He decided that the river wasn’t as slushy here, and as he rebolted the prop, he cast a look at the sky, thinking that he might be able to replace the strut and the float in time to fly out of here if he hurried. He hauled the lumber over to the plane and struggled with numb fingers to adjust it to fit where the strut was supposed to be, cursing at the cold.
He paused only once to eat Kerry’s crackers and oysters, resuming work as quickly as he could, jamming the new wooden strut in place. The idea rose in his mind that perhaps, just perhaps, it was possible to return to the cabin and collect Kerry, and maybe, just maybe, he might be able to get this crate off the ground.
He made his mistake right at the end when he stepped out on the float with an eye to scraping ice off the windshield. His foot slipped on the icy metal, and he fell headlong into the river.
KERRY WATCHED anxiously at the window most of the afternoon, sure that she’d see Sam looming out of the forest any minute. When he didn’t appear early in the afternoon, she decided that he must be making real progress in the repair of the plane and made herself take inventory of the food that remained on the kitchen shelves.
Afterward, looking for something, anything, to do, she waded through drifted snow to the lodge, but felt too edgy to go to the trouble of lighting a fire in the fireplace so she could work there. She wandered the rooms, hunched into her parka, making herself think of how gratifying it would be to welcome her first guests here next summer, to see them to their rooms all sparkling fresh with paint, with vases of native wildflowers in every bathroom and the newfound paintings gracing the walls.
Usually such exercises in optimism lifted her spirits, but today she couldn’t shake her feeling of foreboding. Something was wrong. She felt it.
The only other time Kerry had ever felt the way she did today was on the day Doug died. She’d awakened earlier than usual that morning at their house in Seattle harboring a vague uneasiness. As the day had worn on she’d felt as if a hand were crushing her heart, and for no reason that was readily apparent.
In fact, it had been a happy day: lunch with friends, shopping at Pike Place Market. And because she had been thinking of Doug all day, she’d bought ingredients for his favorite bouillabaisse. Then as she had stepped out of her car, she’d seen officials from the airline waiting on her front porch. The expressions they had fixed on her had been grim, and she’d known. Oh yes, she’d known. She’d dropped the shopping bags and started screaming, and the neighbors had come and led her into the house. That was how she had learned her husband had died.
So now Kerry knew better than to ignore these anxieties. But she didn’t know what to do about them, either. She told herself she was making things up in her mind, that she was simply too sensitive to things that might go wrong, that Sam would be fine and that there was nothing to worry about. There was nothing wrong.
Well, that wasn’t true. A lot was wrong. They were stranded in a cabin with only enough food to last a few more days, the river was freezing, and the plane might not fly.
She walked back slowly to the cabin, keeping a wary eye on the mountaintop for signs that the weather would hold. The cabin seemed empty, hollow, lonely without Sam’s presence.
Kerry slid out of her coat, brewed a pot of tea. “I wish I’d gone with him,” she said out loud. Her voice seemed to echo back at her from the very rafters, and after she drank her tea, she climbed up to the loft and lay down on the cot, trying to nap. But even though she closed her eyes, she felt wide awake.
SAM FISHED HIMSELF out of the icy river, soaked to the skin. He lost no time in divesting himself of his wet clothes, but they started to stiffen with ice before he’d even hung them up to dry inside the plane. Shivering so violently that his teeth chattered, he dug behind the backseat of the Cessna and found a spare set of clothing, some things that Vic had left there, probably a long time ago.
With shaking fingers he pulled on the heavy wool lumberman’s long johns, thick sweater and jeans, topping it all off with a heavy rain slicker. All the garments were too short for him, and by the time he’d managed to dress, he was dismayed to see a thick ice fog rolling in from nowhere, obscuring the river, the trees, the mountains—everything.
Ollie, his friend from Athinopa, had once shared a bit of Indian lore. “The secret, if you’re ever out in the cold and can’t get back to shelter, is to conserve your energy,” Ollie had said. “One good way to freeze to death is to get exhausted. In a case like that, you don’t have enough energy to keep your blood circulating, and without the blood, you die.”
Considering this piece of wisdom and the whited-out landscape, Sam decided he’d better not strike out for the cabin after all.
KERRY WAS BESIDE herself when darkness fell and Sam hadn’t returned.
She paced back and forth in front of the cabin, breathing out plumes of vapor into the cold night air, even lighting a lantern and setting it on a tree stump near the river trail to light his way back. Doing something constructive made her feel only slightly better, and once it was done she couldn’t think of anything else that might help. She wished she’d gone with him. She wished she’d followed him later and surprised him at the plane. She wished…
Overhead something rustled in the treetops, and a large helping of snow dumped on her head.
Realizing that it wasn’t prudent to stand around outside in the dark, she retreated to the cabin, peering out the window into the night and seeing nothing but the glow of the welcoming lantern and her own reflection staring back at her.
OTHER ADVICE that Sam had received over the years from Ollie about survival in the wilderness had included digging a trough in the snow and laying showshoes on top, then covering those with a blanket or tarp and climbing under it. Ollie had touted this as a good way to keep warm. But Sam didn’t have to do that. He had the plane.
Stuffed into the tail of the plane was a moth-eaten old sleeping bag, but it was made of down and would be warm. Huddled inside, he lit a couple of candles he’d found in the emergency kit. Outside, the fog was so thick that he couldn’t see a thing.
He worried about Kerry alone in the cabin waiting for him. He thought about why he had come to Silverthorne in the first place. And he thought about how Kerry would hate him when she found the papers in the waterproof pouch.
Maybe she wouldn’t hate him for long. Maybe she’d get over it. He hoped so, considering that he’d once been willing for Kerry to be the mother of his child. No, not his child. It would have been Doug and Kerry’s child. It would have been a boy, he thought, with dark curly hair like his and Doug’s and eyes like Kerry’s, all gold and silver. He thought about Kerry’s eyes now, how they could dance in merriment, how they softened when she was talking about the lodge and her hopes for it, how they could snap in anger.
And how if he kissed her the lids would drift slowly closed, casting feathery shadows on her cheeks.
He wanted to kiss her. And more.
Sam punched the sleeping bag into submission and tried to settle into its depths, warm enough, but not looking forward to a long, cold, lonely night.
BACK IN THE CABIN, Kerry gave the place a thorough cleaning. It only made sense, since if all went well, they’d be leaving it soon. She wiped down the stove, cleaned the kitchen floor, polished the inside of the windows with a mixture of vinegar and water. She dusted the furniture and swept out the loft. Then she straightened things in general, tossing everything burnable into the kitchen stove.
On top of her crossword puzzle magazine lay a waterproof pouch that she didn’t recognize. She started to open it, but realized that it must be Sam’s and assumed that it would be the sectional charts and logbook that pilots carried with them, so she stuffed the pouch unopened down into Sam’s pack and resolved to tell him what she’d done with it when he came back.
SAM HAD A HARD TIME going to sleep in the cockpit. The seat was approximately the size of the one in the Volkswagen bug he’d restored when he was a kid, and it afforded little room for his big fr
ame. When his feet started to go numb, he didn’t know if it was from the cold or from lack of blood circulation due to his cramped position. Remembering Ollie’s advice, he massaged his legs to get the blood going again. Afterward he tossed and turned and finally fell asleep, dreaming so vividly of a grizzly attack that when the dream woke him, he peered warily out over the plane’s wing toward the forest, trying to see if there really was a bear.
He didn’t see one. He didn’t see anything but the fog drawn around the plane like a shroud.
FOR DINNER, Kerry heated chili from a can and then took refuge under an afghan on the couch. She stayed awake as long as she could, wanting to remain alert so that she’d hear Sam’s approach or see his face grinning at her from the window.
But she was so tired that she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and her head kept slipping to one side. Finally she gave in to it, pulling the afghan up over her shoulders and letting herself be borne away on a wave of gentle slumber.
She was jolted from her drowsy state by the clatter of metal in the breezeway.
Sam.
She jumped up from the couch and ran to the back door, so sure it must be Sam that she flung it open without a second thought. A blast of cold wind knifed through her, but she didn’t stop for her shawl. She rushed through the breezeway and banged on the shed door with her fist, thinking that Sam must be inside.
“Sam?”
She heard the rattle of dry leaves on snow crust. She whirled and just beyond the first trees, but within the pale circle of light from the kerosene lamp inside the cabin, she saw a fat-haunched grizzly bear standing over the big metal-covered container where she stored the cache of dried blueberries she’d harvested from the patch behind the lodge.
The bear seemed as startled as she was. It charged through the breezeway, sending the blueberries flying into the snow, but it soon found itself blocked by the stacks of wood that Sam had so recently chopped. Confused, it stumbled, then recovered.
Kerry broke out in a sweat that chilled her with the icy numbness of pure terror. Her heart began to pound as if it would leap out of her chest. She tried frantically to remember what she was supposed to do when confronted by a bear. Run? Curl into a ball? Don’t move?
This was an enormous grizzly, bigger than she could have even imagined. It rose threateningly on its hind feet, the hackles rising on its neck and its enormous head weaving back and forth. It stood much taller than she was and must have weighed almost a thousand pounds. Its teeth were ugly fangs, and its claws were at least four inches long and looked as if they could use a good manicure.
At least the bear was only standing there looking at her, not lunging or pawing or doing any of the other things that bears could do. But she was also mindful that bears had been said to rip a man’s scalp off with one swat and she had no intention of giving this bear such a chance.
Slowly she inched backward, reaching behind her with one hand. The bear teetered on its hind feet, beady eyes intent upon her. Kerry had the impression that things could go bad in a nanosecond. Her hand met the shed’s door handle, gripped the cold metal and slowly drew it toward her. The door scraped the ground, grinding into the dirt. The bear’s ears perked, and suddenly it dropped back to all four feet.
That was when Kerry made a crucial move. She jerked the shed door open and tumbled inside, pulling it shut behind her and slamming the hasp of the heavy iron bolt through. She fully expected the bear to come crashing against the planks.
As she leaned against the door holding her breath, she heard snuffling around its edges. She stood quaking as she waited for the animal to attack the shed; she’d heard numerous tales of bears’ ill-temper and aggressiveness when provoked. But nothing happened.
She endured a few jiggles of the door as if the bear were bumping against it, and then she heard the animal galumphing toward the woods. After a while, the bear began to rattle the lid of the blueberry container, so maybe it had decided to finish its snack.
Listening to the noises, wishing she had a flashlight, Kerry shivered in the cold shed. When she was sure that the bear was not in an attack mode, she searched by touch until she found a waterproof box of matches. She lit one and located the one-burner kerosene heater that Doug had stored there years ago. It held kerosene, not much but enough, she hoped, to last for a while. After several unsuccessful attempts, she managed to light it.
The flare of another match revealed that Doug’s boyhood sleeping bag was stored on one of the shelves above her head, and she fumbled around in the dark until she was able to pull it down from the shelf. She wrapped herself in it and settled down beside the heater for what she was afraid might be a very long wait.
SAM WOKE UP early the next morning feeling stiff all over. His clothes, which had been wet the night before, were so cold that they crackled to the touch. It didn’t matter, he could wear Vic’s clothes, although he wished he had something warmer to wear than the rain slicker.
He thought about Kerry, knowing that she must have found his pouch with its incriminating papers by this time. All right, so he’d been chicken. But letting her learn on her own about his sperm donation and Doug’s complicity might be the kindest way to handle it. This way she’d have her privacy when she found out. This way she could marshal her thoughts before she assailed him with blame and accusations.
This way he felt like a cad.
But still. His purpose in donating to the sperm bank had been to help out two friends who desperately wanted a baby. He hoped Kerry would eventually understand that his offer had been driven by kindness and that Doug’s acceptance had been full of gratitude.
He waited until the fog cleared before climbing down from the cockpit and looking around. The sky was still overcast, but pale-pink fingers of light pointed up from the horizon. Rays of hope, Sam thought without much humor.
He studied the river for a long time, uncertain whether it was too slushy to consider taking off even if he finished his work on the plane. Finally he decided that the jerry-built strut could use some adjustment, so he worked on that for a couple of hours. Later he built a fire on one of the boulders and boiled water for coffee, and he also heated up a can of sausages from the plane. After this unsatisfactory breakfast, he turned his attention to the float, and that’s when he first noticed large chunks of ice flowing down the river.
This meant that the Kilkit River would be frozen solid before long. And the chunks of ice tooling along in the current would make it nigh unto impossible for the plane to take off. Optimism fizzled, quenched by despair.
Sam did what he could to secure the plane. He emptied it of everything that could possibly be useful to them, devised a makeshift pack from the sleeping bag and tied it to his back. Then, with a heavy heart, he started to hoof it back to Silverthorne Lodge.
Kerry had certainly found the pouch with its incriminating paperwork by this time. He was pretty sure there’d be hell to pay when he got back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Sam arrived at the juncture of the woods path and the river trail near the cabin, he noticed the lantern on the stump. It wasn’t lit, and when he checked, there was no oil in it. He had no idea why Kerry might have put a lamp there.
The cabin looked dark, and no smoke rose from the fireplace chimney. This seemed strange. It was so cold now that Kerry would need to have the fireplace going at full blast in order to stay warm.
He opened the front door.
“Kerry?”
He was cautious, not knowing what to expect. Something was strange. Had she been rescued? Was she sick again?
He’d spent his walk back here preparing himself for a tongue-lashing over those papers. He’d prepared himself to defend himself as well as Doug. He was prepared to cajole, mollify and appease.
He was prepared, in fact, for almost anything except Kerry’s absence. She wasn’t there.
It was cold in the cabin because the fire in the fireplace had gone out. A pot of congealed chili stood on the stove, and the stove fire had f
aded to a few glowing coals.
“Kerry?”
No answer from the loft.
“Kerry?” He hurried up the ladder, taking two rungs at a time, and calling to her even as he went.
Kerry wasn’t in the loft. The wool coverlet she used for a bedspread was tucked neatly under the cot’s mattress, and he could see the concave imprint of her body where she had lain upon it.
“Kerry!” Now he was frantic, worried. Where could she be?
He descended the ladder, rushed to the back door, wrenched it open. To one side was a big heavy container that he’d seen outside the back door of the cabin, and a few berries were scattered through the breezeway and in the snow. Had she been storing blueberries outside where a bear might get a whiff of them? Of all the stupid cheechako things to do!
And then he spotted the footprints, bear footprints, the same kind of footprints he’d seen earlier and neglected to mention to Kerry because he didn’t want to frighten her. The sight of them pierced him like a knife to his heart.
The shed door flew open and Kerry stumbled out. Her hair was wild, her face pale, and she was wrapped in Doug’s old sleeping bag. He thought he had never seen her looking more beautiful.
“Sam, oh Sam, there was a bear, a grizzly bear, and I came outside because I heard the noise and thought it was you, and it stood up on its hind legs, and I didn’t know what to do, but I ran in the shed and locked the door and I’ve been there I don’t know how long—”
“You left berries out where a bear could get their scent?”
“I kept them in a covered pot, I didn’t know any bear would notice.”
“Of all the fool things—”
But he didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before she threw herself into his arms, clinging to him with all her might. In the face of such neediness, his anger evaporated. Whether the neediness was mostly hers or mostly his, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that it felt wonderful to hold her close, to feel her heart beating close to his.
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