bear clawed and bit and tore, it didn’t club and punch and twist arms from their sockets. But a fall could have. If she’d tried to climb a tree as they had, a fall could have done it. Wynn shivered. He was now downwind of the flames, the smoke stinging his eyes, the heat billowing into knees and face; he wasn’t shivering from cold. He realized that sometime in his musing he had reached for a chunk of driftwood and still held it. Damn, he must be getting sleepy. He reached out and laid it on the flames.
* * *
He got up and stretched and went to the woodpile and picked up an entire armload and fed it to the fire. They had scavenged the shoreline and stacked a pile of driftwood waist high. Might as well stay warm. And the way the megafire looked to be running, in a week or so all of this wood might be burned up anyway. He sat back down. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. The day seemed interminable, it defied natural law, no day could last this long. He made himself stay awake and in what seemed like twenty minutes he woke up Jack and passed out in the tent.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They had oatmeal in the box, and brown sugar and tea. They boiled the oats and added sugar until it was sweet and spooned it into her. They made tea for themselves, ate a little after she did, let her drink hot sweet water. She sat up in the sleeping bags. She didn’t say anything, but when Wynn held the spoon to her mouth she opened it, slowly—half opened it; it seemed her jaw was sore from whatever blows had blackened her eyes. She blinked when it was too hot or she’d had enough. She could use only one hand, but even that she barely had the energy to lift. The other arm they’d slung with two tied-together bandannas. When she had drunk most of the cup of hot water she half opened her mouth and emitted a rasping croak.
“What?” Wynn said, leaning his ear down close. “What’d you say? We?”
“She has to pee,” Jack said.
“Oh.”
She nodded, barely.
“Oh, okay.”
They took up their now regular positions and Wynn held her under her head and upper back and Jack lifted her hips and knees and they carried her fifteen feet from the fire and set her down over a larger stone and let her half sit. They still held her torso. She was very weak.
“Can you pee like that?” Wynn asked. She was naked from the waist down from where they’d stripped off her wet clothes. She nodded. She did. They both felt relief as they heard it hitting the stones, almost as if it were they themselves emptying. When she finished, everyone held position for an awkward minute.
“Ipe,” she whispered.
“Wipe? Oh, wipe! Got it!” Wynn said, a little too loud. This was all new territory for him. Jack, who had grown up on a ranch, held little stigma for bodily functions and no patience for squeamishness, said, “Just a sec,” and ran up to the berm and yanked out halms of dried grass and brought them back. He handed them to her and she tried to take them but she was too weak. Her eyes spilled tears then. The tears ran unhindered down over her bruised cheeks and dripped off her chin.
“Okay, okay,” Jack said gently. “I got this. Okay?”
She nodded faintly. He patted her with a bunch of grass and they carried her back. She was very weak. Her underwear and pants had been hanging by the fire and were dry, and Jack and Wynn worked one, then the other up her legs and snapped and zipped the fly and buckled the webbing belt. They worked her right arm through the sleeve of her zip-up fleece sweater and then through the sleeve of the rain jacket and zipped them up over her slung left arm. The wind had died, thank God. A light northwest breeze and the overcast had broken up. Just high clouds drifting slowly and bruised-rose underneath from the rising sun, which had not yet cleared the trees. No frost. They worked her dried wool socks over her feet and put her Gore-Tex hiking boots back on and laced them up. They doused the embers of their fire with lakewater. After the first hiss and the exploding puff of ash and steam and the sharp stench of char, they