Robert Crews: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” He threw the berries back.

  Friday’s face fell. “I’m okay now,” she said softly. “You don’t have to take it easy on me.”

  “It’s not you…”

  “All of a sudden you’re sad,” said Friday. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m happier than I can ever remember being,” he said. “I want you to know that, because it has to do with you. I’m sad because I can’t just stay here being happy until we run out of berries or the weather gets so bad we can’t protect ourselves from it—winter will come eventually—or until you get enough of my company. I really have to think of the families of those men on the airplane. It was self-serving to say they are better off in their ignorance. I ought to stop telling myself such lies.” He paused. “Unless I go back, it might be years before the plane is found. Those bodies should be recovered.”

  “Of course. I always knew that.”

  “You did?”

  “That’s the kind of man you are.” She quickly pushed some berries into his mouth. “Now don’t say anything else on the subject. We know what we’re going to do tomorrow. Let’s make the most of what we have here today.”

  Ever since arriving in the wilderness, Crews had gone to bed when night came and, except for bears, mosquitoes, or bad weather, remained asleep until dawn, for a natural reason: without artificial interference, the human being is a diurnal animal. But on this last night in their home camp, he and Friday stayed near the glowing embers of the fire until the only natural illumination was a thin slice of moon amid a vast sparkling dome of stars.

  He pointed to a constellation that was exceptionally vivid this evening. It was the only one he could identify. “Would you look at the Big Dipper? It’s unmistakable. The two stars that make up the leading edge of the receptacle point directly at that bright one out there. That’s the North Star, as everybody knows.”

  “I didn’t, as it happens,” said Friday, resting her tilted head on his shoulder, so as to study the heavens more comfortably.

  “Well, I’ve known it since I was a kid. I think I saw it in the comics, not the ones with stories but those that inform you of certain facts, like what makes the tail of a comet, and so on. I remembered some other stuff about natural indicators of direction: moss tends to grow on the north side of trees and the bark is thicker, but there are so many exceptions to the rule, depending on other factors, that you can’t really trust such things. But the North Star is never wrong. And I forgot to stay up and look for it when I was lost!”

  “Would it have made much difference?” Friday asked, nestling her warm head against his neck.

  “None, when I was on my own. But I would have found the river sooner when you and I were looking for it.”

  “But then we wouldn’t have made this nice place.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “What do you think—when we’ve both done what we have to do, should we come back for a visit?”

  “That won’t be possible,” Friday said. “Once the news is out, this will be a popular camping spot.”

  “I won’t tell how to get here.”

  She sat up, his arm falling to her waist. “You’re going to be a celebrity, whether you like it or not. You won’t be allowed to keep any secrets.”

  “Especially since this can be called a love nest.” He shuddered. “You’re giving me every reason not to want to go back. Can’t we just wait till we’re found?”

  “It’s tempting,” Friday said. “But we’ve got to take the initiative. You know that.”

  “I need you to remind me…. If we have to lose this, then we’ll make another place, even nicer.”

  “There’s no doubt about that,” she murmured.

  “Then that’s settled.”

  “Now that we’re going back,” said Friday, “I’ll have to start thinking again about what I tried to forget. My situation has gotten a lot more complicated than when it was just that my husband shot me.”

  “Under the circumstances,” Crews said, “we had to live together. We can deny we were lovers.”

  “I don’t know about you,” said she, clasping the hand he had kept at her waist, “but I would find it humiliating to make such a statement when everybody looking at us would know it was a lie.”

  11

  DESPITE THEIR DECISION TO JOIN THE rest of humankind now that the route had been located, Crews might have found it easy to procrastinate in doing as much had Friday not convinced him, on arising next morning, that, if you thought about it, there was no good reason to delay. He could have stayed in place at least until the blackberries were exhausted, but she was right, and not only in the obvious sense. Having command of oneself meant you made decisions and acted on them: whatever the outcome, you had completed a process. He had lived too long in fragments and spasms.

  At the edge of the clearing they stopped to look fondly back at the lean-to.

  “Next time we’ll do the birch-bark shingles,” Friday said.

  “And make the clay oven,” said Crews. “And by then we’ll have done research on edible wild foods. There’s probably all kinds of stuff we missed now.” He turned. “We’re jumping the gun. We’ve still got a long hike to Fort Judson.”

  “Yeah,” Friday answered. “But this was a real home.” Her bruise was gone by now, and her face was of a flawless tan. Her teeth were as white as ever.

  “It wouldn’t be quite the same if we really knew what we were doing,” said Crews. “So maybe we shouldn’t try to reproduce it but rather tackle something new next time. Bathroom with shower.”

  “Heated towel rack and bidet!”

  As always when a route was known, following this one took only a fraction of the time needed for its previous discovery. The hill from which the river could be seen now seemed to be only a mile or so from the campsite. But though it had been in sight from the crest of the hill, the waterway was no longer visible once they entered the trees on the downward slope, and because the trail from here on was entirely new, the travel took forever. They were still on descending ground when the sun had climbed to its high-noon position.

  They paused to sit on a fallen log and eat the blackberries Friday had bagged in her denim jacket, which was lavishly stained thereby.

  “Along with the other things I have learned,” Crews said, “is a respect for the bygone explorers who first made maps. It takes me no time at all to get the feeling I don’t know where I am. You don’t think we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere?”

  “No,” said Friday. “We’re fine.”

  “Then where’s the river? We should be there by now.”

  “Farther than it looked.” She fed him several berries. “It has to be, doesn’t it, if we saw where it was and then walked straight toward it?”

  “But I don’t know if we did walk straight. We had to skirt some fallen timber, and then remember that patch of thorny bushes.”

  Friday chewed and swallowed a blackberry. “Consider this: we’re still going slightly downhill. Water seeks the lowest level, no? As long as the earth continues to slope downward, it isn’t possible for the river to be there. When we reach level ground and don’t find it soon thereafter, then I’ll worry.”

  She was proved right within the next hour. There, beyond a strip of deciduous-treed bottomland, was the river, which, after the lively trout stream, looked broad and sluggish and the color of dull metal. He tossed a stick in and watched it slowly drift away. He had expected a more rapid current.

  He asked Friday whether anything looked familiar. “Maybe we should look for the canoe. Paddling against the current might go faster than I thought. We’d probably make better time and also be more comfortable in a boat.”

  She stared upstream and down. “As usual, everything looks the same in any given area, and I’m only now beginning to try to notice particular distinctions. I wasn’t doing that the last time I was here. I do remember that where we landed last, the bank was lower than this is. He pulled the
canoe partway out of the water and then, when we had unloaded everything, all the way up and back into a grove of trees, where he turned it over and covered it with branches and brush. But that could have been anyplace.”

  “I guess we should start to walk it,” Crews said, “staying right along the bank, which looks passable as far as I can see. Maybe we’ll run across where you pulled in. With luck, it’ll be upstream from here. If it’s downstream, it can be written off. What do you think?”

  “I defer to you.”

  “But you often have better ideas than I.”

  She seized his hand. “Usually it’s when you begin to doubt your own judgment that you are struck by my brilliance. If I’m so smart, how did I get here?”

  Perhaps it was seeing the river again that evoked the masochistic impulse. Crews averted his eyes from the sight of pain in hers. “I could say the same about life,” he told her. “In fact, I used to say it all the time. But that was in the old days, when I shaved from time to time and changed my clothes and ordered from menus.”

  Squeezing his hand, she said anxiously, “Promise you won’t go clean-shaven when we get back without warning me first.”

  “I promise.”

  “I don’t mean asking my permission,” Friday added, almost desperately. “I mean, just letting me know.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I’m not necessarily stuck on beards,” she said. “But everything is changing so much that—it’s just that I know you that way.”

  “You’re going to let me take off this jacket, I hope.”

  “Never!” But she was back to kidding again, and pushed amiably away.

  This was the first time since taking off from the suburban airport, many weeks before, that Crews had had a known destination. At last he could be sure about something: except in the unlikely event that there was more than one river in the area, with this one he could count on going in the opposite direction to which the current flowed and eventually reaching Fort Judson. There could be no exception to this truth. The conviction brought with it a sense of adequacy simply not available when his position in space was in doubt. Had the accident not marooned him in trackless terrain he would probably have gone his life long without experiencing such literal disorientation, as opposed to the kind common to the drunk, which might be called sentimental, for it could be corrected only by a negative measure, i.e., ceasing to drink.

  They hiked along the bank on nondemanding ground, for the most part level and grassy and five or six feet above the water. The other side of the river, probably a hundred yards away, had what looked like gravelly beach, anyway quite a wide lip of shore at water level. Over there, and not here, was the place to pull a boat in. And this was true mile after mile. He might have begun to question Friday’s impression of where she and her husband had landed had he not quickly disciplined himself: that Fort Judson was upstream of everywhere was a truth as fixed as the position of the North Star that he had forgotten to look for.

  Maintaining a regular pace, they did not exhaust themselves and needed no stops for rest. Occasionally they drank from the thermos, and at one point, continuing to walk, they ate smoked fish from the little supply Crews carried, wrapped in fresh leaves, in whichever pockets could accept them. They remained silent except on practical matters. It went without saying that real conversation was reserved for camp. Crews was no longer astonished at their compatibility, which by now seemed a matter of natural instinct.

  By late afternoon the terrain had changed. The bank on their side had gradually dwindled in height and finally, at the beginning of a bend of the river, become a broad shingle, a beach of stones, but small ones, pebbles mainly, and rounded, so that walking on them would have been no problem had they not been heated by hours of sunshine. They were fiery to bare feet. Crews danced briefly before hopping down into the thin leading edge of the water. He moued over at Friday. “It seems I’m still a tenderfoot. About time to make camp. Everything we need should be in that grove up there. I don’t know that we’ll want shelter for the night. It’s so warm, and no rain is coming. What do you think?”

  “Still, it would be cozy.”

  He had hoped that she would say as much. But he pretended otherwise, saying dubiously, “Well, all right. Then you can get to work. Do you have the tool?” She pulled it out of a pocket and waved it smugly. “Good. Oh, here’s the mirror. You might start the fire. I’m going to try some fishing, as long as I’ve already got my feet wet. And I want to reconnoiter the river down there around that point. Maybe I’ll be able to see Fort Judson.”

  He was joking, but Friday frowned. She had come to take the mirror, standing at the edge of the dry pebbles. “Watch yourself down there. You’ll be out of sight.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll try to keep out of trouble. If I run into a bear, I’ll yell for you to come and handle him. Can you sing off-key?”

  “One of my specialties! Or at least so I was told when I got rejected for glee club.”

  Her reminiscences were invariably of her schooldays. Crews spoke very little of his own past. As the days since meeting her went by, his memories were less and less applicable to the present. He continued to splash along in the shallows and watched Friday as their routes, at first parallel, diverged and she angled off across the pebbles, heading for the trees. He hoped she would look back before they could no longer see each other, and she did, at the last possible moment before he reached the point, waving merrily.

  The stones gave way to a low bank, below which the water rapidly deepened. Crews scrambled out of the river and, mounting the rise, could see what was beyond: another pebble beach, though this one was narrower than that he had just left.

  A dark-green canoe lay bottom up, back where the short slope up to the woods began.

  He leaped down to the beach and ran across the stones, immune to their heat. At the canoe he bent to read the legend stencil-painted in yellow on the bow: “Scanlon’s, Fort Judson,” under which appeared a large number 3. But Friday had said that many campers who came downriver hired equipment in Judson. It had been a long time since she fled her husband, who by now had surely returned his own canoe to Scanlon’s and given the authorities whatever story he had chosen. But if so, why had there been no sign of a search party?

  Crews saw the top of the tent before he had run all the way up the bank, and gaining the crest, he saw Friday. She was being hugged by a man a head taller than she. It did not look as if she was resisting him.

  12

  BEFORE CREWS COULD ACT ON HIS cowardly impulse to retreat in silence, Friday saw him and pushed herself away from the big man and shouted and beckoned. Crews went to them, though like a sleepwalker.

  “Robert,” Friday said when he got there, and her first use, ever, of his name did little to restore him to real life. “This is Michael.”

  The man was even larger than he had looked at a distance. He was also wide of upper body and clean-shaven and dressed in what, by contrast with any other clothing Crews had seen in a season, looked like a brand-new khaki outdoorsman’s costume, of the sort favored by the late Dick Spurgeon. Everything about him was outsized, including his prominent jaw, a head of dense dark hair, and the thick-fingered hand that, after Friday’s next words, he readily thrust forward.

  What Friday said was, “I owe my life to this man.”

  In his coma Crews for an instant assumed she meant the other and not himself. He allowed his hand to be shaken vigorously, though the grip was not as crushing as it occurred to him he had expected.

  The man was smiling. His voice was surprisingly boyish. “Christ almighty,” he said in his tenor. “How can I thank you?” He sighed and his smile grew even wider. “But I’m sure going to try.” He let go of Crews’s hand and turned a fond expression on his wife. “You must have done something right. El looks mighty healthy. And that tan is new. She was white as a ghost when we started out.”

  Crews had avoided looking at Friday all this while, but
he did so now and simply asked, “El?”

  “Ellen,” Friday said. “But you—”

  She was interrupted by her husband. “After the accident—which I guess you might know about—I searched for her the whole time. I ransacked the woods. I went around the lake and up and down miles of the river. I finally was running real low on food. Yesterday I used my second-to-last match. I was heading back to Judson. But I never gave up hope. It’s warm weather, after all.” He had begun to speed up his words. “I was coming back with reinforcements, boats, helicopters.”

  Crews was still looking at Friday. At last he asked, “Why were you hugging him?”

  She winced. “I was being hugged.”

  Her husband meanwhile anxiously continued speaking, as if he had not heard the exchange. “… everyplace, my God! I was going out of my skull…”

  “Didn’t he shoot you?”

  “Do you think I was lying?” she asked angrily.

  Crews turned to Michael. “You stole my raft, and then you stole my fishing stuff.”

  The accusations brought the larger man out of his obsessive monologue. “Those were yours? I’ll make it good, I’ll make it all good. I was desperate. I had to make time. She was headed in that direction. As for the fishing rod, I thought I might run out of food, and that’s just what did happen, not right away, maybe, but it’s true now: I’m down to my last packet.”

  Crews said, “I’m taking your canoe in exchange.”

  Michael’s instant of puzzled stare by stages became a crooked grin. “Why, sure,” he said brightly. “We’ll all fit in it, and you can take bow paddle.”

  “Not you,” said Crews. “Just me.”

  The other chose either to ignore or simply not to acknowledge this statement. “Look,” he said, “about the rod and stuff. I’ve still got it, right there.” He thrust his square chin at the tent. “I wasn’t going to keep it permanently. I’m no thief. I can see how you might be steamed, though.” He chuckled for effect. “You might be interested to know I never could catch a damn thing with it. I admire the hell out of you trout-fly guys, but I guess I just don’t have the patience to stand there for hours, casting away: not enough of a physical challenge. But maybe I should have tried harder, because I’m real low on rations.”