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After
UNDER THE OVERHANG, sleeping fitfully between tending my small fire, I dream of Griff. We drive along a dark road toward a man standing on the median line, his back to us. “Don’t worry about him,” Griff says. He pumps the brake. “Look at him skeeedaddle.”
But he doesn’t. He turns. He raises his hand, and there’s a gun in it. The gun roars with the sound of a fire, crackling and howling. Griff’s head kicks back. The air fills with red blood like mist, and it’s all over my clothes, it’s all over my hands and my face and in my mouth.
I scream. The screaming wakes me. It wakes Bo, too, and he leaps up snarling into the dark. I sob, pulling myself into a little ball. The fire is out. I’ve slept too long. “Oh, Bo,” I say. “I wish Dad was here.”
It’s not the same as missing him, exactly. I worry then that there’s something wrong with me, that I want my dad’s help but I don’t know if I loved him enough to really miss him for his own sake.
Bo heads off to patrol the clearing. Does he even understand that Dad is dead? When he leaves, is he looking for him, roaming the woods to try to catch his scent? Does he go back to that spot, to the grave?
I hope he knows that Dad is dead, that he isn’t coming back. Because it’s awful, but worse would be waiting for him to come back.
With Bo gone there’s no one to see the slow, awkward process by which I crawl out from under the overhang to pee. When I have my jeans buttoned again, my cheeks raked with tears more angry than sorrowful, I make my way around the clearing again. I think I can stand, but I stay on all fours for now, and keep going until my limbs start trembling.
I have twice as much to do as yesterday. I don’t start the fire just yet. I drink the boiled water—flat-tasting but palatable—and eat a small meal. Only a few bites left of the salmon. It takes everything I have to screw the top back on instead of gobbling it down.
When I’ve cleaned my fingers on my jeans, I open the tackle box. I’m not ready to go fishing yet, but I should know what’s in there. I start to inventory everything, setting things out carefully on a white T-shirt so I won’t lose track of them.
All the expected gear is there, and a gift: a can opener. The compact camping kind, slightly rusted, but it means that I have a way to get the can of peaches open without using the knife. My mouth starts watering, imagining the sweet syrup, the slippery slices melting in my mouth. But I force myself to set the can opener aside. Not yet. Not yet.
Although—is there any point to denying myself? It assumes that eventually, I’ll find other food. Maybe it would be better to enjoy it all now, one big meal, rather than just stretching out the time it takes to starve to death.
But if I think like that, I’ve got no chance.
I push to my feet before my willpower fails me. I sling the rifle over my shoulder. Building the shelter will have to wait—again. I need more food. Quickly. And more water.
I pack four of the moose jars, one full and three empty—one to drink along the way, since I’m sure I’m dehydrated, even if it’s lost in the stew of other signals my body is sending me, pain and hunger and weariness and fear.
I bring the rest of the salmon, too, and then head out, walking stick in hand. I take my time. Every step takes conscious thought, and I lean on my walking stick heavily. If I wasn’t so used to pain, after the last few months, I don’t think I’d make it. If I weren’t hurt before, I wouldn’t be able to stand it now.
If I weren’t hurt before, I wouldn’t be here at all.
I stop to rest every hundred steps, leaning against my makeshift cane. I don’t dare sit down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get up again.
By the time the lake comes into view my breathing is tight and labored. I breathe through my teeth, hissing in with one step and out with the next. But I’m here.
The canoe has filled with rain. I shouldn’t have tipped it over. Idiot. I was barely able to turn it when it was empty. No way I can empty it out now and still have the strength to—well, do anything.
Cursing myself, I walk toward the burnt buildings instead. I have to see what I can salvage.
I didn’t look at the outhouse that first day, but I go there now, just to take stock. The structure was made of planks, not logs like the shed and the cabin, and the fire hasn’t damaged it as much. It’s taken off the roof and most of one of the walls, but the others are just scorched. I wiggle one of the planks of wood. It’s loose.
Those planks are tall enough to fit my shelter wall, and even the ones burnt down to a foot or two will make good firewood. I start to tug harder, feel my back protest. My fingers scrape against the wood, bending a fingernail back painfully. I lose my grip and stumble back, barely catching myself.
Not strong. Smart, I remind myself. I step back and force myself to wait, to think it through. I take off the rifle strap once more and loop it over the plank. I start to pull, stepping back, but my leg almost buckles. No. I’m going to fall this way.
Smart. I tie the other end of the strap to my walking stick. This time instead of using my own weight, I brace the stick against the ground and face away from the outhouse—if I pull I’m worried I’ll lose my balance. Pushing gives me more stability. I push the top of the stick, using it as a lever to haul against the strap. The plank cracks. I push harder. It creaks. I shove. It breaks, sending plank and walking stick to the ground. I jerk forward, but I catch myself before I fall. I nod, satisfied, and move to the next plank to repeat the trick.
I stop after three. No use wearing myself out and getting more than I can actually carry. I stack the planks and bind them together with my belt. Next time I’ll bring the rope with me.
I’m still not ready to search inside the cabin. I walk past it and sit on the lakeshore, eating all but the last bite or two of salmon, sipping moose water like fine wine. The sun turns the water silver. A bird with a low, mournful voice sings out somewhere on the lake. It feels like I’ve been alone here forever. It feels like hardly an hour. Two nights.
It’s strange sitting with my back to the cabin, not even the smell of smoke lingering to remind me that it’s there. Looking out over the lake, there is not one sign of human habitation, not one footprint to suggest that Griff or Dad or I was ever here. The wild doesn’t care and won’t remember. However many days I hold on, claw my way through, at the end of them I will still die and my body will rot. It will feed the forest; moss and mushrooms will grow on me like on every other dead thing.
To survive you need to learn to hold contradictory things in your head at the same time. I am going to die; I am going to live. There is nothing to fear; be wary of everything. In this moment I find a new contradiction. The indifference of the wild is terrifying—I want to be remembered, to leave a mark. And it is freeing, knowing that the forest does not care, does not judge. My failure will go unmarked—no mourning, no mockery. For the first time in my life, there are no expectations of me at all. The only thing that matters is what I want, what I can do.
I decide, again, as I will every day, sometimes once and sometimes a dozen times, that I want to live. Someday, maybe, I’ll decide I’m done. But this day, watching insects dance over the shallows of the lake, I’m still too stubborn and too fond of living.
I eye the last bite of salmon. Better save it. My belly feels caved in, but I’m getting used to this constant hunger. I know it’ll only get worse.
If it was a few weeks earlier, there would be berries to eat. I’ve passed endless blackberry bushes, their berries long gone. Nothing but thorns for me there.
I think back to that day we went by the rock, my dad talking about the woods like it was his neighborhood, pointing out the landmarks, gossiping about the neighbors—in this case, wolverines and porcupines, hummingbirds and foxes. Out that way, there’s a field of snowberries, he says. You ever had a snowberry?
I still haven’t. But I remember the way he pointed, because I had to shade my hand against the sun. My left hand, and the sun was west, so I was looking north.
I screw the cap on the salmon, pack away my things, and stand, whistling for Bo. I can’t be sure the berries will be there, or that I’ll find them if they are, but I have to try. Berries, after all, have one major advantage as a food source: they can’t run away.
