Robert B Parker - Wilderness

by Wilderness(lit)

  "That's why I shot him."

  "How do you feel?" "Scared, out of wind, mad. Like you," she said.

  "But you killed a guy. You've never done that before. Does it bother you?"

  "No. It had to be done. I don't mind. I won't mind next time either." "You are a tough cookie," Newman said. "Thank God."

  "No, I don't think that's it, Aaron. It might be hard if it were right close and you had to wrestle and gouge or if you knew the person. But at fifty feet with someone I don't know it's easy. Squeeze the trigger. Just like you put the brakes on in a car. Something happens, you react. Didn't you ever kill anyone in Korea?"

  "I don't think so. I was a radio operator at battalion level. I heard shots fired in anger, but I didn't kill anyone I can recall."

  "Well, we'll have to kill several now. And you'll have to do some of it."

  "I know," Newman said. "They know who we are. They'll figure out what we were doing here. If they get out of here alive we're dead."

  "And the girls," Janet said, "they may well be dead too."

  Newman grunted as if he'd been hit.

  "So," Janet said, "let's get organized."

  Newman sat behind the outcropping of granite in the woods in the dark and rubbed his temples with his left hand. As he sat the sweat cooled on his body and he felt cold.

  "It's September," he said.

  "What?" "Cold," Newman said, "it gets cold up here in September."

  "Yes."

  "They took my rifle, and pistol belt." "Take the carbine and my ax," Janet said.

  "Yes, and you have the.32 and the knife. We have the jackets and the down vests. I have eleven granola bars. You?"

  "Twelve."

  "We ought to try and get by on one a day and stretch them out. Try to live off the land as much as we can."

  "Yes."

  "We'll eat one each morning. Then we'll look for berries and stuff. If we've found nothing by night we'll have another one."

  "I hope we're not here that long."

  "Even if we can get them, and they don't get us, we may get lost.

  Neither one of us is big in the woods." "You won't get lost," Janet said. "You've never been lost in your life."

  "I've never spent time in the woods." "I'll bet they haven't either," Janet said.

  "I hope not."

  CHAPTER 25.

  They slept very little that night, though they tried, huddled together, each in a thigh-length nylon pullover.

  "You try and sleep and I'll watch," Newman had said. "Then I'll wake you when I'm falling asleep and you watch."

  But in fact neither one of them slept, and after an hour and a half they realized they weren't going to and they sat quiet in the dark and listened to the twittering of insects and waited for the morning. It came, finally, with a slow thinning of the darkness. The sky behind the treetops got paler. Then the trees and rocks around them began to take shape. They could begin to see where they were and what it looked like.

  "We've got to sneak back to the camp and see," Newman said.

  "Yes."

  "You look pretty good for a broad who slept on the ground in her clothes."

  "What I wonder is if they're sneaking about, looking for us," Janet said.

  All business, he thought, even here. Getting in charge.

  "Take the carbine," she said.

  "Okay."

  The sun began to rise. Newman looked at it carefully, turning his body so the sun was to his right. In his mental map he saw himself standing on the East Coast, near the Atlantic, looking at Canada, full-sized, like someone in a television commercial.

  "Okay," he said, "uphill is essentially north, downhill is essentially south. To get back to the lake we want to go south, downhill, remember that. In case we're separated."

  "How about the packs?" Janet said.

  "We'll bring them."

  "Easier to be sneaking around without them."

  "But if we leave them someplace we may not find them again and we need them," Newman said. "We better bring them."

  She nodded and slipped into hers. It pleased him that she did what he said without argument. Not because I said so, though, because she agreed.

  "Let's go," she said.

  He picked up the carbine. "I'm not even sure which way," he said. "I'd say northwest." "Which way is that?" she said.

  He'd known she wouldn't know. "Bear left, uphill," he said. "Remember, uphill is north. When you face north, west is to your left."

  "Why not say left and right then?"

  "Because left and right are relative to the way you're standing but north and south are not." She was impatient. "Let's go," she said.

  "All right, but let me go first," he said. "You tend to get lost."

  She nodded and they moved out of the small clearing. It feels like I'm leaving a refuge, he thought. It's no safer here than anywhere else but because we spent about eight hours here it's familiar and it feels safer. Amazing how we adjust. Safety may turn out to be relative too.

  It was full daylight. He moved very slowly through the woods ahead of her. Walking very carefully, putting each foot down thoughtfully, feeling his way through the ground bramble and princess pine that tangled underfoot. He stopped frequently to listen. The second time he stopped there was a thicket of black raspberries. He gestured at them. And they both picked and ate as many as were ripe.

  "Blackberries?" she said softly.

  "Black raspberries I think. The blackberry bushes are taller and these don't have that oblong blackberry look, you know."

  "How the hell do you know how high black raspberry bushes are?" she said.

  He shrugged. "I read it somewhere." "I'm finished," she said.

  He nodded and they moved on, bearing slightly west and slightly uphill, listening. Stopping, moving very slowly a careful step at a time. He held the carbine in his right hand. His finger on the trigger guard but not on the trigger, the barrel pointing down. It was a light weapon; with the fifteen-round clip fully loaded it weighed just over six pounds and it fitted comfortably in one hand. He could even fire it with one hand should he need to.

  The forest was handsome. There were white and gray birch, white pine, and oak. There were clumps of second growth saplings and the low tangle of ground vines. The ascending sun made shade and light patterns through the tree leaves. Even though it was only early September, the sumac this far north was beginning to show color. He couldn't see very far, and as he moved through the woods he looked and listened with physical effort, feeling the stress of his concentration tightening the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

  As the day warmed the insects became more active and Newman stopped to put insect repellent on himself and his wife. Their hum was still frustrating but they didn't bite. Birds moved and sang in the trees and before them in the bushes. There were squirrels, too, looking to Newman oddly out of place in the woods, as if they belonged in parks and front yards. Christ, Newman thought, pretty soon I'll run into some pigeons and then I'll see a wino sleeping on a bench.

  They had walked in silence and tension for an hour when they cut the trail. Here, where they crossed it, the trail was rutted slightly, and worn in some places to bare earth. He raised his right hand, palm open. Janet stopped behind him, next to his shoulder.

  "Is it the same trail?" she whispered.

  "Must be," he whispered. "How many can there be up here?"

  "Which way is their camp?"

  "I'm not sure," he said. "I can't tell if we are above it or below it.

  I'd guess we're below it. If we were above it I'd assume we would have crossed that stream."

  "Are you sure?"

  "No, but it stands to reason. The stream was running southwest. We've been moving northwest. If we were above their campsite we should have crossed the stream."

  "I still don't see why."

  "Well, take my word on it," he said. "If you can't picture it, I don't have time to draw a picture for you."

  She was silent.


  "Of course streams will go strange ways, they follow the land." He was talking so she could hear, but in fact he was talking to himself. He often did that, talked to her so he could hear himself think. "But all we can do is go with the best guess, the most reasonable possibility."

  He pointed up the trail with his forefinger, making a decisive stabbing motion with his hand, his thumb cocked.

  She said, "I still don't see..." and stopped talking as he looked at her.

  She nodded. They stood together looking up the trail.

  "We can't just walk up it," she said.

  "I know. We'll have to go along it in the woods. Every little while we'll swing over and cross the trail. Then we'll go a ways and swing back over and so on. That way we make sure that the trail's still there."

  "What do you think they're doing?" she said.

  "If it were me I'd hide in the woods near camp and wait for us to come back. But I don't know. They're used to bullying people and having people scared of them. They may think we're running. They may be crazy mad. They may chase us."

  "So you think they are out in the woods trying to find us?"

  "Either way," he said. "Maybe in ambush. Maybe chasing us."

  "Well don't we have to know which?" she said.

  "We can't," he said.

  "But can't you make a guess?"

  "No. We have to assume both things. Sort of a variation of negative capability."

  "I don't like it," she said.

  "Me either," he said, "but there it is."

  "Well, let's go. The sooner we find them the sooner this is over with."

  They began to move up the trail, keeping to the right of it fifty feet, looking and listening carefully. There was wind, more than had blown since they went into the wilderness. It was not uncomfortable, but it stirred the branches as if someone were there, and it rustled the leaves as if someone were coming. They moved even more slowly and carefully. Hearing the bird and insect noises, the tree noises, the sound of their own movement.

  The noise of the woods was continuous. It was one of the things that surprised him most about the forest. It was never quiet. The great, still forest of his imagination was derived from photographs and paintings. The real forest was always alive. Birds, frogs, cicada, squirrels, and things he didn't know of chirped and chittered and keened and hummed and grunted and rustled day and night. He was listening for human sounds.

  It took them an hour to go a mile. Newman had a red scratch starting at the corner of his left eye and running across his cheek, and Janet's lip was puffy from an insect bite. Newman's stomach rolled emptily as if it had over reacted to the handful of raspberries it had gotten and was now digesting more than it had received.

  They turned left and crossed the trail. It had veered toward them and they were barely ten feet from it.

  "Jesus," Newman said, "not good. We might have walked right into them.

  We're too close."

  They crossed the trail and stopped forty-five feet into the woods on the left side of it. "We shouldn't be walking bunched together like this," he said. "If we blunder into them they could kill us both with one shot."

  "I'm not going to walk alone," she said. "I'll get lost."

  He looked back behind him. "Stay behind me as far as you can and still keep me in sight. Then if I'm nabbed you can still operate. You saved me last time."

  "All right, but if I whistle like Chris taught us"-she whistled softly between her teeth, see soo-"you wait and if you don't see me, come back."

  He nodded. "If you get lost stay where you are. I'll find you.

  Otherwise we'll go around in circles for each other."

  She turned away to look back of them. "Of course they could come up behind us."

  "Yes," he said. "You're no safer back there. We cover each other. If I need you I'll whistle the same way." He smiled at her. "You know how to whistle don't you?"

  "Just pucker up and blow," she said. She smiled. It was an old joke from a favorite movie. And it seemed some-' how to ease the oddness of their situation.

  CHAPTER 26.

  They found Karl's camp in the early afternoon. Newman saw the orange tent through the trees. He raised his hand. Twenty feet behind him Janet stopped. Her hair was wet with sweat and stuck close to her head. There were scratches on her face. Newman gestured her forward and she came up beside him. She had the.32 in her hand. Newman put one finger to his lips. Then he pointed at the tent. She nodded. He could feel the vertigo in his stomach. His legs felt weak. He looked at her face, scratched and sweaty, without makeup, showing strong bone structure and no fear. He'd looked at the face so long it seemed somehow permanent. He felt reassured, safer with her beside him.

  They listened. There was no human sound from the camp. He put his lips close to her ear.

  "We'll circle it," he said. "If they are staking it out we'll come behind them."

  She nodded.

  "Remember," he whispered, "you only have five shots in that thing before you have to reload. Don't waste them."

  She nodded again. They started very carefully around the camp. A quarter of the way around the camp's perimeter they found Hood's body.

  It was thirty yards from where he had died. It lay facedown under some low clumped sumac. One hand was under him and the other lay palm up by his side. The fingers half closed. Ants crawled in the cup of the hand and more ants crawled around the black area of dried blood between his shoulder blades where the bullets had emerged. Death had released Hood's sphincter control. Janet put her clenched fist against her mouth. Newman looked down once, and looked away. He put one hand on Janet's arm and moved her away from Hood's body.

  It took them ninety-six minutes to complete the circle. No one was near the camp.

  "Let's get closer," Newman said.

  Crouched, they inched closer to the clearing and stopped finally, squatting beneath the down-swooping bows of an old white pine tree, silent on the thick mulch of needles around the foot-thick base of the tree. There was a cluster of stones grouped to form a fireplace, but there was no fire. The orange tent had its flap open. A pack board lay by the open flap. Around the fireplace there were several camp cookery utensils. Starlings were pecking at something in one of the pans. Three sleeping bags, still unrolled, spread out around the fireplace like spokes from a hub. The foil wrappings of freeze-dried food were scattered about the clearing. A half-full bottle of Canadian Club stood on the ground near the tent. Two pack boards leaned against the flat rock over which the stream flowed. Another pack board hung from a tree behind the tent. A ground squirrel skittered across the clearing. The sun slanted from the west now, behind them, and dust motes danced in its rays in the silent space. Fresh dirt and a mound of stones at the far edge of the clearing showed where they had buried the boy.

  "What now?" she whispered.

  He shook his head.

  "Let's destroy it," she said.

  He looked at her. Faintly, almost like an internal sound, a ruffed grouse drummed far off. The sound registered only at the edge of Newman's mind. "Okay," he said. "Let's do it."

  He looked around him. "Get kindling, dry twigs, sticks, leaves, we'll pile them in the tent and then throw everything in there and set it going."

  "What about a forest fire?"

  He shook his head. "Woods are green. There's been a lot of rain. The tent is surrounded by dirt. Shouldn't spread far." "Aren't you going to get kindling?" she said.

  "No. I want to be able to shoot when we step out there if they really were hiding and we missed them."

  She nodded and gathered an armload of dry sticks and twigs. "Okay," she said.

  He said, "Stay down. We'll scooch out behind the tent and cut a hole in the back and stuff the brush in that way."

  "What if they're back that way?"

  "Then we get shot at. But if they're not they won't see us. It cuts down the odds. If we go in the front way they can see us from every place." "Let's go," she said and handed him her knife.


  He went to his knees, the carbine pushing before him in his right hand, the knife in his left, and crawled into the clearing. Nothing happened. He crawled to the tent. No sound. The starlings continued to forage in the cookware. He drove the point of the knife through the nylon fabric of the tent and sawed a hole. No one was inside. He peered through. There was an open sleeping bag, a roll of toilet paper, a pack, nothing else. He gestured to Janet and she pushed her armload of under into the tent. With the hunting knife he whittled some shavings and scraps of bark from one of the sticks. He crumbled several handfuls of the toilet paper. Then he took a butane lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the paper and shavings. The flame caught the paper at once, flickered at the edge of the shavings. A tiny spiral of smoke rose. Then the flame began to nibble into the wood in a tiny black-edged crescent. Newman moved more twigs and bark scraps closer. The fire spread.