by Jill Barnett
In less than an hour they’d eaten a breakfast of bread and canned peaches, Lollie had had her nature call and he had untied the carabao from the rock he’d used to secure them. Now, with the animals tied and harnessed to the cart, they were ready to leave. Also, the mynah was still alive, something that said a lot about his self-control. But best of all, it had stopped raining.
Sam slogged through the foot-deep mud back to the cart. “Are you all set?”
“Sure am.” Lollie sat perched on the supplies, the ever-present bird on her shoulder. For once Medusa was quiet, although she stared at Sam with a look he didn’t like.
Sunlight bled through the clouds, breaking them up until they drifted on, leaving only deep blue sky behind. He moved forward and prodded the carabao. It was slow going, the mud making the road all that much harder to traverse. The road wound through a thick section of rain forest, where the tall, dark crowns of the trees blocked out the sun.
Water, muddy and abundant, streamed between the trees, washing small bits of debris past them. It was oddly quiet, no wind, no birds, which was strange, and no scream or hum of insects. There was only the trickle and occasional rush of water, the bawl of carabao, the squishing and squeaking of the cart rolling along the muddy roadway, and the sound of Lollie and that bird singing.
They reached the end of the rain forest, and the road became steeper, winding up the rocky hillside until finally they crossed onto a plateau. Dark blue mountains ringed the horizon, and Mount Mayon, an active volcano, rose up in the east like a she-devil’s breast. A deep lake, as clear and blue as a tropical lagoon, sat at the base of that eastern mountain and upward, in the direction of their road, were more mountaintops, ringed dark gray with water-heavy clouds.
More rain was coming. Sam rounded the bend. They were at the bottom of a deep ravine that ran between two mountains. The narrow valley formed here would be a good place to rest and give Lollie a chance to get out of the cart and limp around a bit. He stopped the carabao, which, since their excursion into the rice field, had been pretty manageable. They’d only plopped down twice.
Sam walked over to the cart and held up his hands to help Lollie out. “We’ll stop here.” He looked around for the bird. “Where’s that black bat?”
“What?”
“The bird.”
“Oh, she’s right there.” Lollie pointed to the rear carabao. The mynah sat on the animal’s left horn. “She thinks it’s her perch.”
Sam looked at the stupid bird.
“Why won’t you call her by her name?” Lollie asked.
“Medusa?” Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I should. Every time she opens her mouth snakes should coil from her head.”
“You can be so mean.”
“I don’t like birds.”
“I can tell.”
He set her on the ground, but held her arm. “How’s the ankle?”
She shifted, putting weight on it. “Better. It almost feels normal again.” She stretched, raising her arms high above her head. “Do you think that I could walk for a bit tomorrow?”
“Why?” He eyed her skeptically. That was all he needed. Lollie LaRue limping up the road. She’d probably be slower than those water buffalo.
“I’m tired of riding,” she said, sighing.
“We’ll see.” Sam turned to check the other animal. “Oh, good!”
He stopped and turned back to her. “I said, ‘we’ll see’ as in maybe, not yes.”
“I know. I heard you.”
“I just wanted to make sure you understood. I didn’t say yes.”
“You said ‘we’ll see’,” she said, then turned and walked toward the bushes mumbling, “ ‘We’ means you and I, and I’ll see that I do.”
Sam watched her disappear into the bushes. Off to visit nature again, he thought, for the tenth time at least. Women. He shook his head, then turned back.
It was quiet, almost too quiet. Sam stopped and looked around. The carabao twitched, then turned around. Its bawling broke the silence. The other beast began to sidestep. Sam frowned. Both animals stood, completely still, but their ears twitched rapidly. Sam spun around, suddenly uneasy.
“Awwwwwk!” Medusa screamed, then took off, flying
high in the air above the bushes, circling and squawking. A swift sound, just like rolling thunder, echoed down and
around him. A small vibration shook the ground. Sam looked up.
A wall of water came at him.
Chapter 22
“Lollie! Lollie!” he yelled, racing for the bushes. The deafening rush of water chased him. He dove into the bushes, tackled her, and rolled down a hillside and through the brush. Over and over they tumbled. Rocks jabbed into him. He pulled her closer, held tighter. The roar grew, thundering and thundering. He jerked her up with him, pinned her against a tree, and locked his arms around the trunk.
With the power of a hundred cannons, the flash flood hit, blasting over them. Water burned up his nose, in his mouth, down his throat. Lollie squirmed against him; he held tighter.
The tree bent. It cracked, uprooted, and they shot down the gorge, riding on the spiraling tree, swirling with the pounding water until it swallowed them. They sped under and over, under and over, with no sound around but the water’s hellish roar. It swept them down, down, then with a sudden rush the tree shot up like a rocket, bursting through the foam of pounding water and into the air.
“Breathe!” Sam screamed at Lollie’s limp body. “Breathe!”
He felt her gasp for air and took his own.
The tree dropped, slamming into the water with a force that almost threw him free. With dizzying speed, the log spun around and around atop the rapids, then jammed against a rock. The impact threw Sam off. His arm locked around Lollie. They went under, sucked down with the tow and tumbling like dice, until the water once again pushed them to the surface.
He lay back, pulling her up onto his body to keep her head above the surface. The current slowed, little by little, until they drifted into a crater where the floodwater pooled. He used one aching arm to swim to the bank and his last bit of strength to pull them up onto solid ground. He coughed up some water, then rolled Lollie over.
She wasn’t breathing.
“Breathe! Damn you, breathe!” He pressed her stomach. Nothing.
He flipped her over, straddled her hips and pressed over and over on her back. “Breathe!”
Nothing.
“You stupid bitch! Breathe!” He pressed down, hard. Water spewed out of her mouth. She coughed again and again.
The sound washed over him like an answered prayer. He sagged back flat on the ground, panting, his arm flung over his eyes, his knees raised, and he rested, unable to believe they had made it.
Yes, they’d made it, but he shook everywhere—his hands, his legs—and not from the thrill, not from the challenge of defying death. He shook from fear—pure white fear—something he hadn’t felt in years.
Sam Forester had defied the odds again, played with chance, and made it, but he was scared, damn scared, because Lollie almost didn’t. It took every bit of his willpower not to pull her into his arms. And that kind of emotion was not an easy thing for a man like him to acknowledge.
He heard her pant, felt her stir. Both sounds made his own heart slow down with relief. A few minutes later she moved around some more. Then he felt her shadow over him, blocking out the sun. There was a long silence. He waited for her reaction, the words that would thank him for saving her life.
She kicked him in the shin.
“Ouch! Dammit!” He shot upright, an action that brought stars to his head. “What’d you do that for?”
“You called me a stupid bitch!”
“It got you to breathe, didn’t it?” He rubbed his leg. “Damn . . . I just spent the last ten minutes holding on to you until my arms are half dead, saving your butt, and you kick me because of some stupid word.”
She stood there, silent. Then she sat down next to him. “Tha
nk you, but don’t ever call me stupid again.”
He looked at her. “All right. Next time we’re in a flash flood I’ll call you a dumb bitch.”
She looked at him as if to make sure he was teasing her. Her expression showed she realized he was teasing. She smiled at him so brightly that he had to turn away. He didn’t want that smile to make his guts stir. He didn’t want to care. But what he wanted and what he felt were two different things.
After a few minutes she said, “Sam?”
He turned back.
She cocked her head and stared. “You know, your eye doesn’t look so bad.”
His hand flew up, feeling for the patch. It was gone. Of course the patch is gone, you idiot. You just went through liquid hell.
“Why do you wear it?” she asked.
He shrugged and looked away. “For other people mostly. After it happened, people’s reaction was . . . Well, let’s just say it wasn’t like yours.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “In fact it looks like you’re winking.”
Even he had to laugh at that image. He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a pouch, looked at it for a moment, then untied the strings and opened it. He turned it over, spilling the contents into his palm. Then he bent his head down over his palm and slid another patch into place.
She touched his arm, and he looked up.
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“Okay.” He pulled off the patch.
She gasped. “You’ve got an eye!”
“Right now I have two eyes. One’s glass.” He smiled. Her face was priceless. This was one of his favorite tricks—one he had used to his advantage many times before.
“Let me see.” She got to her knees and crawled forward, stopping when she was between his raised knees and placing her hands on his chest so she could get a closer look. She examined his face, her nose only a few inches from his. “Well, if that don’t take the rag off the bush.”
He did laugh then.
She sat back, never taking her eyes off his. “Why don’t you wear it?”
“I save it for special occasions. Balls, teas, coming-out parties, like you have in Belleview.”
“Belvedere, and stop that. Now, tell me why, really.”
He shrugged. “I like the patch.”
“If you don’t use the eye, why do you have it?”
“It was free.”
“Free?”
“Compliments of the United States government.”
She sat back on her heels and looked at him for a long time. Then, with a tentative note in her voice, she asked, “How’d you lose your eye?”
He slid the patch back on, flipped it up, and bent down. When he straightened, the patch was in place and the glass eye was in his outstretched hand. “Like this.” Then he tossed it lightly, put it back in the pouch, and tucked it away.
She looked just as he’d hoped, uncomfortable. He didn’t answer her question and he didn’t intend to. It was hard for him to talk about, made him feel vulnerable, and that was a side he refused to show any woman. He stood up and looked around.
Black clouds had rolled over the mountain again and were fast coming their way. “We’d better move to higher ground and find something to eat. Those clouds could start another flood. We’re not safe this low.”
“Sam?”
He stopped and turned. “What?”
Her face was suddenly apprehensive. “What happened to the cart and the animals?”
He saw the real question in her eyes. “Medusa flew away, Lollie. I’m sure she’s safe. The cart and the carabao?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I heard her squawk and saw her flying above me just before you hit me.”
“She swooped around higher than the floodwater, so she might have flown back to the camp. It’s been her home for months.” Sam started walking toward the steep tree-covered hillside. He heard her scurrying to catch up.
“Sam?” She grabbed his arm.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to wear that patch for me.”
“I know. I’m not.” He started to walk again.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Then he could hear her walking along behind him. A few silent minutes later she said, “You know what?”
“What?”
“I think you like to wear it because it makes you look more sinister. It makes people wary of you. You like that, don’t you?”
He never broke stride, but called back over his shoulder, “I guess you’re not a dumb bitch after all.” And he kept walking, only faster—protection for his shins.
Lollie sat inside the cave and watched the firelight flicker off its rock walls. Sam had found this cave, seemingly anxious to get her settled in before it started to rain again. They’d walked up some tree-covered hillsides, then out of the gorge and into another small valley. He’d used his knife and a stone to build a fire. Then he’d left her alone to get some more food before it started raining again.
She peeled a banana and ate it, her third since he had left to search for wood and food. And a few minutes ago, true to his forecast, it had started to rain. Wondering where Sam was, she craned her neck to look outside. All she saw was sheet after pouring gray sheet of rain.
Shifting a little, she looked around the cave again. She didn’t like being in here all alone. The cave had a sinister atmosphere. It was dark and dank-smelling, and when the thunder rumbled from the storm outside, it echoed like drums through the hollows of the cave. White steam, like smoke from the fires of hell, floated along the back of the cave, where a small cauldron of a mineral pool bubbled up from within the dark depths of the mountain.
Sam had told her they were lucky. The cave was high in the mountain, which he’d said was an inactive volcano. Her stomach had dropped at that news. The minute he’d said it was a volcano, she’d had an image of hell, of red-orange fires bursting up from the very place where they had sought refuge. She turned and eyed the steam from the pool, expecting the devil himself to come bubbling up on a bed of lava any minute.
A twig cracked behind her. She whipped around. The black silhouette of a man with a huge horned head stood at the entrance to the cave.
She screamed.
“Dammit to hell, Lollie! It’s me, Sam!” He walked into the firelight.
“Awwwwk! Damn Yankee! Sam’s in hell! Get a shovel!”
“Medusa!” Lollie stood up as soon as she spotted the bird, wings open, perched on Sam’s head.
“Get her off me, would you?” Sam dropped a bag onto the cave floor.
Lollie lifted her arm, and Medusa flapped and hopped onto it, then walked up to her shoulder and nuzzled her ear. She rubbed the bird’s head. “I’m so glad you found her.”
“I didn’t find her. She found me. Swooped down like a bat and pulled half my hair out.” He rubbed the top of his head, then muttered, “I should have known that flying back to the camp was too logical. She is a female.” He looked at them for a moment, then added, “I don’t know how she found us.”
“Awwwk! I-ah once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, like Sam, but now I see . . . Awwwk!”
He scowled. “Keep it up, bird, and we’ll have roast fowl for dinner.” Sam squatted down beside the bag he’d brought inside.
Lollie looked at it and realized it was the canvas tarp from the cart. He peeled it back, and there were a few of their supplies.
“Some of the supplies washed up at the end of the canyon. There’re a few cans of peaches, only one can of beans, this pot, a blanket, and here’s something you’ll be happy about. Your satchel.”
He held up the small canvas bag containing her few personal items: soap, comb, and so forth. He tossed it to her.
“I also found this oilcloth bag.” He held up the blue drawstring sack. “I’m not sure what’s inside. It wasn’t something I packed in the cart. Must belong to someone else.” He fumbled with the ties. “Maybe we’ll get
lucky and there’ll be something we need inside.”
“Sam . . .” Lollie recognized it immediately, even before Sam jerked it open and spilled the contents into his hand. “Peanuts?” He groaned.
“Jim slipped the bag to me when he gave me Medusa.” Medusa flew down and took a nut, then waddled over to the tarp. Crack! Chomp! chomp! chomp!
Sam winced, shook his head as if someone had just punched him, then laid out the other things he’d brought back. “There were some melons and mangoes—there’s a whole grove on the other side of the canyon—more bananas, and your personal favorite.” He held up a handful of red berries and grinned.
She crossed her arms and gave him a look that said she didn’t think that was funny.
“And, my personal favorite, ubi.” He held up a handful of long brown-skinned roots.
“What are you-bees?” She scowled at them.
“Yams. Sweet potatoes.”
Crack! Chomp! chomp! chomp!
“They go great with roast bird.” Sam glared at Medusa and tossed the potato in his hand as if weighing it to throw. The bird just ignored him and cracked open another nut.
“What’s in the bottles?” Lollie leaned over to try to see them better.
“Nothing important.” Sam jerked the tarp over them.
“Those weren’t whiskey bottles, were they?” She frowned, then turned back to him. “Did you have whiskey in that cart?”
“For medicinal purposes, and to keep us warm.”
“I thought blankets kept a person warm.”
“Not this one.” Sam held up the blanket and started wringing the water out of it. He laid it on a rock outcropping near the fire and turned back. “You hungry?”
“I ate some bananas. You go ahead.” Lollie watched the rain fall outside. It still came down in sheets. Remembering how fast the water had hit them, she asked, “Will we be safe in here?”
“We’ll be fine. This is high ground.” He went back to unloading the bundle. “The potatoes will take a while to cook. Maybe you’ll want something by then.” He turned back and began to stack some rocks near the fire.