Wilderness

by Robert B. Parker

  "How's it look?" he said. He kept his eyes on the trail opening across the meadow.

  "It's too dark to see," she said. She took the flashlight from her pack and cupping it to shield the light she looked at the wound. "It doesn't look too bad," she said. "Does it hurt?" "Yes," he said.

  "There's some like little bb's in there," she said.

  "It's shot," he said. "I was hit with a shotgun."

  "I think I will have to get them out," she said.

  "I guess so," he said.

  "Give me your jackknife," she said.

  He let the carbine rest on the log as he fished his jackknife out of his right hip pocket. He handed it to her and took up the gun again.

  She opened the larger blade. It had a narrow sharp point.

  "Give me your lighter," she said. He handed that to her. She snapped it into flame and ran the knife blade through it. She released the lighter and slipped it into his pocket. She blew on the knife blade until it cooled. There was a smudge of black soot on it.

  "What I'm going to try to do," she said, "is to pop the bb's out with the point of the knife, like you would a splinter. I'm not going to dig you."

  "Okay," he said. "Go ahead."

  She put the flashlight in her mouth and held it with her teeth so that the light shone on his wound and her hands were free. She carefully probed the point of the knife at the edge of a bit of shot looking black against the raw flesh. He jumped.

  "Hold still," she said around the flashlight, unable to make the dental sounds.

  He clamped his jaw harder and she flicked the shot out of the flesh with a quick movement of the knife blade. It didn't hurt. It was the sense of what she was doing that made him jumpy, the sense of knife blade in open wound that made the sweat begin to bead on his forehead.

  He was tense. He looked around at her. Saliva ran along the casing of the flashlight. Her eyebrows were down, her face taut with concentration. The light of the flashlight reflecting upward on her made her eye hollows seem deep. He noticed that she had sweat on her forehead too. He turned away and looked at the woods. She carefully and with great delicacy pried another shot fragment from the wound.

  It was full dark now, the open meadow before them still gray with the memory of day, but the woods black. He jumped as she pried too deep with the knife. She murmured around the flashlight. He held still and she got another bit of lead. Across the open land an owl moved in almost soundless flight, low, looking for field mice.

  She worked on his wound for twenty-five minutes. Then she put the knife down, opened a tube of antiseptic cream, smeared it on a large gauze pad, and placed the pad over the wound. She took adhesive tape from the fir staid kit and wrapped it tightly around the arm, holding the pad in place. Then she took the flashlight from her mouth.

  "All there is is aspirin. Why don't you swallow a couple. Can you do it without water?" "Yes," he said. He put the two aspirin in his mouth, tipped his head back with a sudden movement, and swallowed the aspirin.

  "Here," she said, and handed him back the jackknife. Her hands were shaking.

  He put the blade into the ground to clean it and pulled it out and folded it and slipped the knife back in his hip pocket.

  "Thank you," he said. His arm throbbed and he felt weak.

  She shut off the flashlight and put it and the first-aid kit back in the pack.

  "How do you feel?" she said.

  "Not bad," he said. "It throbs, but having it bandaged right helps.

  Makes it feel, you know, protected."

  She nodded and put her hand on the back of his neck and massaged it lightly. It was cold and getting colder. She put her hood up and tightened the drawstrings. Across the open meadow nothing moved. The owl was gone. They had become accustomed to the night sounds of the woods. It now seemed to them like quiet.

  "When they get to this open place," she said, "won't they expect us to be waiting for them?" "Yes," he said. "I would think so."

  "So what will they do?"

  "I wish I knew," he said. He talked without taking his eyes from the circle of wood-line. Back and forth in a slow semicircle he watched.

  "So far they have been stupid as hell. But they can't be that stupid.

  They wouldn't just walk across the open field like targets. Nobody could be that dumb."

  "So what will they do?"

  "Well, they don't have many choices. They have to get downhill to the lake. This trail is the only one they know. When they come to this clearing they'll have to skirt it. That means they'll be ploughing through the woods at night."

  "So what will we do?" "We'll listen," he said.

  CHAPTER 29.

  They lay perfectly still, shivering in the darkness, close together in the hollow just off the trail at the edge of the meadow. There was no moon and the darkness was absolute. They listened. The owl they had seen earlier still hunted and occasionally called out in his hoo hoo hoo sound, so like an owl was said to sound that it seemed almost contrived. They listened intensely, feeling an ache of effort along the jawline. His arm pounded steadily. There was no wind.

  It was an hour before dawn. He heard a branch snap. Half hypnotized by the hours of dead-quiet concentration, he jerked as if waking up, though he had not slept. He put his hand on her arm. She patted it.

  She'd heard. Some twigs snapped and there was a rustling of brush. In the thick blackness it was hard to find direction. Across the trail, he thought. To our right. Maybe ten, twenty yards. He turned his body so he could point the carbine that way. There was silence. Then the sound of someone's breath, short and wheezing. A rustling movement. The wheezing breath remained constant, rasping air in and out. It was a sound of exhaustion. The twigs cracked again.

  Then someone spoke, the sound shocking in the silent wilderness they'd gotten used to.

  "I can't make it, Dolph," the voice said, the breath short and gasping.

  "I can't make it no farther."

  "Shut up." It was Karl's voice. They were closer than Newman had thought. Ten yards. Maybe less.

  "I gotta stop," the voice said. It was the one on the telephone. The huge man.

  "For cris sake keep your voice down," Karl said. "They might be around. They might be anywhere." Karl sounded frightened.

  There was sound of movement in the brush. "Fuck'em," the huge man said. His voice shook with exhaustion. "I ain't moving."

  Newman very carefully got to his feet. He stood behind the trunk of a thick oak and held the carbine chest-high, aimed at the sound of voices. He heard a scratch, smelled sulfur, and saw the flare of a match.

  Karl's voice said, "Richie, are you fucking crazy…"

  The match went out and Newman fired at the spot where it had been, the flare still an impression on his retina. He fired again, moving the barrel of the carbine an inch left. Then again, moving it two inches right. And again, two inches left. Methodically he fired in an oscillating arc centered on the place where the match had flared. He fired at waist-level. Janet crouched behind him, shielded by the tree, one hand on the inside of his right knee, the other holding her small silver revolver. He heard someone grunt. He heard Karl's voice say, "Richie?" and then, higher, "Richie?" and then gunfire returned. They were firing at the muzzle-flash of the carbine. Two slugs thumped into the tree trunk. Another splattered through the foliage to their right.

  He could hear Karl's voice. Cursing.

  "Son of a bitch," Karl said, "son of a fucking bitch." Another bullet hit a tree somewhere behind Newman. The fifteenth shell-casing ejected from the carbine. The trigger clicked and the firing pin snapped emptily. Newman crouched behind the tree, shrugged out of the knapsack, and dug into it frantically. He found the box of shells and, fumbling in the dark, feeling the pressure of Karl's presence, he began to feed fresh ammunition into the clip. He counted, unable to see in the dark. Janet knelt with the.32 ready, looking into the dark. They were facing east and a faint tinge of gray was beginning to lessen the blackness in that direction. Fifteen, he said
to himself, and feeling the bullets with his thumb to make sure they were in the right direction he slid the clip back up into the carbine. He tapped it home with the palm of his right hand and heard it click into place. Relief moved up along his buttocks and across his lower back. Safety is relative, he thought. Now I feel safe because the gun's loaded.

  In front of them there was no noise. The absence of gunfire made the woods seem to echo with silence. The gunfire had quieted the normal forest sounds. As he got used to the silence Newman could hear two things, the sound of labored breathing and, faintly, the sound of someone running. The sky lightened a little more. New man crouched beside Janet and put his mouth to her ear.

  "We have to move," he whispered. "One of them got away and is ahead of us."

  She nodded. He could now barely see her in the very early morning, but he felt her head bob, his face was so close. He started to stand. She took his arm, put her hand against his cheek, and pulled his ear to her lips.

  "It's almost light," she said. "Why not wait until we can see?"

  "The one that's away will get farther away," he whispered.

  "You can catch him," she said. They had developed a little pattern of head-turns, so that each whispered into the other's ear.

  "You think so?" "How far can you run?" she said.

  "Ten, fifteen miles."

  "Can he?" "Probably not," he said.

  "Let's wait, at least until we can see." "Okay," he said, and remained crouched beside her with the oak tree trunk shielding them. There was no more sound of feet, but they could still hear the labored breathing. It was more labored. There was a rattle to it. The sky in the east was white now. Newman could see Janet clearly beside him. There was birdsong.

  "You go around that way," he whispered, and gestured to his right.

  "I'll come from the other side. Creep in. Be careful." He touched her hand. She smiled at him. He moved in a crouch to his left, leaving the protection of the tree, swinging around the place where the breathing came from. He held the carbine ready, his finger on the trigger, a round in the chamber. He saw the huge man first. It was he of the labored breathing. He sat with his back to a tree, a short-barreled revolver in his hand, his hands in his lap. There was blood on his throat and on the front of his shirt. His mouth was open and he seemed to be struggling to breathe. His eyes were slitted and his head would drop forward then snap back erect, like a man falling asleep at the wheel. A stubble of beard showed through the blood that had smeared up onto his chin.

  Near his outstretched legs was Richie Karl. Facedown, dead. Bullet went in the front, came out the back, Newman thought. Don't seem to mind, he thought. Doesn't seem to bother me. Get used to anything.

  Beyond Richie Karl he saw Janet moving behind some sapling birch, then she stepped out from behind the saplings and stood next to the huge man.

  He raised his head, jerking it up again in that peculiar motion. He squinted at her. He moved his right hand. The gun fell from it. He didn't seem to notice.

  "Remember me?" she said.

  He made a croaking noise.

  "Remember tying me up and gagging me?" she said.

  He moved his right hand again. She aimed the nickel plated.32 revolver at his temple and pulled the trigger. A small black hole appeared in his temple and he slumped against the tree. The labored breathing stopped.

  "I hope you went to hell," she said. She still held the revolver straight out ahead of her, pointed as it had been.

  "Jesus," Newman said. He walked to her and pushed her arm down to her side. She didn't resist but neither was her arm limp. With one hand on each shoulder he turned her away, and then, with his arm around her waist, he moved her to the trail. Behind them the woods closed. The dead men were no more. Ahead of them the trail led gently downward.

  Toward the water. Out of the woods.

  "One more," he said.

  "Yes."

  The sun appeared above the edge of the trees in the eastern sky, the top rim of it. And the woods, while shadowy, seemed pleasant and warm after the storm. They walked in silence along the trail for a quarter of a mile.

  "You are going to have to run him down," she said.

  "Without you?"

  "You know I can't run like you can."

  "You can go several miles."

  "I'll have to carry your pack, unless you want to run with it on."

  He shook his head. They stopped.

  "If he gets away it means our death," she said. "It means our daughters' death, probably, it means the destruction of everything you've ever cherished. We've come this far. We've almost won. You'll have to do it."

  His arm hurt. It had hurt all along, but in the fire fight in the darkness he'd forgotten. It throbbed and the pain ran into his shoulder and neck.

  Janet said, "I can't chase him. I'm exhausted. I probably couldn't, even if I weren't." She spoke very quietly, standing right in front of him, her face close to his.

  "Yes," he said. He felt heavy and slow. His legs felt weak and stiff.

  He was in pain. He edged the knapsack down over the wound in his arm and dropped it on the ground. He slipped off the nylon pullover and rolled it tightly and, squatting, put it into the pack. He slipped out of the down vest, rolled it tightly, and put it into the pack. Then he stripped off his shirt and stowed it.

  "You've lost weight," she said.

  He handed her the hatchet and she slipped it into her belt.

  "You take the carbine," he said. She took it. He took from her the.32 gun and holster and strapped it to his belt, in back, near the small of his back. He was naked to the waist, shivering in the early sunlight. He had on near white corduroy pants, and boots that laced up over the ankle. They were expensive and weighed very little. He put two granola bars in his pants pocket.

  "What if he's waiting ahead, like we did?" she said.

  He shrugged. "If he is, he is. You're right, I got no choice."

  "Maybe he won't be."

  "Maybe. He doesn't know how many of us there are. His whole party's been shot. He's alone in the woods. He must be scared. I hope he'll just run." "I'm glad we destroyed the boats," she said.

  "I wish we'd destroyed the canoe. If he finds it we've lost."

  "He won't," she said.

  He looked again at her. She still had the green nylon pullover on, the hood over her head, the drawstring tight. It framed her face like a nun's habit. There was no makeup left, and her face was gray with fatigue. But there was no uncertainty in the face. He'd looked at the same face with the strong planes and the wide mouth for almost as long as he could remember. Without makeup a few freckles showed against her pale skin. There were deep parenthetical lines around her mouth.

  Deeper than he remembered. He was enough taller than she was so that she tilted her head slightly to look at him.

  "You can do this," she said. "He won't find the canoe. You will catch him."

  There were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, a tiny red mark under her right eye. He could see the pores in her skin.

  "You can," she said.

  He nodded. "Here I go," he said. And turned and began to jog down the trail away from her, toward the lake.

  CHAPTER 30.

  He jogged slowly. He wasn't used to running in boots and they felt heavy on his feet. But he remembered running in boots in the Army.

  I'll get used to it. He watched the trail ahead of him; it was narrow and it turned frequently. There were fallen branches occasionally, and tree roots that reared here and there above ground, and rocks, some as big as softballs. What seemed easy to walk on became dangerous to run on. He knew that. The years of jogging had left him so sensitive to footing that he could feel the difference between running on sidewalk and running in the street. Street's better. More give. Smooth. Shows what we care about in our culture. He took short steps. Running, even running slowly, increased his sense of the trail's downward pitch. He felt clumsy and stiff, the joints awkward-feeling, and slow.

  His breathin
g was ragged. I'll never make a mile, he thought, and thought how often he'd said that. He always felt this way when he started. As if today he couldn't do it. But he pressed on and always he loosened up and the breath came easy and he found he could make it.

  It'll happen this time too, he thought. The sun rose higher. In places among the trees a thin fog steamed up from the wet leaves. The pitch of the trail flattened slightly. As he ran, his eyes moved steadily back and forth across the trail into the woods on either side.

  He could almost feel the threat of gunfire, the bullet hitting him in the chest, a massive thump. A green garter snake with black stripes glided across the path in front of him, moving as if without volition.

  He began to feel warmer. He stayed on the pace, slow, easy, his arms held slightly above his waist moved in rhythm with his steps. When he'd first begun to run regularly, he remembered, he'd worked on the rhythm, getting the feet to move steadily, and the arms. When he'd been teaching his daughters he used to emphasize it: "Get the rhythm down," he'd told them. "Later it will be much easier to run if you run in an organized way. If you look good or at least better." They hadn't stuck with the running, though, and had never got beyond the stage where their arms and legs moved in ragged asymmetry. Above him two sparrows chased a crow, darting about it in flight, looking ludicrously small next to the great black scavenger. But the crow fled, and the sparrows pursued. Watch the path he said to himself. Twist your ankle and you might as well be dead. Never mind the fucking birds. He was conscious as he jogged of the weight of the revolver banging against his coccyx. It was the best place for it. It would be more bothersome anywhere else. He began to loosen. His legs felt freer, stretched out more. His arms moved easier, he felt sweat begin to form on his bare back. He felt lighter. I probably have lost weight. I ought to. Haven't eaten anything to speak of in… He couldn't remember how long they'd been in the woods. A ground squirrel crossed his path, its tail out straight behind it, its feet moving very rapidly. He remembered how he used to try to keep his cat from killing chipmunks as a boy and how determined the cat was, dodging his broom, circling back to torment and toy with the half-crippled chipmunk, too quick for him to grab, until his father had told him not to interfere, that even if he saved the chipmunk its spine was probably broken and it would die a lingering death anyway. At night the cat slept on his bed.