Robert Crews

by Thomas Berger

  “Who the hell are you?” The tone was harsh, but the voice was that of a woman. She brandished the blade. “I’m not afraid to use this.”

  “God almighty,” Crews croaked, from a throat unaccustomed to speech. He was getting his hands and one knee under him. “You’re—”

  She pushed him forcefully with a foot, and he fell back. “I asked who you were.”

  “I was in a plane crash,” he said angrily. “It went into the lake. I’ve been trying to keep alive ever since. Why are you threatening me? Why did you steal and wreck my raft? It took me days to make that, without any tools but the one you’re holding. Why do you need my knife when you’ve got a gun?”

  The flame was sputtering and getting smokier by the moment. The young woman, for such she was, held the torch as far from her body as she could. She had tousled long dark hair and regular features, so far as could be seen in the light that illuminated only part of her face and threw distorting shadows on the remainder.

  “Are you telling the truth?” Her voice had lost some of its edge.

  “Look at me,” Crews said. “Do I look like things are going my way?”

  “All right,” she said, gesturing with the knife blade. “Get to your knees and start crawling out of the cave, and be quick about it: this torch is about ready to quit. Remember, I’m right behind you, with the knife. When you get to the outside, keep crawling away from the mouth of the cave, until I tell you to stand up.”

  He did as ordered, but when he reached the outside, where daylight had come, he immediately sprang erect, bent down as she crawled out, wrested the tool from her hand, and, seizing her denim jacket at the scruff of its neck, pulled her to her feet. She was fairly tall, only a couple of inches shorter than he, and slender but very fit-looking. She tried to struggle with him, but he pushed her away.

  “Stop it, goddammit! This is my property.” He folded the blade back into the handle and dropped the tool into his side pocket. “Now suppose you tell me what you are doing here.” He could not resist adding bitterly, “Aside from stealing stuff from people who are fighting for their life.”

  Her blue eyes continued to show residual fury for a moment or two. In full daylight her features were in fact very fine, but her face was smudged with dirt. She wore filthy jeans. Her denim jacket was torn on its left side. She snarled, “Touch me again, and I’ll kill you.”

  He had forgotten the gun, but if she had been carrying it, she would surely have drawn it by now. And if she had had a firearm, why would she have brandished the knife?

  “I’m not impressed by your bluster,” he said. “I won’t have any reason to touch you if you aren’t carrying any weapons. Empty your pockets. Turn them out.”

  She hesitated for a moment and then complied. Her front pockets were empty.

  “Turn around.”

  “The hell I will.” She was fierce again.

  “I just want to see your back pockets. Come on.” She had no weapons or anything else. She could do him no serious harm. “I was telling the truth about the crash. I don’t want to fight with you. Just tell me how to get out of these woods. I’ve been traveling in circles.”

  She blinked briefly, but raised her eyes in some lingering defiance. “Why’d you come into the cave?”

  “To get out of the rain,” Crews said. “Why are you so pugnacious?” She met his stare, and he broke before she did, because all he wanted now was her help. “All right, forget about the raft and the stuff from my hut—”

  “You keep mentioning that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked away. “If you’re lost, so am I. I don’t have any idea where I am. I’ve been running for my life.” When she turned back to him, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Running for your life? Then you’re not the one who has the gun? Who’s chasing you?”

  She shook her tousled head but stayed silent.

  Given the situation, he was annoyed. “I told you about me. If I could submit references, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I know I must look awful. I haven’t been able to shave, and it’s hard to get clean without soap. You just have to think why someone in my shoes would lie.” He lifted one of his bare feet.

  “No, I don’t,” she cried bitterly, still weeping.

  Her trouble seemed genuine. “Okay,” he said, “don’t tell me. But can’t we work together on getting out of here?”

  She grimaced, impatiently, and wiped her eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “I certainly don’t have a gun. The man who’s after me does have one. He might do harm to you too if we link up.”

  “If he’s coming this way,” said Crews, “we’d better find some cover. But not in the cave again. Too easy to be trapped there.”

  “He tried to kill me.” She seemed to be telling this primarily to herself and with a certain disbelief.

  “He’s not superhuman, is he?” Crews asked. “I’ve held my own out here for weeks. And look, you got away from him, didn’t you?”

  She stayed grim. “He killed my husband. We were camping, and he just came out of the woods with this gun and shot Michael.”

  “I heard those shots.”

  “Then he tied me up.” Her voice had lost all identifiable emotion. “I hate camping. I was just trying to be a good guy. That was important to Michael.”

  “Who was this man?” Crews asked. “A complete stranger?” Suddenly she was too weak to stand erect. He pointed to a nearby boulder. “Why don’t you sit there?” She finally did so. The ground, though stony, was still too damp from yesterday’s downpour. Crews remained standing. “This criminal, do you have any idea who he might be?”

  “He’s some kind of woodsman,” she said, almost contemplatively, looking at the rocks between her feet. “I think he probably lives around here. A hunter or trapper or something. He’s got a beard.”

  “Like mine?”

  She kept her eyes down. “Big and bushy. He’s filthy dirty.”

  “You’re sure your husband is dead?”

  “I don’t see how he could have survived. It was at close range.”

  “I’m no authority,” Crews said, “but I’ve heard about people who have survived worse.”

  “That was two days ago.”

  “Even so, I think we should find the campsite. He might still be hanging on, you can’t tell. I’ve got a general idea of where it might be, because I can remember where I was when I heard the shots, more or less. Who was it I saw on the cliff? Was that you or him? I yelled and waved my arms. I was sure whoever it was saw me.”

  “It wasn’t me. I didn’t see anybody after I got away. He went off somewhere for a while. He left me tied up, but it was easier getting out of the ropes than I thought. I didn’t know where I was running. I only know we’re a couple of days from anywhere. That was what Michael wanted. To leave it all behind.” She put her hands on her face.

  Crews was reminded of his failure to retrieve the bodies from the submerged airplane. Perhaps he could earn some extenuation. “If there’s any chance your husband might still be living, we ought to try and find him. I’d spare you the ordeal and go myself, but I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “I’m scared. There’s nothing you can do against a gun.”

  “There are two of us,” Crews said. “And we know he’s out there. We’re not going to be jumped without warning, like you and your husband were. One of us will stay on guard at all times. The gun is not necessarily a deciding factor. There are other weapons available to us.” Much of this was bravado, but the need to gain her respect gave him more faith in himself than he otherwise would have known. “But we’ve got to get organized. Do you have any idea where this gunman might be? If it wasn’t you who stole the stuff from my camp, then he did it. But I don’t know when. I thought he might have come this way, but if he did, the rain washed away any footprints. The first move we should make is climb up there and see what we can.” He nodded at the heights above the cave. “Do you want to go first?”

  She seeme
d not quite to have lost her distrust of him. He took the knife-bearing tool from his pocket. “Hold it, if you want. It’s the only thing I own that could be called a weapon.”

  She waved it off. “Don’t mind me.” She was shivering.

  He took off the seersucker jacket. “Here. I’m sorry it’s so dirty.”

  “I’m not cold that way.” She began quietly to weep again.

  Crews put his jacket on. “We should get going.”

  She stared at him. “It was completely by surprise. There was nothing I could do.”

  “I saved myself in the crash,” Crews said, “and even brought along some gear. I did nothing for the others. I tried, but then I passed out. Maybe I could have saved some or all of my friends, but I didn’t. The difference with you is that you could not have done anything about what happened. But you’re alive, and I’m not going to let any more harm come to you. You can count on it! Now let’s find a way to get up there.”

  It was she who located the best route to the top of the cliff above them, a ravine to start to climb which took more initial effort than the one he first chose, but his presented an un-climbable impasse a third of the way up, and he had to come down and follow her lead. She waited for him on the level summit.

  This was the highest point from which he had yet surveyed the territory in which he had been lost for—however long it was. One end of the lake could be seen, but the other was hidden by the forest, as were the pond, the area of fallen trees, and his hut, along with the stream except for its immediate length just below them. The killer could be anywhere.

  “Did you and your husband have a lot of camping equipment?” She gazed blankly at him. “This guy stole the only stuff from my hut that was worth anything. He’s tracking down the only witness to his crime and yet he takes the trouble to steal my fishing stuff. Maybe sooner or later he’ll go back to your campsite to get whatever possessions you left there.”

  She nodded in what might have seemed indifference had her anguish not been known. She could surrender her vigilance, now that he had come forward. It was an expression of trust, perhaps as much as he could expect from her.

  “Here’s my idea,” he went on. “If all we do is keep trying to evade him, we won’t have a moment’s peace of mind, and we might lose in the end if we think of ourselves as his prey. We don’t know where we are, and we are unarmed and amateurs at this. Whereas he’s presumably a native of the area and has a gun.” She was listening, but her face was so expressionless he could not believe she heard him. He would, however, have said as much to himself. “The conclusion I therefore have arrived at might sound crazy. I say we stalk him.” He gave her a moment to protest, while counting on her to stay remote while he worked out what he really meant. She made no response. “There are two of us, you see. In effect, he’ll always have his back to one or the other. That is, we should see that’s the case. We can make weapons of our own, spears, clubs, and so on, or just rocks. But our most effective weapon will be surprise. The last thing he’ll expect is to become the pursued.”

  She stared down across the forest and said nothing. He had looked at her for an hour now without seeing that what he had believed a sooty smudge from her left cheekbone to the chin was rather one great area of discoloration, a bruise that occupied more than a quarter of her face.

  “Maybe you should stay here,” Crews said. “If he did try to come up, there’s no way but the one we took. You could see him coming from a long way off, and roll those boulders down on him. There’s no place in that ravine to maneuver. You’ll be okay here. I’ll go down and catch some fish and bring them up, and some water too. We’ll eat, and then I’ll go after that bastard.”

  She shook her head violently, though she continued to avoid meeting his eyes. “No.”

  He tried not to be exasperated. “If you just want to try to get out of here, remember that we’re almost certain to run into him anyway. There’s probably just one main trail, and if he can’t find you before, he’s likely to wait there.”

  The woman said slowly, in almost a moan, “He shot me.” She lifted the torn side of her jacket. She wore nothing under it. There was an ugly purplish wound in the soft tissue between her ribs and the waist, not a hole as such but a kind of slash. It looked as if the bullet had gone across, tearing skin and flesh, but not into her body.

  Crews winced. “I’ve got some antiseptic down at my camp. I don’t think he stole that. Let me go get it. I should be back in an hour or less.”

  “No, no,” she said. “You mustn’t.” She clutched at her jacket. “You’ll get killed.”

  “No, I won’t!” he cried. “He’s not going to kill either one of us.” Then, so as to make a case even he could find credible, he went on. “You see, I’ve got a charmed life. There has to be a reason why I of all people was spared from dying in that crash. I was the least worthwhile person on board. I’m being given the opportunity to prove I’m worth a damn.” She dropped her hands. He could not tell whether what he said had had any effect on her. “I don’t like the way that wound looks. It might be infected. It should be cleaned and treated. I wish you had mentioned it before now. You must be in pain.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” she said. “But I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  “All right,” said Crews, and turned to lead the way down. It was then, making one last sweep of the land below, that he saw the thin wisp of gray smoke coming up from the dark forest on the other side of the lake. “Look. Over there.” He turned back to her. “That’s a couple of miles away. We’re one up on him at the moment. We know where he is, but he doesn’t know where we are. Let’s go.” He did not wait for her reaction.

  They made good time in reaching his camp. He found the little spray can and gave it to her. But when he saw the difficulty she would have in reaching the far end of the elongated wound, he reclaimed it.

  “Just keep your shirt lifted. This will feel cold at first, but the local anesthetic in it will take over in a second.” The gash, though ugly, did not seem to be infected. Washing off the encrusted blood with water from the pond would have been too painful at this point, in his opinion. She recoiled slightly when the spray first touched her, as he expected. He welcomed the reaction as evidence that she had not fallen into a state of semiconsciousness.

  He took the tool from his pocket and squatted in the dirt. He began to scratch out a crude map with the screwdriver blade. “Here’s the lake, and here’s where we are.” This was an oval and an X. “Here’s the stream, the pond, my hut. Here’s where I was on the raft, on the lake, when I heard the shots.” He touched the blade to the earth. “Think your camp might have been about here?” She was still standing. Crews was impatient. “I need your help with this.” But when he saw her woeful expression, he rose. “We can do that later. Let me put some stuff together, and we’ll get going.”

  “There was a clearing,” she said. “It was less than fifty yards to the beach. He didn’t want to be closer to the water, he said, because the tent would be too exposed if a storm came. He knew about things like that.”

  Crews squatted again and x’d the dirt map. “Does this look about right?…” He glanced up at her. “I know this is painful, but can you remember any details at all? Where the sun rose or set? Any landmarks? One of those cliffs, for example?”

  “I didn’t know about anything,” she said. “Mostly, I didn’t know about him.”

  Crews put the tool into his pocket along with the can of disinfectant. From the hut he got the thermos, which, after filling it at the pond, he tethered to his belt with a loop of fishline that would allow it to dispense water without being unhitched. In the duffel bag he found one of his knitted shirts. During his raft-building days he had taken time to do some laundry in the lake, and the shirt was as clean as soapless cold water could make it. He took it out to her.

  “Here. Put this on under the jacket. It’ll help at night.” He considerately turned his back. “I’ve only got one other pair of pants, an
d I didn’t get around to washing them after the raft was finished, and they’re full of mud.” When he turned back she had the shirt on. It was even looser on her than he had anticipated. She had trouble getting back into the smaller denim jacket.

  He took a last look at the house he had built. He was proud of what he had done and wished that he could have shown it to her under different circumstances.

  “We’ll stay back from the lakeshore. We won’t make as good time through the woods, but he won’t be able to see us as easily, if he’s looking. I’ll lead the way. Anytime I’m going too fast or you don’t feel good and want to stop, just tell me. And please stay close. I can’t keep looking back to check.”

  Nevertheless, he did keep looking back, every few paces, on their way along the bank of the stream, for the route was much more demanding than it had been when he used it alone. There were places where he had simply waded in an undergrowth that then had seemed sparse, but mysteriously had since grown burrs and thorns, too cruel to lead her through. There were fallen trees which, alone, he had easily climbed over but now considered too formidable for her. Because of his detours they made much poorer time than he had anticipated and sometimes encountered even worse terrain than that they were avoiding, which required still further evasive action.

  But at last he could say, “Right down there is where the woods end and the marsh begins. That’s where I built the raft. It’s an exposed position: we could be seen from the opposite shore. So we’ll turn right here and keep in the trees.”

  Despite the pains with which he had led her around the worst thickets, a little twig end had caught and broken off in the abundant fall of rich brown hair that swung across her left ear. He thought about removing the twiglet, but doctoring was one thing and grooming another. Also, it was not unattractive, a kind of wilderness jewelry.

  He had forgotten that before long the woods gave way to the meadow where the wildflowers grew. He halted at its edge. The alternative was to go the long way around, keeping to the trees a quarter mile behind.

  “We’ll go on across. He’s probably still way back in the woods over there. He may even be farther away.” The smoke had never been seen again once they had come down from their observation post on the cliff, but Crews had decided that that was a matter of relative perspectives and not necessarily evidence that the man had put out his campfire and gone back to the hunt.