Frozen Stiff

by Sherry Shahan

  • • •

  Hours must have ticked off while she floated in and out of consciousness, barely aware of the washcloth being removed, resoaked to make it cold again, then replaced. Or of her fever. She kicked in her sleeping bag, desperate to escape the heat.

  Cody opened her eyes a few times to lightness or darkness. Shadows without shapes. “I can’t see!” she cried out.

  She thought it was Patterson who answered her. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “Patterson?” Then his voice turned deep like her father’s. “Daddy?”

  She dropped off again.

  The thin line between reality and dreams disappeared; they became welded together by the fever. And thoughts of food: Sometimes she dreamed of eating, even chewing meat of some kind. She gobbled it up, swallowing some of it whole.

  Someone wiped her chin.

  And Derek’s voice filtering through. “Don’t die on me, Cody. You can’t die.”

  It seemed as if she laughed. No one died of sunburn. In the desert, maybe. Not in Alaska.

  Shock—now, that could be a killer. And pain sometimes killed.

  Dreams pelted her from all sides.

  Her father boxing up his World’s Greatest Dad mug, a Father’s Day gift. Even in her dream she wanted to throw it, smash it until the ceramic was nothing but powder.

  • • •

  The night and the following day slipped away, broken by nightmares and pain. She wanted to rip her eyes from their sockets. Drop them into a bucket of ice water.

  If she dared open her swollen lids she saw only white. She’d always thought people who couldn’t see lived in a world of darkness!

  Derek dipped the cloth in water and bathed her eyes. Another cloth. This one on her forehead. Mopping sweat. Was he reading to her? Impossible. Somehow she figured it out: He was writing in his head and reciting aloud everything that had happened since they’d left Yakutat.

  Finally the fever broke and she awakened to the sound of rain splattering the tent. She tried opening her eyes, slowly. Her lids were still puffy, but the intense burning had died to a dull sting.

  She turned toward the soft snoring. Even in the early-morning light Derek had a shape, although she couldn’t pick out his features.

  I can see! she exclaimed to herself.

  Then she whispered to the sun gods, “Thank you.”

  A thank-you for letting her off the hook. They could have kept her sight forever.

  She felt around for the damp cloth and pressed it against her eyelids. Her face felt as tight as if it were ready to split open like a barbecued sausage.

  How long was I out? she wondered. It couldn’t have been too long because she wasn’t hungry. She should have been ravenous, near starvation. Except for the egg she’d thrown up, she didn’t think she’d eaten since their macaroni and cheese casserole—whenever that was.

  “You’re back,” Derek said from his bag. “Are you okay?”

  “Better, much better.” She kept her eyes closed, bathing them with the cloth. “It must have been that glare off the water and ice. Without shades. Thank God for No Fear. It could have been so much worse if I didn’t have a cap.”

  “You could have worn my shades,” he said, handing her a pot of water.

  “Then I’d be taking care of you.” Cody drank slowly, rinsing away the rotten taste in her mouth. “You fed me, huh?”

  “Yeah. For two days.”

  “I was out of it for two days?” Suddenly she had to pee. She got up and went outside. When she returned she said, “Did I eat something?”

  “Some kind of jerky,” he said. “Salmon, I think. I ripped it into small pieces and soaked it in water to soften it up. That and crushed pine nuts.”

  Derek handed her a strip of jerky, watching her tear off a tough bite. After swallowing she felt bloated, as if she’d just eaten a Thanksgiving dinner. Had her stomach shrunk? Then a more important question came to mind.

  Salmon jerky in the tent? She felt for the bear horn, relaxing when she located the handle next to her boots. For a moment she tried to wonder where the food had come from. The cabin, maybe?

  Then she lay back down, exhausted, and slept.

  The next time she woke up it was night. Moonlight filtered ever so faintly through the tent. It was still raining. Now she needed to see the rain. She wanted to taste it and dance around in it, rejoicing, I can see!

  Cody crawled across the floor and unzipped the tent. She stuck her hand out, disappointed not to feel raindrops. Below their camp, granite boulders glistened under a cloudless moonlit sky. Although everything was a blur, she could still make out edges. She waited while her eyes focused on the fjord; a mass of icebergs clogged the inlet.

  The sound she had thought to be pelting rain was air being released from melting ice; air that could have been trapped inside a glacier for thousands of years. It sounded like a bowl of rice cereal. Snap. Crackle. Pop.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  Derek scooted next to her and gave her a pouch of pine nuts. She fingered the deerskin. The leather wasn’t scarred or rotten as she’d expect from something found in the old cabin. The drawstring was coarse braided hair.

  She might have been weakened by fever, but her mind was working. “How come we didn’t see this and the jerky before?”

  Derek didn’t answer. He was under the spell of the parading icebergs.

  She followed his gaze. Even in the moonlight some of the bergs sparkled. And they were so unbelievably blue. They had probably come off the glacier Cody and Derek had watched calving days before. The bergs were so tightly packed it looked as if someone could ice-walk to the other side of the fjord.

  The air seemed surprisingly mild for a clear night this late in summer. Thirty-five or forty degrees. Or maybe she’d just gotten used to the cold.

  She wondered if it was clear in Yakutat too.

  Had their mothers returned to the empty cabin and found her note on the milk carton? She checked her watch, her eyes slow to focus on the numbers: 3:00. She pictured a group of volunteers in the tavern getting last-minute instructions for the rescue operation. She’d seen lots of search-and-rescue teams on the news out of Juneau. Hikers, mountain climbers, sometimes bush planes. Most of those missing were found in a few days.

  Three A.M. At first light they’d be on their way. Bush planes with pontoons for a water landing, packed with survival kits. And food.

  “He left it,” Derek finally said.

  “Who? Left what?”

  “You know, Bigfoot. But he’s really just this big guy.”

  She looked at him, still puzzled.

  “He left the food, Cody, and I saw him.” His next words sliced through the air. “I even talked to him.”

  Suddenly she knew who he meant. The shadow. It. Him. The up-to-no-good man. “You talked to him? What did he say?”

  Cody crawled back inside the tent, snatched the damp cloth, and pressed it against her swollen eyes. She must have stared too long at the parade of icebergs. Even without any glare, she could feel the strain. Daylight would be utter torture.

  He must be making it up. “You want to be a writer. And this is a story, right?”

  Derek rezipped the tent flap. “I don’t think he wanted me to see him. I just did, at the cabin.”

  She pressed the cloth harder against her eyes; the pressure caused a play of colors behind her lids. She remembered the stack of skins under the boards. The pile of bones. “Were those his skins we found?”

  The outfitters had talked a lot about poachers, about men who killed animals for their hides and sold them to other countries. Animals hunted without permits, slaughtered out of season. Even animals on the endangered lists. The thought of poachers made her sick.

  “Maybe he followed us,” she said, considering another possibility.

  “I think he was already here. He just saw us, that’s all. Knew we were in trouble, knew we needed help.”

  The same person could hav
e scared off the bear at the waterfall. Maybe the bear had ruined his plans of sneaking up on her. Cody didn’t want to think about that.

  That had been days and miles behind them. There weren’t any roads or trails out here. Except for the maze of trampled brush made by bears. Unless someone else had been on the water. Surely she would have seen a kayak or canoe. Then she remembered Derek spotting a shadow on the far side of the fjord. Maybe the shadow was on this side now.

  All at once it was as if the pages of “Hansel and Gretel” were unfolding. Two kids lost in the woods, following bread crumbs to the wicked witch’s house. “He’s a poacher, Derek. I’d bet anything.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  Cody dropped the cloth, waiting for her eyes to focus. She could see that some of the scabs from Derek’s mosquito bites had been picked off. There were small white spots on his forehead, a stark contrast to the dark circles under his eyes. The blisters on his nose had dried. Now half peeling, the skin underneath was raw and pink.

  “Why else would he be out here this late in summer?” she asked.

  Derek shrugged.

  She shivered, knowing he could be lurking outside the tent at this very moment. “What did he look like?”

  Derek hesitated, then described him. The stranger was too much like a character in a late-night movie. The kind where a scientist travels back in time and discovers a lost civilization. Crude deerskin pants and a poncho-type shirt, homemade boots, scruffy fur cap and gloves.

  “It doesn’t matter what he looks like.” Derek finished, and glanced toward the cabin. “He’s trying to help us.”

  “Said the spider to the fly,” Cody said.

  “You’re just paranoid,” he said. “Because of that kidnapping.”

  Cody sighed, remembering Ginny Martin, the curly-haired little girl who had been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night. The Martins lived only a few miles from Cody’s house. Even after a year, the family didn’t know what had happened to her. “And you’re too trusting of strangers.”

  Derek quit trying to convince her that the man wasn’t a threat. He changed the subject by shining his flashlight on his new project. Part of a torn T-shirt was stretched tightly over a board and secured with old nails. He’d used charred firewood to sketch in the fjord, from Yakutat to Hubbard Glacier at Disenchantment Bay. “I made this map while you were sick.”

  She saw an X at their first camp. “You were reciting what’s happened to us out here.”

  “Yeah, the map goes with my story.”

  “I bet one of the papers in Alaska would publish it.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Maybe even the Californian.” That was the big paper in Bakersfield.

  Cody knotted her hair into a fist, which fell lopsided over one ear. Dried salt water mixed with sweat and dirt had made her hair coarse and stiff.

  Outside, the sky had started to lighten up. At least the storm’s over, she told herself. Mom’s found the note by now and a rescue party will be on its way at first light. All we have to do is build a fire and stay put until a pilot spots the smoke.

  Cody fell into the warm folds of her sleeping bag. “You still haven’t told me what the poacher said.”

  “He didn’t talk. I did. I thanked him for the food.”

  “Are you nuts?” She couldn’t believe Derek wasn’t more suspicious of a stranger in the wilderness. Especially someone dressed in skins. “No wonder your mom worries so much about you.”

  “Maybe if you talked to him you wouldn’t be so scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” she said quickly. “I’ll start socializing with poachers when the fjord freezes over.”

  Derek sighed, settling deeper into his bag.

  Cody wouldn’t talk about it anymore. In a little while they’d build a roaring fire. Under a clear sky, smoke would be visible for miles. “Yakutat.” She rolled it around on her tongue. Hot shower, hot meal. She’d sell her soul for the shower alone. No, a toothbrush. Brushing her teeth would even beat a shower.

  “Let’s not wait on the fire,” she said. “Let’s get it going now.”

  • • •

  Cody huddled with her back to the fire pit, shielding her eyes from the heat and light. She’d pulled her knotted hair through the back of No Fear; the brim shaded her eyes. Maybe she’d rub mud high on her cheekbones. That was what Patterson did when he played football to absorb the beams off stadium lights.

  She wished she had lotion to rub on her face. It was so hard and dry it felt ready to crack. She considered searching for edible roots, something that wasn’t toxic. She could boil and mash them, then spread them on her face. But by the time she went to all that trouble the rescuers would be there.

  Now that the skies over Yakutat were rid of thunderstorms, their rescue was inevitable, probably within an hour, certainly before lunchtime, a thought that took the edge off images of a poacher dressed in dead animals.

  At sunrise the sky spread soft-colored pastels; then a heavy gray mist muddied the palette. Even in a fire pit clogged with burning logs the smoke evaporated into the clouds.

  If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes, she reminded herself.

  The water had risen another five or six feet since she’d been out of it. Luckily the terrain was steeper here than at their first campsite, and the tent was still high above the waterline. No sea life swam by, no otters, no porpoises. And few birds. Where were all the deer? There were more deer in Southeast Alaska than people, she knew. She hadn’t seen one since they’d left Yakutat.

  Now that she was sure help was on the way she’d stopped worrying so much about the tide. She kept glancing at the fjord, noting that the icebergs had vanished. They must be melting or drifting around another bend. She strained to see that the kayak was safely tethered.

  “Where are the planes and helicopters?” she asked an hour later.

  Sitting sideways, she stoked the coals with a stick. Fiery sparks sputtered around her boots, quickly snuffed out by the soupy mist. “Wouldn’t choppers fly in from Juneau to search for a couple of kids lost in the fjord? And there are lots of bush planes in Yakutat.”

  She realized she was talking to herself. The sound of leaves crunching in the trees made her jump. “Derek?”

  Instinct pushed her fingers to one of the logs, guiding them around the rough bark. If it’s a bear, I hope it’s a black bear. I’d rather face a black bear than a grizzly any day. If it’s the poacher, I might still need a weapon.

  Slowly rising to her feet, she turned, letting her eyes focus on the vine-tangled woods, drab brown and muted green like military camouflage.

  “Derek?”

  Be quiet! Hold the log behind your back … The instructions were coming from some other self, her survival self. Then, at the last second …

  Staring this long was painful, but she didn’t dare blink.

  She stood still, hands gripping the log. and waited.

  Derek moved into the clearing. “What’re you doing?”

  Cody tossed the log in the fire. “Me?” She noticed for the first time that he was back in his jeans, the cuffs tucked inside his rubber boots; three days and a fire must have been long enough to dry them. “You scared me to death. I didn’t know you’d left.”

  Derek rubbed his hands briskly over the fire. “I thought you were sleeping, so I went to the cabin.”

  “What for?”

  He pulled a T-shirt scrap from under his sweatshirt. “I found some berries.”

  She recognized the pink fruit, smooth and succulent. Salmonberries. “He left them, didn’t he?”

  Derek shrugged.

  “Did you see him?”

  She looked nervously toward Yakutat. Where is the search party? she cried to herself. Then she turned to Derek and said aloud, “What does he want from us?”

  He set the bundle in the dirt, the T-shirt becoming a platter. “I found the berries.”

  Cody thought he was lying but d
idn’t argue about it. She snatched a handful of berries and ate them quietly. She needed to build up her strength. The juice had an odd taste, not as sweet as usual.

  They aren’t ripe, she thought, eating them anyway.

  Derek pulled a strip of brittle plastic from his hip pocket. “Maybe we can make you some shades.”

  Cody recognized the plastic from the cabin’s crude window. She turned it over in her hand. Maybe if she soaked off the years of grime, tucked it under No Fear, notched out a slot for her nose … She held it up to her eyes and looked at the flames; the light was definitely softened. But her vision was close to zero.

  “Maybe if I can scrape off some of the yellow,” she said, hoping she’d never need them.

  She was suddenly ravenously thirsty, as if her sunburn had spent the last three days sucking moisture from every pore. She lifted the cooled pot and drank what was left, guzzling each drop. Then she reached for the second pot, swirling it to cool the water.

  Derek polished off his half of the berries and dug into the roots. Boiled roots? He couldn’t have found roots and boiled them. So the man had either given him the food or left it in the cabin.

  “Maybe we’ll make sunglasses the way the Eskimos did,” Derek said. “I read about it at the lodge. They carved them out of wood, with slits in the front, so you can see out but light can’t get in. And we need a fishing pole. We could bend a nail for a hook.”

  She had to tell him about the note and that she’d sort of cheated on the bet. She hadn’t told anyone where they had gone, but …

  Derek took the empty pots and turned in the direction of the stream. “I’ll get more water.” He paused to look at a white-gray sky tightly knitted with weeping mist. “Then let’s start on a fishing pole. The fjord must be full of fish.”

  She couldn’t let him go to the stream yet. “I have good news and bad news,” she said.

  Derek turned, straddling the downed tree trunk, a pot in each hand.