The River at Night(63)

The plan was to take turns on watch every couple of hours, but since I was first up and my throbbing arm kept me awake anyway, I just let them sleep. As long as I was awake and on the lookout, it seemed the best thing for us. The night turned mild, and I was thankful for it. My eyes adjusted completely; if I had a book, I could easily have read it in the moonlight. The river became a bright coil of energy I drew from to keep going.

But the rush of the water was loud enough for me to fear I wouldn’t hear the softer things, like footsteps, like the breathing of someone other than Pia or Rachel. The ache in my arm vibrated with its own noise I struggled to listen over. How much warning would we have, anyway? Would there be a thunderous crashing through the woods? A puff of air as an arrow flew past? Or just a hole appearing in one of our chests? I pictured the animal heads swinging in the night breeze over the camp—the bear, coyote, deer, moose—wondered if any had seen their own death coming before they were snuffed out.

Only a yard from me, a branch dipped and swayed with the weight of a magnificent bird, an owl by the contour of its round head and broad body. It fanned out speckled brown-and-white wings and fluffed its wedge-shaped tail, then arranged itself, tucking back all its parts in proper order. It faced the river, its tufted ears cupped toward the surging current. I was close enough to watch its bony talons unclench, then resettle, clarifying their perch on the bough.

As the creature moved, the branch swayed over the rock ledge that bordered the river, a coercion of grace. Pia shifted in her sleep. The owl’s head swiveled until it looked at us or past us with glowing yellow eyes. Unimpressed, it turned away, lifted its mantle of wings, and flew. It vanished among the branches, then reappeared as a black silhouette that skimmed across soft night clouds. I felt myself flying with it, and for those moments I was free of pain, free of my past, free of any fear. We were going to make it out of this place, I felt sure of it. The sweetness of the night informed me, the owl told me in its way; even the drumming pain in my arm declared that my living blood still pulsed through me.

I don’t recall falling asleep. I only remember being up with the bird, soaring and hunting, until—with all the logic of dreams—I was back in art school. Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, 1995. It was late at night and I was alone in one of the fine arts studios. Dressed in paint-stained jeans and a T-shirt and stupidly high on too much coffee, I slathered oils on a canvas as tall as myself. I was deep in that stop-time thing when nothing else mattered but painting. The delirium of youth informed me that the parade of beautiful paintings I would create stretched out forever and without end. No death. Just this. I was joyous. I inhaled the turpentine fumes as I worked, a smell that forever became inseparable from elation.

But even in dream logic something felt off. The smell wasn’t quite right. What I detected was something ranker, less chemical based.

More human.

The insides of my eyelids glowed a roseate pink. By degrees I came to understand that morning had arrived, as much as my beautiful dream wanted me back. I allowed into my reverie a sensation of being observed. The hair lifted up on the back of my neck.

I let my eyes open to slits. My mouth and throat were parched; my lips cracked apart slowly. I had fallen asleep propped on my good elbow, head and back against the tree, legs splayed out. A foot below my eyes, hundreds of tiny red ants swarmed around a neat cone of sandy dirt near the coiled, stiff fingers of my broken arm. Pia’s pile of rocks sat several feet away, utterly out of reach.

I heard a cracking noise. A sound my dad used to make as he crushed two walnuts in one strong hand. Someone chewed something; crunched, openmouthed. A sniffle. Rachel stuttered awake, but I watched her settle down, feigning sleep. Her eyeballs jerked under her closed eyes. Pia slept on, her flat, muscled belly rising and falling, her bandage slipping off her ghastly wound. I closed my eyes again.

I inhaled a rancid smell of sweat and rotted cloth.

Heard a rustling sound.

A click.

“Rise and shine, little ladies.” Simone’s gristly voice. “Day’s wasting away.”





Monday


   June 25





44


Simone squatted on a rock ledge behind and just over us, her gnarled feet spilling out of tire-rubber shoes, her dirty leather skirt tucked up under her. Nests of hair twined with bits of bone and tiny pinecones snarled from under the orange ski cap. Pendulous breasts swung free under her stretched-out sweater. Eyebrows working, she peered down at some sort of nutmeat in her palm that she picked at delicately with grimed fingers, some of the nails so long they curved down and in, wedged with triangles of dirt. A tidy pile of shells was arranged in front of her, next to Rory’s gun, which lay pointing in our direction, so close I could smell the cold copper, the snap of gunpowder. She didn’t look at us.

“Here’s a question for you, my friends: Do you have any idea how many times I could have killed you in the past twenty-four hours? Anybody?”

Rachel pushed herself to a sitting position. Pulling up her sagging bandage, Pia winced as she turned toward Simone. I jimmied myself up with my working arm, in the process trying to edge myself closer to the pile of stones. Ridiculous.

Coyly, she shook back her hair. It rattled with forest detritus. “Yes, it is a rhetorical question, which means, of course, no, you don’t have to answer it. Granted. But let’s look at the facts. I do have a gun pointed at you, which—well, I think—demands a higher level of politeness.” She lifted her eyes from her snack and lasered them into me. “Winifred, what are your calculations? How many times could I have blown you to bits, say, or cut you all to ribbons like your pitiful raft?” She nibbled a morsel of nutmeat, white teeth flashing in her weather-beaten face. “Thoughts?”