The River at Night(46)

“Right behind you,” Rachel said.

Sandra snatched the phone from between the jars and zipped it into the front pocket of her vest. We ducked down and stepped outside, the night air a tonic after the fetid stink of the cabin.

Simone loaded her arms with logs from a pile of wood stacked up against the cabin and dropped them near the fire before stoking the coals back to healthy flames. “We’re early to bed here,” she said, “so this will be good-night for me. Sweet dreams, ladies.” She slapped the bark and dirt off her hands and disappeared into the cabin.

A rustling came from a hulking metal structure behind the camp, toward the wall of woods. Shrouded by darkness and undergrowth, the cab of an antique truck sagged in the dirt, its bed and engine and the rest of it gone, melted into the earth with the years. Deflated tires rested against it, engulfed by vines and new growth. Dean emerged from the thing, burdened with what looked like a stack of rugs. Never meeting our eyes, he set out around the fire four animal skins sewn together with gristly thread into rough blankets. We stood spellbound, unable to look away.

He turned on his heel toward the cabin.

I forced myself out of my shocked stupor. This was my last and only chance.

I whispered, “Dean.”

His shoulders slumped as if he’d been caught at something bad. With visible effort, he turned toward us, lifting his head as if resisting a great weight, to meet my eyes. Profound sadness rested in his.

Slowly, deliberately, I signed, “Thank you for the blankets.” I was rusty at this and the gestures felt awkward. Twice I stumbled on blankets, finally spelling out the word to be clear.

There was only the crackling of the fire and the night sounds that breathed in and out all around us. Dean gazed at my hands with new attention, then at my face, his eyes slowly lighting from the inside. He looked younger all of a sudden, and I realized I hadn’t thought about his age at all.

He signed, “You sign?”

“Yes,” I signed. “I understand you.”

“Them?”

“No,” my hands said. “Just me.”

He ran up to me. I wasn’t ready for it. I gasped, stumbling backward as he grabbed my hands with his filthy ones and yanked me toward him as if I were nothing. He turned my hands over, opened them, and placed my palms flat against his cheeks, holding me there. I didn’t try to move. His face felt clammy, gritty. I felt his incipient beard and realized he was young, maybe just a teenager. His eyes searched mine with a desperation I’d never seen before or since. I stopped breathing. I felt like I’d fallen into a wild animal’s cage. His face contorted as a deep-rooted sob erupted from him, and he lifted my hands from his cheeks, encased them with his own, and held them against his closed eyes. They felt hot and wet as he cried soundlessly, his back heaving.

“Hey,” Pia whispered. “What in hell is going on?”

“Dean!” Simone bellowed from inside the cabin. “Quit bothering those women and get in here and go to sleep. They’ve had quite enough of you for one night.”

Dean stiffened, gathered himself, lifted his head. He released my hands and signed, “I sleep. You—”

“Dean, get in here this instant!” Simone roared.

He turned and ran toward the flickering light of the cabin.





30


We lay shivering under the stinking, heavy skins in full moonlight. It had to be midnight, maybe later. For long minutes we listened to the creak and whine of the animal heads as they turned above us, casting black cutout shapes against a spray of stars. Beyond them stood the living forest, unimaginably dense and shadow filled, where for miles around creatures with eyes built for darkness stared, with paws made for silence crept, smelling us in all our fear and soft humanity.

Rachel rustled under the patchwork pelts, whispered, “She actually told him to kill us?”

“Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake,” Pia breathed.

“Would I make up a thing like that?” I said as quietly as I could. As disgusting as the skins felt—stiff, raw, and damp—I was finally starting to get warm. “He refused to do it,” I added. I closed my eyes, replaying in my mind his hands’ quick movements, straining to make sure I understood correctly every word he had signed.

Sandra said, “I can’t feel my feet.”

“Rub them,” Pia whispered. “Come on, scooch over here. I’ll do it.”

As Sandra struggled to turn her body around on the dirt, Rachel said, “We have to get out of here. Now. No fucking around. These people are psychos.”

“Where are we going to go?” Pia breathed as she worked on Sandra’s feet. Sandra whimpered softly.

“Back to the river,” Rachel whispered hotly. “We have to find the raft.”

“Looks like they already did,” Pia said.

Rachel turned under the crackling skins. “So maybe they pulled it up onshore somewhere.”

“Probably hid it.”

“So we look for it,” Rachel said.

“I say we wait awhile here,” Pia said. “Get some rest, and then—”

“Get some rest? Yes, I like to be well rested when I’m slaughtered,” Rachel hissed. “She doesn’t want to be found. Get it? She’s not going to let us out of here, she told her freakazoid son to kill us.”