The River at Night(24)

“I need a drink so bad right now.” Rachel quickly raised her hand. “But don’t worry. I’ve been good. Just got my three-year medallion.”

“Congratulations,” Sandra said, meaning it.

“Good for you,” I said through my pleasant haze of grape. Each of us at one point or another had picked Rachel up from the depths of her addiction, from tearful interventions to bringing her to rehab to just buddying up with her at a meeting, but it had been nearly ten years since any of us had lived close enough to her to be meaningful in those ways once she’d moved to Philly from Boston. That said, I confess that hearing about the last day, hour, or minute she’d had a drink was one up close part of our friendship I didn’t miss. Addictions to me felt adolescent at our stage in life, as harsh and unfeeling as that sounds; it was profound loneliness that haunted me; obsolescence in my profession; midlife existential dread. Now that the dying parents had arrived, the divorces, the snotty teenagers, who had time for addiction?

Rachel combed her still-wet hair with her fingers, sighed a big but somehow fragile sigh. I thought of her growing up as the youngest of nine in rural poverty, all the stories of hardship she’d shared over the years, and felt a surge of tenderness for her that washed away my petty lack of understanding. Perhaps her attraction to nursing was a way of healing her traumatic past. Naturally she overcompensated in the control department. Who wouldn’t?

Sandra shivered.

“You warm enough, Loo?” I asked.

“Never,” she said with a little smile, edging closer to the fire and rubbing her hands together.

Rachel rocked back and forth on her haunches. “This is so fucked.”

“Maybe we should just go to bed,” Sandra said. She gave Rachel a little pat on the shoulder, got up, then dropped down to crawl inside our tent. Rachel and I sat in silence a few minutes, watching the fire die down to smoke and embers, until the moon took over and we could see more clearly than ever.





12


Figuring she’d come crashing in when she came crashing in and no sooner, Sandra and I made up Pia’s place in the center of our tent: sleeping bag rolled out, makeshift pillow next to ours. The three of us got oriented in the tight quarters by flashlight, tucking supplies where we could, then stashing our lights close at hand, until we all lay staring at the deep blue nylon of the tent, feeling the night breathing all around us.

“Do we even know this kid, really?” Rachel said, tossing in her bag. “What if he’s a maniac?”

I thought of the gun hidden in his pack and zipped my bag up tight to my chin. “He’s not a maniac. He’s a normal twenty-year-old kid.”

Rachel smacked at her pile-of-clothes-as-pillow. “My point exactly.”

“Rachel,” Sandra said sleepily, “they’re doing whatever they’re doing. There’s nothing we can do about it. Try and relax and get some sleep, okay?”

“I don’t get it. We go away together to be together and catch up as friends, and then Pia goes and does this—this—acting like a fifteen-year-old.” A rustling came from outside the tent, a fussy, scrabbling sound. Rachel jerked upright, snapped on her flashlight, and covered it with her hand, which glowed red with her living blood. “What the fuck is that?”

Sandra stayed motionless in her bag, her thick black hair spilling out, the sparks of her eyes shining. Her eyelashes cast freakishly long shadows against the tent from the odd angle of Rachel’s flashlight. “The food. We left it out.”

“Fuck, we’re such idiots.” I lunged for the zipper of our netted door.

“Wini, don’t!” Rachel yanked me back by my T-shirt. “Anything could be out there!”

We all sat up now, listening to our ragged breathing and the sound of a can hitting a tree, rolling, rattling. Claws scraped on metal. I thought of the can of baked beans Rory had opened earlier and eaten without heating them, how he’d offered some to us and no one had taken him up on it. Cellophane rustled; I pictured the energy-bar wrappers by the fire. The pile of fish bones stuck to sheets of foil.

“We need to scare it away!” I whispered.

“Why?” Rachel breathed.

“Because Pia and Rory are out there.”

“What if it’s a bear?” Rachel’s eyes were huge, dark circles underneath.

“I have a knife.” Sandra scrambled through her pack, flashlight bouncing. She pulled out her Swiss Army knife. We all stared at the ridiculous thing.

“Just let it eat the food and go away, whatever it is,” Rachel whispered hoarsely. “Do we have food in the tent? Anybody?”

I thought hard. “An apple, that’s it.”

“Nothing,” Sandra said.

“Turn off all your flashlights,” I said.

They clicked off. The sounds continued, from all over the camp now. Whatever was out there, there were more than one of them. Our eyes adjusted to the new darkness. Tree shadows fell starkly across the nylon ceiling; I pictured the heavy limbs looming over us. Getting down on my elbows and worming my way to the front of the tent, I unzipped the mesh a few inches and lifted the flap.

Six pairs of eyes glowed silver in the blackness. A family of raccoons, midchew, gaped at me from different sections of the camp. A well-fed one sat up on its haunches. It clutched a piece of granola bar with its eerily human claws, peered at me through bandit eyes.