The Way Back from Broken (15 page)

“Get in,” he said, looking at Leah. “Please.” He held the canoe steady.

Leah studied him for a long moment before getting in the bow. Whether she believed him or was saving the fight for later, he didn't know. But maybe it didn't matter. As soon as they were all in place, Rakmen poled through the mucky shallows and sent the canoe skimming out into open water. He squinted against the bright sun as he paddled into its brightness. A breeze rippled across the surface of the lake, turning it into a sparkling patchwork of green and gold and blue.

As they sailed past Edna's dock, a loon rose ten feet off the bow, fixed them in its red stare, and then dove again. Rakmen's stomach pitched as he imagined the canoe rising bow first from the water like a porpoise and following the bird into the depths. They were almost to the portage when a hoarse cry sounded behind them.

“It's Edna!” Jacey squealed, thrusting her paddle in the air and waving it in salute. The stout woman on the dock waved back.

“Bye!” Jacey shrieked.

From across the water, he heard Edna call, “
Au large
!”

CHAPTER 19

Three more strokes and the canoe slid into the sandy shore with a crunch. Leah climbed out and straddled the front of the canoe to stabilize it while they unloaded. “Jacey, hand me your pack and then climb out. Keep your weight in the middle.”

“I know that,” Jacey snapped. “Edna showed me.”

Rakmen rolled the shaft of his paddle crosswise on his knees, waiting for his turn to get out. “Okay,” Leah said, nodding to him. “Climb over the big pack and when you get past it, lift it out.”

Rakmen handed her his paddle and lifted the monstrous pack. On shore, Leah strapped their paddles to the sides of the backpack. Rakmen sat on a log, retied his boots, and flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. Underneath today's date, he wrote
au large
. Edna's farewell had lodged in his throat, choking him. If he were braver, maybe he'd feel excited. If he believed he was leaving his troubles behind, maybe he'd want to go. But he wasn't brave, and he didn't believe.

Jacey slid next to him. “Look what I found,” she said, holding out a handful of jagged, nearly-translucent pebbles. “Do you think they're diamonds?”

Looking up from the patch of rocky beach between his feet seemed to Rakmen to take an extraordinary amount of effort. He shook his head. Her face drooped, and he tried to rally. “They're really cool, though. I like this one best.”

Happy again, she bounced off the log and held out her hand to Leah.

“Quartz,” said Leah and went back to wrestling with the straps on the pack.

Jacey bobbed up and down. “Can I have a bag for them?”

Annoyed, Leah wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead. “You can't take them. These packs are heavy enough already.”

Rakmen watched the pep drain out of Jacey. “But—”

“No.”

That was that.

Leah double-checked that the canoe was empty.

Jacey gazed at the glittering rocks in her hand. At snail speed, she began to line them up one by one on the log. Rakmen gave a low whistle. When she looked up, he held open the cargo pocket on his pants and jerked his head toward it. Grinning, Jacey scooped up the discarded treasures and hid them safe in his pocket.

They were ready for orders.

“Here,” said Leah, holding up the small pack so Jacey could stick her arms through the straps. “Let me adjust them for you.” A few tugs and Leah was satisfied.

“Can I go? Can I go?” Jacey bobbed up and down on her feet.

“Wait. We stay together.” Leah tightened one more strap. “Rakmen, help me with this, then I'll help you with the canoe.”

Lifting from behind, Rakmen hoisted the pack into the air. It was going to crush the scrawny woman like a bug. Leah shrugged into the shoulder straps, clipped the waist belt, and pulled a strap that she called a tumpline onto her forehead.

“That looks like agony,” he said.

Leah grunted and her expression, if possible, grew even more pained.

Perhaps that was the point. To suffer.

“Alright,” she grunted, “you have to flip the canoe. I'll hold one end up while you get under it.”

Rakmen waved her off and slid the mid-sized pack on. “I got this.”

“No, you don't got this,” Leah spluttered.

Ignoring her, Rakmen grabbed the center thwart of the canoe in his left hand and the far gunnel with his right. He pulled the canoe off the ground, slid it up his left thigh, and with smooth, quick motion flipped it upside down over his head. Thank you, Edna, he thought as the yoke of the thwart settled into place on his shoulders.

He stole a peek at Leah from under the canoe. Her expression made it clear he'd earned an A+ in canoe lifting.

“I'm impressed. Who taught you that?”

“Edna!” Jacey squealed.

“When did you . . . How? Oh, never mind,” said Leah, throwing up her hands. “I kind of love that old bat.”

A yellow sign fixed to one of the trees had a picture of a person with a canoe on his head—Rakmen nodded a salute to his silhouetted compatriot—and the words
Vesper Lake to Wren Lake 375 meters
. That was a lap around the track at school. Piece of cake. He could do this. But Rakmen's load felt like a Mack truck. Three seventy-five might turn out to be a hell of a lot longer than it sounded.

“This is the shake-down run. Let's stick together,” said Leah as she started up a series of natural stone steps leading from the sand where they'd unloaded to the trail leading into the forest. Jacey trotted along behind her.

When Rakmen took the first step, the canoe's center of gravity shifted, and the stern dug into the dirt. He overcorrected, and the bow hit one of the rocks in front of him with a bang. He panted, shifting the canoe on his shoulders until it felt stable.

One step.

That's all he'd managed, and his shoulders were already burning from the weight of the canoe and the straps of the pack. All the practice time with Edna had made him think he could do this. Now he wasn't sure. But staring down at the rough gray rock under his feet, Rakmen realized it was this—one step at a time—or go back to the moldy, flooded cabin full of mice.

Forward.

Or blow your brains out.

He slid his hand along the gunnel to stabilize the canoe before taking a slow, steady step up to the next rock. By the time he reached the level portion of the path, his thighs were burning, and his spine felt compressed. Everything was against him, even gravity.

The portage was narrow and covered with rusty orange pine needles from the huge trees on all sides. They were springy underfoot and muffled the sound of his steps. He wondered what other sounds were silenced by this forest. He wished he could see, but the canoe enclosed his head almost as fully as a bag over a hostage's head. He could see the bow seat, the golden ribs of the canoe, the trail, and the slip of metal that read
au large
.

The words pounded through his head as he walked.

Au large. Au large. Au large.

He trudged to their drumbeat.

Sweat trickled down his face and stung his eyes.

The trees changed from huge pines to a kind that grew very close together, making a dark tunnel around the trail. He began to feel afraid. His ears strained to detect movement. Bears. Wolves. Whatever lurked in this place without road signs or rest stops or ambulances. Trapped under the canoe, he imagined them coming for him, burying their muzzles in his flesh.

Rakmen caught the toe of his boot on an exposed root. He lurched to the left. The canoe slipped, unbalancing him further. He lunged to the right to compensate, slipped on an exposed rock and went down on one knee still underneath the bulk of the canoe. The bow caught in a low branch beside the trail and held. Rakmen sucked air into his lungs as adrenaline surged through him.

They could come now. The wild animals. They could bring their fangs and claws. A welcome alternative to this pain, this humiliation. But they didn't, and before long, Rakmen's thighs began to cramp from crouching under the canoe. He forced himself to stand, pushing the canoe up with him. The bow squealed against the slender branches as it pulled free, snapping twigs and filling the air with the tangy smell of pitch.

He had to go on.

Au large. Au large. Au large.

He picked his way through a rocky section of trail.

Pins and needles darted through his hands from holding them at face-level. The knee that had hit the ground throbbed. His leg muscles ached and his bruised shoulders reverberated with pain at every step.

He hated the canoe.

He hated the rocky ground.

He hated the hot, rot-filled air that filled his lungs.

Three hundred seventy-five meters was infinity.

It seemed he would always be lurching forward under this unbearable weight. There was no job at Ray's auto parts shop. There was no family to go home to. There was no driver's license, no car, no college, no girlfriend, no bright shiny future self.

Only this.

Au large, au large, au large.

The pain of it. The punishment.

The big hollow inside of the canoe was an echo chamber for his worst thoughts. He deserved this. He was an asshole for thinking that taking care of Jacey would make up for failing Dora. Slick with sweat and aching everywhere, he knew that was stupid. He didn't do things right. Ever. He was wrong. So many ways wrong.

Au large, au large, au large.

God—

The screaming in his head was making him crazy. He would soon be deafened by the noise if he didn't silence his mind. He had to cross 375.

One, two, three. . .

Rakmen began counting steps. He got to a hundred and started over.

CHAPTER 20

He felt the next lake before he saw it.

A whisper of breeze slipped under the canoe, licking the sweat from his neck. He smelled wet earth, fresh enough to overpower his own stink. A glitter of water showed between the ground and the canoe.

With his last ounce of energy, Rakmen pushed the canoe up over his head, eased it into the crook of his arm, rested it on his thigh, and slid it down to the shore. Edna should have told him how goddamn much this would hurt. He kneaded his shoulders and looked around, grateful for the three hundred and sixty degree view and his release from the echo chamber.

Wren Lake was far bigger than Vesper Lake, and it was a proper lake, not swampy at the edges. Jacey had peeled off her boots and was wading in the shallows. Leah had dropped her pack on the bank and was gulping down water. Circles of perspiration spread across the armpits of her T-shirt.

Rakmen knelt, splashed water on his face, and pulled up his pant leg to look at his knee, which was oozing blood.

“How did that canoe carry?” Leah asked.

He dropped his pants leg. What he wanted to say was like crap. Instead he shrugged.

“I know,” she said. “It was awful. My pack is a beast too. At least you're not an out-of-shape teacher. Here.” She tossed him a piece of chocolate along with a feeble grin.

Jacey stood next to him, hands on hips, while he unwrapped the slightly squishy brick of candy. “You were slow.”

He slumped to the ground and let the chocolate melt in his mouth. “You carry it next time.”

Jacey sat next to him and leaned on his shoulder. “It's too heavy for me.”

He looked down at the top of her head. Her part was jagged. A wild tangle stuck out on one side. A bit of leaf was lodged near her left ear.

“I thought you were the power,” he said, surprised to find that he felt grateful that she was sitting near him.

“Well, yeah,” she said, “but I'm short-range.”

“Short, for sure.”

“Hey!” Jacey grinned at him, a smear of chocolate on one cheek. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she was flushed with the effort of the trail, but she bounced with excitement.

Rakmen didn't know much about little girls, but even he could see that this one was happy. In the middle of bloody, painful
au large
, Jacey was blissed out.

He didn't get it, but—he had to admit—he kind of wanted to understand.

. . .

The rest of the day was a blur of lake and trail. As Rakmen lifted the canoe on the last portage, a blister on the palm of one hand burst, and the fluid inside it splattered his face. He didn't have the strength to do anything but register how gross that was, add the spiking pain to his list, and hit the trail.

He'd always associated that phrase, hit the trail, with cowboys, but after five portages, he now understood it to mean the dazed, aching, echoing state in which all you wanted to do was beat the ground with your fists in frustration. A hundred times that day he'd considered lying in the path and refusing to move, but something had kept him going—whether it was hating Leah or hating life or just following Jacey.

He watched his footing. The last thing he needed was to fall again. From the wet, warm slick of blood, Rakmen could tell the scrape on his knee had reopened. With his luck, he'd probably break something if he fell again, and of course, they had no phone.

Mechanically, he set down the canoe, hefted Leah's pack, and loaded it in the bottom of the boat. Jacey had long since stopped slipping rocks into his cargo pockets. She sat on a rock at the edge of this new lake and stared blankly out into the growing dusk.

Leah handed him the smaller packs. “We made it, guys.”

Rakmen grunted. All he wanted to know was when he could lie down. Instead he stood and waited for Leah and Jacey to get in the canoe. Sitting down would be the end of him.

As he picked up the paddle and thrust the canoe into deeper water, his open blister burned against the wooden shaft, and every muscle in his arms and torso screamed in protest.
Au large
was the perfect torture, he thought. When you can't walk anymore, you paddle. When your hands are about to fall off, you hike. And every single part of your body ends up hurting.