Transcript for:
Summary of Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

hatchet by gary paulsen narrated by adam mcdonald for novel knowledge on youtube chapter one brian robison stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below it was a small plane a cessna 406 a bush plane and the engine was so loud so roaring and consuming and loud that it ruined any chance for conversation not that he had much to say he was 13 and the only passenger on the plane was a pilot named what was it jim or jake or something who was in his mid-40s and who had been silent as he worked to prepare for takeoff in fact since brian had come to the small airport in hampton new york to meet the plane driven by his mother the pilot had only spoken five words to him get in the co-pilot seat was brian had done they had taken off and that was the last of their conversation there had been the initial excitement of course he had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the co-pilot seat with all the controls right there in front of him all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off had been interesting and exciting but in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent staring out the front and the drone of the engine had been all that was left the drone in the sea of green trees that lay before the plane's nose and flowed to the horizon spread with lakes swamps and wandering streams and rivers now brian sat looking out the window with a roar thundering through his ears and tried to catalog what had led up to his taking this flight the thinking started always it started with a single word divorce it was an ugly word he thought a tearing ugly word that meant fights and yelling lawyers god he thought how he hated lawyers who sat with their comfortable smiles and tried to explain to him in legal terms how all that he lived in was coming apart and the breaking and shattering of all solid things his home his life all the solid things divorce a breaking word an ugly word divorce secrets no not secrets so much as just the secret what he knew and had not told anybody what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce what he knew what he knew the secret divorce the secret brian felt his eyes beginning to burn and he knew there would be tears he had cried for a time but that was gone now he didn't cry now instead his eyes burned and tears came the seeping tears that burned but he didn't cry he wiped his eyes with a finger and looked at the pilot out of the corner of his eye to make sure he hadn't noticed the burning and tears the pilot sat large his hands lightly on the wheel feet on the rudder pedals he seemed more a machine than a man an extension of the plane on the dashboard in front of him brian saw the dials switches meters knobs levers cranks lights handles that were wiggling and flickering all indicating nothing that he understood and the pilot seemed the same way part of the plane not human when he saw brian look at him the pilot seemed to open up a bit and he smiled ever fly in the cockpit seat before he leaned over and lifted this headset off his right ear and put it on his temple yelling to overcome the sound of the engine brian shook his head he had never been in any kind of plane never seen the cockpit of a plane except in films or television it was loud and confusing first time it's not as complicated as it looks good playing like this almost flies itself the pilot shrugged makes my job easy he took brian's left arm here put your hands on the controls you're feeding the rudder pedals and i'll show you what i mean brian shook his head i'd better not sure try it brian reached out and took the wheel and it grips so tight his knuckles were white he pushed his feet down on the pedals the plane slewt suddenly to the right not so hard take her light take her light brian eased off relaxed his grip the burning in his eyes was forgotten momentarily as the vibration of the plane came through the wheel and the pedals it seemed almost alive see the pilot let go of his wheel raised his hand in the air and took his feet off the pedals to show brian he was actually flying the plane alone simple now turn the wheel little to the right and push on the right rudder pedal just a small amount brian turned the wheel slightly and the plane immediately banked to the right and when he passed on the right rudder pedal the nose slid across the horizon to the right he left off on the pressure and straightened the wheel and the plane righted itself now you can turn bring her back to the left a little brian turned the wheel left pushed on the left pedal and the plane came back around it's easy he smiled at least this part the pilot nodded all of flying is easy just takes learning like everything else like everything else he took the controls back then reached up and rubbed his left shoulder aches and pains mush be getting old brian let go of the controls and moved his feet away from the pedals as the pilot put his hands on the wheel thank you but the pilot had put his headset back on and the gratitude was lost in the engine noise and things went back to brine looking out the window at the ocean of trees and lakes the burning eyes did not come back but memories did came flooding in the words always the words divorce the secret fights split the big split brian's father did not understand as brian did knew only that brian's mother wanted to break the marriage apart the split had come and then the divorce also fast and the court had left him with his mother except for the summers and what the judge called visitation rights so formal brian hated judges and he hated lawyers judges that leaned over the bench and asked brian if he understood where he was to live and why judges with the caring look that meant nothing as lawyers said legal phrases that meant nothing in the summer brian would live with his father in the school year with his mother that's what the judge said after looking at papers on his desk and listening to the lawyer's talk talk words now the plane lurched slightly to the right and brian looked at the pilot he was rubbing his shoulder again and there was the sudden smell of body gas in the plane brian turned back to avoid embarrassing the pilot who was obviously in some discomfort must have stomach troubles so this summer this first summer when he was allowed to have visitation rights with his father with a divorce only one month old brian was heading north his father was a mechanical engineer who designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling a self-cleaning self-sharpening bit he was working in the oil fields of canada up on the tree line where the tundra started and the force ended brian was riding up from new york with some drilling equipment it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing that had to be specially made in the city riding in the bush plane with a pilot named jim or jake or something who had turned out to be an all-right guy letting him fly and all except for the smell now there was a constant odor and brian took another look at the pilot found him rubbing his shoulder and down the arm now the left arm letting go more gas and wincing probably something he ate brian thought his mother had driven him from the city to meet the plane at hampton where it came to pick up the drilling equipment a drive in silence a long drive in silence two and a half hours of sitting in the car staring at the window of the plane once after an hour when they were out of the city she turned to him look can't we talk this over can't we talk this out can't you tell me what's bothering you and there were the words again divorce split the secret how could he tell her what he knew so he had remained silent shook his head and continued to stare unseen the countryside and his mother had gone back to driving only to speak to him one more time when they were close to hampton she reached over the back of the seat and brought up a paper sack i got something for you for the trip brian took the sack and opened the top inside there was a hatchet the kind with a steel handle and rubber hand grip the head was in a stout leather case that had a brass riveted belt loop it goes on your belt his mother spoke now without looking at him there were some farm trucks on the roads now and she had to weave through them and watch traffic the man at the store said you could use it you know in the woods with your father daddy thought not my father my dad thanks it's really nice but the word sounded hollow even to brian try it on see how it looks on your belt and he would normally have said no would normally have said no that it looked too hokey to have a hatchet on your belt those were the normal things he would say but her voice was thin had a sound like something thin that would break if you touched it and he felt bad for not speaking to her knowing what he knew even with the anger the hot white hate of his anger at her he still felt bad for not speaking to her and so to humor her he loosened his belt and pulled the right side out and put the hatchet on and rethreaded the belt scooch around so i can see he moved around in the seat feeling only slightly ridiculous she nodded just like a scout my little scout and there was the tenderness in her voice that she had when he was small the tenderness that she had when he was small and sick with a cold and she put her hand on his forehead and the burning came into his eyes again and he had turned away from her and looked out the window forgotten the hatchet on his belt and so arrived at the plane with the hatchet still on his belt because it was a bush flight from a small airport there had been no security and the plane had been waiting with the engine running when he arrived and he had grabbed his suitcase and packed bag and run for the plane without stopping to remove the hatchet so was still on his belt at first he had been embarrassed but the pilot had said nothing about it and brian forgot it as they took off and began flying there was more smell now bad brian turned again to glance at the pilot who had both hands on his stomach and was grimacing in pain reaching for the left shoulder again as brian watched don't know kid the pilot's words were a hiss barely audible bad aches here bad aches thought it was something i ate but he stopped as a fresh spasm of pain hit him even brian could see how bad it was the pain drove the pilot back into the seat back and down i've never had anything like this the pilot reached for the switch on his mic cord his hand coming up in a small arc from his stomach and he flipped the switch and said this is flight 4-6 and now a jolt took him like a hammer blow so forcefully that he seemed to crush back into the seat and brian reached for him could not understand at first what it was could not know and then he knew brian knew the pilot's mouth went rigid he swore and jerked a short series of slams into the seat holding his shoulder now sworn hissed chest oh god my chest is coming apart brian knew now the pilot was having a heart attack brian had been in the shopping mall with his mother when a man in front of paisley store had suffered a heart attack he had gone down and screamed about his chest an old man much older than the pilot brian knew the pilot was having a heart attack and even as knowledge came to brian he saw the pilot slam into the seat one more time one more awful time he slammed back into the seat and his right leg jerked pulling the plane to the side in a sudden twist and his head fell forward and spit came spit came from the corners of his mouth and his legs contracted up up into the seat and his eyes roll back in his head until there was only white only white for his eyes and the smell became worse filled the cockpit and all of it so fast so incredibly fast that brian's mind could not take it in at first could only see it in stages the pilot had been talking just a moment ago complaining of the pain he had been talking then the jolts had come the jolts that took the pilot back had come and now brian sat and there was a strange feeling of silence in the thrumming roar of the engine a strange feeling of silence and being alone brian was stopped he was stopped inside he was stopped he could not think past what he saw what he felt all was stopped the very core of him the very center of brian robison was stopped and stricken with a white flash of horror a terror so intense his breathing his thinking and nearly his heart had stopped stopped seconds passed seconds that became all of his life and he began to know what he was seeing began to understand what he saw and that was worse so much worse that he wanted to make his mind freeze again he was sitting in a bush plane roaring 7000 feet above the northern wilderness with a pilot who had suffered a massive heart attack and who was either dead or in something close to a coma he was alone in the roaring plane with no pilot he was alone alone chapter 2 for a time that he couldn't understand brian could do nothing even after his mind began working and he could see what had happened he could do nothing it was if his hands and arms were led then he looked for ways for it not to have happened be asleep his mind screamed at the pilot just be asleep and your eyes will open now and your hands will take the controls and your feet will move to the petals but it didn't happen the pilot didn't move except that his head rolled on a neck impossibly loose as the plane hit a small bit of turbulence the plane somehow the plane was still flying seconds had passed nearly a minute and the plane flew on as if nothing happened and he had to do something had to do something but didn't know what help he had to help he stretched one hand toward the pilot saw that his fingers were trembling and touched the pilot on the chest he didn't know what to do he knew there were procedures that you could do mouth-to-mouth on victims of heart attacks and push their chests cpr but he didn't know how to do it and in any case couldn't do with the pilot who was sitting up in the seat and still strapped in with a seat belt so he touched the pilot with the tips of his fingers touched him on the chest and could feel nothing no heartbeat no rise and fall of breathing which meant that the pilot was almost certainly dead please brian said but didn't know what or who to ask please the plane lurched again hit more turbulence and brian felt the nose drop it didn't dive but the nose went down slightly and the down angle increased the speed and he knew that at this angle the slight angle down he would ultimately fly into the trees he could see them ahead on the horizon where before he could see only sky he had to fly it somehow had to fly the plane he had to help himself the pilot was gone beyond anything he could do he had to try and fly the plane he turned back in the seat facing the front and put his hand still trembling on the control wheel his feet gently on the rudder pedals you pulled back on the stick to raise the plane he knew that from reading you always pulled back on the wheel he gave it a tug and it slid back towards him easily too easily the plane with the increased speed from the tilt down swooped eagerly up and drove brian's stomach down he pushed the wheel back in went too far this time and the plane's nose went below the horizon and the engine's speed increased with the shallow dive too much he pulled back again more gently this time and the nose floated up again too far but not as violently as before then down a bit too much and up again as before then down a bit too much and up again very easily and the front of the engine cowling settled when he had it aimed at the horizon and it seemed to be steady he held the wheel where it was let out his breath which he had been holding all this time and tried to think what to do next it was a clear blue sky day with fluffy bits of clouds here and there and he looked out the window for a moment hoping to see something a town or a village but there was nothing just the green of trees endless green and lake scattered more and more thickly as the plane flew where he was flying but did not know where had no idea where he was going he looked at the dashboard of the plane studied the dials and hoped to get some help hoped to find a compass but it was also confusing a jumble of numbers and lights one lighted display in the top center of the dashboard said the number 342 another next to it said 22 down beneath that were dialed with lines that seemed to indicate what the winds were doing tipping or moving and one dial with a needle pointing to the number 70 which he thought only thought might be the altimeter the device that told him his height above the ground or above sea level somewhere he had read something about altimeters but he couldn't remember what or where or anything about them slightly to the left and below the altimeter he saw a small rectangular panel with a lighted dial and two knobs his eyes had passed it over two or three times before he saw what was written in tiny letters on the top of the panel transmitter 221 was stamped in the metal and it hit him finally that was the radio the radio of course he had to use the radio when the pilot had had been hit that way he couldn't bring himself to say that the pilot was dead couldn't think it he had been trying to use the radio brian looked at the pilot the headset was still on his head turned sideways a bit from his jamming back into the seat and the microphone switch was clipped into his belt brian had to get the headset from the pilot had to reach over and get the headset from the pilot or he would not be able to use the radio to call for help he had to reach over his hands began trembling he did not want to touch the pilot did not want to reach for him but he had to had to get the radio he lifted his hands from the wheel just slightly and held them waiting to see what would happen the plane flew on normally smoothly alright he thought now now to do this thing he turned and reached for the headset slid it from the pilot's head one eye on the plane waiting for it to dive the headset came easily but the microphone switch at the pilot's belt was jammed in and he had to pull it to get it loose when he pulled his elbow bumped the wheel and pushed it in and the plane started down in a shallow dive brian grabbed the wheel and pulled it back too hard again and the plane went through another series of stomach-wrenching swoops up and down before he could get it under control when things had settled again he pulled at the mic cord once more and at last jerked the cord free it took him another second or two to place the headset on his own head and position the small microphone tube in the front of his mouth he had seen the pilot use it had seen him to press the switch at his belt so brian pushed the switch in and blew into the mic he heard the sound of his breath into the headset hello is there anybody listening on this hello he repeated it two or three times and then waited but heard nothing except his own breathing panic came then he had been afraid had been stopped with the terror of what was happening but now panic came and he began to scream into the microphone scream over and over help somebody help me i'm in this plane and i don't know i don't know i don't know what to do and he started crying with the screams crying and slamming his hands against the wheel of the plane causing it to jerk down then back up but again he heard nothing but the sound of his own sobs in the microphone his own screams mocking him coming back into his ears the microphone awareness cut into him he had used a cb radio in his uncle's pickup once you had to turn the mic switch off to hear anybody else he reached to his belt and released the switch for a second all he heard was the sh of the empty airwaves then through the noise and the static he heard a voice whoever is calling on this radio net i repeat release your mic switch you are covering me you are covering me over it stopped and brian hit his mic switch i hear you i hear you this is me he released the switch roger i have you now the voice was very faint and breaking up please state your difficulty in location and say over to signal end of transmission over please state my difficulty brian thought god my difficulty i'm in a plane with a pilot who is he can't fly and i don't know how to fly help me help he turned his mic off without ending transmission properly there was a moment's hesitation before the answer your signal is breaking up and i lost most of it understand pilot you can't fly correct over brian could barely hear him now heard mostly noise and static that's right i can't fly the plane is flying now but i don't know how much longer over lost signal your location please flight number locate i don't know my flight number or location i don't know anything i told you that over he waited now waited but there was nothing once for a second he thought he heard a break in the noise some part of a word but it could have been static two three minutes ten minutes the plane roared and brian listened but heard no one then he hit the switch again i don't know the flight number my name is brian robison and we left hampton new york headed for the canadian oil fields to visit my father and i don't know how to fly an airplane and the pilot he let go of the mic his voice was starting to rattle and he felt as if he might start screaming at any second he took a deep breath if there's anybody listening who can help me fly a plane please answer again he released the mic but heard nothing but the hiss of the noise in the headset after half an hour of listening and repeating the cry for help he tore the headset off in frustration and threw it to the floor it all seemed so hopeless he tried to figure out the dials again he thought he might know which was speed it was a lighted number that read 160 but he didn't know if that was actually miles an hour or kilometers or if it just meant how fast the plane was moving through the air and not over the ground he knew airspeed was different from ground speed but not by how much parts of books he'd write about flying came to him how wings worked how the propeller pulled the plane through the sky simple things that wouldn't help him now nothing could help him now an hour passed he picked up the headset and tried again it was he knew in the end all he had but there was no answer he felt like a prisoner kept in a small cell that was hurtling through the sky what he thought to be 160 miles an hour headed he didn't know where just headed somewhere until there it was until what until he ran out of fuel when the plane ran out of fuel it would go down period or he could pull the throttle out and make it go down now he had seen the pilot push the throttle in to increase speed if he pulled the throttle back out the engine would slow down and the plane would go down those were his choices he could wait for the plane to run out of gas and fall or he could push the throttle in and make it happen sooner if he waited for the plane to run out of fuel he would go farther but he didn't know which way he was moving when the pilot had jerked he had moved the plane but brian couldn't remember how much or if it had come back to its original course since he didn't know the original course anyway and could only guess at which display might be the compass the one reading 342 he didn't know where he had been or where he was going so it didn't make much difference if he went down now or waited everything in him rebelled against stopping the engine and falling now he had a vague feeling that he was wrong to keep heading as the plane was heading a feeling that he might be going off in the wrong direction but he couldn't bring himself to stop the engine and fall now he was safe or safer than if he went down the plane was flying he was still breathing when the engine stopped he would go down so he left the plane running holding altitude and kept trying the radio he worked out a system every 10 minutes by the small clock built into the dashboard he tried the radio a simple message i need help is there anybody listening to me in the times between transmissions he tried to prepare himself for what he knew was coming when he ran out of fuel the plane would start down he guessed that without the propeller pulling he would have to push the nose down to keep the plane flying he thought he may have read that somewhere or just came to him either way it made sense he would have to push the nose down to keep flying speed and then just before he hit he would have to pull the nose back up to slow the plane as much as possible it all made sense glide down then slow the plane and hit hit he would have to find a clearing as he went down the problem with that was that he hadn't seen one clearing since they started flying over the forest some swamps but they had trees scattered through them no roads no trails no clearings just the lakes and it came to him that he would have to use a lake for landing if he went down in the trees he was certain to die the trees would tear the plane to pieces as it went into them he would have to come down in a lake no on the edge of a lake he would have to come down near the edge of a lake and try to slow the plane as much as possible just before he hit the water easy to say he thought hard to do easy say hard do easy say hard do it became a chant that beat with the engine easy say hard do impossible do he repeated the radio call 17 times at 10 minute intervals working on what he would do between transmissions once more he reached over to the pilot and touched him on the face but the skin was cold cold hard death cold and brian turned back to the dashboard he did what he could tightened his seatbelt positioned himself rehearsed mentally again and again what his procedure should be when the plane ran out of gas he should hold the nose down and head for the nearest lake and try to fly the plane kind of onto the water that's how he thought of it kind of fly the plane onto the water and just before it hit he should pull back on the wheel and slow the plane to reduce the impact over and over his mind ran the picture of how it would go the plane running out of gas flying the plane onto the water the crash from pictures he'd seen on television he tried to visualize it he tried to be ready but between the 17th and 18th radio transmissions without a warning the engine coughed roared violently for a second and died there was a sudden silence cut only by the sound of the wind milling propeller and the wind passed the cockpit brian pushed the nose of the plane down and threw up chapter three going to die brian thought going to die gonna die gonna die his whole brain screamed it in the sudden silence gonna die he wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and held the nose down the plane went into a glide a very fast glide that ate altitude and suddenly there weren't any lakes all he'd seen since they started flying over the forest was lakes and now they were gone gone out in front far away at the horizon he could see lots of them glittering blue in the late afternoon sun but he needed one right in front he desperately needed a lake right in front of the plane and all he saw through the windshield were trees green death trees if he had to turn if he had to turn he didn't think he could keep the plane flying his stomach tightened into a series of rolling knots and his breaths came in short berths there not quite in front but slightly to the right he saw a lake l-shaped with rounded corners and the plane was nearly aimed at the long part of the l coming from the bottom and heading to the top just a tiny bit to the right he pushed the right rudder pedal gently and the nose moved over but the turn cost him speed and now the lake was above the nose he pulled back on the wheel slightly and the nose came up this caused the plane to slow dramatically and almost seemed to stop and wallow in the air the controls became very loose feeling and frightened brian making him push the wheel back in this increased the speed a bit but filled the windshield once more with nothing but trees and put the lake well above the nose and out of reach for a space of three or four seconds things seemed to hang almost to stop the plane was flying but so slowly so slowly it would never reach the lake brian looked out to the side and saw a small pond and at the edge of the pond some large animal he thought a moose standing out in the water also still looking so stopped the pond and the moose and the trees as he slid over them now only three or four hundred feet off the ground all like a picture then everything happened at once tree suddenly took on detail filled his whole field of vision with green and he knew he would hit and die would die but his luck held and just as he was to hit he came into an open lane a channel of fallen trees a wide place leading to the lake the plane committed now to landing to crashing fell into the wide place like a stone and brian eased back on the wheel and braced himself for the crash but there was a tiny bit of speed left and when he pulled on the wheel the nose came up and he saw in front the blue of the lake and at that instant the plane hit the trees there was a great wrenching as the wings caught the pines at the side of the clearing and broke back ripping back just outside the main braces dust and dirt blew off the floor into his face so hard he thought there must have been some kind of explosion he was momentarily blinded and slammed forward in the seat smashing his head on the wheel then a wild crashing sound ripping of metal and the plane rolled to the right and blew through the trees out over the water and down down to slam into the lake skip once on water as hard as concrete water that tore the windshield out and shattered the side windows water that drove him back into the seat somebody was screaming screaming as the plane drove down into the water someone screamed tight animal screams of fear and pain and he did not know that it was his sound that he roared against the water that took him and the plane still deeper down in the water he saw nothing but sense blue cold blue green and he raked at the seat belt catch tore his nails loose on one hand he ripped at it until it released and somehow the water trying to kill him to end him somehow he pulled himself out of the shattered front window and clawed up into the blue felt something hold him back felt his windbreaker tear and he was free tearing free ripping free but so far so far to the surface his lungs could not do this thing could not hold and we're through and he sucked water took a great pull of water that would finally win finally take him and his head broke into light and he vomited and swam pulling without knowing what he was what he was doing without knowing anything pulling until his hands caught it weeds and muck pulling and screaming until his hands caught at last in grass and brush and he felt his chest on land felt his face in the coarse blades of grass he stopped everything stopped a color came that he had never seen before a color that exploded in his mind with the pain and he was gone gone from it all spiraling out into the world spiraling out into nothing nothing chapter four the memory was like a knife cutting into him slicing deep into him with hate the secret he had been riding his 10 speed with a friend named terry they'd been taking a run on a bike trail and decided to come back a different way a way that took them past the amber mall brian remembered everything in incredible detail remember the time on the bank clock in the mall flashing 331 then the temperature 82 and the date all the numbers were part of the memory all of his life was part of the memory terry just turned to smile at him about something and brian looked over terry's head and saw her his mother she was sitting in a station wagon a strange wagon he saw her and she didn't see him brian was going to wave or call out but something stopped him there was a man in the car short blonde hair the man had wearing some kind of white pullover tennis shirt brian saw this and more saw the secret and saw more later but the memory came in pieces came in scenes like this terry smiling ryan looking over his head to see the station wagon and his mother sitting with the man the time and the temperature clock the front wheel of his bike the short blonde hair of the man the white shirt of the man the hot hate slices of the memory were exact the secret brian opened his eyes and screamed for seconds he didn't know where he was only that the crash was still happening and he was going to die and he screamed until his breath was gone then silence filled with sobs as he pulled in air half crying how could it be so quiet moments ago there was nothing but noise crashing and tearing screaming not quiet some birds were singing how could birds be singing his legs felt wet and he raised up on his hands and looked back down at them they were in the lake strange they went down into the water he tried to move but pain hammered into him and made his breath shorten into gasps and he stopped his legs still in the water pain memory he turned again and sun came across the water late sun cut into his eyes and made him turn away it was over then the crash he was alive the crash is over and i'm alive he thought then his eyes closed and he lowered his head for minutes that seemed longer when he opened them again it was evening and some of the sharp pain had abated there were dull aches and the crash came back to him fully into the trees and out onto the lake the plane had crashed and sunk in the lake and he had somehow pulled free he raised himself and crawled out of the water grunting with pain of the movement his legs were on fire and his forehead felt as if somebody had been pounding on it with a hammer but he could move he pulled his legs out of the lake and crawled on his hands and knees until he was away from the wet soft shore and near a small stand of brush of some kind then he went down only this time to rest to save something of himself he lay on his side and put his head on his arm and closed his eyes because that was all he could do now all he could think of being able to do he closed his eyes and slept dreamless deep and down there was almost no light when he opened his eyes again the darkness of night was thick and for a moment he began to panic again to see he thought to see his everything and he couldn't see but he turned his head without moving his body and saw that across the lake the sky was a light gray that the sun was starting to come up and he remembered that it had been evening when he went to sleep must be morning now he mumbled it almost in a hoarse whisper as the thickness of sleep left him the world came back he was still in pain all over pain his legs were cramped and drawn up tight and aching and his back hurt when he tried to move worse was a keening throb in his head that pulsed with every beat of his heart it seemed that the whole crash had happened to his head he rolled on his back and felt his sides and his legs moving things slowly he rubbed his arms nothing seemed to be shattered or even sprained all that badly when he was nine he had plowed his small dirt bike into a parked car and broken his ankle had to wear a cast for eight weeks and there was nothing now like that nothing broken just battered around a bit his forehead felt massively swollen to the touch almost like a mound out over his eyes and it was so tender that when his fingers grazed it he nearly cried but there's nothing he could do about it and like the rest of him it seemed to be bruised more than broken i'm alive he thought i'm alive it could have been different there could have been death i could have been done like the pilot he thought suddenly the pilot in the plane down in the water down into the blue water strapped into the seat he sat up or tried to the first time he fell back but on the second attempt grunting with the effort he managed to come to a sitting position and scrunched sideways until his back was against a small tree where he sat facing the lake watching the sky get lighter and lighter with the coming dawn his clothes were wet and clammy and there was a faint chill he pulled the torn remnants of his windbreaker pieces really around his shoulders and tried to hold what he his body could find he couldn't think couldn't make the thought patterns work right things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination except that it was all reality one second he seemed only to have imagined that there was a plane crash that he had fought out of the sinking plane and swarmed ashore that it happened to some other person or in a movie playing in his mind then he would feel his clothes wet and cold and his forehead would slash a pain through his thoughts and he would know it was real that it had really happened but all in haze all in the haze world so he sat and stared at the lake felt the pain come and go in waves and watched the sun come over the end of the lake it took an hour perhaps too he couldn't measure time yet and didn't care for the sun to get halfway up with it came some warmth small bits of it at first and with the heat came clouds of insects thick swarming hordes of mosquitoes that flocked to his body made a living coat on his exposed skin clogged his nostrils when he inhaled poured into his mouth when he opened it to take a breath it was not possibly believable not this he had come through the crash but the insects were not possible he coughed them up spat them out sneezed them out closed his eyes and kept brushing his face slapping and crushing them by the dozens by the hundreds but as soon as he cleared his place as soon as he killed them moore came thick whining buzzing masses of them mosquitoes and some black flies he had never seen before all biting chewing taking from him in moments his eyes were swollen shut and his face puffy and round to match his battered forehead he pulled the torn pieces of his windbreaker over his head and tried to shelter it but the jacket was full of rips and it didn't work in desperation he pulled his t-shirt up to cover his face but that exposed the skin of his lower back and mosquitoes and flies attacked the new soft flesh of his back so viciously that he pulled the shirt down in the end he sat with the windbreaker pulled up brushed with his hands and took it almost crying in frustration and agony there was nothing left to do and when the sun was fully up and heating him directly bringing steam off of his wet clothes and bathing him in warmth the mosquitoes and flies disappeared almost that suddenly one minute he was sitting in the middle of a swarm the next they were gone and the sun was on him vampires he thought apparently they didn't like the deep of night perhaps because it was too cool and they couldn't take the direct sunlight but in that gray time in the morning when it began to get warm and before the sun was full up and hot he couldn't believe them never in all the reading in the movies he had watched on television about the outdoors never once had they ever mentioned the mosquitos or flies all they ever showed on naturalist shows was beautiful scenery or animals jumping around having a good time nobody ever mentioned mosquitoes and flies he pulled himself up to stand against the tree and stretched bringing new aches and pains his back muscles must have been hurt as well they almost seemed to tear when he stretched and while the pain in his forehead seemed to be abating somewhat just trying to stand made him weak enough to nearly collapse the back of his hands were puffy and his eyes were almost swollen shut from the mosquitoes and he saw everything through a narrow squint not that there was much to see he thought scratching the bites in front of him lay the lake blue and deep he had a sudden picture of the plane sunk in the lake down and down in the blue with the pilot's body still strapped in the seat his hair waving he shook his head more pain that wasn't something to think about he looked at his surroundings again the lake stretched slightly below him he was at the base of the l looking up the long part with the short part out to his right in the morning light and calm the water was absolutely perfectly still he could see the reflection of the trees at the other end of the lake upside down in the water they seemed almost like an other forest an upside down force to match the real one as he watched a large bird he thought it looked like a crow but it seemed larger flew from the top real forest and the reflection bird matched it both flying out over the water everything was green so green it went into him the force was largely made up of pines and spruce with stands of some low brush smeared here and there and thick grass and some other kind of very small brush all over he couldn't identify most of it except the evergreens and some leafy trees he thought might be aspen he'd seen pictures of aspen in the mountains on television the country around the lake was moderately hilly but the hills were small almost hummocks and there were very few rocks except to his left there lay a rocky ridge that stuck out overlooking the lake about 20 feet high if the plane had come down a little to the left it would have hit the rocks and never made the lake he would have been smashed destroyed the word came i would have been destroyed and torn and smashed driven into the rocks and destroyed lucky thought i have luck i had good luck there but he knew that it was wrong if he did have good luck his parents wouldn't have divorced because of the secret and he wouldn't have been flying with a pilot who had a heart attack and he wouldn't be here where he had to have good luck to keep from being destroyed if you keep walking back from good luck you thought you'll come to bad luck he shook his head again wincing another thing not to think about the rocky ridge was rounded and seemed to be some kind of sandstone with bits of darker stone layered and stuck into it directly across the lake from it at the inside corner of the l was a mound of sticks and mud rising up out of the water a good eight or ten feet at first brian couldn't place it but he knew that somehow he knew what it was had seen it in films then a small brown head popped to the surface of the water near the mound and began swimming off down the short leg of the l leaving a v of ripples behind and he remembered where he'd seen it it was a beaver house called a beaver lodge in a special eat scene on the public channel a fish jumped not a large fish but it made a big splash near the beaver and as if by a signal there were suddenly little splots all over the sides of the lake along the shore as the fish began jumping hundreds of them jumping and slapping the water brian watched them for a time still in the half days still not thinking well the scenery was very pretty he thought and there were new things to look at but it was all green and blue blur and he was used to the gray and black of the city traffic people talking sounds all the time the hum and wine of the city here at first it was silent or he thought it was silent but when he started to listen really listen he heard thousands of things pisses and blerks small sounds birds singing hum of insects splashes from this fish jumping there was great noise here but a noise he didn't know and the colors were new to him and the colors and noise mixed in his mind to make a green blue blur he could hear here is a hissing pulse sound as he was still tired so tired so awfully tired and standing to take in a lot of energy somehow had drained him he supposed he was still in some kind of shock from the crash and there was still the pain the dizziness the strange feeling he found another tree a tall pine with no branches until the top and sat with his back against it looking down on the lake with the sun warming him and in a few moments he scrunched down and he was asleep again chapter 5 his eyes snapped open hammered open and there were these things about himself that he knew instantly he was unbelievably viciously thirsty his mouth was dry and tasted foul and sticky his lips were cracked and felt as if they were bleeding and if he didn't drink some water soon he felt that he would wither up and die lots of water all the water he could find he knew the thirst and felt the burn on his face it was mid-afternoon and the sun had come over him and cooked him while he slept and his face was on fire would blister would peel which didn't help the thirst made it much worse he stood using the tree to pull himself up because there was still some pain and much stiffness and looked down at the lake it was water but he didn't know if he could drink it nobody had ever told him if he could drink or not drink lakes there was also the thought of the pilot down in the blue with the plane strapped in the body awfully thought but the lake was blue and wet looking and his mouth and throat raged with the thirst and he didn't know where there might be another form of water he could drink besides he had probably swallowed a ton of it while he was swimming out of the plane and getting to shore in the movies they always showed the hero finding a clear spring with pure sweet water to drink but in the movies they didn't have plane wrecks and swollen foreheads and aching bodies and thirst that tore the hero until he couldn't think brian took small steps down the bank to the lake along the edge there were thick grasses and the water looked a little murky and there were small things swimming in the water small bugs but there was a log extending about 20 feet out into the water of the lake a beaver dropped from some time before with old limb sticking up almost like handles he balanced on the log holding himself up with the limbs and teetered out past the weeds in murky water when he was out where the water was clear and he could see no bugs swimming he kneeled on the log to drink a sippy thought still worrying about the lake water i'll just take a sip but when he brought a cupped hand to his mouth and felt the cold lake water trickle past his cracked lips and over his tongue he couldn't stop he had never not even on long bike trips in the hot summer been this thirsty it was if the water were more than water as if the water had become all of life and he couldn't stop he stopped and put his mouth to the lake and drank and drank pulling it deep and swallowing great gulps of it he drank until his stomach was swollen until he nearly fell off the log with it then he rose and staggered his way back to the bank where he was immediately sick and threw up most of the water but his thirst was gone and the water seemed to reduce the pain in his head as well although the sunburn still cooked his face so he almost jumped with the word spoken aloud it seemed so out of place the sound he tried it again so so so here i am and there it is he thought for the first time since the crash his mind started to work his brain triggered and he began thinking here i am and where is that where am i he pulled himself once more up the bank to the tall tree without branches and sat again with his back against the rough bark it was hot now but the sun was high into his rear and he sat in the shade of the tree in relative comfort there were things to sort out here i am and that is nowhere with his mind opened and his thoughts happening it all tried to come in with a rush all of what had occurred and he could not take it the hole turned into a confused jumble that made no sense he fought it down and tried to take one thing at a time he had been flying north to visit his father for a couple months in the summer and the pilot had a heart attack and had died and the plane had crashed somewhere in the canadian north woods but he didn't know how far they had flown or in what direction or where he was slow down he thought slow down more my name is brian robison and i'm 13 years old and i'm alone in the north woods of canada alright he thought that's simple enough i was flying to visit my father and the plane crashed and sank in a lake there keep it that way short thoughts i don't know where i am which doesn't mean much more to the point they don't know where i am they mean anybody who might be wanting to look for me the searchers they would look for him look for the plane his father and mother would be frantic they would tear the world apart to find him brian had seen searches on the news seen movies and lost planes when a plane went down they mounted extensive searches and almost always they found the plane within a day or two pilots always filed flight plans a detailed plan for where and when they were going to fly with all the courses explained they would come they would look for him the searchers would get government planes and cover both sides of the flight plan filed by the pilot and search until they found him maybe even today they might come today this was the second day after the crash no brian frowned was it the first day or the second day they had gone down in the afternoon and he had spent the whole night out cold so this was the first day but they could still come today they would have started the search immediately when brian's plane didn't arrive yeah they would probably come today probably come in here with amphibious planes small bush planes with floats that could land right here on the lake and pick him up and take him home which home the father home or the mother home he stopped the thinking it didn't matter either on to his dad or back to his mother either way he wouldn't probably be home by late night or early morning home where he could sit down and eat a large cheesy juicy burger with tomatoes and double fries with ketchup and a thick chocolate shake and there came hunger brian rubbed his stomach the hunger had been there but something else fear pain had held it down now with the thought of the burger the emptiness roared at him he couldn't believe the hunger had never felt it this way the lake water had filled his stomach but left it hungry and now demanded food scream for food and there was he thought absolutely nothing to eat nothing what did they do in the movies when they got stranded like this oh yeah the hero usually found some kind of plant that he knew was good to eat and that took care of it just ate the plant until he was full or used some kind of cute trap to catch an animal and cook it over a slick little fire pretty soon he had a full eight-course meal the trouble brian thought looking around was that all he could see was grass and brush there was nothing obvious to eat and aside from about a million birds and the beaver he hadn't seen animals to trap and cook and even if he got one somehow he didn't have any matches so he couldn't have a fire nothing it kept coming back to that he had nothing well almost nothing as a matter of fact he thought i don't know what i've got or haven't got maybe i should try figure out just how i stand it'll give me something to do keep me from thinking of food until they come to find me brian had once had an english teacher a guy named perpich who was always talking about being positive thinking positive staying on top of things that's how perpich had put it stay positive stay on top of things brian thought of him now wondered how to stay positive and stay on top of this all purpose would say is that i have to get motivated he was always telling kids to get motivated brian changed position so he was sitting on his knees he reached into his pocket and took out everything he had and laid it on the grass in front of him it was pitiful enough a quarter three dimes a nickel and two pennies a fingernail clipper a billfold with a 20 bill in case you could strand at the airport in some small town and have to buy food his mother had said and some odd pieces of paper and on his belt somehow still there the hatchet his mother had given him he had forgotten about it and now reached around and took it out and put it on the grass there was a touch of rust already forming on the cutting edge of the blade and he rubbed it off with his thumbs that was it he frowned no wait if he was going to play the game might as well play it right perpish would tell him to quit messing around get motivated look at all of it robison had on a pair of good tennis shoes now almost dry in socks and jeans and underwear and a thin leather belt and a t-shirt with a windbreaker so torn it hung on him in tatters and a watch he had a digital watch still on his wrist but it was broken from the crash the little screen blank and he took it off and almost threw it away but stopped the hand motion and lay the watch on the grass with the rest of it there that was it no wait one other thing those were all the things he had but he also had himself purpose used to drum that into them you are the most valuable asset don't forget that you are the best thing you have brian looked around again i wish you were here perpich i'm hungry and i trade everything i have for a hamburger i'm hungry he said aloud in a normal tone at first then louder and louder until he was yelling it i'm hungry i'm hungry i'm hungry when he stopped there was a sudden silence not just from him but the clicks and blurps and bird sounds of the force as well the noise of his voice has startled everything and it was quiet he looked around listened with his mouth open and realized that in all his life he had never heard silence before complete silence there had always been some sound some kind of sound it lasted only a few seconds but it was so intense that it seemed to become part of him nothing there was no sound then the bird started again and some kind of buzzing insect and then a chattering and a calling and soon there was the same background of sound which left him still hungry of course he thought putting the coins in the rest back in his pocket and the hatchet in his belt of course if they come tonight or even if they take as long as tomorrow the hunger is no big thing people have gone for many days without food as long as they have got water even if they don't come until late tomorrow i'll be all right lose a little weight maybe but the first hamburger and a malt fries will bring it right back a mental picture of hamburger the way they showed it in the television commercials thundered into his thoughts rich colors the meat juicy and hot he pushed the picture away so even if they didn't find him tomorrow he thought he would be all right he had plenty of water although he wasn't sure if it was good and clean or not he sat again by the tree his back against it there was a thing bothering him he wasn't quite sure what it was but it kept chewing at the edge of his thoughts something about the plane and the pilot that would change things ah there it was the moment when the pilot had his heart attack his right foot had jerked down on the rudder pedal and the plane had slewed sideways what did that mean why did that keep coming into his thinking that way nudging and pushing it means a voice in his thoughts said that they might not be coming for you tonight or even tomorrow when the pilot pushed the rudder pedal the plane had jerked to the side and assumed a new course brian could not remember how much it had pulled around but it wouldn't have had to be much because after that with the pilot dead brian had flown for hour after hour on the new course well away from the flight plan the pilot had filed many hours at maybe 160 miles an hour even if it was only a little off course with that speed and time brian might now be sitting several hundred miles off to the side of the recorded flight plan and they would probably search most heavily at first along the flight plan course they might go out to the side a little but he could easily be three 400 miles to the side he couldn't know couldn't think of how far he might have flown wrong because he didn't know the original course and didn't know how much they'd pulled sideways quite a bit that's how he remembered it quite a jerk to the side it pulled his head over sharply when the plane had swung around they might not find him for two or three days he felt his heartbeat increase as the fear started the thought was there but he fought it down for a time pushed it away then exploded out they might not find him for a long time and the next thought was there as well that they might never find him but that was panic and he fought it down and tried to stay positive they searched hard when a plane went down they used many men in planes and they would go to the side they would know he was off from the flight path he had talked to the man on the radio they would somehow know it would be all right they would soon find him maybe not tomorrow but soon soon soon they would find him soon gradually like sloshing oil his thoughts settled back and the panic was gone say they didn't come for two days no say they didn't come for three days even pushed that to four days he could live with that he would have to live with that he didn't want to think of them taking longer but say four days he had to do something he couldn't just sit at the bottom of this tree and stare down at the lake for four days and nights he was in deep woods and didn't have any matches couldn't make a fire there were large things in the woods there were wolves he thought and bears other things in the dark he would be in the open here just sitting at the bottom of a tree he looked around suddenly felt the hair in the back of his neck go up things might be looking at him right now waiting for him waiting for the dark so they could move in and take him he fingered the hatchet at his belt it was the only weapon he had but it was something he had to have some kind of shelter no make that worse he had to have some kind of shelter and he had to have something to eat he pulled himself to his feet and jerked the back of his shirt down before the mosquitoes could get at it he had to do something to help himself i have to get motivated he thought remembering perpich right now i'm all i've got i have to do something chapter six two years before he and terry had been fooling around down near the park where the city seemed to end for a time and the trees grew thick and came down to the small river that went through the park it was thick there and seemed kind of wild and they had been joking and making things up and they pretended that they were lost in the woods and talked in the afternoon about what they would do of course they figured they'd have all sorts of goodies like a gun and a knife and fishing gear and matches so they could hunt and fish and have a fire i wish you were here terry he thought with a gun and a knife and some matches in the park that time they had decided the best shelter was a lean-to and brian set out now to make one up maybe cover it with grass or leaves or sticks he thought and he started to go down to the lake again where there were some willows he could cut down for braces but it struck him that he ought to find a good place for the lean to and so he decided to look around first he wanted to stay near the lake because he thought the plane even deep in the water might show up to somebody flying over and he didn't want to diminish any chance he might have of being found his eyes fell upon the stone ridge to his left and he thought at first he should build his shelter against the stone but before he decided to check out the far side of the ridge and that was where he got lucky using the sun and the fact that it rose in the east and set in the west he decided that the far side was the northern side of the ridge at one time in the far past it had been scooped by something probably a glacier and the scooping had left a kind of sideways bowl back in under a ledge it wasn't very deep not a cave but it was smooth and made a perfect roof and he could almost stand in under the ledge he had to hold his head slightly tipped forward at the front to keep it from hitting the top some of the rock that had been scooped out had also been pulverized by the glacial action turned into sand and now made a small sand beach that went down to the edge of the water in front and to the right of the overhang it was his first good luck no he thought he had good luck in the landing but this was good luck as well luck he needed all he had to do was wall off a part of the bowl and leave an opening as a doorway and he would have a perfect shelter much stronger than a lean to and dry because the overhang made a watertight roof he crawled back in under the ledge and sat the sand was cool here in the shade and the coolness felt wonderful to his face which was already starting to blister and get especially painful on his forehead with the blisters on top of the swelling he was also still weak just to walk around the back of the ridge and the slight climb over the top had left his legs rubbery it felt good to sit for a bit under the shade of the overhang in the cool sand and now he thought if i just had something to eat anything when he had rested a bit he went back down to the lake and drank a couple swallows of water he wasn't all that thirsty but he thought the water might help to take the edge off his hunger it didn't somehow the cold lake water actually made it worse sharpened it he thought of dragging in wood to make a wall and part of the overhang and picked up one piece to pull up but his arms were too weak and he knew then that it wasn't just the crash and injury to his body and head it was also that he was weak from hunger he would have to find something to eat before he did anything else he would have to have something to eat but what brian leaned against the rock and stared out at the lake what in all of this was there to eat he was so used to having food just be there just always be there when he was hungry he went to the icebox or to the store or sat down to his meal his mother cooked oh he thought remembering a meal now oh it was last thanksgiving last year the last thanksgiving they had as a family before his mother demanded the divorce and his father moved out in the following january brian already knew the secret but didn't know it would cause them to break up and thought it might work out the secret that his father still didn't know but that he would try to tell him when he saw him the meal had been turkey and they cooked it in the backyard and the barbecue over charcoal with the lid down tight his father had put hickory chips on the charcoal and the smell of the cooking turkey and the hickory smoke had filled the yard when his father took the lid off smiling the smell that had come out was unbelievable and when they sat to eat the meat was wet with juice and rich and had the taste of smoke in it he had to stop this his mouth was full of saliva and his stomach was twisting and growling what was there to eat what had he read or seen that told him about food in the wilderness hadn't there been something a show yes a show on television about air force pilots and some kind of course they took a survival course all right he had the show coming into his thoughts now the pilots had to live in the desert they put them in the desert down in arizona or someplace and they had to live for a week they had to find food and water for a week for water they made a sheet of plastic into a dew gathering device and for food they ate lizards that was it course brian had lots of water and there weren't too many lizards in the canadian woods that he knew one of the pilots had used a watch crystal as a magnifying glass to focus the sun and start a fire so they didn't have to eat the lizard draw but brian had a digital watch without a crystal broken at that so the show didn't help him much wait there was one thing one of the pilots a woman had found some kind of beans on a bush and she used them with her lizard meat to make a little stew in a tin can she had found bean lizard stew there weren't any beans here but there must be berries there had to be berry bushes around that's what everybody else always said well he'd actually never heard anybody say it but he felt that it must be true there must be berry bushes he stood and moved out into the sand and looked up at the sun it was still high he didn't know what time it must be at home it would be one or two if the sun were that high at home one or two his mother would be putting away the lunch dishes and getting ready for exercise class no that would have been yesterday today she'd be going to see him today was thursday she always went to see him on thursdays wednesday was the exercise class and thursday she went to see him hot little jets of hate worked into his thoughts pushed once moved back if his mother hadn't begun to see him and force the divorce brian wouldn't be here now he shook his head had to stop that kind of thinking the sun was still high and that meant that he had some time before darkness to find berries he didn't want to be away from his shelter when it came to be dark he almost thought of it as home now he didn't want to be anywhere in the woods when it came to be dark and he didn't want to get lost which was a real problem all he knew in the world was the lake in front of him and the hill at his back and the ridge if he lost sight of them there was a really good chance that he would get turned around and not find his way back so he had to look for berry bushes but keep the lake or the rock ridge in sight at all times he looked up the lake shore to the north for a good distance perhaps 200 yards it was fairly clear there were tall pines the kinds with no limbs until very close to the top with a gentle breeze sign in them but not too much low brush 200 yards up there seemed to be a belt of thick lower brush starting about 10 or 12 feet high and that formed a wall he couldn't see through it seemed to go around the lake thick and lushly green but he couldn't be sure if there were berries they'd be in that brush he felt and as long as he stayed close to the lake so he could keep the water on his right and know it was there he wouldn't get lost when he was done or found berries he thought he would just turn around so the water was on his left and walked back until he came to the ridge and his shelter simple keep it simple i'm brian robison i've been in a plane crash i'm going to find some food i'm going to find some berries he walked slowly up along the side of the lake still a bit pained in his joints and weak from hunger the trees were full of birds singing ahead of him in the sun some he knew some he didn't he saw a robin and some kind of sparrows and a flock of reddish orange birds with thick beaks 20 or 30 of them were sitting in one of the pines they made much noise and flew away ahead of him when he walked under the tree he watched them fly their color a bright slash and solid green and in the way he found the berries the birds landed in some taller willow type of undergrowth with wide leaves and started jumping and making noises at first he was too far away to see what they were doing but their color drew him and he moved toward them keeping the lake in sight on its right and when he got closer he saw they were eating the berries he couldn't believe it was that easy it was if the birds had taken him right to the berries the slender branches went up about 20 feet and were heavy drooping with clusters of bright red berries they were half as big as grapes but hung in bunches much like grapes and when brian saw them glistening red in the sunlight he almost yelled his pace quickened and he was in them in moments scattering the birds grabbing branches stripping them to fill his mouth with berries you almost spit them out it wasn't that they were bitter so much as they lacked any sweetness had a tart flavor that left his mouth dry feeling and they were like cherries and that they had large pits which made them hard to chew but there was such a hunger on him such an emptiness that he couldn't stop and kept stripping branches and eating berries by the handful grabbing and jamming them into his mouth and swallowing them pits and all he couldn't stop and when at last his stomach was full he was still hungry two days without food must have shrunk in his stomach but the drive of hunger was still there thinking of the birds and how they would come back into the berries when he left he made a caring pouch of his torn windbreaker and kept picking finally when he judged he had close to four pounds in the jacket he stopped and went back to his camp by the ridge now he thought now i have some food and i could do something about fixing this place up he glanced at the sun and saw he had some time before dark if only he had matches he thought looking ruthly at the beach and lakeside there was driftwood everywhere not to mention dead and dry wood all over the hill and dead dry branches hanging from every tree all firewood and no matches how did they used to do it he thought rubbed two sticks together he tucked the berries in the pouch backing under the overhang in the cool shade and found a couple of sticks after 10 minutes of rubbing he felt the sticks and they were almost cool to the touch not that he thought they didn't do fire that way he threw the sticks down in disgust so no fire but he could still fix the shelter and make it more livable here the word safer came into his mind and he didn't know why kind of close it in he thought i'll close it in a bit he started dragging sticks up from the lake and pulling long dead branches down from the hill never getting out of sight of the water in the ridge with these he interlaced and wove a wall across the opening of the front of the rock it took over two hours and he had to stop several times because he still felt a bit weak and once because he felt a strange new twinge in his stomach a tightening rolling too many berries he thought i ate too many of them but it was gone soon and he kept working until the entire front of the overhang was covered save for a small opening at the right end nearest the lake the doorway was about three feet and when he went in he found himself in a room almost 15 feet long and eight to ten feet deep with the rock wall sloping down at the rear good he said nodding good outside the sun was going down finally and in the initial coolness the mosquitoes came out again and clouded in on him they were thick terrible if not quite as bad as in the morning and he kept brushing them off his arms until he couldn't stand it and then dumped the berries and put the torn windbreaker on at least the sleeves covered his arms wrapped in the jacket with darkness coming down fast now he crawled back in under the rock and huddled and tried to sleep he was deeply tired and still aching some but sleep was slow coming and didn't finally settle in until the evening cool turned to nightcool and the mosquitoes slowed then at last with his stomach turning on the berries brian went to sleep chapter 7 mother he screamed it and he couldn't be sure if the scream awakened him or the pain in his stomach his whole abdomen was torn with great rolling jolts of pain pain that doubled him in the darkness of the little shelter put him over and his face down in the sand to moan again and again mother mother mother never anything like this never it was if all the berries all the pits had exploded in the center of him ripped and tore at him he crawled out the doorway and was sick in the sand then crawled still farther and was sick again vomiting and with terrible diarrhea for over an hour for over a year he thought until he was at least empty and drained of all strength then he crawled back into the shelter and fell again to the sand but couldn't sleep at first could do nothing except lie there and his mind decided then to bring the memory up again in the mall every detail his mother sitting in the station wagon with the man and she had leaned across and kissed him kissed the man with a short blonde hair and it was not a friendly peck but a kiss a kiss where she turned her head over at an angle and put her mouth against the mouth of the blonde man who was not his father and kissed mouthed the mouth and then brought her hand up to touch his cheek his forehead while they were kissing and brian saw it saw this thing that his mother did with the blonde man saw the kiss that became the secret that his father still didn't know about know all about the memory was so real that he could feel the heat in the mall that day could remember the worry that terry would turn and see his mother could remember the worry of the shame of it and then the memory faded and he slept again awake for a second perhaps two he didn't know where he was was still asleep somewhere then he saw the sun streaming in the open doorway of the shelter and heard the close vicious wine of the mosquitoes and knew he brushed his face completely welted now with two days of bites completely covered with lumps and bites and was surprised to find the swelling on his forehead had gone down a great deal was almost gone the smell was awful and he couldn't place it then he saw the pile of berries at the back of the shelter and remembered the night and being sick too many of them he said aloud too many gut cherries he crawled out of the shelter and found where he'd mess the sand used sticks and cleaned it as best he could covered it with clean sand and went down the lake to wash his hands and get a drink it was still very early only just past true dawn and the water was so calm he could see his reflection it frightened him the face was cut and bleeding swollen and lumpy the hair all matted and on his forehead a cut had healed but left the hair stuck with blood and scab his eyes were slits in the bites and he was somehow covered with dirt he slapped the water with his hand to destroy the mirror ugly he thought very very ugly and he was at the moment almost overcome with self-pity he was dirty and starving and bitten and hurt and lonely and ugly and afraid and so completely miserable that it was like being in a pit a dark deep pit with no way out he sat back on the bank and fought crying then let it come and cried for perhaps three four minutes long tears self-pity tears wasted tears he stood went back to the water and took small drinks as soon as the cold water hit his stomach he felt the hunger sharpen as it had before and he stood and held his abdomen until the hunger cramps receded he had to eat he was weak with it again down with the hunger and he had to eat back at the shelter the berries lay in a pile where he had dumped them when he grabbed his windbreaker gut cherries he called them in his mind now and he thought of eating some of them not such a crazy amount as he had which he felt brought on the sickness in the night but just enough to stave off the hunger a bit he crawled into the shelter some flies were on the berries and he brushed them off he selected only the berries that were solidly ripe not the light red ones but the berries that were dark maroon red to black and swollen in ripeness when he had a small handful of them he went back down to the lake and washed them in water small fish scattered away when he splashed the water up and he wished he had a fishing line and hook then he ate them carefully spitting out the pits they were still tart but had sweetness to them although they seemed to make his lips a bit numb when he was finished he was still hungry but the edge was gone and his legs didn't feel as weak as they had he went back to the shelter it took him half an hour to go through the rest of the berries and sort them putting all the fully ripe ones in a pile and some leaves the rest in another pile when he was done he covered the two piles with grass he tore from the lake shore to keep the flies off and went back outside there were awful berries those gut berries he thought but there was food there food of some kind and he could eat a bit more later tonight if he had to for now he had a full day ahead of him he looked at the sky through the trees and saw that while there were clouds they were scattered and didn't seem to hold rain there was a light breeze that seemed to keep the mosquitoes down and he thought looking up along the lakeshore if there was one kind of berry there should be other kinds sweeter kinds if he kept the lake in sight as he had done yesterday he should be all right should be able to find home again and it stopped him he'd actually thought at that time home three days no two or was it three yes this was the third day and he had thought of the shelter as home he turned and looked at it studied the crude work the brush made a fair wall not weather tight but it cut most of the wind off he hadn't done so badly at that maybe it wasn't much but also maybe it was all he had for a home alrighty thought so i'll call it home he turned back and set off up the side of the lake heading for the gut cherry bushes his windbreaker bag in his hand things were bad he thought but maybe not that bad maybe he could find some better berries when he came to the gut cherry bushes he paused the branches were empty of birds but still had many berries and some of those had been merely red yesterday were now a dark maroon to black much riper maybe should stay and pick them to save them but the explosion in the night was still much to his memory and he decided to go on gut cherries were food but tricky to eat he needed something better another hundred yards up the shore there was a place where the wind had torn another path these must have been the fierce winds he thought to tear up places like this as they had the path he found with the plane when he crashed here the trees were not all the way down but twisted and snapped off halfway up from the ground so their tops were all down and rotted and gone leaving the snakes poking into the sky like broken teeth it made for tons of dead and dry wood and he wished once more he'd get a fire going it also made a kind of clearing with the tops of the trees gone the sun could get down to the ground and it was filled with small thorny bushes that were covered with berries raspberries these he knew because there were some raspberry bushes in the park and he and terry were always picking and eating them when they biked past the berries were full and ripe and he tasted one to find it sweet and with none of the problems of the gut cherries although they did not grow in clusters there were many of them and they were easy to pick and brian smiled and started eating sweet juice he thought oh they were sweet with just a tiny tang and he picked and ate and picked an eight and thought he had never tasted anything this good soon as before his stomach was full but now he had some sense and he did not gorge or cram more down instead he picked more and put them in his windbreaker feeling the morning sun on his back and thinking he was rich rich with food now just rich and he heard a noise to his rear a slight noise and he turned and saw the bear he could do nothing think nothing his tongue stained with berry juice stuck to the roof of his mouth and he stared at the bear it was black with a cinnamon-colored nose not 20 feet from him and big no huge it was all black fur and huge he had seen one in the zoo in the city once a black bear but it had been from india or somewhere this one was wild and much bigger than the one in the zoo and it was right there right there the sun caught the ends of the hairs along his back shining black and silky the bear stood on its hind legs half up and studied brian just studied him then lowered itself and moved slowly to the left eating berries as it rolled along wuffling and delicately using its mouth to lift each berry from the stem and in seconds it was gone gone and brian still hadn't moved his tongue was stuck to the top of his mouth the tip half out his eyes were wide and his hands were reaching for a berry then he made a sound a low it made no sense was just a sound of fear of disbelief that something that large could have come so close to him without his knowing it just walked up to him and could have eaten him and he could have done nothing nothing and when the sound was half done a thing happened to his leg a thing he had nothing to do with and they were running in the opposite direction from the bear back toward the shelter he would have run all the way in panic but after he had gone perhaps 50 yards his brain took over and slowed and finally stopped him if the bear had wanted you his brain said he would have taken you it is something to understand he thought not something to run away from the bear was eating berries not people the bear made no move to hurt you to threaten you it stood to see you better study you then went on its way eating berries it was a big bear but it didn't want you didn't want to cause you harm and that is the thing to understand here he turned and looked back at the stand of raspberries the bear was gone the birds were singing he saw nothing that could hurt him there was no danger here that he could sense could feel in the city at night there was sometimes danger you could not be in the park at night after dark because of danger but here the bear had looked at him and had moved on and this filled his thoughts the berries were so good so good so sweet and rich and his body was so empty and the bear had almost indicated that it didn't mind sharing he just walked from him and the berries were so good and he thought finally if he didn't go back and get the berries he would have to eat the gut cherries again tonight that convinced him and he walked slowly back to the raspberry patch and continued picking for the entire morning although with great caution and once when a squirrel rustled some pine needles at the base of a tree he nearly jumped out of his skin about noon the sun was almost straight overhead the clouds began to thicken and look dark in moments it started to rain and he took what he had picked and trotted back to the shelter he had eaten probably two pounds of raspberries and made another three pounds in his jacket rolled in a pouch he made it to the shelter just as the clouds completely opened and the rain roared down in the sheets soon the sound outside was drenched and there was rivolitz running down to the lake but inside he was dry and snug he started to put the picked berries back in the sordid pile with the gut cherries but noticed that the raspberries were seeping through the jacket they were much softer than the gut cherries and apparently were being crushed a bit with their own weight when he held the jacket up and looked beneath he saw a stream of red liquid he put a finger in it and found it to be a sweet and tangy like pop without the fizz and he grinned and lay back on the sand holding the bag up over his face and letting the seepage drip inside his mouth outside the rain poured down but brian lay back drinking syrup from the berries dry and with the pain almost all gone the stiffness also gone his belly full and a good taste in his mouth for the first time since the crash he wasn't thinking of himself or his own life brian was wondering if the bear was a surprise as he to find another bean in the berries later in the afternoon as evening came down he went to the lake and washed the sticky berry juice from his face and hands then went back to prepare for the night while he accepted and understood that the bear didn't want to hurt him it was still much in his thoughts and as darkness came into the shelter he took the hatchet out of his belt and put it by his head his hand on the handle as the day caught up with him and he slept chapter 8 at first he thought it was a growl in the still darkness of the shelter in the middle of the night his eyes came open and he was awake and he thought there was a growl but it was the wind a medium wind in the pines had made some sound that brought him up brought him awake he sat up and was hit with the smell it terrified him the smell was one of rot some musty rot that made him think only of graves with cobwebs and dust and old death his nostrils widened and he opened his eyes wider but he could see nothing it was too dark too hard dark with clouds covering even the small light from the stars and he couldn't see but the smell was alive alive and full and in the shelter he thought of the bear thought of bigfoot and every monster he had ever seen in every fright movie he'd ever watched and his heart hammered in his throat then he heard the slithering a brushing sound a slithering brushing sound near his feet and he kicked out as hard as he could kicked out and threw the hatchet of the sound a noise coming from his throat but the hatchet mist sailed into the wall where it hit the rocks with a shower of sparks and his leg was instantly torn with pain as if a hundred needles had been driven into it ah now he screamed with a pain and fear and skittered on his backside up into the corner of the shelter breathing through his mouth straining to see to hear the slithering moved again he thought toward him at first and terror took him stopping his breath he felt he could see a low dark form a bulk in the darkness a shadow that lived but now it moved away slithering and scraping it moved away and he saw or thought he saw it go out of the door opening he lay on his side for a moment then pulled a raspy breath in and held it listening for the attacker to return when it was apparent that the shadow wasn't coming back he felt the calf of his leg where the pain was centered and spreading to fill the whole leg his fingers gingerly touched a group of needles that had been driven through his pants and into the fleshy parts of his calf they were stiff and very sharp on the ends that stuck out and he knew then what the attacker had been a porcupine had stumbled into his shelter and when he had kicked it the thing had slapped him with its tail of quills he touched each quill carefully the pain made it seem as if dozens of them had been slammed into his leg but there were only eight pinning the cloth against his skin he turned back against the wall for a minute he couldn't leave them in they had to come out but just touching them made the pain more intense so fast he thought so fast things change when he'd gone to sleep he had satisfaction and in just a moment was all different he grasped one of the quills held his breath and jerked it sent pain signals to his brain in tight waves but he grabbed another pulled it then another quill when he had pulled four of them he stopped for a moment the pain had gone from being appointed injury pain to spreading in a hot smear up his leg and it made him catch his breath some of the quills were driven in deeper than others and they tore when they came out he breathed deeply twice let half of the breath out and went back to work jerk pause jerk and three more times before he laid back into the darkness done the pain filled his leg now and with it came new waves of self-pity sitting alone in the dark his leg aching some mosquitoes finding him again he started crying it was all too much just too much and he couldn't take it not the way it was i can't take it this way alone with no fire in the dark and next time it might be something worse maybe a bear and it wouldn't be just quills in the leg it'd be worse i can't do this he thought again and again i can't brian pulled himself up until he was sitting upright back in the corner of the cave he put his head down on his arms across his knees with stiffness taking his left leg and cried until he was cried out he didn't know how long it took but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of his when he learned the most important rule of survival which was the feeling sorry for yourself didn't work it wasn't just that it was wrong to do or that it was considered incorrect it was more than that it didn't work when he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done all done with it nothing had changed his legs still hurt it was still dark he was still alone and self-pity had accomplished nothing at last he slept again but already his patterns were changing and the sleep was light a resting dose more than a deep sleep with small sounds awakening him twice in the rest of the night in the last dose period before daylight before he awakened finally with the morning light and the clouds of new mosquitoes he dreamed this time it wasn't of his mother not of the secret but of his father at first and then of his friend terry in the initial segment of the dream his father was standing at the side of a living room looking at him and it was clear from his expression that he was trying to tell brian something his lips moved but there was no sound not a whisper he waved his hands at brian made gestures in front of his face as if you were scratching something and he worked to make a word with his mouth but at first brian couldn't see it then the lips made him shape but no sound came [Music] brian couldn't hear it couldn't understand it and he wanted to so badly it was so important to understand his father to know what he was saying he was trying to help trying so hard and when brian couldn't understand he looked cross the way he did when brian asked questions more than once and he faded brian's father faded into a fog place brian couldn't see and the dream was almost over or seemed to be when terry came he wasn't gesturing to brian but was sitting in the park at a bench looking at a barbecue pit and for a time nothing happened then he got up and poured some charcoal from a bag into the cooker then some starter fluid and he took a flick type lighter and lit the fluid when it was burning and the charcoal was at last getting hot he turned noticing brian for the first time in the dream he turned and smiled and pointed to the fire is it to say see a fire but it meant nothing to brian except that he wished he had a fire he saw a grocery sack on the table next to terry brian thought it must contain hot dogs and chips and mustard and he could think only of food but terry shook his head and pointed again to the fire and twice more he pointed to the fire made brian see the flames and brian felt his frustration and anger rise and he thought alright alright i see the fire but so what i don't have a fire i know about fire i know i need a fire i know that his eyes open and there was light in the cave a gray dim light of mourning he wiped his mouth and tried to move his leg which had stiffened like wood there was thirst and hunger and he ate some raspberries from the jacket they had spoiled a bit seemed softer and mushier but still at a rich sweetness he crushed the berries against the roof of his mouth with his tongue and drank the sweet juice as it ran down his throat a flash of metal caught his eye and he saw his hatchet in the sand where he had thrown it at the porcupine in the dark he scooched up wincing a bit when he bent his stiff leg and crawled to where the hatchet lay he picked it up and examined it and saw a chip in the top of the head the nick wasn't too large but the hatchet was important to him was his only tool and he shouldn't have thrown it he should keep it in his hand and make a tool of some kind to help push away an animal make a staff he thought or a lance and save the hatchet something came then a thought as he held the hatchet something about the dream and his father and terry but he couldn't pin it down he scrambled out and stood in the morning sun and stretched his back muscles and his sore leg the hatchet was still in his hand and as he stretched and raised it over his head it caught the first rays of the morning sun the first faint light hit the silver of the hatchet and it flashed a brilliant gold in the light like fire that's it he thought what they were trying to tell me fire the hatchet was the key to it all when he threw the hatchet the porcupine in the cave and missed and hit the stone wall it had showered sparks a golden shower of sparks in the dark as golden with fire as the sun was now the hatchet was the answer that's what his father and terry had been trying to tell him somehow he could get fire from the hatchet the sparks would make fire brian went back into the shelter and studied the wall it was some form of chalky granite or a sandstone but embedded in it were large pieces of a darker stone a harder and darker stone it only took him a moment to find where the hatchet had struck the steel had nicked into the edge of one of the darker stone pieces brian turned the head backward so he would strike with the flat rear of the hatchet and hit the black rock gently too gently and nothing happened he struck harder a glancing blow and two or three sparks skipped off the rock and died immediately he swung harder held the hatchet so it hit a longer sliding blow and the black rock exploded in fire sparks flew so heavily that several of them skittered and jumped on the sand beneath the rock and he smiled and struck again and again there could be fire here he thought i'll have fire here and struck again all of fire from the hatchet chapter nine brian found it was a long way from sparks to fire clearly there had to be something for the sparks to ignite some kind of tinder or kindling but what he brought some dried grass in tapped sparks into it and watched them die he tried small twigs breaking them into little pieces but that was worse than the grass then he tried a combination of the two grass and twigs nothing he had no trouble getting sparks but the tiny bits of hot stone or metal he couldn't tell which they were just sputtered and died he needed something finer something soft and fine and fluffy to catch the bits of fire shredded paper would be nice but he had no paper so close he said aloud so close he put the hatchet back in his belt and went out of the shelter limping on his sore leg there had to be something had to be man had made fire there had been fire for thousands millions of years there had to be a way he dug into his pockets and found a 20 bill in his wallet paper worthless paper out here but if he could get a fire going he ripped the 20 into tiny pieces made a pile of pieces and hit sparks into them nothing happened they just sat wouldn't take the sparks but there had to be a way some way to do it not 20 feet to his right leaning out over the water were birches and he stood looking at them for half a minute before they registered in his mind they were beautiful white with bark like clean slightly speckled paper paper he moved to the trees where the bark was peeling from the trunks it lifted in tiny tendrils almost fluffs brian plucked some of them loose rolled them in his fingers they seemed flammable dry and nearly powdery he pulled and twisted bits of the trees packing them in one hand while he picked them with the other picking and gathering until he had a wad close to the size of a baseball then he went back into his shelter and arranged the ball of birch bark peelings at the base of the black rock as an afterthought he threw in the remains of the 20 bill he struck in a stream of sparks fell into the bark and quickly died but this time one spark fell on one small hair of the dry bark almost a thread of bark and seemed to glow a bit brighter before it died the material had to be finer there had to be a soft and incredibly fine nest for the sparks i must make a home for the sparks he thought a perfect home or they won't stay they won't make fire he started ripping the bark using his fingernails at first and when that didn't work he used the sharp edge of the hatchet cutting the bark in thin slivers hair's so fine they were almost not there it was painstaking work slow work and he stayed with it for over two hours twice he stopped for a handful of berries and wants to go to the lake for a drink then back to work the sun on his back until at last he had a ball of fluff as big as a grapefruit dry birch bark fluff he positioned his spark nest at the base of the rock used his thumb to make a small depression in the middle and slammed the back of the hatchet down across the black rock a cloud of sparks rained down most of them missing the nest but some perhaps 30 or so hit the depression and of those six or seven found fuel and grew smoldered and caused the bark to take on the red glow then they went out close he was close he repositioned the nest made a new and smaller dent with his thumb and struck again more sparks a slight glow than nothing it was me i'm doing something wrong i don't know this a cave dweller would have a fire by now a cruel magnum man would have a fire by now but i don't know this i don't know how to make a fire maybe not enough sparks he settled the nest in place once more and hit the rock with a series of blows as fast as he could the sparks flowed like a golden waterfall at first they seemed to take there were several many sparks that found life and took briefly but they all died starved he leaned back they're like me they're starving it wasn't quantity there were plenty of sparks but they needed more i killed for a book of matches just one book just one match a kill what makes fire he thought back to school to all those science classes had he ever learned what made a fire did a teacher ever stand up and say this is what makes a fire he shook his head tried to focus his thoughts what did it take you have to have fuel and he had that the bark was fuel oxygen there had to be air he needed to add air he had to fan on it blow on it he made the nest ready again held the hatchet backward and struck four quick blows sparks came down and he leaned forward as fast as he could in blue too hard there was a bright almost intense glow then it was gone he had blown it out another set of strikes more sparks he leaned in blue but gently this time holding back and aiming the stream of air from his mouth to hit the brightest spot five or six sparks had fallen in a tight mass of bark hair and brian centered his efforts there the sparks grew with his gentle breath the red glow moved from the sparks themselves into the bark moved and grew and became worms glowing red worms that crawled up the bark hairs and caught other threads of bark and grew until there was a pocket of red as big as a quarter a glowing red coal of heat and when he ran out of breath and paused to inhale the red ball suddenly burst into flame fire i've got fire i've got it i've got it i've got it but the flames were thick and oily and burning fast consuming the ball of bark as fast if it were gasoline he had to feed the flames keep them going working as fast as he could he carefully placed the dried grass and wood pieces he had tried at first on top of the bark and was gratified to see them take but they would go fast he needed more and more he couldn't let the flame go out he ran from the shelter to the pines and started breaking off the low dead small limbs these he threw into the shelter went back for more threw those in and squatted to break and feed the hungry flames when the small wood was going well he went out and found larger wood and didn't relax until that was going then he leaned back against the wood brace of his door opening and smiled i have a friend i have a friend now a hungry friend but a good one and a friend named fire hello fire the curve of the rock back made an almost perfect drawing flue that carried the smoke up through the cracks of the rock but held the heat if he kept the fire small it would be perfect and keep anything like the porcupine from coming through the door again a friend and a guard so much for a little spark a friend and a guard from a tiny spark he looked around and wished he had somebody to tell this thing to show this thing he had done but there was nobody nothing but the trees and the sun and the breeze in the lake nobody and he thought rolling thoughts with the smoke curling up over his head and a smile still half on his face he thought i wonder what they're doing now i wonder what my father is doing now i wonder what my mother is doing now i wonder if she's with him chapter 10 he couldn't at first leave the fire it was so precious to him so close and sweet a thing the yellow and red flames brightening the dark interior of the shelter the happy crackled the dry wood as it burned that he couldn't leave it he went to the trees and brought in as many dead limbs as he could chop off and carry and we had a large pile of them he sat near the fire though was getting into the warm middle part of the day and he was hot and broke them into small pieces and fed the fire i won't let you go out he said to himself to the flames not ever and so he sat through a long part of the day keeping the flames even eating from his stalk of raspberries leaving to drink from the lake when he was thirsty in the afternoon toward the evening with his face smoke smeared and skin red from the heat he finally began to think ahead to what he needed to do he would need a large wood pile to get through the night it would be almost impossible to find wood in the dark so he had to have it all in and cut and stacked before the sun went down brian made certain the fire was banked with new wood then went out of the shelter and searched for a good fuel supply up the hill from the campsite the same windstorm that left him a place to land the plane had that only been three or four days ago had dropped three large white pines across each other they were dead now dry and filled with weathered dry dead limbs enough for many days he chopped and broke and carried wood back to the camp stacking the pieces under the overhang until he had what he thought to be an enormous pile as high as his head and six feet across the base between trips he added small pieces to the fire to keep it going and on one of the trips to get wood he noticed an added advantage of the fire when he was in the shade of the trees breaking limbs the mosquitoes swarmed on him as usual but when he came to the fire or just near the shelter where the smoke eddied and swirled the insects were gone it was a wonderful discovery the mosquitoes had nearly driven him mad and the thought of being rid of them lifted his spirits on another trip he looked back and saw the smoke curling up through the trees and realized for the first time that he now had the means to make a signal he could carry a burning stick and build a signal and perhaps attract attention which meant more wood and still more wood there did not seem to be an end to the wood he would need and spent all the rest of the afternoon into dusk making wood trips at dark he settled in again for the night next to the fire with a stack of short pieces ready to put on and he ate the rest of the raspberries during all the work of the day his leg had loosened but it still ached a bit and he rubbed it and watched the fire and thought for the first time since the crash that he might be getting a handle on things might be starting to do something other than just sit he was out of food but he could look tomorrow and he could build a signal fire tomorrow and get more wood tomorrow the fire cut the night coolness and settled him back into sleep thinking of tomorrow he slept hard and wasn't sure what awakened him but his eyes came open and he stared into the darkness the fire had burned down and looked out but he stirred with a piece of wood and found a bed of coal still glowing hot and red with small pieces of wood and carefully blowing he soon had a blaze going again it had been close he had to be sure to try and sleep in short intervals so he could keep the fire going and he tried to think of a way to regulate his sleep but it made him sleepy to think about it and he was just going under again when he heard the sound outside it was not unlike the sound of the porcupine something slithering and being dragged across the sand but when he looked out the door opening it was too dark to see anything whatever it was stopped making that sound in a few moments and he thought he heard something sloshing into the water at the shoreline but he had the fire now and plenty of wood so he wasn't as worried as he had been the night before he dozed and slept for a time awakened again just a dawn grey light and added wood to the still-smoking fire before standing outside and stretching standing with his arms stretched over his head and the tight knot of hunger in his stomach he looked toward the lake and saw the tracks they were strange a main center line up from the lake in the sand with claw marks to the side leading to a small pile of sand then going back down to the water he walked over and squatted near them studied them tried to make sense of them whatever had made the tracks had some kind of flat draking bottom in the middle and was apparently pushed along by the legs that stuck out to the side up from the water to a small pile of sand then back down into the water some animal some kind of water animal that came up into the sand to do to do what to do something with the sand to play and make a pile into the sand he smiled city boy he thought oh you city boy with your city ways he made a mirror in his mind a mirror of himself and saw how he must look city boy with your city ways sitting in the sand trying to read the tracks and not knowing not understanding why would anything wild come up from the water to play in the sand not that way animals weren't that way they didn't waste time that way it had come up from the water for a reason a good reason and he must try to understand the reason he must change to fully understand the reason himself or he wouldn't make it he'd come up from the water for a reason and the reason he thought squatting the reason had to do with the pile of sand he brushed the top off gently with his hand but found only damp sand still there must be a reason and he carefully kept scraping and digging until about four inches down he suddenly came into a small chamber in the cool damp sand and there lay eggs many eggs almost perfectly round eggs the size of table tennis balls and he laughed then because he knew it had been a turtle he had seen a show on television about sea turtles that came up onto beaches and laid their eggs in the sand there must be fresh water lake turtles that did the same maybe snapping turtles he had heard of snapping turtles they became fairly large he thought it must have been a snapper that came up in the night when he heard the noise that awakened him she must have come then and laid the eggs food more than eggs more than knowledge more than anything this was food his stomach tightened and rolled and made a noise as he looked at the eggs as if his stomach belonged to somebody else or had seen the eggs with his own eyes and was demanding food the hunger always there had been somewhat controlled and dormant when there was nothing to eat but with the eggs came to scream to eat his whole body craved food with such intensity that it quickened his breath he reached into the nest and pulled the eggs out one at a time there were 17 of them each as round as a ball in white they had leathery shells that gave instead of breaking when he squeezed them when he had them heaped on the sand in a pyramid he'd never felt so rich somehow he suddenly realized that he didn't know how to eat them he had a fire but no way to cook them no container and he'd never thought of eating a raw egg he had an uncle named carter his father's brother who always put an egg in a glass of milk and drank it in the morning brian had watched him do it once just once and when the runny part of the white left the glass and went into his uncle's mouth and down the throat in a single gulp brian almost lost everything he had ever eaten still he thought still as his stomach moved towards his backbone he became less and less fussy some natives in the world ate grasshoppers and ants and if they could do that he could get a raw egg down he picked one up and tried to break the shell and found it surprisingly tough finally using the hatchet he sharpened a stick and poked a hole in the egg he widened the hole with his finger and looked inside just an egg it had a dark yellow yolk and not so much white as he thought there would be just an egg food just an egg he had to eat raw he looked out across the lake and brought the egg to his mouth and closed his eyes and sucked and squeezed the egg at the same time and swallowed as fast as he could ugh it had a greasy almost oily taste but it was still an egg his throat tried to throw it back up his whole body seemed to convulse with it but his stomach took it held it and demanded more the second egg was easier and by the third one he had no trouble at all it just slid down he ate six of them could have easily eaten all of them and not been full but a part of him said to hold back save the rest he couldn't now believe the hunger the eggs had awakened it fully roaringly so that it tore at him after the sixth egg he ripped the shell open and licked the inside clean then went back and ripped the other five open and licked them out as well and wondered if he could eat the shells there must be some food value in them but when he tried they were too leathery to chew and he couldn't get them down he stood away from the eggs for a moment literally stood and turned away so they couldn't see them if he looked at them he would have to eat more he would store them in the shelter and eat only one a day he fought the hunger down again controlled it he would take them now and store them and save them and eat one a day and he realized as he thought it that he had forgotten that they might come the searchers surely they would come before he could eat all the eggs at one day he had forgotten to think about them and that wasn't good he had to keep thinking of them because if he forgot them and didn't think of them they might forget about him and he had to keep hoping he had to keep hoping chapter 11 there were these things to do he transferred all the eggs from the small beach into the shelter reburying them near his sleeping area took all his will to keep from eating another one as he moved them but he got it done and when they were out of sight again it was easier he added wood to the fire and cleaned up the camp area a good laugh that cleaning up the camp all he did was shake out his windbreaker and hang it in the sun to dry the berry juice that it soaked in and smooth the sand where he slept but it was a mental thing he had gotten depressed thinking about how they hadn't found him yet and when he was busy and had something to do the depression seemed to leave so there were things to do with the camp squared away he brought in more wood he had decided to always have enough on hand for three days and after spending one night with the fire for a friend he knew what a staggering amount of wood it would take he worked all through the morning at the wood breaking down dead limbs and breaking or chopping them in smaller pieces storing them neatly beneath the overhang he stopped once to take a drink at the lake and in his reflection he saw that the swelling on his head was nearly gone there was no pain there so he assumed that it had taken care of itself his leg was also back to normal although he had a small pattern of holes roughly star-shaped where the quills had nailed him and while he was standing at the lake shore taking stock he noticed that his body was changing he had never been fat but had been slightly heavy with a little extra weight just above his belt at the sides this was completely gone and his stomach had caved into the hunger and the sun had cooked him past burning so he was tanning and with the smoke from the fire his face was starting to look like leather but perhaps more than his body was the change in his mind or in the way he was becoming i'm not the same he thought i see i hear differently he didn't know when the change started but it was there when a sound came to him now he didn't just hear it but he would know the sound he would swing and look at it a breaking twig of movement of air and know the sound as if somehow could move his mind back down the wave of sound to the source he could know what the sound was before he could quite realize he heard it and when he saw something a bird moving a wing inside a bush or a ripple on the water he would truly see that thing not just notice it as he used to notice things in the city he would see all the parts of it see the whole wing the feathers see the color of the feathers see the bush and the size and shape and color of its leaves he would see the way the light moved with the ripples on the water and see that the wind made the ripples and which way the wind had to blow to make the ripples move in that certain way none of that used to be in brian and now it was part of him a changed part of him a grown part of him and the two things his mind and his body had come together as well had made quite a connection with each other that he didn't quite understand when his ears heard a sound or his eye saw sight his mind took control of his body without his thinking he moved to face the sound or sight moved to make ready for it to deal with it there were these things to do when the wood was done he decided to get a signal fire ready he moved to the top of the rock ridge that comprised the bluff over his shelter and was pleased to find a large flat stone area more wood he thought moani inwardly he went back to the fallen trees and found more dead limbs carrying them up on the rock until he had enough for a bonfire initially he had thought of making a signal fire every day but he couldn't he would never be able to keep the wood supply going so while he was working he decided to have the fire ready and if he heard an engine or even thought he heard a plane engine he would run up with a burning limb and set off the signal fire things to do at the last trip to the top of the stone bluff with the wood he stopped sat on the point overlooking the lake and rested the lake lay before him 20 or so feet below and he had not seen this way since he had come in with a plane remembering the crash he had a moment of fear a breath tightening little rip of terror but it passed and he was quickly caught up in the beauty of the scenery it was so incredibly beautiful that it was almost unreal from his height he could see not just the lake but across part of the forest a green carpet and it was full of life birds insects there was a constant hum and song at the other end of the bottom of the l there was another large rock sticking out of the water and on top of the rock a snagly pine had somehow found food and grown bent and gnarled sitting on one limb was a blue bird with a crest and sharp beak a kingfisher he thought of a picture he'd seen once which left the branch while he watched and dove into the water it emerged a split part of a second later in its mouth was a small fish wiggling silver in the sun it took the fish to a limb juggled it twice and swallowed it whole fish of course he thought there were fish in the lake there were fish in the lake and they were food and if a bird could do it he scrambled down the side of the bluff and trotted to the edge of the lake looking down into the water somehow it never occurred to him to look inside the water only at the surface the sun was flashing back up into his eyes and he moved off to the side and took his shoes off and waited out 15 feet then he turned and stood still with the sun at his back and studied the water again it was he saw after a moment literally packed with life small fish swam everywhere some narrow and long some round most of them three or four inches long some a bit larger and many smaller there was a patch of mud off to the side leading into deeper water and he could see old clamshells there so there must be clams as he watched a crayfish looking like a tiny lobster left one of the empty clam shells and went to another looking for something to eat digging with its claws while he stood some of the small roundish fish came quite close to his legs and he tensed got ready and made a wild stab at grabbing one of them they exploded away in a hundred flicks of quick light so fast that he had no hope of catching them that way but they soon came back seemed to be curious about him and as he walked from the water he tried to think of a way to use the curiosity to catch them he had no hooks or string but if he could somehow lure them into the shallows and make a spear a small fish spear he might be able to strike fast enough to get one he would have to find the right kind of wood slim and straight he had seen some willows up along the lake that might work he could use the hatchet to sharpen it and shape it while he was sitting by the fire tonight and that brought up the fire which he had to feed again he looked at the sun and saw it was getting late in the afternoon and when he thought of how late it was he thought he ought to reward all his work with another egg and that made him think some kind of dessert would be nice he smiled when he thought of dessert so fancy and he wondered if he should move up the lake and see if he could find some raspberries after he banked the fire and while he was looking for the right wood for a spear spear would he thought and it all rolled together just rolled together and rolled over him there were things to do chapter 12 the fishbeard didn't work he stood in the shallows and waited again and again the small fish came closer and closer and he lunged time after time but was always too slow he tried throwing it jabbing it everything but flailing with it and it didn't work the fish were just too fast he had been so sure so absolutely certain that it would work the night before sitting by the fire he had taken the willow and carefully peeled the bark until he had a straight staff about six feet long and just under an inch thick at the base the thickest end then propping the hatchet in a crack in the rock wall he had pulled the head of his spear against it carving a thin piece off each time until the thick end tapered down to a needle point still not satisfied he couldn't imagine hitting one of the fish with a single point he carefully used the hatchet to split the point up the middle for 8 or 10 inches and jammed a piece of wood up into the split to make a two-pronged spear with a point about two inches apart it was crude but it looked effective and seemed to have good balance when he stood outside the shelter and hefted the spear he had worked on the fish spear until it had become more than just a tool he'd spent hours and hours on it and now it didn't work he moved into the shallows and stood and the fish came to him just as before they swarmed around his legs some of them about six inches long but no matter how he tried they were too fast at first he tried throwing it but that had no chance as soon as he brought his arm back well before he threw the movement frightened them next he tried lunging at them having the spear ready just above the water and thrusting it with it finally he actually put the spear in the water and waited until the fish were right in front of it but still somehow he telegraphed his motion before he thrust and they saw it and flashed away he needed something to spring the spear forward some way to make it move faster than the fish some mode of force a string that snapped or a bow a bow and arrow a thin long arrow with the point in the water and the bowl pulled back so that all it had to do was release the arrow yes that was it he had to invent the bow and arrow he almost laughed as he moved out of the water and put his shoes on the morning sun was getting hot and he took his shirt off maybe that was how it really happened way back when some primitive man tried to spear fish and it didn't work and he invented the bow and arrow maybe it was always that way discoveries happened because they needed to happen he had not eaten anything yet this morning so he took a moment to dig up the eggs and eat one then he re-buried them banked the fire with a couple of thicker pieces of wood settled the hatchet on his belt and took the spear in his right hand and set off up the lake to find wood to make a bow he went without a shirt but something about the wood smoke smell on him kept the insects from bothering him as he walked to the berry patch the raspberries were starting to become overripe just in two days and he would have to pick as many as possible after he found the wood but he did take a little time now to pick a few and eat them they were full and sweet when he picked one two others would fall off the limbs into the grass and soon his hands and cheeks were covered with red berry juice and he was full that surprised him being full he hadn't thought he would ever be full again knew only the hunger and here he was full one turtle leg and a few handfuls of berries and he felt full he looked down at his stomach and saw that it was still caved in didn't bulge out as it would have with two hamburgers and a freezy slush it must have shrunk and there was still hunger there but not like it was not tearing at him this was hunger that he knew would be there always even when he had food a hunger that made him look for things see things a hunger to make him hunt he swung his eyes across the berries to make sure the bear wasn't there at his back then he moved down to the lake the spear went out before him automatically moving the brush away from his face as he walked and when he came to the water's edge he swung left not sure what he was looking for not knowing what wood might be best for a bow he had never made a bow never shot a bow in his life but it seemed that it would be along the lake near the water he saw some young birch and they were springy but they lacked snaps somehow as did the willows not enough whip back halfway up the lake just as he started to step over a log he was absolutely terrified by an explosion under his feet something like a feathered bomb blew up and away in a flurry of leaves and thunder it frightened him so badly that he fell back and down and then was gone leaving only an image in his mind a bird it had been about the size of a very small chicken only with a fan tail and stubby wings that slammed against his body and made a loud noise noise there and gone he got up and brushed himself off the bird had been speckled brown and grey and it must not have been very smart because brian's foot had been nearly on it before it flew half a second more and he would have stepped on it and caught it he thought and eaten it he might be able to catch one or spear one maybe he thought maybe it tasted like chicken maybe he could catch one or spear one and probably it did taste like chicken just like chicken when his mother baked it in the oven with garlic and salt and it turned golden brown and crackled he shook his head to drive the picture out and moved down to the shore there was a tree there with long branches that seemed straight and when he pulled on one of them and let go it had almost a vicious snap to it he picked one of the limbs that seemed right and began chopping where the limb joined the tree the wood was so hard and he didn't want to cause it to split so he took his time took small chips and concentrated so hard that at first he didn't hear it a persistent wine like the insects only more steady with an edge of a roar to it was in his ears and he chopped and cut and was thinking of a bow how he would make a bow how it would be when he shaped it with a hatchet and still the sound didn't cut through until the limb was nearly off the tree and when the wine inside his head and knew it then a plane it was a motor far off but seeming to get louder they were coming for him he threw down the limb and his spear and holding the hatchet he started to run for camp he had to get fire up on the bluff and signal to them get fire and smoke up he put all of his life into his legs jumped log and moved through brush like a light ghost swiveling and running his lungs filling and blowing and now the sound was louder coming in his direction if not right at him at least closer he could see it all in his mind now the picture the way it would be he would get the fire going and the plane would see the smoke and circle circle once and then again and wiggle its wings it would be a float plane and it would land on the water and come across the lake and the pilot would be amazed that he was alive after all these days all this he saw as he ran for the camp and the fire they would take him from here and this night this very night he would sit with his father and eat and tell him all the things he could see it now oh yes all as he ran in the sun his legs liquid springs he got to the camp still hearing the wine of the engine and one stick of wood still had good flame he dove inside and grabbed the wood and ran around the edge of the ridge scrambled up like a cat in blue and nearly had the flame feeding growing when the sound moved away it was abrupt as if the plane had turned he shielded the sun from his eyes and tried to see it tried to make the plane become real in his eyes but the trees were so high so thick and now the sound was still fainter he kneeled again to the flames and blew and added grass and chips and the flames fed and grew and in moments he had a bonfire as high as his head but the sound was gone now look back look back and see the smoke now and turn please turn he thought look back he whispered feeling all the pictures fade seeing his father's face fade like the sound like the lost dreams like an end to hope oh turn now and come back look back and see the smoke and turn for me but it kept moving away until he couldn't hear it even in his imagination in his soul gone he stood on the bluff over the lake his face cooking in the roaring bonfire watching the clouds of ash and smoke going into the sky and thought no more than a thought he knew then he wouldn't get out of this place not now not ever that had been a search plane he was sure of it that must have been them and they'd come as far off to the side of the flight plans they thought they would have to come and then turn back they didn't see a smoke didn't hear the cry from his mind they wouldn't return he would never leave now never get out of here he went down to his knees and felt the tears start cutting through the smoke and ash on his face silently falling onto the stone gone he thought finally it was all gone all silly and gone no bows no spears or fish or berries it was also silly anyway all just a game he could do a day but never forever he couldn't make it if they didn't come for him someday he couldn't play the game without hope couldn't play the game without a dream they'd taken it all away from him now they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now the plane gone his family gone all of it gone they wouldn't come he was alone and there was nothing for him chapter 13 brian stood at the end of the long part of the l of the lake and watched the water smelled the water listen to the water was the water a fish moved and his eyes jerked sideways to see the ripples but he didn't move any part of his body and didn't raise the bow or reach into his belt pouch for a fish arrow it wasn't the right kind of fish not a food fish the food fish stayed close in in the shallows and didn't roll that way but made quicker movements food movements the large fish rolled and stayed deep and couldn't be taken but it didn't matter this day this morning he wasn't looking for fish fish was the light meat and he was sick of them he was looking for one of the foolish birds he called them fool birds and there was a flock that lived near the end of the long part of the lake but something he didn't understand had stopped him and he stood breathing gently through his mouth to keep silent letting his eyes and his ears go out and do the work for him it had happened before this way something had come into him from outside to warn him and he had stopped once it had been the bear again he had been taking the last of the raspberries and something came inside and stopped him and when he looked where his ears said to look there was a female bear with cubs had he taken two more steps he would have come between the mother and her cubs and that was a bad place to be as it was the mother had stood and faced him and made a sound a low sound in her throat to threaten and warn him he paid attention to the feeling now and he stood and waited patiently knowing he was right and something would come turn smell listen feel and then sound a small sound and he looked up and away from the lake and saw the wolf it was halfway up the hill from the lake standing with its head and shoulder sticking out into a small opening looking down on him with wide yellow eyes he'd never seen a wolf and the size threw him not as big as a bear but somehow seeming that large the wolf claimed all that was below him as his own took brian as his own brian looked back and for a moment felt afraid because the wolf was so so right he knew brian knew him and owned him and chose not to do anything to him but the fear moved then moved away and brian knew the wolf for what it was another part of the woods another part of all of it brian relaxed the tension on his spear in his hand settled the bow in his other hand from where it had started to come up he knew the wolf now as the wolf knew him and he nodded to it nodded and smiled the wolf watched him for another time another part of his life then it turned and walked effortlessly up the hill and it came out of the brush it was followed by three other wolves all equally large and gray and beautiful all looking down on him as they trotted past and away and brian nodded to each of them he was not the same now brian that stood and watched the wolves move away and nodded to them was completely changed time had come time that he measured but didn't care about time had come into his life and moved out and left him different in measured time 47 days had passed since the crash 42 days he thought since he had died and been born as a new brian when the plane had come and gone it had put him down gutted him and dropped him and left him with nothing the rest of that first day he had gone down and down until dark he had let the fire go out had forgotten to eat even an egg had let his brain take him down to where he was done where he wanted to be done and done to where he wanted to die he had settled into the grey funk deeper and still deeper until finally in the dark he had gone up on the ridge and then taken the hatchet and tried to end it by cutting himself madness a hissing madness that still took his brain there had been nothing for him then and he tried to become nothing but the cutting had been hard to do impossible to do and he had it last fall into his side wishing for death wishing for an end and slept only didn't sleep with his eyes closed and his mind open he lay on the rock through the night lay and hated and wished for it to end and thought the word cloud down cloud down through the awful night over and over the word wanting all his clouds to come down but in the morning he was still there still there on his side and the sun came up and when he opened his eyes he saw the cuts on his arm the dry blood turning black he saw the blood and hated the blood hated what he had done to himself when he was the old brian and was weak and two things came into his mind two true things he was not the same the plain passing changed him the disappointment cut him down and made him new he was not the same and would never be again like he had been that was one of the true things the new things and the other one was that he wouldn't die he wouldn't let death in again he was new of course he had made a lot of mistakes he smiled now walking up the lake shore after the wolves were gone thinking of the early mistakes the mistakes that came before he realized that he had to find new ways to be what he had become he'd made a new fire which he now kept going using partially rotten wood because the punky wood would smolder for many hours and still come back with fire but that had been the extent of doing things right for a while his first bow was a disaster that almost blinded him he had sat a whole night and shaped the limbs carefully until the bow looked beautiful then he had spent two days making arrows the shafts were willow straight and with the barked peeled and he fire hardened the points and split a couple of them to make forked points as he had done with the spear he had no feathers so he just left them bare figuring for fish they only have to travel a few inches he had no string and that threw him until he looked down at his tennis shoes they had long laces too long and he found that one lace cut in half would take care of both shoes and that left the other lace for a bow string all seemed to be going well until he tried a test shot he put an arrow to the string pulled it back to his cheek pointed it at a dirt humming and at that precise instant the bow would explode in his hands at sending splinters and chips of wood into his face two pieces actually stuck into his forehead just above his eyes and had they only been slightly lower they would have blinded him too stiff mistakes in his mental journal he listed them to tell his father listed all the mistakes he had made a new bow with slender limbs and a more fluid gentle pull but couldn't hit the fish though he sat in the water and was in the end surrounded by a virtual cloud of small fish it was infuriating he would pull the bow back set the arrow just above the water and when the fish was no more than an inch away released the arrow only to miss it seemed to him that the arrow had gone right through the fish again and again but the fish didn't get hurt finally after hours he stuck the arrow down in the water pulled the bow and waited for a fish to come close and while he was waiting he noticed that the water seemed to make the arrow bend or break in the middle of course he had forgotten that water refracts ben's light he'd learn that somewhere in some class maybe it was biology he couldn't remember but it did bend light and that meant the fish were not where they appeared to be they were lower just below which meant he had to aim just under them he wouldn't forget his first hit not ever a round-shaped fish with golden sides sides as gold as the sun stopped in front of the arrow and he aimed just beneath it at the bottom edge of the fish and released the arrow and there was a bright flurry a splash of gold in the water he grabbed the arrow and raised it up and the fish was on the end wiggling against the blue sky he held the fish against the sky until it stopped wiggling held it and looked to the sky and felt his throat tightened swell and fill with pride in what he had done he had done food with his bow with an arrow fashioned by his own hands he had done food had found a way to live the bow had given him this way and he exalted in it in the bow in the arrow in the fish in the hatchet in the sky he stood and walked from the water still holding the fish and arrow and bow against the sky seeing them as they fit his arms as they were part of him he had food he cut a green willow fork and held the fish over the fire until the skin crackled and peeled away and the meat inside was flaky and moist and tender this he picked off carefully with his fingers tasting every piece mashing them in his mouth with his tongue to get the juices out of them hot steaming pieces of fish he couldn't he thought then ever get enough and all that first day first new day he spent going to the lake shooting a fish taking it back to the fire cooking it and eating it then back to the lake shooting a fish cooking it and eating it and on that way until it was dark he had taken the scraps back to the water with the thought that they might work for bait and the other fish came by the hundreds to clean them up he could take his pick of them like a store he thought just like a store and he couldn't remember later how many ate that day but he thought it must have been over 20. it had been a feast day his first feast day and a celebration of being alive and the new way he had of getting food by the end of that day when it became dark and he lay next to the fire with his stomach full of fish and grease from the meat smeared around his mouth he could feel new hope building in him not hope that he would be rescued that was gone but hope in his knowledge hoping the fact that he could learn and survive and take care of himself tough hope he thought that night i'm full of tough hope chapter 14 mistakes small mistakes could turn into disasters funny little mistakes could snowball so that while you were still smiling at the humor you could find yourself looking at death in the city if you made a mistake usually there was a way to rectify it make it all right if he fell on his bike and sprained a leg he could wait for it to heal if he forgot something at the store he could find other food in the refrigerator now it was different and also quick also incredibly quick if he sprained a leg here he might starve before he could get around again if he missed while he was hunting or if the fish moved away he might starve if he got sick really sick so he couldn't move he might starve mistakes early in the new time he had learned the most important thing the truly vital knowledge that drives all creatures in the forest food is all food was simply everything all things in the woods from insects to fish to bears were always always looking for food it was the great single driving influence in nature to eat all must eat but the way he learned it almost killed him his second new night stomach full of fish the fire smoldering in the shelter he had been sound asleep when something he thought later it might be smell and awakened him near the fire completely unafraid of the smoking coals completely unafraid of brian a skunk was digging where he had buried the eggs there was some sliver of a moon and in the faint pearl light he could see the bushy tail the white stripes down the back and he had nearly smiled he didn't know how the skunk had found the eggs some smell perhaps some tiny fragment of shell had left a smell but it looked almost cute its little head down and its little tail up as it dug kicking the sand back but those were his eggs not the skunks and the half smile had been quickly replaced with fear that he would lose his food and he grabbed a handful of sand and thrown it at the skunk get out of here he was going to say more some silly human words but in less than half a second the skunk had snapped its rear end up curved the tail over and sprayed brian with a direct shot aimed at his head from less than four feet away in the tiny confines of the shelter the effect was devastating the thick sulfurous rot and odor filled the small room heavy ugly and stinking the corrosive spray that hit his face seared into his lungs and eyes blinding him he screamed and threw himself sideways taking the entire wall off the shelter screamed and clawed off the shelter and fell ran to the shore of the lake stumbling and tripping he scrambled into the water and slammed his head back and forth trying to wash his eyes slashing at the water to clear his eyes a hundred funny cartoons he had seen about skunks cute cartoons about the smell of skunks cartoons to laugh at and joke about but when the spray hit there was nothing funny about it he was completely blind for almost two hours a lifetime he thought that he might be permanently blind or at least impaired and that would have been the end as it was the pain in his eyes lasted for days bothered him after that for two weeks the smell in the shelter in his clothes and his hair was still there now almost a month and a half later and he had nearly smiled mistakes food had to be protected while he was in the lake trying to clear his eyes the skunk went ahead and dug up the rest of the turtle eggs and ate every one licked all the shells clean and couldn't have cared less that brian was thrashing around in the water like a dying carp the skunk had found food and was taking it and brian was paying for a lesson protect food and have a good shelter not just a shelter to keep the wind and rain out but a shelter to protect a shelter to make him safe the day after the skunk he set about making a good place to live the basic idea had been good the place for his shelter was right but he just hadn't gone far enough he'd been lazy but now he knew the second most important thing about nature what drives nature food was first but the work for the food went on and on nothing in nature was lazy he had tried to take a shortcut and paid for it with his turtle eggs which he had come to like more than chicken eggs from the store they had been fuller somehow had more depth to them he set about improving his shelter by tearing it down from dead pines up the hill he brought down heavier logs and fastened several of them across the opening wedging them at the top and burying the bottom in the sand then he wove long branches in through them to make a truly tight wall and still not satisfied he took even thinner branches and wove those into the first weave when he was at last finished he couldn't find a place to put his fist through it all held together like a very stiff woven basket he judged the door opening to be the weakest spot and here he took special time to weave a door of willows and so tied a mesh that no matter how a skunk tried or porcupine he thought looking at the marks in his leg it couldn't possibly get through he had no hinges but by arranging some cut off limbs at the top in the right way he had a method to hook the door in place and when he was in and the door was hung he felt relatively safe a bear something big could still get in by tearing at it but nothing small could bother him and the weave of the structure still allowed the smoke to filter up through the top and out all in all it took him three days to make the shelter stopping to shoot fish and eat as he went bathing four times a day to try and get the smell from the skunk to leave when his house was done finally done right he turned to the constant problem food it was all right to hunt and eat or fish in eat but what happened if he had to go a long time without food what happened when the berries were gone and he got sick or hurt or thinking of the skunk laid up temporarily he needed a way to store food a place to store it and he needed food to store mistakes he tried to learn from the mistakes he couldn't bury food again couldn't leave it in the shelter because something like a bear could get at it right away it had to be high somehow high and safe above the door to the shelter up the rock face about 10 feet was a small ledge that could make a natural storage place unreachable to animals except that it was unreachable to him as well a ladder of course he needed a ladder but he had no way to fashion one nothing to hold the steps on and that stopped him until he found a dead pine with small branches still sticking out using his hatchet he chopped the branches off so they stuck out four or five inches all up along the log then he cut the log off about 10 feet long and dragged it down to his shelter it was a little heavy but dry and he could manage it and when he propped it up he found he could climb to the ledge with ease though the tree did roll from side to side a bit as he climbed his food shelf as he thought of it had been covered with bird manure and he carefully scraped it clean with sticks he'd never seen birds there but that was probably because the smoke from his fire went up right across the opening and they didn't like smoke still he had learned and he took time to weave a snug door for the small opening with green willows cutting it so it jammed in tightly and when he finished he stood back and looked at the rock face his shelter below the food shelf above and allowed a small bit of pride to come not bad he thought not bad for somebody who used to have trouble greasing the bearings on a bicycle not bad at all mistakes he had made a good shelter and food shelf but he had no food except for fish and the last of the berries and the fish as good as they still tasted then were not something he could store his mother left some salmon out by mistake one time when they went on an overnight trip to cape hesper to visit relatives and when they got back the smell filled the whole house there was no way to store fish at least he thought no way to store them dead but as he looked at the weave of his structure a thought came to him and he moved down to the water he had been putting the waste from the fish back in the water and the food had attracted hundreds of new ones i wonder they seemed to come easily to the food at least the small ones he had no trouble now shooting them and had even speared one with his old fish beer now that he knew to aim low he could dangle something in his fingers and they came right up to it it might be possible he thought might just be possible to trap them make some kind of pond to his right at the base of the rock bluff there were piles of smaller rocks that had fallen from the main chunk splinters and hunks from double fist size to some as large as his head he spent an afternoon carrying rocks to the beach and making what amounted to a large pen for holding live fish two rock arms that stuck out 15 feet into the lake and curved together at the end where the arms came together he left an opening about two feet across then he sat on the shore and waited when he had first started dropping the rocks all the fish had darted away but his fish trash pile of bones and skins and guts was in the pond area and the prospect of food brought them back soon under an hour there were 30 or 40 small fish in the enclosure and brian made a gate by weaving small willows together into a fine mesh and closed them in fresh fish i have fresh fish for sale he had yelled storing live fish to eat later had been a major breakthrough he thought it wasn't just keeping from starving it was trying to save ahead think ahead of course he didn't know then how sick he would get a fish chapter 15 the days had folded one into another and mixed so that after two or three weeks the only new time had passed in days because he made a mark for each day in stone near the door to his shelter real time he measured in events a day was nothing not a thing to remember it was just the sun coming up sun going down some light in the middle but events events were burned into his memory and so he used them to remember time to know and to remember what had happened to keep a mental journal there had been the day of first meet that had been a day that had started like the rest up after the sun clean the camp and make sure there's enough wood for another night but it was a long time a long time of eating fish and looking for berries and he craved more craved more food heavier food deeper food he craved meat he thon the night now of meat thought of his mother's cooking a roast or dreamed of turkey and one night he awakened before he had to put wood on the fire with his mouth making saliva and the taste of pork chops in his mouth so real so real and all a dream but it left him intent on getting meat he had been working farther and farther out for wood sometimes now going nearly a quarter of a mile away from camp for wood and he saw many small animals squirrels were everywhere small red ones that chattered at him and seemed to swear and jump from limb to limb there were also many rabbits large gray ones with a mix of reddish fur smaller fast gray ones that he only saw at dawn the larger one sometimes sat until he was quite close then bounded and jerked two or three steps before freezing again he thought if he worked at it in practice he might hit one of the larger rabbits with an arrow or a spear never the smaller ones are the squirrels they were too small and fast then there were the fool birds they exasperated him to the point where they were close to driving him insane the birds were everywhere five and six in a flock and their camouflage was so perfect that it was possible for brian to sit and rest leaning against a tree with one of them standing right in front of him in a willow clump two feet away hidden only to explode into deafening flight just when brian least expected it he just couldn't see them couldn't figure out how to locate them before they flew because they stood so perfectly still and blended in so perfectly well and what made it worse was that they were so dumb or they seemed to be so dumb that it was almost insulting the way they kept hidden from him nor could he get used to the way they exploded up when they flew it seemed like every time he went for wood which was every morning he spent the whole time jumping and jerking in fright as he walked on one memorable morning he had actually reached for a piece of wood what he thought to be a pitchy stump at the base of a dead birch his fingers close to touching it only to have it blow up in his face but on the day of first meet he had decided the best thing to try for would be a fool bird and that morning he had set out with his bow and spear to get one to stay with it until he got one and ate some meat not to get wood not to find berries but to get a bird and eat some meat at first the hunt had not gone well he saw plenty of birds working up along the shore of the lake to the end then down the other side but he only saw them after they flew he had to find a way to see them first see them and get close enough to either shoot them with his bow or use the spear and he couldn't find a way to see them when he had gone halfway around the lake he had jumped up 20 or so birds he finally gave up and sat at the base of a tree he had to work this out see what he was doing wrong there were birds there and he had eyes he just had to bring the two things together looking wrong he thought i'm looking wrong more more than that i'm being wrong somehow i'm doing it the wrong way fine sarcasm came into his thoughts i know that thank you i know i'm doing it wrong but what is right the morning sun had cooked him until it seemed his brain was frying sitting by the tree but nothing came until he got up and started to walk again and hadn't gone two steps when a bird got up he'd been there all the time while he was thinking about how to see them right next to him right there he almost screamed but this time when the bird flew something caught his eye and it was the secret key the bird cut down toward the lake then seen it couldn't land in the water turned and flew back up the hill into the trees when it turned curving through the trees the sun had caught it and brian for an instant saw it as a shape sharp pointed in front back from the head in a streamlined bullet shape to the fat body kind of like a pear he'd thought with a point on one end and a fat little body a flying pair and that had been the secret he'd been looking for feathers for the color of the bird for a bird sitting there he had to look for the outline instead he had to see the shape instead of the feathers or colors had to train his eyes to see the shape it was like turning on a television suddenly he could see things he'd never seen before in just moments it seemed he saw three birds before they flew saw them sitting and got close to one moving slowly got close enough to try a shot with his bow he had missed that time and had missed many more but he saw them he saw the little fat shapes with the pointed head sitting in the brush all over the place time and again he drew held and let his arrows fly but he still had no feathers on the arrows and there were little more than sticks that flopped out of the bow sometimes going sideways even when a bird was seven or eight feet away the arrow would turn without feathers to stabilize it and hit the brush or a twig after time he gave up with the bow it worked alright for the fish when they came right to the end of the arrow but it wasn't good for any kind of distance at least not the way it was now but he carried his fish beer the original one with the two prongs and he moved the bow to his left hand and carried the spear in his right he tried throwing the spear but he wasn't good enough and not fast enough the birds could fly amazingly fast get up fast but in the end he found that if he saw the bird sitting and moved sideways towards it not directly toward it but an angle back and forth he could get close enough to put the spear point out ahead almost to the bird and thrust lunge with it he came close twice and then down along the lake not far from the beaver house he got his first meet the bird had sat and he had lunged and the two points took the bird back down into the ground and killed it almost instantly it had fluttered a bit and brian had grabbed it and held it in both hands until he was sure it was dead then he picked up the spear in the bow and trotted back around the lake to his shelter where the fire burned down to a glowing coals he sat looking at the bird wondering what to do with the fish he just cooked them whole left everything in and picked the meat off this was different we'd have to clean it it always been so simple at home he would go to the store to get a chicken and it was all cleaned and neat no feathers or insides and his mother would bake it in the oven and he would eat it his mother from old time from the time before would bake it now he had the bird but he'd never cleaned one never taken the insides out or gotten rid of the feathers and he didn't know where to start but he wanted the meat had to have the meat and that drove him in the end the feathers came off easily he tried to pluck them out but the skin was so fragile that it pulled off as well so he just pulled the skin off the bird like peeling an orange he thought sort of except that when the skin was gone the insides fell out the back end he was immediately caught in a cloud of raw odor a kind of steamy dung odor that came out from the greasy coil of the insides that fell from the bird and he nearly threw up but there was something else to the smell as well some kind of richness that went with his hunger and that overcame the sick smell he quickly cut off the neck with his hatchet cut the feet off the same way and in his hand he held something like a small chicken with dark fat thick breast and small legs he set it up on some sticks on the shelter wall and took the feathers and insides down to the water to his fish pond the fish would eat them or eat what they could and the feeding action would bring more fish on second thought he took out the wing and tail feathers which were stiff and long and pretty banded and speckled in brown and grays and light reds there might be some use for them he thought maybe worked them onto the arrows somehow the rest he threw in the water saw the small round fish begin tearing at it and washed his hands back at the shelter the flies were on the meat and he brushed them off it was amazing how fast they came but when he built up the fire and the smoke increased the flies almost magically disappeared he pushed a pointed stick through the bird and held it over the fire the fire was too hot the flames hit the fat and the bird almost ignited he held it higher but the heat was worse and finally he moved it to the side a bit and there it seemed to cook properly except that it only cooked on one side and all the juice dripped off he had to rotate it slowly and that was hard to do with his hands so he found a forked stick and stuck it in the sand to put his cooking stick in he turned it and in this way he found a proper method to cook the bird in minutes the outside was cooked and the odor that came up was almost the same as the older when his mother baked chickens in the oven and he didn't think he could stand it but when he tried to pull a piece of breast meat off the meat was still raw inside patience he thought so much of this was patience waiting and thinking and doing things right so much all of this so much of all living was patience and thinking he settled back turning the birds slowly letting the juices go back into the meat letting it cook and smell and smell and cook and there came a time when it didn't matter if the meat was done or not it was black on the outside and hard and hot and he would eat it he tore a piece from the breast a sliver of meat and put it in his mouth and chewed carefully chewed as slowly and carefully as he could get all the taste and he thought never never in all the food all the hamburgers and malts all the fries or meals at home never in all the candy or pies or cakes never in all the roasts or steaks or pizzas never in all the submarine sandwiches never never never had he tasted anything as fine as the first bite first meat chapter 16 and now we stood at the end of the long part of the lake and wasn't the same wouldn't be the same again there had been many first days first arrow day when he'd used the thread from his tattered old piece of windbreaker and some pitch from a stump to put slivers of feather on a dry willow shaft and make an arrow that would fly correctly not accurately he never got really good with it but fly correctly so that if a rabbit or a fool bird sat in one place long enough close enough and he had enough arrows he could hit it that brought the first rabbit day when he killed one of the large rabbits with an arrow and skinned it as he did the first bird cook did the same to find the meat as good not as rich as the bird but still good and there were strips of fat on the back of the rabbit that cooked into the meat to make it richer now he went back and forth between rabbits and full birds when he could filling it with fish in the middle always hungry i'm always hungry but i can do it now i can get food and i know i can get food and it makes me more i know what i can do you've moved closer to the lake to a stand of nut brush these were thick bushes with little stickler pods that held green nuts nuts that he thought he might be able to eat but they weren't ripe yet he was out of fool bird and they liked to hide in the base of the thick part of the nut brush and back where the stems were close together and provided cover in the second clump he saw a bird move closer to it pause when the head feather came up and it made a sound like a cricket a sign of alarm just before it flew then moved closer when the feathers went down and the bird relaxed he did this four times never looking at the bird directly moving toward it at an angle so that it seemed he was moving off to the side he had perfected this method after many attempts and it worked so well that he actually caught one with his bare hands until he was standing less than three feet from the bird which was frozen in a hiding attitude in the brush the bird held for him and he put an arrow to the bow one of the feathered arrows not a fish arrow and drew and released it was a clean miss and he took another arrow out of the cloth pouch at his belt which he'd made from a piece of windbreaker sleeve tied at one end to make a bottom the full bird sat still for him and he didn't look directly at it until he drew the second arrow and aimed and released and missed again this time the bird jerked a bit and the arrow stuck next to it so close it almost brushed its breast brian had only two more arrows and he debated moving slowly to change the spear over to his right hand and used that to kill the bird one more shot he decided he would try it again he slowly brought another arrow out put it on the string and aimed and released and this time saw the flurry of feathers that meant he had made a hit the bird had been struck off center and was flopping around wildly brian jumped on it and grabbed it and slammed it against the ground once sharply to kill it then he stood and retrieved his arrows and made sure they were all right and went down to the lake to wash the blood off his hands he kneeled at the water's edge and put the dead bird and his weapon down and dipped his hands into the water it was very nearly the last act of his life later he wouldn't know why he started to turn some smell or sound a tiny brushing sound but something caught his ear or nose and he began to turn and his head half around when he saw a brown wall of fur detach itself from the forest to his rear and come down on him like a runaway truck he just had time to see that it was a moose he knew them from pictures but didn't know couldn't guess how large they were when it hit him it was a cow and she had horns but she took him in the left side of the back with his forehead took him and threw him out into the water and then came after him to finish the job he had another half second to fill his lungs with air and she was on him again using her head to drive him down into the mud of the bottom insane he thought just that word insane mud filled his eyes his ears the horn boss and the moose drove him deeper and deeper into the bottom muck and suddenly it was over and he felt alone he sputtered to the surface sucking air and fighting panic and when he wiped the mud and water out of his eyes and cleared them he saw the cow standing sideways to him not ten feet away calmly chewing on a lily pad route she didn't appear to even see him or didn't seem to care about him and brian turned carefully and began to swim crawl out of the water as soon as he moved the hair on her back went up and she charged him again using her head in front hooves this time slamming him back and down into the water on his back this time and he screamed the air out of his lungs and hammered on her head with his fists and filled his throat with water and she left again once more he came to the surface but he was hurt now heard inside heard in his ribs and he stayed hunched over pretended to be dead she was standing again eating brian studied her out of one eye looking to the bank with the other wondering how seriously he was injured wondering if she would let him go home this time insane he started to move ever so slowly her head turned and her back hair went up like the hair on an angry dog and he stopped took a slow breath the hair went down and she ate move hair up stop hair down move hair up a half foot at a time until he was at the edge of the water he stayed on his hands and knees indeed he was hurt so he wasn't sure he could walk anyway and she seemed to accept that and let him crawl slowly out of the water and up into the trees and brush when he was behind a tree stood carefully and took stock legs seemed all right but his ribs were hurt bad he could only take short breaths and then he got a jabbing pain and his right shoulder seemed to be wrenched somehow also his bow and spear and foolbird were in the water at least he could walk and he had just about decided to leave everything when the cow moved out of the deeper water and left him as quickly as she'd come walking down along the shoreline in the shallow water with her long legs making sucking sounds when she pulled them free of the mud hanging on a pine limb he watched her go half expecting her to turn and come back to run him over again but she kept going and when she was well gone from sight he went to the bank and found the bird then waited out a bit to get his bow and spear neither of them was broken and the arrows incredibly were still on his belt in the pouch although messed up with mud and water took him almost an hour to work his way back around the lake his legs worked well enough but if he took two or three fast steps he would begin to breathe deeply and the pain from his ribs would stop him and he would have to lean against a tree until he could slow back down to shallow breathing she'd done more damage than he had originally thought the insane cow no sense at all to it just madness when he got to the shelter he crawled inside and was grateful that the coals were still glowing and that he had thought to get wood first thing in the mornings to be ready for the day grateful that he thought to get enough wood for two or three days at a time grateful that he had fished nearby if he needed it grateful finally as he dozed off that he was alive so insane he thought letting sleep cover the pain in his chest such an intense attack for no reason and he fell asleep with his mind trying to make the moose have reason the noise awakened him it was a low sound a low roaring sound that came from wind his eyes snapped open not because it was loud but because it was new he had felt wind in his shelter felt the rain that came with wind and had heard thunder many times in the past 47 days but not this not this noise low almost alive almost from a throat somehow the sound the noise was a roar a far-off roar but coming at him and when he was fully awake he sat up in the darkness grimacing with the pain from his ribs the pain was different now a titan pain and it seemed less but the sound so strange he thought a mystery sound a spirit sound a bad sound he took some small wood and got the fire going again felt some little comfort and cheer from the flames but also felt that he should get ready he didn't know how but he should get ready the sound was coming for him just for him and he had to get ready the sound wanted him he found the spear and bow where they were hanging on the pegs of the shelter wall and brought his weapons to the bed he had made of pine bows more comfort but like the comfort of the flames it didn't work with this new threat that he didn't understand yet restless threat he thought and stood out of the shelter away from the flames to study the sky but it was too dark the sound meant something to him something from his memory something he had read about something he had seen on tv something oh he thought oh no it was wind when like the sound of a train with the low belly roar of a train it was a tornado that was it the roar of a train meant bad wind and was coming for him god he thought on top of the moose not this not this but it was too late too late to do anything in the strange stillness he looked at the night sky then turned back into the shelter and was leaning over to go through the door opening when it hit later you would think of it and find that it was the same as the moose just insanity he was taken in the back by some mad force and driven into the shelter on his face slammed down into the pine branches of his bed at the same time the wind tore at the fire and sprayed red coals and sparks and a cloud around him then it backed out seemed to hesitate momentarily and returned with a massive roar a roar that took his ears and mind and body he was whipped against the front wall of the shelter like a rag felt a ripping pain in his ribs again then was hammered back down into the sand once more while the wind took the whole wall his bed the fire his tools all of it and threw it out into the lake gone out of sight gone forever he felt a burning on his neck and reached up to find red coals there he brushed those off found more in his pants brushed those away and the wind hit again heavy gusts tearing gusts he heard trees snapping in the forest around the rock felt his body slipping out and clawed at the rocks to hold himself down he couldn't think just held and knew that he was praying but didn't know what the prayer was knew that he wanted to be stay and be and then the wind moved to the lake brian heard the great roaring sucking sounds of the water and opened his eyes to see the lake torn by the wind the water slamming in great waves that went in all ways fought each other and then rose in a spout of water going up into the night sky like a wet column of light it was beautiful and terrible at the same time the tornado tore one more time at the shore on the opposite side of the lake brian could hear the trees being ripped down and then it was gone gone as rapidly as it had come it left nothing nothing but brine in the pitch dark he could find nothing of where his fire had been not a spark nothing of his shelter tools or bed even the body of the fool bird was gone i'm back to nothing he thought trying to find things in the dark back to where i was when i crashed heard in the dark just the same as if to emphasize his thoughts the mosquitoes with the fire gone and protective smoke no longer saving him came back in thick nostril-clogging swarms all that was left was the hatchet of his belt still there but now it began to rain and in the downpour he would never find anything dry enough to get a fire going and at last he pulled his battered body back in under the overhang where his bed had been and wrapped his arms around his ribs sleep didn't come couldn't come with the insects ripping at him so he laid the rest of the night slapping the mosquitoes and chewing with his mind on the day this morning he had been fat well almost fat and happy sure of everything with good weapons and food and the sun in his face and things looking good for the future and inside of one day just one day he'd been run over by a moose and a tornado had lost everything and was back to square one just like that a flip of some giant coin and he was a loser but there's a difference now he thought there really is a difference i might be hit but i'm not done when the light comes i'll start to rebuild i still have the hatchet and that's all i had in the first place come on he thought burying his teeth in the darkness come on is that the best you can do is that all you can hit me with a moose and a tornado well he thought holding his rib and smiling then spitting mosquitoes out of his mouth well that won't get the job done that was the difference now he had changed and he was tough i'm tough where it counts tough in the head in the end right before dawn a kind of cold snap came down something else knew this cold snap and the mosquitoes settled back into the damp grass and under the leaves he could sleep or doze and the last thought he had that morning as he closed his eyes was i hope the tornado hit the moose when he awakened the sun was cooking the inside of his mouth and it dried his tongue to leather he'd fallen into a deeper sleep with his mouth open just at dawn and it tasted as if his mouth had been sucking on his foot all night he rolled out almost bellowed with pain from his ribs they'd tightened in the night and they seemed to pull at his chest when he moved he slowed his movements and stood slowly without stretching unduly and went to the lake for a drink at the shore he kneeled carefully with great gentleness and drank and rinsed his mouth to his right he saw the fish pond was still there although the willow gate was gone and there were no fish they'll come back he thought as soon as i can make a spear or bow and get one or two for bait they'll come back he turned to look at his shelter saw that some of the wood for the wall was scattered around the beach was still there then saw's bow jammed into a driftwood log broken but with the precious string still intact not so bad now not so bad he looked down the shoreline for other parts of his wall and that's when he saw it out in the lake in the short part of the l something curved and yellow was sticking six or eight inches out of the water it was a bright color not an earth or natural color and for a second he couldn't place it then he knew it for what it was it's the tail of the plane he said it aloud half expecting to hear somebody answer him there it was sticking up out of the water the tornado must have flipped the plane around somehow when it hit the lake changed the position of the plane and raised the tail well he thought well just look at that he thought and at the same moment a cutting thought hit him he thought of the pilot still in the plane and that brought a shiver and massive sadness that seemed to settle on him like a weight and he thought he should say or do something for the pilot some words but he didn't know any of the right words the religious words so he went down to the side of the water and looked at the plane and focused his mind the way he did when he was hunting fool birds and wanted to concentrate focused it on the pilot and thought have rest have rest forever chapter 17. he turned back to his campsite and looked to the wreckage he had a lot to do rebuild his shelter get a new fire going find some food or get ready to find food make weapons and he had to work slowly because his ribs hurt first things first he tried to find some dry grass and twigs then peeled bark from a nearby birch to shred into a fire nest he worked slowly but even so with his new skill he had a fire going in less than an hour the flames cut the cool damp morning frackled and did much to bring his spirits up not to mention chasing away the incessant mosquitoes with the fire going he searched for dry wood the rain had driven water into virtually all the wood he could find and at last located some in a thick evergreen where the top branches had covered the lower dead ones keeping them dry he'd had great difficulty breaking them not being able to pull much with his arm or chest muscles but finally got enough to keep the fire going all day and into the night with that he rested a bit eased his chest and then set about getting a shelter squared away much of the wood from his original wall was still nearby and up in back of the ridge he actually found a major section of the weave still intact the wind had torn it out lifted it and thrown it to the top of the ridge and brian felt lucky once more that he hadn't been killed or more seriously injured which would have been the same he thought if he couldn't hunt he would die and if he were injured badly he wouldn't be able to hunt he jerked and dragged wood around until the wall was once more in place crudely but he could improve it later he had no trouble finding enough pine bows to make a new bed the storm had torn the forest to pieces up in back of the ridge it looked like a giant had become angry and used some kind of massive meat grinder on the trees huge pines were twisted and snapped off blown sideways the ground was so littered with limbs and treetops sticking every which way that it was hard to get through he pulled enough thick limbs in for a bed green and spicy with the new broken sap smell and by evening he was exhausted hungry and hurting but he had something close to a place to live again a place to be tomorrow he thought as he lay back in the darkness tomorrow maybe the fish would be back and he'd make a spear and a new bow and get some food tomorrow he'd find food and refine the camp and bring things back to sanity from the one completely insane day he faced the fire curving his body he rested his head on his arm and began to sleep when a picture came into his head the tail of the plane sticking out of the water there was the tail sticking up and inside the plane near the tail somewhere was the survival pack it must have survived the crash because the plane's main body was still intact that was the picture the tail sticking up and the survival pack inside right there in his mind as he dozed his eyes snapped open if i could get the pack oh if i could get the pack it'd probably have food and knives and matches it might have a sleeping bag it might have fishing gear oh it must have so many wonderful things if i could get at the pack and just some of the things i'd be rich so rich if i could get the pack he thought tomorrow he watched the flames and smiled tomorrow i'll see all things come tomorrow he slept deep and down with only one picture of the plane tail sticking up in his mind a healing sleep in the morning he rolled out before true light in the gray dawn he built up the fire and found more wood for the day feeling almost chipper because his ribs were much better now with camp ready for the day he looked at the lake part of him half expected the plane tail to be gone sunk back into the depths but he saw that it was still there didn't seem to have moved at all he looked down at his feet and saw there were some fish in his fish pen looking for tiny bits of bait still left from before the wind came he fought in patience to get on the plane project and remembered since remembered what he had learned first food because food made strength first food then thought then action there were fish at hand here and he might not be able to get anything from the plane that was all a dream the fish were real and his stomach even his new shrunken stomach was sending signals that was savagely empty he made a fish spear with two points not peeling the bark all the way back but just working on the pointed end it took him an hour or so and all the time he worked he sat looking at the tail of the plane sticking up in the air his hands working on the spear his mind working on the problem of the plane when the spear was done although still crude he jammed a wedge between the points to spread them apart and went to the fish pond there weren't clouds of fish but at least ten and he picked one of the larger ones a round fish almost six inches long and put the spear point in the water held it then thrust with a flicking motion of his wrist when the fish was just about the point the fish was pinned neatly and he took two more with the same ease then carried all three back up to the fire he had a fishboard now piece of wood he had flattened with the hatchet that leaned out by the fire for cooking fish so he didn't have to hold a stick all the time he put the three fish on the board push sharpened pegs through their tails into cracks on the cooking board and propped it next to the reddest part of the coals in moments the fish were hissing and cooking with the heat and as soon as they were done or when he could stand the smell no longer he picked the steamy meat from under the loosened skin and ate it the fish didn't fill him didn't even come close fish meat was too light for that but they gave him strength he could feel it moving into his arms and legs and he began work on the plane project while making the spear he decided that he would have to make a raft and push paddle the raft to the plane and tie it there for a working base somehow he'd have to get into the tail inside the plane ripper cut his way in and however he did it you'd need an operating base of some kind a raft which he found ruefully was much easier said than done there were plenty of logs around the shore was littered with driftwood new and old tossed up and scattered by the tornado and it was a simpler matter to find four of them about the same length and pull them together keeping them together was the problem without ropes or cross pieces and nails the logs just rolled and separated he tried wedging them together crossing them over each other nothing seemed to work and he needed a stable platform to get the job done it was becoming frustrating i need a momentary loss of temper as he would have done in the past when he was the other person at that point he sat back on the beach and studied the problem again since he had to use his sense that's all it took to solve problems just sense it came then the logs he'd selected were smooth and round and had no limbs what he needed were logs with limbs sticking out then he could cross the limbs of one log over the limbs of another and weave them together as he had done with his wall the food shelf cover and the fish gate he scanned the area above the beach and found four dry tree tops that had been broken off by the storm these had limbs and he dragged them down to his work area at the water's edge and fitted them together it took most of the day the limbs were cluttered and stuck any which way and he'd have to cut one to make another fit then cut one from another log to come back to the first one then still another from a third log would have to be pulled in but at last in the late afternoon he was done and the raft which he called brush pile 1 for its looks hung together even as he pulled it into the water off the beach it floated well if low in the water and in the excitement he started for the plane he couldn't stand on it but would have to swim alongside he was out to chest depth when he realized he had no way to keep the raft at the plane he needed some way to tie it in place so he could work from it and for a moment he was stymied he had no rope only the bow string and the other cut shoe strings in his tennis shoes which were by now looking close to dead his toes showing at the tops when he remembered his windbreaker and he found the tattered part he used for an arrow pouch he tore it into narrow strips and tied them together to make a rope or tie down about four feet long it wasn't strong he couldn't use it to pull tarzan and swing from a tree but it should hold the raft to the plane once more he slid the raft off the beach and out into the water until his chest deep he had left his tennis shoes in the shelter and when he felt the sand turned to mud between his toes he kicked off the bottom and began to swim pushing the raft he figured was about like trying to push an aircraft carrier all the branches that stuck down into the water dragged and pulled and the logs themselves fought any forward motion and he hadn't gone 20 feet when he realized that it was going to be much harder than he thought to get the raft to the plane it barely moved and if he kept going this way he would just about reach the plane at dark he decided to turn back again spend the night and start early in the morning and he pulled the ref once more onto the sand and wiped scraped it dry with his hand patience he was better now but impatience still ground at him a bit so he sat at the edge of the fish pond with a new spear and took three or more fish cooked them up and ate them which helped to pass the time until dark he also dragged in more wood endless wood and then relaxed and watched the sun set over the trees in the back of the ridge westy thought i'm watching the sun set in the west and that way was north where his father was and that way it was east and that was the south and somewhere to the south and east his mother would be the news would be on the television he could visualize more easily his mother doing things than his father because he'd never been to where his father lived now he knew everything about how his mother lived she'd have the small tv on the kitchen counter on and be watching the news and talking about how awful it was in south africa or how cute the baby in the commercial looked talking and making sounds cooking sounds he jerked his mind back to the lake there was great beauty here almost unbelievable beauty the sun exploded the sky just blew it up with a setting color and that color came down into the water of the lake lit the trees and the amazing beauty and he wished he could share it with somebody and say look there over there see that but even alone it was beautiful and he fed the fire to cut the night chill there it is again that late summer chill to the air the smell of fall he went to sleep thinking of a kind of reverse question he didn't know if he would ever get out of this couldn't see how it might be but if he did somehow get home and go back to living the way he'd lived would it be just the opposite would he be sitting watching television and suddenly think about the sunset up in the back of the ridge and wonder how the color looked in the lake sleep in the morning the chill was more pronounced and he could see tiny wisps of vapor from his breath he threw wood on the fire and blew until it flamed then banked the flames to last and went down to the lake perhaps because the air was so cool the water felt warm as he waded in it he made sure the hatchet was still at his belt and the raft still held together then set out pushing the raft and kicked swimming toward the tail of the plane as before was very hard going once an eddie of breeze came up against him and he seemed to be standing still and by the time he was close enough to the tail to see the rivets in the aluminum he had pushed and kicked for over two hours was nearly exhausted and wished she'd taken some time to get a fish or two and have breakfast he was also wrinkled as a prune and ready for a break the tail looked much larger when he got next to it with a major part of the vertical stabilizer showing and perhaps half of the elevators only a short piece of the top of the fuselage the plane's body toward the tail was out of the water just a curve of aluminum and at first he couldn't see the place to tie the raft he pulled himself along the elevators to the end and there he found a gap that went in up by the hinges where he could feed his rope through with the raft secure he climbed on top of it and lay on his back for 15 minutes resting and letting the sun warm him the job he thought looked impossible to have any chance of success he would have to be strong when he started somehow he had to get inside the plane all openings even the small rear cargo hatch were underwater so we couldn't get at them without diving and coming up inside the plane where he would be trapped he shuddered at the thought and then remembered what was in front of the plane down on the bottom of the lake still trapped in the seat the body of the pilot sitting there in the water brian could see him the big man with his hair waving up in the current his eyes open stop he thought stop now stop that thinking he was nearly at the point of swimming back to shore and forgetting the whole thing but the image of the survival pack kept him if he could get it out of the plane or if he could just get into it and pull something out a candy bar even that just a candy bar it'd be worth it but how to get out the inside of the plane he rolled off the raft and pulled himself around the plane no openings three times he put his face in the water and opened his eyes and looked down the water was murky but he could see perhaps six feet and there was no obvious way to get into the plane he was blocked chapter 18 brian worked around the tail of the plane two more times pulling himself along the stabilizer in the elevator but there simply wasn't a way in stupid he thought i was stupid to think i could just come out here and get inside the plane nothing's that easy not out here not in this place nothing's easy he slammed his fist against the body of the plane and to his complete surprise the aluminum covering gave easily under his blow he hit it again and once more it bent and gave and he found that even when he didn't strike it but just pushed it it still moved it was really he thought very thin aluminum skin over a kind of skeleton and if it gave that easily he might be able to force his way through the hatchet he might be able to cut or hack with the hatchet he reached to his belt and pulled the hatchet out picked a place where the aluminum gave to his push and took an experimental swing at it the hatchet cut through the aluminum as if it were soft cheese he couldn't believe it three more hacks and he had a triangular hole the size of his hand and he could see four cables that he guessed were the control cables going back to the tail and he hit the skin of the plane with a frenzied series of hacks to make a still larger opening and he was bending a piece of aluminum away from two aluminum braces of some kind when he dropped the hatchet it went straight down past his legs he felt it bump his foot and then go down down into the water for a second he couldn't understand that he had done it for all this time all the living and fighting the hatchet had been everything he had always worn it without the hatchet he had nothing no fire no tools no weapons he was nothing the hatchet was had been him and he dropped it no he yelled it choked on it a snarl cry of rage at his own carelessness the hole in the plane was still too small to use for anything and now he didn't have a tool that was the kind of thing i would have done before he said to the lake to the sky to the trees when i came here i would have done that not now not now yet he had and he hung on the raft for a moment and felt sorry for himself for his own stupidity but as before the self-pity didn't help and he knew that he only had one course of action he had to get the hatchet back he had to dive and get it back but how deep was it in the deep end of the gym pool at school he had no trouble getting to the bottom and that was he was pretty sure about 11 feet here it was impossible to know the exact depth the front end of the plane anchored by the weight of the engine was obviously on the bottom but it came back up at an angle so the water wasn't as deep as the plane was long he pulled himself out of the water so his chest could expand took two deep breaths and swiveled and dove pulling his arms and kicking off the raft bottom with his feet his thrust took him down a good eight feet but the visibility was only five feet beyond that and he couldn't see the bottom yet he clawed down six or seven feet the pressure pushing in his ears until he held his nose and popped them and just as he ran out of breath and headed back up he thought he saw the bottom still four feet below his dive he exploded out of the surface bumping his head on the side of the elevator when he came up and took air like a whale pushing the stale air out until he wheezed taking new in he would have to get deeper yet and still have time to search while he was down there stupid he thought once more cursing himself just dumb he pulled air again and again pushing his chest out until he couldn't possibly get any more capacity then took one more deep lungful wheeled and dove again this time he made an arrow out of his arms and used his legs to push off the bottom of the raft all he had in his legs to spring snap and propel him down as soon as he felt himself slowing a bit he started raking back with his arms at his sides like paddles and thrusting with his legs like a frog and this time he was so successful that he ran his face into the bottom of the mud he shook his head to clear his eyes and looked around the plane disappeared out and down in the front of him he thought he could see the windows and that made him think again of the pilot sitting inside and he forced his thoughts from it but he couldn't see the hatchet bad air triggers were starting to go off in his brain and he knew he was limited to seconds now but he held for a moment and tried moving out a bit and just as he ran out of air knew that he was going to have to blow soon he saw the handle sticking out of the mud he made one grab missed reached again and felt his fingers close on the rubber he clutched it and in one motion slammed his feet down into the mud and powered himself up but now his lungs were ready to explode and he had flashes of color in his brain explosions of color and he would have to take a pull of water take it into his lungs and just as he opened his mouth to take it in to pull in all the water in the lake his head blew out of the surface and into the light it was if a balloon had exploded old air blew out of his nose and mouth and he pulled new in again and again he reached for the side of the raft and hung there just breathing until he could think once more the hatchet clutched and shining in his right hand all right the plane still the plane he went back to the hole in the fuselage and began to chop and cut again peeling the aluminum skin off in pieces it was slow going because he was careful very careful with the hatchet but he hacked and pulled until he had opened a hole large enough to pull his head and shoulders in and looked down into the water it was very dark inside the fuselage and he could see nothing certainly no sign of the survival pack there were some small pieces and bits of paper floating on the surface inside the plane dirt from the floor of the plane that had floated up but nothing substantial well he thought did you expect it to be easy so easy that way just open her up and get the pack right you would have to open it more much more so he could poke down inside and see what he could find the survival pack had been a zippered nylon bag or perhaps canvas of some kind and he thought it been red or was it gray well that didn't matter it must have been moved when the plane crashed and it might be jammed down under something else he started chopping again cutting the aluminum away in small triangles putting each one on the raft as he chopped he could never throw anything away again he thought because they might be useful later bits of metal fish arrowheads or lures maybe and when he finally finished again he had cleaned away the whole side and top of the fuselage that stuck out of the water had cut down into the water as far as he could reach and had a hole almost as big as he was except that it was crossed and crisscrossed with aluminum or it might be steel he couldn't tell braces and formers and cables it was an awful tangled mess but after chopping some braces away there was room for him to wiggle through and get inside he held back for a moment uncomfortable with the thought of getting inside the plane what if the tail settled back to the bottom and he got caught and couldn't get out it was a horrible thought but then he reconsidered the thing had been up now for two days plus a bit and he'd been hammering and climbing on it and it hadn't gone back down it seemed pretty solid he eeled in through the cables and formers wiggling and pulling until he was inside the tail with his head clear of the surface of the water and his legs down on the angled floor when he was ready he took a deep breath and pushed down along the floor with his legs feeling for some kind of fabric or cloth anything with his bare feet he touched nothing but the floor plates up a new breath then he reached down to formers underwater and pulled himself beneath the water his legs pushing down and down almost to the backs of the front seats and finally on the left side of the plane he thought he felt his foot hit cloth or canvas up for more air deep breathing then one more grab at the formers and pushing as hard as he could he jammed his feet down and he hit it again definitely canvas or heavy nylon and this time when he pushed his foot he thought he felt something inside something hard it had to be the bag driven forward by the crash it was jammed into the backs of the seat and caught on something he tried to reach for it and pull but didn't have the air left and went up for more lungs filled in great gulps he shot down again pulling on the formers until he was almost there then wheeling down headfirst he grabbed at the cloth it was the survival bag he pulled and tore at it to loosen it and just as it broke free his heart leaped to feel it rise he'd looked up above the bag and the light coming through the side window the pale green light from the water he saw the pilot's head only it wasn't the pilot's head any longer the fish he'd never really thought of it but the fish the fish he'd been eating all this time had to eat too they'd been at the pilot all this time almost two months nibbling and chewing and all that remain was the not quite clean skull and when he looked up it wobbled loosely too much too much his mind screamed in horror and he slammed back and was sick in the water sick so that he choked on it and tried to breathe water and could have ended there ended with the pilot where it almost ended when they first arrived except that his legs jerked it was instinctive fear more than anything else fear of what he'd seen but they jerked and pushed and he was headed up when they jerked and he shot to the surface still inside the birdcage of the formers and cables his head slammed into a bracket as he cleared and reached up to grab it and was free in the air hanging up in the tail he hung that way for several minutes choking and heaving and gasping for air fighting to clear the picture of the pilot from his mind it went slowly he knew it would never completely leave but he looked to the shore and there were trees and birds the sun was getting low and golden over his shelter and when he stopped coughing he could hear the gentle sounds of the evening the peace sounds the bird sounds the breeze and the trees the peace finally came to him and he settled his breathing he was still a long way from being finished he had a lot of work to do the bag was floating next to him but he had to get out of the plane and onto the raft then back to shore he wiggled out through the formers it seemed harder than when he came in and pulled the raft around the bag fought him it was almost as if he didn't want to leave the plane he pulled and jerked and still it wouldn't fit and at last he had to change the shape of it rearranging what was inside by pushing and pulling at the sides until he had narrowed it and made it longer even when it finally came it was difficult and he had to pull first at one side then another an inch at a time squeezing it through all of this took some time and when he finally got the bag out and tied on top of the raft it was nearly dark he was bone tired from working in the water all day chilled deep and he still had to push the raft to shore many times he thought he would not make it with the added weight of the bag which seemed to get heavier by the foot coupled with the fact he was getting weaker all the time the raft seemed barely to move he kicked and pulled and pushed taking the shortest way straight back to the shore hanging to rest many times then surging again and again it seemed to take forever and when at last his feet had bottom and he could push against the mud and slide the raft into the shore weeds to bump against the bank he was so weak he couldn't stand had to crawl so tired he didn't even notice the mosquitoes that tore into him like a gray angry cloud he done it that's all he could think now he'd done it he turned and sat on the bank with his legs in the water and pulled the bag ashore and began the long drag he couldn't lift it back down the shoreline to his shelter two hours almost three he dragged and stumbled in the dark brushing the mosquitoes away sometimes on his feet more often on his knees finally to drop across the bag and to sleep when he made the sand in front of the doorway he done it chapter 19 treasure unbelievable riches he couldn't believe the contents of the survival pack the night before he was so numb with exhaustion he couldn't do anything but sleep all day in the water it tired him so much that in the end he'd fallen asleep sitting against his shelter wall oblivious even to the mosquitoes to the night to anything but with false gray dawn he'd awakened instantly and began to dig in the pack to find amazing wonderful things there was a sleeping bag which he hung to dry over a shelter roof on the outside and foam sleeping pad an aluminum cook set with four little pots and two frying pans it actually even had a fork and knife and spoon a waterproof container with matches and two small butane lighters a sheath knife with a compass in the handle as if a compass would help him he thought smiling a first aid kit with bandages and a tube of antiseptic paste and small scissors a cap that said cesna across the front in large letters why a cap he wondered it was adjustable and he put it on immediately a fishing kit with four coils of line a dozen small lures and hooks and sinkers incredible wealth it was like all the holidays in the world all the birthdays there were he sat in the sun by the doorway where he had dropped the night before and pulled the presents out one at a time to examine them turn them in the light touch them and feel them with his hands and eyes something that at first puzzled him he pulled out what seemed to be a broken off bulky stalk of a rifle and he was going to put it aside thinking it might be for something else in the pack when he shook it and it rattled after working at it a moment he found the butt of the stalk came off and inside there was a barrel and a magazine and action assembly with a clip and a full box of 50 shells it was a 22 survival rifle he'd seen one once in the sporting goods store where he went for bike parts and the barrel screwed onto the stock he'd never owned a rifle never fired one but he'd seen them on tv of course and after a few moments figured out how to put it together by screwing the action on the stalk how to load it and put the clip full of bullets into the action it was a strange feeling holding the rifle it somehow removed him from everything around him without the rifle he had to fit in to be part of it all to understand it and use it the woods all of it with the rifle suddenly he didn't have to know didn't have to be afraid or understand he didn't have to get close to a fool bird to kill it didn't have to know how it would stand if he didn't look at it and moved off to the side the rifle changed him the minute he picked it up and he wasn't sure he liked the change very much he set it aside leaning against the wall he could deal with that feeling later the fire was out and he used a butane lighter and a piece of birch bark with small twigs to get another one started marveling at how easy it was but feeling again the lighter somehow removed him from where he was what he had to know with a ready flame he didn't have to know how to make a spark nest or how to feed the new flames to make them grow as with the rifle he wasn't sure he liked the change up and down he thought the pack was wonderful but it gave him up and down feelings with the fire going and sending up black smoke and a steady roar from a pitch-smelling chunk he put on he turned once more to the pack rubbishing through the food packets he hadn't brought them out yet because he wanted to save them until last glory in them he came up with a small electronic device completely encased in a plastic bag at first he thought it was a radio or cassette player and he had a surge of hope because he missed music missed sounds missed hearing another voice but when he opened the plastic and took the thing out and turned it over he could see that it wasn't a receiver at all there was a coil of wire held together on the side by tape and it sprung into a three foot long antenna when he took the tape off no speaker no lights just a small switch at the top and on the bottom he finally found in small print emergency transmitter that was it he turned the switch back and forth a few times but nothing happened he couldn't even hear static so as with the rifle he set it against the wall and went back to the bag it was probably ruined in the crash she thought two bars of soap he'd bathe regularly in the lake but not with soap and he thought a wonderful would be to wash his hair thick with grime and smoke dirt frizzed by wind and sun matted with fish and full bird grease his hair grown and stuck and tangled and grown until it was a clump mess on his head he could use the scissors from the first aid kit to cut it off then wash it with soap and then finally the food it was all freeze-dried and in such quantity that he thought with this i could live forever package after package he took out beef dinner with potatoes cheese and noodle dinners chicken dinners egg and potato breakfast fruit mixes drink mixes dessert mixes more dinners and breakfast than he could count easily dozens and dozens of them all packed in waterproof bags all in perfect shape and we had them all out and laid against the wall and stacks he couldn't stand it and he went through them again if i'm careful he thought they'll last as long as as long as i need them to last if i'm careful no not yet i won't be careful just yet first i'm going to have a feast right here now i'm going to cook up a feast and eat until i drop and then i'll be careful he went into the food packs once more and selected what he wanted for his feast a four-person beef and potato dinner with orange drink for an appetizer and something called a peach whip for dessert just add water it said on the packages and cook for half an hour or so until everything was normal size and done brian went to the lake and got water in one of the aluminum pots and came back to the fire just that amazed him to be able to carry water to the fire in a pot such a simple act and he hadn't been able to do it for almost two months he guessed at the amounts and put the beef dinner and peach dessert on to boil then went back to the lake and brought water to mix with the orange drink it was sweet and tangy almost too sweet but so good that he didn't drink it fast held it in his mouth and let the taste go over his tongue tickling on the sides sloshing it back and forth and then down swallow then another that he thought that is just fine just fine he got more like water and mixed another one and drank it fast then a third one and he sat with that near the fire but looking out across the lake thinking how rich the smell was from the cooking beef dinner there was garlic in it and some other spices and the smells came up to him and made him think of home his mother cooking the rich smells of the kitchen and at that precise instant with his mind full of home and the smell from the food filling him the plane appeared he'd only a moment of warning there was a tiny drone but as before it didn't register then suddenly roaring over his head low and in back of the ridge a bush plane with floats exploded into his life it passed directly over him very low tipped a wing sharply over the tail of the crashed plane the lake cut power glided down the long part of the yellow of the lake then turned and glided back touching the water gently once twice and settling with a sprayed a taxi and stopped with its floats gently bumping the beach in front of brian's shelter he hadn't moved it all happened so fast that he hadn't moved he sat with the pot of orange drink still in his hand staring at the plane not quite understanding it yet not quite knowing yet that it was over the pilot cut the engine opened the door and got out balanced and stepped forward on the float to hop on the sand without getting his feet wet he was wearing sunglasses and he took them off to stare at brian i heard your emergency transmitter then i saw the plane when i came over he trailed off cocked his head studying brian damn you're him aren't you you're that kid they quit looking a month no almost two months ago you're him aren't you you're that kid brian was standing now but still silent still holding the drink his tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth and his throat didn't work right he looked at the pilot and the plane and down at himself dirty and ragged burned and lean and tough and he coughed to clear his throat my name is brian robison he said then he saw that his stew was done the peach whip was almost done and he waved to it with his hand would you like something to eat epilogue the pilot who landed so suddenly in the lake was a fur buyer mapping cree trapping camps for future buying runs drawn by brian when he unwittingly turned on the emergency transmitter and left it going the cree move into the camps for fall and winter to trap and the buyers fly from camp to camp on a regular route when the pilot rescued brian he'd be alone on the l-shaped lake for 54 days during that time he'd lost 17 of his body weight he later gained back six percent but had virtually no body fat his body consumed all extra weight and he would remain lean and wiry for several years many of the changes would prove to be permanent brian had gained immensely in his ability to observe what was happening and react to it that would last him all his life he had become more thoughtful as well and from that time on he would think slowly about something before speaking food all food even food he didn't like never lost his wonder for him for years after his rescue he would find himself stopping in grocery stores just to stare at the isles of food marveling the quantity and the variety there were many questions in his mind about what he'd seen and known and he worked at research when he got back identifying the game and berries gut cherries were termed choke cherries and made good jelly the nut bushes where the full birds hid were hazelnut bushes the two kinds of rabbits were snowshoes and cottontails the fool birds were ruffled grouse also called fool hens by trappers for their stupidity the small food fish were bluegills sunfish and perch the turtle eggs were laid by a snapping turtle as he had thought the wolves were timber wolves which aren't known to attack or bother people the moose was a moose there were also the dreams he had many dreams about the lake after he was rescued the canadian government sent a team to recover the body of the pilot and they took reporters who naturally took pictures and film of the whole campsite the shelter all of it for a brief time the press made much of brian and he was interviewed for several networks the fur died within a few months a writer showed up who wanted to do a book on the complete adventure as he called it but he turned out to be a dreamer and it all came to nothing but talk still brian was given copies of the pictures and tape and looking at them seemed to trigger the dreams they weren't nightmares none of them was frightening but he would awaken at times with them just awaken and sit up and think of the lake the forest the fire at night the night birds singing the fish jumping sit in the dark alone and think of them and it wasn't bad and would never be bad for him predictions are for the most part ineffective but it might be interesting to note that had brian not been rescued when he was had he been forced to go into hard fall perhaps winter it would have been very rough on him when the lake froze he would have lost the fish and when the snow got deep he would have trouble moving at all game becomes seemingly plentiful in the fall it's easier to see with the leaves off the brush but in winter it gets scarce and sometimes simply non-existent as predators like fox lynx wolf owls weasels fisher martin and northern coyotes sweep through areas and wipe things out it's amazing what a single owl can do to a local population of ruffled grouse and rabbits in just a few months after the initial surprise and happiness from his parents at him being alive for a week it looked as if they might actually get back together but things rapidly went back to normal his father returned to the northern oil fields where brian eventually visited him and his mother stayed in the city worked at a career in real estate and continued to see the man in the station wagon brian tried several times to tell his father came really close once to doing it but in the end never said a word about the man or what he knew the secret