I Am Still Alive, page 6
I looked at Bo, big-boned and rangy and probably weighing almost as much as me. “Runty?” I repeated.
Dad laughed. “You should’ve seen his big brother. I think he might have actually been part bear himself.”
We lapsed into silence again as Dad turned the fish. He seemed content to sit and turn and sit and turn, but now I was bored and my leg had finally stopped hurting.
I stood up, pushing off so I didn’t put any weight on my leg until everything was lined up, hip and knee and ankle. When the joints were stacked like that they didn’t collapse, and I could bend slowly to make sure that the muscles had remembered how to work.
I dragged myself off down the beach.
“Don’t go far,” Dad said to the fire.
Bo, who’d been sitting at Dad’s side and staring at the fish with his tongue hanging out, lifted himself with a martyr’s sigh and trotted after me. “Don’t trust me not to get myself killed?” I asked him. He gave me an apologetic look, and we set off together.
It was hard to pay attention to my surroundings when I had to pay so much attention to my walking. Step, BIG STEP, step, BIG STEP, step, BIG STEP, then step, WRONG STEP, DRAG, LIMP, step.
Will, my physical therapist, had huge shoulders and swoopy hair, and he wore this big doofy grin all the time. His favorite thing to say was “You can do it! You just need the Will!” like it was the funniest, cleverest thing anyone had ever come up with.
The first time he said it I glared at him. The next three times I rolled my eyes, but by the time we got up to ten, twenty, thirty times I started giggling or groaning. He said that if I was annoyed at him, I didn’t think about how much it hurt, and if I was laughing, I didn’t mind how much it hurt.
I didn’t know if that was exactly true, but it didn’t take long for me to want to make Will proud of me. And so I pushed and pushed, even when I wanted to cry. And then he had to start telling me to take it easy, but by then he’d done the important thing. He’d convinced me I would get better. He even told me it was okay to get frustrated, and to cry, and to want to give up. He gave me a trigger for when I felt like that, so I could get out of it again.
I would let myself feel awful for a while, because feeling awful can feel really good. But I had to decide on an amount of time—ten minutes, five minutes—and at the end of it I had to snap my fingers and say, “That’s enough of that, mopey-head!” in as chirpy and happy a voice as I could.
After that, I was allowed to go back to moping if I really wanted to, but somehow it worked. It wouldn’t have worked for everyone, but whenever I had to declare That’s enough of that! in Will’s crazy upbeat tone, I couldn’t take myself seriously anymore. Which meant I couldn’t stay mopey.
My leg was getting sore, and I stopped. There was a bit of a hill between Dad and me, so I couldn’t see him, but I could see the smoke rising up, and I could smell the fish cooking. I looked out over the lake. The wind dragged a ripple across the surface. Out toward the center a fish twice as big as the one I’d got flopped up out of the water and down again. A duck skidded down into the water not far away and paddled by, and insects skimmed over the surface.
I turned around. The trees were the lushest green I’d ever seen. Their branches were thick and tangled with one another, and they netted shadows beneath them until it looked like evening instead of noon. Birds flickered among the branches. There were at least half a dozen different calls echoing among the trees, and the flat, raspy croak of a crow.
It was beautiful. It was nothing like when I’d been camping and there were twenty camping sites laid out next to one another and some guy’s RV running a generator and daytime TV in the distance. Here the sounds that wrapped around me were wild sounds and the smells were wild smells and there was no light to stain the sky except the sun.
“That’s enough of that, mopey-head!” I declared, channeling my very best Will impression.
Bo looked at me like I’d gone crazy and maybe he should go get help. I grinned at him and scratched him between the ears.
“This totally sucks and my dad is bonkers,” I told the dog. I wanted to be clear on that. I was done feeling sorry for myself, but I wasn’t done being pissed and out of place. “Now let’s go learn how to cook a fish.”
After
MY FIRST MORNING under the overhang I wake up warm on one side and frozen on the other. Every muscle in my body aches. I press myself against Bo and whimper. He licks my cheek, then heaves to his feet. I protest—come back—but he’s already gone, trotting off into the clearing.
I stay curled on my side, my mom’s photo in my hand. My thumb covers the version of me in the photo, leaving just Mom, looking right at me. I lie there for a long time. I don’t think I can do anything else. I try to sleep again, but it’s too cold; the clouds are still thick over the sky and dew dampens everything. I should have changed my clothes before I fell asleep. If it wasn’t for Bo, I might have frozen to death in my wet jeans.
At least I have other clothes. And food and water—two rain-filled jars, safe to drink without boiling, and the three from the lake whenever I can get a fire started.
But my food and my water and my clothes are down at my feet, and I can barely move.
I gather my strength for about thirty seconds, and then I roll onto my belly. I pull myself with my arms and push with my good leg, and get myself facing around the other way. The overhang is even better than I thought. Even with the rain that fell overnight it’s dry and dusty; I’m the only wet thing under here.
I have to get into dry clothing. My rain shell’s kept my torso dry and relatively warm, but my legs are freezing. First, though, I grab the jar of salmon. Propping myself up on one arm, I cram three fingers into the jar and pull out chunks of pink meat.
I have never tasted anything so good. It’s oily and salty and it breaks easily over my tongue, and I have to stop myself from wolfing down the whole jar. Just a few bites.
I won’t be moving much, so I won’t be expending many calories. I can afford to eat slowly. I can’t afford to run out of food.
Then I take one of the moose jars I’d filled with water and sip down about a quarter of it. I didn’t have much to drink yesterday, so I have a real drink today. But I’m still going to have to ration, in case it doesn’t rain, in case I can’t get the fire going.
Then it’s the hard part. I flip onto my back and undo the fly of my jeans. I’m going to get dirty; there’s no way around that. My legs are wet and I don’t have anything underneath me to keep the dirt off, but dirt won’t kill me.
I work my jeans down my hips. I brace my good leg against the ground and lift my butt up enough to shove them down farther.
The wet fabric clings to my skin and my back twinges with the effort, but the jeans slide down to my thighs. I hesitate a moment before shoving my underwear down, too.
My face heats with embarrassment. “Don’t be stupid,” I hiss to myself. “There’s no one here to see you.”
Still blushing and hating myself for it, I manage to get my jeans bunched down to my ankles. Only then do I think about taking off my boots. I groan.
I’m going to have to sit up.
I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe raggedly. I already hurt so much. Tears well behind my lids at the thought of having to do more.
I reach for the pill bottle, pop the lid off with my thumb. Not many left. But saving them won’t do me any good if I don’t last long enough to use them. I swallow one with a mouthful of moose water and let myself lie still, loose clothes covering my bare legs to keep them warm.
When the aches start to fade a bit, I know it’s time. I brace my hands under me and ease myself up.
It’s like everything is tearing all over again. I cry out, but I keep pushing. I wonder if Will would be proud or horrified that I’m pushing myself so hard. I haul myself around so I can put my shoulders against the rock, even though that means my neck leans forward at an uncomfortable angle. My neck isn’t what I’m worried about.
I fight with my bootlaces. They’re swollen from the water and they’ve worked themselves into tight knots. I rip a fingernail before they finally ease up enough to get my boots off my feet. I strip my socks. Then the jeans and underwear, and now I’m naked from the waist down and still freaking cold.
Getting new clothes on isn’t quite as bad as getting the old clothes off. I use an extra pair of underwear to dry my legs off first. I figure no one’s going to complain if I have to wear the same pair two days in a row out here, and better to use wet underwear I don’t need than a wet shirt I do.
I put it with the rest of the wet clothes and wriggle into my other pair of jeans. Only two pairs. I have to get the other pair dry somehow. I need fire. It keeps coming back to that.
I decide to wait. See how I’m feeling in a couple of hours. The pill should last four, and maybe my muscles will loosen up a bit. Maybe I can gather a little bit of wood.
In the meantime I sit with my back to the rock and try to come up with a plan.
IT’S GOING TO be much, much harder to survive because I’m injured, but sitting here with the drugs kicking through my system and my stomach cramping over my tiny breakfast, I realize that it’s helped me, too. Because I was injured, I met Will. And because I met Will, I know Will’s Important True Things, which was a silly name for what were really just ways of getting me to think right, so that I’d be able to get better.
One of Will’s Important True Things is that you should always know the goal. I have two goals, always: to survive, and to get rescued.
Another of the Important True Things is that you should always have a plan, even if it is only one small thing that you will do first while you come up with a plan. You should always be doing something, even if it’s thinking, even if it’s relaxing (Will says knowing when to rest is as important as knowing when to work).
You have to learn to assume that you will fail and assume that you will succeed at the same time. This is the only way to stay smart and careful and stay moving and motivated. You cannot give up and you cannot let up.
I have a third goal, too, I realize. I tell myself I shouldn’t. I try not to think about it, because thinking about it means thinking about that day. About what happened.
Nothing is ever going to put it right. That’s what I tell myself. I need to stay alive. To survive. Anything else is a distraction. Anything else is impossible, and surviving probably is, too.
I rest the rifle over my lap. My fingertip traces the curve of the trigger. My dad told me when you fire a bullet from a rifle, it can go faster than the speed of sound. Aimed right, and you’re dead before you hear it. You never know it’s coming.
One single second, that’s all it takes.
I try not to think about it.
I think about Will instead. What would Will tell me to do? He’d tell me to make a plan, step by step, moment by moment. Which isn’t so different from what my dad told me, not so long ago. If you want a thing, make it happen, he said. Days ago, a lifetime ago.
I want to stay alive. And no one’s going to make that happen but me.
So I plan.
Before
THE FISH WAS done cooking by the time I got back to my dad. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so hungry. Which was good, because just plain fish without even salt to season it isn’t the tastiest thing I’ve ever had. But it filled my belly, and by the time we were done eating, Dad and I weren’t quite as prickly toward each other.
What he’d wanted to show me over here, it turned out, was a berry patch. There weren’t any berries—they’d peaked early this season. But he said next year we could come down and pick pounds and pounds of it, and make jam and preserves to last us all winter.
“Of course, we have to make sure to get to them before Rolly does,” he said.
“Who?”
“Rolly. She’s a bear,” he said cheerfully. “Just a little one, and as long as you don’t bother her babies she won’t bother you, but she’ll eat your berries and your fish and your breakfast out of your hand if you let her, which is definitely not a habit you should encourage. What you really have to worry about is moose.”
“Moose? Really?” I said, skeptical. “Aren’t they vegetarians?”
“Huge, angry vegetarians. You hear a moose coming for you, get up a tree,” Dad said, nodding. “Don’t go for the water, ’cause Mr. Moose can swim a whole lot faster than you can. But he can’t climb. And you sit up in that tree as long as you need to for him to leave, and then sit up there a little while longer.”
“What about a porcupine?” I asked. “What do you do about a porcupine?”
He laughed. “Don’t step on ’em,” he said. “Porcupine’s about the easiest meat you can get out here. They’re slow and dumb. You can pin ’em with a stick and hit ’em with a rock, and then you flip ’em over to get at that soft belly and finish them off. Of course, we’ve got no need, but if you’re starving and you can find one . . .”
I must have been making a face at him, because he trailed off. I didn’t want to hit anything with a rock. Okay, I thought I could manage catching and gutting fish. But a porcupine? I didn’t want to try getting the guts out of that. And what if I stuck myself with the quills? I’d been a vegetarian before Mom died. I gave it up at the Wilkersons because otherwise I’d have gone hungry, but I didn’t want to kill an animal myself.
Dad showed me a little stream next, which he said I shouldn’t drink, but that would do for rinsing off our hands. He said there was good sweet water down by the south of the lake, a little waterfall, and that he usually went fishing and trapping down that way because for whatever reason, the fish and the “varmints” liked it better on the south side. Which was maybe why when he checked the traps he’d set around here, all of them were empty. He cussed a bit and re-baited them.
“I’ll show you how to set these another time,” he said, but that sounded even worse to me than killing a porcupine. An animal might be alive and suffering for hours and hours before you ever came to check on it.
We paddled back across the water, leaving Bo to run the lakeshore again. On our way up to the cabin we fetched water from the lake. I didn’t carry much, just one half-gallon jug while Dad loaded up with five gallons in each hand. You had to do a lot of hauling to get much water, but Dad said it was sweeter than anything out of a tap.
“Winter’s easier in a way, because you can just melt snow,” he said, and I pictured myself wading through snow with my bad leg. I had to get out of here before winter. When was Griff coming back? Tomorrow seemed like too late.
“So, Griff’s coming back . . .” I prompted.
“Sure is, but you can never really tell when. Depends on the weather and what he’s up to. Sometimes he visits a lady friend, and sometimes he gets melancholy for a few weeks, but eventually he always pours himself out of his bottle and comes back.” Dad nodded as he talked. “Things don’t run on a schedule the way they do in the city,” he said. “Things happen when they’re going to happen, and there’s always more to do than you have time for. It’s about priorities, not hours of the day.”
My heart sank. It could be weeks, then. It could be winter.
No, it would be before that. Dad wouldn’t want to build in the winter, right? He’d want the extension done before it snowed, so Griff would have to come back soon with supplies.
“Jess?” Dad said. He sounded hesitant, a question to my name; that was new. “You remember what Griff’s plane looks like, right? The yellow one.”
“Of course,” I said, confused. Did he think I had memory problems? Was he going to start treating me like a baby, the way some people did? I’m pretty sure even if I did have brain damage, I wouldn’t want people talking to me like I was a toddler.
“You see any other plane, come find me,” Dad said.
“Why?” I asked, more confused than alarmed.
“It’s just that . . . some of my friends, they’re not as personable as I am,” Dad said. “People this far out tend to be a little rough around the edges.”
“Griff’s rough around the edges.”
“Griff would start a rehabilitation and rescue center for injured flies if he could get the funding,” Dad said with a laugh. “The only thing you’ve got to worry about with Griff is making sure he doesn’t swipe your beer. He’s a good person. One of the best.”
“But you’ve got friends who aren’t good people?”
Dad rubbed his thumb along the side of his mouth. “Griff aside, I don’t know that I believe people are good or bad all at once,” he said. “We’re all a collection of our choices. Good choices, bad choices, choices that don’t look one way or another when you’re making them. Anyway. Point stands. You see anyone but Griff coming, and you make sure to find me. How’s that leg?” Dad asked suddenly.
I blinked at the sudden change of topic, putting my hand to my leg automatically, kneading the meat of my thigh. “It’s okay,” I said. “A bit sore.”
“You should rest, then,” Dad said. He scratched at his neck, where stubble was bristling already. I wondered if he’d shaved for my arrival.
“Okay.” I didn’t move just yet. It seemed like he was going to say something more, but instead he shook his head. I walked back to the cabin. Bo started to follow until Dad whistled, and I walked the rest of the way alone. Step-drag, step-drag. I had worn myself out too much.
I sat on the bed and took out the picture of Mom. I wished I’d gotten a picture of Scott, too. He’d visited me in the hospital, and he’d called me once a week or so. He’d said he wished I could come stay with him, and I said I wished that, too, but I hadn’t meant it, exactly. I hadn’t wanted to live anywhere, then. I’d just wanted to sleep and wake up with my mom still there and everything just a dream.
