He pauses and holds his paddle still.
“I couldn’t power through it.”
You can see the shore in the distance now if you squint.
“I hid some pills in my dresser. I didn’t have a plan, but they were there and my dad found them. He told me he wasn’t going to do anything, then he tricked me into coming here. I guess the joke’s on him because I might die anyway.”
He doesn’t laugh.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” you say.
He turns around and looks at you.
“There’d be nobody to paddle me.”
A half smile. Then he starts in again.
“If we ever get out of this,” he says, “I’ll get some real help. Maybe some medication if I need it. I know I haven’t been easy to deal with out here, but you guys have helped me. Just knowing I’m not alone. It got me thinking about some things.”
As the shore grows closer, he paddles faster, his whole body straining. You can just make out some figures, and as the boat inches closer you see Diana, Fran, and Troy waiting for you. When the canoe hits sand, they all come running to help you out of the boat.
“He’s awake!” you hear from Troy, along with a few other murmurs.
Diana reaches for your hand, and Fran grabs the other. Will leaves the boat and stands in the shallow water, waiting for you to climb out. Before you try a step, you look at their dirty, malnourished faces. Your therapist told you once that friendships formed in trauma aren’t real friendships. They often don’t outlast the traumatic experience itself. If you manage to escape those circumstances, the thing that bonded you is gone and everything dissolves. But as you step out of the teetering canoe and your group of exhausted survivors steadies you with their calloused hands, it’s suddenly hard to imagine a life without them.
One of them especially. But you’re surprised to feel a similar tie to the others as well. You’re not sure when this happened; you only know, as they help you to the shore, that you all have to make it out of this somehow so you can see one another in better times. You feel a pull in you to keep moving. It wars against thevery real fatigue and pain, but you manage to stay on your feet, which clomp through the cold shallows by the shore.
When you get to the land, everyone watches you. You realize after a few seconds that they’re waiting to see if you can walk. What would they do if you couldn’t? They would have to leave you behind, and if they wouldn’t, you would make them. For now, however, you’re vertical, and when you move one of your feet forward, it goes where you want. You don’t know how far you can go, or how fast, but for now, you can move yourself in a chosen direction. You look up and face your friends.
“Which way, Fran?” you say.
And everyone sighs in relief.
You’re about to start moving when you suddenly hear a sound coming from across the lake. You all look up, and at first, all you see is a sky full of tiny pinpricks. Scattering dots like floaters in your vision. They morph as they grow closer, until you can finally see that they’re birds. Whole flocks converging and flying over you. Some with drab feathers and small bodies. Others with sharp wings and hooked beaks. Birds of prey. Songbirds. Waterfowl.
They’re making all the possible bird sounds—gurgles, chirps, and screams—that merge together like an out-of-tune orchestra. Each of you cranes your neck to watch them pass over a thicket of baby birch trees. It feels like they’re never-ending until finally a few last stragglers disappear into the woods, and the sky is empty once again.
“Migration?” says Fran, staring out in the direction they came.
Troy has a puzzled look on his face.
“Maybe,” he says. “But there were so many different kinds. I guess that happens sometimes…”
“Everybody’s getting out of here but us,” says Diana.
A few of you laugh, but Will still stares intently at the sky.
“It looked super urgent, though,” he says. “Like they were trying to get away from something.”
“Probably just the cold, right?” says Diana, hugging her shoulders.
Everything is quiet again in their absence. You all wait a moment, wondering what might come tearing through next. A moose? A herd of deer? But there’s nothing. And because you have to keep moving if you want to live, you let it go. You chalk it up to yet another thing you don’t understand about nature. But as you help Fran lift a canoe over the top of the two of you, your weakened body straining under the weight, you can’t quite get that cacophony of screeches out of your head. What, you wonder, were they trying to say?
THIRTY-NINE
Bushwhacking, as Fran calls it, is not easy. And it’s even harder with canoes. It’s one thing to go off the trail and wade through waist-high brush, bugs crawling all over your legs, but it’s even harder to haul a canoe with low-hanging branches scraping over the roof and pushing it down on your already beleaguered shoulders. You’re still with Fran, who can more than carry her share of the weight, but the combination of your injury and the trees blown down by the storm makes the first long portage a hellish trek. Your hot, feverish breath fills your section of the canoe, and you blink the cold sweat from your eyes as you walk.
You’re stumbling more than before, barely picking up your feet, trying to keep pace with Fran. From behind you come the groans and swears of the rest of your companions. No one is speaking in sentences, just grunting and moving as fast as their bone-tired bodies will take them. You’re all going to need food again soon, but there isn’t time to stop and fish, or to form another hunting party. Getting to the drop as early as possible is the only goal, even if you collapse the moment you make it. All you can do in the meantime is just pray that you get to the small river that’s next on the map before your legs give out.
