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MORNING COMES, BUTthe storm does not let up. The light is a weak, pale gray pressing through the cloud cover. It doesn’t matter. I can’t wait.
I am hollowed out. I have spent every ounce of sorrow and despair, every last drop of emotion that I have. I don’t think. I don’t feel. I just move. I lurch out into the wet, my belt-and-strap system ready. I slide it over the end of a birch log without bending over and use it to lift until I can get a hold of the log with only a slight bend of my back.
My back complains as I heft the log overhead. With the rain, I can’t tell if I’m crying as I lean it against the overhang. It tries to roll away. I shove the end of the log into the ground, into the mud, and then stamp down the dirt around it to keep it in place.
I repeat the process again and again. Two birch logs, four planks, spaced across the shelter. Then I go around and gather evergreen branches. I strip low ones from trees and pick up some the wind has knocked down. All the while the rain funnels down my back, past my collar, sending a rivulet of cold down my spine.
Cold will kill you first, I keep thinking. But I can’t get warm without shelter and a fire. I can’t get warm without being dry, and I can’t get dry unless I get this shelter finished. This is it; I know in my bones. I have been in danger before, but not since the fire has it come down to such a clear decision: succeed and live, fail and die.
I am not ready to die.
My stomach cramps. I need to eat. No, I don’t. I want to eat. I don’t need to eat for hours yet. I need the shelter, and I need more food, and then I can risk eating the last of what I have.
I start stacking the evergreen boughs on top of the boards, but they slide, leaving gaps. I yell in frustration. The sound barely rises above the driving rain.
THINK.
Throwing myself at something that isn’t working is just wasting energy. Energy is food, and food is another thing I don’t have.
So what do I have? I have the tackle box, my clothes, the jars. I have the canoe, down by the beach—at least I can hide under that if worse comes to worst, I realize, but I can’t move it from the beach—no way.
The rope! I think of tying the branches individually, discard the idea—it would take too much rope and too much time. I shut my eyes, imagining ways to tie the rope. I could throw it over the side of the rock to dangle things over the planks. No. I need to somehow go across all of the planks side to side and top to bottom.
I open my eyes. I have it.
I get the rope out. It’s still fairly dry, but I know it’ll swell up with water pretty quickly, so I tuck it into my rain shell and feed it out of the neck a little bit at a time. I start at the bottom and weave the rope between the planks and the logs, making a zigzag net. I pull it tight but not too tight. The rope is long; it reaches all the way to the top. I’ll miss that rope when I need to tie something later, but I keep thinking, Cold kills you first.
When I’m out of rope I tie it off around one of the birch logs. I have no idea how to tie a good knot, but I don’t need it to hold too much. It just needs to stay in place. I start shoving the evergreen branches under the ropes. Then the evergreens are firm enough to sort of weave other branches with them, and they’re all holding each other in place.
As I work, I warm up. I’m wet, but I’ve stopped shivering. Cold will still kill me, but not right now. Not until I’m done and have a chance to build a fire.
The whole time I’m working, I hardly notice how much my leg hurts. I do stop sometimes, checking. It’s the good hurt, the you’re-building-strength hurt, not the you’re-making-it-worse hurt. So I keep going.
Soon I have a functional wall. It isn’t perfect and I need more branches. A lot more branches, overlapping so that no rain can get in. And I need to stretch it out and bend it so that one whole side of the shelter is covered, except for an exit at the foot. Maybe I can even make myself a door. But for now, it will do. I crawl under and wrap my arms around myself. It will be cold very soon. I need to get the fire going.
I take a deep breath. And I turn to my wood.
Some of it is wet, but a lot of it has managed to stay relatively dry. And the thriller was tucked under my clothes in the duffel, so it’s all right. A little damp at the edges. I tear out the title page and the first page of the prologue (in which a woman in a red dress gets murdered to show that the main bad guy is bad) and shred them up.
My hands are numb, but by now I have practice. It takes me only three tries to get the fire started, and I build it up just under the shelter of my wall. I still have a couple of chunks of chopped-up plank. They last a while if I keep the fire small, I’ve discovered, so I put one on when it’s ready.
As soon as I can, I swap clothes, hanging the wet ones to dry. Bo chooses that moment to come home muddy and wet and plaster himself by my side. I look at him and sigh. I’ll have to dry off that side of me, but at least Bo keeps me warm. At least he’s here, and I’m not worrying about him being out in the storm anymore. I scrub his ears. He has blood on his muzzle, which he licks off idly. At least one of us is getting fed.
I eat the rest of the berries. It takes the edge off my hunger, but nothing more.
“When it stops raining, I’ll get more,” I say. “And I’ll find Dad’s traps. And then I’ll finish the shelter. And when I finish the shelter, I’ll gather more firewood. And if I gather more firewood, I’ll go fishing again, but only for half the day. And if I catch a fish...”
If I catch a fish, I’ll pick more berries, and check more traps, and catch more fish. I need to build up a surplus. Which means I need a way to store food.
There’s no end to it. No end at all. I curl in over myself and bite my hand, hard, and then the grief is there again. Sharper and fiercer than it ever has been. My father is dead. My mother is dead. Even the photographs I had are gone, stolen by this place. By the wind and the storm. The cold is gnawing at me. The damp is everywhere.
All this work I’ve done, all this effort, is probably for nothing. Is definitely for nothing. Because everything is dead and gone even if I’m not. There’s nothing to be alive for. I’m going to die eventually, and none of it will matter. No one will even know.
My tears are the only warm things in the storm, but they turn cold on my cheeks. I bury my face in my arms, and I sob and can barely hear it over the rain and the wind. There are no tricks to snap me out of it. No perky Will maxims. Just the storm, and me, and Bo.
And the stupid notebook.
