Jen's Legacy.

“Let’s eat, if you can manage some food.”

She hadn’t even noticed him preparing any. She should eat something before she explored along the river and decided what she’d do with herself.

He lifted the pot away from the fire and set it in the sand by her legs to cool.

He even began to feed her, with her wrapped up in his sleeping bag, but she soon freed her arms and took over feeding herself.

After she’d eaten her fill of enough of that soup, he finished it off, using the same spoon she’d used—there was only the one—not caring about using it after her.

At least he wasn’t finicky, and hadn’t felt the need to rinse it off with water or sand, as an obsessive compulsive germaphobe would have done.

After that, he wandered farther afield to bring in bigger pieces of driftwood caught up in the rocks, bringing them down for her to make up the fire while he did other things to see to their comfort.

He tumbled larger logs down the slope and carried in a couple of them to reflect heat back at them and to hold the fire for longer, once the night-time hours came. Each of them weighed as much as she did, but they were dry, so would catch fire easily.

Once he’d got another pot of water to heat for tea, and dried out her shirt and shorts for her to put them back on, rather than to sit in only her swimsuit-- though it hid most of her well-enough if she was careful how she sat-- he recovered his fishing line from his back pack. After baiting it with some insect grub he’d recovered from one of the larger logs that he’d broken apart over the rocks, he fished in that quieter stretch of water, leaving her to keep the fire going. She could manage that, and watch him at the same time, just as he could watch her.

Contrary to his expectations, he managed to land a large trout for a more substantial meal, and he’d seen others swimming in one of the still pools. He’d go after them in the morning.

What they couldn’t eat, he’d save for the next day or boil up with more of that soup. He had more than enough of that, in powder form.

She watched as he cleaned the fish and skewered it to cook slowly over the fire on a stick driven into the sand at an angle, and resting against some of the flatter slabs of shale, he’d taken from the slope behind them.

The fire was dying back, leaving a bed of hot ashes that he raked to where the fish could cook. The heat would soon get to it, and she could turn it, as on a rotisserie, or lay it on the rock to cook in the heat radiating from the fire. It would keep her occupied and keep her mind off other things as he watched her and began to formulate his own impression of her, as that other elusive memory of where he had seen her, still nagged at him.

She’d stopped shivering now with his sleeping bag wrapped around her; was moving more, and was beginning to take better note of him and of her surroundings and maybe even thought about what the next few days would look like for her. If she stayed here.

They might have different views on that.

She didn’t like what she was learning; that she was unlikely to meet up with her companions again that evening, or for quite some time. They would be worried for her, not knowing what had actually happened to her, and being unable to find out anything for at least a few days. It was not a comforting thought to know that no one would be looking for her either. At least not until those rafts got to where they could communicate with the outside world. They were called wilderness adventures, ‘getting away from it all’, for a reason.

If she was going to be stuck with him for a few days she had better learn what she could of him and of this predicament she would now have to face.

He was obviously self-sufficient and well organized, as well as polite, intelligent, and soft spoken. He’d barely said more than a few words to her since he’d rescued her. But he had not hesitated to rescue her, or she really would not have survived, so she could thank him for that.

He had dealt kindly, and only gently with her, so far, if in an embarrassing way as he'd tended to her, but where they were, miles from anywhere, and with no one knowing where they were, if he was not of good character, there would not be much she could do about it. She would just be another one of those women who went missing and was never found.

However, he did have a wedding ring on his finger, which he constantly touched, unconsciously, and there was another on a loop around his neck which he also touched, as though reminding himself of something as he considered whatever he was considering. That one had bumped into her face as he’d seen to her, but she hadn’t been focused on that at all, seeing that he had been naked most of the time and that there had been more important things for her to worry about.

If he was married, where was his wife? Why wasn’t she with him? She wouldn’t ask. It was none of her business.

“If you are still hungry, I can prepare more soup, and we now have that fish so we’ll be okay for the rest of tonight and tomorrow morning.”

He seemed to have it all sorted out, but where would she sleep? She wouldn’t think of that.

She shouldn’t stay here but should think of how to rejoin her party, except it might not be that easy.

They’d be concerned, of course, even though they had barely had time to meet or get to know each other, having left their starting point just two days earlier, and having had just two nights together so far. The only one of the groups she’d got reasonably close to had been the woman at the tiller, Elinor, whom she’d tried to help. Elinor had seen her go overboard so would do everything she could to… to… to what? Wait for her somewhere downriver? They might have waited for an hour or two in one of the quieter areas between rapids, watching and waiting, but they couldn’t have done anything else and they couldn't spend the night in the middle of the river.

He looked at her and smiled, reading her mind, then stated things matter-of-factly.

“Your rafting party are already a few miles away from here by now. There will be no catching up to them, and we can’t walk down the river.”

What did he mean, ‘we?’.

“We need to be up there, where the walking is much easier, to make any progress.” He pointed to the plateau above them. “We will be on our own until they can report what happened to you.”

She wouldn’t accept his finality about that until she had to, but was always ready to seek a way around such roadblocks and to buck common sense and authority until she learned that she couldn’t.

“I know where they will camp tonight. They may be waiting for me downriver.”

Ever the optimist!

He responded patiently. “By the time you get to where they’ll make camp tonight, at Badger’s crossing, another day will have gone, maybe two. They can’t wait for you. They have to get out to report you missing and to see to that other girl, and that, will take a couple of days.”

Everything he said was likely true.

“Today is Monday. They might get to Marsden by Tuesday night, and be out, by Wednesday night, maybe Thursday, depending upon the weather and the state of the river. Two, three days, and after that it will take time to get a search party organized and decide where they should search, and then, only if the weather cooperates.”

He let that thought work its way into her mind before he piled on with others.

“Also, one of them is injured. The girl you were going to help, may have broken ribs. I saw the sweep, trap her body against the raft, just as you saw it. She may have internal injuries or she may be unharmed, I don’t know. I was too far away to see much detail, so they’ll not be hanging around waiting for anything, but will need to get her out and report you missing at the same time. They won’t dare risk doing anything else.”

He could see she didn’t like to hear any of it.

“It’s difficult to know where you could be on the river after that.”

He kept raining on her parade. “There is nowhere to pull out of the river to do anything, or to wait, except at Badger’s Crossing. They’ll leave someone watching the river there until dark, waiting for you to come down (dead, of course), but they won’t know what to think when you don’t show up, though in that case it might indicate that you made it to the bank somewhere, and could still be alive.”

He didn't pull any punches did he?

In other words, she was stuck with him.

It didn’t sit well with her.

“They are too far away for us to get to them tonight, or even tomorrow, and no one chooses to walk this canyon down here, or up there after dark, though a couple of them may try to walk out for help, or to get a phone signal, but that’s a long shot, and they would know it.”

She protested, but gently. “But I can’t stay here (and not with you).”

She wasn’t sure about him, and wasn’t sure she should trust him.

He dug out his map and moved to sit beside her.

When he came close, she became tense and prickly, and had all of her defensive barriers up around herself, wary when he came within a foot of her as he showed her his map.

They had until morning to decide, before they could go anywhere.

She saw circles marked on his map for Chepstow, and another at Culver, off to one side of the river, then another between them at Witches Cauldron, not far from Culver, with a thin, wavy line connecting them. She guessed that the total distance was more than a hundred miles, with them more than three quarters of the way along it. She opened a fold in the map to see where the line began, showing a trail almost three hundred miles long, the way it snaked around. If he’d set out from Welland, on that date, he’d already been walking for two weeks.

This was his trail, covering several weeks from beginning to end. She looked for the stops on the river below them that she knew about, and realized that what he’d said was likely true about Badger’s Crossing and Marsden, but she had to be sure for herself.

Culver was the main point that everyone headed for at the bottom end of the main canyon, but that was still three days away for that rafting group and a week or even two for a walker, who could take a supposedly more direct line; except for all of those side canyons and tributaries that broke up the plateau into a hundred pieces like a jigsaw puzzle as they fed into the main river, like the individual barbs, barbules and hooklets, extending from the shaft of a feather, or like all of the branches shooting off the main trunk of a tree.

“There’ll be others come down the river....”

He said nothing.

There wouldn’t be. No other rafting-parties would be coming down until those rafts were transported back up to the starting point again.

“...Search parties, and helicopters.” She was still in a dream-world of cognitive dissonance, not wanting to believe how difficult it would all be.

He spoke quietly correcting her. “Not until they learn you are missing and, as I said, that could be a few days away. There’ll be no more parties set out until they know where you are, one way or another.” One way or another!

“But what do I do?”

She seemed ready to listen.

It would take a while to sink in. She’d figure it out in a short while. He began to lay it out for her.

“It’s not advisable to stay here. We are several days away from civilization.

“If your shoes will stand up to walking, and it looks like they should, if we take it easy, we could likely walk out of here in the time it would take a rescue party to find you along that expanse of river.”

“There might be the odd, sight-seeing plane swoop in along the gorge, but they won’t see you. To them, you will just be another hiker; a small dot on the landscape." (A pimple on the arse of an elephant).

“I have enough food for us both for a few days, and I can supplement it with fish here and there, and whatever else I can find. The problem will be the cold at night, but I may be able to get a fire going if we choose where to stop.

He wouldn’t say anything about them sleeping together in his sleeping bag if it got too cold, as it always did, but he didn’t need to.

Now she looked alarmed, scared. She was caught miles, days from anywhere, with this unknown man who was clearly strong enough to overwhelm her anytime he chose.

“As we appear to be stuck together for at least a day or two, we should introduce ourselves.

“Hi. My name is Royce Healey.”

He looked at her, knowing she would not want to reach out to formally shake hands with a stranger she was stuck with, and with there being nothing she could do to change it either.

She seemed loath to tell him her name. He prompted her. “About now is when you tell me your name. I assume you have one?” He was smiling at her encouragingly.

“Claire.”

She heard his breath catch, and then he breathed out slowly as he closed his eyes, the smile suddenly frozen on his face. He had also gone pale.

He felt as though someone had just hit him in the face, as those painful memories he’d suppressed, knotted his stomach, hearing that cherished name spoken by someone else.

She noticed that response, but didn't know the meaning behind it. What had she said? Only her name.

He nodded at her and repeated it; forcing himself to say it when it had been rattling around in his mind ceaselessly, irretrievably linked with Jen’s name with almost every step of this journey.

“Claire.” His voice caught.

That name upon her didn’t ring any bells, as he tried to place that name to this face, so maybe he hadn’t met her, but that feeling still nagged at him.

No, it meant nothing. I was only a coincidence that she had that name. Admittedly it was not that common a name, but it was not unique.

He was suddenly taken back three months, wanting to cry out in frustration, but he could not let that trap-door open at his feet to swallow him up again. He’d broken free of that deeper anguish for almost a whole month, and here he was, being thrown into it again.

He regained control before she noticed how he’d responded. He hoped. Or saw a few tears that escaped his eyes.

He took a deep breath. “Welcome to my world, Claire. Welcome to a different world altogether than the one you just left, and are used to.”

Welcome to a different Hell! The one he’d been living in alone, for the last three months with no one to speak to or to share his pain with.

She had a decision of her own to make. “I’m going to take a look around.”

He wouldn’t caution her not to go far. He knew she couldn’t. It was impassable after a hundred yards in either direction. He watched her pull on her ankle socks, now dry, and her sneakers. She was nice to look at and watch. Everything she did reminded him of Jen and how she had done things. He fought back the tears. This was proving to be too much of a roller-coaster ride of emotions for him, meeting her, helping her.

He wouldn’t try to dissuade her. That would only put her back up even more.

He could read her mind. She hadn’t yet given up on getting back to her rafting party and he couldn’t blame her. She soon would have to give up on that notion.

For the moment, she intended to walk downriver along the rocks and see how negotiable it was. He knew from experience that it was impassable.

He climbed up to sit on the large flat slab of rock, thirty feet above the fire and watched her progress. She didn’t know enough to watch out for herself, so he would have to do it for her, and she was also stubborn.

She frequently stood and looked across the river and up and down it before she descended to the very edge and considered her options, eventually reaching the same conclusions that he had, and not liking them, about not being able to follow the river on foot.

Others would be worried for her. She could imagine how her new-found friends were feeling, but at least she was safe for the moment, though they wouldn’t know that.

He watched her look around, before she laid her lifejacket aside, stripped her swimsuit down her body (even at this distance he could admire her breasts and the way they left him breathless), and settled back against a rock to pee, dressed again and continued walking downriver. She’d come up against the river again, and an impassable wall of rock in a few more tens of feet and see that she would be able to go no farther without taking to the water again, and she’d had enough of a learning experience for her not to want to suffer like that again.

When he saw that she had turned around to return, he climbed down from his observation point before she noticed him watching her.

She was another ten minutes before she returned. She’d snacked on some of the raspberries and other berries that the birds had missed.

“There was a fox following you for a while, but he’s harmless.”

He had watched her and seen what she had done? She hoped not. She’d seen nothing of a fox, though there had been some small animal droppings with fur in them, where she’d walked.