by Nevada Barr
The drowned woman’s legs bumped against Anna’s rib cage and the pregnant stomach seemed to be doing its best to keep her from getting in a position to cut the body loose. Gently, she pushed the body aside and insinuated herself between the floating hand and the torso. The dead might sadden her, but they didn’t frighten her. One of the perks of not believing in life after death, in ghosts and vampires, zombies and animated mummies. Still she wasn’t overly fond of snuggling into the embrace of corpses.
Close in the pull of the water from beneath the strainer was stronger and she took a minute to set her feet as best she could.
“I’ve got you,” Paul said reassuringly.
“And I’ve got you, babe,” Anna said, and heard him laugh.
With difficulty she fished her little knife from her shorts pocket and opened the wee scissors. “This may take a while.”
“No need to style it,” Paul said. “Hack away.”
Thick wet hair and one-inch blades began to do battle. Where she could, Anna pulled the hair free. Her fingers were growing numb from working the minuscule blades and the spring in the scissors was slipping. The rain had dwindled to a drizzle. One blessing to count, that and the fact that none of the rafting party had joined the unfortunate in the strainer.
“How are you doing?” Carmen called.
“Not too much longer,” Anna said. The dead hand brushed at her thigh and she jumped.
“What?” Paul demanded.
“Brush with death,” Anna said, and went back to her snipping.
Invisible beneath the mud-colored water, the hand brushed her again, a creepy snaking of flesh against flesh. This time Anna didn’t flinch externally but her insides were shrinking from the touch. Perhaps she had not completely evolved from the belief in the creatures of the night.
Anna’s scissors broke.
She borrowed Paul’s knife.
The last hank of hair came free and she sawed it off and fed it to the strainer. The submerged hand touched her thigh again. This time the fingers tried to close. Anna squawked. The instant’s belief in the netherworld blinked out.
“She’s not dead,” she said. Anna should have felt for a pulse, she should have done a lot of things but the body was cold to the touch, the temperature of the river, and Anna had done a bit of abdicating herself when she’d been cut loose on administrative leave.
“Hallelujah,” Paul breathed.
What had been a body recovery where the luxury of time and necessary roughness were a given became a rescue. Quickly, but with care, Anna loosed the woman’s hand from the sticks. Her fingers were clamped around a limb so tightly Anna had to pry them open one at a time. That done, the woman came free and Anna gathered her into her arms, her back against Anna’s chest, her head falling on Anna’s shoulder.
“Take us out,” she said, and the human chain began pulling her and her charge back to shore. The woman’s dress, cheap rayon with a flowered print, probably from Wal-Mart or Target, molded itself to the woman’s stomach. As Anna was led backward she had a mother’s-eye view of it. Lumps moved beneath the sodden fabric like kittens under a sheet.
“The baby’s alive as well,” Anna said. Paul did not repeat his short psalm of praise but she knew he was thinking it. As was she. New life was what the world needed at the moment, a life that hadn’t been mucked up by people. She didn’t believe in babies as blank slates. Genetics wrote in indelible ink. But they were another chance to get things right.
Paul walked upriver. Their gear was stowed in dry-bags, small ones for the daily use items, larger for the rest. He’d cut two loose before the raft had deflated and the smaller personal bags weren’t tied in. If they were lucky one or more would have hung up somewhere and could be salvaged.
With Carmen and Steve’s help, Anna carried the woman up the bank to an overhang where the river had carved out the shale. As a shelter it wasn’t much but it did keep the drizzle off. Anna knelt next to her and took her vitals as best she could. Her heart rate was slow, her skin cold, her eyes slightly dilated. There was a lump on her skull the size of a golf ball and cuts and abrasions on her arms and legs. All injuries that could be attributed to the river. Near as Anna could tell, none of her bones were broken and she wasn’t bleeding but for a slight ooze from the scratches.
“We need to warm her up,” Anna said. “Her body temp isn’t much above that of the river.”
“Nothing’s dry,” Steve said sadly.
“Lay down,” Anna told him. “Take off your shirt. You and Cyril, one on each side, put your arms around her and share your body heat.” At another time she would have asked them to strip to their underwear but they weren’t wearing enough clothes to bother.
Somewhat to her surprise they complied without question or complaint. “We learned this in Scouts,” Steve said. “It was a drag till we got to Explorers where there were girls to save, then they wouldn’t let us save them.”
“I remember how desperate you were to save Silvia Lieberman,” Cyril said.
“Yes. If ever a woman was built to be saved, it was the lovely Silvia.”
The twins lay on either side of the woman and pressed close. Chrissie and Lori had followed them to the shelter of the cliff and stood together as far from the action as they could without stepping back into the drizzle.
“What next?” Cyril asked.
Anna had absolutely no idea what was next. The usual arsenal of hot drinks, dry blankets and fire were floating down the river or lodged under a boulder.
“Elevate her feet,” Anna said. It wasn’t much, but it would keep some of the blood near the vital organs. “You carry a satellite phone, don’t you?” Anna said to Carmen.
“It’s in my dry-bag. In the raft.”
“Right.”
Anna thought for a moment. “What are the chances another rafting party will be by anytime soon?”
“It’s late in the season. Usually the water is low and people don’t book. We’ve got nothing till the weekend. There might be a canoe or two. There’s always somebody on the river, though. Could be an hour, could be ten.”
The woman caught in the long arms and legs of the twins as surely as she’d been caught in the limbs of the river was not going to last another ten hours of exposure. If she had any internal injuries, she might not last another ten minutes.
“Can you get out of the canyon anywhere?” Anna asked.
“There’s a rough trail up out of the slide on this side of the river. Very rough. More of a climb, but I wouldn’t be anywhere when I got there. The best bet is for me to float out the mouth of the canyon. There’s a road there. It’s paved and well used. Eventually I’d find somebody with a cell phone.”
“How long would it take you to float out?”
Carmen mused for a moment and stared at the river. “It’s eight miles out. A few hours, maybe.” Carmen would be floating out on her back the way Anna had come down through the rockslide. The river water wasn’t particularly cold, and with the cessation of the rain the temperature had risen into the seventies. Even if the sun came out and the air temperatures went into the eighties or nineties, hypothermia could still be an issue, given the woman’s long immersion in the river. Anna didn’t know enough about rivers to make an informed decision, but it didn’t strike her as a sound plan.
“I could make it,” Carmen said. Anna heard an echo of herself in the guide’s words and it was not reassuring.
“Rafters will be along soon,” Anna said, because it was as true as it was untrue and it was always good to look on the bright side.
“Unless you need me here, I’ll go beachcombing with Paul.”
“Anything we get is bound to be a plus,” Anna said.
“Keep a sharp eye out for the groover,” Steve said from his position as bed warmer. “Good hygiene is important in times of stress.”
The Kessler twins almost made up for Lori and Chrissie. Anna didn’t see the four of them as fast enough friends to plan another river trip together.
/> The unconscious woman wore a single white sneaker, brown now with the silt—the Rio Grande had taken the other one. Anna unlaced it and took it off. Her feet were narrow and swollen. Too much baby for her fragile bones. The soles were soft and the toenails filed and painted.
“Chrissie, I’ve got a job for you,” Anna called. The two girls were still hovering at the edge of the overhang, hating to stay but too scared to go.
Chrissie didn’t move.
“A good job,” Anna said.
With a sigh that could have been heard in the back row from the stage at Madison Square Garden, Chrissie trudged over. “Kneel here and rub her feet, try and warm them up with your hands.”
“Her feet?” Chrissie complained.
“Jesus did feet. Doing feet was very fashionable then,” Steve volunteered.
“You’re Jewish, what do you know about Christ,” Chrissie grumbled, but she knelt in the space Anna had vacated and took the feet into her lap.
“He was a Jew,” Steve said.
“Don’t be stupid.” Chrissie set her lips in a thin line and began rubbing the woman’s feet with a gentleness that, given the source, startled Anna. Perhaps the old saw was right; perhaps there was some good in everyone.
Anna put Lori at the woman’s head to serve as pillow. If there was any spinal injury the poor thing had been bashed around and manhandled so much, elevating her head a few inches wasn’t going to make matters any worse. It might make breathing a bit easier and a lap would be warmer than the ground, but mostly Anna did it for Lori. She was uninjured, but too quiet and docile; shock could be induced by fear as well as cold and pain. Giving her something constructive and distracting to do would help.
From upstream a shout of victory melted through the river sounds. Moments later Carmen came back at a jog, waving a cell phone over her head. “Dry and charged,” she said triumphantly.
“What are the odds?” Anna asked, and let relief wash over her. “Dial nine-one-one. I never thought it would feel so good to say that.”
“Does this mean the human hot-water bottles may get up?” Cyril asked. “Easter might be ready to eat a little.”
“Not yet,” Anna said. “Unless Easter wants to take your place. Ever read Steinbeck’s The Red Pony?” Cyril hadn’t and, feeling magnanimous because of the satellite phone miracle, Anna didn’t describe the cutting open of the horse and crawling inside to keep from freezing.
“Damn. I’ve got a signal but no connection. Sat phones are amazing but not infallible. There are places they can’t get out, and deep in narrow canyons are them. I think if I climb up a ways I’ll be able to get a call out.”
“What do those things cost?” Steve asked, his head held up at an awkward angle so he could look at Carmen without peeling any part of his physical and warm self from his patient.
“Twelve bucks a month,” Carmen said, and not without a touch of smugness.
“No!” Steve yelped. “Nooooo.” In a day of shocking happenings, clearly this was the most disturbing to the Princeton student.
“The federal government picks up the tab,” Carmen said. “The poor folks in Terlingua were designated among the lucky few who required sat phones for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Every rusting trailer and tumbledown shack has a satellite phone.”
Steve groaned and let his head fall back to the ground.
The clouds had gone, at least from the narrow strip visible above the canyon rims but, even with the blue, there was little light left in the day. “Can you get up and back before dark?” Anna asked. Boulder hopping without good light was a dangerous proposition.
“Maybe,” Carmen said. “I’ll stop before the point of no return.”
She left, again at a jog. Anna loved her strength and energy. Carmen lived below the poverty level—the subsidized sat phone proved that. From what she’d heard, she lived without running water in an abandoned miner’s shack. A goal of Carmen’s was to get entirely “off the grid,” whatever that meant. Her work was hard physical labor overlaid with the skills needed to keep rich tourists happy and safe. Still, there was a lot to be said for a life lived outdoors and close to the bone. At forty Carmen was vital and strong. She wasn’t worried about how much she weighed; a slice of cake wasn’t an evil adversary. She smoked when she wanted to and drank bourbon when her day was done and slept on the ground without nightmares.
A flicker of the wildness that had drawn her to the wilderness, the parks and law enforcement sparked in Anna. It died when she turned back to the five people on the ground under the lowering brow of the cliff face.
“Her eyes are open,” Lori said in a wisp of a voice.
Anna squatted at the woman’s head. “Hey,” she said. “Nice to have you back among the living.”
Paul returned, dragging a dry-bag. Things were looking up.
“My baby, take my baby,” the woman whispered. Her eyes didn’t close but the life went from them. Anna had seen life wink out before. There was no great exhalation of air, there were no celestial choirs, her head did not flop dramatically to one side. Just in one instant there was a person behind the eyes. Then there wasn’t.
She laid two fingers on the woman’s carotid. No pulse beat there. She tried the wrist, listened at the nostrils and watched the chest.
“She’s dead,” Anna said. “You guys can get up if you want.” Chrissie dropped the feet and crabbed backward as if the meat left behind when the soul had fled was contaminated. Cyril and Steve climbed slowly and stiffly to their feet. Only Lori stayed, cradling the woman’s head in her lap with something akin to compassion.
“Is the baby dead too?” she asked softly.
“Not yet,” Anna said. “But it will be.”
Lori began to cry silently.
“Shit,” Steve said.
“Do something,” Cyril begged.
“Paul, did I give you back your pocketknife?” Anna asked.
TEN
Paul handed Anna the jackknife. She knelt beside the drowned woman and began cutting away her clothing.
“What are you doing?” Chrissie gasped. She hadn’t bothered to stand from her crabbing position and sat in the sand where her rump had first touched down.
“C-section,” Anna said. She had never done anything of this sort before. The closest she’d come was watching an old Jane Fonda movie where the heroine saves a victim by giving him an emergency tracheotomy with a pair of scissors or a Bic pen or something.
“You’ll kill her!” Chrissie almost screamed.
“She’s already dead. His mother isn’t breathing for him anymore,” Paul explained gently. “Anna’s going to try and save the baby. If she doesn’t get it out of the womb quickly, the little guy will suffocate.”
“Jiminy Cricket,” Steve said, sounding all of six years old.
Anna peeled back the wet rayon to reveal the woman’s belly, smooth and brown and swollen. She laid her hand on it and the skin was warm. The woman’s arms and legs and face were cold but nature had sent what heat there was to the fetus. Life must go on. Nothing moved beneath her palm. The baby was still and Anna wondered if a fetus could die of shock.
“Here goes,” she said, sounding as unprofessional as she felt at the moment.
“Shouldn’t you sterilize yourself or something?” Cyril asked.
Anna had been acutely aware of how germ-laden she and her surgical instrument must be, but there was nothing for it; no soap, alcohol or fire.
Resisting the compulsion to wipe the blade on her shorts, she said nothing. Cyril didn’t ask again.
Anna ran her hands down the woman’s abdomen, trying to feel where the little person inside began and ended, visions of thrusting the blade of Paul’s jackknife into a tiny eye or through a soft skull dancing like poison plums in her head. A handspan above the pubic bone the uterus softened. If any bit of the baby inhabited that part of the womb it was a hand or a foot. Nothing too vital. Except that a filthy knife amputating a miniature finger couldn’t but give a ki
d a rotten start on life. If it were still alive.
Anna walked her fingers down till they were on solid bone. “Paul, could you rifle through the dry-bag you rescued and see if there is anything to wrap this baby in?” She didn’t add, “if I don’t kill it first,” but she was thinking it.
“Right,” Paul said. Like the others, he’d been standing transfixed by the prospect of horror, gore, salvation, death and rebirth. That, and the prospect of a pocketknife slicing into the turgid belly of a dead person. He sounded relieved to have been released from the trance.
“You might not want to watch this,” Anna said to Lori, who still had the woman’s head in her lap.
“I’m okay,” Lori said softly and lifted a wet strand of hair from the woman’s face as if it could still bother her.
“Suit yourself,” Anna said.
Cyril, Steve and Chrissie had pressed close, none of them making a sound. “Back off,” Anna said. “You’re in my light.”
They circled around so they were on the cliff side of the overhang. Anna could feel them hovering above her shoulders like sentient storm clouds.
“If anybody passes out or throws up on me, they are next to go under the knife,” she warned.
Then she forgot about them, her attention narrowed to the tip of the knife. Pressing firmly, she pushed the blade through the cooling flesh till it hit bone. Though the mother was dead, Anna winced as if the cut could still cause her pain. Sawing a little to work the small blade through flesh and muscle, Anna made a cut about four inches long up from the pubic bone toward the sternum. Blood oozed around the knife but, without a heart to push it, it was minimal. Gifts from the dead.
When the incision was long enough, she put her left hand into it, her fingers feeling their way carefully. The blood was still warm. Her fingers traced the bone then slipped off into the uncharted territory of the abdomen.
