Robert Crews: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  He worked as fast as he could, though as she had pointed out, there was no need for haste. They were both drenched to the bone, with no means of drying out till the sun returned. He would not even be able to find dry materials from which to make fire by bow and drill. Even if their roof held tight against the cloudburst, they would soak the interior merely by reentering. But it was better to work than to lie passively in wet misery. He cut enough pine boughs to give each an armload.

  They piled a supply at the head end of the shelter, then entered, inserting themselves backward, in the prone position, at the foot—which thereby became, and stayed, the head, for they had to close that entrance too against the rain, and to do so otherwise would have required their reversing themselves once inside, so as to reach out and pull up the pine boughs. It was Friday who had the foresight to design this maneuver.

  The interior was darker than before, and by now the roof had in fact finally leaked, though not badly, considering the force of the rain. And at least the makeshift mattress, though wet, kept them off the ground. They had both now rolled to the supine.

  “I don’t see how any roof we could make would hold up perfectly against these conditions,” Crews said. “This one’s doing a better job than could have been expected.” From time to time a drop fell on his face, and if he felt for the spot of penetration and poked around, rearranging the branches so that it was plugged, one or more leaks were thereby created in the area adjoining.

  “One more layer,” Friday said, “and it would be watertight. I know that now.”

  “Maybe a steeper pitch,” said Crews. “But a certain amount of width would have to be sacrificed, the higher the ridgepole.”

  “How about making it longer, to compensate, with compartments end to end, railroad-style.”

  “It wouldn’t be as companionable, though.”

  “That’s true.”

  He stayed silent for a moment and had nothing to hear but the falling water. “Where’s it leaking on your side?”

  “Here and there. I’m twisted, to avoid what I can.”

  Crews sat up. “Switch with me. This side’s better. There’s only a little coming in down by my feet.”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “Certainly not. We’re in this together.”

  “You’ve still got that wound, haven’t you?” He had asked about it when they were building the shelter and had given her the antiseptic can to keep.

  “I told you it’s coming along fine. Really. It doesn’t hurt any more when I move, only if I touch it.”

  “We’re stuck here until the rain stops. I never have figured out quite how to handle the problem of bad weather—except in the case of that cave. You know, I went in there to get out of the rain. I never asked you, did you hear me come in in the dark?”

  “Of course. For a little while I thought it was him. But then, after the noises stopped, I believed it was some animal, some big animal by the sound of it. I didn’t sleep all night. I was terrified. And then when morning came outside, and a little light penetrated, there near the entrance where you were, and I saw you, and I saw that knife near your hand, I got the idea, the crazy idea, he had sent you to kill me. I had a box of matches in my pocket. I had just made a campfire and was going to cook lunch when he began his target practice the day he shot me. I had found a piece of dead wood that I thought I might use to defend myself, and brought it along to the cave. When I first made out your form, I almost panicked and considered beating out your brains before you woke up. Fortunately, I decided I ought to see you better before doing that, and I used up all my matches getting that stick ignited.”

  The rain ceased to come in gusts and settled down to a steady fall of medium force, but that was worse for the roof, which at least on his side leaked more. He did not mention this or ask about hers, because there could be no help for it.

  “Don’t forget the fish,” he said. “They must be all wet by now. We’ll have to dry them out when we can. Otherwise they won’t keep long. Of course, we could eat them all.”

  “I’ll have one now,” Friday said. It had grown darker outside, which meant he could hardly see her, a foot away. “Here’s yours.”

  He accepted the fish, which had been wetted on but stayed crisp of skin. “I’m still so hungry I find this delicious. But we might think about varying our diet. We could use more bulk, and something starchy if that’s possible. Too much protein isn’t good for the system. For that matter, some fat would be in order.”

  She was still eating the same fish. She made more of her food than he did. Thus far he had continued the same gulping that had been his way when alone.

  “I’ll get on that in the morning,” she said.

  He bent his neck at another angle, to avoid the water drops that were falling on his forehead. “I think I now have an idea where we got off the right trail. To find it again, we shouldn’t have to backtrack too far.” New drips had found him, and he moved his head again, this time nearer the center line.

  “Why don’t we sleep on it?” she said, very near where his face was now, startling him.

  He pulled away a little. “Look, I don’t want to bring up unhappy memories, but something’s been bothering me. Before I heard those gunshots, I found a footprint on the side of a cliff. It couldn’t have been yours, either one of you. Of course, I don’t know how long it had been there.”

  He waited for her reply, but none came. He felt better for having brought up the question, even if there might never be an answer. He was pleased that she could fall asleep under these conditions. The rain had not stopped but was no longer falling so loudly he could not hear the regular sound of Friday’s breathing. He had not slept with a woman in ages. He had not slept at all since the night before last, in the cave. He was soaked to the skin, in a universe of dampness, lying on wet boughs above mud, water falling in his face. But he was not alone.

  9

  HEAVY RAIN RETURNED AT DAWN, AND Crews was awakened not by light but by a leak that had gone from drops to a thin but continuous stream of water, which found his face wherever he put it.

  Friday’s back was to him. If she could continue to sleep under such conditions, good for her. He rolled over onto his stomach and crawled out of the shelter, pushing before him the pine-bough barricade, but before he was all the way out, there she was, sharing the task.

  They compared notes on the night. The fact is that he had slept well until so rudely woken up, whereas her sleep had been fitful.

  “I would say the leaks were diabolically precise in finding just the places that would disturb me most. But the truth is that there were so many, they couldn’t help hitting every target.”

  “Do you realize,” Crews asked, “that you are cruelly dismissing the theory that has always given me solace? That I am the victim of the malicious rain god, or anyway the deity who is supposed to protect all makeshift roofs.”

  They stood there smiling at each other, being rained on. But the weather was warmer than ever, and since they had been wet for so many hours anyway, he found standing far preferable to lying prone and passive.

  Friday wrinkled her nose as the water streamed onto it from her high forehead. “I’ve been thinking about the firemaking rig. All that really has to be dry is the socket the drill goes into, and of course the tinder. No, I guess the drill too, or its end anyhow, which creates the friction. Maybe we could locate a big fallen tree trunk, or even a stump that’s thick enough and not so rotten it’s soaked like a sponge. Maybe if we could cut away enough of the wet wood to get down where it would be dry? What do you think?” Somehow, the longer he had known her, the wetter and more bedraggled she was, the more attractive she looked.

  “We could try,” he said. He was irked with himself for not having the idea. But then how long had he depended solely on the sun, going tireless on gray days, before making the first bow and drill? No phase of woodsmanship had come easily to him.

  They had to hike some distance from the campsite to find a suitable fal
len tree. The rain came and went all morning, but fell in such volume that the foliage continued to drip abundantly between cloudbursts. When they finally found their log, its wood was the toughest Crews had yet encountered, and he was afraid he might break the knife blade on it.

  But finally the parts were fashioned and assembled, and using Friday’s shoelace as bowstring, he was about to make fire when she asked, “Can I try that?”

  Either this was the best bow and drill yet, or she was a more effective user thereof, for her time in getting a mature flame was half his quickest. Once the tinder was ignited, they added on shreds from the dry inner wood of the log from which they had made the apparatus, and when those were burning well, piled on dead evergreen rubbish with incendiary Christmas-tree needles, then wet but thin branches, and on top of all, several logs thick as his forearm: these last sizzled and steamed when the heat reached them, and did not genuinely catch fire until the fuel underneath had been replenished several times. The absence of rain at the most crucial stages helped enormously, for even though, acting on another idea of Friday’s, they had found even larger flat stones of the kind on which Crews had fried the fish the evening before and built a roofed structure around the fire, it would never have defied a downpour of the cloudburst kind that had made a mockery of their shelter during the night.

  Once the rocky surround had been constructed and a small fire was going inside, it was self-evident that they also now had a workable stove, on the broad top slab of which, balanced on uprights Stonehenge-style, food could be cooked. It soon grew so hot that the drops from the occasional drizzle to which the rain had now been reduced evaporated on contact, sometimes so quickly as to leave no steam behind.

  “I guess I’ll catch some fresh fish,” Crews said, glancing around for the pronged spear. “We might as well stay here until we get in better shape for traveling. It feels to me like the rain’s going to stay for a while. We ought to take advantage of the interim periods to collect food and also we ought to thatch our roof tighter—if we spend another night here, and in my opinion, better that than to be caught somewhere else without any shelter at all.”

  “I agree,” Friday said, smiling. How she kept her teeth so white under these conditions he could not explain, and was too delicate to ask. Her cheeks glowed, too. Each was discreet about hygiene, going into the woods or to the stream, depending on the purpose. He had washed various parts of himself the day before, but did not have her stomach for full immersion in the icy brook.

  “Just where did you leave the spear? I’m going to give your technique a try.”

  She pointed past the sodden black-and-gray ashes of the campfire of the day before. “I thought it was over there. I could have sworn I brought it back, but maybe it’s down by the rapids.”

  “Okay. I’m going there…. We might think about making a drying rack for our clothes, only not too close to the fire.”

  He walked along the bank of the stream. Even the drizzle had ceased by now, but the sky still looked heavy with water, as if any provocation, a thunderclap or lightning bolt, might cause it to rupture and drop more. The ground was spongy-slick when there was grass and elsewhere muddy, squishing between his toes, but turned to grit and gravel as it sloped to meet the rocky, swift-watered, swirling shallows. No spear was in evidence. He returned to the campsite.

  “It probably got into the water somehow while we were stringing up the fish. It’s reached the lake by now.” Friday was stoking the fire. He asked her for the tool. “I’ll cut another.”

  She frowned, pushing back her hair. “I could have sworn…” She produced the implement from the back pocket of the jeans.

  “You’re continuing to use the antiseptic, right?”

  “Of course.” She grinned, an expression he was seeing for the first time.

  “I feel responsible for you.”

  “I know you do…. How long would you say it’s been since we got the ingredients together for the meal yesterday? That would have been late afternoon, right? And now it’s midmorning.”

  “Yeah,” Crews said. “More or less. Why does the time mean so much?”

  She poked at the fire with a long stick. It was not green, and the tip caught fire almost immediately. She let it burn. “You’re going to be angry again, as you were when I brought the mushrooms back…. I ate some of them, and—”

  “You didn’t!” he cried. “Aw, for God’s sake…”

  “That was back when I first found them. If they were toxic, wouldn’t I have felt it by now? It must be eighteen hours ago.”

  “How would I know? For God’s sake,” he repeated. “What happens if the poison just takes longer to act?”

  “I’ll die,” she said. “I know that. I knew that when I ate them. I’m not that attached to living, any more.”

  “Don’t say that.” He shook his head violently. “It isn’t right.”

  “It may not be right, but it’s true.” She plunged the burning stick farther into the flames and left it there. “You have to allow me my defiance, which I’ve bought and paid for. It’s not against you. You’re a good person, a fine man. But I tell you what I wish: I wish that Michael’s aim had been better. I could easily stand being dead, but I don’t know what to do with a superficial wound.”

  “I won’t protest further,” Crews said. “I suddenly remember what people used to say to me when I was drinking, people who cared about me. I don’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like them, and I found what they said unbearable, because of course it was true. But it’s not true that everything true is necessarily unbearable. I used to believe it was, but I was wrong. I was dead wrong. Now I’m right because I’m alive, not because I’m wise or good. I grant your privilege to not care whether you live or die, but my business is survival. If you stay with me, I’m going to restrain you by any means at my disposal from doing something self-destructive. You say it wouldn’t reflect on me, but it would. I won’t put up with it. If you don’t agree, then don’t be here when I get back.”

  He was genuinely furious. He saw no good reason why the mushrooms could even yet be called harmless. He could not think of her sickening and dying, and still he could think of nothing else. She was addicted to the man who tried to kill her. The phenomenon was not unknown. He hoped she would be gone when he returned.

  He roamed amid a forest containing hundreds of trees of all species, from lofty masts to midget saplings, and could not find a single one with the configuration of branches required to make a spear of the sort that Friday had wielded so profitably. With every problem to which she had thus far applied herself, she had done better than he, but then she was obviously a lot smarter. But that was small distinction. The only one of his wives he even approached in intelligence was Michelle, and then probably only when she was stoned. But there had been a day when each was fond of him.

  He tripped on exposed roots, and was savagely whipped in the face by wet branches. He trod painfully on pine cones. He was losing his woodsmanship, regressing to the spirit of his early days at the lake. His own survival was now one with hers. He had failed to save his companions in the fallen airplane. If he failed her as well…

  He stopped and looked about him. He was lost again. The disorientation was now to the third power: after the crash he had been lost to the world; then they had got lost while searching for the river; now this, at the limits of absurdity. There could be no fourth stage but to perish.

  He tried to remember what he could of the terrain as it affected him physically. Where had he been whipped by the recoiling branches, with a spray of droplets? What had been the sequence underfoot? The thick, wet leaf mold, then the pine cones, the moss in the shadow of the fallen tree with rotten bark, the rocky outcropping, the area at which the level ground began gently to slope upward.

  He climbed another two hundred yards through thick woods, more in hope than in the sense that the long hill would soon reach its crest. Then all at once he had reached the last line of trees, beyond which ther
e seemed to be nothing but air. He emerged from the forest to stand on a ridge from which he could see the water, far away in the valley below. He was so high above and distant from the lake that it appeared narrower than he had ever known it to be, and also of a different texture or hue … unless it was another lake altogether, or the river that in fact it was, as he recognized in the next instant. Nor was it so far away, probably no more than half a mile.

  He had found the river. The discovery should have inspired exultation, but there could be little under the circumstances. Nor was he lost. His trail back would be easy to follow, given the damp ground over which he had traveled. There had been places so spongy that his tracks had filled with water as soon as his feet left them. It was simply that he did not want to return to the campsite and find she was dead or missing. He should have offered her better alternatives. He should have made it clear that he would not forsake her for any cause whatever. If his purpose was to dissuade her from self-damage, he had been quite as negative as she. In so doing he had withdrawn the protection he had furnished, which, aside from managing to keep alive for these weeks, was his sole achievement as a man.

  He arrived at an awful explanation for the disappearance of the fishing spear she had used the day before: her husband had found them, had confiscated the potential weapon, had lain in concealment until Crews went into the woods.

  He began to run. He did not trip now nor get lashed by low-hanging branches. He was swift and sure, and half the route was downhill. In the light of the new menace, he accepted her argument about the mushrooms: if she had felt nothing untoward in eighteen hours, then they probably were not poisonous. It might still have been foolish to risk eating them, but that was not his worry now. He must return to the campsite as quickly as possible, but when he got near he must do so with stealth. Not only was the man armed with a pistol, but he was apparently some sort of athlete. It had not mattered when a drunken Crews got the worst of brawls he had instigated: nothing was at stake. But this was a battle he must not lose.