Wild Man Island Page 5

  His bushy eyebrows were raven black.

  His robe—what had it been made of? Bark fiber, maybe, same as the pointy, conical hat designed to shed the rain.

  The spear at his side was nearly his height, with a finely crafted, fearsome-looking point. From head to toe, he looked like he had stepped out of the Stone Age.

  Suddenly I was skeptical of my own senses. In the fog, I could have imagined him, every detail. Everything about the encounter and about him had been so strange, so dreamlike.

  Starvation could account for it.

  I stood looking at the buildings, the pier, the ruins of the cannery. I couldn’t blink them away. In the fog, they looked otherworldly, but they were real.

  An eagle flew by with a fish. A raven went tok-tok-tok.

  I returned to the house with the Life covers. Still there. I went back to the room with the fireplace and the bookshelves.

  The shelves were mostly empty except for a few National Geographics from the 1920s and a dozen or so books that were the exact size and color of the ones I’d seen the wild man clutching in his hand. All were dusty brown. Harvard Classics, they were called. I picked one up: Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith. I put it back, thinking it wouldn’t have been my first choice, either.

  This was absurd. A man from the Stone Age, visiting his local library. Had he really been here? How could I prove it?

  Suddenly it was important to prove to myself that I wasn’t going crazy. What about footprints?

  Close to the spot where he had disappeared, in an opening among the devil’s club, I found a single imprint in the mud. It had a woven pattern. The man must have been wearing sandals of woven thatch.

  I hadn’t imagined him. He really had been there, and I had called out to him. He had seen that I had nothing, and he’d run away.

  Hey buddy, I thought, I wasn’t the one with the spear.

  I walked down to the water, crushed that I’d come so close to help and come away with nothing. If the wild man could read those Harvard Classics, he must have understood my cry for help.

  Who in the world was he? Were there others?

  An hour later I was still at the fogbound cannery. I’d searched for a map and for canned goods, any sort of food, but had come up empty. I felt so defeated. I sat on a flat rock under the wobbly pier and watched the tide rise among the barnacle-encrusted rocks. The bottom was thick with starfish and neon-green sea anemones, nothing I could eat. It was going to be difficult to make myself keep walking. It was too hard. I was too hungry.

  Why hadn’t Stone Age man helped me? Done something, anything?

  Just then I heard it again, the thrashing of a raven’s wings. I looked up and saw one of those shaggy-throated rascals eyeing me with what looked like intelligence. I had a feeling it was the same one that had been with the wild man. Did that mean that the wild man had come back?

  Croaking wildly as I scrambled up the bank, the raven flew off into the forest.

  The spear. There it was, just lying on the ground. Next to it lay a bone-handled knife with a stone blade. Stunned, I looked around for the wild man, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I picked up the spear. The long wooden shaft, light yet true and solid as iron, was smooth from handling. The spearhead was about four inches long and a thing of beauty. At my first close glance I knew exactly what it was—a Clovis point. My father used to make Clovis points for collectors and museums.

  I couldn’t believe it. This was the classic weapon of the mammoth hunters. For a long time, Clovis hunters were thought to be the first people who came to North America.

  This point was a gem, elegantly chipped to sharpness on both edges and finished off with a groove down the center of each side. It was made of dark volcanic rock like the basalt in the Gunnison River country in western Colorado.

  So the wild man had helped me after all. Left me the means to defend myself on the Fortress of the Bears.

  The blade of the stone knife was about three inches long, and made from greenish jade-like rock. The handle was made of antler, probably deer antler. The blade was hafted to the handle with some sort of animal sinew.

  Under the straps of my life jacket would be a perfect place to stow the knife.

  Could I feed myself with the spear and the knife? I didn’t know. If I threw the spear at something, a fish or something, I might break the point. It was too valuable to use like that. With the knife, though, I could make a long jabbing stick. The next time I crossed a stream, I would be able to spear fish. I should be able to make a lot of other things too. Enough to get by.

  Then, if I followed the coast a little farther, I might get past these rocky bays. I might reach a place where fishing boats hugged the coast. Signal one fishing boat and all this would be over.

  I had to keep walking, but walking was already too hard, too painful with the bruises and all the small cuts on my feet. As soon as I thought about it some more, my gratitude to the wild man wore thin. I couldn’t eat the spear or the knife. He could have invited me to dinner.

  I laughed out loud. This was all too crazy to be believed.

  At least you can still laugh, I told myself. That must be a good sign. I tried the knife on a lock of my hair. It was sharp as a razor.

  Make something to protect your feet, Andy. Weave some sort of sandals like the wild man’s.

  Out of what?

  The answer came immediately: cedar. Julia had said that the Indians had been able to stay warm on this rain coast for thousands of years because of their mastery of the inner bark of the cedar tree. The wild man must have mastered it too.

  When I got started again I was wearing footgear of sorts. I’d figured out what inner cedar bark was, freed a slab of it with the knife, made strips, pounded them soft with a rock, and woven a crude pair of sandals. They were two layers thick, so they would last. It had taken me the rest of the day and half of the next. They looked awful, lashed over the tops of my feet and around my ankles, but they would do the job.

  I’d also made a long jabbing stick with a sharp wooden point. All I needed now was a salmon stream, and I wouldn’t be hungry again. Sushi would suit me just fine.

  I followed the coast to the east. From far off came the sound of a foghorn. A ferry, I guessed. I thought about the cafeteria on that boat. Unbelievable amounts of food. Hot food, hot showers. People to talk to. Cell phones. But mostly, food.

  Midafternoon, the fog finally started to lift. There was another creek up ahead, the biggest yet. In Colorado it might have been called a river. As I hurried toward it I pictured salmon so thick I could walk across on their backs. That’s what I really needed, a salmon run.

  What I found was a few trout that flashed away into the holes under the banks. With a groan, I lay down on my belly and made myself drink some water. Nothing on this island was ever going to be easy.

  Where the creek crossed the beach, I rinsed seaweed. Bite by bite, I put a disgusting amount of it into my stomach. Why weren’t there salmon in the stream, big fat salmon, so many I could spear any one I wanted? I was sick of this, so sick of the hunger, like a wolverine in my insides, and it never went away. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it. Most of all, I was sick of my luck.

  My eyes fell on a bed of mussels. I grimaced at the image running through my head: I was starving to death in the middle of a grocery store.

  Every so often they’re poisonous, Julia had said.

  Every so often, I thought. As in, once in a while. As in, rarely. It was just that they were risky.

  I was ready to take that risk. If chances are good that they’re edible, I heard myself thinking, I’m going to try it. I can’t be unlucky all the time.

  A minute later I was smashing a mussel with a rock, prying away pieces of shell with the knife. It wasn’t like I’d made a conscious decision. It was just knowing that people eat mussels in restaurants from coast to coast, and imagining myself being lucky for once.

  I would eat just one, nibble it at first, see
what happened. If I felt that tingling sensation Julia talked about, I would quit.

  Out of its shell, the mussel was about as long as my little finger and slimy like a raw oyster. I couldn’t afford to slide the whole thing down my throat. I had to be careful.

  I chewed slowly. No tingling sensation, no numbness. It was tough going. Maybe after the first few I would pound them with a rock to soften them up like I did with the cedar bark.

  I chewed the whole thing up and swallowed it. I ate a second one.

  It was when I was chewing the third one that I felt the tingling. Just a little tingling on my tongue and along my gums and the inside of my lips.

  As fast as I could, I spit the slimy stuff out. I tried to retch what was already in my stomach but I was unsuccessful. I stuck my finger way down in my throat, again and again—that didn’t work either. I wondered if the poison was numbing my senses, like the shot you get before an operation.

  Suddenly, everything felt strange. My vision started to swim, and I felt myself losing my balance. Fearing the worst, I grabbed the spear and the knife and dragged myself off the beach so the rising tide wouldn’t drown me.

  Before I could get to tree cover, I was struck down. Just struck down like falling timber.

  10

  WHEN I CAME TO, darkness engulfed me. It took a while before I figured out I was looking up at the sky. I could see stars and the ragged edge of a cloud bank lit by moonlight. Other than flat on my back, I had no idea where I was.

  The faint lapping of surf jogged my memory. I remembered the mussels, the tingling, the numbness, and I remembered running.

  I tried to roll over but I couldn’t move, not at all. There was no sensation in my legs or my arms. I tried to curl my fingers into a ball but I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  Blink, I told myself.

  I couldn’t. The word came to me, the word that would describe what had happened. Paralyzed. I was completely paralyzed.

  It began to drizzle. The rain fell into my open eyes.

  I knew that I must be breathing, maybe just enough to stay alive, but I couldn’t hear my breathing. I could hear the surf and the birds, I could see the sky, and I could think. That was all.

  My mind was on my mother. Anytime now, my breathing could shut off completely. Then I would die, I would simply die.

  In case that was going to happen, I had to concentrate on my mother. I willed myself to think only of her. After she lost my father it was just the two of us, and now she was going to lose me. Forgive me, I thought. I am so, so sorry.

  I must have blacked out and fallen into dreams. I was with my father, and he was teaching me flintknapping. I was using an antler tip to fleck small chips from a spearpoint. It was already fluted down the center on both sides; we were making a Clovis point.

  Suddenly I saw that he had changed. He had long gray hair and a long gray beard. “You look different,” I said, and he replied, “Well, you know, I’ve been dead a long time.”

  None of this quite made sense, but I was happy just to be with him.

  “Would you like to go on a journey with me?” he asked.

  “You know I would,” I said, “but I should let Mom know I’m going to be gone.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure you can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s against the rules. I’m under a certain set of rules here. I have to go on the journey, but if you want to stay, I will understand.”

  “No,” I said desperately, “I want to go with you.”

  My father grabbed up the spear we’d just made. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, he’d attached the point to a long wooden shaft. I was disappointed that I’d missed him doing the hafting. “Let’s get going,” he said.

  Across rivers and over mountains I followed him, along the seashore and over higher mountains. Everywhere there were bears, monstrous grizzly bears. They would stand on their hind legs and they would lay back their ears and woof at us, but they never charged.

  “Why don’t they ever charge you?” I asked.

  “They know they can’t touch me,” he replied.

  “Because of your spear?”

  “Because I’m dead. Bears are very intelligent. They know.”

  We kept going until he led me to a certain mountainside. “You can’t tell because of all the trees,” he said, “but that entire ridge is karst.”

  “Limestone?” I said. “The kind that makes caves?”

  With a wink, my father replied, “Just might be,” and then he led me up the mountainside to a small opening in a knobby gray rock formation.

  “A cave?” I asked.

  In reply, he reached inside and brought out two helmets, each with a headlamp.

  I asked, “Does this mean you’ve found the earliest Americans?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  We went inside. The formations were exquisite beyond belief. My father led me on and on, until we came to an abyss. We were looking into the depths of an immense well that seemed to have no bottom.

  “Look,” I said, “across from us, the cave keeps going on the other side. It might be possible to keep going on that ledge that swings around the side. Have you been beyond here?”

  “It’s against the rules.”

  “But why?”

  “You can go. It looks perfectly safe. I’ll wait right here.”

  I aimed my headlamp for a better look. The ledge was ridiculously narrow, and water was seeping across it. “Forget I ever mentioned it,” I said.

  My father didn’t say anything. Obviously, he wanted me to try it. The next thing I knew, I was starting across the ledge. I got to the part that was wet and slippery. It was no wider than a balance beam, and was angled down toward the abyss. “I don’t know,” I muttered. I looked over my shoulder. My father waved me on impatiently.

  All at once I was slipping, slipping and falling. I reached out for a grip but my hands found only slick white stone and I pitched head over heels into the abyss.

  Now I was in free flight, falling, falling, falling…

  Suddenly everything changed. I was on my back again and looking straight up into the face of a bear. It was right above me, broad and huge, silhouetted against the stars. I could hear it sniffing me, I could smell its breath.

  I wasn’t dreaming. Being with my father had been a dream. The bear was not a dream. I’m conscious again, I thought. I’ve come to, and the bear is real. I’m still lying here paralyzed, and the bear is real.

  The bear’s face pulled away and stars replaced it. The clouds have cleared, I thought. Maybe they’re gone for good. At the edge of my vision, I saw the bear’s claws. The bear was still there. Gently, it was raking the life jacket that protected my chest.

  I tried to feel my fingers. Still no response. The bear was gone. I willed myself not to black out.

  I couldn’t prevent it. Now I was on a raging river and paddling for my life. The walls of the canyon bristled black and narrow. Higher up and stepped back, they glowed a vivid red orange. This was Westwater Canyon, I realized. How many times have I heard my mother talk about it?

  I looked over my shoulder for her but she wasn’t there. I didn’t understand it. She was always right behind me.

  The whitewater was getting worse, and the river was full of rocks—jagged teeth, sleepers, and submerged stones that should have been deep enough for me to slide over. Somehow they weren’t. At the stern of my kayak, something was hitting the rocks. My rudder, I realized.

  I looked over my shoulder and there was my mother. “That sea kayak isn’t right for this river,” she told me. “That’s why river kayaks don’t have rudders.”

  A roar downstream brought my head around. The river was taking a plunge down an impossible-looking set of whitewater stairs. And at the bottom of the stairs, the river smashed up against the black cliffs.

  “What’s the deal?” I yelled back.

  “Skull Rapid!” my mother exclaimed. “That’s Skull down there—right do
wn there at that screaming left-hand turn.”

  “I didn’t have any idea it was going to be this bad.”

  “You can do it,” she shouted. “Just watch out for the Room of Doom. It’s in a pocket you can’t see down there next to the wall. If you’re too far right, the water off the wall will throw you into the Room. Got that?”

  “But I’m in a sea kayak!” I tried to yell. My words were lost in the fury of the moment. It was all I could do to stay upright. Down the stairs I went, through mountains of exploding whitewater. At every moment, I thought I was about to spill, but somehow, miraculously, I was keeping my balance. The black wall was flying by on my right; I caught a glimpse of the Room of Doom. It was a whirlpool with no escape, like they always talked about. A dead cow was swirling around and around.

  I looked back upstream. Where was my mother? I looked downstream. Where was she?

  She just wasn’t anywhere. The river had swallowed her up. All I could see was screaming birds where my mother should have been.

  I couldn’t bear any more. I heaved and struggled and fought my way back to consciousness.

  There was a bird on my chest. A seagull. Dawn had come and a seagull was leaning into my face. It had a red spot on the side of its bill. The gull had a predatory look to it, as if it was just about to stab me with its beak.

  That’s exactly what it was about to do. Stab me in the eye.

  Birds do that, I thought. It thinks I’m dead. The first thing it will go for is my eyes.

  I struggled. I struggled just to close my eyelids. I couldn’t. I could hear other gulls screaming and now I could see them flying in from all sides.

  A second gull landed on me. The first one turned around and attacked it. I could hear their squawking and the beating of their wings, but I was powerless to do a thing.

  One of them was back in my face.

  I heard a loud bark. A deep, loud bark—two, three times. The bark of a dog?

  The gulls flew off screaming as the face of a dog appeared directly above mine. It was a very large dog with a broad head, a large, long-haired, black dog. Dried blood caked one of its ears. I had seen this dog before.