The Way Back from Broken (20 page)

“Yeah, but there's one thing I don't get.”

Leah threw another log on the fire. “What's that?”

“Molly's mom won't let her do anything. No sleepovers with friends. No driving. No dates.”

“Kate is scared she'll lose her too,” said Leah.

“I know,” said Rakmen, “but are you not? I mean, you brought us out here where anything could happen.” She stiffened. “I'm not criticizing,” he explained. “I was wondering. Aren't you afraid?”

On the water, a loon howled. The sound had grown so familiar that it no longer sent adrenaline coursing through Rakmen. Instead he listened for a reply, and soon enough it came, muted and distant, from some neighboring lake.

Leah zipped her fleece jacket against the growing chill of the night. “I came because this place—these trees, the lakes, the trails—they don't care if I'm happy or miserable. They take me the way I am.”

Rakmen rubbed the calluses on his left palm with his thumb, nodding. He got that. He was a tiny dot on the map of the world. Under this sky and in these woods, it didn't matter that he had failed as a brother. Somehow that made Dora easier to face.

“Mrs. Tatlas,” he asked, suddenly unable to use her first name. “What happened to your baby?”

She dropped the stick on the coals where it caught and flamed, deepening the shadows of her face.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have asked.”

“No, it's okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “When your baby dies like he did, most people pretend he never existed. That's worse than asking.” She picked up another stick from Rakmen's wood pile and stirred the coals. A puff of sparks floated into the night, winking out above their heads. “He was stillborn.”

“Jacey told me that,” said Rakmen. “I was wondering why.”

Leah rocked back and forth on the log bench. “I remember thinking when I was pregnant that I wouldn't have to start worrying about him until he was born. I didn't know he could die like that. So fast.”

Rakmen could feel the gentle weight of Dora in his arms, hear her snuffling, smell her milk-scented breath. He'd wanted to get her to sleep quickly so he could go out with Juan. She was holding him up, alternately crying and panting. He'd hummed distractedly, not really noticing the way her breathing changed, becoming wheezy and shallow.

“Jordan was past his due date. The doctor kept wanting to induce labor. I kept saying no, everything's fine.”

Dora's breath came in frantic gulps. Her eyes wheeled, terrified by the way her inner machinery was breaking down, but she was a baby and didn't know what was happening. And he was slow, too stupid slow, to realize what was happening.

“But the placenta started to tear off.”

As a gray tinge snuck into Dora's cheeks, Rakmen had screamed for help. He'd pressed two fingers to her sternum—again, again, again. He'd covered her tiny nose and soft lips with his own mouth, desperate to send his own life into her lungs—again, again, again.

“By the time we were at the hospital, it was too late.”

Dad wrenched Dora from his arms, but by then, her eyes had dimmed and gone.

Across the dying fire, Leah's shoulders trembled, and the wet tracks on her cheeks gleamed. Rakmen's heart was flailing against the bone cage of his chest, thrashing its way to deeper water.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”

She poured water over the coals. A hissing, choking cloud of steam rose in a gray column. “Let's get some sleep. I want to move early tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 26

“You can't take it.”

“Mom!” The drawn-out whine of Jacey's protest woke Rakmen from a nightmare. In the dream, they were back on Pen Lake where they'd seen the moose. He'd jumped off the high rocks like he had in real life, but he'd gone too deep to make it to the surface again. He thrashed out of his sleeping bag, panting.

“I'll carry it.”

“It weighs too much.”

“But—”

“The trap stays.”

Rakmen waited until the argument was over and the frantic pounding in his chest had calmed before pulling on his pants and climbing out of his tent. Jacey sulked over oatmeal while Leah finished rolling their sleeping pads.

He glanced at his watch. It wasn't even seven o'clock.

Bleary-eyed, Rakmen headed to the lake to dip his head. Fog hung over the water, concealing the homestead across the bay, but the graves were there, the bones churned each year through freeze and thaw.

Dora was buried in a cemetery high on the hills over Portland. For the funeral, their procession of cars had followed the hearse up a steep, twisting road. Queasy waves of nausea had swept over him, intensified by the cloying perfume his mother had worn. He'd gulped back bile, each swallow a struggle against the knotted tie and stiff collar.

Rakmen dried his face on the bottom of his T-shirt. The cold, wet fabric against his stomach sent a shiver through him. He returned to the fire, where Jacey stared mournfully at the beaver trap.

She flashed puppy eyes at him. “Can you take it?”

“Sorry, girl. My pockets are full.”

She returned to full sulk, gnawing on a piece of hair. Her brother's bones were ash in a box in his crib. Rakmen squatted beside her. “You can take some pictures, you know.”

“It's not the same.”

“I know, but it's still cool. Nobody back home knows what a beaver trap looks like. Set it up on that rock for a fashion shoot.” That won a smile, and Jacey scurried to the task while he and Leah broke camp. For once, he was as eager to move on as she was.

Thirty minutes later they were skimming through the rising mist toward the first portage of the day. It was a long one—five hundred and thirty meters—and the landing spot was a jumble of rocks. He'd have to be careful not to ding up his canoe.

Uncle Leroy's canoe.

But Rakmen couldn't help feeling possessive. He was the one who had carried it for the past nine days. He had propelled it mile after painful mile with his aching limbs. The blond wood reminded him of Molly and the way sailors always call their ships she.

“You can stop paddling,” he told Leah and Jacey. “I'll ease us in.”

They rested their paddles across their knees while he slowed the canoe and deftly brought the bow into a narrow slot between two rocks. Once their gear was piled on the rocky shore, Leah helped him lift the canoe out of the water and rest it on a semi-flat spot, then the three of them stood together looking up the path. If you could call it a path. From the shoreline, the bank was more rock than soil and sloped up steeply. He'd have to pick his way like a mountain goat for at least fifty feet.

“Are you going to be able to manage it?” Leah asked. “The balance will be tricky.”

She was right. On flat ground, the canoe balanced perfectly on his shoulders, but here he'd have to tilt it to match the angle of the slope. The weight would try to pull him backward.

“I think I'll take my pack up the steep part first. Or I can take yours and you can take the smaller one up.”

“I've got it,” she said.

He nodded, shouldered his pack and took Jacey's pack in his other hand. “Let's go, girl. You first.” Jacey began to scramble up the rocks, pointing out good handholds along the way. He kept close behind her in case she slipped. At the top, they high-fived. “Wait here until I come back with the canoe.”

“I wanna go,” she said, scuffing her boots in the dirt.

He frowned at her, the uneasiness he'd felt earlier returning. “Take some pictures. I think we should stick together on this one.”

On the way back down, he skidded on some loose pebbles and slid a few feet before catching himself. He frowned as he dabbed at the scrape on his palm.

“Do you need a Band-Aid?” Leah asked when she saw fresh blood on his shirt.

“Nah. Let's get out of here.” This lake was bad news all around.

He hefted Leah's pack so she could slide into the straps. As she adjusted the tumpline on her forehead, Rakmen knelt and re-tied his boots, knotting them extra tight. Once the canoe was up, he couldn't afford to catch a lace.

Rakmen scanned the lake one last time. The fog had lifted, and the meadow where the trapper's family had lived was a pale green smudge along the far shore. It was sunny, but a wind was rising, bringing with it a warning of trouble like a far-off siren. He turned back to the steep slope. For once, Jacey had listened. She waited at the top, taking pictures of tree bark or something. Leah was halfway up, bent almost double under the weight of her back and picking her way through the rocks. Twenty more feet and she'd be out of the tough part.

Thin clouds streaked by. The upper air was moving fast. Rakmen bent toward the canoe, gripping the thwart inside the gunnels. A gust of wind flattened his T-shirt against his body and filled his mouth with a metallic tang. Waves splattered against the rocks around him. He was tensing for the swift movement needed to bring the craft overhead when he heard a quick, throaty gasp. The surprised intake of breath was barely audible over the wind and waves but somehow more piercing than any alarm.

After the gasp came a
pop
like the release of a jar lid.

A tight, artificial sound. The rupture of some sealed chamber, cracked wide open.

And then Leah fell.

She thudded down the rocky slope.

Jacey screamed and was still screaming when Leah's body slammed into the ground at his feet. She was face up, her shoulders wrenched back by the straps of the pack. Her pupils were black tubes connected straight to her animal brain. The wind knocked out of her came back in a wheeze that racked through her body.

Rakmen dropped to his knees, loosening the buckles on the straps so Leah was no longer pinioned.

“It's bad,” she said, the words cracking against each other. “Broken.”

“No,” he said, unwilling to agree.

“Look.”

Her foot bent inward at an unnatural angle like the head of a dead chicken. Fear screamed through him. Jacey clattered down beside them in an avalanche of pebbles as Rakmen slid his hands under Leah's back, lifted her off the pack and laid her on the ground. Leah's face contorted with pain then relaxed as she lost consciousness.

“Don't die,” Jacey shrieked, throwing herself toward Leah.

Rakmen caught Jacey around the waist and pulled her into his arms. She pounded her fists against Rakmen's chest. “Don't let her die!”

The ground listed beneath Rakmen as if the ever-increasing wind had brought swells to the earth. His thoughts trampled each other.

They needed help.

There was no one.

Not 911.

Not his father.

Not Edna.

“Do something!” Jacey screamed. “You can fix her.”

Four days from anywhere.

The only someone was him.

Rakmen shook Jacey, forcing her to sit down next to the canoe. “Shut up! I need to think.” Jacey glued her mouth into a tight little line. Rakmen palmed his hand toward the ground—stay. She dipped her chin and stayed. He crawled to Leah. All he could see was glassy white between her slitted lids. Beneath the skin, her eyeballs twitched. Her breath came in shallow rasps. Rakmen raked his hands through his hair, pulling hard. If only his dad were here, he'd know what to do.

He had to focus.

He needed to know how bad the break was. Compound fractures were the worst, his dad always said. Infection was the enemy. He crawled to the lower half of Leah's body, flexing his fingers. Right in front of him was Leah's scuffed, dirt-covered boot. The weight of it pulled against the foot inside.

Sweat dribbled down the side of his face, only to be sucked away by the wind. He shivered. “I've got to get the boot off,” he said, trying to sound like his dad, “and quickly, before she wakes up. It'll hurt less that way.”

“What if you make it worse?” Jacey asked.

He wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm. “We've got to know how bad it is. Besides, her foot will swell in the boot. Come over here. I need you to hold her steady.”

Jacey crouched beside him and cradled Leah's leg in her hands. Shaking, Rakmen picked at the double-knotted laces until they were as loose as possible.

He paused, unsure of what to do next.

The boot was still tight around the bones of her ankle. He didn't know where it was broken or how badly or what damage he could do removing the boot, but Leah moaned, and he knew he couldn't wait. He wasn't sure he could do this if she were awake and in pain.

“Hold her calf as steady as you can,” he said. “I'm going to ease the boot off.”

Jacey blinked back tears and shifted position. “Now?”

Rakmen held the heel with one hand and the toe in the other. “Now,” he said and pulled.

With a wet, gristly sound, the boot came off. Afraid to stop what he had started, Rakmen peeled off Leah's sock as well. Purple bloomed under the skin, spreading as he watched. The dents left by her sock were already being erased by swelling. Lumps where he didn't think there should be lumps protruded, but the skin hadn't split.

He supported the foot with Jacey's fleece jacket and sent her to dampen a bandana from the lunch pack. Wiping the cool cloth over Leah's face, he worked to rouse her, trying all the while not to see, superimposed on Leah's immobile face, his sister's and the way her lips had gone blue-black at the end.

“Come on. Wake up,” he pleaded. When her eyes flickered open, he nearly wept. “You're alright.”

She blinked slowly. “I don't think so, Rakmen.”

“You'll be okay,” he stammered. “We'll get out of here.”

She shook her head very slowly. “I can't walk.”

Buzzing filled Rakmen's ears and head and limbs. This wasn't right. Things had finally started coming together. A few good days. That's what they'd had. Now everything was broken again. His arm lifted of its own volition, the fingers curling into a fist. Sick churning filled him. He wanted to break and pound and destroy. He pulled his fist back, his muscles tensed, fury obscuring his vision.