Notes from My Captivity(28)

Dan saved me. I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to swim to the bank and pull me out of the water. I turn my head and see footprints in the mud of the bank, trailing off into the woods. “Dan!” I call weakly, my voice echoing in the silence. “Dan!”

I manage to sit up. I taste blood in my mouth, and my tongue finds a space where a tooth used to be. I slide my hands over my body, up and down each arm, my legs, my neck, my face, bewildered at my wholeness, my breathing, my warmth and movement and thought. This miracle called living that just a few hours ago I was taking for granted.

Dan is nowhere to be seen. Where did he go? Slowly I stand, testing out my legs. The small of my back hurts. My knuckles are scraped. My face feels raw and my head swims.

I look down the river. The boat has flipped and is on its side, held between a rock and a fallen tree about a hundred yards away. I turn and follow the footsteps that lead into the steep woods, calling Dan’s name. I don’t understand why he’d pull me out of the river and then just take off. Maybe he’s injured or stunned or not in his right mind.

“Dan!” I scream. I’m shivering from the cold and limping. The ground slopes upward, and I struggle through the brush, stopping every few feet to call for my stepfather. I step on something and a vine swings out, lashing razor-sharp thorns across my face. I gasp and touch my cheek. My hand comes away streaked with blood. I give up and make my way back to the riverbank, moving slowly toward the boat.

“Dan!”

Nothing but the rush of water and the echo of his name. Up ahead, a tree has fallen across the river, between two boulders near the bank. I stop. I see something.

I see Dan’s red jacket.

I scramble toward the color, holding on to exposed tree roots and low-hanging branches to steady myself until I am parallel to it.

Dan’s body is pinned between rocks. His arms float. His face is underwater.

For a moment, I freeze. My cold hand grips a wet root. This can’t be. His eyes are open. The current lifts his hair from his head.

Enough breath gathers in me to scream his name. My shrill, broken voice echoes through the canyon. His arms don’t move. I can’t reach him. The water is too swift to wade in. Frantic now, I scramble around the bank, looking for a fallen branch to use as a lever to free him. Finally I find one, strip off the foliage to form a pole, and dip the pole into the water, trying to push it between Dan and the rocks that hold him down. The rocks don’t budge. The branch breaks in half. I find another branch, try again, keep trying long after it’s too late to help him.

I fall on my knees on the bank, crying. Dan is gone. There is only me, and somewhere, them. The sun is hot on the back of my neck. My clothes are drying.

I no longer doubt the danger. I no longer doubt my stepfather. I no longer doubt the family.

I am a believer.





Part Two





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In my study of the Osinovs, I found myself. I found the part of me that wanted to run away, to seek shelter in the wilderness, to leave everything behind me. Just leave.

Dr. Daniel Westin

New York Times article



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Ten


I look at my stepfather submerged under the water and begin to scream. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that screaming is the worst thing I can do, that I need to be as silent and invisible as the beasts and the humans in the woods or they will follow my voice as well as my scent and find me here, defenseless.

I don’t care. I scream until I am hoarse, and then I finally stop, exhausted.

It’s warmed up a little, although my clothes haven’t fully dried. I stand up slowly. The boat is still resting down the river on some rocks. Even from here I can see the engine has been ripped off, leaving a gaping hole. All the contents of the boat spilled out when it flipped. I have no food or supplies, and the only clothes I have I am wearing.

I have no knife or weapon. No way to get food. No way to keep warm when night falls. And somewhere in the woods, the family lurks. The strange and dreamy father, the quiet mother, the wild children. The girls who coo like doves. I brace for the sound of that cooing, listen for it in the wind. Is one of them the ghostly little girl who appeared in my tent? And will she appear again, less friendly? Is she behind a tree right now? Is her breath on my neck? I raise my hand to it as though shielding it from the sting of a wasp. I force air into my lungs, count, hold it, willing my body to calm itself. This is no time to give in to horror. I have to get back to civilization. Back to where I belong.

Cold, fresh water flows a few feet away. A small group of silvery fish swims in the shallows. Maybe when I get hungry enough, I can catch one and eat it raw.

In the meantime, I have to walk. I know the impossibility of walking alone through the strange and mountainous wilderness for four hundred kilometers. Possibly I won’t make it. But if I die, I’ll die walking. My father would have expected that for me. My stepfather too. I almost glance back over at the place in the water where he lies just beneath the surface, but I stop myself.

It’s strange to me, this sudden feeling of wanting to live, having that be my only goal. I always took it for granted, this life thing. Even after my father died, I still just assumed my own life would be there, all broken up and full of anger and grief but there. And now, it’s dangling like a carrot at the far end of the river. Well, fine, carrot. Here I come. I’m going to do what Dan did: defy the odds. Believe in something despite the chorus of voices, real or imagined, that tries to interfere. I’m going to live. And I’m going to write that article. Not the one about Dan, my stepfather the idiot. But Dan, my stepfather the professor, the scholar, the hero. The one who never gave up. The believer who traced his belief to the source of it and found proof at last.