Stranded (24 page)

For sure, Jake was dead.

Horror crawled over Crystal’s insides like the blowflies crawling over Jake’s outside. She should help him, but her feet wouldn’t move. At a gasp behind her, she turned numbly to observe Aunt Betty hobbling up to them. Her aunt’s eyes bugged out, and her mouth and nostrils flared wide as the air swooped into her lungs.

“Get those flies off him!” Aunt Betty shoved her and Eve aside and rushed toward the still figure. She flailed her cane in heavy arcs over him until the flies rose like a swirling tornado to envelop her.

Crystal and Eve broke out of their stupor and ran to her rescue. They pulled her back until the angry horde returned to its feast.

Aunt Betty refused defeat. “Check his pulse!” she yelled to Eve. “Crystal, fast as you can, bring a bucket of water!”

Crystal grabbed the bucket and ran for the stream. She looked back once and saw Eve crouched beside Jake’s head. Her aunt was attacking the horde again. This time the flies looked like they were losing.

Filling the bucket was her daily job and she had learned how to do it efficiently. Still, the stream was shallow, and filling the big bucket even halfway took time. She splashed water into it to hurry the process. She had to get back. Maybe Jake really wasn’t dead.

She began to pray for him, then stopped. God wasn’t going to listen to her! This whole thing was her fault. Jake would still be asleep on his ledge if it weren’t for her. She had woken him up, and if Jake were dead, then clearly it was because of her.

The knowledge squeezed the life out of her budding soul. She understood she hadn’t done anything to deserve her father’s abandonment and her mother’s death. But Jake, that was different. If he died, if she was guilty of his death, then she deserved to lose God.

She steeled herself against the reality awaiting her in the trench. Everything inside her became quiet. The breath in her lungs ceased. Her heart didn’t beat. Though she moved on the outside, on the inside she either lived with Jake or she died with Jake. Her guilt could bear nothing less.

Eve scooted back from checking Jake’s pulse as Betty splashed water from the bucket again and again over his back. The flies rose in a dark mass and attacked Betty, but she merely squinted her eyes against their assault and kept pouring. Jake didn’t flinch under the impact of the water on his raw sores, but when she splashed water onto his face, he groaned. Next to her, Crystal drew in a sharp breath.

With a pang, Eve realized Crystal, too, had feared him dead. A fear that had sunk sharp teeth into Eve’s heart and brought up all kinds of unsuspected feelings for Jake. Feelings that said he meant far more to her than she had imagined. Her head still whirled in confusion. She shoved the emotions aside and reached for Crystal’s hand. It was cold and limp. “He’s going to be okay, sweetie.”

Crystal said nothing.

“C’mon, let’s get him out of here.” She got Crystal to help her take Jake’s arms and pull his chest onto Eve’s back, then hoist him higher so she could bend forward and carry him turtle-back. The flies now struck at her. They batted against her eyes and every inch of exposed skin, buzzing in her ears with the high shrill of a dentist’s drill.

“Lead the way,” she shouted at Crystal. Clutching Jake’s arms to her chest, she staggered forward, eyes slitted against the dive-bombers. At the cave entrance, while Betty and Crystal warded off the flies, she dragged poor Jake inside on his stomach. It took all three of them to heave him from the floor onto the table.

“Quick, more water.” Betty sent Crystal skedaddling with the bucket.

Swatting away the flies that rode Jake in, Eve examined his injuries. “Hard to tell with all this dirt, but his stitches look okay.”

“You can bet those flies laid eggs in them,” Betty growled. “However many buckets it takes, we’re going to clean them out.”

It took three buckets before Betty was satisfied. Jake was shivering by the time they tucked him away on his ledge. Eve piled coals into the small pot and placed it as close to him as she dared to warm him up.

The coolness of the cave fought her efforts. She rubbed his arms and legs to stimulate his circulation. A lump lodged in her throat.
Come on, Jake, don’t scare me again.
Fear rocked her a second time, harder than it had in the trench.
Please, Jake.
She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. Of living without him.

When at last his skin warmed and his teeth stopped chattering, she left him to Betty’s care and hustled to get fruit before dusk arrived. The venison soup they would have eaten for supper was peppered with blowflies. Nobody commented about insects in their food anymore. They simply spooned them out. But this was too over-the-top to stomach.

She made the trip a quick pick—whatever looked ripe, whatever was within easy reach. Her nerves still crawled from the sight of Jake covered with flies, lying in the trench like an abandoned corpse.

Jake dead—the possibility shredded her. Left her insides dull and jumbled, like the island in the gray morning after a typhoon. All the toughness she’d hammered into her brain over a lifetime was now mush. The carefully guarded soft spots in her heart were in disaray. She was no longer clear as to how she felt toward whom and what.

Jake. Her breath dammed her lungs so she couldn’t breathe. Believing him dead had blasted the ramparts protecting her
heart. Had flung hidden feelings sky-high. Feelings freed, revealing themselves warm and tender toward this man.

They frightened her.

What was happening? The air locked up in her lungs shuddered out. All she knew for sure was that she wanted to hurry back. Not to Chicago. Not to a new Romero trial. But to the cave.

To Jake.

When she returned, Betty sank into a chair next to her at the table, clutching a damp wad of Jake’s shirt. “He’s got a high fever. We should take turns watching him tonight.” Her voice trembled. “He was delirious while you were gone.”

Eve gave her a quick hug, as much for her own fear as Betty’s. “Let’s eat and I’ll take the first watch. You get some rest.” There was no way she’d sleep if Jake needed tending.

Crystal hardly touched her food.

“You all right?” Eve placed her hand on Crystal’s. There was no response. No turning of the wrist to clasp Eve’s palm, no entwining of slender, little fingers with Eve’s.

The child shook her head.

“He’ll be okay.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I keep meaning it. You want to keep watch with me awhile?”

She was surprised when Crystal declined. “I just want to go to bed.”

“Me too.” Betty leaned heavily on the table and stood. She pointed to the small pot of water. “I’m using his shirt to mop off his brow and keep him cool. You can check him for fever anytime.”

Eve followed their shuffling footsteps into the dark sleeping corridor. Betty grunted as she did every night when Crystal helped her onto her ledge. A soft rustle identified Crystal’s climb into her own bed. “Good-night, darling,” Betty called. Crystal’s response was faint.

Jake was lying on his side. Was he awake? She leaned over him, her heartbeat quickening. His breath warmed her cheek, and she jumped back, startled by how close she’d come to him. The second piece of shirt lay in a tidy bundle over his brow. She scooped it off and replaced it with the cooler cloth from the pot.

At her touch, he opened his eyes. “Water.” His voice rasped like parched reeds in a sea breeze. Alarm seized her breath and held it. He’d been in pain the last three days from the stitches, but not weak like this.
Crystal’s fear seeped into her bones. What if he did die? What if she were wrong that he’d be okay?

With trembling hands, she fetched a coconut shell of water and slid her hand under his head to help him take small sips. It reminded her of her first conscious moments on the island, when Jake had fed her drops of coconut juice after rescuing her from the sea. He’d done everything he’d promised, hadn’t he? Found them water, food, shelter. Made her moccasins, saved her how many times? She owed him everything, and all she’d ever done was give him a hard time, gone her own way.

Betty was right that first day of their trip up the island, when the two of them had argued about Jake. Eve inhaled a slow breath, ready now to accept the truth of Betty’s words. Ready to admit what she’d so vehemently denied back then.

She lowered her face to Jake’s ear. “You’re a good man, Jake.” She jerked in a second breath. May as well own up to all of it. “We—all of us—love you.”

In the middle of the night, Jake’s cries startled Eve out of a doze. She pulled herself to a wobbly stand from the chair she’d placed next to his ledge.

“Ginny! I can’t find you!”

Pain daggered her heart. He wanted Ginny. Of course he would . . .

Her fingers confirmed what the darkness obscured. Sweat soaked his hair and beard and pooled beneath his chin onto the bed. She ran to change the cloth slipping off his forehead. “Shh now, you’re okay.” His face and arms and chest steamed with heat. She brought the pot over and used both cloths to cool him. The bony corrugation of his ribs beneath the damp cloth brought tears to her eyes. He had paid a heavy price to care for her and Betty and Crystal. An unaccustomed tenderness swept through her.

“Ginny!” He grabbed away a cloth and pressed her empty hand to his mouth. His lips were chapped in ragged furrows that scraped the soft inner circle of her palm. For a second, she yielded to the heady tingle of intimacy that coursed up her arm and pushed the breath from her throat. His grip tightened.

No!

She jerked her hand away. What was she doing? Shame at her response to his touch—a touch meant for Ginny—clamped her throat and rocketed heat up her neck to her cheeks. This was wrong, totally wrong.

It was her fault that Jake was here. Her fault that Ginny wasn’t.

Cold fingers seized her arm, and she jumped. Betty stood next to her. “Eve, are you all right?”

It took a moment to realize what Betty was referring to. She was crying. Shoulders shaking. Chest heaving. Muffled sobs pushing through her nostrils. She opened her mouth and sucked in little chokes of air. “I—” She didn’t know what to say. “He’s calling for Ginny.”

Betty slipped an arm around Eve’s waist. “He did this afternoon too. Poor guy, he loved her so much. It will take a long time for him to move on.”

The tears wouldn’t stop. “You were right all those months ago, Betty. He is a good man. I never met . . . never thought . . .” She struggled to untangle her thoughts, to speak words that made sense. “Jake has been nothing but good to me, and I’ve been so . . . so—”

“Blind?” Betty offered. “Belligerent? Ungrateful? Stupid?”

Despair suffused her at the ease with which Betty summoned the gruff words. She collapsed into the chair and covered her face with her hands. She should be the one dying.

Betty put her arm around Eve’s shoulder and pulled her into a bony hug. “Those are harsh words, dearie, but you know, I thank God for you. You jumped right off that lighter and swam out to Crystal and me and dragged us to safety. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And look how you sewed Jake up and saved him from bleeding to death. Every day you go out of your way to help make Crystal and me comfortable and happy.”

“But not Jake.”

“You’ve been hard on him, no question about it. But now that you see the good in him, all that will change. Every day can be a new day in which you bless him just like you have Crystal and me.”

Bless?
She recoiled at the religious word. All right, bless, then—she’d do her best to make him happy. A sigh heaved from her chest. At least the word gave her a handle on how to swoop up and manage all those wild emotions that had leaped out when she thought Jake was dead.

“Ginny!” Jake’s cry brought her to her feet.

Betty shot her palm to his forehead. “We’ve got to bring this fever down or . . .”

Eve gulped, finishing the sentence.
Or they’d lose him.
She dunked both cloths into the water and thrust one at Betty. They mopped his head, his chest, his limbs. Her hands and arms shook.

How could it be that she’d finally found a good man—maybe the only one to ever walk into her life—and now she might lose him forever?

Once Betty and Eve were sound asleep, Crystal crept off her ledge and sneaked by the three exhausted adults. All night she had stifled her sobs so no one would hear her. The sun was poking orange rays through the cave windows. At least she could get fruit for them now that it was morning. She hurried so Aunt Betty wouldn’t worry about where she’d disappeared to, but nobody was awake when she returned. Okay then, she’d do more. Anything to please them, to relieve the weight of guilt on her heart.

At the stream, she filled the water bucket and rinsed out the two cloths and lay them in the sun to dry. With one eye on the cave in case anyone woke up, she hunted mussels, cleaned them, and added them to the cauldron. All that work, and still everyone slept.

Her own eyelids wanted to drop into slumber, too, but she couldn’t bear to walk by Jake’s bunk to get to hers. The horrid
thud
of his fall yesterday kept echoing in her head. Even worse, what if she slipped past him and there was
no
sound because he’d stopped breathing? The thought pinched spasms in her stomach and squeezed her lungs so tight she couldn’t breathe.

She gasped in air and forced her imagination to picture Jake up and at ’em, smiling so big all his front teeth showed, beckoning her with a pat on the ground to sit beside him on the beach and read the Bible together.

He’d like it, wouldn’t he, if she kept the hearth fire going too? She fetched firewood from the plateau until her legs ached from the climb and her skin itched from the dirt and sweat. A speedy dip in the stream brought her to the last task she could think of, cutting up the fruit.

The sharp knife set her insides jittering. Slicing the mangos and star apples wasn’t a problem, but peeling the weird red fruit covered with green hair was something Eve always handled. Well, she had learned how to open coconuts, hadn’t she? A little practice and she could peel the creepy red and green fruit too. 

She yelped as the knife split open the soft flesh of her thumb. The knife clattered to the floor and skittered toward the sleeping hall. Before Crystal could retrieve it, Eve rushed into the room.

No, not the Owl! Crystal’s insides shriveled into the darkest corner of her heart.

Eve stopped, glanced at her, then the food, then the knife. “Oh, thanks for getting the fruit—that’s exactly the lift I need. You want help?” She picked up the knife.

“I cut myself.”

“Let me see.” Eve took Crystal’s hand and examined her thumb. “Want me to sew it up? I’m getting pretty good at the job.”

Was she kidding or not? Crystal jerked her hand away. “That’s okay. I’m fine.”

A
tap-tap-tap
against the rock floor announced Aunt Betty’s arrival. “What’d you do, cut yourself? I told you to leave that knife alone.” She leaned on her cane and seized Crystal’s thumb. “Now look what you’ve done, on top of all our other troubles!”

A grunt from the sleeping corridor jerked their attention to its doorway. Jake stumbled into view. He leaned against the wall, his chest and palms flat against the stone for support. “Help me.” His voice was raspy.

“Jake! What are you doing up?” In two steps, Eve was at his side.

“Need you . . . look at my back.”

“What’s wrong? It’s not bleeding. Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Help me . . . to table.” His words, whispered with effort, were nevertheless insistent. “Need light to see.”

Fear punched the air in Crystal’s lungs.
See what?

Eve’s voice softened. “Okay, lean against my back, then, like I did against yours during the typhoon.” She slipped Jake’s arms over her shoulders and trundled him with small steps to the table. Crystal swiped away the fruit and helped Eve lay Jake on the bamboo slats. Eve brushed away wisps of Jake’s hair plastered in sweat to his face. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

His answer scraped out between heaving breaths from the journey across the room. “Get close . . . Look.”

Crystal’s stomach knotted at how feeble his voice sounded. How he lay with the bumpy bamboo slats poking his face. How his arms lay limp by his side, like jellyfish washed ashore by the tide. She blinked back tears and forced herself to join Eve and Betty at the table.

At best, the light in the cave was dim. She leaned over and squinted at his back. The pattern of the cat’s claws marked four short furrows down each shoulder. The blood had dried into black lines puckered with miniature, pink volcanoes connected by fishline where Eve had sewn Jake up. Tiny, white dots the size of rice embedded the pink bumps.

No! Surely those dots had not moved. She bent closer. Every one of them wriggled and fidgeted.

She jumped back with a scream. “Maggots!”

As if choreographed, Eve and Betty leaped back with her. Their faces mirrored her horror.

Jake released a heavy sigh. “Thought so.” He raised his hand and opened his palm flat. “Let me see.”

Eve inched forward to peek at his back. “Trust me, they’re there. Some are already under your skin.”

“Show me one.” When no one moved, he murmured, “Crystal?”

“Gross!” But how could she refuse? Wasn’t she the cause of this invasion in the first place? If Jake had to bear it, so did she. Suppressing a whimper, she brushed a stubby, white larva into her hand and held it out for Jake’s inspection. It wriggled toward the crease line below her fingers. She squealed and dumped it onto his palm.

He shoved his hand level with his eyes. “Good. A maggot.”

Aunt Betty squeezed Crystal’s arm. “Get me that bucket of water. We’re getting rid of them right now.”

“No!” Jake’s voice raised the hair on Crystal’s arms. He lifted his head and shook it with surprising vigor. “Don’t.”

“He’s delirious.” Aunt Betty pushed Crystal toward the bucket. “Get the water.”

“Stop!” Jake boosted himself to his elbows and twisted around to frown at Betty. “They eat dead flesh. They’ll help my wounds.”

“I won’t allow it, Jake.” Tears brimmed in Betty’s eyes. “I won’t have you eaten alive by worms.”

“Wait.” Eve grasped Crystal’s arm. “I’ve heard about this, Betty. In some parts of the world, maggots are used medically to remove decay and prevent gangrene. It may—” She halted and pressed her lips together. When they stopped quivering, she continued. “It may be Jake’s only chance.”

Silence smothered the cave. Air vanished from Crystal’s lungs. Pulse and heartbeat quit. The words swallowed her soul.
Jake’s only chance—to live
.

The creak of the table shattered the quiet. Crystal jumped, her heart ramming her ribs. Across from her, Jake slid his legs off the bamboo slats to a shaky stand, his arms, braced against the table, equally shaky. His head drooped as if his neck had turned to rubber. “Take me back.”

Eve helped him to his bed. She returned to sit next to Betty and put an arm across Betty’s slumped shoulders. Crystal couldn’t distinguish the words Eve mumbled into Betty’s ear, but it wasn’t a hard guess. “He’ll be okay.” How many times had Eve said that? And look at Jake now.

Crystal’s insides ached. She wanted Eve’s arm around her. Wanted Eve’s hand smoothing her hair away from her face. Wanted, yes, even the empty words of comfort. But she understood she was unworthy. The words “eaten alive” cut deeply into her heart. Jake might die, maybe was dying right now, alone in bed. Slowly eaten by worms.

She sniffled bumpy, little sobs of air into her lungs. At last, here was someone who loved her for no good reason in the whole, wide world—and she had as good as killed him.

When she crawled onto her bunk that night, she hardly closed her eyes before Jake’s cries awoke her.

“Ginny!”

The soft patter of Eve’s feet, the tap of Aunt Betty’s cane, the slosh of two cloths dunked in water—they all said the same thing. The worms were eating Jake.

There were no more tears left to cry. Only a deep chill, and the certainty that tomorrow Jake would be dead.