The River

9

Brian stood away from the fish trap and shook his head.

Nothing was the same, really.

It was a beautiful day, with the mid-afternoon sun shining down on them, and he thought of what the problem could be, what was wrong.

It had somehow turned into one big happy camping trip.

We might as well have a cooler full of soft drinks and sandwiches, Brian thought.

They’d been at the lake three days, but it looked like they’d been there a year. The camp was squared away and neat. Derek had called in on the radio and told the world they were all right, telling them to pass the information on to Brian’s parents — Brian thought his mother might worry if she knew about them sending the gear back. Then they had enhanced the beds and made them deep and soft with more boughs, there was enough firewood for a month, and they had made birch-bark containers to hold extra hazelnuts and berries.

They’d found blueberries and raspberries and plums. On this side of the lake the forest was more open and the plums and nuts and berries seemed to thrive in the light and heat.

Wild plums. They were a little green, but even so, Brian couldn’t believe how sweet and rich they were — like small, domestic plums, with a little more tang to them.

Brian had made a bow, used a strip from his belt for a string, and had shown Derek how to shoot fish, then how to use the guts from one fish to bait the others into a trap made of stones; and they soon had more fish than they needed. Brian found a clam bed and they had actually eaten one meal — clams steamed around the fire, nuts, and berries — that left them full.

Full.

Plus, they had more clams stored and plenty of fish left in the trap and knew the locations of several ruffed grouse. There were rabbits and squirrels all over the place, and if they had to they could make it a year or two, and it felt wrong.

All wrong.

He shook his head again and moved back by the fire pit. Derek was sitting on his bed by the fire, feeding an occasional stick to the fire to keep it going, writing in his notebook. He looked up as Brian walked into the shelter, and saw him shaking his head.

“What’s the matter?”

Brian shrugged. “I don’t know — it’s just wrong, I think.”

“What do you mean — wrong?”

Brian looked around at the shelter, the comfort, the food, the fire, the lake. “All this. We’re so… so ready. So calm. It doesn’t work, somehow. None of it works.”

“I still don’t know for sure what you’re talking about. We’ve done it. In four days you’ve shown me how to live in the wilderness with nothing but a knife. I’ve got tons of notes to take back and teach from — I think you’re wrong.”

“But this isn’t how it works,” Brian said. “It isn’t this smooth and easy. You don’t just fly in and get set on a perfect lake and have all the food you want and have it all come this easy. It isn’t real.”

Derek leaned back, put his hands in back of his head, and looked at Brian.

“There’s not a thing to make it rough… nothing wrong. In a real situation, like when I was here before, there were things wrong — going wrong. The plane didn’t land and set me on the shore. It crashed. A man was dead. I was hurt. I didn’t know anything. Nothing at all. I was, maybe, close to death and now we’re out here going la-de-da, I’ve got a fish; la-de-da, there are some more berries.”

“Tension.” Derek said. “It lacks tension.”

Brian nodded. “Maybe — but that’s not all. I don’t think you can teach what you want to teach.”

“But they do — they teach survival.”

“No. I think they tell people what to do and maybe you can tell them some of what we do. But that doesn’t teach them how to live, how to do it, does it? You’d have to bring each person here and drop them in the lake and let them swim out and drag up the shore and try to live, to really teach them how to do it. Every single one.”

“But that’s impossible.”

Brian nodded. “I know. But I don’t think it will work unless you do it that way. You can tell, but you can’t really teach.”

“Tension,” Derek said again, leaning forward and writing in his notebook again. “You need the tension created by the emergency.”

And they settled in for the rest of the day and that night, and later Brian would remember what they had said — how it needed tension — and wish he had not thought it at all.