Robert B. Parker

by Wilderness

  It’s a risk, he thought, but it’s worth taking. We can’t get soaking wet and chilled. To do this we’ve got to be in good shape. He found a fallen tree and cut several lengths of firewood from it and brought it back in and put it on the fire. Reflecting off the rock the fire spread heat. Janet sat next to it hugging herself.

  “Coffee would be nice,” she said.

  “I know it.”

  “Let’s split a granola bar,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you think the rain will slow them up?” she said.

  He chewed on his half of the bar. “I don’t know. Depends whether they’ve found a way to get out of it, I should think.” He sat near the open end of the shelter, the carbine in his lap, looking at the trail through the screen of white-pine branches.

  “Will they see the smoke?” she said.

  “It gets lost in the trees,” he said. “They might smell it, but they won’t know where it is.”

  “I needed a fire,” she said. “I was shaking when I woke up.”

  “I know. I was freezing too.”

  Outside the shelter the woods were silent. No bird sound. No insect sound. Nothing moved. The rain came steady and hard, dripping through the spruce branches in places. A bed of coals began to build under the fire as Newman fed it from time to time with more wood cut from the fallen tree. Nothing moved on the trail.

  “What do we do,” Janet said, “when we see them?”

  “We shoot, or I do. You keep the pistol for back-up. It’s not very accurate at any distance anyway. If we can get all four of them we’re home free. If we can’t we keep after them. Even if they get to the lake, remember they got no boats. It will take them a long time to walk around that lake.”

  She nodded. The lightning came more swiftly after the thunder now. The storm was getting closer. Newman took a book from his pack and thumbed through it. Then he stood up.

  “Where’re you going?” she said.

  “I’m starving. I’m going to see what we can get for food.”

  “What’s the book?”

  “A Field Guide to Survival,” Newman said. “I slipped it in the pack before we left.”

  “In case Chris got killed,” she said.

  “Yes, or separated. It’s got pictures of edible plants.”

  “If we get out of this,” she said, “you can open a Boy Scout camp.”

  He nodded. “Here,” he said, “you take the carbine, give me the .32. I’m just going around behind the rocks.”

  He put the hood up on the nylon jacket, put the .32 in his pants pocket, and went out into the rain. In the stream behind the rocks were cattails. He pulled a dozen out, root and all, and brought them back into the shelter. He gave Janet back the revolver and with his jackknife cut the roots off the plants and peeled them. Then he put the twelve tubers into the ashes of the fire.

  “Are they any good?” Janet said.

  “Book says they are sweet and delicious,” Newman said.

  “I’ll bet,” she said.

  He settled back with the carbine, watching the trail while the cattail roots roasted in the coals. Occasionally he tested them with the blade of his knife to see if they were done, and finally, when the knife slid easily in, he decided they were. He poked them out of the ashes with the knife blade and gave six to Janet. They were too hot to handle so they let them lie on a flat rock while they cooled, and Newman stared at the trail.

  “You really mean that,” Newman said, “about being tough because you had me to back you up?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never fully got that sense, or the sense that you were aware of it.”

  “I don’t know why,” she said. “It seems perfectly clear.”

  “But you’re always so manage-y. You’re so …” He stopped and stared out at the rain-soaked trail beyond his screen of white-pine boughs, “so separate. You never seem at all dependent.”

  “Because I don’t hold your hand or lean on your arm or run on about how much I need you?”

  “Some of that wouldn’t hurt,” he said.

  “It’s not the way I am.”

  “Why not?”

  “I suppose it has something to do with fear, fear that if I’m dependent on anything or anyone I can’t control my life. It’s a control issue, as they say at the consciousness groups.”

  “You can control me,” he said.

  “That scares me too. It’s like the old Groucho Marx joke. I wouldn’t want to depend on anyone I can control.”

  “Would you be more affectionate if you couldn’t control me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But if you couldn’t control me, wouldn’t that scare you and make you hostile?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “I love you, you know,” she said. “I love you and I am committed to this marriage and to you. If I don’t show it the way you do, that doesn’t make it wrong.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “If I should love you more, maybe you should love me less. The weight of your need is heavy. The pressure of your thwarted romanticism is not pleasant, and you don’t miss any chance to remind me that I’m not loving enough.”

  “I know.”

  She picked up one of the cattail roots and bit into it. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “Well?” he said.

  “Sweet and delicious,” she said. She chewed it methodically and swallowed.

  He stabbed one with the blade of his jackknife and bit off half. He chewed.

  “Never trust a field guide,” he said and ate the other half.

  “See,” she said. “You don’t like these damned roots and neither do I. But they’re the best we’ve got and so we’ll eat them and make the best of it.”

  “Half a loaf is better than none?”

  She made a noncommittal gesture with her hands. “If you wish. The point is most of the time we enjoy each other very much. Be happy with that. Wanting more than you can have will spoil what you’ve got.”

  He reached out with the knife blade and stabbed another root and ate it, chewing ostensively.

  “Right now,” he said, “I want to kill four men.”

  She didn’t say anything and the rain came down in sheets.

  28

  The rain stopped at three-twelve in the afternoon. The sun did not appear and the temperature dropped slightly. At three-fifteen he said, “They’ll come now; we better be out and in a good spot.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “Because they must be freezing their ass and soaking wet and hungry as hell and the first chance they get to get the hell out of the woods and get back to civilization they’ll take.”

  “You don’t think they’ll be looking for us?”

  “I think they’ll keep an eye out, but I’ll bet now they want out. They know who we are. They can get us later.”

  With the knife he scraped a hole in the floor of the shelter and kicked the coals of the fire into it and covered it with dirt. They slipped into the knapsacks. He looked around the small warm space once and then they left it. They went down the trail thirty yards to a place where a tree had fallen across it. They sprawled flat behind the fallen tree, to one side of the trail. Behind them the trail turned sharply east.

  He took out the compass and looked at it, turning it until he could read it. He looked southwest through the trees. Through a break in the trees he could see mountains.

  “Look,” he said. “See the top of that mountain? It looks like sort of a cockscomb on top?”

  “It doesn’t look like a cockscomb,” she said.

  “Well whatever it looks like to you. Study it, get it imprinted. You want to keep walking so that the mountain is about half right of you. So that you’d half-turn your head so to see it. Halfway between straight ahead and directly to your right.”

  “Okay.”

  They said nothing else but lay still watching the trail.

  The wet woods dripped steadil
y.

  Frank Marriott came first. He wore a blue plaid shirt buttoned to the neck with the collar turned up. It was wet through and his hair was plastered to his skull. In his right hand he carried a revolver with a big handle. The one he had shot Hood with. It swung at his side now, barrel pointing toward the ground. His eyes moved right and left as he came, looking in the bushes. He was walking as if his feet hurt.

  Newman brought the carbine up and aimed. And waited. The blue plaid shirt seemed to enlarge as it sat on the splayed trident of the front sight. Wait, he thought. Wait. If you shoot now you’ll only get one. Wait until there’s more than one to shoot at. The blue shirt got bigger. Wait, wait, wait, wait, and his finger squeezed the trigger shut and the bullet made the material of the shirt jump as it hit Marriott in the chest. His finger squeezed again and Marriott fell backward. The gun with the big handle fell out of his hand. Behind him Richie Karl jumped for the woods to the left of the trail. Farther back the huge man and Adolph Karl stepped into the woods to the right and dropped to the ground.

  Newman said, “Run,” and Janet and he scrambled on the ground toward the turn in the trail. Behind them Richie Karl raised the shotgun and fired over Marriott’s body in the direction the shots had come from, pumping the shotgun as fast as he could, spraying the area with an ounce and a quarter of lead shot with each pump.

  As Newman and his wife reached the turn they both stood to run, and something slapped Newman in the back of the left arm. And tugged at the triceps. Then they were around the bend of the trail and running. Janet first, Newman behind her.

  “Easy,” he said, “watch where you’re running.” She slowed. “They won’t come charging after us.” He slowed behind her. “They don’t know where we are. Don’t want to turn an ankle or sprain a knee or something.”

  She slowed more and he slowed. They jogged for fifteen minutes, Newman listening always behind him. “Okay,” he said. And they stopped.

  “Did you see the others?” he said.

  “Yes, they were behind. But you got the one in front.”

  “Bad way to do it,” Newman said. “Stupid. Shouldn’t have ambushed them from in front. If I’d been on the side or in an open area I could have got them all.”

  “You did very well,” she said.

  “Could have had them all. Now they’ll be a lot harder.”

  His left arm was numb. He put his hand on it and felt the warm wet. “God,” he said, “they shot me.”

  She looked at the back of his arm. “It’s bleeding,” she said. “Take off the coat and let me see.”

  “Not here,” he said. “We got to get under cover, out of sight. Where we can watch.”

  “Let me tie something on it to cut down the bleeding,” she said. “It won’t take a minute.” She took the first-aid kit from his knapsack, opened it, took out a spool of gauze bandage, and wrapped it around his arm outside the sleeve. She wrapped it as tightly as she could and then cut the bandage with her hunting knife, split the end, and tied the bandage in place.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go find a place.”

  “On the way up, the trail crossed a little meadow, remember? A stream ran through it and there were a lot of wild flowers and the trees were all around it. It’s where the hiking sign was.”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Okay. We’ll go there and put the meadow between us and wait for them there.”

  “You think they’ll still come down this trail?”

  “It’s the only way they know. They’re city, like us. They have no food. They’re wet and freezing. They must be scared. They have no maps. Probably no compass. The trail’s all they have. I’d stick to it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  “Even if I’m not, it’s all we can do.”

  They walked for an hour and a half down the trail. The numbness wore out of Newman’s arm. It began to throb. It was nearly dark when they reached the meadow. They crossed it and turned right along the edge of the woods and went a third of the way around the meadow and settled into a small hollow inside the cover of the woods.

  Janet took the first-aid kit from her pack and placed it beside her on top of the fallen tree behind which they lay. She unwrapped the bandage on his arm, and with her knife she carefully cut the fabric on his jacket and shirt away from the wound.

  “How’s it look?” he said. He kept his eyes on the trail opening across the meadow.

  “It’s too dark to see,” she said. She took the flashlight from her pack and cupping it to shield the light she looked at the wound. “It doesn’t look too bad,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “There’s some like little bb’s in there,” she said.

  “It’s shot,” he said. “I was hit with a shotgun.”

  “I think I will have to get them out,” she said.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Give me your jackknife,” she said.

  He let the carbine rest on the log as he fished his jackknife out of his right hip pocket. He handed it to her and took up the gun again.

  She opened the larger blade. It had a narrow sharp point.

  “Give me your lighter,” she said. He handed that to her. She snapped it into flame and ran the knife blade through it. She released the lighter and slipped it into his pocket. She blew on the knife blade until it cooled. There was a smudge of black soot on it.

  “What I’m going to try to do,” she said, “is to pop the bb’s out with the point of the knife, like you would a splinter. I’m not going to dig you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  She put the flashlight in her mouth and held it with her teeth so that the light shone on his wound and her hands were free. She carefully probed the point of the knife at the edge of a bit of shot looking black against the raw flesh. He jumped.

  “Hold still,” she said around the flashlight, unable to make the dental sounds.

  He clamped his jaw harder and she flicked the shot out of the flesh with a quick movement of the knife blade. It didn’t hurt. It was the sense of what she was doing that made him jumpy, the sense of knife blade in open wound that made the sweat begin to bead on his forehead. He was tense. He looked around at her. Saliva ran along the casing of the flashlight. Her eyebrows were down, her face taut with concentration. The light of the flashlight reflecting upward on her made her eye hollows seem deep. He noticed that she had sweat on her forehead too. He turned away and looked at the woods. She carefully and with great delicacy pried another shot fragment from the wound.

  It was full dark now, the open meadow before them still gray with the memory of day, but the woods black. He jumped as she pried too deep with the knife. She murmured around the flashlight. He held still and she got another bit of lead. Across the open land an owl moved in almost soundless flight, low, looking for field mice.

  She worked on his wound for twenty-five minutes. Then she put the knife down, opened a tube of antiseptic cream, smeared it on a large gauze pad, and placed the pad over the wound. She took adhesive tape from the first-aid kit and wrapped it tightly around the arm, holding the pad in place. Then she took the flashlight from her mouth.

  “All there is is aspirin. Why don’t you swallow a couple. Can you do it without water?”

  “Yes,” he said. He put the two aspirin in his mouth, tipped his head back with a sudden movement, and swallowed the aspirin.

  “Here,” she said, and handed him back the jack-knife. Her hands were shaking.

  He put the blade into the ground to clean it and pulled it out and folded it and slipped the knife back in his hip pocket.

  “Thank you,” he said. His arm throbbed and he felt weak.

  She shut off the flashlight and put it and the first-aid kit back in the pack.

  “How do you feel?” she said.

  “Not bad,” he said. “It throbs, but having it bandaged right helps. Makes it feel, you know, protected.”

 
She nodded and put her hand on the back of his neck and massaged it lightly. It was cold and getting colder. She put her hood up and tightened the drawstrings. Across the open meadow nothing moved. The owl was gone. They had become accustomed to the night sounds of the woods. It now seemed to them like quiet.

  “When they get to this open place,” she said, “won’t they expect us to be waiting for them?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I would think so.”

  “So what will they do?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said. He talked without taking his eyes from the circle of wood-line. Back and forth in a slow semicircle he watched. “So far they have been stupid as hell. But they can’t be that stupid. They wouldn’t just walk across the open field like targets. Nobody could be that dumb.”

  “So what will they do?”

  “Well, they don’t have many choices. They have to get downhill to the lake. This trail is the only one they know. When they come to this clearing they’ll have to skirt it. That means they’ll be ploughing through the woods at night.”

  “So what will we do?”

  “We’ll listen,” he said.

  29

  They lay perfectly still, shivering in the darkness, close together in the hollow just off the trail at the edge of the meadow. There was no moon and the darkness was absolute. They listened. The owl they had seen earlier still hunted and occasionally called out in his hoo hoo hoo sound, so like an owl was said to sound that it seemed almost contrived. They listened intensely, feeling an ache of effort along the jawline. His arm pounded steadily. There was no wind.