The River - Peter Heller Page 0,27
the fire.
Therm-a-Rest? It was green, Jack’s. Wynn glanced at him.
“I got yours, too. And the tent.”
“Damn.” Wynn almost laughed but it came up like a cough. “No wonder the pack was so heavy.”
Jack stuck his arm in the blue dry bag and pulled out the nylon cylinder of a stuff sack. A sleeping bag.
“Holy shit,” Wynn said. “You brought the whole camp.” In the bottom he felt both their bear sprays. Whoa. Wave of relief. Their sleeping bags were light, but they were water-resistant down. The fire was hot, they kept the woman back a couple of feet. They stripped off her wet pants and underwear and her rain jacket and wet sweater but her wool undershirt had wicked dry as she’d lost heat and they left it on. They wrapped her with the sleeping bags but left the side facing the fire open so that the heat could get inside her bed. Jack had pushed smooth stones into the flames so they’d heat up in the glowing embers, and when they were hot they’d let them cool to warm and use them like hot pads. He’d also thrown the one battered pot in the bag, and he trotted down over the cobbles to the lake and filled it with lakewater and set it on two rocks by the flames.
They squatted beside her and waited for the water to boil.
“You knew it’d be like this,” Wynn murmured.
“I didn’t know. Still don’t. What happened. But I know the dude was lying. And thinking about it now, he did not want us to come back up here. He only gave us the walkie-talkie so he’d know if we found her.” He raked coals under the pot. “Sorry about that part,” he said again. He meant slapping the radio out of Wynn’s hand. He’d never done anything like that.
“That’s all right.”
They felt the fire heat their knees, pants almost burning to the touch, and they scooched back. Wynn reached down and felt the nylon on the outside of her sleeping bag to make sure it wasn’t too hot.
“Her shoulder’s out,” Wynn said. “I’m going to have to put it back in. When she warms up.”
“You done it before?”
“No. I know the theory.”
“I have. I did it for Pop once. I’ll do it.”
“Okay.”
“I never heard Pop mewl, before or since, but he cried.”
“Ouch. Okay. I’ll explain it to her.”
* * *
When the sun went down, so did the wind. They raked the stones out of the fire and let them cool to an even heat and wrapped them in their shirts and placed them in the sleeping bags with the woman. Pot, spoon, their two cups. What Jack had brought. He’d had a gut feeling they might be spending a night or two out. When her shaking stopped they stirred a bouillon cube into half a cup of water and blew on it until it wouldn’t burn her and then they both propped her up and let her sip the salty liquid. She seemed awake enough to understand. Wynn thought she might have been badly concussed. They’d have to see. They let her drink the clear soup slowly and then Jack made up a cup of sugar water, not tea—no caffeine in case of a bad concussion. She drank that, too. She whimpered a little as she sipped but was otherwise quiet.
When she finished, Wynn said gently, “We’re going to have to put your left shoulder back in. It’s dislocated. Once we get it back in the socket you’ll have a ton of relief.” She blinked. “It’s going to hurt a lot,” Wynn said. “But just for a minute.”
Her head may have moved up and down. Jack had thrown in their wool hats for good measure, and Wynn took his Ivy Darrow hand-knitted Putney ski hat and spread it open and worked it over her head and bandage. “Ready?”
Her eyes closed. Maybe that was an affirmative. Wynn had seen it before: injured people who had barely enough energy to shift a little, to eat, but not enough to talk. Strange that words took so much life force. She was half sitting propped back against him. Jack ran his hands up and around her left arm in its thin wool shirt. He felt up to her shoulder and he gently rotated the arm inward to its normal position and then pulled. Gently at first, then more firmly, then hard. She cried out, a peal of pain stronger and louder than they could