Survive (13 page)

Chapter 33

I
’m awake all night. Adrenaline is pumping through my body, which has gone into a serious protection mode, with all my sensory powers on full alert. I register every twig snap from miles away, and I find myself twitching constantly until the sun rises.

From up in the tree, I watch dawn begin to spread across the sky. It is clear, and I think it will be warm.
This is it,
I promise myself.
This is my day. This is the day I walk out of here. This is the day I find help for Paul.

I climb down slowly and have my sticks at the ready. When I touch ground, I look around carefully and see that there are paw prints all around the tree but no sign of the wolf. I start to walk west, resuming the direction I’ve been traveling.

It is slow going. The forest is thick, hilly, and full of rocks, large and small. I’m tired and my nerves are shot from last night, so I trip and fall more than usual. Each time I fall, I panic and anticipate the wolf. My knees buckle several times as my legs weaken from the stress and lack of nourishment. My body, which has been working harder than I ever asked it to before, craves water more than anything else. It is the first time I fear dehydration, but if I choose to eat the snow, hypothermia will kill me. Despite its early promise, the sun disappears behind a cloud bank. I shake my head at my earlier optimism. But I don’t feel pathetic or disgusted the way I might have last week. It’s better than having no sun at all. I celebrate its warmth even as I feel disappointment. I’ve just got to hang on until the clouds move by again. I keep moving, one foot in front of the other.

My hands are starting to freeze. They’ve been cold for days, but this morning I notice how numb the fingers on my left hand feel. I look at the tips of my fingers, and they look darker. I can’t decide if it’s paranoia; I’m pretty sure it’s real, but I’m not sure if it means I’ll lose my fingers.

My mind flashes on the knife in my hand and the time not so long ago when I thought slicing myself would bring me some kind of joy. Now the thought of losing even an ounce of my blood repulses me. I wiggle my fingers for a second and pray that I can keep them in the end.

At around noon, I stop walking. I’ve been fighting for hours, and I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress. I find a large stick and pick it up. It’s about six inches taller than my head, fits nicely in my hands, and feels sturdy. I walk with it, and it provides the balance and support that I desperately need. I only wish I’d stumbled on the idea earlier.

When I first hear the sound of the river, it comes as a dull roar. At first there is a low tone, like the moan of tired television in a distant room. But it grows louder with each step I take, and eventually the correct synapses in my brain fire and connect, and I get it. River. Water. I pick up my pace and quickly find myself standing on top of a ravine, looking down at a thick, lush, flowing river.

I look north and south, up and down the river, but there’s no entry point. I could try to walk along the river, but I’m not entirely sure my body can carry me any farther. With water, yes, I could keep going. But between the lack of food and dehydration, I’m dead on my feet. It’s so close. I look down. The drop is maybe fifteen feet down a sloping hill that would take me to the river’s edge. I try to calculate how damaging the fall will be, factoring in the snow and the slope, but in the end, it is less complicated than the algebra exams I always failed. If I try to walk the edge of the ravine, I will definitely die. If I jump, I’ll probably die. I weigh my options and opt for probably die.

I walk a few yards in each direction, looking for the ideal place to jump. I know from gym class I’m supposed to bend my knees when I land and roll forward. I toss my stick down and it hits the ground and rolls toward the riverbank. It doesn’t snap or break. It bounces and tumbles a bit, but it survives intact. I’ll be able to use it to walk with me another mile or two.

I’m going to count to three and then leap.
God, please help me,
I think. One.
Paul, stay with me.
Two.
Paul, I’m coming back for you.
Three.
Jump, Jane, jump.
I leap and for a long, sick second, I hover in the air before my body yields to the force of gravity. The downward rush takes over and I just fall until—
bang!
—my feet hit the ground hard. Although my legs are bent and some of the fall is absorbed by my thighs and calves, it still jolts my body like a lightning bolt. I pitch forward through air, banging my face into the snow, then flipping again, landing on my feet momentarily and finally collapsing as my ankles give way and I roll over. I roll and tumble until I hit the riverbank.

Finally, I stop rolling and lie there panting, on my back, afraid to move. I open my eyes and watch the gloomy, gray clouds low in the sky.

I’m alive,
I say quietly to no one. Or maybe I just think it; I’m not sure. My wrists and hands are, amazingly, unhurt, but my left ankle swells immediately and the pain is enormous. I can bend it a bit, so I know it isn’t broken. I try my best with my frozen hands to tighten the boot. The loud roar of the river fills my ears and suddenly the cotton feeling of my mouth blooms into my consciousness and crowds out any other thoughts. I get on all fours and crawl the rest of the way to the river. The water moves very quickly, and I’m careful not to lean too far in for fear of getting swept away. That’s a headline I’d rather not imagine: G
IRL
H
IKES
O
UT OF
V
ALLEY
O
NLY TO
F
ALL INTO
R
IVER
.

I get to the edge of the river and gulp down the water. Food. Drink. Candy. Rabbit. You name it. Nothing has ever tasted as deeply refreshing as the river water. The thick, icy water splashes into my mouth with such force that I nearly choke on it. I try to keep as dry as I can, but water flows down my throat and spills into my jacket and onto my chest and stomach. I pull back for a few seconds before I lap up some more. I repeat this scenario until my stomach swells, and I simply roll onto my back and pass out.

When I wake, I am still thirsty, but a few more pulls off the river soothe me. My stomach is in knots, though. I feel the full effort of the day in my bones, and the hell of the journey still ahead of me looms. A single sit-up is needed, but the energy and desire have dissipated.
Rest, then try. Rest, then try.

I close my eyes, and my mind drifts until my father appears. He’s young, like in the photo on my mother’s dresser. He’s wearing a white sweater with dark blue-and-red trim around a small V-neck, the same one he wore on his last Christmas Eve. He’s very tan and wearing sunglasses that hide his sad eyes.

“I’m okay,” he says.

I reach out to touch him. His face is smooth, and the smell of Old Spice lingers in the air. I move his face to the side so I can look at his profile, but what I really want to see is the hole in his head. It’s black and scabbed over with dark, wine-colored blood. I place my fingertips over the hole, and I dig in gently and remove a silver bullet and blood starts to flow down his cheek.

He turns back and puts his warm hand on my face.
“Thank you, Jane. I’m okay. Go ahead without me. I’m okay.”

I nod and I start to cry, his hand wiping each tear away.

“I’m okay too, Daddy.”

And I believe it, too. That’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way, dream or no dream, since the day my father killed himself. The blackness swirling through my mind begins to echo with the sound of the shot, my mother’s screams, and the noise of sirens and walkie-talkies, medics and policemen. My father died that night, but something inside of me started to grow, and at first, I tended it, helping it, but then I lost control and it grew into something that existed all on its own: a raging beast inside of me that almost devoured me from the inside out.

“Goodbye,” I tell my father, and I touch his face once more and he leans into me, very close. I can feel the imprint of his kiss. Then his face turns mean and ugly and I can feel his breath on the top of my nose.

I open my eyes, and for a split second I am looking up into the yellow eyes of the wolf. Then suddenly,
snap!
The icy wind hits my face and I awake.

I’m frozen and panting from my dream.

I stand up and grab my walking stick and look upriver and then down. There’s no sign of the wolf.
It was just a dream, Jane. The wolf is only as real as your father. Let them go.

I turn and head downriver with the wind at my back. Walking the riverbank is the easiest walk I’ve had since I started. That’s good, because my body is failing me now, and every hundred feet or so, I have to kneel down and gather my strength. Eventually, with the help of the wind pushing me forward, I feel some energy. I’m thinking about that last climb Paul made and how he came to life on that day, just before he took a turn for the worse.

Is he still alive? How could he be? He just has to be. Don’t give up on him.
My thoughts turn to the people who never gave up on me. My mother, Old Doctor, the nurses, some of the other Life Housers like Ben. I remember one day in the hospital; it was a low point perhaps a couple months into my stay. I was looking out at the courtyard filled with snow. I was thinking about how wonderful snow is to a child. Sledding, snowmen, snowball fights. And it must have made me sad, because tears were rolling down my face and Ben came up to me and sat down. He didn’t say much, but he offered me a cigarette. And even though I wasn’t a smoker, I joined him out in the courtyard. When we were done, he said, “Everything I look at has the potential to make me sad.”

“I love the snow,” I said. “But it makes me sad.”

“Yeah. It makes me sad too,” Ben said.

“It makes me miss my father. We played in the snow—I still think about that a lot.”

Then he did something that made my mouth drop but I now realize was perhaps the grandest gesture ever committed at Life House. He pulled down his pants and took a pee in the pristine white snow, spelling his name.

“Now you’ll think of me.”

I laughed. And it makes me smile even now.

My pace steadies, and I move along the river until it takes a wide turn back toward the mountain range I left days before. It is so easy to walk along the river and follow its path mindlessly. But I feel the sun, and I know where that river is going. I can’t go back there. I stop and look across the river, considering my options. As far as I can see from here, there’s nothing but an open field of grass beyond the underbrush. Cross and take my chances of dying from exposure in the middle of the field? Or follow a river back toward a world I know holds certain death for me?

My eyes focus deep into the vast expanse beyond the river and follow a clear dark line straight along the horizon. Is that a fence? A road? A power line? A logging road? It must be man-made, whatever it is. Nothing in nature could cut such a long, straight line across the horizon. It occurs to me that my eyes could be playing tricks on me.

The first thing standing between the line on the horizon and me is a narrow piece of river. I step to the edge of the riverbank and look down to where the bend breaks. It is probably fifteen or twenty feet across at the narrowest point, maybe less. The river isn’t deep; I can tell because I can see it rippling off the rocks on the bottom.

I take out all my dry clothes: a pair of pants, a shirt and sweater, two pairs of wool socks, and my jacket and shell, and I put them into a plastic bag and tie it. Then I put the bag in my sleeping bag, knowing I must keep my clothes dry if I am to survive crossing the river.

I shimmy down the bank and slide into the water with both boots. The slow-moving current is more powerful than I anticipated, but it only goes up to my shins. I plant my full weight and hold the bank with my arms so as not to be swept away. I look up to the bank and know that scrambling back up isn’t an option. I take a deep breath.
Let me cross. Let me cross.

Chapter 34

I
stand still for a moment, taking in the strength of the current and the distance I have to cover.
It is less than twenty feet,
I tell myself.
You can do this.
I walk out and the current stays around knee level for the first two or three steps, then the water is up to my thighs and its chill is bracing.

I jam my stick as far out as I can manage but am pushed a few feet downstream as I do it. I step and push against the stick like a pole vault jumper, and the current sweeps me up. I flutter kick as fast as I can and push hard against the stick and I’m able to move two or three yards across the river.
Don’t fight it, Jane. Let the river move you.
I try pulling my stick back toward me, but the force of the drag makes it impossible. I see it float away, rushing in the current, and I feel like I’m losing my best friend.

I’m moving quickly and making progress, but the bend is closer than I expected. I don’t fight the current; it floats me directly toward the far bank. The cold of the water strangles my muscles, and I am struggling to stay afloat. Their tightness makes lifting my arm from the water nearly impossible. My body feels heavy and numb. For a moment, my head is swallowed by the heavy drag from below. I get my mouth just above the waterline and gasp, trying to inhale deeply. My lungs feel frozen.

My legs are numb and weighted down by my waterlogged pants and heavy boots. My treading slows, then stops. I flail my arms, but the cold has numbed my shoulders. I look up, and I can see that I’m halfway across but stuck in the center sweep of the current. When the river breaks right, I need to be near the bank so I can stop my forward momentum. But I have nothing left. The fight in my legs is gone, and my arms offer no more force than a feather against the churning, moving beast.

Just as I hit the bend, the river roils and my feet graze the rocky bottom. I immediately kick back and run through the mud, and the effort ignites my arms, which thrash into the water with ferocity. My body lurches toward the shoreline, and I slam into the riverbank just before it turns sharply and cups the excess roiling water.

I drag myself up, drape myself over the lip of the bank, and hook my right leg over the top, rolling myself onto solid ground. I cough and heave water and bile into the snow. I am shaking and sobbing and my fingers and hands begin to burn with pain. After a while, I get on my knees to fling off my sleeping bag. I have no idea how much or how little time has passed. I push my frozen arms into the frozen bag and grab the ties with my teeth. I pull the knot free, and the bag unrolls.

I put my knee on the lip of the sleeping bag, but I can’t hold the edge of the lining with my frozen fingers, so I bite the corner and pull it open with my teeth. I reach in and grab my clothes. My hands are about as useful as clubs, but I manage. The bag is damp, but my clothes are dry.

I’m clumsy, but I get my clothes and jacket on and keep my frozen hands close to my heart underneath my clothes. They’ll never warm up under these conditions, but my hope is to stave off hypothermia as long as possible. I drape the wet sleeping bag over my body, propping the top shielded corner over my head. From a distance I must look like a sheik or nomad with a long, dark green cape, tromping over the snow.

I can see the dark line in the distance. I look to the sky and suddenly, for the first time since the crash, the sun comes out in full force. It warms my face.

I have to cross this field before the sun falls. A night under the snow—under a wet sleeping bag with soaking pants—will find me gone by morning.

My body shakes with chills. Early on, the exercise created warmth, and I could capture that heat to melt water or warm my hands or, with Paul, to heat our bodies at night. But I’m no longer able to generate heat. I may make the horizon, but if nobody is there to help me, I’ll be dead by dawn.