The River

3

“It was a wonderful meal,” his mother said, leaning back from the table and smiling, “as usual.”

Brian nodded. “Something I whipped up.”

They cleared the table. They had become strangely closer since his return. So much of the divorce, and the other man, had bothered him, but coming close to death in the woods had led him to understand some things about himself and other people. He realized that he was not always right, was, indeed, often not right, and at the same time he found that others were not always wrong.

He learned to accept things — his mother, the situation, his life, all of it — and with the acceptance, he found that he admired her.

She was trying to make a go of it alone, working in a real estate office selling lots, and it was rough.

“We have to talk,” he said, putting the dishes in the dishwasher. To have dishes, he thought, just to have dishes and pots and pans and a stove to cook the food — it still marveled him. “Some men are coming over to talk to you.”

“What men?”

He explained Derek and the other two, what they wanted.

“You mean what they said they wanted. They might be anybody. We should call the police.”

He shrugged. “If you want. I was a little worried at first, but they didn’t do anything and they seemed all right, so I told them to come back.”

She thought it over and finally nodded. “Let’s see if they come — we’ll play it the way it looks best.”

As if on cue the doorbell rang, and she went to the door with Brian following.

Derek stood alone on the front step. He backed away so they could see him well through the peephole in the door.

She opened the door.

“Hello. I’m Derek Holtzer—”

“My son told me about you. Weren’t there two others?”

“We thought one man might be less pushy. They stayed in the motel.”

“Please come in. We’ll have some coffee.”

Derek followed her in and they sat down at the dining room table and Derek explained to Brian’s mother what he wanted — all that he had told Brian.

“We would control the operation closely,” he said, “and take every precaution possible. Of course, we wouldn’t do anything without your permission, and Brian’s father’s as well,” Derek concluded.

His mother sipped coffee and put the cup down carefully. Her voice was even, as if talking about the weather. “I think it’s insane.”

Brian half agreed with her. In all the time since his return, he had had dozens of kids and not a few adults say how much they would have liked to do it — be marooned in the woods with nothing but a hatchet. But they always said it when they weren’t over a block and a half from a grocery store, usually in a room with lights and cushions on a couch and running water. None of them had ever said it while they were sitting in the dark with mosquitoes plugging their nostrils or night sounds so loud around them they couldn’t think.

To want to go back was insane.

And yet.

And yet…

Yet there was this small feeling, a tingle at the back of his neck as his hairs went up.

“I know it sounds strange, but Brian has had a unique experience,” Derek said. He set his cup down carefully on the saucer. “It could save lives if he would help us.”

“It’s still insane.” Brian’s mother shook her head. “I don’t think you have the slightest idea of what you’re asking. You must realize that for the time Brian was gone we thought he was dead. Dead. We were told by experts that he couldn’t possibly still be alive and then we got him back. Back from the dead. And now you’re asking me — his mother — to send him back out there?”

Derek took a breath, held it, let it out. “Don’t you see? That’s exactly why we must do it. Because he was thought to be dead and lived, because he did something nobody else could do and if he could share that with us, show us, take us through it with him — he could save others who are in the same place. It’s not just what he learned about survival — we know most of that. Or at least the survival instructors do. It’s his thinking, his psychological processes, how his mind worked for him — that’s what’s so important.”

“I have to do it.” God, Brian thought — was that my voice?

Both of them looked at Brian. Derek in surprise, his mother with a stunned look on her face.

“What?”

Brian leaned back. “I know, Mother. But he’s right. I… learned something there. About how to live — I mean how to live. And if it could help others, I have to do it.”

“There is money,” Derek said. “We can contract him and the government will pay well for his help.”

His mother was still staring at him, but he knew, Brian knew, that she understood. There was much between them since he came back, much understanding. She treated him much more as an adult and she understood. Still, she held back, and the worry was alive in her face. “Are you sure — absolutely certain?”

Brian sighed. “I have to — if it will help others.”

She nodded slowly, biting her lower lip. But she nodded.

“I’ll have to call his father,” she said. “He may say no.”

But Brian knew.

He was going.