Impasse

by Royce Scott Buckingham

  Stu arrived at the drainage, a seasonal-looking puddle either fed by an underground aquifer or simply a low spot of oversaturated soil. There were animal tracks in the mud—small paw impressions, a trail of three-pronged bird prints that looked like someone had held down a punctuation key on nature’s keyboard, and a set of hoofprints. My caribou. He dipped his bladder in the three-inch-deep runoff. It drained the puddle, but as he sat watching, the depression quickly refilled itself.

  The remainder of the morning was spent dragging himself back up the hill and sitting with his foot elevated on the cot. The cold and light poured in through the branches he’d propped over the roof. His small fire crackled in the pit, but it couldn’t banish the chill.

  Colder.

  The temperature drop was sudden and astounding. Just a day earlier he’d been walking around outside in only a shirt. Now he was huddled in his Great Beyond jacket beside the fire inside the cabin and, though the sun had been up for hours, he still couldn’t seem to get warm. His father would have called it a cold snap. But it was more than that, Stu knew. Winter was coming. Alaskan winter. The state was famous for them.

  Four days.

  CHAPTER 15

  I was just surviving, Stu thought as he lay waiting for the plane, as much at home as here in the wilderness. The rock upon which he had hoisted himself and his injured leg jutted from the water near the spot where Ivan had dropped him at the beginning of the week. Even if he passed out, the pilot couldn’t miss him.

  He was leaving defeated. No way to sugarcoat it. He hadn’t taken on the Klondike, he hadn’t kicked ass, and though he was sort of a new man, it wasn’t the sort anyone had hoped for. I’m an even bigger pussy than everyone thought I was. In fact, he was physically a shell of the man he’d been when he arrived. After four more days of eating grass and two skewer-roasted squirrels he’d blown in half with the .30-06, he’d sloughed off ten to fifteen pounds. He’d vomited at times, and diarrhea had begun draining him of fluids two days earlier. He still limped when he tried to walk. And he smelled like stale soggy Fritos corn chips; it had been too cold for him to wash himself in the lake. Worst of all, he was starting to have delusions. The day before, he’d imagined helicopter sounds and stumbled out of the cabin to find a woodpecker knocking at a nearby tree. Twice. That very morning, he’d scooped dirt into his collapsible plastic cup to make coffee and only missed drinking it because the cup had melted when he held it over the fire.

  His bags sat behind him on the shore, packed and ready to go. He’d been lucid enough to drag everything down immediately after the coffee incident so that there was no chance he’d miss his ride out. He was going to live, thankfully.

  He’d had a lot of time to think about living while he shivered and starved in the tiny shack, and he was surprised at how few reasons he could come up with that he truly needed to do so. But Edwin’s said that finding something to live for was among the top five common factors in survival success stories. Stu had come to dislike Edwin, and despised the preachy text a shade more for forcing him to try to inspire himself when he felt like dog shit. But he did try.

  The idea of surviving to return to work so he could fight about other people’s problems was profoundly uninspiring. And struggling to retirement so he could stop participating in everyday society felt more like an anti-goal. Nor did he have any kids who needed him. A shame, really. I’ll survive for Katherine, he’d decided finally sometime around noon on day three. She had steadfastly supported him, rain or shine. She deserved his effort, and so he’d made one. He’d eaten burnt squirrel, for God’s sake. I’ll make a better effort at home, too. But he couldn’t have survived much longer in this miserable territory, he thought. If this is the way America used to be, then thank God bygone America is bygone. He wasn’t the type of guy that settled the Old West. Not a cowboy.

  I survived law school in Oregon, he thought as he watched the sky and listened for the lawn mower buzz of the Piper Cub’s engine. Not everyone could do that. There were dropouts, of course. Five in his class in the first year alone. One sad kid just out of undergrad had actually committed suicide. Stu tried to recall how he’d done it. Pills? A rope? A gun? Couldn’t remember. He thought of Sophia Baron. She’d quit.

  Of the women Clay had burned through during law school, Sophia was the most memorable, a sparkling diamond in the landslide of law nerds who crowded the square 1970s geometric brick monstrosity that was McKenzie Hall. She was more like an airbrushed model for the graduate school’s brochure than a real student wearing sweatpants and a glazed look from studying too late. Indeed, she’d been photographed for the cover. She’d also hobbled around after Clay for a semester in four-inch heels that no other female law student would be caught dead wearing on a weekday. But Clay moved too fast. He’d quickly morphed into an environmentally aware, laid-back dude in tie-dye when he realized that post-hippie-era Eugene celebrated the earthy-outdoorsy culture, and he’d left her behind in her ridiculous shoes. He adapted. She didn’t. After they broke up, she’d wandered around for a few days, clicking through the halls looking lost and missing classes. She finally had the dazed law student look, but its origin wasn’t the suffocating academics. People began to talk. Then, in the second semester of her second year, she’d dropped out, which was odd, because most law students who had already sweated through the grueling weed-out first year were willing to put their legal career ahead of their relationships, and most everything else. In fact, the two married couples in Stu’s class who had divorced during school wound up hating each other, but all four individuals sure as hell stayed to complete the Juris Doctor. He wondered what ever happened to Sophia.

  And then he was back on the rock. His mind had wandered again, and the sun had climbed high in the empty sky. Empty.

  Stu’s butt hurt. He had to drag himself off the rock and step onto shore to stretch his legs. He’d judiciously avoided running down his cell phone battery, keeping it off most of the time. He checked the time. It was almost noon. Ivan was late. Idiot. The idea of suing Yukon Tours had occurred to him. Or Dugan. Someone. He’d almost died. He wondered how much he could get for a week of pain and suffering, plus medical bills for his ankle, which was almost certainly healing wrong.

  The fact that three or four hours had passed almost without him noticing worried Stu. He was light-headed, not thinking straight. He chewed some grass. He wouldn’t be suing anyone until he got some real food in him for a week or two. He tried to stay on his feet, but it felt too good to sit down, and when he did, he lost track of time.

  One o’clock came and went. Then it was three. Stu wondered if he should walk around the lake to make sure Ivan wasn’t looking for him in the thicker stand of trees to the south. He’d walked half mile when he decided it was crazy. The plane had to land on the lake. He couldn’t have missed it. Besides, he’d forgotten all his gear back at the rock.

  “Shit!” Stu flung his curse upward toward the God he’d tentatively decided did not exist in his twenties. “Shit, shit, shit!” Nothing changed. His foot kept hurting. His empty stomach continued to churn like a dying blender. The plane still didn’t come.

  Shouting sapped his remaining energy. His voice fell to a mumble. “Katherine, I’ve failed you.”

  He hadn’t calculated the days wrong. Even when he’d been in his right mind, he’d pegged today as pickup time. He’d checked it a dozen times, even turning his cell phone on to consult his calendar. Ivan must have gotten it wrong, he thought. He’ll be here tomorrow. The thought of enduring another day was almost unbearable.

  What if Ivan crashed? Alaska had twenty times more crashes per capita than any other state, after all. Edwin’s said it was dehydration that would kill him. He could linger another week or two without food, but he needed to keep some water down and retain it. Between the vomit and diarrhea, he was ejecting fluids as fast as he could collect them. Stu groaned, sitting heavily on the soft, damp shore, and he might have died there if the thought of being eaten by a bear hadn’t h
orrified him.

  * * *

  It was nightfall by the time Stu climbed back up to the cabin. The fire was out. He’d brought his backpack and the gun. The duffel bag was stashed beside the shore so that he wouldn’t have to haul it back down again in the morning. He was unable to get a fire started with the flint and steel, and so he huddled in his bag, occasionally rolling over to throw up into one corner—he’d given up trying to go outside to do it. He could no longer distinguish the smell of the cabin from that of his deteriorating body or the taste of vomit in his mouth and throat. He still had the dignity to crawl outside to void his watery bowels. Sleep came and went. During his waking times, he occasionally thought he was having an Alaskan nightmare and that he might wake in his own bed. Other times, he dozed and dreamed of Katherine and, strangely, Audry. They wore cheerleader uniforms, but it wasn’t sexual. He himself wore a suit and carried the .30-06. Butz was there, sitting on the witness stand. Stu trained the rifle on him, and a small cork popped out. And the jury laughed.

  Stu awoke to something tickling his face. Wet and cold. He started awake, wondering if he was still lying by the shore and a wolf was nosing him to see if he was dead and rotten or alive and delicious. But the touch was lighter. Not a snout. Snow. Large flakes were settling on him. A small pile of the stuff had accumulated on the cot and there was a dusting on the floor. Enough had floated in through the limb-crossed hole in the ceiling that there would certainly be much more outside.

  No, no, no!

  He wasn’t cold. The Great Beyond bag did its job well. But he couldn’t live in the bag. He pulled himself out. It was agony. His limbs ached, and as soon as he sat up, he dry heaved. He was alarmed to find that he didn’t even have any bile to spit up. He wasn’t wet. No fever. But he had to scramble across the dirt floor to get outside and drop his pants. There was little to dispense from the other end either.

  The lake. I have to get down to the lake.

  He took the gun. Ivan would be sad if he left it behind. His pack stayed on the cot. It was heavy, and there was nothing inside that money wouldn’t replace. The cell phone came. A habit, he supposed. It wouldn’t help him hail the plane. He pulled on one boot and one torn tennis shoe and exited. The clearing was quiet. He said a meanspirited, profanity-laced farewell to the leaning cabin, wishing it an imminent collapse, then started his last trek down the mountain and around the lake.

  That idiot Ivan. Seven days, six nights. Vacation rental companies counted each night of occupancy, which was six, not all seven calendar days. Clearly, obviously, Ivan had screwed up the count. It was the only reasonable explanation. Except for a crash. No, a crash was not reasonable. Even at twenty times the average of other states, the odds were against that. Besides, Clay and Dugan knew where he was. If he wasn’t back on time—and he already wasn’t—they’d come looking for him. It might take another couple of days.

  Stu moaned at the thought of two more days and slogged down the hill through three inches of snow. He was surprised to find the caribou waiting for him halfway, in its customary spot beside his water spring, happily defecating. He stopped and sat. It was a good place for a rest anyway.

  “You’re lucky it’s my last day,” Stu said. Although he was fairly sure he didn’t have the energy to butcher the large animal even if he brought it down. He’d had enough trouble figuring out how to cut up a squirrel, which had very little meat. The caribou’s antlers towered over its head like some Ice Age radar array, a far cry from the fuzzy nubs Stu had always seen on Santa’s reindeer in pictures and cartoons. “Nice rack, by the way, Dasher.” The caribou finished its dump and wandered off. No human-animal connection. No bonding. “Yeah, you’d better run. Or walk. Or dash away. Or whatever the hell it is that you do.”

  The one-sided banter was strangely relaxing, but Edwin’s warned against getting too comfortable when one was sick or starving in the wild. Any spot he stopped at could be his final resting place. Stu tried to think of Katherine waiting for him at the airport, worried. Then he rose and moved on.

  CHAPTER 16

  The plane didn’t come. Stu lay on the rock again, fighting to stay alert. He pinched his skin, talked to himself, and checked the clock on his phone every few minutes. Screw the battery. And still, nothing came over the ridge but a lone hawk, and even if he squinted, he couldn’t pretend it was a plane. It took all evening to drag himself up the mountain again. He stopped to rest and to drain his bowels every hundred yards, too proud to soil his pants, and when he reached the hard wooden cot, he collapsed like a marathoner who’d overrun his training. In the night he was either uncomfortable or unconscious.

  He couldn’t hike back down to the lake the next morning. His tortured body was too weak, so he simply hauled himself outside and leaned against the cabin, which leaned against the pine. He imagined that he looked like a small domino leaning against a large one. And he listened for the plane. He planned to fire the rifle as a signal if he heard an engine, and to use the flare from the Great Beyond emergency kit. But the sky remained quiet. It was cloudy and cold, and his hands were numb, but he didn’t have the energy to drag himself back inside for gloves, so he mostly kept them shoved into his pockets. This time the day didn’t warm up. Soon he couldn’t feel the toes on his tennis-shoed foot either. And everything that he could feel hurt. He wasn’t vomiting so much anymore, but stomach cramps doubled him over at intervals. Nor was he thirsty, but he was aware he needed to drink, and he forced himself to do so, sipping a small mouthful every minute or two. He was out of water by ten o’clock in the morning. By noon he was out of cell phone battery. The one thing he had plenty of, he noted, was bullets.

  And then it began to snow again, big wet flakes. Stu wondered if the indigenous people had a name for this particular type. He sure did, and it wasn’t a nice one. They fell on him for maybe an hour—he could no longer keep track of the time—before he crawled back inside. He would still hear a plane from the cot, he reasoned. But it was token logic. He didn’t expect to hear anything now. He just wanted to be comfortable, or as comfortable as possible.

  But as Stu stretched himself on the cot that might be his final resting place, he couldn’t get comfortable. It was a grim realization: he would die slowly and in pain, watching white snow trickle through the torn ceiling, past the red stain of rat blood he’d painted it with.

  How did I get here? A simple question with an easy answer. It had all started with Butz. He’d had a sinking feeling the first time he’d read the Court of Appeals decision that had walked his murderer, and his life had been the second half of a bell curve graph ever since. This was merely the inevitable ending for which he’d volunteered seven years ago. “No body, no case,” Stu’s fellow attorneys at the Bristol County DA’s Office had warned him. He hadn’t listened. But as he lay dying in the ramshackle cabin in the middle of the Alaska interior, he wished he had.

  CHAPTER 17

  (ONE WEEK EARLIER)

  Katherine hadn’t spent much time at the firm’s office, but Clay’s e-mail summoning her had been insistent. She arrived to find the formerly half-empty Bluestone Building abuzz with activity. The back door was locked, but the front was open for a change, and several men and women in suits were arriving. She entered through the main entrance to find the previously locked and dusty lobby scrubbed and furnished with a three-foot-high vase full of fresh flowers. A large new plaque on the wall pronounced Buchanan, Stark & Associates the proud occupants of the fourth and fifth floors, instead of just the second. A stunning young receptionist behind an antique table hailed her while she stared about. The girl was smartly dressed in a dark pencil skirt and a conservatively ruffled white blouse—the uniform of real law firms. No fuchsia in sight.

  “May I help you?”

  Katherine was befuddled. “Yes, I’m here to see Mr. Buchanan. Usually, I’m forced to hike up the back stairs, but it seems they’re locked.”

  “I’ll phone up for him. Name?”

  “Katherine. He should be expecting
me. What is all of this?”

  “Please forgive the chaos. We just settled a big case and we’re remodeling our local offices.”

  Katherine cocked an eyebrow. “A big case? Really? Sounds exciting. I’ll have to ask your boss about it.”

  Pencil skirt girl buzzed the phone. “He’ll be right down, Katherine. Can I get you some bottled water or tea while you wait?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll just loiter in the entryway until he decides to let me in.” She smiled curtly and wandered back into the foyer, studying the newly polished marble and admiring the fresh bouquet. The space smelled like baking soda and potpourri.

  Katherine was surprised when the elevator clanged its arrival. The clunky old thing hadn’t worked since they’d started the firm. Its doors shuddered opened, and Clay strode out wearing a new perfectly tailored suit.

  “Kate! Thanks for coming.”

  “Fixing the old place up?”

  “Big meeting today.”

  “Big win, too, I hear from the receptionist I’ve never seen before. What’s going on?”

  “Stuart didn’t tell you?”

  Katherine gave him a blank look.

  “Molson,” Clay said. “We settled it on his birthday.”

  “No. He didn’t tell me.”

  “Hmmm.” Clay cocked his head, thinking, then he took Katherine by the hand and marched her to the elevator. He ushered her inside, then joined her and closed the door. The elevator car was small, and they had to stand shoulder to shoulder. The familiar scent of lavender on him made her nostrils flare. Standing so close, she noticed that he was at least three inches taller than Stu. He didn’t look at her, and instead stared politely at the floor numbers. He hit number five and the button lit up.