Falling From Grace (30 page)

Paul and I collapsed onto the top of a stump, too depressed to move. Rainbow clambered over and under and around in the unstable landscape, trailed by a watchful Grace.

“Careful, child,” she called.

“No point in carrying on,” I lamented. “Let's go back into the park. This is too gloomy.”

Paul massaged his thigh. “We could maintain an old-growth site in the park?”

“What's the point?” I countered. “We've lost half our study trees. Interior forest conditions are gone. New trees won't mature to old-growth for centuries. We'll be long dead.”

Paul reached out and held his hand over the bulge that strained the buttons of my jacket. “Is she moving?”

“It's a girl, is it?” I teased. “He/she's a gymnast, I believe.” I moved his hand over to the other side of my navel. “Here's the bum.”

The fabric rippled beneath his fingers. “The swimmer swimmeth.” He kissed my forehead. “We'll find a new site.”

“Where? Only five intact watersheds left on all of Vancouver Island, all under threat of the axe.”

“We'd better get busy.”

“All right,” I said. “Study site five hundred and sixty three a year from now.” Could I handle an infant in a field camp? “I wonder if the university will fund a field nanny.”

Paul laughed. “Why? You've got me.” A light drizzle of rain in a darkening sky foreshadowed a downpour. “We should go,” he said.

“Faye, Paul.” Grace gestured from atop a pile of slash. She pointed to Rainbow, who knelt in the jumble, arms working between a pair of logs, tongue clenched between her teeth. Paul helped me up and supporting one another, we made our way through the slash.

“What is it?” I said. Rainbow grunted, wrestling an object from the hole. She gave one last tug, tumbling backward as her prize, mangled and caked in mud, came free. She held it up with a triumphant smile. The crossbow.

• • •

Paul and
I lay in the tent after dark, our sleeping bags zipped together, his long body spooned warm against my back, a folded jacket between my legs to make space for the baby. We were like a seed within a seed, Paul the warm, protective pod enveloping us. We wore toques and socks and long underwear, the night near freezing. A steady rain drummed on the tent fly. “Who do you think did it?” I asked.

Paul remained silent, but I knew the discovery of the crossbow, propped against his pack under a tarp outside the tent, must be on his mind.

“Someone tried to kill you.”

“But they didn't.” He paused. “I suppose it was a disgruntled logger.”

“How did he find you?”

“He was hunting and stumbled upon me?”

“In the dark. With our crossbow.”

“Can I go to sleep, Detective Sherlock?”

“I didn't tell anyone you went up the tree,” I persisted. “The culprit must have known. You didn't say anything to anyone, did you?” His body tensed against me. “Paul, did you?”

His silence provided my answer. In my mind's eye I scanned the faces of the protest group, pictured Mary kissing Paul, Cougar watching from the trailhead, his eyes hot with jealousy. Mary. Paul would have shared our plan with Mary.

• • •

The rain
stopped at dawn and the bleeding began. I discovered the spots of blood on my underwear when I crawled out of the tent to pee. I crouched on the wet ground and willed the stains to disappear, to evaporate, to reverse their journey. It wasn't fair. To end our time together in another bloody scar on the forest floor. The
rat-tat-tat
of a flicker hammered on a tree on the other side of the river and the sound pulled me to my senses. I woke Grace, who crawled from the tent to find me pacing between the trees.

“I'm bleeding.”

“How much.”

“Spots . . . a few.”

“You need to rest.” Grace dragged my sleeping bag and mat from the tent. Rainbow's sleepy voice called out from the second tent, “What are you doing, Nanna?” She'd christened Grace Nanna a month after Mary left.

By the time Paul emerged from the tent I was shivering inside the bag, propped against a log, trying to steady a cup of tea against my lips.

“We have to get her to a hospital.” He slipped on a sweater and started yanking tent pegs from the ground. “Let's go.”

“We can't risk driving. The road's too rough,” Grace argued, her face creased with worry. “I tried the phone. There's no reception.”

“What choice do we have,” Paul said. “You hold her. I'll drive.”

“You can't. I'll get the keys,” Grace said. “I'll drive.”

By the time the car was loaded and we were underway, the rain had resumed, steady and hard. It pounded on the roof, wipers thumping across the windshield, defroster on full in a vain attempt to keep the view ahead clear. Grace leaned forward and squinted into the downpour, driving at a snail's pace to minimize the vibration of the car on the rough gravel road. Paul supported me on his lap in the back seat as the car lurched through potholes and shuddered across washboard. Rainbow fell asleep, propped on a pillow beside Grace.

“Is it any worse?” Paul adjusted the sleeping bag and brushed my hair away from my forehead.

I couldn't tell, the space between my legs sticky but cold. No cramps or contractions. No flood of amniotic fluid. No river of blood flowing out behind with the rain. “I'm fine,” I answered, reluctant to add to the level of stress in the car.

Paul's hand slipped under the blanket and stroked my heavy abdomen. “Hang in there baby,” he whispered.

“Is she okay?” Grace asked, the strain in her face visible in the rear-view mirror.

“All under control back here,” Paul answered. “You keep your attention on the road.”

We drove in silence, the tension in the car palpable. Paul's thighs tight under my head, the muscles in his stomach taut.

Would he leave if I lost the baby? “Go ahead,” I said. “Say it.”

“Say what?” Paul asked.

“I told you so.”

He waited a moment before answering. “No point in that,” he murmured. “Besides, I love you for your adventurous spirit.”

Why else?
I wanted to ask, but I couldn't muster the energy.

He massaged the back of my neck. “Why don't you try to sleep.”

I drifted into a state of semi-consciousness, aware of the drumming on the roof, the swish of water on the undercarriage as Grace manoeuvred the car through deeper and deeper puddles. In the haze of my semi-dream state, marbled murrelets circled above a red canopy. The birds dropped purple eggs from the treetops to the forest floor, the eggs bursting open in yellow splatters across the ground.

I woke when the car came to a stop.

“Damn.” Grace pounded her fists on the steering wheel. She swivelled around in her seat, face ashen.

“What is it?” Paul said.

“The road's flooded.”

I struggled to sit up and leaned over the back seat to see the passage ahead a torrent of brown water and debris, the roadbed washed out for at least two car lengths. I wasn't surprised to see both sides of the road were clear-cut, no trees, no root system to modulate the flow of water across the land.

“Shit.” Paul reached for his raincoat. “I hope it's not too deep.” He glanced over at me. “You stay here.”

“You can't go in there,” I said, alarmed.

“Don't worry. I haven't had a seizure in weeks. Any better ideas?” He stepped from the car, turning at the last minute to say, “This time I won't do it in my underwear.”

Rainbow sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. “What's happening?” she said, clambering onto her knees to peer out the window. “Where's Paul?”

Grace pulled her onto her lap and pointed.

Paul hunted around at the edge of the road until he found a solid length of branch. Standing beside the torrent, he thrust it out ahead of him and down into the swirling water. The current caught the tip of the branch and threatened to snatch it from Paul's grasp. He pulled it back and probed the bottom closer to shore. When he lifted his probe and measured it against his body, the watermark reached his kneecaps.

“He can't go in there,” I said again.

Grace cranked the window open and called to him. He returned to the car, lifted the back hatch, and rummaged around in the jumble of gear. “I knew I brought this for a reason.” He lifted a climbing rope from a pack. He tied one end to the front bumper of the car, looped the other around his waist, and, against our protests, waded into the flood waters.

By the time he was halfway across, the water had reached mid-thigh. He turned and raised a thumb. “He's going to make it,” Rainbow yelled. Grace grabbed my hand. “Yes, yes,” she whispered.

Suddenly, Paul's body stiffened. Rainbow screamed as he fell. We watched in horror as his head disappeared below the waves. His shoulders rolled to the surface and the current carried his body swiftly downstream.

“Paul.” I heaved my bulk out into the driving rain, Grace close behind. We took up the rope and heaved, the loose untidy coils snaking in the mud at our feet. The line went taut. We followed it, hand over hand, until we found him, coat snagged on a half-sunk limb near shore, face submerged, body thrashing weakly. We stumbled down the embankment, turned him over, and hauled his torso onto solid land, legs floating. I knelt over him, my belly dragging in the muck and my ear to his mouth. “He's breathing.” I burst into tears with a short-lived relief.

Keep him safe
. I remembered the neurologist's instructions.
When he has a seizure your job is to keep him from hurting himself
. I removed my raincoat to shelter him. Rainbow appeared in her pyjamas and rubber boots, the tent flapping like a giant airborne bird around her. The three of us knelt under it in the muck and watched helplessly while the seizure took its course.

Somehow we managed to drag the weight of his unconscious body across the road and lift him into the car. Grace fetched dry clothes from the packs and we peeled his mud-soaked sweater and pants from his clammy body and wrapped him in sleeping bags. I struggled out of my wet things, my underwear spotted with fresh blood.

“What were you thinking?” Grace scolded. “What if—” She buried her face in her hands. Rainbow slipped her fingers into the crease in Grace's elbow. “Nanna?”

Grace pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose.

“What, dear?”

“I want to go home,” she sniffed.

“I know.” Grace drew her close. “Me too.”

The rain continued, the floodwaters growing by the minute, and Grace backed the car away from the breach for fear the raging current would crumble the road bed further and take us with it. We huddled under sleeping bags and ate the dry remainders of our food. Grace boiled tea under the open back hatch for warmth, but we were reluctant to run the engine for fear of draining the gas tank. I checked Paul's condition every few minutes. He remained unconscious but breathing, skin pasty and cold.

“We should set up the tents,” I ventured.

No one moved. The weight of our situation was suffocating. I reached again for my cell phone, praying for adequate reception. No signal.

Rainbow drew a picture with her finger in the thick grey film of moisture on the inside of the windshield. I punched numbers pointlessly into the dead phone. “Oh,” Rainbow exclaimed. Her crooked house with a tree in the garden came alive with an eerie glow. “Lights,” she cried out. A horn blared from across the washout. Rainbow wiped her landscape away with a single sweep of her sleeve and pointed through the glass. “A car.”

Grace opened the window and peered out. “A crew cab.” She bolted from the car and ran toward the torrent, arms waving. “Help us!”

Across the water, two people in heavy yellow slickers waved back. After a shouted exchange, Grace returned to the car. “I can't tell what they're saying.” She slid in behind the wheel and started the car. “We can't wait. We have to try.”

“It's too dangerous, Grace,” I said, “We can't make it without a rope. Wait. Rainbow, crawl into the back and bring me Paul's gear bag, the one the rope was in.” Within minutes she returned with the bag and I hunted around to find a length of parachute cord and a lead-filled pouch.

We climbed from the car and stood on the bank, loose gravel washing away below our feet with the current. I knotted one end of the line to the weighted bag, the other end to the rope that was still tied to the bumper. The two shrouded figures yelled encouragement across the water. I dragged the coiled rope to the edge of the torrent and threw the bag with all my strength, the cord looping behind. A cramp shot through my abdomen and I doubled over; the weight fell short in the middle of the stream.

Grace snatched the line from my fingers and reeled it back in. “I'll do it.” She swung the bag in tight circles, then released it over the water. It too fell far from the opposite shore. On her third try, the weight cleared the water and landed on the crumbling roadbed at the margins of the flood. One of the men retrieved it and hauled in the line, followed by the climbing rope. They backed the truck to the water's edge and secured the rope to the rear bumper. The driver gestured out the window for us to proceed.

Grace and Rainbow and I piled back into the car.

“Open the windows,” Grace ordered, starting the car. She paused, then added in a hushed tone that made my legs go weak, “in case we have to get out.”

“Put the gear shift in neutral, Grace,” I suggested with a tenderness for my mother I'd never felt before.

The rope stretched tight. The wheels turned. The car lurched forward in tot he rushing flood waters. “Mother of God,” Grace whispered and then raised her voice. “Hang on.”

“You can do it, Mom,” I assured her. “All you have to do is steer.”

The station wagon slipped into the current. I peered through the window and watched as water inched higher and higher on the hubcaps. At midstream, waves lapped at the bottom of the door. My heart banged in my chest and Rainbow's fingernails dug into my hand, her eyes clenched shut. None of us spoke.