I&#39ll Be There (20 page)

And then everything was dark again.

Sam was shaking from the freezing night air, so Riddle picked every fern that he could find on the riverbank. He had armfuls and armfuls of them.

Then Riddle took off the old, oversize sweater that Sam had given him from the back of the truck and he wrapped it around Sam’s legs. He then carefully covered Sam with layer after layer
of ferns, all positioned in the same direction, like the insides of a circuit board, until only Sam’s head was now visible.

And then Riddle lifted up the ferns and got right up against his brother and he fell asleep, hoping his body heat would help keep them both warm.

Riddle woke up at first light. Sam’s chest was moving up and down. He was breathing. So he was still alive. Riddle was hungry. Really hungry. But it was warm next to Sam
under the ferns, and he waited until the sun was higher up in the sky, sending spots of bright yellow light onto the riverbank and onto Sam. And then he finally got to his feet.

Riddle filled his shoe with icy water from the churning river and he drank, hoping that the liquid would stop his stomach cramps. But it didn’t. He took a seat on a rotten log that lay on
the mat of forest debris.

Sam always got them out of trouble. But now Sam was under the ferns and he was still having trouble waking up.

Riddle stared at his left hand. He felt something small. Shiny black beetles were burrowing into a hole close to his left thumb, which rested on the decomposing reddish bark.

They look like candy.

Candy with legs.

Riddle reached over and plucked a beetle off the log. It struggled in his fingers. He then pulled off the insect’s six angled legs. Now it wasn’t struggling.

And now it really looks like candy.

Riddle popped it into his mouth and chewed.

It doesn’t taste like candy.

It tastes like a spicy nut.

A nut that’s been stuck in the back seat of the truck and that I find after a long time and I eat anyway but don’t tell Sam.

Riddle reached over and picked up four more beetles and ripped off their legs and ate them. With each beetle, he got more comfortable with the taste, until he was digging into the log, pulling
out beetles by the handful.

And the crunch is a good thing.

Using a sharp stick to dig deeper into the rotten log, Riddle found hundreds of beetles.

He ate until his tongue started to feel thick. The beetles were tart and like licking a lemon wedge that was covered in ground pepper. Knowing that Sam would need something to eat, he then
collected many more beetle bodies, removing the insects’ legs and putting them in the empty shoe.

But Riddle worried that the nutty snack beetles wouldn’t be enough, so he continued searching along the river’s edge and was rewarded around the next bend with an inlet.

Here the water was stagnant and sat in shallow, cold pools. Around the edges of the brackish water, it was like a marsh. As Riddle got closer, he saw that the area was filled with cattails.

Riddle stared. They looked like corn dogs. He liked corn dogs.

Sometimes Sam bought them corn dogs at the Seven-Eleven. Riddle knew that these weren’t corn dogs, but that didn’t stop him from reaching into the rushes and breaking off a
stalk.

Riddle held the fuzzy, brown spike in his hands. He shut his eyes and let the soft brown cylinder rest against his cheek. It was comforting. And it smelled good. When he opened his eyes, Riddle
was looking down and could see the fresh green new shoots of future cattail spikes poking up out of the water.

They looked like the vegetable that Debbie Bell made. What was it called? Ash. Pear. Gas. But it had nothing to do with ashes or pears or gas.

Riddle reached down and broke off a new shoot, peeling back the outside green layers to reveal a soft white interior. Didn’t Debbie Bell say that sometimes they could be white? He dug his
dirty thumbnail into the fleshy, creamy pulp, and it gave way.

He then instinctively took a bite. It was like raw zucchini and fresh cucumbers.

He took another bite.

It tasted good. Really good.

Especially after eating a lot of black beetles.

Moving was intense.

If Sam could just stay in one place and keep his shoulder steady, everything would be fine. But of course he had to breathe, and that hurt his side. His ribs. They must be broken. And his
shoulder was massively messed up. But he was alive.

And then there was Riddle.

How exactly had Riddle gotten down the mountainside? And how had he stayed in one piece? The last thing Sam remembered, he was up on the road. They were all up on the road.

So where was Clarence?

Hadn’t he tried to kill them? Or did he imagine that? He remembered his father aiming the shotgun. But then it all went blank. Did he kill his father? Maybe that’s what this was
about. The end of Clarence. Is that what happened?

He felt like it might be the end of something. For him anyway.

But, except for the fact that Riddle had a cut on his forehead, his brother looked fine. He looked better than that. He looked good. Even his breathing seemed okay – maybe it was the
mountain air. Sam had spent his whole life taking care of his little brother, and somehow Riddle was now the strong one.

And to think he always worried about the kid just crossing the street.

He got back to find Sam awake, staring up into the swaying pine branches.

Riddle was carrying a stack of the cattail shoots with a shoe full of beetles balanced on top.

‘Sam!’

Sam managed a small, ‘Hey . . . Could you get me some water?’

Riddle carefully put down the cattails and then quickly scooped up some of the cold river into his other sneaker and brought it back. Riddle felt a huge sense of relief, which he kept to
himself. But inside he was saying, in a swirl of repetitive circles,
Sam is still Sam. Sam is still Sam. Sam is still Sam.

After Sam had swallowed the water, Riddle presented the other shoe, removing a handful of what looked like black currants. He placed them in Sam’s hand. Sam didn’t even ask what they
were. He put them in his mouth and chewed. Riddle could not stop smiling.

‘Nuts . . .’

Sam ate most of what was in the shoe and then, after more water, he started in, slowly, on the crunchy cattail shoots.

After Sam ate, he painfully, incredibly painfully, rolled to his side and took a leak, which had to mean his kidneys were still working. But the reality was that he had broken
bones, and maybe something inside was bleeding. And he needed a doctor.

Small black flies, exploding into the air in spring, now appeared in a swarm, like a filter of fine netting, waving above his head. Sam watched the chaotic frenzy. What were the insects doing?
And why? The frantic motion suddenly was translated in his head into sound.

His physical pain lessened when he could fix his mind on something else. He’d learned years ago how to make this happen. And now, more than ever, this is what got him through the agony of
a broken shoulder, six broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, concussion, and multiple bone bruises.

Sam had no idea how long Riddle was gone.

But when he again appeared at his side, he was using the old striped sweater as a large sling. Dozens and dozens of fuzzy cattails were inside. Sam watched as Riddle obsessively arranged the
cattails on rows on the ground.

And then after he’d completed his work, Riddle carefully moved his brother off the damp pine-covered earth to what felt to Sam’s broken body like the sweetest cushion imaginable.

Clarence slowly pulled himself upwards over the rocks.

His broken leg, a compound fracture, now stiff and swollen, was discoloured from pooled blood vessels and almost twice its normal size.

Clarence’s collarbone was still electric, but if he held his arm folded when he rested, close to his chest, he could keep the searing jolts to a minimum.

Any normal person would have quit. The pain. The insanity of scaling the jagged rock face. It would have been too much. But the very thing that made Clarence irrational was the same thing that
kept him going.

And the following afternoon, under a partly cloudy sky, a full twenty-four hours after they’d gone over the edge, he dragged himself up onto the gravel road.

His truck was at a distance, stuck in the rushing water. With his last ounce of energy, Clarence stumbled into the icy, running water and drank for what felt like ten minutes. He then staggered
to the passenger door, opened it, and fell onto the front seat as he lost consciousness.

Since Clarence had always left the boys to fend for themselves, being all alone deep in the forest didn’t panic Riddle. He and Sam were survivalists even when they were
in the heart of a city.

So as Sam drifted back asleep, Riddle snapped off branches and used them to make an enclosure. He stacked them into a wall, which was nearly four feet high.

Satisfied that they’d now be warmer at night, Riddle sat down next to Sam. He was exhausted. Riddle shut his eyes, and his fingers twitched.

I need to make lines. I need to make the shapes.

But I don’t have my drawing book.

I need to make lines.

And that was when Riddle suddenly realised that he still had a pen shoved deep in his back pocket. He took it out. Holding the ballpoint made him feel better. He stared at the print on the
side.

State Farm Insurance. Agent Dewey Danes Says Be Prepared!

Riddle unscrewed the pen and looked at the different parts.

It had two plastic outer pieces and a thin metal ring in the centre. There was a metal clip at the top and a small spring inside that pressed on the plastic tube of blue ink.

Riddle pulled on the spring, and it elongated into a thin piece of curved metal. Riddle pushed the pieces of the pen from his cupped hand back into his jeans pocket. And then he curled up right
next to his brother and fell asleep.

When he woke up, several hours later, Sam’s eyes were open. He was staring up at the big clouds, hoping they didn’t hold rain.

Riddle looked at his brother as he said, ‘I’m hungry.’

Sam ever so slightly nodded. Riddle was talking to himself now as much as to his big brother.

‘I saw little fish in the water.’

Riddle didn’t like to eat fish. But he knew Sam did. He continued, ‘I’d eat a fish sandwich. I’d even eat one with that bad sauce.’

Riddle dug into his pocket and pulled out the pen parts and began fiddling with the uncoiled spring. Sam watched. The metal looked sharp.

‘Be careful with that. You could cut yourself.’ Sam closed his eyes.

Riddle kept pulling on the former spring, which was now a piece of kinky metal. Sam opened his eyes. Riddle was still doing it. Sam was not in shape to fight about anything. He shut his eyes.
Riddle sucked in his breath and said, ‘Maybe we could catch a fish.’

Sam’s eyes stayed closed. ‘Maybe.’

Riddle had tears in his eyes now. ‘I don’t know how to catch a fish.’

Sam opened his eyes. When Riddle got started on something, even on a good day, it could be tough. The unsprung little metal spring had a curl on the end. Riddle was trying to straighten it. It
caught the light. It was pointy. Sharp. ‘Put the pen parts away. And take this . . .’

Sam was still wearing Emily’s grandfather’s old gold watch. It had survived the fall.

Riddle had always been fascinated by it. He had asked many times if he could take off the back and look inside, but Sam had never allowed it.

Riddle’s eyes now widened. ‘Can I take it apart? I’ll be careful.’

Sam didn’t even answer. Moving his arm was too painful. The last thing he remembered for the day was feeling Riddle undo the strap.

Riddle used a piece of the pen to pry open the back of the watch. The working mechanism was a thing of beauty. Just looking at the shiny moving parts calmed him. Now he wanted
to disassemble the whole thing. Using the clip from the ballpoint pen, he was able to get the crystal off the front. He carefully placed the glass dome on the pine needles at his side and continued
his work.

Overhead, the sun was still strong. Riddle needed a drink. He got up to his feet and, using his shoe, scooped up some of the river. When he came back, water was still dripping from his chin. A
drop fell on the glass crystal front of the watch.

And then, while Riddle continued to analyse the intricate gold timepiece, the sun hit the drop of water on the curved glass. The intense light turned a tiny spot into a powerful hot point.

One of the pine needles, dry tinder at just the right angle, began to burn. Riddle smelled it before he saw it.

But it didn’t take long for him to realise he’d stumbled, accidentally, upon greatness: fire.

Sam opened his eyes and as they adjusted to the darkness he saw Riddle’s face, bathed in the orange light of flames. He was in hell.

‘No!’

Riddle was positively euphoric. ‘I made a fire. With the glass from the watch. Now we’ll be warm. And we can cook food! But we don’t have food. But I can find us food. I
promise. Because now we have fire.’

The next day they ate more of the white, crunchy cattail stalks and drank more of the icy water.

But when Riddle, looking for distraction and comfort, took the parts of the pen out of his pocket, Sam again saw the uncoiled spring. And the piece of wire, he now realised, held the makings of
a hook.

Riddle understood how things worked. He’d spent his life drawing mechanical parts. So he listened to his brother. He broke off a branch from a birch tree. He then peeled off the bark into
long strips. He attached the metal clip of the pen to the bark, braiding the green bark together until it was strong.

Along the icy riverbanks, the soil was dark and rich. Riddle did what he was told and dug in the ground, finding plump, purplish pink earthworms. He carefully worked the metal spring through the
body of a struggling earthworm and then fastened it to the pen clip.

It took him most of the day, but sitting on a rock next to the water, Riddle finally caught a two-pound rainbow trout. It flopped on the shore, furious to have swallowed a dead worm with a
devastating secret.