Crabbe

by William Bell

  A short time later I awoke, hungry and very thirsty. Scooping up cold lakewater, I gulped it greedily down. Soon I was dressed, with a full stomach, loading the canoe. I wanted out of that horrible place as soon as possible. I left my old clothing behind me and pushed out onto the calm lake in bright afternoon sunshine. I don’t know why, but I felt new, as if this was the real start of my journey. Of course, I didn’t know where I was going, but one thing I was sure of: I would sleep on islands from now on!

  And late that afternoon I found an island on the same lake but hours of the Crabbe zig-zag further on. It was shaped like a wedge — high on one end and tapering down to a nice little sand beach flanked with young birches.

  When I had unloaded the canoe, beached it, turned it over and stored the paddles underneath, it was dusk. I turned and looked back down the lake to the other campsite but it was hidden by a point of land which jutted into the lake. Good. The sooner I forgot that place, the better.

  I was pretty dragged out and decided to hit the sack early. Stars were beginning to show themselves in the darkening sky and there were no clouds. I figured I’d sleep out in the open. I found my bag, torn and still damp and soiled in a couple of places by vomit, climbed in, folding the dirty patches under, and fell asleep.

  The sun woke me, already high in the sky. I put on a pair of shorts after washing in the lake and got to work. There was a lot to do. First I unpacked everything. I laid out all the food -what seemed like an endless supply of cans -on the gravel near the water’s edge. Next came my wardrobe — a small one now. Then all the equipment. I looked it all over. Everything was wet. Some of the equipment, like cooking pots, was dented from rough handling and bad packing. Cereal was leaking from squashed boxes.

  I took a length of quarter inch rope and strung it between two thick pines. I had to experiment with the knots so the line wouldn’t droop. Then I hung up my clothes. The canvas packs, soggy and stiff, I hung from broken branches.

  The tent was hauled into the lake for a good washing. It was ripped a little around the door and back wall but not too badly. I figured it would dry best if pitched so I did that. I got a pot of water to rinse the sleeping bag, dipping the dirty patches in, soaping them, rinsing again. That took ages, because I had to be careful not to get the down too wet. After spreading it over a low bush in the sun, I repacked the food in some sort of an organized fashion so the packs could be carried without giving me a hernia.

  All this made me hungry. As the afternoon wore on, I began to picture and to taste a thick savoury beef stew with rich brown gravy. But when I found the matches my vision disappeared. I had lots of matches alright — paper ones, fifty packets of paper matches. All soaking wet.

  Dammit! I thought. And other worse words. My feeling of optimism disappeared in a cold wave. I grabbed a book of matches in desperation, ripped out a soggy match, tried to strike it alight. But the red sulphur match head crumbled; the sand on the striking patch was torn from the paper backing. It was useless.

  For the first time, as I sat back on the pine-needled ground, I really wanted a drink. Where was Silent Sam when I really needed him? How good it would feel — to have him soothing me, dissolving the angles and edges from my anxiety and depression.

  I ate cold, glutinous, sticky stew that night on a darkening beach, right from the tin. How could I go on without a fire? No heat. No cooking. (Not that I could cook worth a damn anyway.) No defence. Maybe I’d meet someone — a fisherman maybe — and borrow some. But I wanted to avoid people. That was the reason I was here in the first place.

  I couldn’t turn back. I just couldn’t. To go limping home like a fool — the great outdoorsman, too stupid to waterproof his matches — I couldn’t do it. I’d get too many “I told you so’s” to count. I’d only confirm everybody’s opinion that I needed them to run my life for me.

  I would go on. After all, it was June, warm weather was coming, I could exist on cold food. I went to bed thinking, if I could survive that bear I could survive anything.

  By noon next day I was on my way again, after a breakfast of raisin bran and lake water and cold instant coffee partially dissolved. I headed off.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 9

  It’s kind of embarrassing to admit this now, but you’ve probably already noticed that when I set out on my escape I had no idea where I was going. And I had no map or compass — which was logical in a way because I didn’t know how to use either anyway.

  But at the time I didn’t know there was anything wrong or crazy in what I was doing. If I had thought about it, I’d have figured it was all pretty simple. For example, you go down a river, across a lake, throw in a few portages, and when you want to come home you just retrace your route. Easy, right? Wrong. When you recross, say, a lake, from the opposite direction, especially after a day or so, it looks like a different lake altogether. Everything — shoreline, shape of islands — looks different. So map and compass are essential.

  But the thing about someone who is escaping is this: he’s more concerned about what he’s leaving than what he’s going to. I was lost from the time I left Ithaca Camp. And what was worse, I didn’t know I was lost.

  So on I went that afternoon, looking for the river mouth where my Father and I had gone fishing that long ago summer. It took awhile to find it because there were several small bays at this end of the lake. It was shallow, about two canoe lengths wide, and had almost no current.

  It was getting dusk by now, the air taking on a chilly dampness. I could see quick, dark birds darting along the water’s surface and all sorts of chirrups and clunks were coming from the grasses in the bay.

  I decided to camp there and get an early start in the morning. There was a small campsite at the river mouth so I headed for it, the marsh grass whispering as the canoe parted it. The shore was flat and the campsite was canopied and surrounded by dark evergreens. By the time I was set up it w.as almost dark. I went down to the shoreline to eat a can of cold pork and beans and look out over the narrow bay.

  You know, people say that darkness falls, but it doesn’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve read that sentence — I do a lot of reading — “darkness fell.” But, as I watched the shore which was covered with dense evergreens and the odd silver birch, I realized that dark­ ness seems to rise from the floor of the forest, and as the sun sinks, the light seems to climb up the trunks as if to escape the blackness that wells up from the earth. Soon, only a few stars shone weakly, then disappeared behind the clouds that were moving in fast on the breeze.

  I don’t know how long I sat there — it was quite awhile — before I noticed something else that surprised me. The forest is noisy at night. What’s all this stuff about the quiet, nighttime woods? I could hear the breeze in the spruce branches, a loon laughing out on the lake, rustles, chirrups, frog-thunks, and other noises I didn’t recognize.

  And I’ll tell you, after awhile it got to me. I didn’t feel so good. It was very dark — so dark that I could barely see the calm surface of the bay, protected by the trees from the night breeze — and the damp air chilled like a wet coat. I began to imagine all kinds of threatening sources for the noises I couldn’t identify. Like insane killers who would invade my campsite and knife me with huge, curved blades, or another bear seeking to chew me up, or the same bear, come back to finish the job. Loneliness crept close, closer with each long, lonely “aloooooooo” of the loon. Another Crabbe anxiety attack was on me, but not the kind I was used to. This was the same dread I had felt a few minutes before the bear came.

  I got up and headed for the tent and my down womb. God, I wanted to talk to my old buddy, Silent Sam: the shivers that chilled me were not from the cold.

  It was a long, fearful night. The kind that is supposed to build character but really just makes you want a drink and a sensible answer to the question, what the hell am I doing here? Or in the world, for that matter. It wasn’t my first lonely night, I can tell you. But it had been a long time since I’d cried, and a long ti
me since Sam was able to convince me that I didn’t really need anybody.

  There isn’t much to tell about the next day. I got up as soon as I saw (gratefully) dawn’s rosy fingers creeping over the horizon. The river travel was uneventful. I found a campsite on a small island that was much less gloomy than the last night’s. But it rained and the plop and patter of drops on the fly increased my loneliness. I was also getting really jumpy. I have to admit Sam’s absence had a lot to do with that. That night was the first time I seriously considered going home. I guess I got some sleep but not much.

  It’s funny how the weather affects you when you’re living outdoors, though. A sunny day greeted me. It was warm, with a light breeze. The murmur of the river was background music to birdsong. I felt full of confidence: what the hell, so I had a few bad nights; I had lots of those at home.

  So, after a continental breakfast of cold instant coffee and a couple of handfuls of Cheerios, intrepid Crabbe launched his loyal craft onto the bosom of whatever river it was.

  For the first while I practiced my rudder technique, letting the current move me — which it did at a brisk rate, it seemed. It was like travelling down an artery at times because the forest came right to the edge of the water. Here, the river was only about twenty feet wide and fairly deep. Occasionally it would widen, trees would give way to a beaver pond. I saw a moose in one of these, staring at me with her long, stupid face, with weeds and whitish bulbs hanging dripping from her lips. Sometimes those bushes that looked sort of like blueberry bushes lined the river. If you were a science buff — which I wasn’t then — you’d have had fits of delight over the variety of bushes and birds and stuff.

  Until you began to hit the portages, that is. I began to encounter them about noon after I stopped for a munch. They were there to skirt the numerous little falls and rapids that started to show up. Although almost all the carry-overs were short — none over a hundred yards — they were difficult as hell, all mucky, strewn with boulders, sometimes pushing straight up an embankment and back down again a little further on. I had to make three trips per portage. So, after a couple of hours I had lost most of my patience and all of my appreciation for the so-called beauties of nature. Some of the falls were really pretty, all laced with white foam, but at the time I hardly looked at them, just pressed on like a machine. It got so I groaned every time I heard the sound of fast moving water in the distance — a sound almost exactly like the wind in the tree tops.

  I guess bone weariness mostly explains what happened. I wasn’t paying too much attention to what I was doing and I was so whacked out I probably couldn’t have got out of the mess anyway.

  What happened was this: I’d just pushed off from a portage that ended below a chute of very fast, wicked looking water that snarled through a rock cut, tossing foam into the air. It wasn’t registering with me that this river was getting quite a bit quicker and more treacherous, deeper and wider, as I struggled along, heaving packs or trying to keep the canoe straight in the swift current.

  Anyway, I started off again and about fifty yards downstream from the pottage was an almost right­angled bend in the river. I could hear loud roaring and figured it was the rapids behind me. Off I went, too tired to paddle, just steering. Then I noticed two things: I began to speed up and the river bottom seemed to leap toward me as it got shallow very quickly, so shallow I couldn’t paddle even if I wanted to. I went lickety-split into that turn. And when I got into it the patented Crabbe paddling method failed me. The canoe began to revolve and the next thing I knew I was between two rock walls going like hell backwards down a fast chute, noise of water thundering in my ears. Sounds funny doesn’t it, if you picture it? But when I turned around to look over my shoulder down the river, my heart stopped. The rock canyon I was trapped in narrowed quickly, like a long funnel, to end where two giant boulders squeezed the foaming river to no more than canoe length in width. And there the water just disappeared.

  I was confused — for about five seconds. Then I got close enough to be shrouded in mist, spray, and the hellish roar of a falls. Over I went. And as I was suspended for a split second in midair, you know what I thought? I thought, Christ, Crabbe, I’ll bet you look ridiculous! Can you believe it? For that microsecond before a very likely death I felt embarrassed!

  But I didn’t have time to blush. The stern of the canoe dropped crashing onto a boulder just beneath the surface and water, walls and ceilings of water, smashed down on me. The packs rolled onto me, propelled by the rushing water, pounding the breath out of me. One of them bashed my arm against a gunwale and I felt a searing pain as the buckle slashed my forearm open. A second pack came square against my face and knocked me backwards into the pandemonium of leaping water. Then, as they say in the whodunits, everything went black.

  But that was just the beginning. Two things — impressions — I remember: darkness and cold. I’ve felt darkness and cold. Everybody has. But this wasn’t the same. The dark was a dead, chilling liquid. And it was like I was slowly sinking into it, and it flowed into my ears and nose and mouth and filled me, dissolved me in blackness.

  Cold is always white or blue, and it pinches you. But this cold was like the blackness. It invaded me, crept to the centre, congealing like black slush. It took me over, turning my bones to dark ice.

  And all the while, this sinking, forever, down and down. There was no fear, strangely enough, just the feeling that I had gone away.

  Then the sinking stopped. The cold and darkness began to recede. Then — this is a little embarrassing — I had an erotic dream. A graceful woman walked naked from the sea and lay down with me, holding me firmly in her arms. She melted the cold away, now embracing me from the front, now from the back, and I could feel her life-warmth on my naked skin. Soon she went away, taking the darkness with her, and I lay in a warm cocoon.

  I opened my eyes eventually. And there, above me, was the most beautiful face I had ever seen.

  Crabbe’s Journal: 10

  She had large, grey eyes, full lips that were a little dry and cracked, and long sandy-coloured hair. Thinking I was still dreaming. I closed my eyes again.

  “Come on. Try to sit up,” said a human voice above me. “Come on.”

  Arms gripped me from behind and lifted me until I sat unsteadily. I rubbed my eyes and tried to hold them open. Bright sunlight made it difficult, shooting little arrows of pain onto my eyeballs. Finally, they focused on a woman, a tall, slender woman dressed in a red checked flannel shirt and jeans. She knelt in front of me and offered me a cup.

  “Here. Drink.”

  I obeyed, still stupefied. I felt like I’d been asleep for a long time and I was completely disoriented. I drank down the delicious, warm soup. The more I swallowed the hungrier I got. Having drained the cup, I handed it back to her. She took it with rough, calloused hands, the nails short and a little dirty.

  “Do you feel warm now?” she said, a little like an interrogator in her tone of voice.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, think. Do you or don’t you?”

  “Yes — yes. I’m warm.”

  “Good. Count from one to ten.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it,” she commanded. Her voice was firm but not nasty -no cream puff, that’s for sure. I counted, feeling a little silly.

  “Okay, that’s good.” Her tone softened a little.

  “Now, gimme your name and where you’re from.”

  I must have been fully to my senses by then because I balked at that one.

  “No, I don’t want to do that,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Just because I don’t want you to know. I could make something up.”

  She smiled then and said, “You too, eh? Well that’s okay. I just wanted to make sure your mind is working right. Hypothermia disorients the mind somewhat. You appear to be alright, though.”

  “What’s ‘hypothermia’?”

  She sat back and crossed her long legs, Indian style, and r
ested her hands on her knees.

  “When you went over the falls you almost drowned. The water in the river is very cold, and when I pulled you out you were already into shock. That’s what hypothermia is, really, shock caused by the cold, which lowers your body temperature. Eventually, it will kill you. Disorientation of the mind is one of the symptoms.”

  “Oh,” I said weakly. She smiled.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to lecture. Want more soup?”

  “Yes. Please. I’m awfully thirsty.”

  She got up and walked over to where a blackened pot sat balanced on a ring of rocks around a little, smoke­ less fire. What had she meant by saying “You too, eh?” I wondered. She came back with more soup and handed me the cup.

  “Thanks,” I said. “This is good. What’s in it?”

  “Oh, let’s see.” She folded her long legs under her and sat down again. “Umm, fish heads, flour, some salt pork, lily roots, onions.”

  You might think I’d throw up at that description but that was the best soup I’d ever tasted. I was famished. It was hot, savoury, full of tasty chunks of potato­ tasting stuff.

  “How did you find me?” I asked. “I don’t remember anything after I went over.” I had to shift my weight because I began to notice a pain in my chest, now that I was fully awake. Putting my hand to my ribs, I saw my left arm was bandaged from elbow to hand .and splinted with two round, peeled sticks. Funny: as soon as I saw the dressing, which was bright blue flowery cloth, my arm began to throb.

  “Careful,” she warned. “You’ve got a couple of cracked ribs. I’ve bound your chest. That’s why it’s hard to get a deep breath. Is it very sore?”

  I nodded.

  “Your arm was cut pretty badly and it may be broken but I’m not sure. I splinted it just in case. To answer your question, I saw you go over the falls. I was down river a bit, putting out some night lines and I looked up just in time to see you disappear into the water. I thought you’d be dead by the time I got to you.”