The River at Night(41)

Sandra got up and tucked herself between me and Pia. I could barely feel her with her extra vest, but her bony shoulders poked into me and she folded her legs under mine. I thought I was freezing, but I shuddered at her meat-locker-cold calves and thighs. Pia, her arm practically around both of us, felt like a warm room in comparison, though every now and then an involuntary shiver passed through her.

“We have just one job,” Pia whispered. “To get through the night. Don’t think past that, okay? Just go a little at a time, minute by minute if you have to.”

Maybe because someone had told me it was my job to go to sleep, I felt my eyelids grow heavy and—unbelievably—found myself with my chin resting on the collar of my vest. To keep my mind off where we were, I pictured us in our seventies and eighties, and what each of our old-lady bodies might look like. Sandra and I would stay in pear mode no doubt, butts getting bigger and top halves tending toward scrawny, especially in the neck and shoulders. Rachel would shrink all over, just get tinier, while Pia would morph into a walking stick, frail and long, in danger of breaking a hip just crossing the kitchen floor. Nested in the overheated comforts of our assisted-living facility, we’d invite each other over for decaf and blond brownies, laughing as we recalled that silly trip to Maine when our guide drowned and we lost the raft but ultimately found our way to safety. . . .

? ? ?

Howling sounds snapped me awake. My heart blood leapt high into my throat. We clutched each other.

“Oh, dear God,” Pia said. “Wolves.” Her nails dug into the flesh of my arms.

A staccato of yips, followed by long, mournful baying and high-pitched barks. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere. It surrounded us, ricocheted inside our heads, sliced up into the sky; it even silenced the insects.

The yelping stopped. Utter quiet now. The forest held its breath.

Strangled barks broke the stillness, now closer to us and more vicious, in the woods upriver.

“They’re over by Rory now,” Rachel whispered.

Pia stifled a cry. I pictured her long white hands laying leaves and flat river stones over his eyes.

Sandra’s shoulders shook so hard we could all feel it. “Come on, shhh,” Rachel breathed. “Don’t think, okay? Just don’t think.”

And so we listened. To the more terrible quiet that came next. In the black land behind my squeezed-shut eyes I saw teeth and bone and blood. How many were there? Impossible to tell. Why couldn’t we have gotten farther from him before night fell? Another impossibility.

Time passed in its ruthless way. The normal noise of the forest returned. And suddenly the most pressing of my bodily concerns was a full-to-bursting bladder. I considered going right where I sat, I was so terrified. I don’t know if anyone would have noticed, or cared.

“I have to pee,” I whispered.

A bullfrog at the riverbank answered me with a wet croak.

“I’ll go with you,” Pia said. “I have to go too.”

? ? ?

We crawled on hands and knees out of our nest of branches and stiffly got to our feet. Shivering, I pulled my still-damp shirt and shorts away from my skin, nostalgic for that vile latrine back at the lodge, chemicals, whining overhead lights, beetles, and all. I squatted next to a rock shaped like a slumbering bear while Pia relieved herself on the other side of it. As I looked up into the blackness, I concentrated on relaxing enough to do what I had come for. The release of peeing felt almost sexual, the hot stream coming out of me a reminder that there was still heat, still life in me. The rain had passed, leaving a cold mist that cast a ghostly pallor over the trees and water.

“Wini!” Pia whispered hoarsely from the darkness. I heard her zip her shorts, the jangle of her belt buckle. “Do you smell that?”

I did. A whiff of home, of comfort. My shattered mind finally came around to naming it. Woodsmoke.

I heard splashing behind me. Muffled swearing. Then: “Get over here.”

My eyes fully adjusted to the dark now, I turned toward her voice. Pia crouched on a slab of stone a few yards out into the river. “Win, you have to—”

“I’m coming, give me a sec.” I was loath to get into the water again, but I had to do it, at least up to my thighs, to climb up to where she was. Even then, she had to lean down and give me a hand.

Rachel’s voice came from the bank. “What are you doing?”

“I see something!”

High up in the belly of the dark mountain, a smudge of bone-colored smoke gathered, twisting up into the night sky.

“What do you see?” Sandra called out.

“A fire!” Pia dropped back into the water. “Guys—someone’s up there! I think we’re going to be okay.”

I waded behind her toward the shore, teeth chattering.

“How far away is it, do you think?” Rachel rushed to meet us at the narrow bank.

“It’s hard to say. Maybe half a mile?” I strained to see back up the mountain, but nothing was visible from the bank. “Who’s camping way out here?”

I surveyed our exhausted, grimy faces and remembered someone telling me that hope is always the last thing to die.

“They could be anyone,” I said, fear audible in my voice.

“That’s who we need,” Rachel said. “Anyone.”

“Should we yell up to them?” Sandra ventured a few steps toward the inky-black woods. Before we could stop her, she opened her mouth and screamed, “Help! Help us, please! We’re down by the river!”