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After
THAT SECOND NIGHT after my father’s death, my thoughts are hazy and frantic at the same time. I keep thinking I hear footsteps. That those men are back for me. But it’s really just the rain on the ground, on the leaves, or a bird or a mouse or even, once, a fat black beetle dragging itself over the ground, belly rasping against pine needles. Still I jump at every noise, and by morning Bo is wound up, too, snarling at shadows and walking everywhere bristle-backed.
Around midmorning I swallow another pill. One more, I tell myself, just one more so that I can get the work done to survive another night. I have to gather firewood.
As soon as the pain starts to let up I crawl out of the shelter. I move on hands and knees because it’s all I can manage. I wear the backpack reversed, hanging down in front of me. It bumps and rubs at my chin and face, but it means when I find a stick, I can just tuck it into the backpack and keep moving.
I crawl all over the clearing, filling my backpack with the driest wood I can find. I know the sticks won’t last long; I need something bigger to keep a fire going. But I don’t have the strength to chop anything up. I have to get lucky, that’s all.
But I don’t have yesterday’s luck. All I can feel is despair, wet and heavy and pressing down on me. I pull myself back under the overhang and sit panting for a while, clutching the bag to my chest. I can’t put a solid thought together. Every time I try, my mind wrenches back to that moment. Dad shaking his head. Dad putting his hand out. Then—
I force the images away before I get to the end. It’s easier not to think at all. Easier to lose myself in a task, and so I start sorting the sticks, separating out the ones that are a little bit drier. Sorting those by size. It’s a pathetic, small pile. I need more.
Going back out hurts, but I move eagerly. If I’m moving, I’m not thinking. I do it again and again, gathering, sorting, heading out again. Five trips and the stack has grown enough that I trust it will last a little while. Long enough to dry myself out, to boil water. I hope. I’m relieved at how many thick branches I’ve found, some as big around as my wrist. They’ll last longer. Maybe through the night.
I indulge myself with another few bites of salmon and three swallows of moose water, and then I realize that I don’t have any tinder.
I reach for the notebook first. This notebook. But when I run my fingers over the pages they’re slick, a little shiny, and I’m not sure they’ll burn right. I set it aside—useless, I think. I grab the thriller instead. The paper is rougher, feels more like it will burn.
I open the book and tear out three pages: one with a bunch of quotes about how awesome the book is, one with copyright stuff, and one where the author thanks his writing group and his agent and some guy named Steve for “helping me along the way.”
I’d like to thank that wilderness teacher in elementary school and Will and Dad for helping me along the way. So if you find this, can you figure out who that teacher was? And buy Will a candy bar, because he loves them but won’t buy them for himself. He says the calories don’t count if it’s a present.
The thank-yous and copyright and the A wild thrill ride like no other! get crumpled up, and I make a little tent of sticks around them.
It takes me about a hundred tries to get the steel to strike sparks. The sparks hit the paper and glow a moment—and then fade. I try again. All I get are little black specks peppering the pages. I scrape at the flint and steel again and again, blow, pray, but every time the little orange-red dots fade out in a second or two.
I sit back. My eyes prickle with tears, but I clench my teeth and will them away. They won’t help me. Thinking about what happened won’t help me. The only thing that will help is figuring this out, and so that’s what I’m going to do.
All right. I’m doing something wrong. What? The paper is thicker than the birch bark Dad used. And the bark—Dad had shredded it. So maybe if I shred the paper...
I grab the knife from the tackle box and smooth out the paper. I shred it as finely as I can with the knife. My hands shake; I keep missing where I mean to cut, and tension creeps up between my shoulder blades until I want to scream.
I stop, shake out my hands. I start to hum. Nothing in particular, just humming, giving my brain an extra tiny something to focus on so I stop obsessing over the exact path of the blade. Just cut and cut and cut, it doesn’t have to be neat and pretty, and it’s not, it’s sloppy and there are chunks that are too big and bits that escape the pile, but then I have a raggedy stack of fine strips, and I fluff them all into a ball like a bird’s nest.
I take a deep breath, then strike the sparks again. As soon as they hit, I bend and blow gently on them.
Smoke rises in a thin, curling line.
I do cry then, a wet, blubbery bunch of sobs that seize up my chest and make my back ache, and in the time it takes me to get myself under control the sparks have gone out again. But this time I know it will work.
It takes two more tries to get a small flame going, and I almost blow it out from puffing too hard. It takes an eternity to figure out how to blow enough air but not too much, to get the flames licking up, to get them to catch the sticks. But finally I have a little fire. I feed it very, very slowly, waiting until it’s getting smaller before I give it more food. I open the tackle box and drape my clothes over it near the fire, hoping that will help them dry, and then I lie on my side. The rest of the wood is in arm’s reach and so is the fire, and keeping it fed is about all I can do.
I can’t sleep very well with the pain, but it’s just as well. It keeps me awake to tend the fire when it’s flagging, and I need the warmth more than the sleep. I set the jars of moose water I got from the lake snug up against the fire, building it around them to get them boiling. I don’t have any way to hang them above the flames, and this is awkward, but eventually it works. When I think they’ve boiled enough, I use two sticks like tongs to pull them away and let them cool.
Bo’s wandered off, but he comes back in the evening and lies down with me, and I’m properly warm for the first time in—well—two days, but it feels like longer. It feels like forever. It feels like a lifetime ago that I crouched in the woods, fitting an arrow against my bowstring, and my dad caught my eye. Shook his head.
Reached out his hand.
I reach behind me to stroke Bo’s back, interrupting the memory. “Where you been, Bo?” I ask sleepily. My mouth is dry and I know I should have another swallow or two of moose water, but I’m too tired to even reach for it.
Bo answers with a blustery sigh and goes to sleep. I wonder if he’s missing Dad. I wonder if I am. I can’t be certain on either count.
