Chapter THIRTEEN
Dear Caleb: Nothing much to report today, unless you count shooting yourself in the leg with an arrow.
It was not that there was so much wind—certainly not as much as he’d been through before with the tornado—when he was first marooned in the wilderness and not that there was so much rain, although there was a goodly amount of it.
It was the combination of the two.
He had cooked dinner and eaten, boiled water for the next day’s canteen, pulled his packs up in a tree, set up the tent and arranged his sleeping bag and weapons. Then he’d sat by the fire and written to Caleb about the day in one of the books, using tiny writing so he wouldn’t waste the pages.
When he was done he put the book back in a plastic bag and crawled inside the tent to go to bed.
Two things he noted but didn’t pay attention to: One, the mosquitos and flies were not as bad as they’d been. Two, with darkness a heavy cloud layer had come up, causing a closeness in the air.
He had studied the map. It looked as if he’d gone more than twenty miles, which explained why he was tired. About eighty miles remained to reach Williams Lake, maybe four more days at his current rate. He fell asleep almost as soon as he lay down.
He was awakened by a new sound, a loud sound. Not thunder—it never did thunder or lighten—and not the trainlike roar of a tornado. This just started low, the hissing of rain driven against the tent. He listened for a moment, then snuggled back in his bag. He was in a good shelter, waterproof—let it rain.
Except that it kept coming and kept coming. It went from a moderate rain to a downpour and finally to an outright deluge. And with the rain came wind. Not violent, but enough to break off branches and push the rain still harder, and soon Brian found his bag wet as the rain came in under the tent. He lifted the flap to look out but it was far too dark to see anything.
And it rained harder. And harder. The wind pushed stronger and still stronger and at last the tent seemed to sigh. It collapsed around him and he started rolling across the grass toward the edge of the clearing.
Everything was upside down, crazy. He couldn’t find the entrance and about the time he thought he had it the tent dropped off the five-foot embankment and he rolled down to the lakeshore.
He landed in a heap and felt an intense, hot pain in his right leg at the upper thigh and reached down to feel an arrow shaft protruding from his leg.
Great, he thought. I’ve shot myself in the leg. He hadn’t, of course, but had rolled onto an arrow that had fallen out of the quiver just as the tent rolled off the embankment.
He couldn’t get his bearings but he knew where his thigh was and he grabbed the arrow and jerked the shaft out of his leg. There was an immediate surge of pain and he felt like passing out. He didn’t, but then he heard a strange whump-thump and something crashed down on his head. This time he did pass out.
He came to a few seconds later with a sore head, a sore leg and absolutely no idea in the world what was happening to him. He was still wrapped in the tent and his bag was in his face and his bow and arrows lay all around him and he seemed to be in water, almost swimming.
All right, he thought, take one thing at a time. Just one thing.
I poked my leg with an arrow.
There. Good. I pulled the arrow out. My leg still works. It must not have been a broadhead because it didn’t go in very deep. Good.
My tent collapsed. There. Another thing. I’m in the tent and it collapsed. I just have to find the front zipper and get out and climb up the bank. Easy now, easy.
Something hit me on the head. What? Something big that thunked. The canoe. The wind picked up the canoe and it hit me.
There. I’ve poked my leg, rolled down a bank and been hit in the head with the canoe.
All simple things. All fixable things.
He fumbled around and at last found the zipper at the front of the tent, opened it and slithered out into the mud on the lakeshore.
The rain was still coming down in sheets, the wind still hissing and slashing him with the water, but he had his bearings and it was not impossible to deal with things. He dragged the tent back up the embankment onto the grass, limping as the pain in his leg hit him. It was too dark to see much but he could make out the shape of the canoe lying upside down. It had moved a good ten feet from where he had left it and had he not tied it down loosely with the line it would have blown away across the lake.
He had forgotten the most important thing about living in the wilderness, the one thing he’d thought he would never forget—expect the unexpected. What you didn’t think would get you, would get you. Plan on the worst and be happy when it didn’t come.
But he had done one thing right: He had tied the canoe to a tree. He dragged the tent to the canoe, crawled underneath and lay on the tent the rest of the night, listening to the wind and rain, wincing now and then with the pain in his leg and feeling stupid.
It was a long night.