Nowhere Wild (14 page)

For six hours, Izzy lay in the bottom of the canoe while Jake paddled westward. A slight breeze from the northwest threw choppy water into their path. Jake chattered on about the current coming in from the west, and how it made this lake so dangerous and so unpredictable. Izzy barely listened. She watched the horizon behind them, half-expecting Rick to materialize from the haze at any moment. The shore moved by at a glacial pace. Once, Jake pointed out wildlife on the shore—a black bear that bolted back into the cover of the forest as soon as it saw them. After so many months in the bush, wildlife—unless it was dinner—didn't interest her. Getting farther away from Rick—and getting home, wherever that was now—were the only things that mattered.

Around lunchtime, Izzy's stomach began to rumble. She reached for Jake's pack and began to undo the straps holding the fishing-rod case to the side.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“What does it look like? I'm going to fish. Catch us some lunch.”

“You know how?”

“Of course I know how.” She shook her head. “My father taught me. Years ago.”

A half-truth. Her dad had tried to teach her. She had been too squeamish at the time. Rick had done his best to not teach her
anything about fishing, but she had picked up a few things.
How hard can it be?
she asked herself.

She pulled the rod from the case and assembled it, careful not to tangle the line. She paused only briefly to guess how the reel worked—it was a spinning rod, not the spincast reel she had used with her dad, but the operation wasn't too different. Still, it took four tries to get the lure into deeper water away from the canoe. She adjusted her position, keeping the tip of the rod well out from the boat, so as not to interfere with Jake's paddling.

Three minutes later, a fish grabbed the lure. Izzy set the hook with a snap, just like she had seen Rick do a hundred times, and began to apply pressure to reel the fish in. A quick turn by Jake left too much slack in the line. In an instant, the fish broke free. Izzy scowled. She reeled in the extra line. Jake grabbed the line as it slid along the hull and inspected the lure.

“Hooks are dull. Need to be sharpened. Should have done it a week ago.” Jake shrugged off her misfortune. He dropped the lure back into the water so she could reel in the rest of the slack. “Keep the pressure on the line when reeling it in and it should still work.”

Izzy did not reply. Dull hooks or not, if he had kept the boat steady, she would have already had lunch in the boat.

She hauled the lure back in and checked the points on the dual treble hooks herself with the tip of her finger. She drew blood. They seemed sharp enough. She cast the line back into the depths.

Half an hour passed before her next bite. She set the hook and this time, kept a close watch on both the incoming fish and Jake's actions with the paddle. After a brief struggle, the large northern pike surged and broke the surface three boat lengths from the bow. It threw itself into the air, spun end-for-end, and wrenched the lure free from its jaw.

Izzy used more of the swear words Rick had taught her.

“You need to set it hard, then pull with steady force. If it wants to run, let it go a bit. Don't jerk it after it's been set. You'll tear right through the skin.”

“I know. I've fished before. A lot,” Izzy muttered.

Another half-truth. She had
watched
Rick fish a lot. She reeled the line in and recast the lure into the lake. The line tightened as Jake resumed paddling.

“Look.” She pointed north. The opposite shore emerged from the haze. “Should we be able to see that? Shouldn't we have found the river by now?”

“Yeah. The river must have been to the east, not the west.”

“I thought you said you knew where you were,” she growled.
Where was he taking her?

“I did. I mean, I do. Crossing a lake this size without a map and a good idea of where you started from isn't an accurate business.”

“So we've got to go all the way back?”

“Yep.” Jake set the paddle down across his legs and pulled the map from his pack. “Unless you want to try to go up fifty klicks of the Churchill. We could head for South Indian Lake.”

“Is that doable?”

Jake shook his head. “Not really. Not for us. The Churchill is big. And fast. We'd have to portage the whole way. Better to turn back around and head for Laroque.”

“You sure you know the way?”

“Yes. I know the way,” he snapped. “We must have just missed the river by a couple of klicks to the east. Bad luck. That's all it was.”

Jake stowed the map and picked the paddle up.

Izzy turned away from his glare. Jake swept the canoe into a tight turn, throwing the bow directly over her line. Izzy reeled it in as quickly as she could, so it wouldn't get caught on his paddle.

“Watch my line!” she warned as he accelerated faster than she could pull in the slack.

“Just reel it in.”

“I am.” Izzy spun the crank. The line snagged on the keel and before she knew it, it snapped. The lure disappeared into the depths.

“Damn it! Look what you made me do,” Izzy said.

“Me? You're the one who broke the line.” Jake leaned forward and snatched the rod from her hands. “That was my best lure.”

“I didn't do it on purpose. You turned without looking where I was.” This scrawny boy who had just got them lost was accusing
her
of not knowing what she was doing?

Jake examined the rod and let out a frustrated sigh. He shook his head, but did not meet her gaze. He reeled in the excess line, then rethreaded the line back through the loops on the rod. From his pack he dug out another lure—a small silver spoon with a single treble hook on the end. He tied it with nimble fingers, bit the extra line from the knot, and pressed two small lead weights an arm's length from the lure. He reluctantly handed the rod back to her.

“You still trust me with your precious fishing rod?” Izzy asked.

“We need lunch, and I need to paddle. Be careful. We lose that lure and we'll be using our hands.”

Izzy waited until he realigned the canoe, now with the bow pointed east, then cast the line far out to the side. She glanced back at him only once. He was lost in thought, barely paying any attention to her. She let her emotions cool. Jake hadn't reacted to her words, not like Rick would have.

So maybe this boy wasn't quite the same as Rick. Still, Rick had been nice at first, too, and the day was still young. She peeked at the shore. Once they got back to land, she'd be able to make it on her own if she needed to.

Her stomach picked that moment to complain, as if to remind
her that as much as she wanted that to be true, it wasn't entirely true. Life in the bush, alone, was more than a little difficult.

Izzy returned her focus to the task at hand. Getting lunch was up to her.

An hour later, Izzy hooked a pike that nearly sawed through the thin filament line. Jake grabbed the rod from her as soon as he realized how big the fish was. He couldn't afford to lose that last lure, and more importantly, if the line did break, he didn't want to have her to blame. Still, she didn't seem to take his help very well. She barely said a word as the fish cooked over a hastily built fire. For a while, it was like Jake was all alone again, only now with more responsibility.

They passed their previous night's camp around dinnertime, but Jake didn't even slow down. Two kilometers farther east, they found what they were looking for: the river snaked out of the forest, rippling and bubbling with runoff from recent rains. Jake put his left arm in the air, bent at the elbow to signal a right turn. Izzy didn't get the joke.

The lazy flow ran wide enough and deep enough to paddle. According to his map, less than two days' paddling and portaging remained until they would reach Laroque. Two rivers and two lakes stood between them and their goal.

They camped just a few kilometers from their previous night's location. Knowing where they were, and that the girl seemed capable of surviving the next two days, lifted Jake's spirits.

“You can have the tent and the sleeping bag,” Jake said as they polished off the leftovers from lunch.

“You sure?” Izzy asked.

Jake lifted the canoe and propped it up against a log near the fire. “Yeah. I'll be fine out here.” He grabbed his hatchet and hacked a few branches off a nearby cedar tree. He crammed the boughs under the canoe. “Sleeping on these branches won't be so bad. Done it before.”

“Whatever.” Izzy eyed the branches for a moment, then disappeared into the tent, zipping it closed.

Not even a thank you, Jake thought.
Whatever
. A little appreciation for all he had done—was doing—would have been nice.

Jake threw another hunk of wood on the fire and crawled under the canoe, pulling his clothes tight. The reflected heat from the fire made his cubby under the canoe bearable. He tried to force the expectation for her appreciation out of his head. This girl was not right. Whatever had happened to her had damaged her in a dozen ways. Everything he did to help her seemed to be grounds for suspicion. Everything he said was taken the wrong way. His journey home to this point had been exhausting. The last thirty hours with her had pushed him, and his patience, to the limit. When they got to Laroque, he'd be glad to be rid of her—to turn her over to the authorities, or whoever was left there.

He had his own issues to deal with.

He paddled, and together they portaged the entire length of the river the next day. The distance wore down, five kilometers before lunch, four after, then three more after a quick break. The river drained an L-shaped lake so large they couldn't see one side from the other. He knew this lake though. He had seen it from the air a half dozen times. To the southwest loomed another large lake. On the western side of that lake, on a thin spit of land, was the town of Laroque.

Safety. Rescue.

The next river was a steeper, upriver run, requiring more portaging around rapids and shallows on marked trails used in the not-so-distant past. Jake swung the canoe up over his head on the portages, while Izzy carried his pack. At the end of the trailhead leading to the final lake, Jake set the canoe down and raised his aching arms over his head in victory.

“What?” Izzy asked as she halted her scan of the water ahead to look at the boy dancing a little jig.

“We made it!”

“Looks like another big lake.”

“Sure. No more damn portages, though. We'll follow the shore all the way around to Laroque, and we're there.”

“Can't we just go straight across?”

“Too far in this canoe. Wind gets bad out there. We'll hug the shore. Safer that way.”

“Can we make it tonight?”

“Tomorrow, early, probably.”

Izzy cracked a smile—the first smile she had made since he found her. He couldn't help but smile back. He did another silly dance to celebrate.

“Let's go before you embarrass yourself any further,” Izzy said. Jake stopped dancing as she chuckled at his expense.

“We'll be home by this time tomorrow,” he promised.

Izzy's smile faded. “We'll see.”

They slipped into the canoe and paddled through the afternoon. Jake dug into his memories for the exact geography of the lake to avoid getting lost in some back channel. The sun had long disappeared when he finally pulled them up onto a narrow strip of beach, surrounded by thick jack pines and reeds. He made another small fire, ate another fish caught by the now-silent Izzy, and smiled. Nothing could stop them from reaching Laroque the next day, short
of a massive storm. The weather seemed to be holding. Izzy did not seem to share his enthusiasm.

He tossed and turned that night. The anticipation of the end of the journey was too much to contain. He would paddle into Laroque, victorious—a survivor of an incredible trek—an accomplishment no one could ever deny.

As the night crawled by, his excitement was tempered by one other, unforgettable fact: tomorrow, for better or worse, he would also find out what had happened to his father. That issue forced doubt into his brain and stirred an uneasy stomach.

“Let's go.” Jake pestered Izzy for the third time since his predawn shake of the tent. Izzy knelt by the lake and splashed water onto her face.

“Give me a minute,” she mumbled. She stretched her back. Two days of lying in the bottom of the impossibly small canoe had crimped her like a staple. Her hamstrings had locked tight sometime during the brief night. She stood, made her way over to a nearby tree, and used that to lean against while she stretched her calves.

The first streaks of light lit the horizon to the east.

“What time is it?” Izzy switched legs.

“I don't know. Four, maybe. Let's go,” Jake said.

“Just wait a second, would ya? I need to stretch.” The night on the ground had been uniformly uncomfortable. Izzy longed for even the comfort of the old pine bough bed back at the cabin. She spat on the ground at the thought.

“What about breakfast?” Izzy asked as she finished her stretches.

“We'll catch something once we get moving. I don't want to waste any light today. We've got a long way to go.”

“Want me to paddle for a bit? You can fish?”

“No, I'm fine.”

Jake picked up the paddle from the canoe and held it close, as if he was worried Izzy might fight him for it.
Fine
. She rolled her
eyes, then looked around the camp for something—anything—that would work as a paddle—a broken tree limb, or an old board washed up on shore. Her search was fruitless. She let out a sigh, checked to make sure they hadn't forgotten any of their gear, and hopped into the bow as Jake shoved off.

Jake paddled them into a mild chop and turned right a minute later. It was still so dark that Izzy could barely see the shore.

“You sure this is safe? Shouldn't we wait another fifteen minutes?”

“We'll be fine. I can hear the waves on the shore. The sun will be up shortly.”

A slight breeze blew off the starboard quarter, forcing Jake to make occasional course corrections to prevent being blown out to the center of the lake. As the sun finally brightened the sky to the east, Izzy spotted whitecaps out on the center of the lake. Her stomach roiled at the thought of another day in a seesawing boat. The western shore blocked the wind though, and as long as they stayed in its lee, the waves seemed manageable.

Izzy dug out the fishing rod, checked the knot on the lure, and began the search for breakfast.

“Wouldn't want to be out there today,” Jake said as he noticed the waves.

“No.”

“When the wind really kicks up out here, the floatplanes can't land in Laroque. Hopefully they'll be there today.” Izzy snapped her head around.

“Jake, there won't be planes there. I told you. The flu. It was really bad. Everywhere.”

“Someone will be there.” Jake scanned the water ahead of them. Izzy knew better. If there was anyone there, they weren't likely to be friendly. She checked behind them. Still no sign of Rick. Had he
given up? Let her go? Her hopes began the long, slow crawl up from the pit of despair she had lived in for so long. If Jake was right . . . and there were people in Laroque . . .

“What's that?” Jake's question broke her train of thought. He pointed forward to a long, dark mass just off the starboard bow. Izzy reeled in her line as Jake maneuvered around the half-submerged branches of a large log floating in their path.

“Just driftwood,” Izzy said. She reached out, grabbed one of the broken limbs, and rolled the log over.

“My dad called logs like that ‘keel wreckers.'” Jake said. “They can tear the bottom out of a speeding boat or the floats off a plane just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We”—he tapped the canoe with his fingers—“probably don't have to worry about that. Might dump us though. Let it go.”

Izzy held on to the log for a moment. “It's burned.” She pointed to a long black scar running up the side of the trunk.

“Campfire, maybe?” Jake disregarded her concern.

Something struck Izzy as odd about this log. The bottom was broken and splintered. The exposed wood had not yet been worn down by seasons of weather and waves. Izzy studied the log for a moment, then released it as Jake resumed their course southward.

The farther south they went, though, the more burned timbers they saw piled up on the shore, stacked by the waves like the walls of a fortress. Hundreds of others bobbed in the shallows. Broken pieces of fire-burned wood turned the shore black. A lump formed in Izzy's throat. Jake's face, which had, not so long ago, been filled with excitement, blanched. What they saw had but one explanation.

Jake pushed back in to the shore, slowly navigating the tangle of deadwood. They approached a small peninsula, where the logs in the water were so thick that Izzy could have walked across them
like a logger riding a raft of timber down a river. As they passed the escarpment, the sight beyond took Izzy's breath away.

The trees were gone. A river, its southern shore darkened by a clog of burned sticks and charcoal, formed a barrier that had somehow held back the flames. To the north, the green that had become so familiar continued unabated. To the south lay a black-and-gray wasteland. Sooty mud separated misshapen, telephone-pole remnants of isolated trees.

A few humble patches of grass, somehow bypassed by the fire, floated in a sea of destruction. Izzy scanned the horizon for an end to the burn. More charred hulks of wood dotted the landscape to the west and to the south. In the gloom of an overcast sky, it was a moonscape on earth: a muddy, blackened moonscape.

Jake beached the canoe next to the river, slipped on his boots, and wandered into the burned-out forest. Izzy did not venture away from the shore. Dark mud, mixed with burned leaves, slivers of wood, and clumps of charcoal, clung to Jake's boots. After a few steps, the weight of his boots increased to the point where he had to strain to lift them. He turned around.

“What the hell happened?” he asked her, as if she would know.

Izzy shook her head. He wasn't asking what had destroyed the landscape. He was asking how it could have burned so much without someone stopping it. He was asking why people hadn't been there to stop it.

“The flu,” she said finally.

Jake appeared not ready, or not able, to accept her story. He expected to arrive in Laroque, to be welcomed, and then to fly home. Izzy knew better. There had been a time right after her parents had died, when denial had taken over. It had taken days for the reality to sink in. Weeks even. She, however, had seen the flu happen. She'd been through it. She'd seen the dead. Every time they went into a
house to salvage something, the dead had been there, a reminder of a dream that wasn't. When the food ran out, reality became the only thing that mattered. Starvation destroyed everything, including hope.

Jake had not been through that. He would have to see it with his own eyes to believe it.

Jake picked his way through the mud to a small patch of grass a few meters from shore. He bent down to pluck the bloom off a ground-hugging wildflower. Izzy stayed on the gravel, stepping carefully over more of the downed timber. There were other signs of life here—deer tracks, bird footprints, and the peculiar drag of turtle carapaces carved into the mud. But the forest was gone.

Izzy followed the shore, avoiding the worst of the mud.

“You think it's still burning?” Izzy asked.

“Doubt it. Looks like this happened last year. See these plants with the little flowers? They only grow in the spring. They'd have burned off if this had happened this year. Besides, it's been too wet this year for this to burn. Way too wet.”

“Oh.” She and Rick had been on the far side of the lake on their trek north. They had seen none of this. All they had seen was snow and ice, in every direction.

She walked a little farther down the barren beach and stared inland. A small red fox tracked her progress from behind a fallen tree, a short distance away. Grime coated its fur. It stood with its head low, suspicious of any sudden movement and ready to scurry off should Izzy approach.

Izzy headed back to the canoe, meeting up with Jake just short of the bow. Jake dislodged the mud from his boots by slamming the soles together. The fox jumped at the sound, bolting westward with its tail between its legs. It stopped twice to see if it was being pursued. Izzy lost sight of it as soon as she clambered back into the canoe.

Only a few kilometers separated them from Laroque. With each stroke of Jake's paddle, Izzy's fears of what they would or wouldn't find there grew. She kept those fears to herself. There was no point in worrying Jake any further.