by Nowick Gray
So
maybe, I considered, I could just ditch the ill-fated Ford--at least temporarily.
Then I'd have to make it somehow through the rest of the planting season without
a truck (and all my gear for camping and planting, the variety of clothes for
weather ranging from snow to burning heat, the spare boots, shovels, sleeping
bags, tent . . .) but I could plan to return later in the summer with the Dodge
to pull it out--or what was left of it by then.
We desperately plumbed our reserves of luck and surveyed the possible angles of an alternative crossing. Twenty feet upstream the creek was wider and somewhat shallower, though still it swelled with a wild force that made the prospects of success seem madly slim. The only hope might be to build up the deepest holes in the creekbed there with fresh layers of rock. The current was strong enough to make loose boulders roll, however; so a log dam, supported by a row of well-placed rocks, would have to be installed first. It just might work, we began to think. I observed that we would also have to mine the approaches on both sides for the large rocks and log-ends that otherwise prevented access to and from the existing road. That operation would provide plenty of fill right at hand by the stream.
It was still a gamble, and it would take hours. If we invested our afternoon in such work and then stranded the truck in midstream, we'd be left without enough daylight, energy or food for the walk to Columbiana. Either way, botching it like that, or forgetting the whole thing and walking now, we'd be faced with a six-hour walk. Unless the gamble worked.
"So, what do you think?" I asked Matt.
"Like I said, it's your truck."
"Oh, hell," I said, with a shrug of my shoulders. "Let's go for it."
We spent the next three hours hardly talking, just working doggedly to throw and drop and nudge rock after rock into place, building up the stream bed, wading and digging, smoothing and widening the approaches.
At last the job was done well enough--we hoped. The water still rushed over the rocks about a foot deep, but without its former turbulence, as the boulders now fit together in a relatively even pattern under the current. The large tires and high-riding frame of the truck would be put to the test, but with a good head of steam, we just might make it.
I hopped in behind the wheel, with my adrenaline starting to flow. Matt posted himself on the upstream side to watch where the wheels were headed. It was going to be hard to see where I was going, and I'd only have one chance.
The engine revved smoothly; I gunned it. I spun the steering wheel just right, apparently, because I was over and down onto the road in a moment. Matt's eyes were large, however, as he trotted down to the truck and pointed back to the creek.
"Man, you just made it," he said. "Your right rear wheel took out that log dam just as it passed over. Good thing you had some momentum or you'd still be back in the creek."
We arrived at Columbiana just in time for our four-thirty phone call to the company office. I also tried my home number to see if Faron had arrived yet. There was no answer, and once more I began to worry.
"It's still a little early yet," Matt reassured me. "It must have been slow going with that load she was carrying."
"Yeah, I guess you're right.
But back on the road, I had to wonder, would we really be able to enjoy a celebratory supper tonight? In fact, would we even get as far as Inverness? My eyes followed the needle of the fuel gauge down to E, and below.
"Maybe I should have tried Ron's while we were at the phone, to see if she stopped in there on her way home. Or maybe her sister's place . . ."
"Hey, we'll be in town in a few minutes. It's all downhill from here."
As soon as we gassed up and parked, I headed for the pay phone. Matt went on to a restaurant across the street, called The Meeting Place.
Faron answered, her voice vibrantly alive. She and Suze were all right. But on the way down, she'd been lost.
"Oh, Faron," I told her, sick at heart. "I should have gone with you farther to find that trail."
"I don't how much that would have helped, really. I just couldn't see a thing. And I was completely soaked, and shivering, and my pants were torn, and Suze was crying--" And Faron started to cry on the phone while she told me the rest.
For hours she'd wandered through the untracked brush, until, at the limit of her endurance, she decided to bushwhack straight downhill, leaving the backpack behind so as to save what little strength she had left for carrying Suze.
My grief at being partly responsible for her nightmarish ordeal was balanced by a final elation that they'd survived. The backpack could stay there forever, even with our down quilts inside, as a monument to what might have been.
"But I know where I left it," Faron said. "Under a certain tree . . ."
"Oh, great. Under a tree."
"No really," she laughed. "I don't think it would be that hard to find. I made a little stone cairn, to mark the trail where I came onto it, straight downhill from the pack. I bet we could find it."
We. Now that sounded more promising. Maybe it would be fun to go back there together. We could take along some flagging tape and mark the hillside as we traversed it, looking for the pack. Suze would enjoy a little picnic out there--if the bugs weren't too bad in July . . .
We told each other good-bye, and I left the phone booth with a spring in my step, to cross the street to The Meeting Place.
Morning dawned through the nearby window, and my eyelids pulled slowly open. Faron still slept beside me curled up under the covers; I'd tossed them off during the night and now felt cold in the chill morning air. I could see that Suze still slept peacefully in her bed. I pulled the bedclothes back over me and snuggled closer to Faron.
It was clear out, likely to be another scorching July day once the sun came out in force. This was to be the day we would go back to Mirror Pass together, to see if the bears and squirrels had left us anything of the backpack. If we could find it. If the Tumbler Creek road was still negotiable. If I didn't get called back to work while we sat down to breakfast. If the good weather held.
THE END