“No.”
The blueberries had warmed inside the shirt, in the sun. The fragrance made their mouths water. Jack poured a handful into the cup and mashed them with the spoon. Added a trickle of water and stirred the slurry. “Wanna see if she will drink something first?” he said.
“Okay.” Wynn placed one hand under her head along the band of the wool hat and asked Jack with a look if he could come around the other side and lift her back. They sat her up and she moaned, very faintly. “Got her?” Wynn said. He let go and jogged to the canoe, unstrapped the dry bag and brought it back, propped her up. She took shallow rapid breaths and uttered a soft whine. She seemed to be terrified or in pain. It made Wynn think of Leo back home, his black Lab, when he was having a nightmare. Her eyes fluttered open for a second and closed. Fuck. They really needed her in a hospital right now, probably in ICU, probably getting prepped for surgery. Who knew what was going on. Well, getting some nourishment inside her could not make it much worse. He bent to her ear and said, “Maia. Maia? Can you hear me?” A catch in the whimper, as if some thread of comprehension had snagged. Then a tentative moan like a question. “We’ve got to get some food and water in you, okay? It’s important.” Was it important? Without knowing if she had internal injuries, they couldn’t know whether feeding her would do more damage. Could it? He wasn’t a doctor. He felt his own panic rise up. Wynn had taken a wilderness EMT course one spring in the mountains of western North Carolina. He had learned to stop bleeding and splint a fracture, how to lower someone down a cliff on a backboard. None of it had prepared him for this.
Jack held the water bottle and his demeanor had not changed. He had tugged calves out of bloody wombs with a chain and put down a bellowing cow in the snow with a shot in the forehead when his ministrations had failed. None of it was fun, and it was neither good nor bad.
She took in one long volcanic breath and cried out, a sharp report of pain, and her eyes opened. “Try,” she said. Her first clear word since they’d found her. Wynn tipped up the bottle and trickled water into her half-open mouth and she blinked for a pause and he repeated until the bottle was empty. Then Jack spooned her the blueberry mash. She ate half a cup, good. The effort seemed to exhaust her. Before Jack could ask her what he needed to know, she rolled her head back and her eyes shuttered closed.
They ate blueberries themselves until they were bloated. They knew they’d get the shits, but what choice did they have? They drank their fill of water and then Wynn carried her back to the boat and they shoved off.
* * *
Replay of the morning. Steady paddle. Except that now their muscles were tired and sore and the wind came in flat gusts upstream or quartered across from the northwest and then they could smell the smoke with the intensity of a campfire that blows in your face. More acrid and dense, though; more char. It smelled like devastation. And then, in late afternoon, they saw the first flocks of birds.
They were haphazard squadrons of songbirds, forest birds, colorless, in chaotic formations, mostly silent and fast winging east across the river. There were chickadees and tiny warblers and waterthrush, olive flycatchers, kinglets and crows. The wrens and warblers cried and peeped as they flew in a chorus of constant questioning, maybe panic, and the reedy squeaks rained down like gusts of weightless hail. Then came waxwings, woodpeckers, flickers flashing yellow. And the larger lake birds, the rare heron the color of fog beating out the slow cadences of lunar time, the cranes, the loons in twos and threes, sailing overhead with the singular swiftness of arrows. No raptors yet, which the boys found curious. They watched with speechless fascination and often found themselves stilled, not paddling, drifting against the wind and gawking at the sky. Also, it could not be good. Neither said a word.
When they paddled they paddled hard, as hard as they had ever done. Jack did not want to get there in the dark with no options but to sit out the freezing night with no fire—he wanted to devise a plan, he wasn’t sure what, and have enough light to enact it. The sun lowered to the tops of the tallest spruce and made a molten fringe of the trees; it seared and spindled them as if they had already burned. The temperature dropped. Wynn dug out the sleeping bags and covered her and they kept paddling into the frail light, the river surface gone to slate, then a casting of flat burnished silver that tilted into the uneven darkness of dusk.
They passed the rock island with the two trees and were swept into a tight left bend and they heard the buffeting rush of the rapid carried up the half mile of river like the sound of wind. The river began to straighten and they knew that soon on the right they would see a small shale beach pale in the twilight. Their portage. That’s what the book had said. Jack turned suddenly and very sharply said, “Head to the right bank. Pull out. Now.”
“What?”
“Do it, Wynn. Crank to the right. Hurry the fuck up.”
“That’s steep bank.” It was. “Nothing but trees.” It was. “We’ve got to get her out, the easier the better, and lay her down. Get her warm. The book said there’s an easy beach landing.”
“Head in. There.”
“No. Jesus, what’s wrong with you? She’s gonna go back into sh—”
The word died in his mouth. Jack had set his paddle against his seat. He had picked up the rifle and he was aiming it at Wynn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m not bluffing. Brother, you point the bow to the bank, there.” Jack tossed his head toward a shallow cove and an eroded cut where maybe a game trail ramped into the water from thick woods. “Point it and get us there. Now.”
For a second Wynn was stunned. He thought, Has he gone fucking crazy? But he did. He ruddered hard and reached forward and laid into the stroke, a stroke to keep them moving cross-current, and they bumped the bank and Jack hopped out with the painter rope and the rifle slung over his shoulder. He tied it off fast to a young fir and jerked his head toward the woods and the thickening darkness. “Get out. Leave her. Won’t be long. Hurry up. I got the boat.” The canoe spun stern into the bank and Jack crouched and steadied it as Wynn shimmied forward, around and over her, and hopped out. He was towering over Jack and he might have shoved him into the water but he didn’t. Jack could come up shooting, who knew what. What the hell was going on? The day at its end—burnished in the last reluctant light—seemed to warp and twist and twang like a bent saw blade.
Wynn stood over Jack. “What the fuck,” he whispered.
Jack glanced up at him. “I know, Big. Just frigging follow me. You’ll thank me.” The tone had softened. He sounded like his friend. “Let’s go.”