Robert Crews: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  “There used to be a guy who made a name for himself by finding edible things in the great outdoors. Do you remember him, and if so, anything he said? I guess it’s too early in the year for nuts and even fruits: anyway, I haven’t found any.”

  “Yeah,” Friday said, “I think I do, but I was a kid then…. But wait a minute: you can make tea from pine needles.”

  “That’s not what killed Socrates, was it?”

  “Hardly. At least it didn’t hurt my brother and me, though we didn’t like it much. But what did we know? We didn’t like mussels either, nor even asparagus, and all kinds of other stuff.”

  “Your family will be looking for you now.”

  “It hasn’t been that long yet. They all live in different parts of the country, and I sometimes don’t get in touch for months.”

  He and she were lying side by side in the dark, in the new and improved lean-to. This had become their time for the conversation they could not always find room for during their daylight labors. “Dick Spurgeon’s family and those of the other two fellows must be suffering,” Crews said, “not knowing what happened. But maybe it’s better that they continue to hope than know the truth. I’m not eager to get back with the bad news. I’ve got nobody of my own. That’s not self-pity but simply a fact. I guess my next of kin are some cousins, but they cut me off years ago, for the best reasons.”

  “Michael’s got nobody, either,” Friday said. “He was raised in foster homes. He wouldn’t talk about his parents. Maybe he never knew them. He made something of himself, you can’t take that away from him. He got athletic scholarships for college, then he worked at a series of crappy coaching jobs before he could get the health club off the ground.”

  Crews writhed whenever he had to hear about her husband but was certain that any negative response of his own, however sympathetic to her, would be misguided. “Why don’t we try the pine-needle tea tomorrow? I haven’t had a hot drink since I got here.”

  Friday was quiet for a while. Then she asked, “Do you dream?”

  “Once in a while I do, and it’s almost always about food. But the details are sometimes odd. What I’m eating in the dream, with great relish, might be something I never cared for: chicken livers, for example, or shredded raw carrots.”

  “I don’t dream at all,” said Friday. “Not once. Never. I always used to dream a lot. I even had nightmares on occasion. What’s funny is that it seemed to happen when I was happiest, or thought I was.”

  He was sorry to hear this. He had begun to entertain the simpleminded hope that she was as happy now as he, and that her reluctance to leave their home behind was not based on physical infirmity. “It’s the law of compensation,” he told her. “If you’ve had a living nightmare, you don’t need the make-believe for a while.” What he did not mention was the possibility that she had had unconscious premonitions of disaster. She could live in a dreamless present now because she was looked after by someone who would lay down his life for her.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to finally finish the spoon.” She had been whittling at the utensil whenever he could spare the knife. “Should I start a second one or next try a fork? With one complete set, we could share them.”

  “The fork,” Crews said. “Remember, my offer stays good. Anytime you feel like starting for the river, I can carry you piggyback.”

  “It won’t be much longer.” She had been saying that for a good week. The discoloration was fading from her foot, but to his observation she was as disabled as ever.

  “I hope I did right in immobilizing your knee that way.” He had finally removed the splints. “You don’t think that made it worse?”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t be as far along as I am.”

  “Maybe you should try bending it a little. Hot compresses might help. It can’t be right to let it stiffen up from disuse.”

  “It’s getting better, really.”

  “I’m not in a hurry to get going,” Crews assured her. “You must never think that.”

  “I don’t,” Friday said.

  They exchanged good nights, but he stayed awake for a while. It was one of those nights that were so quiet he could hear each of her breaths.

  Next morning he rose first, as usual, and went into the woods to relieve himself. With so much space available, this still seemed preferable to fashioning a fixed latrine. He took his morning bath in the stream, the chilly waters of which he had never gotten used to. He was less modest than he had been earlier on, but that was mostly due to Friday’s discretion in staying inside until he was done—to do which she had to look out eventually, and when he was late in drying himself and dressing, she probably saw him naked, as he so frequently had seen her. He never got really dry, because he had no proper towel, but he scraped off with the edge of his hand such visible drops as he could reach and walked about in the air, which was now usually warm and not humid.

  He filled one of their birch-bark vessels with water and started a fire. By the time the water had come to a boil, Friday had limped about on her morning rituals, the forked crutch in her armpit, after which she gathered pine needles.

  The tea on first sip was weaker than Crews had anticipated, so he let it steep longer, after which it was rather stronger than he wished, though the steaming liquid, only faintly colored, looked like so much hot water.

  “Sort of like witch hazel.”

  Friday was not so quick to abuse the decoction. “I think it takes getting used to.”

  His third sip was more potable and less astringent, so perhaps she was right, and the warmth of the drink was ingratiating. He toasted her with his birch-bark cup. But she was preoccupied. “Are you still worried about not dreaming?”

  “I didn’t sleep that well,” she said, holding her own cup in two hands. “I know I haven’t fooled you: my leg has been okay for some time. It’s another of those things I haven’t been able to admit to myself.”

  “But you’re doing it now.”

  “In words only. If I keep the crutch in place, I can actually put all my weight on the leg, and I can bend my knee all right, though it’s a little stiff from lack of use. But I have to keep hold of the crutch, though not for support. I just have to know it’s there.”

  “You’ve tried to walk without it?”

  “I fell down.”

  He got to his feet and reached for her. She pulled herself up with the help of his hand. The crutch lay on the ground. “Leave it there. Start walking on both legs. You can always grab me.”

  Fingertips against his upper arm, she gingerly imposed weight on her right foot, which was still bare, though the inflammation had faded to a shadow. Crews had slipped his arm back to a position from which he could swoop it around her waist in an instant should she fall, an event that would not have made him despair, even though the exercise was his idea. But then he was at odds with himself in all that concerned Friday, whom he wanted to rescue but also to keep a kind of prisoner.

  She walked carefully, no longer touching him, both hands out for balance. “I’m doing it,” she said softly. She still had a slight limp, but that was due to the running shoe and sock on her left foot. Turning to smile at Crews, she faltered but did not fall. Nevertheless, he seized her in the crook of his elbow, with such force that she was lifted off the ground. He lowered her as quickly.

  “Sorry,” she said. “My knee’s a little stiff.” They resumed walking.

  “I just thought of this,” Crews said. “If that outfitter at Fort Judson rents out canoes, then other people than you and—” He refused to name her husband. “Other camping parties must sometimes come down the river.”

  “There was supposed to be a party that left the day before us,” said Friday.

  “It’s likely we’ll see some other people before we’re on the river long. This should be the heart of the camping season.”

  Friday halted abruptly and stared at him. “Do you think he’s still looking for me?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I stopped worrying about
it after the first few days.”

  Tears welled from her eyes, and her shoulders were heaving. Crews put both arms around her. Against his chest she said, “Maybe it was an accident. He wasn’t deliberately trying to shoot me. He just turned with the gun in his hand and it went off. I panicked and ran, and he chased me not to do me harm but to catch me before I got lost in the woods. After all, he didn’t shoot me again. He could have, but he didn’t. He would have if he wanted me dead.”

  “I thought I heard two shots,” Crews said. “I suppose the second could have been the echo of the first. I was on the lake at the time, and sounds are funny near water.” Bolstering her new theory did not serve his own cause, but he would do what he could to assuage her pain, because not only did he love her but he had come to have some grasp on what that love entailed.

  “I couldn’t stand to have him arrested,” Friday said.

  “You’re not serious?” Crews continued to enclose her supple body.

  “It would just be my word against his.”

  “For God’s sake, you’re the one with the wound.”

  “It wasn’t anyplace vital.”

  He hugged her more ardently. “It can’t be right to let him—”

  “But what would be gained if we went through some legal mess?”

  “A would-be killer might be put away for a while.”

  Friday stepped just far enough back to look at him through accusatory blue eyes, she who had seemingly been about to pardon the real criminal. “You have to understand we’re talking about somebody who’s basically a helpless weakling.”

  Crews nodded. “Forgive me, but I really have to say this: you once saw something in him.”

  “There’s nothing to be proud about,” said Friday, “but I’m not ashamed either. I found him attractive! It’s always hard to explain why to anyone else. He’s handsome and he knew more than I did about something I was interested in learning at that time, and he seemed interested in and attracted to me, and—”

  “Reasons enough,” Crews said hastily. He was scarcely in a position from which to contest such points. What his wives had first seen in him would have been difficult to specify. He had brought the matter up only to dispose of it. Mutual attractions can seldom bear the scrutiny of persons uninvolved, whereas aversions are often immediately obvious to all. His resentment of a man better-looking and more physically fit than himself was so natural as to be impersonal.

  “But what if he is stalking you, or us?”

  “He isn’t,” she said firmly. “I was a coward for a while, but I realize now he wouldn’t take you on.”

  “He stole my fishing tackle.”

  “You weren’t there at the time.” She shook her head. “He’s gone back and told his own version, that the shooting was an accident and that I ran away and got lost.”

  “You’re beginning to believe that now yourself,” said Crews.

  “So be it.” She smiled sadly. “Maybe it’s even true. He’ll lead in a rescue expedition. He’ll try to put a good face on it and maybe hope even to emerge as a sort of hero.”

  “But how could he count on you not to accuse him of attempted murder? This change of heart is new even to me.”

  “He knows me,” Friday said. “I have to admit that. He knows in the end I always give him the benefit of the doubt on anything that pertains to his manhood.”

  “I’ve been counting on that myself,” Crews said, and though pretending to levity he was serious enough.

  “Your quality is not in doubt,” she said tenderly. “People don’t fuss over those who are strong! What a tiresome companion I’ve been! I think I’ve finally got it all straight. I’ll do better now, I promise.”

  Crews was aware that he should be man enough to accept prestige gracefully, but he was still too new to it. “Good! Except when I’m hunting, I intend to lounge about camp while you do the menial chores. Isn’t that the way the human race started out?” He could not keep the joke going. “You don’t know about me. I’m almost forty and I’ve never really had a job. I’ve been married three times. I was drunk for years, and I lost all the money I ever had, none of which was earned. I don’t understand how I was able to hang on out here by myself, but it was just barely. I instinctively saved myself in the plane crash. I didn’t deliberately let the others drown—if they were still alive after the impact—but I was no help to them. It’s only since meeting you that I’ve had any sense that I’m doing more than just keeping alive only because it is natural to fight against ceasing to exist.”

  “That’s only what you say,” Friday said, linking arms with him. “How would I know what truth is in it? Anyway, that’s the past.”

  “But what’s the future? What will I do when I get back?”

  She sighed happily. “Write a book about how you survived here! Come on, let’s celebrate by taking a walk down to the fishing hole.”

  “I’ve never done anything like that.” Yet he felt exultant. “I guess I could tell it to somebody, who would do the actual—”

  “No,” said Friday. “That’s not like you.”

  “The fact is, it’s exactly like me. I’m trying to be realistic.” She had succeeded in overcoming his initial restiveness and getting him in motion, but she still had to pull him along. “What I did here was an alternative to perishing. I was forced into it. What compulsion would I have back in town? It will be hard enough to keep off the booze.”

  She stepped in front of him. “I’ll be there, won’t I? You won’t be able to let me down. I’m a witness: I know what you stand for.”

  He had never heard a statement like that from anybody his life long. He could only assume that her judgment was still quite as faulty as when she selected the ineffable Michael for a mate, and Crews was almost too devoted to her well-being to let her do it again; but not quite.

  “Do you mind my asking where your husband will be, if you won’t send him to jail?”

  “Just because I don’t intend to press charges,” Friday said, “doesn’t mean I intend to stay married to him.”

  They continued walking downstream, past the rapids, to an area where the banks gained in height as the water became less turbulent. During his weeks in the wilderness Crews had developed an attentiveness to practicalities that was unaffected by emotional preoccupations. At the moment his feelings were in what otherwise might have been a turmoil, yet he did not fail to notice a promising striation in the side of the bank beneath them.

  He knelt and reached down. “Look at this.” He held up a sample for Friday’s inspection. “This feels like clay to me.”

  She rubbed it between her index finger and her thumb. “I only remember the stuff we had as kids. This is the wrong color, but the texture seems right.”

  He wiped his fingers on some weedy vegetation and ripped up a sheaf for her. “We can making things with that. Cups and plates, to go with your wooden silverware. If I get really ambitious, I think I could make that oven. Then we could bake and roast things. We might try some roots. Roasting’s a sophisticated culinary technique. It might make all the difference.”

  She had taken his arm again. “Now that you’ve found the route out of here, you’re in no hurry to use it.”

  “The hurry was for your sake,” Crews said. “But I’m beginning to understand: you’re going to let your husband stew in his own juice for a while. He won’t know whether you’re dead or alive, or what you’ll say when found.” He squeezed her hand between his elbow and ribs. “I was afraid, there for a few moments, that you were going to forgive him.”

  “I’m going to do my best to forgive him,” said Friday, “at least for our time here.” She lifted her face to take the sun on its fine surfaces. She closed her eyes and sniffed. “Rain is on its way.”

  Crews raised his nose. “Damned if I can smell it.”

  “Even though there’s not a cloud in the sky.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Only if it turns out I’m wrong,” Friday said,
swinging around to face him with sparkling eyes. “But we’ve still got time before it comes to improve our house, put on those birch-bark shingles. And you probably can even get the clay oven built. You know, a fire could be kept going in it throughout all kinds of weather.”

  “You won’t be wrong,” said Crews. “Sooner or later it always rains.”

  “When it does, we’ll be nice and snug.” She was laughing in the sunlight.

  They walked to a point at which the woods swung away in favor of a sun-drenched meadow.

  “My God,” Friday cried. “Don’t tell me those are blackberries!”

  Her eyes were sharper than Crews’s own for the middle distances. She ran ahead, and had plucked a handful by the time he arrived. She popped one in his mouth.

  The berry was an explosion of sweetness against his palate. “They’re at their peak,” he said, accepting another from her and speaking through it. “And look at all the bushes. It’s this whole part of the field!”

  Friday had removed her denim jacket and was using it as a receptacle for the gathering of fruit. Crews helped fill it, but both were gobbling down more than they saved.

  “After all,” Friday said, chortling with berry-stained lips, “the only breakfast we had was that awful tea.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Crews groaned through a mouthful of blackberries. “The tea was your idea.”

  “It was?” Her eyes were disingenuously wide. “I could have sworn…” An insect had followed her latest handful of fruit, and in shooing it away from her face, she crushed a berry against her cheek. She mugged at Crews. “I must be painted like a clown.”

  He thought her more beautiful than ever. “Is my beard stained?”

  “Not nearly enough!” She smeared him with her red hands.

  He cupped a palm, scooped some loose berries from her jacket, and threatened her with them.

  She screeched like a schoolgirl. “You wouldn’t dare.”