By the shimmery yellow glow, I searched the ground. Staying on my knees, I circled the area, sweeping my gaze back and forth, trying not to look at the body.
Looking at it anyway, from time to time.
After a while, you get used to anything.
Desperate to find the knife, I finally considered the possibility that the corpse might be hiding it. The knife couldn’t have fallen underneath the body, but it might’ve dropped out of sight in any of several places.
My lighter was little use on some of them.
I had to reach into the darkness under the chin and on both sides of the neck. I fingered the spaces under the armpits. I traced the entire body, crawling around it and running my fingertips along the crevice where its skin was pressed against the rock floor. I spread the legs apart and searched between them.
That’s when I confirmed that the body was not a woman, after all.
But I didn’t find the knife.
So then I turned the body over. (In for a penny, in for a pound.) As he rolled out of the way, I felt almost positive that the knife would show up, at last.
Kidding myself.
It wasn’t there, of course.
And, of course, I couldn’t stop myself from gazing at the front of the body.
The man had a pulpy ruin where his face should’ve been. Also, the left side of his chest was split open.
My guess is that Wesley and Thelma couldn’t be sure whether he would land face up or face down when they gave him the old heave-ho into the chasm. They wanted to make sure he would pass for Wesley, either way, so they didn’t spare any efforts in mutilating him.
Who was he, though? He certainly wasn’t Keith or Andrew. Where in hell had they gotten their hands on a spare man to use for their trap?
Giving up my search for Kimberly’s knife, I put away the lighter and returned to the open end of the chasm. I eased myself over the edge, and began to make my way down the sheer wall of rock.
I made it to the bottom in record time.
No bones got broken, though. Nor did I find myself unconscious. I was able to pick myself up again and get moving a few hours later, a while after the sun came up.
I found my way, without much trouble, back to the lagoon. I came upon its shoreline near the south end. After emptying my pants pockets on a rock, I took off my sneakers and socks. (How great it felt to have bare feet!) I climbed down into the water and washed my hands the best I could, then cupped water to my mouth.
Delicious!
Cool, clear water, just like the song. (Not very cool, as a matter of fact, but it tasted wonderful anyhow.)
After gulping down quite a load of it, I waded out until most of the lagoon came into sight.
Nobody else seemed to be there.
I submerged myself. The water felt like a soothing ointment on my battered, bruised and bitten skin. Staying under, I rubbed my face. I rubbed my shoulders, arms, chest, sides and belly, using my hands to wipe away the layers of filth.
Then I took off my shorts and worked for a while at scrubbing them. They certainly didn’t come clean, but I got rid of the worst of the mess. Done with them, I waded toward shore and tossed them onto the nearest rock. Waiting no longer, I bent over and rubbed all the itchy, sore, grimy places from my waist on down to my feet.
Later, I swam to the waterfall. I stood underneath it, the water splashing on my head and shoulders, running down me, spilling down me, flooding down me, washing off the last of the sweat and blood and whatever bits of Matt might still be clinging to my back.
I must’ve stood under it for half an hour.
Then I returned to the south end of the lagoon and climbed out. Nearby, I found a large slab of rock with a fairly flat surface. I crawled onto it and lay down.
I slept. If dreams came, I don’t remember them.
Later that day, I walked out onto our section of the beach.
By then, I’d stopped kidding myself; I knew the women wouldn’t be there.
The camp looked as if it hadn’t been touched since our departure, some days earlier.
The fire was dead.
But I found my book bag, opened it up, and took out my journal and one of the pens.
My journal—my only companion, now.
I sat down in the sand, crossed my legs, placed the journal on my lap, and opened it. After riffling through the great thickness of it, I came to a blank page.
I wrote, “DAY? ANYBODY’S GUESS.” I turned that page and wrote on the next, “Musings On My Return To The Journal.”
When a Body Meets a Body
It took one hell of a long rime to write all that. Yesterday morning, I started to write about my hike upstream the previous night. I was only about half done with that when I realized everything would make better sense if I went back in time and told the whole business about our “last stand.”
I can’t seem to be brief about this stuff. Next thing I know I’ll spend all day writing—and still have plenty left to go.
I haven’t been building fires since my return to the beach (trying to stay inconspicuous), so writing after dark is out of the question. I had to call it quits before I’d even gotten myself off the top of Matt.
This morning, I finished about the chasm, and brought myself back to the beach.
Now, I’m ready to tell the rest of what happened when I went upstream (two nights ago, now) to search for the women. I’d made my way about halfway through before breaking off to backtrack. But I need to get to the bad part, and get it over with, before I’m free to stop writing and do whatever comes next.
I was last seen above the waterfall, running naked through the jungle with the straight razor in my sock.
I found the place where Billie, Connie and I had joined up with Kimberly. Without her to lead the way, though, I had a difficult time finding the chasm from there. I became lost. More than once, I arrived at a boulder or tree that I recognized because I’d recently walked past it. I was roaming in circles.
It didn’t bother me. I was in no hurry to reach the chasm. I didn’t want to reach it, in fact. But the chasm (the area above it, actually) was the place where I needed to go, so I kept searching for it.
Eventually, I got there. Peering around a corner of rock, I scanned the scene of our battle.
No bodies littered the moonlit field.
I murmured, “Thank God.”
Then I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it.
I’d fully expected to find the remains of my three women on the ground near the top of the chasm. If not all of them, at least one or two.
Relief overpowered me.
The relief lasted about as long as my tears. I no sooner recovered from the crying than things came back into perspective; the absence of their bodies was an excellent sign. It didn’t, however, guarantee they were still alive.
Wesley and Thelma might’ve killed my women and dragged them away: buried them, burned them, sunk them, tossed them off a ledge, hauled them off somewhere to play nasty games with—God only knows.
Or they might’ve taken my women away alive—as prisoners.
Stepping into the open, I wondered if I might be walking into another trap. After all, this was enemy territory and we’d been ambushed here before.
I crouched, drew the razor out of my sock, and flipped open its blade. Then I made my way slowly toward the area where we’d been attacked. I crept along, turning, checking to my rear and sides, glancing in every direction.
Not far from the edge of the chasm, I found Connie’s beach-towel vest. The last time I saw her, she’d been wearing it. Now it lay crumpled in shadow beside a block of stone. I clamped the razor handle between my teeth, then crouched and picked up the vest. I spread it open and studied it. The stripes looked like different shades of gray in the moonlight.