I pass the soup to Frankie and remember the can of fruit juice cooling in the creek. I get up and go over to lift it from the water, feeling the cool metal in my hands. Pete cuts a hole in the lid and lets Frankie and me take the first sips.
We eat our dinner on the creek bank under the moon and a handful of blue stars.
When we’re done, Frankie passes the airplane dial around again. Each of us takes a long time holding it in his hands, as if we might absorb some of its magic through our skin.
“Somewhere just around the corner,” Pete says, turning it over in his fingers, letting orange firelight play across the scorched metal.
“What happened to the pilot?” Frankie asks.
“Far as anybody knows,” Will replies, “he died.”
We’re quiet for a time. So it ain’t just a lost wreck we’re searching for, but a burial site. Hallowed ground.
Butch ambles over, and I give him the last of my baked potato.
“How about a song, Will?” Pete says then, as he starts up his harmonica once more.
Will shakes his head.
“A story then,” Pete says. “Shakespeare? One of your old Greek myths?”
Will looks at Frankie. “You ever hear the Beowulf tale?” he asks.
Frankie shakes his head.
Pete grins, kicks off his shoes, and leans back on the sand. Frankie and me do likewise as Will sits himself up and begins the story of Beowulf and his band of warriors. Heroes is a better word for them, for they answer a call for help from an old king whose people are being attacked by a monster named Grendel.
Will’s a marvelous storyteller, and the way he tells it, we’re right there with Beowulf and his men as they lie in wait for the creature around their campfire, pretending to be asleep but really ready to jump up and fight the moment he appears. And when Grendel comes, it’s a big battle until Beowulf tears the monster’s arm off and beats him to death with it.
Will finishes the story and I have to ask him.
“Is that a true story, Will?”
He drains the last of the tomato soup from the can. “No one knows for sure.”
The four of us sit quiet on cold sand. It’s the same dark that presses against us and our tiny campfire as before, but now there’s the possibility of something hideous hiding in it and our fire has died down to a few glowing coals.
“Can we put another piece of wood on?” I ask.
“It’s late now, Jack,” says Pete. “Best to let the fire be and get some sleep.”
Frankie and me lie extra still in our rolls.
At first I’m too scared to sleep, even though I know Grendel ain’t real and that it was all just a story—and an old story at that. But then the weariness settles into my body. My bones become heavy.
It’s not too much longer after that when I let my eyelids close over our bank, those glowing embers, and the black water—and the shape at the edge of the trees that seems to melt into the dark just as I leave the world.
Chapter 15
FEVER!
When I wake, dawn’s rose-colored fingers are peeling back the curtain of night from the sky, but even that watery light is too much for my aching head to handle.
I’m running a fever.
No doubt about it.
I’m running a fever, sure as I’m breathing.
How bad? Have to hide it. Can’t let Pete or Will see.
My brothers are still asleep. Gray lumps in the gray light. So is Frankie, his glasses hanging crooked off his nose, mouth wide open at the sky like he’s trying to taste the coming day.
I lie still, and through my headache I am able to taste it too: wet dew on my blanket and on my clothes; the blush of warm sunlight on my face; across the creek, a mourning dove . . .
I let its newness flow through me, into me, over me, try to let it heal me.
I get up on one elbow and feel the blood rushing hard in my temples. I wince, but I stay up.
My clothes are wet from sweat too, and in the early morning cool I shiver.
How long before Pete and Will wake? How long before they decide to call off our expedition because I’m too sick?
The whole thing is something fun for them, a great adventure. They don’t know it’s something more, that it’s Pete’s ticket to safety, to staying out of the draft, to staying out of Vietnam and those murderous jungles.
Mist curls over Apple Creek’s glassy surface, white, ghostlike.
The creek. Cold and clean. I crawl out of my bedroll and across damp sand to it and, cupping my hands, bring that water to my face and the back of my neck. I wash in the creek in the early morning and feel the thrumming between my ears let up just a little.