The Sacrifice

by Robert Whitlow

  “The dome. Eskimos don’t try to backpack with igloos.”

  Scott pointed to the stream. “If you’re thinking about igloos, you need to cool off.”

  While Scott continued organizing the campsite, Kay walked over to the water. There were gentle ankle-deep rapids close to the bank. Taking off her shoes and socks, she put one of her aching feet in the water. It was cold. She took a few steps farther into the stream until the water came up to her knees. The rushing flow washed away her fatigue.

  Turning toward Scott, she called out, “This is wonderful!”

  She took another step, slipped on a rock, and fell, soaking her shorts.

  Scott turned when he heard her scream. Nicky barked and came running to the bank. Kay was struggling to her feet.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize how fast I could lose my footing. Did you see me fall?”

  “No, but every fish within a couple of hundred yards is talking about it. Nicky will drag you out if you fall in again.”

  Kay took a few cautious steps to a large rock that protruded out of the water and sat down. She soaked a red bandanna in white foam that bubbled around the boulder and rubbed it around her neck and against her face.

  Finished with his preliminary work at the campsite, Scott walked to the edge of the stream and took off his shoes and socks. He took small steps into the water.

  “The rocks with moss are safe,” he said. “The ones without any growth on them are the worst.” He shifted his weight to avoid losing his balance. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Except the bruise where I fell.”

  Scott reached Kay and handed her a granola bar.

  “I thought you might want a snack.”

  Kay ate while Scott continued moving slowly along the stream. Every so often he would stoop down and pick up a rock and inspect it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Looking for gold nuggets.”

  “Did they pan for gold in this stream?”

  “No, but I’ve always thought they should have.”

  “If you find one, I get half of the profits,” Kay demanded.

  He stood up and looked at her. “Why?”

  “I carried in one of the backpacks, and I don’t make much money as a teacher.”

  Scott nodded. “Okay. Two good reasons.”

  In a few minutes Kay’s shorts had dried in the warm afternoon sun that shone through the trees. Scott held her hand as she navigated her way back to shore.

  “What next?” she asked.

  Scott looked at the sky. “We don’t have a schedule, except that we eat when we’re hungry and sleep when the campfire goes out. I’d like to do some fishing. You can watch or stay here and rest.”

  “I’ll watch.”

  Scott had brought an ultralight fishing pole that came apart into four pieces. It was so thin that it almost disappeared when he stood in front of the trees along the bank. He decided to try the pool near the campsite before venturing farther upstream.

  Using a small metal lure shaped like the bowl of a baby’s spoon with a hook underneath it, he cast across the pool and slowly dragged the lure along the bottom of the stream. On the first cast he had a strike. The pole bent double and a fat ten-inch rainbow trout jumped once into view above the surface of the water before Scott brought it to the bank. Nicky went crazy with excitement. Wetting his hand so that the mucous on the fish’s sleek body wouldn’t be disturbed by his touch, Scott held it so that Nicky could sniff it from tail to gill, then released it back into the water.

  “That would have been good in a skillet,” he said. “But we have steak tonight.”

  He pulled two more fish from the pool before they stopped biting. He moved to a smaller pool that churned and bubbled at the base of the waterfall.

  Pointing to the white foam, he said, “Fish will wait for dinner to come over the falls.”

  On his first cast, Scott’s lure was sucked under and caught on a rock. He lost it when he pulled the line free. He tried a different one, but lost it in the same spot. Kay watched him patiently tie on a third lure.

  “Aren’t you upset?” she asked.

  Concentrating on the knot, he didn’t look up. “About losing the lures? It’s part of the process. I’ve left a lot of dollars in these streams.”

  He avoided the fishing lure graveyard and hooked the biggest fish yet, a fourteen-inch rainbow that made a short run away from the pool before Scott reeled it in. It was a magnificent trout. After losing another lure without any more bites, they moved to a different place. The afternoon passed at a leisurely pace as they slowly moved down the stream. Scott only caught one more fish, a tiny fingerling. He threatened to feed it to Nicky, until Kay told him that the baby’s mother would go to her watery grave in grief if he didn’t release it.

  The sun was behind the tops of the trees when they returned to their campsite. Zipping open one of the side pockets of his backpack, Scott took out a small plastic bottle containing a green liquid. He handed it to Kay.

  “If you’d like to clean up in the stream, use this. It’s biodegradable. It does a great job on pots and pans and leaves your hair silky and manageable. Don’t use too much; it’s very concentrated.”

  Kay looked at the bottle skeptically before handing it back to him.

  “You use it to scrub pots and pans?”

  “And me.”

  Scott walked to the stream, took off his shirt, and stepped into the deep pool until the water came up to his waist. He poured a few drops of the cleaner in his hand, held it up for Kay to see, and lathered his upper torso. The soap covered the scar on his left shoulder and a few more drops finished off his neck, face, and hair. After dunking himself in the water a few times, he waded out and dried himself with a sport towel.

  “Very refreshing,” he said. “How does my hair look?”

  “Not very silky.”

  “After you.”

  “Okay. But if I want to get baptized, I’m going to wait until Bishop Moore can arrange it properly.”

  She took the soap and went to the edge of the water where she carefully washed her arms, face, and legs without getting in deeper than a few inches.

  Scott started a fire with dead limbs and twigs. In a few minutes, the wood was crackling and a narrow column of white smoke was rising from the forest floor. Kay rejoined him.

  “How was the bath?” he asked.

  “Okay, but it could have been warmer. You don’t want to heat a few gallons of water for me, do you?”

  Scott smiled. “I forgot the bathtub. It would have made my backpack too heavy. They make special plastic bag containers that can be filled with water and hung from a tree during the day. The sun’s rays heat up the water, and someone can take a short shower before going to bed in the evening. I’ve never used one because I enjoy the stream. It’s part of the experience.”

  Some previous campers had dragged logs to the edge of the fire ring. Kay sat down while Scott built the fire. The sun was below the horizon. The woods across the stream were already dark, but a few diffuse rays of twilight still reached the little clearing. The fire created a circle of light that included the logs and the backs of the tents.

  Scott stood up. “Ready for supper?”

  “I’m starving.”

  Scott went to Kay’s backpack and retrieved a lunch-size collapsible cooler. Inside were several cubes of steak and four ears of corn that he’d shucked and wrapped in aluminum foil. He positioned the ears around the edges of the fire. After putting a piece of steak on the end of a sharp stick, he handed it to Kay.

  “This is like the fancy restaurants where you cook your own food at the table. Be careful to cook the steak and not your stick. There’s nothing worse than the end of the stick falling in the fire just before the meat is done.”

  Kay held the meat high over the top of the flame.

  “Not that high,” Scott corrected. “Here, I’ll show you.”

&n
bsp; He sat next to her on the log and, putting his hand over hers, held the stick the proper distance from the hot coals located a few inches away from the center of the fire. Nicky was sniffing the air at the smell of the meat. Scott let his hand stay over Kay’s a few seconds longer than necessary.

  “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Scott withdrew his hand and stuck a slightly larger piece of steak on another stick and sat across from her on another log. In a few minutes the meat was sizzling.

  “Is it ready?” Kay asked.

  “How rare do you like it?”

  “With the moo still in it. Light brown on the outside with a cold, red center.”

  Scott was surprised. He let his meat drop too close to the fire and his stick began to smolder.

  “Are you serious?”

  “No, but it sounded like the thing to say out here in the middle of the woods. I’m trying to be rough and tough. Medium would be nice.”

  After experimenting with their first two pieces of meat, they perfected the art of cooking cubes of New York strip over an open fire. They ate the corn when it was properly roasted and the melted butter had soaked into the kernels and turned slightly brown. Nicky feasted on tidbits of steak from both of them. They drank purified stream water that matched the best Chablis.

  For dessert, Scott pulled out a few marshmallows. Kay carefully roasted hers; Scott set his on fire and ate the charred remains. A slight wind picked up and blew the smoke from the fire into his eyes, so he shifted to the log beside Kay for his last three marshmallows.

  Scott was feeling mellow and debated eliminating the distance between them on the log. Kay’s marriage was officially over, and her availability was having a greater effect on him than he’d suspected. Their honest discussion at the overlook emboldened him to consider something more for their relationship. Friendship was fine, but the way Kay had adapted to the rigors of the camping trip made her even more attractive to his eyes. The light from the fire reflected off her hair and made her head seem ablaze with gold. Scott shifted his weight to move closer. Kay stood up and dropped her stick in the fire.

  “It’s done, I guess,” she said. “Jake has a new wife.”

  The mention of Jake’s name was a jolt. Scott had forgotten that Kay’s ex-husband was going to remarry on Saturday.

  She continued. “I thought about it a lot during the hike after we left the overlook. I know I have to go on because of the choices he made. That’s hard to accept, but it’s the truth, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  The fact that their minds had been on such diverse tracks threw Scott off balance. If Kay was thinking about her ex-husband, she wasn’t thinking about him. He’d been thinking about her and assumed that if he could read her mind, her thoughts would be written in similar language. Not so.

  Kay stretched. “I’m tired. Is it okay if I go to sleep?”

  “Sure, your sleeping bag is in the tent. Your pillowcase is still in your backpack.”

  “I’ll put everything in the tent.”

  “Is there any food in your pack?”

  “No.”

  “Good. A raccoon might want to join you in your tent if it smelled food.”

  “Anything bigger than raccoons?” Kay asked.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Kay picked up her almost empty backpack and put it inside the door of the tent.

  “Good night,” she said as she zipped up the screen door flap.

  “Good night.”

  Scott stayed by the campfire for over an hour after the sounds of Kay trying to get comfortable gave way to silence. Nicky was asleep at his feet. The formerly white dog was a dingy brown after his day in the woods.

  The sound of the water rushing over and around the rocks of the stream was joined by the scratchy calls of a few hearty katydids that slowly rubbed their legs together like a chorus of miniature chain saws. In a few weeks the frosts of early winter would still all sounds in the forest except the swirling noise caused by the never-tiring movement of the stream. If he could have blocked out the music of the water and the insects, Scott could have heard the rustle in the leaves that signaled the journey of a raccoon along the woodland floor to the far side of the stream where it discovered the remains of the apple that was Scott’s afternoon snack. It was a rare find, and the raccoon happily held the core with its front paws and nibbled it down to the stem before sticking his face in the water for a wash and cold drink.

  Scott stared at the few remaining red-and-orange embers of their campfire. On the other side of the fire was the dark silhouette of Kay’s tent. He couldn’t tell if she’d zipped up the front flap over the screen mesh or not. Probably did. A closed tent gave a false sense of security— a black bear looking for food wouldn’t knock and ask permission before trying to stick his nose inside. But then, Kay’s greatest enemy was not the unseen adolescent black bear prowling on the ridge a half-mile north of their campsite—the thoughts inside Scott’s head were a more immediate threat.

  He sat motionless, struggling with how to respond. An increasing part of him wanted to see if he could share her tent for the night. His attraction to her was already stronger than any he’d had for a woman in years, and his fear of making a mistake in love was not the uppermost thought in his mind. He listened again to the calls of the katydids, each one making as raucous a sound as possible. Scott knew their motivation. Katydids didn’t sing out of vanity or the love of music. They raised their cry in the night because they desperately wanted to attract a suitor from across the clearing. But the longings of the human heart are not as simple to define as a katydid’s call, and Scott didn’t know what response to expect from the other side of the dying campfire.

  Ever since Kay had reentered his life he’d tried not to push too far past the barrier of friendship. Intellectually, he knew that what he told Perry Dixon in the male-only atmosphere of the gym was right, and even though the legal “wall” of her marriage was down, Kay needed time to process the final ending of her relationship with Jake. However, like the katydids in the dark night, Scott saw the passage of time as an enemy. Tonight was a lost opportunity. A small piece of unburned wood on the edge of the fire flared up. Scott was a man; Kay was a beautiful woman. The close contact they’d had all day had caused desire to flame up within him. He stood up, startling Nicky who jumped awake.

  But Scott didn’t take a step toward Kay’s tent. His code of honor reared its head and reminded him that he’d promised her safety. He didn’t know whether to resent the code or be thankful for it. Maybe someday they would share a tent, but not yet. Kay’s heart and his hormones were not in sync. He took a deep breath of cool night air, leaned over, and patted Nicky on the head.

  “Remind me not to bring a girl dog on a camping trip,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to put you through the torture.”

  Nicky stretched out and yawned.

  “Let’s get in our tent.”

  The little dog followed his master to the tent and fell asleep with his back against Scott’s feet.

  Scott was up and had a small fire crackling when Kay stuck her head out into the cool morning air. Her hair was disheveled, and she blinked her eyes against the smoke that suddenly shifted in her direction. Scott was squatting beside the fire, carefully laying larger twigs into the center of the flames. He turned toward her.

  “Good morning,” he said. “You look beautiful.”

  “Right.” Kay ran her hand through her hair until it got stuck in an unyielding tangle. “I’d stick my tongue out at you, but I’m afraid what might be on it.”

  “Some fresh coffee will take care of that. I’ll have some ready in a few minutes.”

  Kay looked toward the stream. Mist was rising along the edge of the water.

  “What time is it?”

  Scott glanced toward the sky. “Daytime. Night is over. Remember, we’re using a camping clock without numbers.”

  She yawned without covering her mouth. Her head disappeared inside the tent a
nd the zipper went back up. Scott heard various unidentifiable sounds coming from the tent for the next few minutes and had the coffeepot close to boiling when a more orderly Kay Laramie, her hair in a ponytail, opened the door of her tent and stuck her feet outside while she put on her shoes.

  “Is the hot water ready?” she asked.

  “Almost.”

  Kay stood up and stretched her arms. “That’s not enough for my bath.”

  “Splash your face in the stream a few times. It’s so refreshing you’ll forget about hot water. How do you want your coffee?”

  “With lots of cream and sugar.”

  By the time she returned, Scott had the coffee ready. He’d lined a backpacking skillet with pieces of thick bacon and mixed a half-dozen eggs together in a large plastic cup. Kay’s cheeks were pink and drops of water were dripping from the edges of her hair.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  “You lied. It was so cold all I could think about was hot water.”

  He handed her a Styrofoam cup of light brown liquid. He’d made it weak with lots of creamer from a baggie and a packet of sugar.

  “Here’s your coffee. Maybe that will help. Breakfast happens fast over an open fire.”

  He fried the bacon and wrapped it in aluminum foil to keep it warm while he scrambled the eggs. It was all done in a few minutes, and he handed a plate to Kay.

  “Can I pray?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  Kay closed her eyes. “Father, thank you for this day and this place you’ve created. Thank you for Scott and the friend and protector he has been to me. And thanks for this breakfast. Amen.”

  Scott took a bite of egg and bacon together. It was perfect.

  He swallowed and asked, “Why did you call me a protector in your prayer?”

  Kay sipped her coffee. “You’ve been a safe man for me to be around the past few months when I could have gotten into trouble with someone else. You protected me from myself and any predatory males.”

  “Oh,” Scott said, sheepishly remembering his internal debate of the previous night. He was a less noble knight than Kay suspected.

  “I feel great this morning,” she said.