Brian's Return

by Gary Paulsen

  He couldn’t get his bearings but he knew where his thigh was and he grabbed the arrow and jerked the shaft out of his leg. There was an immediate surge of pain and he felt like passing out. He didn’t, but then he heard a strange whump-thump and something crashed down on his head. This time he did pass out.

  He came to a few seconds later with a sore head, a sore leg and absolutely no idea in the world what was happening to him. He was still wrapped in the tent and his bag was in his face and his bow and arrows lay all around him and he seemed to be in water, almost swimming.

  All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just one thing.

  I poked my leg with an arrow.

  There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works. It must not have been a broadhead because it didn’t go in very deep. Good.

  My tent collapsed. There. Another thing. I’m in the tent and it collapsed. I just have to find the front zipper and get out and climb up the bank. Easy now, easy.

  Something hit me on the head. What? Something big that thunked. The canoe. The wind picked up the canoe and it hit me.

  There. I’ve poked my leg, rolled down a bank and been hit in the head with the canoe.

  All simple things. All fixable things.

  He fumbled around and at last found the zipper at the front of the tent, opened it and slithered out into the mud on the lakeshore.

  The rain was still coming down in sheets, the wind still hissing and slashing him with the water, but he had his bearings and it was not impossible to deal with things. He dragged the tent back up the embankment onto the grass, limping as the pain in his leg hit him. It was too dark to see much but he could make out the shape of the canoe lying upside down. It had moved a good ten feet from where he had left it and had he not tied it down loosely with the line it would have blown away across the lake.

  He had forgotten the most important thing about living in the wilderness, the one thing he’d thought he would never forget—expect the unexpected. What you didn’t think would get you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happy when it didn’t come.

  But he had done one thing right: He had tied the canoe to a tree. He dragged the tent to the canoe, crawled underneath and lay on the tent the rest of the night, listening to the wind and rain, wincing now and then with the pain in his leg and feeling stupid.

  It was a long night.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  Dear Caleb: I read some Shakespeare today. I think it changed my life.

  It was a repair day, both for equipment and for himself.

  Dawn was wet and dreary and it took him a full hour to find some dry wood and leaves and get a decent fire going—all the time castigating himself. Had he forgotten everything? He hadn’t made a secure camp, hadn’t dug a rain gutter around the tent, hadn’t brought in wood so he’d have dry fire starter in the morning.

  He limped through the woods around the campsite until he found a dead birch log with the bark still intact. Birchbark was nearly waterproof—it was what Native Americans used for canoes—and beneath the bark he broke off slivers of dry wood. He took a double armful of bark and slivers back to the campsite and after three attempts—he should have needed only one match, he told himself—he at last got a sputtering flame going.

  Once the bark caught it went like paper dipped in kerosene and the wood caught and when the flames were going well he put on smaller pieces of the wet firewood. The flames dried the wood and started it burning and in another half hour he had a good blaze going.

  He took a moment then to examine his leg. There was a clean puncture wound not more than half an inch deep and he took some disinfectant from the first-aid kit and dabbed it on the hole, put a Band-Aid on it and then went back to work.

  The wind had dropped and the rain had eased to a few sprinkles now and then. He saw clear holes in the clouds. He spread the gear to dry, tying it to limbs with nylon cord. His sleeping bag was soaked through and the tent was a sloppy mess. He had to stay put so he set the tent back up, this time pegging it down and using the small shovel to dig a drainage ditch around the sides with a runoff ditch leading down to the lake.

  The wind had tangled the packs in the tree limbs but they were still intact, and after some effort Brian untangled them and lowered them to the ground.

  Again he dried arrows and the quiver and checked his bow. Then he launched the canoe and took about fifteen minutes to catch six good-size bluegills. He cleaned the fish, put them on to boil with a teaspoon or so of salt, put rice in the other pan and then suddenly found that all the work was done.

  The sun was out—he could actually see steam coming up from his sleeping bag as it dried—and he lay back on the ground by the fire and went over what had happened. His leg throbbed in time with his thoughts as he learned yet again: Never assume anything, expect the unexpected, be ready for everything all the time.

  And finally, no matter what he thought would happen, nature would do what it wanted to do. He had to be part of it, part of what it was really like, not what he or some other person thought it should be like.

  He gathered wood for the night and spread it in the sun to dry, took the meat off the fish and mixed it with the rice and set it aside to cool—he sometimes liked to eat the rice cold—and lay in the sun nude (his shorts drying on a limb) and let the smoke from the fire keep the mosquitos off while he dozed, catching up on sleep he’d lost in the rain the night before.

  He slept solidly for more than four hours. The fire was nearly out when he awakened and he put more wood on the coals and got them going again.

  It was midafternoon and he ate the rice and fish, then made tea and had a cup with a sugar cube for dessert.

  By evening his bag was dry. He put it in the tent, put on a T-shirt because he was feeling a bit sunburned, and his hand bumped one of the Shakespeare volumes.

  ‘‘So I’ll try reading it . . .’’

  He had been exposed to Shakespeare in school, briefly, and had not paid much attention. The play they had read was Romeo and Juliet and he knew it was about young people so he tried it again now.

  He stood on the shore and read aloud, and felt silly at first. But because he liked Caleb and trusted him he kept going, staggering on until he came to the verse in act 2 where Juliet says:

  O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

  Deny thy father and refuse thy name,

  Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

  And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

  Here a strange thing happened to Brian. Whenever he’d heard this part before—on television, in school—he’d thought she was looking for Romeo, wondering where he was, calling for him. But something brought the words, the meaning, to him as he stood there in the afternoon sun, reading it aloud out onto the lake, and he knew that was wrong, knew that she was instead calling on Romeo, asking him why he was a member of the wrong family, the Montagues, and if only he weren’t . . .

  And a few lines later he read Juliet saying:

  What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

  By any other word would smell as sweet.

  And Brian knew. It was as if his whole world had suddenly opened. He knew what Shakespeare was trying to tell him. Of Juliet’s love for Romeo, of her torment and despair over the agony of the fight between the two families.

  This man had written of these things hundreds of years before Brian was born, in a world so different from Brian’s it might be on another planet, and Brian knew . . .

  It shook him, standing there on the side of a lake in the northern wilderness reading a love story written more than three hundred years earlier, to know how they felt, how they hurt.

  He closed the book and sat down on the grass, his legs crossed, the sun heading into evening, and thought of all the time he had wasted not knowing Shakespeare, and a tear slid down his cheek, a tear for Juliet and Romeo, a tear for Shakespeare, who he wished were still alive, a tear for his own loss and a tear for the beauty of knowing sadness . . . />
  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Dear Caleb: It gets more and more beautiful. I think most of the city is leaving me.

  He was not sure what, if anything, awakened him. Probably the fact that he had slept so hard during the day. Whatever the reason, in the dead middle of the night his eyes suddenly snapped open and he sat up, listening with his mouth open, breathing in shallow pulls to not make noise.

  Nothing.

  He leaned forward and unzipped the tent and looked out. Still nothing, at least nothing to hear. But the sight that met his eyes made him hold his breath.

  The sky was clear, filled with stars, and the moon was half full and laid a silver streak across the lake—a white road that came across the water and called to him with such intensity that he closed the tent and moved to the canoe, turned it over and slid it out onto the water.

  The night was cool enough that the mosquitos stayed down. He stroked once with the paddle and the canoe slid out and away from the bank into the silver reflection of the moon out on the water.

  Another pull, another slide across the still water, moving through liquid silver. A loon called. It seemed to come from somewhere to the left but the sound moved around until it filled the lake, mixed somehow with the moonlight and became almost visible. It hung there, the sound he could see in the moonlight, for half a minute; then the loon called again, or another answered it, and suddenly—close, on the far edge of the lake, only a hundred yards away—a wolf howled.

  Long, sweet, and sad and happy and frightening and joyful all at once, a keening howl that started high and dropped low and ended almost hoarse.

  The hair went up on the back of Brian’s neck and he took a deep breath and answered the howl, trying to match the tones of it, starting high the same way and bringing it down as low as he could until it trailed off.

  Then he waited. Ten seconds, twenty, a full minute and the wolf called again. Different this time. Low all the time, almost a moan.

  And Brian answered.

  Three more times they went back and forth and finally Brian waited until the wolf started its call and Brian matched it, harmonized with it, and they sang together that way, four more songs, a duet, boy and wolf in the moonlight, singing to beauty until at last the wolf grew tired of it and quieted. Brian called twice more but when he didn’t get an answer he stopped.

  The moon was dropping below the horizon at any rate and he paddled back to the campsite, pulled the canoe up, tied it off and went back in to bed.

  He did not sleep at first but lay thinking of the wolf and the moonlight and the loon and when he closed his eyes and sleep started to come he thought he could see the wolf, or perhaps see as the wolf moving through the night, part of the night, the smells and sounds of the woods moving through the wolf like vapor, stopping to listen, moving on in a silent slide through the moonlight and forest, Brian and the wolf mixed, Brian-wolf, wolf-Brian.

  Then sleep.

  He awakened completely refreshed, having slept again past dawn. It was a clear morning and the side of the tent was warm from the sun and he rolled out and stretched and walked to the canoe to flip it over and slide it into the water when he saw the prints.

  Two wolves had come into camp. One good-size, the other slightly smaller, and from the look of the tracks around the tent in the drainage ditch, around the canoe in the soft earth and beneath the packs they had investigated everything. They had also peed on the canoe and the tent—not a great deal, but enough so he’d know they had, a calling card—and then moved on.

  Brian smiled. Either they were greeting him or, more likely, telling him he was a lousy singer. He finished packing the canoe and just before leaving went up and covered the two places where they’d left sign with his own. Hello to you too, he peed. Then he got into the canoe and slid off.

  He had not gone a mile when he was back beneath the canopy, in the green world, and wondered how far it was to the next lake. On the map that lake was long—almost eight miles before he would come to his first portage, about a half mile to the next lake, which was at least six miles long. He thought perhaps he would do the two of them today, which would bring the distance to Williams Lake down to about sixty-five miles.

  The canopy only lasted three or four miles and he came out onto the eight-mile lake. There was a slight breeze coming up, directly into his face, so he put on the life jacket and set to the paddle, heading right up the middle of the lake.

  The work felt good, solid somehow. The pain in his leg was nearly gone and he was just noodling along, paddling the canoe across small lakes and down the green corridors, not really working, and it felt good to stretch his arms and bite deep with the paddle and take the wind.

  He kept up a steady effort and seemed to be moving well—an illusion caused by the visual effect of the wind blowing small waves in the opposite direction that he was going—but it took him four hours to make the eight miles.

  ‘‘I guess the wind must be stronger than it looks,’’ he said, gliding into the calm area at the end of the lake where the portage started. ‘‘Half a day gone . . .’’

  He pulled the canoe up on the bank and considered the situation. He had to carry everything half a mile and he couldn’t do it all at once.

  He tied the tent inside the canoe near the center, and under the cross-thwarts he tied the paddles, centering their weight, and the bow and the quiver of arrows. There was a yoke for portaging built into the canoe, shaped to fit around the neck and rest on the shoulders.

  He put one backpack up in a tree on a bearproof rope, and the other one he slipped onto his back.

  Then he moved to the canoe, flipped it belly-up and moved beneath it and took the weight of the yoke on his shoulders.

  At first it felt as if his legs would sink into the ground.

  But the canoe balanced well and when he started off he gained a momentum that kept him going. It only took him twenty minutes to walk the portage. There wasn’t a trail—the grass had grown up and covered any tracks—but there was a long clearing and in the dim past somebody had taken an ax and cut marks in the trees to show the direction.

  Probably, Brian thought, Native Americans when they trapped through here. The ax marks were very old, healed over and often nearly covered with bark, so some were just a dimple.

  Still, it meant people had been here before and it made Brian wonder about them. Fifty years ago, he thought, or maybe more—seventy-five. The trees were huge pines, the marks well off the ground. Whoever had made them was probably gone now, dead, nothing left but his mark.

  He left the canoe at the next lake, tied the pack up in a tree—though he hadn’t seen any signs of bear— and, carrying the bow with an arrow ready and the quiver on his back, he went back for the other pack.

  It took him only ten minutes to get back. He let the pack down, took the quiver off his back and put the pack back on, and with the quiver in one hand and the bow with a broadhead nocked to the string in the other he started for the canoe.

  He hadn’t taken three steps when he saw the deer. It was a buck, horns in velvet, and it stopped, a young animal with a small rack.

  Good meat, Brian thought—really good meat. The thought came automatically and he lowered the quiver to the ground softly, raised the bow and paused. The deer wasn’t thirty feet away and seemed entirely unafraid, standing there. While Brian watched, it actually turned its head away and looked to where a bird had chattered on a limb.

  It would have been an easy shot. A clean shot. You’re mine, Brian thought, and his throat seemed to choke with it, the excitement. Mine. The arrow was in the bow, he raised the bow, drew the arrow, sighted it so he was looking over the broadhead straight at the deer’s heart, and then he paused again. He eased the string up and lowered the bow.

  Maybe in the fall. He could not keep the meat in the hot weather. He would get three or four meals and the rest would spoil. The skin wouldn’t make leather and most of the meat would be wasted.

  He had fish, all the fish he want
ed, all he would need. He could take a rabbit or a grouse for different meat, but not the deer, not now. It would be a waste.

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ he said aloud, to the deer, to whatever hunting spirit was watching over him, had given him this chance at meat. ‘‘Thank you . . .’’

  The sound of his voice startled the buck but still it stood for another beat, two, three, then it turned and trotted off down the portage trail for thirty or forty yards before springing lightly off to the side.

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ Brian whispered, watching it leave.

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Dear Caleb: I met a man today and he helped me find my medicine.

  The deer was on his mind when he came to where he’d left the canoe. He looked out at the lake ahead of him. The wind had picked up a bit, still on his nose, and he would be lucky to make the other end by dark.

  For a moment, standing there looking at the water, he actually thought, I’m behind schedule, and then remembered he had no schedule. He was there to learn, to seek, to find, to know. It could happen here or over there or by going backward. There was no time requirement.

  He thought of the deer again and the thought made him think of meat other than fish. He was suddenly hungry and he decided to make camp at the portage and hunt for a grouse or a rabbit to make a rice stew—something heavier than fish.

  He tied the canoe off to a tree high above the lake, pulled his packs up in the air, found firewood enough for the night, and though it was no longer cloudy he stacked a pile of wood beneath the canoe to stay dry so he could start a fire if it did rain.

  Then he hunted.

  He put the quiver on his back again, took the broadhead off the bow and put it back in the quiver, and because he was taking small game he pulled out a field point—they were sharp but had curved shoulders to cause shock and a faster death than the cutting edge of a broadhead—and laid the arrow on the bow.

  He slipped into the woods. He was wearing tennis shoes and wished he had moccasins but they would have to serve. The green grass kept his feet quiet enough.