He takes a long draw at his canteen, swishes it around some. “I’ll be all right. You?”
I tell him the same, but he narrows his dark eyes at me.
“You don’t look good, Jack.”
“You ain’t so pretty yourself.”
“No, I mean your face is pale.”
He reaches out a hand and lays it against my forehead—and snaps it back fast. A look of alarm crosses his thin face.
“Jack, you’ve got a fever!”
“Hush your mouth,” I whisper quickly. “I’ve got no such thing.” I look over my shoulder to where my brothers are murmuring over the map. “I’m just hot from the heat and all this walking, that’s all.”
“I can’t believe with all we packed, we forgot medicine! Maybe Pete brought—”
Before he can get up I’ve got him by the arm.
“Don’t you dare, Frankie! I’m feeling just fine. Maybe a low fever, but that ain’t nothing to get upset about. We’re this close to finding that wrecked fighter jet. Fever or no, I can deal ’til then.”
He looks at me hard. I can tell he don’t like it, but just then Pete comes over.
“Some good news, fellas,” he says. “Give me one more mile, and we’re done for the day. We’ll make camp and have us some dinner over an open fire; what do you say?”
I look at Frankie as I answer for us both. “Sounds dandy.”
We rise and hoist our packs upon our backs once again. Maybe I do feel a little fuzzy behind my eyes then, but I give a big smile to Frankie to show how fine I really am.
Pete turns us back to old Apple Creek, and it feels like we’re coming home. That fuzzy feeling inside my brain lets up a little.
It’s only by chance I look back down the way we came and spy a flash of cottony white against dusty greens. I squint but it’s gone, and now I start to wonder if maybe I’m seeing things and Frankie is right after all about me being sick.
I push that thought away. Plenty of time for fevers later.
Pete has us pitch camp on the dry pebbly creek sand beside a calm stretch of Apple Creek. The four of us are washing off the day’s sweat and dust, the stench of the skunk cabbage, and the smoldering burn of the nettles when Frankie finds it: a twisted piece of scorched metal, half buried in the silt in the shallows, a dial of the kind you’d turn on a radio. Gray and speckled with rust. Wires stick out the back.
No one speaks for a moment, as we pass it back and forth to each other.
“Is it . . . part of it?” Frankie asks.
“Yes,” Pete answers. He scrapes mud with a fingernail, revealing what looks like the face of a clock. He reads out a series of numbers in the gathering dark.
He looks up. “This is an altimeter.”
Will whistles, soft and low. “So our city boy found the first piece.”
Frankie’s dark eyes flash. “How close do you think we are?”
“Close. I imagine this washed down from upstream,” Pete answers.
We stare up Apple Creek, flat and black in the coming night.
I can feel it. That great gray hulk of twisted metal and magic, lying hidden somewhere upstream. Bone-tired as I am, suddenly I am filled with a fierce urge to start right away, just go crawling through the mud in the dark to find it.
“Tomorrow,” Pete says, as if reading my mind. “At first light.”
We make camp by the creek.
Pete lays out the bedrolls, then sinks the can of fruit juice into the creek to cool before sending Frankie and me off to collect kindling for the fire. Will takes his fishing line and disappears into purple twilight.
When we return with armfuls of deadwood, I see Pete’s arranged several smooth river stones in a circle on the sand. With a few handfuls of our kindling, he lights a small fire. He builds it up good, feeding the flames tiny twigs, one by one, until blue smoke drifts across the creek. Then Pete produces another can—tomato soup—and places it near the edge of the fire to warm.
A fat, yellow moon rises behind black trees. We stretch out on the sand as Pete pulls a harmonica from his shirt pocket and begins to play.
Will returns with something hanging over his arm. Firelight shines off the scales of an enormous trout.
“Didn’t think I’d get him.” Will grins. “I got him.”
Soon that trout is sizzling in the skillet.
Potatoes wrapped in sleeves of tinfoil bake in the coals. I catch a whiff and it makes my stomach growl. Pete cuts open the can of tomato soup and passes it around.
The moon’s reflection bobs on the water, and I begin to relax. The smell of woodsmoke. Hot soup in my stomach. Pete’s playing soft as the frogs join in. The ache in my shoulders from carrying that pack all day melts away. My mind goes easy. The knots in my soul are being loosened one by one.