with Lomara’s help, had to grip the roof poles for fear of them blowing off. Leaks wept and rivulets of water coursed beneath the leafy flooring.
The crew slept in fits, their minds exhausted. With no sense of time, the night seemed endless.
In the earliest hours of the morning, wide awake, Karen listened to the wind and rain blast through the trees. She sat in the shelter’s end, her right leg stretched out into the rain. Even though she’d covered her bandage with plastic it made no difference. It was soaked. The chilled rain felt good on her throbbing leg. She felt and heard movement behind her.
Jay settled in beside her. In the darkness she sensed he was looking at her. She turned and peered into the dark obscurity veiling his face. They listened to the rain pound on the river’s surface and through the trees. It was totally black. There was no defining the ground from the trees from the sky. People needed people, the human touch.
She put her arm around him. She felt his breath on her face. They kissed and the warmth trembled through her. The rain was too loud to hear the other’s breathing.
Chapter Thirty-Two
A sound struck Karen into consciousness like a slap. What was it? It was silence. Karen lay on her left side, her arms huddled, injured right leg stretched out, and the left cocked up. Chilled and wet, listening. The others slept; their breathing almost in unison. Jay lay with his left side spooned into her back. His arm was draped over her shoulder and she unconsciously had gripped his hand.
There was a steady but light breeze hissing through the treetops. No rain. Everything was gray-green. A freshness and sharpness cut through the damp air. She shivered, lifted Jay’s arm off and sat up. He groaned lightly and rolled away. She edged herself outside. She could make out trees, ground, the river. And the sky, the sky was clear and to the west hung orange, yellow, red, and pink tattered clouds, the tails of the storm.
As quietly as possible she changed her bandage. It wasn’t pretty. The raw edges were red, white rimmed with pus. It was sore to the touch, throbbed when she moved even a little. She applied more antiseptic and took an antibiotic tablet and a painkiller. She’d ask Jay to change her wet head dressing later. She looked at his slumbering form, at all of them. What’s in store for us today?
The waterlogged chickens sat quietly in a bush curiously gazing at her. “You cluckers are lucky today,” she whispered. There was no dry firewood and they’d burned the last bit of kindling in the hubcap. She looked as the pork wrapped in caladium leaves and nausea surged through her. No breakfast for her today.
A hawk swooped down crashing through the shrub’s limbs, snatched up a momentarily startled hen, and flapped over the trees trailing a gauze leash. The other sat up on its limb, swiveling its blinking head around somewhat perplexed.
It was the eighth day on the río.
»»•««
The crew roused one at a time, berry-eyed and dazed looking. It was going to be a long day. No one spoke of the endless wet night, a memory they’d like to dispose of forever. They wanted to know how Karen was doing. She wanted to know how Tía was doing. It wasn’t good. Tía’s fever was high, she was chilled and her arm infection worse, swollen and hot to the touch.
Tía shrugged it off, but Karen could tell she was in more pain. Regardless, Tía told Jay, through Karen, how to fashion a crutch. He cut a stout sapling with a limb growing at ninety degrees near the top and cut it off leaving a foot. Standing with the Jay’s aid, she placed her arm over the foot long support and he marked the proper length. He whacked off the unneeded foot end. It wasn’t comfortable, but it worked.
“Thanks,” she muttered. He looked self-conscious. “Thanks for sewing me up and for…being there last night.”
With half-closed eyes, Tía asked, “¿Dónde está el otro pollo?”—Where is the other chicken?
They had to get on the river and be on their way. Righting the boat, they shoved it into the water, with Karen trying to help. The river had risen three feet. Everything was loaded. Jay recovered the oars, spear, lever pole, and all the rope from the shelter. They bundled Tía up in the damp hammocks. The sun would dry them.
Before departing, Karen had Jay throw the javelina remains into the water and feebly stabbed at scavenging fish with the spear. Almost, but no luck.
Shoving off, Karen found herself unable to row. It placed too much pressure on her leg; it burned.
“Jay, you’re going to have to do this today.”
He looked at her softly, smiled. “No problem.”
Jay took over and she sat in the s
tern to steer. The rising sun gradually warmed them.
Breakfast was a tablespoon of peanuts and a half-dozen potato chips each. Being soggy, she didn’t keep any for fire-starting. They couldn’t even heat tea.
The river ran faster and the water had a more greenish tint. It was wider too. Karen wrapped the bloody T-shirt around her crutch’s shoulder support and bound it with duct tape.
»»•««
After several hairpin turns they came to a gradual bend. On the right bank, inside the river’s curve, were a half-dozen big log rafts, some piled atop others. Tía said loggers tied logs together and floated them down the river to be sold. These had evidently been anchored and left there before the hurricane.
It grew hotter, the humidity increased and everyone was hungry. Karen’s leg burned and ached. Tía was in no better condition. The flies were worse. Karen was constantly waving them away from her bandages.
Karen hoped the sun and breeze would dry out some wood near the shore.
They came to a sharp bend where the river divided into three forks.
“Which do we follow?” asked Jay.
She shrugged peering at the three choices. The current made the choice for them and carried them past the first two branches.
Near noon, they came upon two stream mouths, the larger on the left bank and a smaller one on the right. They nosed onto a little sand peninsula formed at the mouth of the larger stream. There was a lot of driftwood piled along the sandy beach.
They didn’t waste any time. While Jay and Lomara collected wood and kindling, Karen killed and cleaned the last chicken without getting out of the boat. Jay set up the spit while Lomara ignited the fire with the magnifying glass. They soon had the chicken roasting and water boiling in bottles. “Way to go crew,” Karen said. “Buen equipo,” she tried to translate.
All that was left were the five cans of food. It would get them through two days, barely.
After helping Tía relieve herself, Karen checked her arm. It was bad. Karen was scared, more so than Tía. Maybe Tía was too out of it to show what she really felt. Her fever was higher.
Karen’s fear shook her to the bone. Was the infection too deep, too set in? Maybe the woman was already a walking dead and Karen couldn’t do anything about it.
All she wanted was get in the boat and be on their way. How much farther did they have to go? Would they ever get there? She’d make Jay row. She’d row herself, even if it meant tearing out her sutures. She couldn’t let anything happen to her crew. Karen felt like she was being torn in two, that she was helpless and indecisive, she had no control.
“Vamos,” she said abruptly. “Al bote.”
Tía gave her a funny look. Karen felt she was coming apart at the seams. “Vamos. ¡Rápido!”
In the boat they ate the chicken. Tía didn’t have any appetite, but Karen urged her to eat all she could. It would give her strength to fight the infection. She had to force herself to eat too, and managed to keep it down.
“Jay, Tía getting worse, a lot worse. I gotta ask you to row as much as you can stand, short breaks, okay?”
“For you I’ll do the best I can.”
“Not for me, for her, and the crew.”
Lomara looked stressed out and gloomy.
Late morning. Karen settled into the rower’s seat to spell Jay with Tía weakly begging her not to. She experimented and found a “comfortable” position for her leg, comfortable being a relative thing. Karen rowed slowly, only pulling as hard as necessary to barely increase their speed.
Hours passed, the river grew as wide as four-hundred feet. The bends in the river almost made complete circles as they wound down it. She stayed well away from the shores where snags lay hidden beneath the high water.
It was hotter. Her leg itched beneath the bandage and the irritation increased. She had Jay peel off the bandage, fearing the infection had worsened. She wished that was all it had been. The reddened pus-seeping gash was crawling with maggots.
“¡Quítamelos!”—Take them off! she gasped, her head swimming.
“¡No!” said Tía. “Déjalos.”—Leave them.
“¿Mande?” was all she could say in disbelief.
Tia told her they would eat the infection, a good thing.
“¿Algo bueno?” Karen questioned.
“It may be disgusting to you,” said Tía, “but it is the best way to rid the infection.” She laughed through the pain in her eyes. “I wish I had maggots, but it is not to be.”
True, her infection was internal. Other than antibiotics, there was no way to fight it.
“Grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jay said with revulsion.
Karen put the bandage back on herself. Jay couldn’t bring himself to do it. She’d gut it out. She had read maggots were a common treatment for infections in olden times before antibiotics. She didn’t have to like it, but after all she’s been through, it seemed a little thing.
They drifted, bend after bend. Karen sensed that since the devil dogs, they were traveling more southward, according to the sun.
It was late afternoon and they rounded a very sharp bend. Peering down the river’s reach, maybe half a mile, she could make out an object beside the left bank. The sun’s glare off the water made it impossible to make out.
Except for Tía, everyone stared ahead in alert anticipation.
The left bank-side trees suddenly became sparse and there were empty houses and shacks side-by-side, mostly green-painted or unpainted. Some sat on the ground barely above the water’s edge and others on quite high stilts. Most had lost their tin roofs. One had collapsed among its stilts. There was no one to be seen.
The mysterious object proved to be a big steel barge, maybe a hundred feet long. Its flat green-painted sides rose over six feet above the water. Fifteen-foot steel ramps hung off both ends. It was moored to the bank and a steel cable passed overhead to the right bank where a concrete bulkhead was situated. It was a truck ferry. They were near real civilization!
They pulled up beside the barge where a footpath crawled up the bank. Other than the sound of water lapping against the barge, it was eerily silent.
Karen picked up her crutch and machete and put on her pack with the four remaining throwing sticks. It could carry any discovered treasures. “Jay, bring your spear. We’re going for a look.”
“Are you sure that’s smart? We haven’t had much fun in villages.” His eyes were flashing about.
Tia caught on. “¡No vayas! Te lo prohíbo,”—Do not go! I forbid it, she weakly warned.
“There may be help here or food, Tía. We must look. You are becoming worse.”
Tía feebly begged them not to go.
“Ahorita vengo,”—I’ll be back, was all Karen said.
“Jay, if anything happens, you run to the boat and get away…don’t wait for me.”
“That’s crazy. You can barely move, Karen. I’ll go. You stay here.”
“I’m not letting you go by yourself.”
“We don’t have to go at all. We can move on. We must be getting close.” He grabbed her arm.
Karen pulled back and hobbled up the bank. Exasperated, Jay followed “This is a mistake.”
Atop the bank, they looked around. No movement, no smoke, no vehicles. There wasn’t much to see. After the barge landing, the muddy road made a hard left turn and ran north along the riverbank. There were houses on both sides of the road, maybe two-dozen. Across the road was a small store, a mom and pop deal, all boarded up. Scattered cardboard boxes and cartons, plastic bags, were tire-ground into the road’s mud.
They stepped onto the road at the turn, a wide area so trucks could turn easily. Jay moved off to the left, alert.
Karen was considering breaking into and checking out the little store in spite of evidence it had been seriously looted.
A man stepped around the building’s corner, not forty feet in front of her. He walked toward Karen. He wore cut-off jeans, muddy sandals, was shirtless, thin and haggard looking.
His glare was unreasonable. She knew immediately this animal was more dangerous than snakes, dogs, javelina, or the Others. He held a wicked brush-hook axe.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“¿Qué hay en tu mochila?” The axe-man said.
“¿Mande?”
“¿Qué hay en tu mochila?”—What is in your backpack?
“Nada,” said Karen weakly.
“La quiero.” —I want it.
Karen dropped the pack and stepped back trying to stay balanced on her crutch. Her legs felt like rubber bands. Maybe one of these days I’ll learn to avoid these stupid ghost towns.
“¿Tienes algo de comer?” Axe-man said.
“¿Mande?”
“¿Tienes algo de comida?” —Do you have any food?
“No. No hay comida.” She wanted to run and knew she couldn’t. “Jay, walk to the boat. Don’t run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Shut up and move it. Believe me, I’m not hanging around.”
She tried to back away from her pack, but it was difficult to move backward on a crutch. She looked to her left and Jay was circling behind the man, who appeared oblivious of him.
“Jay, dang it, I’m not kidding. You’re going the wrong way.”
Jay motioned for her to walk away.
“Don’t be a hero.” She turned and hobbled toward the landing.
The man said something harsh, but she couldn’t understand it. She didn’t look back, but stayed focused on the top of Tía’s head, visible over the bank. She almost reached it.
“Karen!”
The man came at her, eyes wild, the wickedly hooked axe raised over his head.
Run! The word flashed though her mind. Her leg failed and caught on the crutch. Down she crashed. Pain shot through her like a blowtorch. In spite of the yellow-white sparks before her eyes, she rolled over. Jay was going at the man with his spear and moving to place himself between her and the nutcase.
“Run!” Jay yelled.
Tears of the River Page 19