Forward.
Or blow your brains out.
He slid his hand along the gunnel to stabilize the canoe before taking a slow, steady step up to the next rock. By the time he reached the level portion of the path, his thighs were burning, and his spine felt compressed. Everything was against him, even gravity.
The portage was narrow and covered with rusty orange pine needles from the huge trees on all sides. They were springy underfoot and muffled the sound of his steps. He wondered what other sounds were silenced by this forest. He wished he could see, but the canoe enclosed his head almost as fully as a bag over a hostage’s head. He could see the bow seat, the golden ribs of the canoe, the trail, and the slip of metal that read au large.
The words pounded through his head as he walked.
Au large. Au large. Au large.
He trudged to their drumbeat.
Sweat trickled down his face and stung his eyes.
The trees changed from huge pines to a kind that grew very close together, making a dark tunnel around the trail. He began to feel afraid. His ears strained to detect movement. Bears. Wolves. Whatever lurked in this place without road signs or rest stops or ambulances. Trapped under the canoe, he imagined them coming for him, burying their muzzles in his flesh.
Rakmen caught the toe of his boot on an exposed root. He lurched to the left. The canoe slipped, unbalancing him further. He lunged to the right to compensate, slipped on an exposed rock and went down on one knee still underneath the bulk of the canoe. The bow caught in a low branch beside the trail and held. Rakmen sucked air into his lungs as adrenaline surged through him.
They could come now. The wild animals. They could bring their fangs and claws. A welcome alternative to this pain, this humiliation. But they didn’t, and before long, Rakmen’s thighs began to cramp from crouching under the canoe. He forced himself to stand, pushing the canoe up with him. The bow squealed against the slender branches as it pulled free, snapping twigs and filling the air with the tangy smell of pitch.
He had to go on.
Au large. Au large. Au large.
He picked his way through a rocky section of trail.
Pins and needles darted through his hands from holding them at face-level. The knee that had hit the ground throbbed. His leg muscles ached and his bruised shoulders reverberated with pain at every step.
He hated the canoe.
He hated the rocky ground.
He hated the hot, rot-filled air that filled his lungs.
Three hundred seventy-five meters was infinity.
It seemed he would always be lurching forward under this unbearable weight. There was no job at Ray’s auto parts shop. There was no family to go home to. There was no driver’s license, no car, no college, no girlfriend, no bright shiny future self.
Only this.
Au large, au large, au large.
The pain of it. The punishment.
The big hollow inside of the canoe was an echo chamber for his worst thoughts. He deserved this. He was an asshole for thinking that taking care of Jacey would make up for failing Dora. Slick with sweat and aching everywhere, he knew that was stupid. He didn’t do things right. Ever. He was wrong. So many ways wrong.
Au large, au large, au large.
God—
The screaming in his head was making him crazy. He would soon be deafened by the noise if he didn’t silence his mind. He had to cross 375.
One, two, three. . .
Rakmen began counting steps. He got to a hundred and started over.
CHAPTER 20
He felt the next lake before he saw it.
A whisper of breeze slipped under the canoe, licking the sweat from his neck. He smelled wet earth, fresh enough to overpower his own stink. A glitter of water showed between the ground and the canoe.
With his last ounce of energy, Rakmen pushed the canoe up over his head, eased it into the crook of his arm, rested it on his thigh, and slid it down to the shore. Edna should have told him how goddamn much this would hurt. He kneaded his shoulders and looked around, grateful for the three hundred and sixty degree view and his release from the echo chamber.
Wren Lake was far bigger than Vesper Lake, and it was a proper lake, not swampy at the edges. Jacey had peeled off her boots and was wading in the shallows. Leah had dropped her pack on the bank and was gulping down water. Circles of perspiration spread across the armpits of her T-shirt.
Rakmen knelt, splashed water on his face, and pulled up his pant leg to look at his knee, which was oozing blood.
“How did that canoe carry?” Leah asked.
He dropped his pants leg. What he wanted to say was like crap. Instead he shrugged.
“I know,” she said. “It was awful. My pack is a beast too. At least you’re not an out-of-shape teacher. Here.” She tossed him a piece of chocolate along with a feeble grin.
Jacey stood next to him, hands on hips, while he unwrapped the slightly squishy brick of candy. “You were slow.”
He slumped to the ground and let the chocolate melt in his mouth. “You carry it next time.”
Jacey sat next to him and leaned on his shoulder. “It’s too heavy for me.”
He looked down at the top of her head. Her part was jagged. A wild tangle stuck out on one side. A bit of leaf was lodged near her left ear.
“I thought you were the power,” he said, surprised to find that he felt grateful that she was sitting near him.
“Well, yeah,” she said, “but I’m short-range.”
“Short, for sure.”
“Hey!” Jacey grinned at him, a smear of chocolate on one cheek. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she was flushed with the effort of the trail, but she bounced with excitement.
Rakmen didn’t know much about little girls, but even he could see that this one was happy. In the middle of bloody, painful au large, Jacey was blissed out.
He didn’t get it, but—he had to admit—he kind of wanted to understand.
. . .
The rest of the day was a blur of lake and trail. As Rakmen lifted the canoe on the last portage, a blister on the palm of one hand burst, and the fluid inside it splattered his face. He didn’t have the strength to do anything but register how gross that was, add the spiking pain to his list, and hit the trail.
He’d always associated that phrase, hit the trail, with cowboys, but after five portages, he now understood it to mean the dazed, aching, echoing state in which all you wanted to do was beat the ground with your fists in frustration. A hundred times that day he’d considered lying in the path and refusing to move, but something had kept him going—whether it was hating Leah or hating life or just following Jacey.
He watched his footing. The last thing he needed was to fall again. From the wet, warm slick of blood, Rakmen could tell the scrape on his knee had reopened. With his luck, he’d probably break something if he fell again, and of course, they had no phone.
Mechanically, he set down the canoe, hefted Leah’s pack, and loaded it in the bottom of the boat. Jacey had long since stopped slipping rocks into his cargo pockets. She sat on a rock at the edge of this new lake and stared blankly out into the growing dusk.
Leah handed him the smaller packs. “We made it, guys.”
Rakmen grunted. All he wanted to know was when he could lie down. Instead he stood and waited for Leah and Jacey to get in the canoe. Sitting down would be the end of him.
As he picked up the paddle and thrust the canoe into deeper water, his open blister burned against the wooden shaft, and every muscle in his arms and torso screamed in protest. Au large was the perfect torture, he thought. When you can’t walk anymore, you paddle. When your hands are about to fall off, you hike. And every single part of your body ends up hurting.
But it had also, he realized, turned off his brain. It had been hours since he had thought of home or Dora or the gaping shotgun blast through his chest. The pain in his body trumped all of it. Its stupor was a small but not insignificant treasure, like th
e nuggets of quartz in the pocket of his pants.
When Leah pointed to an open campsite, he added extra force to his J-stroke and nosed the canoe into shore. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and dark was coming fast now. The spot was mostly rocky, with a grassy oval in the middle. Some other camper had made a ring of stones for a fire, and a twisted grill leaned against it. Rakmen hauled up the big pack, eyeing the line of dark trees behind the campsite. He didn’t like the way the forest pressed against them.
“Hey, Jacey,” said Leah, emerging from the open top of the huge pack with a collapsible saw, “I saw a downed cedar along the shoreline. Let’s go get some firewood. Rakmen, can you find the tents?”
He nodded and watched them disappear around a rocky point. When the sound of Jacey’s voice faded, other sounds filled his ears—swishing, creaking, tapping. He had no idea what this place contained. He unpacked their gear, glancing over his shoulder every few minutes. Two tents—one blue and one orange, sleeping bags and pads, the nylon sacks that held their clothes. All the crap he’d been carrying. He found the red zippered pouch that held the first-aid kit and rummaged through it for three Advil and a Band-Aid.
“You’re bleeding,” said Jacey, coming up behind him and dropping an armload of wood.
“Don’t sneak up on me.”
She grinned. “Wasn’t sneaking. I was quiet. Now gimme that.” Jacey swiped the Band-Aid out of his hand and insisted on wiping down his knee with an alcohol pad.
Too exhausted to argue, he let her fuss over him. “I didn’t think you knew how to be quiet.” She made a show of gluing her lips tight together. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Rakmen.
Silence didn’t last long. As soon as Leah returned to camp with her own armload of small branches, Jacey returned to a running commentary on the sound of frogs and what kind you could eat, whether cattail roots tasted like celery, and if leeches ever ate anything besides blood.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her away from the fire pit where Leah was lighting a fire. “You need to chill out. Let’s put up the tents.”
“Have you ever slept in a tent? I’m so excited. It’s like a little fort.”
The thin nylon was no substitute for proper walls. Tired as he was, Rakmen wondered if he would be able to sleep. The ever increasing dark seemed to amplify the sounds around them, and the flickering light from the fire cast a pitifully small circle of brightness. If anything, it made the dark seem darker. It was as bad as being under the canoe.
Or in the basement of Promise House.
By the time they had finished, the water for their dehydrated food packs had boiled. “Here,” said Leah, handing them each a bowl of glop.
He tipped it toward the firelight, trying to figure out what color it was.
“It looks gross,” Jacey whined. “What is it?”
“Lasagna.”
Rakmen stole a glance at Leah, wondering if she was going to yell at Jacey, but his biology teacher was out of steam. She stared at the fire, spooning in mouthfuls of glop. Rakmen stuck his spoon in the bowl. His dad made terrific lasagna, and it came out of the pan in thick, cheesy squares. It did not resemble this stew of noodle bits, red sauce, and rehydrated beef crumbles.
The fire crackled and popped. All around the campsite, trees swayed and leaves rustled. He was a city boy overdosed on green and pain. Rakmen’s stomach rumbled. He chewed slowly at first, and then more quickly. The sauce was tangy and full of garlic. Soon he was shoveling the noodle mash into his mouth, amazed that anything could taste so good. Especially something that came out of a foil packet looking like lumpy dirt.
“This is delicious,” said Jacey, her words garbled by the half-chewed food in her mouth.
Leah nodded and kept eating.
As his belly filled with hot food, the aches and pains in his body dulled. Jacey threw a pinecone on the fire. It spluttered and then burst into flame, throwing sparks. She hummed under her breath and poked at the coals. The flickering light from the fire transformed her features. She was no longer a dull smudge of a girl. She was glowing and otherworldly.
When Jacey caught him looking, she smiled.
That look again.
The look that said he was enough. More than enough.
She was wrong, of course. But he felt satiated somehow by the food and the fire and the cessation of labor and by having her close. Maybe it was animal nature to survive. A paleo thing—all burning torches and red paint on cave walls.
When they finished eating, Leah handed him a head lamp. “I need you to help hang the food pack.”
He took the head lamp but stared dumbly at her. “Hang it?”
“In case of bears.”
“I thought you said we’d be lucky to see a bear because there aren’t many of them.” Fighting a bear for their silver packets of dehydrated food was definitely beyond the limits of Rakmen’s animal nature.
“We’re not going to have a bear problem,” said Leah, wearily loading all of their food into the big pack and strapping it closed. “We’re being prudent.” Jacey’s eyes were huge behind her scraggly bangs, and Rakmen saw her slip a chunk of hair into her mouth and start chewing. She edged closer. “Bring the pack,” said Leah, grabbing a piece of firewood and a coil of rope.
Jacey slid her hand into his, and they followed Leah to the dark line of forest. About thirty yards from their tents, Leah picked a pine tree with a strong branch about fifteen feet up. She knotted the rope to the chunk of wood, whirled it around her head, and launched it over the branch. The piece of firewood hit the ground at their feet. “We’ve got to get the pack up as high as we can,” said Leah, untying the rope from firewood and retying it around the backpack. “If you lift, I’ll pull. One, two, three.”
Rakmen hoisted the pack, groaning as every muscle in his body throbbed with pain. Leah pulled on the loose end of the rope.
“Hurry,” he grunted.
“Give it one more good push,” she said.
He shoved as high as he could. Leah took up the slack in the rope, wrapped it around the trunk of the tree, and secured it with a knot.
“It’s a bear piñata,” said Jacey, staring up at its lumpy bulk.
“I’m more worried about mice,” said Leah.
“It’s always the mice,” Rakmen blurted. “What is it with the freaking mice?”
“I don’t know,” Leah sighed, leading them back toward the fire pit, “but I’ve got to sleep.” She and Jacey crawled into their tent.
Rakmen slid into his and sat cross-legged in the middle of it, taking stock. The tent had two doors, one mesh and one nylon. It was too hot to close them both. He zipped the mesh against bugs and then tried to decide about his pants. The last thing he wanted was for a bear to surprise him in his underwear. He started to slide inside the sleeping bag fully clothed, but that was dumb. It wouldn’t matter if he were naked or not. The bear would win. Besides, the pants were muddy, bloody, and uncomfortable.
He stripped down to underwear and wadded his pants and sweat-crusted T-shirt in the corner of the tent. The fabric of the sleeping bag was slick against his chest. The murmurs from the other tent subsided, and he listened to water lapping against the rocks, wind in the treetops, and an intermittent skittering of something small moving in the grass.
Out of nowhere, a loon howled wildly. Its cry echoed from the far end of the lake, reminding him how much distance was out there. Lake and forest stretching away and away in every direction. No signs. No bus routes. No easy way home.
He couldn’t settle. Every time he dozed off, there were red eyes and piñatas and claws on flesh. He jerked awake in the pitch black. Molly had cuts like that. They’d been downstairs. Group was long over. Crumbs swept. Kids gone. Upstairs, their mothers were deep in conversation. Rakmen sat on the couch flipping through his notebook as Molly put away the last of the art supplies. She tucked a stray doll into the toy trunk and plunked down beside him, her knee resting against his. She leaned forward, elbows on knees, rubbing
her eyes. “I’m so empty,” she said, breathing lightly and smelling like gingerbread. The closeness of her unnerved him.
“Want me to forage for goldfish crackers in the couch cushions?”
It didn’t make her laugh. Instead she slumped back on the couch, leaving her arms limply outstretched, palms up, penitent. That was when he’d seen the thin, parallel scabs on the milky skin of her inner arm.
He absorbed the lines of dried blood and the knowledge of how they got there, slice by careful slice. Without thinking, he’d reached out with one finger to graze her wounds—one, two, three, four. Molly tilted her head until it rested on his shoulder. Her hair spilled over the front of his black hoodie. He breathed her in as she breathed out, and they sat together until they heard the scraping of chairs upstairs.
As he lay in the tent surrounded by night noises and aching in every single part of his body, he thought maybe Molly had been using pain to pour herself back into the empty container of her body. His collection of blisters, bruises, and torn muscles hurt like hell but made him feel present, like his self or soul or whatever filled his limbs from toe to head.
And in spite of how much he ached, Rakmen fell asleep.
CHAPTER 21
When the rising sun turned his tent into a glowing blue cocoon, Rakmen woke and found his limbs still attached. He’d done it. He’d actually survived a night in the woods. He grinned up at the blue nylon until he tried to extricate himself from his sleeping bag.
“Oh crap.” He could hardly lift his arms. Wedging himself out of the sleeping bag sent pain shooting through his body. Every single muscle was solid concrete. He rolled over on his knees, wincing as the puffy bruise on his right one touched the ground. Rakmen collapsed onto his stomach, tapping his forehead against the ground in frustration. So he made it through one night. Big deal, sucker. Another day. Another slap in the face.
“I’m not moving,” he told the sleeping bag. “Never again.” Not for Jacey or Leah or even Molly. “I’m done.”
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