Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  The last was an obvious lie, as Doug’s careful motions and pale complexion proved, but they both lay back on the dirt, blinking up at the blue-washed sky.

  Suddenly, Doug rolled onto his side. “Is that a—” He broke off.

  “What?” Natalie asked. “What do you see?”

  Doug didn’t respond, but began to scrabble up the final few feet of hill, using one hand and both feet to move like some demented creature, monkey-like in his excitement. “Nat!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Come see!”

  The ground flattened out, and Doug straightened up and started running.

  Natalie followed.

  “Look!” Doug called out again. And—was he crying? Yes, his voice was thick with it, his face shiny. Natalie was about to urge him to save his tears—same reasoning he’d just applied to herself—but then she saw what he did.

  A blaze on a tree, signifying a hiking trail.

  Not the blue metal ones from the trail they had been attempting to find—this was a painted splotch—but it was a blaze nonetheless, pink in color, unmistakably man-made. Blazes demarcated trails, and who cared if this one ran through a completely different part of the wilderness, its origin and terminus unknown? A trail, any trail, meant the end of bushwhacking. A trail meant a return to civilization.

  They both began turning—spinning almost, as if on a carnival ride—while they scanned the woods around them.

  “There!” Doug shouted, and loped forward.

  It took a while to find the next pink mark, but the ground was tamped down, appearing to delineate a path. Natalie found another flag readily enough, though pale and indistinct, then Doug the one after that, until they were both giving way to each other, trading places in a gleeful, expansive pantomime of politeness: “You go.” “No, you.”

  They started running, Doug cradling his bad arm, in a race to find more blazes, as if the trailhead might lie just ahead.

  It was Natalie who thought to stop them. Panting, she said, “We’re probably farther than it feels. We shouldn’t exert ourselves this much.”

  It was so hot out—more like the city than the mountains—and they were both perspiring. The truth was, they could be many miles from egress yet. The direction in which they were traveling might lead them to the end of the trail versus its beginning, and then they would have to turn around, retrace their steps. Still, there was no denying that being on land where human beings were meant to tramp had changed everything.

  They walked until it grew too dark to see the marks, especially given how faint most of them were. Afraid they’d miss one and veer off course, they stopped beneath a sheltering tree, its boughs lending coolness after the heat of the day. Doug sat leaning back against the trunk’s broad base, and Natalie settled down beside him.

  “I hope this heat breaks soon,” she said. “It can’t be helping our thirst.” A vicious vise had clamped itself around her skull, a headache that a whole bottle of Motrin wouldn’t touch.

  Doug’s lips looked swollen, and there were whitish scales around his mouth. It made Natalie recall that a part of the rhythm of their days had gone missing. For how long? When was the last time Doug had crept off to seek privacy behind a tree? A gush, a spatter, even a trickle would be an indication of health.

  “Honey?” she ventured. “Have you been…peeing?”

  He appeared to consider. “Not since yesterday. You?”

  Though it hurt to do so, Natalie shook her head.

  He lowered his gaze. They both knew what this meant, Doug from his wilderness training, Natalie from her amateur interest in health and medicine. Twenty-four hours without relieving oneself constituted a warning. Forty-eight would signal dire danger.

  Natalie resisted the urge to lick her lips, which must’ve resembled Doug’s. She was ghastly, a witchy husk on her honeymoon. Would Doug ever again be able to see her as that pickup at the bar, or as a bride, consumed with her appearance? Both women seemed so frivolous now, yet their replacement was hardly appealing.

  As if reading her mind, Doug gave her a look up and down. “Looking good, Mrs. Larson,” he said, aping the voice of some classic TV show character whose identity now escaped Natalie. Her thoughts had grown sluggish as they followed the trail. Spotting the next painted marker had been challenge enough.

  “It’s the bra,” she said, something vaguely clever coming to her at last, and was gratified when Doug let out a faint laugh upon catching sight of the grimy, dust-streaked lace cups and nylon straps that served as Natalie’s only cover.

  “I was supposed to give you my shirt,” he said. “But I don’t know if I have the strength to take it off.”

  “It’s okay, I don’t want it,” Natalie said. “It’s so hot out.” She sounded whiny, querulous, and wasn’t sure why. What she should’ve felt was a deep and abiding sense of relief. They would be out of here and back home soon.

  “We’ll be back home soon,” Doug said softly, an eerie echo of her thought, minus the malcontent mood. “Bet you I spot the first trail marker tomorrow.”

  “You’re on,” Natalie murmured.

  The nocturnal noisiness of the forest posed a wilderness counterpoint to the nighttime soundtrack she’d lived with all her life in the city, and Natalie felt herself start to drift off.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A tornado began to whirl inside Mia’s chest. She couldn’t take a single step away from the men who now had possession of her phone, let alone fight or pull free.

  She knew these men. Recognized them anyway.

  One had a weird, lopsided walk as he steered her over toward the side of the stoop. And the other was the scowler who’d been sitting on the hood of that shiny new car when Mia had gotten here earlier.

  “We just want to talk to you,” the one who walked funny said.

  His friend couldn’t seem to stop scowling—his face looked like it was formed that way—but he nodded in agreement. “Then you can have your phone back.”

  Like they were her mom, taking away phone privileges. Mia faced both men challengingly. “What were you doing in my aunt and uncle’s apartment?”

  The one with the weird walk stared back at her, not refuting Mia’s charge, but not offering an explanation for it either.

  “Funny,” said the one who scowled all the time. “That’s what we wanted to ask you.”

  The man’s brows hung low over his eyes, and even the corners of his mouth turned in, but the other man, the one with the short leg, had a pleasant enough face. Mia wondered if he’d gotten teased a lot as a kid. That would be sad.

  Her own face felt red and blistery beneath the sun’s strong rays. She had forgotten to put on sunscreen. Mia whipped her head to the left. No police were around, not even the kind that gave parking tickets. People walked by on the sidewalk, caught up in the slipstream of the subway crush and entrances to stores. None of them seemed to notice what was happening on the stoop a few feet above them, but they were all comfortingly close by if Mia decided to scream. Unless they wouldn’t hear her, connected as they were to iPods or chatting on their phones.

  “Did you come here to visit your uncle and aunt?” asked the man who limped.

  “Of course not,” Mia said in a duh tone. “They aren’t even home.”

  Both men exchanged looks.

  “Where are they?” asked Scowly.

  Mia frowned. If these men didn’t know that Aunt Nat and Uncle Doug were on their honeymoon, then perhaps she shouldn’t be the one to tell them.

  Scowly and his friend must’ve been the people who entered the apartment—they looked like the type who would know how to pick a lock—and why would they have done that? To check and see if Aunt Nat and Uncle Doug were there? Had they left upon catching a glimpse of Mia, when she hadn’t known anyone had been watching her? Creepy crawlies started to slither against her skin.

  The man with t
he short leg took out his own phone and began using his thumb to scroll. He tilted the screen in Mia’s direction. “Do you know this man?”

  Mia looked down. The person looked to be about Uncle Doug’s age, but he wasn’t like Uncle Doug or his friends. This guy looked edgier. His hair was buzzed, and he had a bunch of piercings and tats.

  “No,” Mia said, shaking her head.

  “His name is Craig Reynolds,” the nicer man said. “That ring a bell?”

  Mia shook her head again. “Who is he?”

  The nicer man glanced at his friend or partner or whoever he was. Scowly was clearly the one in charge.

  “Friend of your uncle’s,” the nicer man said. “Which brings us back to—”

  “Why did you come down here?” Scowly interrupted, impatient. “If you knew your aunt and uncle weren’t home?”

  Mia had no answer for that.

  The nicer man said, “Let’s go. She doesn’t know anything.”

  Even though Mia wanted nothing more than for both men to do what the nice one was suggesting, his words made her mad.

  Scowly took a step closer, crowding Mia on the stoop. “When do you expect your uncle back?”

  Mia thought fiercely. Aunt Nat had told her their plan. “In four more days,” she said. “Wait, no, three. No, it is four.”

  The nicer man began shaking his head, looking almost fearfully at Scowly. “That isn’t true. So long as they stick to the plan, Larson—or Reynolds, at least—will be back from the mountains today. Tonight at the latest.”

  Well, if he already knew the timing, then why had he asked her about it? Mia thought crossly. Besides which, he was wrong. No way were Aunt Nat and Uncle Doug coming home today. Their honeymoon was only half over; Mia had complained about its length. A whole week plus one day for travel! The city was boring without Aunt Nat.

  Scowly twisted, wedging his body close enough to Mia’s that she could feel the heat coming off him. Fear suddenly clenched her like a fist, and she reacted on sheer instinct, pushing past both men. Mia took all three stairs at a jump, then raced off down the sidewalk, ignoring the startled shouts of pedestrians she brushed against.

  She was six blocks away when she remembered her phone.

  • • •

  Mia swerved into the first bodega she came to. She asked the man behind the counter if she could use his phone. She couldn’t think of the number she was supposed to call to reach her mother at the hospital, but her father’s she knew by heart. That was probably better anyway; Mia couldn’t imagine what her mom would do if she got this news. Hunt the men down herself maybe, knock on every door in the city.

  Her father didn’t recognize the phone Mia was calling from and answered with a cautious “Hello?”

  “Daddy,” Mia said. Tears caught her off guard, and she gulped back a sob.

  “Mi?” His voice rose in alarm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The encounter felt creepier and creepier the further Mia got from it. Plus, she’d lost her phone, when she wasn’t supposed to have been out of her apartment in the first place. Her mom was going to ground her for life.

  “These men… They—” She broke off.

  “Mia!” her dad cried. “Are you all right?”

  The store owner took the phone gently out of Mia’s hand. “Sir? My name is Ravi Patel. It is my phone that your daughter is using. She is all right. I am looking at her, and she is perfectly fine. But I think you had better come down to my store.”

  Mr. Patel also called the police. They arrived before Mia’s dad—Mia figured there were usually police at the ready in a neighborhood like this—but held off talking to Mia until her father could get there. An ambulance came too—slow day in Alphabet City—and one of the EMTs gave Mia a once-over.

  Her father ran into the store, red-faced and sweating, moons of moisture beneath the arms of his shirt. In the air-conditioned chill of the bodega, Mia had forgotten how hot it was outside. Her dad looked like he had run the whole way, or at least hopped out of the cab to finish the trip. The streets were clogged with traffic; the sound of beeps and honks and tires squealing entered from outside.

  Her dad held out his arms, and smelly and sweaty as he was, Mia rushed at him. “What happened, Mi?” He stroked her hair away from her face with a damp palm.

  One of the cops stepped forward. He was unnaturally tall, like an NBA player. “Sir? We’ve been waiting to take your daughter’s statement. Do you think you could come with us to the back of the store? No one will bother us there.” The cop took a closer look at her dad, peering down to do it. “And it’s cooler.”

  Still holding on to each other, Mia and her father followed the tall cop, moving like some conjoined creature toward the refrigerated cases of soda and beer.

  Mr. Patel came back and placed two water-beaded cans of Coke into Mia and her dad’s hands, free of charge. Mia cracked hers and drank the whole thing down without stopping.

  The cop asked Mia what had happened, and Mia heard her dad take in a sucked breath when she got to the part about the men approaching her on the stoop and asking a bunch of questions.

  “What is there to be done about this, Officer?” Mia’s dad asked when she’d finished.

  The cop had been bending down to listen to Mia; now he straightened. “Probably not much,” he admitted. He tapped a spiral-bound notepad against his palm. “In the end, what we’ve got is a voluntary conversation between your daughter and two strangers. The men do seem to have an interest in your…sister-in-law, is it? And her new husband?”

  Mia’s father nodded.

  “But since both of them are currently out of town,” the cop said with a glance at his pad, “the suggestion I would make is for you to warn Mr. and Mrs. Larson upon their return. They can keep an eye out and call us if they see anything strange.”

  “That’s it?” asked Mia’s dad.

  “Well, your daughter’s cell phone was technically stolen,” the cop said. “My partner and I will take a walk around the neighborhood, see if we can find anybody who saw something. But my guess is that the men themselves are long gone by now.”

  Mia’s father wiped his hand across his brow; it came away gleaming. “Christ.” He sounded angry, and Mia looked up at her dad, fresh tears wobbling on the rims of her eyes. But then her father said, “You got away from them, Mi,” in a marveling tone, and Mia felt her whole body go tingly with pride. Even though the men had never actually made a move to hold on to her. “Thank God, you got away.”

  Mia followed her dad and the tall cop back to the front of the store. Her dad walked over to the counter, extending his arm.

  Mr. Patel reached out, and the two men shook hands.

  “I wanted to say…” Mia’s dad began, then stopped and cleared his throat. “I wanted to say thank you. For being here for my daughter.”

  Someone entered the bodega then, causing bells to jangle as the door was banged open. It was Mia’s mom. Mia felt overcome by an utterly childish desire to run over for a hug; she was scared she might’ve whimpered the word mommy.

  Her mother wrapped Mia in her arms, her skin still carrying the chill of the hospital. She spoke to Mia’s dad over Mia’s head. “What happened?” she asked in an accusatory tone. “You barely said anything in your message.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew Mia was okay,” her father replied, his voice also unpleasant. Snippy. If Mia had sounded like that, she would’ve gotten scolded.

  Mia lifted her head. The top of her mother’s ducky scrubs felt clammy, sticking to her cheek, and she saw the tall cop watching her parents.

  “If I can make one more suggestion?” he said.

  Mia’s parents both nodded.

  “You might want to keep a closer eye than usual on your daughter for a while,” the cop said. “It’s likely that this will turn out to be an isolated incident, b
ut a little extra caution never hurt.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Natalie and Doug woke up shivering against each other, legs intertwined, bodies pressed so close there was no space in between. The heat had broken in the night, and Natalie’s half-naked state had become a real problem. Her flesh looked three-dimensional, polka-dotted with minuscule, raised white bumps.

  Doug moaned, moving stiffly to separate their bodies.

  “Your arm,” Natalie said, through lips she had to pry apart. “How is it?” The answer was obvious, and Natalie winced at the sight of his pain. Her myriad discomforts were nothing. Doug needed Motrin. No, he needed morphine.

  He blinked blearily until his gaze landed on her. “Oh shit,” he said, startled. “You’re cold. Natalie, you’re really cold. You need this.”

  She was shaking so hard that she couldn’t refuse, although the sight of Doug trying to get out of his shirt would’ve brought tears to her eyes, had she any left to cry. She helped untie the makeshift sling while Doug cradled his injured arm with his good one. Letting the right arm hang loose seemed an intolerable proposition.

  “Just keep your shirt on,” Natalie said through chattering teeth. “I’ll be okay.”

  Doug shook his head, gritting his own teeth. “Pull it over my arm. I’ll do the rest.”

  The maneuver seemed to take hours as Natalie inched the cloth toward Doug’s shoulder, her hands trembling too hard for precision. “I’m sorry!” she cried tearlessly when she jerked him for the third time. “I’m so sorry, Doug!”

  Finally able to refasten the sling around her shirtless husband, Natalie patted dry his perspiring face and slick chest. The sweat was a good sign. Still, she was frightened by how shrunken Doug had grown after only two days, his chest hollow and sunken in.

  Natalie pulled his shirt over her head and slid her arms into its sleeves. Filthy and stinking as the material was, it delivered instant warmth and comfort.