The fire is hot, and the aroma makes my mouth water, and then I imagine what a bear or a wolf might think. My heart sinks, and then I decide that I can’t control everything. Cook the rabbit; eat the rabbit.
I take the rabbit stick and slide the stick end between two rocks and let the rabbit dangle near the fire. I rub Paul’s back and then wrap myself around him to try and keep him warm. I look up to the sky. It is overcast and cloudy. There’s a big cold world out there, but I believe this little fire is enough to keep us warm, if only for a few hours.
Chapter 29
I wake alone and near the fire. During the night I rolled away from Paul, who is still sleeping. I can see his chest heaving up and down, so I know he is still alive. It is still dark, and stars fill what’s left of the night sky, but there’s morning light flowing up over the bottom edges of the horizon.
I am so cold that I feel my body shivering inside and out. I had hoped to wake up a few times during the night to poke the fire and wake Paul, but my exhausted body had other plans. I look at what remains of the fire. A few embers still glow, and I quickly move over and blow on them gently, stoking them until they redden with heat. I rip a large chunk of pages from Will’s notebook and rebuild the fire with twigs and small branches until the flames begin to lap at the air.
“What are you doing?”
I turn around and see that Paul has sat up and is staring at me.
“I’m saving the fire-it was dying.”
“What’s that?” Paul says, pointing at the burnt rabbit I let slow cook all night.
I pick up the stick with the rabbit on the end, and it is charred black and dry as a bone. I grab a leg and tear it off. With my fingers I pull back whatever skin remains and then I bite down. It is heaven. Salty and chewy and heavenly. I take another bite and then another. I’m like a wild animal ripping away the meat.
“How did you get that?” he asks.
“I killed it. I stepped on it and then stabbed it with the stake you made me.”
I rip off a leg and hand it to him. He bites into the flesh and then quickly devours it. We quickly tear off the remaining meat and devour what’s left of the rabbit. When we are done, we just stare at each other. And then Paul laughs.
“You’re a savage, Solis.”
“I think I am,” I say with a smile. He seems to be more like his old self, like the anger from yesterday dissolved with his fall.
Paul touches his forehead, and dried blood flakes off onto his jacket. He stares at me, apparently trying to put the pieces together. He is a bit groggy, and his eyes are glassy.
“What happened to me?”
“You fell and hit your head. You broke your arm,” I say.
“My chest feels like it was kicked in, too.”
He looks at me, and then he points at the fire.
“That’s amazing,” he says. “How did you start the fire?”
“I used paper from your brother’s notebook. I had to. I’m sorry.”
Paul’s face drops for a moment, and then he puts his head in his good hand. He’s thinking about what he should say or do-whether I should be banished or embraced, I imagine. He looks up, and his eyes are blurry and watery. Then he speaks.
“You kept us warm. You made us food that might save our lives. That’s more important than a memory.”
I nod.
“You read it-I remember you read the letter,” he says quietly.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Paul gazes into my eyes. Then he shimmies himself closer to the fire. He winces with each little movement. I pick up his sleeping bag and put it over him and we snuggle together close to the fire. I pull another leg from the rabbit and hand it to his good hand. He bites in and groans from pleasure.
“Will and I lived in the same room together for sixteen years,” he starts. “He’d write all kinds of crazy stuff. He was a writer, like my dad. When he died, I think my dad hated me for living. That’s crazy-sounding, but I think it’s true.”
“Yes, they can hate you for living. I know that’s true,” I say, and I feel the overwhelming truth of it even though I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. As much as my mother loves me, she resents that I am here and he is gone. I’ve never allowed that thought to surface in my consciousness before, but there it is, as plain as any truth I know.
He closes his eyes and lays his head down on my lap.
“Will died of cancer, right?”
Paul looks up at me. I see some tears well in his eyes.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fucking leukemia. I’m sitting around sometimes, waiting for it to grow inside me.” He pauses. “It was fast, like six months. One moment we were reading on the beach-well, he was reading, I was probably surfing. And then by winter he was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “The faster they go, the harder it is, I think. At least when it takes a long time, you have time to prepare.”
Paul reaches out and takes my hand in his. I put my other hand on top of his and then lay my head down gently in his lap.
A cold wind picks up and cuts into us.
“ Fuck, that’s cold,” Paul says.
I look up to the mountain before us. It is short, but a steep peak, and I wonder if Paul can even climb it. Snow begins to fall again, and I see that we are in for more rough weather by the clouds that are amassing.
“Can you climb?” I ask.
“Yes. I could climb with no legs and no arms.”
“Good.”
He sits up all the way and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the pack of cigarettes he took off the captain.
“Nothing like a smoke after dinner, right?”
“They cause cancer,” I say. I’m smiling because I know it’s irrelevant-given our situation-but I couldn’t help myself.
“My mother would rise from the dead if she saw one of these in my mouth.”
“I think we get a survivor’s pass at this point, don’t you?”
“Yes. ‘You can indulge at death’s door’ is our motto.”
We light up and smoke. I inhale deeply and cough a little. Paul just sucks his down.
“I started smoking after she died. I know it makes no sense, but I wanted to say fuck you to everyone and everything. It drove my brother crazy, and my father would take my packs and throw them away if he found them.”
“You do crazy things when people die. It’s true.”
“Yeah, crazy is the only thing that feels real.”
I nod and then inhale. I look up at Paul and then throw the cigarette filter into the fire and lean my head against his shoulder.
After he finishes his smoke, he stands up for the first time since his fall. He winces. He holds the side of his chest and the pain momentarily overwhelms him. He bows and falls to one knee.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He puts his hand up. He pauses with one knee on the ground for a few moments, gathering his strength. The wind picks up, and it blows frozen snow off the top of drifts. Suddenly, Paul lifts himself and he lets out a loud grunt, his face red and radiating with the effort he’s expending to perform this normally simple maneuver.
I hand him the bottle of Tylenol and one of the water bottles. He takes out a handful and drinks the remaining water.
“I’m ready,” he says.
We walk to the mountain pass that connects the two peaks. I can see that animal tracks have already made their way to and fro across the pass. It’s a good sign. I realize what we were looking at from a distance-what Paul described as a natural bridge-is simply the highest point where the landmasses have remained connected. The animals already knew what we had discovered: to avoid a deadly climb down to the basin of the valley, this was the only place to cross. There’s a sheer wall on either side and it’s only about ten feet wide, thinner in some places. On top, the pass sits like a thin saddle with very steep drops on either side.