Notes from My Captivity(26)

“They took the salt.” My voice shakes. It sounds so small and fragile in this wilderness, under those tall trees, near those dead people.

He glances at me; his eyes are red and watery, his expression wild. He looks utterly lost. “What are you talking about?”

I take a few deep breaths, try to steady my voice. “I brought a bunch of salt packets. They’re gone.”

His eyes go dark. “They found us,” he whispers.

He rises slowly to his feet. “It’s true. It’s true.” I can’t tell whether it’s terror at the thought or some kind of wild, instinctual pride in himself that his theory was right.

Maybe both.

He suddenly grabs my shoulders and then pulls me close in a frantic embrace. I can feel the sweat dripping through his clothes and the pounding of his heart. I don’t know what to do. I can’t draw comfort from such a frightened human being and yet I am too terrified to comfort him.

“All right, then,” he says suddenly, wrenching himself away. “We’re going to get back in the boat and go down the river. That’s all we can do right now. We’ll be safe on the river.” As though anticipating my response, he adds, “Safe from them, at least.”

We pack the motorboat quickly. We don’t take the time to bury the bodies or even pull branches over them. We are too busy trying to save ourselves. For all we know, the family—if indeed it is the family—could be watching us right now from high in the trees. Eyes peering through bushes. Lurking in the morning mist. Is there a rifle pointing at my back at this very moment? My muscles twitch and tighten at the thought.

My breath comes fast. My stomach clenches in fear.

We take only the necessary supplies. We pack the boat like crazy people, grabbing, snatching, throwing.

When we finish, I can’t help myself. I try to go back to the dead. I want to touch them, say a prayer. But Dan stops me.

“No.” He’s calm again. He’s pulled himself together. “We can’t help them. Now help me launch the boat.”

I untie the boat and we both jump in. Dan starts up the motor and we’re off, backtracking downstream. I think about the rapids and the rocks and the branches. I think about the Osinovs. And I realize that we are trading one kind of danger for another. The river is calmer here, but rocks lurk below the surface. I know Dan’s not a river guide. He doesn’t understand its twists and turns and secrets. But what choice do we have? We’d never make it back on foot—even if the Osinovs left us alone.

Dan keeps glancing over his shoulder and peering out into the trees that line the river on either side. “I’m sorry, Adrienne,” he tells me over the sound of the motor.

“For what?”

“What do you mean, ‘for what’? For bringing you!”

“It’s not your fault. I wanted to come.” I did, but not for the reasons he thought. I was going to join the rest of the world in making a fool of him. He was going to be the collateral damage of my ambitions as a journalist. I never thought the family was real, or real in such a terrifying and deadly way.

I know the Osinovs exist. The proof lies back at camp in the form of dead bodies and missing gadgets and the absence of salt. I think about a story I’d heard from Sergei and dismissed as pure rumor, of the hunter found upriver sitting cross-legged by a dead fire, a hatchet wound in his head. They had never found the killer. Had their years in the wilderness turned this family savage, made them see every outsider as prey?

I wonder how they killed the Russians, so silently, so bloodlessly, and I shiver as our boat races down the river, in between canyons where the shadows dominate and the light barely comes through. I don’t know why my stepfather and I were left alive. Had they watched me sleeping? Touched my face? And how did they take my things without waking me? Each time we take a turn around a bend, I wonder if I’m going to see a bear or an entire family five feet away. The way Dan’s source Yuri described them, so long dismissed by me, comes back to me now: the long-haired, glowering sons; the dreamy father whose beard had streaks of white and gray; the stern and quiet mother; the two little girls who look alike and chattered like doves. Will I have time to scream if the river suddenly rushes me to them?

I don’t know how long a person can exist in this state of fear, the throat tight and the palms wet and the heart pounding. I feel like a belt has been tightened around my chest. I struggle to breathe.

Stay calm. That’s what my father always told me, whether it was about danger in the woods or a speech you’re about to give or a big test coming up, a million dangers tiny and huge, near and far, things you can do something about, things you can do nothing about: Dad always told me, You must start calm and go from there.

My father was a calm man.

My father is dead.

“Adrienne!” Dan shouts. “You okay?”

I turn and look at him.

“I’m okay,” I manage. I meet his eyes. Even in the midst of my terror, I’m impressed by Dan, the way he’s taken charge and gotten us out of there. I remember how ferocious he was the night before—You keep your goddamn hands off my daughter!—and I realize I’ve underestimated him. I thought of him as a fool and a joke. But he was right about the Osinovs. And he’s the only person keeping me alive.

The canyon through which the river runs has begun to fill with sunlight, showing the red in the short stubble on his face. His hair is uncombed, revealing a bald spot he usually manages to cover. He has the look of a man who just woke up and hasn’t had coffee yet, that period where night and day are still sifting into their separate shakers, salt and pepper, and everything is still half a dream.