Stranded (25 page)

Eve entered the jungle at the place where she had hacked a path to her favorite tree. The opening cut in the thick growth bordering the stream formed a narrow arch that allowed her to slip through without being scraped, poked, or slapped by branches and leaves. More importantly, the bare earth of the trail removed chances of stepping on a snake. The fewer the challenges she had to face, the better she could focus on keeping Jake alive.

The twitter and hoots from the canopy overhead spoke of the continuity of life. The contrast of Jake’s deliriums last night, for the second night in a row, squeezed her heart. Which was worse, his fever and ravings while she and Betty frantically sponged him off and tried to comfort him, or the periods of utter stillness when she held her breath to see some small sign that he was still alive?

She batted away pesky insects hungry for her eyes. If only Crystal had risen early to gather fruit again for their breakfast, she could have grabbed a morning nap. But the child had remained on her bunk, curled in a fetal position rather than stretched out, half hanging off her ledge, as usual. Poor thing, no doubt she had slept as little as the adults and was filled with the same mind-numbing dread.

It was just as well. With Jake finally sleeping, she wanted to get out anyway. The cave that had been such a welcoming refuge was now a tomb sucking away her every breath. For a second, the image of the Japanese soldiers in the burial cave flashed into her mind. A shiver jabbed down her backbone.

She broke into a trot. They wouldn’t end up like those soldiers. No one was going to die. Not Jake. Not Betty. Not Crystal. Not her. They’d all make it off this cursed island. From now on, she’d refuse to think otherwise.

At her approach to her destination, a flock of brightly colored broadbills swooped away in noisy protest from the towering tree. Leaning into its upper branches was the crown of a second tree that had toppled over. Its mossy trunk created a steep but convenient bridge to the first tree. From there it was an easy climb to the canopy. With practiced skill, she crossed the bridge and scaled the tree. The hole made by the fallen tree allowed her a view of the sky and, in the distance, the gray top of the volcano baking in the morning sun.

So, where was the closest troop of monkeys today? Although she couldn’t see them through the layers of green leaves, she had no problem hearing them. All she had to do was follow the noise, and whatever the monkeys were feeding on became the next meal for their human cousins. Since monkeys simply filled their stomachs and moved on, there was always something left for her to pick.

This time it was mangos. She carried her haul to the waterfall pool and deposited the mangos inside a shallow corral Jake had constructed. After harvesting two other fruits nearby, she bathed, then plodded downstream with the fruit pouched in her dripping shirt.

The coolness of the water rushing over her ankles soothed her. Really, there was no reason to worry about Jake. In spite of two nights of fever, he was at least eating and drinking during the day. With the chill of the cave to counter his fever, and the maggots to consume his dead flesh, he should recover. It was foolish to entertain any other possibility.

Foolish to think her feelings toward Jake had changed in any way too. Fear of his death had simply colored her admiration of him with hyped-up drama. The courtroom demanded data in black and white—facts had to be facts. And that was her venue, the courtroom, not the stage. The black-and-white fact was that her ambition to win
United States vs. Romero
had resulted in nineteen deaths. That had to be the basis for any emotions connected to Jake.

Sobered by her reality check, she arrived at the cave and spotted Crystal, bucket in hand, wading in the cove’s shallow water. Betty must have sent her out to gather mussels to distract her. They certainly didn’t need more meat with all the venison still on hand. Especially with nobody eating much of anything the past five days since Jake’s injury.

Betty greeted her with a dour face. “He had more deliriums while you were gone.” She eyed the fruit with glazed disinterest as Eve dumped it onto the table. “It’s those maggots crawling inside him that are making him sick.”

“You’ve been picking off the ones on the outside, haven’t you?” Eve paired the accusation with a sharp look and raised eyebrow.

“Every chance I get,” Betty shot back. “I don’t understand how those eggs hatched so soon, anyway. It takes at least two to three days, not one.”

Eve took over what was usually Betty’s job and sliced the fruit onto a seashell platter. “The eggs must have been laid at the pit. I swear every fly on the island followed him to the cave.”

Sudden horror drove stomach acid to the back of her throat. “Oh, Betty, I boiled the cloths before I washed him off, but I must have sewn some eggs in with the stitches!” She laid the knife aside and drew in a breath.

“I tell you, Eve, we need to cut them out.”

The thought of slicing into the tender, pink flesh on Jake’s backside brought more acid to Eve’s throat. “No. Absolutely not. Cutting him and digging around for maggots will only make things worse. Promise me you’ll drop the idea.”

Betty grumbled, but Eve made her give her word. Should she hide the three knives to make sure?

She called Crystal in to eat, but none of them consumed more than a few bites. Betty’s new batch of mussel-venison soup fared no better.

At midday, Eve took soup to Jake to encourage him to at least sip the broth. His body was hot, drenched with sweat. Before she could fetch the cloths and water to cool him, he called out for Ginny. Betty crawled off her bunk from a nap and hobbled without her cane to his side. “The time between his deliriums is getting shorter. He’s getting worse.”

Anxiety the size of a boulder rolled into Eve’s stomach. She sped to get the cloths and water. When at last Jake lay in a restless slumber, she climbed onto her own bunk and tossed and turned in a vain effort
to
sleep.

At dusk, his fever returned, rising and rising, his shouts for Ginny growing more and more frantic, until what seemed like hours passed before his fever broke. This time he slept without moving, his breathing so shallow that Eve and Betty checked his pulse again and again. Neither of them could swallow a morsel of food, and they didn’t protest when Crystal refused to eat.

When the sky was a grim black against evening stars, Jake’s fever broke for the fourth time that day. “We’ve got to keep him hydrated,” Betty said. While one of them mopped his body with one cloth, the other dribbled water into his mouth from the second cloth.

The cycles continued into the next day, and the day after that. Jake refused any nourishment but water. The cries of sorrow and grief during his deliriums drained Eve’s sensibility. His fevers robbed her strength. Each time she slept, she rose to the possibility that today might be the day Jake died.

He became the hub of the wheel around which she and Betty and Crystal revolved. She and Betty took turns caring for him, one sleeping as best she could while the other tended him. Crystal stepped up to the plate and nursed the nurses. She prepared the food and insisted they eat. She cleaned the dishes, fetched the water, woke one when the other was spent. She monitored the days for them. Today was the sixth day, the seventh, the eighth.

It was the one consistent request Jake made, asking, “What number day is it?” Or, as he grew more feeble, merely, “Day?”

On day nine, Crystal told her Jake gave her a thumbs-up, though he could barely lift his hand. “What’s that mean?”

Eve was at a loss. “Must be to encourage us.” But why? Each day he got only weaker and weaker. Disgustingly, each day the larvae got bigger and bigger. 

On day ten, he spread his lips into what had to be a smile and lifted a trembling finger to point to Heaven. Stunned, they interpreted it to mean that today he would die.

The maggots were now almost half an inch long, forming horrid little humps under Jake’s skin. But on day ten, they became still. Jake’s cycles of delirium and fever stopped. His skin was pale, his arms meatless. He lay quiescent, his breathing barely discernable.

Eve spent the night in a chair next to his ledge, her heartbeat fluttering thunder at every shallow breath he wheezed in. His forehead was cold. Too cold.

Trembling, she awoke Betty and Crystal. “We need to say our good-byes.”

Crystal crawled onto the ledge with Jake. The dried grass beneath him stank of urine and body odor and, up near his head, a little bit of vomit. She stretched out next to him and stared at his face until she could see his mouth half-hidden in his beard, and above it his nose and eyelids. Would he hear her? Probably not, but she had to tell him. For her sake. Tell him everything.

His left arm pillowed his head. His other lay between them. She copied him, an arm under her head, the other resting next to his. Her fingers brushed against the curly hair on his forearm, and she slowly lifted her palm until her hand lay like a fragile egg on a soft nest.

She chewed her lower lip. No crying. No Crybaby Crystal. She inhaled through her nostrils until her lungs were tight with air. She’d be brave and begin with the worst. The sneaky plan, her lie, everything. It was more than she could carry in her heart anymore. She released her breath and snuffled in more air through her nose. She’d tell him how sorry she was, and beg him to forgive her.

Then she’d tell him how happy he had made her—the happiest in her whole life. She’d thank him for taking her to see the rain forest, for teaching her how to start a fire, and how to mark a jungle path with broken branches. For telling her about him and Ginny, for spending his mornings teaching her Scripture and about God. For the Twenty-third Psalm—she mustn’t forget that.

She had a long, long list. The only thing she wouldn’t tell him was that he mustn’t wait for her in Heaven. She wouldn’t be coming. She didn’t deserve to be there.

She opened her mouth, but the words snagged in her throat. Her hand left its nest and flew to his beard and clutched hold. “I love you, Jake! I don’t want you to die!”

And then little sobs came hicupping out, making her forget everything she wanted to say. She’d thought about it for so long, needed so much to tell him. But all she could do was cry.

Jake stirred. He opened his eyes and inched a finger to her lips. “Hush,” he whispered. “I’m going to live.”

Jake could count his ribs protruding like row after row of sand dunes in the fleshless skin of his chest. How many days had he gone without eating? He groaned when he heard that Betty had thrown out the venison stew, claiming it was too old to eat. He’d hardly gotten a bite of it. That afternoon, he insisted Eve help him to the table for their next meal. Enough of lying in bed—it was time to celebrate his resurrection from the dead!

The pressure on his buttock wounds as he settled his weight into the chair called for jaw-clamping grit. If he didn’t move, he might make it through the meal. The women sat around him with smiles so huge he swore their happiness lit up the cave. All three of them were gaunt in the face, deep hollows under their eyes. For the first time, it hit him how much they had suffered alongside him the last two weeks. His gut tightened all the way up to his throat, making it hard to swallow. The island had tied the four of them together in a way that superseded even the close camaraderie with his battle buddies in Nam. Only his family topped the growing affection he felt for his three fellow survivors.

“Clear up a mystery for us, Jake.” Betty rubbed and patted his left hand as if she were the mother of the Prodigal Son returned home. “What were the thumbs-up about? Especially when you smiled and pointed up?”

“Ah, that!” Jake speared a bite of pineapple and held it up to his mouth. “More field-emergency knowledge from Nam. I knew that on the tenth day, my body would peak in producing its own antibodies. I figured if I could last until then, I might live.” He waggled his eyebrows at Crystal. “And, praise God, it looks as if I will.”

She didn’t laugh at his merriment. A shadow flitted across her brow at the mention of God. Then, as if to please him with an appropriate response, she tipped up the corners of her mouth.

His gaiety ratcheted down a notch. If anyone would be traumatized by his death, it would be Crystal. She had made him, not merely a hero to idolize, but her father to treasure and love. Those were big shoes to fill. He winked and gave her his best grin. With all his heart he wanted to keep in contact with her after they got off the island, but would telephone calls and visits be enough?

If Ginny were alive, he’d be tempted to see if he could adopt Crystal. But Ginny wasn’t alive. He gulped
back the bitter taste of sorrow. Well, thank God tha
t―
at least for Crystal’s sak
e―
he hadn’t died.

“Mind if I check your stitches?” Without waiting for an answer, Eve stood and leaned over his chair. The warmth of her breath tickled his skin. “They look good.” A fingertip poked one of the puncture wounds on his right shoulder. “That’s a scar. Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“How about here?” The fingertip slipped to the tender flesh bordering the scar.

“Ouch! Yes.”

“And here?” The finger lifted and pressed down a tad farther away.

“No.” Must be his uninjured flesh, although every inch of his body had hurt like the dickens the first several days after she’d sewn him up.

“Jake!” Her voice was tense. “The maggots—I can’t find them!” Her fingertips flitted over his stitches like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

“Stop!” He twisted away from her instruments of torture. The movement pinched his buttock wounds against the bamboo slats of the seat. He leaped from his chair and spun away to shield his back from the maniacal fingers. “Get away! The maggots are gone.”

Eve stepped back, her eyes wide. “Oh, Jake, not deeper into your—”

“No! No, they left my body.” Her concern was gratifying, and she’d been a trooper with all the help during his illness, but doggone the woman, she had a way of literally getting under his skin! He drew in a deep breath to calm down. “They crawled out to pupate.”

“You felt them leave?” Betty’s mouth turned down in disgust.

He laughed. She groused when they entered his wounds, groused when they left. “They wiggled their way out a couple days ago. I suspect you can find their cocoons around my bed.”

Betty snorted. “I’ve got better ways to spend my time, thank you.”

Eve faced him with folded arms. “Those stitches should be taken out. It won’t be fun. All we have are knives, no scissors.”

Weariness descended like a cement block on his brain. He eased back into his chair. Perhaps he wasn’t quite up to being resurrected after all. “Let’s think about that for tomorrow. One last bite of fruit, and I’m ready for bed.”

“Wait.” Crystal rose from her chair to stand before him, eyes fixed on the floor, mouth tight above a trembling chin. “I have something to tell you.”

Crystal couldn’t bear to look at Jake. Her insides shook at what she was about to do. She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. 

She had bound her fate to Jake’s. If he lived, God was not lost to her. But if he didn’t live, she would have to bear her guilt forever. Not even Aunt Betty and Eve’s forgiveness would be sufficient. Only Jake’s would do. He was the one who had suffered because of her.

She forced out two words. Forced them from the rat-infested dungeon in her heart. Forced them to her tongue. Opened her mouth, pushed them out. “I lied.”

Shame stripped her into scorching nakedness. Her knees quaked so that she could hardly stand. “I lied to Aunt Betty and Eve. I did it on purpose.”

Silence echoed against the cave walls. The acrid smell of wood ashes, the sweet scent of pineapple, the sour odor of Jake’s unwashed body crowded her nostrils. Relief and dread prickled the back of her throat so that she had to swallow hard. Her insides tingled.

Jake reached over and took her hands into his. They were warm against the ice of her skin. She dared to sneak a glance at him. His face was grave, but his eyes were kind. They encouraged her to tell him more. “I told them I’d fetch the water and not go near you. But all along, that was my plan.”

“You lied because you wanted to see me?”

She hung her head, nudged her chin up and down once.

“And you haven’t apologized to them?”

Her chest knotted. He didn’t get it. Her betrayal was against him, not them. The air in her lungs was barely enough to squeak out the terrible truth. “My lie almost killed you.”

His eyebrows shot up. “How’s that?”

“You left the cave to fetch water because of me.”

“Going outside to get water was my choice, Pumpkin. You’re not to blame for my decision. Do you understand that?”

“No.” Reluctantly, she put the last piece into the puzzle so he could see the whole, ugly picture. “I touched your back and you fell off your bed. After that you chose to get the water.”

“I see.” His thumbs rubbed the backs of her hands in gentle circles. “Let me ask you a question. I took Ginny on the
Gateway
cruise. Does that mean I killed her?”

Crystal gasped in horror. “No! Captain Emilio killed her.”

Jake nodded. “And it was a clouded leopard, not you, that almost killed me. ”

The logic filtered slowly into her brain. Captain Emilio set off the blasts—if he hadn’t, Ginny and all the others would still be alive. The leopard attacked Jake—if it hadn’t, Jake would have no injuries to die from. Air leaped into her lungs in an explosion of joy.

“Then I haven’t lost God either!”

Jake’s eyebrows jumped again. “Why would you think you had?”

“Because . . . I wouldn’t deserve Him. Not if I’d killed you.”

“Crystal, all of us have reasons why we don’t deserve God. Bad things we might do one time, bad things we do over and over again.”

Crystal frowned. Her brain felt like Jake had taken an eggbeater to it. “So none of us can have God?”

“Yes, we can. We become God’s beloved when we believe in Jesus. I gave Ginny a pearl necklace I bought especially for her on our wedding day, and it was always hers after that. In the same way, Jesus gives His forgivenes
s―
that He paid for on the cros
s―
to His beloved, and it’s always theirs after that. That’s how we can have God.”

“Even when we’re bad?”

His mouth pulled down at the corners, and his eyes looked so sad it made her breath jerk. “I hated being bad to Ginny because I loved her and wanted to please her. I always apologized and tried never to do it again. It’s the same with God. We hate being bad to Him.”

She got it. The love needed to go both ways—and why wouldn’t she love God if He loved her that much? Something light, something full and fizzy and crazy with happiness, filled her insides. She squeezed Jake’s hands so tight her bones crunched. “Lying is bad. I don’t ever want to do it again.”

“Tell Him that, Pumpkin.”

She took a big breath, withdrew her hands from Jake’s to weave her fingers together, and closed her eyes. “Dear Jesus, I believe in You, and I want to be forgiven forever. I’m really, really sorry I lied, and I don’t want to ever do it again. I want to love You as much as You love me.” She paused. “And thank You that Jake didn’t die. Amen.”

She opened her eyes and grinned shyly at Jake. Light from the cave windows reflected on tears brimming in his eyes. He drew her to him in a tight hug, and she hugged him back, certain the dizzying happiness inside her was oozing into his insides too. She had God and she had Jake. Both!

“Don’t forget Aunt Betty and Eve,” he whispered.

The guilt, although nowhere near as heavy as what she’d taken to God, pinched out stomach acid. She turned
to face her aunt first. “I’m sorry I lied. Can you forgive me too?”

Aunt Betty’s mouth curved downward. “I’m disappointed, child, but I forgive you. Come give me a hug too.”

She went hesitantly into Aunt Betty’s arms, sorry deep down now that she saw how hurt her aunt was. Lying was a hateful thing to do to people, as well as to God. “I’m sorry,” she said against her aunt’s shoulder. “I won’t ever do it again.”

Aunt Betty patted Crystal’s back and released her. “I’ll be looking for that.”

New sorrow bit her throat. In other words, she’d have to prove herself. She had lost something precious, something that would not be recovered easily. She swallowed back tears, feeling more and more the enormity of what her lie had done.

It was going to be even worse with Eve, the real target of her lie. Eve—her Losers Club buddy, her friend who didn’t look on her as just a dumb kid, her heroine who’d saved her and Aunty instead of looking out for herself, who’d been brave enough to sew up Jake and save him too. Over and over, Eve had shown love to her, and what had she done in return?

A sob lurched from her lungs. Please, God, she couldn’t lose Eve! She ached to throw herself into Eve’s arms and cry and cry and beg forgiveness. “Eve?” Her voice cracked. She turned a full circle, probing the cave’s darkness. “Where’s Eve?”

“She hasn’t come back?” Aunt Betty twisted in her chair to glance over each shoulder, as if already needing proof that Crystal spoke the truth. “She sped out of here back when you said Captain Emilio killed Ginny.”

Heart thumping, Crystal scrambled outside. High overhead, the sun beat down on an empty beach and swashing whitecaps beyond the cove. The grass in the trench sagged, releasing the sharp scent of baked vegetation. No one but her and the lone soldier were there. “Eve,” she shouted. “Please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry!”