Robert Crews: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  He started a fire, burned off such feathers as he could and skinned the duck where he could not, spitted the blackened and somewhat mangled bird on a green stick, and roasted it over flames that leaped and flared when fed by the abundant dripping fat. The result was partially charred and elsewhere raw, like most of his open-fire cookery thus far, but generally glorious, and he ate everything but the bones and cartilage, which he flung to the crow, who had stayed around all this while, cawing sometimes and often changing perches, finally coming to a tree on Crews’s side of the water, from which it peered down at him, anxiously shifting its claws.

  Michelle on occasion brought home frozen dinners from the menu served in first class. There were some passengers who ate nothing even on overseas flights, as Crews himself could testify, being of their company, and nobody seemed to care what disposition was made of the surplus meals. The wines, however, were policed, being of quite a higher order than the food, despite the grand claims made for the latter, supposedly the creation of the celebrity chef whose face was exploited in the ads. The duck, for example, seemed to have been basted with an ammonia-flavored marmalade. It was garnished with potato puffs too often taken from heat to cold and back again, slimy infant green beans, and inedible “roses” coiled from tomato peelings.

  But never that concerned with food, they had fun anyway. Michelle was Crews’s favorite among his wives, and not just for her remarkable body, which never showed a hint of her remarkable abuse of it. One of his great pleasures was simply to lie in bed and watch her wander around the apartment in the nude, often aimlessly, seldom with any immediate awareness of her state. This was true even at those rare times when she had lately smoked or sniffed something. She was also the most generous human being he had ever known. At first he had, in admitted bias, associated this attribute with stupidity, but Michelle did not lack in intelligence: it was rather a matter of attention. Hers was often elsewhere than where the moment would seem to demand. But where? Sometimes brooding on the question made him furious, but as much with himself as with her, and one thing that could not be done with Michelle was to quarrel. She began by granting the validity of all differences of opinion and was by nature incapable of an Ardis-style of opposition. If you want to believe that, go ahead. It was simply never the sort of thing she took seriously. What then was worthwhile? Holidays, public and private, some made up on the spot, such as the first day of sun in an otherwise wet week. She needed no champagne to make the occasion effervescent. Gifts, for which she had a genius. The expensive ones, of precious metals or rare skins, were inconspicuous; but the cheap ones, the jokes, were loud and gaudy: blow-up dolls, goofy paper animal masks, carnival hats from far-flung places. And sometimes she brought back a one-of-a-kind present that enchanted Crews, e.g., the belt from Istanbul which when you pulled the buckle from the leather sheath revealed the flexible blade of a steel so thin and elastic that it became a sword when not encircling a waistline. Judging from what, later on when he was in need, he got for it from an antiques dealer as notoriously mean when buying as greedy when selling, she must have spent several months’ salary on this alone, and with what went for drugs, Michelle could rightly never spare a dime.

  Crews, who always stuck to alcohol with the to him compelling argument that it was properly a food, of which he might be temporarily a glutton but from which he could at any time return to moderation, was drunkenly late in recognizing that she had a problem, but even when he did so he believed her addiction, by exceeding, excused his own.

  The crow had carried quite a large hunk of duck carcass to a high branch, where, one foot clamped on its meal, it plucked and devoured such minuscule morsels of meat as were left. It continued from time to time to caw, though perhaps in satisfaction now. Most nonhuman animals had but a narrow range of voice in which to make their barbaric yawps. Crews could call himself only semiarticulate when it came to women: another way in which he was no chip off the old block. His father had been overweight and bald, yet could with a few words seemingly enchant any female in whose presence his son had ever observed him, despite losing no time in betraying any to whom he became close and letting them know: that was essential to his satisfaction.

  Crews had begun to notice that his reminiscences, which necessarily tended toward the lamentable, invariably came to mind only at those times when his current existence became more rewarding—if gnawing the half-burned, half-raw corpse of a wild duck could be so called, but of course it could, according to the law of prevailing conditions, a clause in the general rule of survival, which made standard the practice of eating that which did not eat you. So long as you kept living, you were damned right to feel satisfaction. Crews cawed back at the crow, who was sufficiently startled to stop pecking bones and to gawk.

  He got back to work, the moral value of which he could at last appreciate, for nothing else so keeps one from fleeing the moment at hand, the only one that can ever be used. The sandals had not been successful, but the theory thereof had by no means been repudiated. Better materials must be found. And now that the possibility that the farther reaches of the lake might be explored with profit had suggested the construction of a raft, he had a lot to do.

  But heavy rain all the next day not only postponed work on the raft but also reminded him, huddling therein, that the lean-to left much to be desired as shelter from wind-driven water, which came in from any of the three open sides it willfully chose, and even through the spaces between the logs of the roof-wall. A reliable raft would take a while to build, and meanwhile there was always the matter of food. He would need his house for some time; it should be improved.

  The next day was dry. He gathered enough of the smaller fallen trees, the beavers’ leftovers, to form the other half of the roof, making the former lean-to into a tent-shaped hut, or a pup tent constructed of wood, for it was only three and a half feet high at the ridgepole and had to be entered on hands and knees. He closed in one of its ends, and for the other lashed together a panel that, when hung on hinges made from the thick, rubber-insulated wire from his otherwise useless electric razor, formed a door. The many interstices of the door would admit some rain and much wind, but had a function as peepholes from which to take the lie of the land before emerging.

  He plastered all the chinks in the other three surfaces of his home with clay from the invaluable deposit near the pond, doing this while the logs were still damp from the rains, so that when the clay dried it would not shrink too much as the wood thirstily absorbed its moisture. Memories that had practical value to him were now returning from childhood, when, as an only child at the country house, he was wont to frequent the workingmen who came to do repairs, such as the stone-mason who assured him it was advisable to wet well all materials that came in contact with fresh concrete.

  What with the hut and a fishing expedition so successful that he prolonged it, bringing back enough trout to sustain him for a while, several days passed before Crews could deal with the matter of the raft. When he did get to it, the problem was soon evident. A platform sufficiently substantial to remain buoyant under his weight would be too wide to be floated down the narrow stream. But if the assembled product would likely be too large for the stream, you could send the logs down, one or more at a time, and when enough had been transferred, build the raft on the very shore of the lake, or even in the shallow water, where the heaviness of the members would not be a hindrance.

  He set to work, rolling to the brook such ready-cut logs as remained and then sending them afloat downstream. He accompanied every consignment, a job that took hours, for the lake was at least half a mile from the pond, and despite his shepherding, the logs tended at places to get turned crosswise and hang up on projecting rocks or roots along the narrow waterway, and then for the earliest trips he had to plow a path for himself through virgin terrain, trampling down some vegetation but being forced to evade that too dense or bristling with thorns.

  Before reaching the lake, the stream degenerated into a swampy delta, in wh
ich the water was shallow and clogged with a profusion of aquatic grasses. This was where Crews collected his logs. When they had all been moved down the brook, he lashed them together, using fishline and twisted reeds and braids of long marsh grasses, a labor which took several days and was now and again interrupted by the need to find food. He was too busy to undertake the lengthy journey to the good trout-catching place. The lake was right at hand and must be teeming with fish. He had had no luck when he first wet a line there, but that was many days before and at a different spot, predating his becoming a homebuilder and naval architect. He now set about the matter in a new way. He cut the feathers, hair, etc., off one of the artificial flies with the largest hooks. He went to drier land and dug here and there with sticks until he had accumulated a mess of earthworms. He cut and trimmed smooth a thin young sapling. With this pole, a length of fishline, and a hook on which a worm was impaled, he made a rig that began to repay his effort as soon as he waded into waist-deep water and dangled the bait eight feet beyond. Almost immediately he felt, through line and pole, the gentle nibbling of something live beneath the surface. He yanked out a fish a bit smaller than the average trout and not as smartly colored, being white with a faint yellowish cast, but presumably as edible. He caught another as soon as the hook was rebaited. Apparently he had encountered a pack or school reminiscent of the minnows, though he doubted whether another makeshift seine would work with fish this large. Yet surely some better method could be found than the inefficient one-at-a-time. He collected more worms and made three more poles. While he was at it, he improved the rigs, tying on a pebble to weight each hook and finding a piece of dead porous wood that furnished buoyant bobbers. Thus he could plant the poles erect in the shallows and work on the raft while fish caught themselves, signaling as much through the dance of the porous chunks floating on the surface above them.

  He caught fish on all poles, some of them new breeds to him, rounder in form, some all silvery, others with blue-tinged scales. All were delicious when spitted over a fire of hot coals. He had begun, as an anticonstipation measure, to try a more varied diet, eating small test samples of such marsh plants as looked harmless. The grasses that seemed safest were usually uninteresting on the palate, but in one place, at the land edge of the marsh, he found a low bed of what would seem from its spiciness to be a form of watercress, though it was of a slightly different shape from the familiar and therefore sufficiently suspect, to a man in his situation, to be tasted in very small amounts until proved nontoxic.

  He abandoned the idea of making a paddle—any kind he could imagine would require more craftsmanship than he yet had at his disposal—and furnished himself with a long, sturdy pole, which would serve on the shore-hugging route he had decided to take. For all his care, the raft could be no better than the quality of the lashings that held it together, and they would not really be tested until the voyage began: it would make sense to avoid deep water.

  As to what to take with him on the expedition, he had to weigh alternatives. Some possessions, such as the fire-making mirror and the all-purpose tool, should go wherever he went, along with coils of fishing line and a selection of flies and hooks from which he had stripped the decorations, but nothing that could not fit in the pockets of his seersucker jacket, a garment now much the worse for wear and too dirty ever to get clean without soap, so he had not tried to wash it. The extra clothing would not be needed and might if carried only wash overboard. If he found nothing but more forest at the other end of the lake, he could return to a comfortable home and a little collection of useful equipment. If on the other hand he encountered any form of civilization, his miserable hovel and lode of wretched goods would instantly become trash that had served its purpose.

  He began the voyage and almost immediately was beset by a problem that had not arisen in the several short trial runs of the completed raft, probably because the purpose of those was only to ascertain whether the structure would carry his weight and whether the crude lashings would maintain their integrity. No attention had been given to the matter of steering a roughly rectangular collection of logs joined together by primitive fastenings that might loosen at any moment. If he put his back into pushing on the pole—and a great deal of effort was needed to move the sluggish thing at all—he was likely to run the raft aground near the shore, and so dangerously send a shock throughout its parts, with another to come on the relaunching. But too gentle a push was useless. Nor did he dare go out into deeper water.

  He had peeled the bark off the pole, to make it less abrasive to handle, but his palms quickly developed areas of sore discoloration, visible despite the dirt. These were en route to becoming blisters. Another unanticipated problem. Had he known, he could have made pads.

  Favoring his more tender left hand, his next push was disproportionate. Reluctant to start from a dead stop, the raft once in motion was as slow to halt, especially when an opportunity to ground itself was offered. Its starboard bow went against the sandy bottom near shore. Having no success with the pole, he stepped off into the mid-calf water, waded to the recalcitrant corner log, and agitated it. The lashing thereby came undone. It had to be rewrapped and retied, with sore hands. This was more comfortably done when sitting. He towed the raft to a place below a high rock, where some large flat stones, perhaps fragments fallen from the granite outcropping, projected from the water. Seated on the outermost, he could keep the raft afloat as he worked.

  When he had finished the job, Crews propped the newly refastened corner of the raft on the stone that had been his seat, waded to land, and climbed up a kind of natural stairs at the side of the rock and continued on to the edge of the field behind, which was the one where the wildflowers grew. He was looking for something with which to pad the pole, but a quick survey of the area, with its wiry grasses, failed to furnish what he required. He got a better idea, and started back down the three or four natural steps to the beach, not part of the rock but eroded naturally in the slope alongside and sometimes sustained by tufts of grass. One was really a little ledge, sufficiently wide and deep for the planting of both feet, though on the ascent he had used only one, without examination. Coming down now, he found it natural to look more carefully.

  In the loose dust, added to which were the grains of sand he had brought up from the beach on damp soles, was the fresh print of his bare left foot. Farther over, almost at the edge of the shelf, was the print of someone else’s right shoe, slightly blurred or smudged, but not so much as to obscure the elaborate pattern of a man-made sole, a complex of waves and wafflings and graph marks. This print was significantly smaller than his own.

  His first emotion, which only a moment later seemed nonsensical, was fright. He fearfully examined the landscape, including even that on the far side of the lake. He went back to the top of the bluff and scanned the meadow, and then descended to search the beach. He found neither another foot-print nor any other evidence humankind had ever visited the area. He went again and again to the pattern left on the surface of the little ledge. It could not be mistaken for an accidental arrangement of dust made by some natural force or the track of any nonhuman creature however fancy its paws or claws.

  But why had he been afraid? Perhaps because he had been taken unaware, and he had now been in the wilderness long enough to believe by instinct, not reason, that any surprise was more likely to be bad news than good. He must become a person again, at least insofar as he dealt with the fact that somebody, not something, had left the impression of a shoe. Someone who wore a much smaller size than his had been when he wore shoes. Perhaps a smaller man, or anyway one with smaller feet, or a woman, or a child.

  The truth was, he could read almost nothing from the spoor, including any sense at all of when it might have been made. He had visited the rock a week or so earlier. Had the print been there then? Was the smudging due to wind and rain, or had other feet, human or animal, trod on the footprint without leaving a trace of another? It was a fact from which he could make nothing, but i
t was impossible to disregard. Where did X go on reaching the ground above? Most of the terrain was heavily overgrown. A path through the grasses and wildflowers, such as his own from the earlier visit, would have been invisible only a few hours after it was made. Beyond the meadow on all three sides was thick forest.

  He had to get on with his business, which was to explore the lake. Pushing the raft ahead of him, he waded away from shore until the water was deep enough to sustain it with weight on board and then climbed on. For some reason, the poling went better than it had gone earlier. He gradually learned how better to direct the awkward craft, and to get more forward progress by using less force: it was a matter of subtlety in the placement of the pole and the adjustment of balances. His hands seemed not as sore as earlier on, now that he did not fight that with which he worked, and he still had not moved to implement the idea that had come to him at the field: to fashion some sort of sail.

  He was poling along a shoreline that at the moment was so consistently linear that it could have been drawn against a great ruler, with as regular a strip of beach, backed by uniform pines so dense as seemingly to be inanimate. The one touch of humanity offered by the footprint revived in him an irony that had presumably been drowned with the submerged airplane: was it that of a child on a family outing? Scrambled up there for fun, then hopped back down, jumped in the speed-boat, and they all roaringly returned to their comfortable vacation home, equipped with microwave oven, fax machine, and TV set on which the news broadcasts had long since reported the loss of a private airplane carrying tycoon Richard Spurgeon, two business associates, and a worthless drunk nobody missed.