They clawed their way through low-hanging branches and walked hard for what seemed like nearly half an hour until they found the spring. As she had said, the water pipe led right to the cabin some fifteen hundred yards overland on a small saltwater bay. In the circle of the flashlight the board siding was weathered gray but appeared intact. The tarpaper roof looked in good repair. On the door there was a sizable padlock and there were shutters over the windows.
“How do we get in?” She slurred her words as if drunk. Any minute he was afraid she would fall over and go permanently to sleep. He had to get her warm fast.
“How were you going to get in?” he asked.
“I was going to let you figure it out.”
Surveying the door, he realized that ramming it with his shoulder would likely break his collarbone if they had a hearty bolt on the inside. Everything about the place seemed pretty beefy; he supposed they’d have a door latch to match. Maybe even a crossbar.
“And how the hell did you know I would be here?” he said, fumbling with a window sash.
“You didn’t let me drown the first time.”
“Don’t tempt me again.”
She was almost smiling when she patted him on the shoulder and kissed his cheek.
On the second window, he found enough purchase to yank it open. After that it was simply a matter of breaking the window and unlocking it. They both crawled through the open window and found a spartan cabin interior.
“Aim the light at the wall. And if you plan to leave before I get back, let me know.”
“I love you for saving me. But otherwise go to hell.”
“It’d be a lot warmer.”
Sam unbolted the door and went out front. With the shutters and door closed, only the tiniest crack of light shone through at one window. It was easily fixed by propping a discarded board. Satisfied, he went back into the cabin and took a more careful look around. It was lined with some type of pressed board that retained a golden brown mottled surface. There were two hanging lights with frosted glass shades. The floor was painted concrete. When the place was occupied there would be a generator to run the meager electrical service, the few lights, and the water pump. On the lone table sat a gas lantern. They verified that the place had no food or matches.
“Search for lighters, blankets, matches, and clothes,” Sam muttered. There was an old woodstove and a little kindling beside some hardwood logs. They rifled through more cupboards and drawers, desperate to find matches. She started to sit down.
“No.” Sam stopped her and made her lean against the wall. “You can’t go to sleep. You’ll die on me. And then there would be a police report and they’d want my last name.” He started rummaging through cabinets. Although she was barely able to move, he watched her emulating him, trying to help. In a closet they found two threadbare sleeping bags, a folded-up rusty three-burner Coleman stove that looked about twenty years old, and a blanket worn thin and barely green, with a few holes and sun-faded with age.
“I thought, given the antenna outside, that there would be a radio in here,” she said.
“Well, there isn’t.”
“We need to get you a new boat and we need to get back to civilization.”
“I’ve got to find the men who sunk my home.”
“On the other end of this island… someone is building. An oyster farm, I think.”
“It’s not on the chart. Even if you’re right, it must be at least four miles down this island through a brush- filled forest.”
“We can go in the morning. First thing.”
It was about forty-two degrees, near as he could guess.
“Dry off and crawl into the bag,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Take care of things.”
“Turn off the light,” she said.
“In just a minute.” He unfolded the Coleman stove. “Yes!” he said, finding a box of wooden matches. She turned her back. He grabbed the paper towels, put them beside her, and doused the light. Quickly he stripped and dried off. He felt for his sleeping bag.
“I’m in,” she said.
Sam crawled into his and could detect only a slight barrier to the cold. It had been a lightweight bag maybe five years ago. Now it wasn’t worthy of the name.
“This won’t work.” Sam turned on the light. He went to the woodstove, took the small amount of remaining kindling, and placed it on a loose wad of paper towels. It burned nicely; he added more kindling. When it flamed he added a thick piece of branch. He was breathing hard and shaking slightly, but at least there was warmth on the palms of his hands. The sleeping bag over his shoulders wasn’t doing him much good. Soon the branch had ignited and he added a larger piece of wood, leaving the stove door ajar for maximum draft. Anna hopped over in her bag and sat down against the stove. After the flame was established, Sam went out in front of the cabin and studied the stovepipe. There was no visible light, nor were there sparks. Uneasy, but satisfied that the fire was not a dead giveaway, he went back inside.
He lay on his back next to the stove with the bag over him, put his hands on the floor, and raised his abdomen so that his body was arched with only his feet and hands touching the Doug-fir planks. He began taking deep breaths.
“That’s a very good Urdhva Dhanura.”
“So you do yoga too. It’s hard to be original anymore.”
“Control the breathing, slow the heart, the body will warm from the quiet exertion. Defeats the cold. I know what you’re trying, but if you’re that good I’ll be jealous, and you probably aren’t that good, so either way let’s huddle close to the stove.”
“Yoga is a way to stretch. I think it’s nothing more.”
After a full minute of stretching he crawled into his bag and they sat close.
“I’m still freezing,” she said.
“We could put one bag inside the other, then wrap you in a blanket and both get in.”
“Only in the movies.”
Five
Jason lay on his desk, facing the ceiling, the fear still there. Always there. Every morning he woke and knew that there was something wrong and that it would not go away.
When he smelled breakfast cooking and opened his eyes to look from the window by the bed, he might try to find something bright, perhaps the sunlight as described by a bard who knew the look of a tree with its tufts of moss-life and the speckling of bark, the sap in the white wood, the bursting of crinkled green shoots, the tireless withering of old leaves before the new. But each time Jason found the bright it was bounded by shadows, dark spots in the crooks of the branches. The darkness ate at him, turned his stomach sour even before he rose. Maybe a bird would flit by, but he knew it would die in winter with little things crawling over its skin, rotting it, smelling like yesterday’s fish. Wind harbored soulless ghosts, the mountain was cruel, and everything on it died, and nothing lived that hadn’t risen from the ashes of another’s death.
Fear lived in his chest as if a barbed hook were stuck fast in the wall of his gullet He couldn’t swallow his spit, let alone sing, without knowing the fear.
They said that without hope you die, and he realized his hope was so dim it barely lit the back rooms of his conscious thought. It helped being naked, especially when he got his massage. Before he picked up a three-ring notebook and walked over to the Principia Mathematica, he sat on the floor and stripped himself of every stitch of clothing. It felt better, but only a little.
Roberto walked in through the kitchen and startled him.
“Relax, Jason. Everything is fine.”
