On Location

by Elizabeth Sims

  "Uh-oh," said Daniel, "she's bleeding from the pelvis."

  "Oh, my God, let me see."

  He looked at me desperately.

  "Oh," I said, once I'd gotten a better look at Gina's naked lower body, "it would seem she's gotten her period."

  His "oh" reflected a world of mixed feelings about women and their bodies. Well, you can't expect guys to deal easily with this kind of thing.

  I touched her cheek to try to get her attention. "Gina, are you expecting a visit from Aunt Flo?"

  "Huh?" inquired Daniel.

  "Girl code."

  "Oh."

  "Um, yeah." Gina was able to help me. She squirmed a little and realized. "Sorry."

  "Hey, no problem."

  I'd brought a small stash of tampons, but I thought inserting anything would be a bad idea.

  "Is your pelvis hurting?" Daniel said. I so admired his poise in dealing with this issue.

  "Ev'thing fuckin' hurts."

  I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was to hear her talk like that. However, I had seen her alarmingly bruised and swollen side, so I was taking nothing for granted. I went to the storeroom and grabbed another of the seemingly endless stacks of T-shirts. I folded one into a nice comfy pad for Gina.

  "Ahhh," she sighed.

  "Softer than Kotex," I remarked.

  "Hurts to breathe," she said, after her sigh.

  This frightened me but Daniel said, "She might have a cracked rib, but it can't be too bad or she wouldn't want to breathe that deeply. Her lungs seem OK. And she doesn't have a fever...yet. I'm worried about a spleen or kidney injury. She's holding steady, though, good pulse, so I guess I shouldn't borrow too much trouble. I'd expect you to have a cracked rib or two yourself."

  "I'm fine."

  "You're not, really."

  "It doesn't matter."

  She had not forgotten about Lance. I expected her to weep, but all she did was murmur his name once or twice. Then she fell silent, and her eyes went far away. I believe she needed all her resources just to survive. I'd piled my sleeping bag and other warm things on her.

  By now it was late afternoon—what a long day this Saturday had been! I rifled the storeroom back of the commandant's office hunting for clothing, more first-aid supplies, anything we could use.

  Daniel hadn't thought to ask George to bring more stove fuel, and his bottles were running low.

  So George, Petey, and Daniel went into the woods hunting dry firewood, which we could at least burn in the sheltered fire pit to heat our food and—God is good—water for coffee. George had brought a two-pound can of Maxwell House, which Daniel and I, hoity-toity L.A. people, would have turned up our noses at a couple of weeks ago but which we now consumed with the kind of gratitude you feel for a lung transplant. It tasted fantastic too.

  So yeah, mark it right next to Gramma Gladys's saying about hunger being the best sauce: Desire is the great coffee leveler.

  The temperature dropped even lower—I guessed down near forty—but I was coping with it OK in my own long underwear, pants, and layered sweaters. A drizzle came and went. As kids do, Petey seemed immune to the cold, but I kept an eye on him.

  Remembering the blotter pad on the commandant's desk, I thought the office could yield more dry paper for tinder.

  Methodically, I went through every drawer in the desk and file cabinet, uncovering a trove of rodent-gnawed paper, old field mouse nests, as well as a recently vacated one, judging by the scurrying sounds when I opened the drawer.

  ROSTERS, one drawer was marked.

  CAMPER FORMS, another one said, but it was empty.

  The rosters were so neatly organized it took me only a minute to look back through the years and find the Sauvenard name.

  Both boys were there.

  And there also, for one same summer, was the name Joseph Preston.

  A chill crept up the back of my neck.

  I knew he'd lied. The son of a bitch. He was the same Joey from the garage, my fan Lydia's son or nephew, whatever. I left the rosters intact and stacked up the blotter pad with the bits of cardboard and the like I'd found.

  I realized if we needed to we could tear down bunks and the cabins themselves to burn for cooking heat.

  A pile of musty clothes had been left behind in a cabinet, perhaps by camp counselors, some Levi's and flannel shirts. I could wash these in the lake, without soap, which we were conserving in case Daniel had to make a solution of it to flush wounds again should they become infected. Also some wool socks that I got excited about until they fell apart in my hands, victims of moths.

  And then I recoiled when something furry brushed my arm deep in the cabinet's shadows. I took a breath, then cautiously proceeded to uncover a neat stack of three raccoon pelts, complete with tails and faces, the eyes empty holes in their black masks, the noses shriveled and hard. They'd been stored carefully, interleaved with brown butcher-type paper. I sank my hand into the irresistible fur, which was slightly prickly on the surface, buttery as thistledown beneath.

  Flipping one over, I could see two small holes in the pale-fawn skin where the bullets had gone in. Well, I guess the camp counselors had had to do something to pass the time. I found no basketry supplies, but I did discover an unstrung yellow fiberglass bow with a red grip, no arrows.

  The pelts had been beautifully tanned and preserved, and instead of the repulsively musky smell of practically everything else around here, I caught the aroma of the tanning liquids on the skins, somewhat like kerosene-soaked cork. Hard to describe the smell of those hides, except that they brought something back to me from childhood. The warmth of animals, the finality of death, the cycles of autumn hunting and harvest. However, the little blind faces creeped me out. I left them.

  Kenner, Gina had mumbled, was somewhere in these woods. If she had really seen him, we needed more clues where to look, and I sure as hell didn't think we should spend a lot of time hunting for Kenner when we had two serious candidates for evacuation.

  I would really have expected Gina to be an emotional wreck after all this, but she seemed to surrender to the situation.

  Not give up—no, she'd clung to that rock as stubborn as a barnacle; I well knew that part of her—and she wasn't about to give another inch to the forces of destruction and decay that seemed to want to claim all of us, as well as everything in this camp.

  But she wasn't going to waste energy resisting what already was.

  That was it: to accept the situation you're in and work from there. Not to struggle in the net.

  So Gina Farmer was a pain in the ass and the Buddha all together in one person.

  I wrung a fresh rag in cold water and went to her, George following. I doubled the cloth and laid it on her bruised cheek. Her cheek looked like a past-ripe mango.

  "Ohh," she breathed with the small comfort. Then she looked up, the fingers of her left hand working. "My ring," she whispered.

  "It didn't get lost." I extracted the dazzling jewel from my pants' zip pocket. "Here, I'll put it on your right hand so it doesn't get stuck."

  "Beautiful," she breathed with utter sadness.

  "Yes," I agreed. "You have it to remember him by." Then I said, "Gina, you mentioned Kenner."

  "Kenner," she repeated. "He came for us. God bless Kenner."

  "He came to the woods? You met him in the woods?" Mumbling, stumbling over words but keeping track of her account, she was able to tell us about getting lost, she and Lance. "Don't know how. Instead of going back, we just got loster and loster."

  "Yeah?" I encouraged.

  "Then we got saved by renegade loggers."

  Renegade loggers? George and I exchanged glances at this.

  "How many loggers?" George asked.

  "Mmm, three. Like the Burris brothers, only meaner. The one." She described a rescue that morphed into captivity. George and I listened.

  "So now they've got Kenner." She spoke with much effort. "The one good one has the ponytail. I love Alger, he helped me get away. He
must be dead...he went in the river. I love Kenner. He came looking for us."

  George said, "Get away from where, exactly? Can you tell us?"

  "Corner of two rivers."

  "The Harkett and the—?"

  She thought. "Quinine," she said at last.

  "The Quilmash?"

  "Yeh."

  "How did they hurt Kenner?"

  A sound of surprise came from the other side of the canvas partition.

  I had forgotten Joey Preston over there.

  George hadn't.

  "Broke his arm." She glanced at her own messed-up shoulder. "Beat him up. Gonna cut bits off him next."

  "They want money from his mother," George told her. Gina snorted faintly against the absurdity of that thought, and came a bit more alive. "They don't know Bertrice. She'll be here any minute with a boxa hand grenades."

  George laughed out loud.

  "Joey," he suddenly called, "who are the loggers? Tell us about the loggers."

  A cough, then silence.

  Outside, I told George, "He knows Lance. They went to this same camp together, I saw the rosters. He lied about not being the same Joey the woman at the store told me about."

  "Yeah," said George. "Plus he seemed to do a double take when we brought Gina in." We walked down the muddy path toward the lake. Or limped, in my case. Man, I was sore.

  I asked, "So what's the deal?"

  "I asked him if he'd seen her before, and he said no."

  "Did you believe him?"

  "No, but maybe I'm getting paranoid. I expect everybody to know everything in these woods."

  In cities, the features that draw humans together are coffee shops, bars, and churches.

  In the wilderness, I now realized, it's views and cool rocks. Rivers usually offer both. Plus, you need water, you need to get from one place to another, you go to a river. Bridges are an especially acute focal point, even that dangerously half-assed log bridge lying across the Harkett. Especially that one.

  I turned to George. Fragments of the forest were sticking to his hair, his clothes. He'd washed up and bandaged his fingertip, but you can't keep the woods off you for long.

  His sloping shoulders made him look somehow more muscular than other men. If a guy has squared-off shoulders, sometimes his shirts hang straight down and he looks like a tree. But the way George's shoulders were, you could see how strong his neck was, plus you could see his back muscles through his shirt, which is nice. He once told me he was "built funny" but said it was a useful body type for a wrestler.

  I said, "Thank you for what you did."

  He smiled into me, into my soul. "She's your blood. I was in an impossible situation, really. If I'd saved you and let her die—and she would have, without a doubt—you'd never have forgiven me."

  "That's not so."

  "You'd say everything was all right, but deep down you'd feel guilty. To be the one who survived, due to me. And you'd hate me for it. I couldn't live with you hating me, even for an instant.

  "And I figured you could save yourself, if you had a good enough reason to—and wanting to kill me was a good enough reason. Like Petey once said, 'When Mom gets mad, she can do anything!'"

  I coursed with shame that while floundering in that river I had not thought of living for my son. It was my selfish self I'd wanted to live for: My life, my vengeances, my unfulfilled desires. My fury.

  Well, I didn't have to confess that to anybody.

  Daniel caught up with us. "We need to discuss going after Kenner."

  "Yes," said George slowly.

  Daniel seemed to catch a certain vibe and said, "Maybe that ought to wait. It's almost five now. Want to eat in about an hour? We'll talk it over after dinner."

  "Great," I said as he went to check on the invalids in Badger Cabin.

  Petey was, I saw, sketching the view from the rickety steps of the kitchen cabin, darting in occasionally to sneak M&M'S. George had brought a gigantic bag of peanut.

  George looked at me carefully. "You look like you could use a shot of whiskey. Would you like one?"

  I laughed. "Oh, yes, please, and how 'bout some smoked salmon to go with it?"

  He smiled with a secret, reached inside his coat, and pulled out a bottle of Canadian Club.

  "Oh, my God."

  Then he proved he was God by reaching for my hand and leading me to Kestrel Cabin, the one farthest removed from the others.

  He pulled open the door, smiling shyly, that tentative smile on his rugged face that never failed to melt my heart. At some point today—I guess while Daniel and I were tending to Gina—he'd swept the cabin clean and laid a carpet of Camp Saskee-wee-wit T-shirts (facedown) in the center of the floor, just big enough for two people to sit on.

  The stump of a candle burned on a bean can lid.

  He'd spread a clean red bandanna and covered it with small pieces of flatbread, each topped with a glistening chunk of smoked salmon. The oily, sweet smell made my mouth water so suddenly it ached.

  "A little something before dinner," he explained, daring to watch my reaction.

  All I could do was shake my head. Then joy took over. Visceral happiness.

  In ordinary life this little picnic—a bottle with no glasses, food eaten off the floor with our hands, no bevnaps or ice, no jazz on the stereo—would seem as bravely pathetic as a roasted rat served forth in a concentration camp barracks.

  Suddenly I understood the romance of roasted rat.

  George had been careful not to create a sex nest—the T-shirts just kept our butts off the cold planks; he hadn't brought in a sleeping bag or anything. This was simply a goddamn tribute of love.

  As if he needed to do anything more.

  We spent a magical hour in that cabin.

  Chapter 23 – Fear Like a Brick

  "It'll be easy enough to get to the confluence of the Harkett and the Quilmash," said Daniel, tracing a line on the map with his finger, "but I don't see how we're gonna find their camp—provided they're still there—with any kind of stealth."

  "Stealth's not a problem," said George. "Our problem is speed. We want to rescue Kenner, but—"

  "We don't want to rescue Kenner," I broke in, "we have to rescue Kenner!"

  The map, bathed in the cold glow from Daniel's battery lantern, lay flat on the one un-rotted picnic table in the dining pavilion, which was, frankly, spooky at night. Damp darkness nibbled at the map's edges, and I felt apprehensive. Sea monsters flopped in the lake with sudden splooshes that echoed off the hillsides. An owl hooted over and over, three hoots, then a pause, then three more identical, impersonal, insistent hoots. If that was a mating call and I were a girl owl, I would really not be interested. Show me some emotion.

  I guess it was about midnight. A bush rustled nearby and I reacted in spite of myself. George said, "Just a rodent, maybe a weasel."

  "How do you know?"

  "The way it moves."

  "I thought you were a city boy."

  He laughed shortly. "I've done a little...time...in the woods too."

  "Were you a scout?" asked Daniel.

  "No. Look, I think we need to challenge an assumption here. We've got two gravely injured people. If we get them to our cars, then down the mountain to the washout near town, I'm sure we can get help from there. Or if one of us hikes back to the gorge, even tonight, we might get a cell signal again, and maybe somebody can get a floatplane in here. How much time do we want to spend trying to get to Kenner, when we only have a vague idea of where he might be, and when every hour we delay getting Gina and Joey to a hospital may be crucial?"

  "George, we have to," I said simply. "We've got to try. He comes out to these woods in the storm of the century; he risks his neck looking for his brother and my sister; then he runs into these creeps who'd just as soon kill him, which puts him categorically in more danger than either of them!" I nodded fiercely toward the dark shape of Badger Cabin. "Frankly!"

  "I agree," said Daniel. "I think it's only right we give it a
shot. Gina and Joey are both stable. Joey's body is really trying to heal. Those long sleeps he takes during the day? Big part of the healing process. I say you and I try for Kenner at dawn, George. If we can't get him by noon, we switch our priority to further evacuation efforts here."

  "OK," said George. "Rita, you good with that?"

  "Yeah."

  That was the easy part.

  Hunched in the gloom near the embers of our cook fire, we proceeded to argue about what to do.

  "A simple plan's the best," I said helpfully.

  "Well, we can't just blunder into the area and start shouting for Kenner," said George.

  "You've gotta sneak up on them somehow," I said, "scope them out and locate Kenner exactly, then—"

  "Then what? Stage a raid? They've got weapons."

  Daniel said, "George, don't you carry a gun?" Oddly, I noticed his voice shaking.

  George answered, "I do, sometimes."

  "Well, what about now?"

  "Look, even if I did have one on me, a gun is not some kind of magical tool. A gun is not going to rescue Kenner. I'll sacrifice Kenner's life rather than risk a shoot-out with some backwoods clowns, where we all could go down."

  He sighed, watching a squat brown bug crawl along the snap cuff of his jacket. "The ramifications of pulling a gun on somebody are huge. Let alone shooting them. People don't understand that. They don't understand what a liability a gun is, even way out here. I know this situation seems like Deliverance, people in the woods making up their own rules, but it's not. The law is here, regardless, witnesses are here—even if the only witness is you." He flicked away the bug and glanced at me and Daniel in turn, and I thought I detected the faintest contempt. "It's only in the movies where good guys with guns solve everything."

  Something was dawning on Daniel.

  And on me.

  Daniel was a true guy, a strong, smart guy, but he was still Daniel, whose motto back home in West Hollywood was, "Let an expert do it," for everything from washing your car to filing your taxes. He was still the guy who liked to drink martinis while memorizing the dialogue in All About Eve. He obsessed about hair products. He would spend ten minutes explaining to you why you should prefer Rodgers & Hammerstein over Lerner & Loewe; he wore neon-orange Lycra T-shirts to the bars; he could not relate to power tools. He would drive across town for tiny cupcakes in designer flavors like prickly pear and curried maple to serve at a party, if he didn't have the affair catered altogether. He spent more on clothes than George spent on rent. He knew the difference between piqué and percale. He was semi-famous for playing a minor yet recurring and endearing role in a popular police sitcom now in reruns. He was about to start shooting a new TV series where he played a professional exorcist's husband who devised custom exorcism equipment in his home shop.