By the third day the return trip had turned into a nightmare. The wind became gusty, more dangerous than helpful, and they no longer tried to use the sail. The current was swifter, the water muddy. It must have rained much more inland than it had in Washington. Also, the air had a chill that persisted until midday, when the sun became too hot for the warm clothing they had put on earlier. By sundown it was too cool for the lighter garments they had changed into at the lunch break. They were always too hot or too cold.
Ben and Lewis withdrew from the others and watched the sunset from a rise over the river. “They’re hungry, that’s part of the trouble,” Ben said. Lewis nodded. “Also, Molly has started her menstrual period and she won’t let anyone near her. She nearly bit poor Harvey’s head off last night.”
“I’m not worried about Harvey,” Lewis said.
“I know. I don’t know if Thomas is going to make it or not. I tranquilized him at dinner. I don’t know from one day to the next what to expect from him.”
“We can’t carry a dead weight home with us,” Lewis said grimly. “Even with strict rationing, food’s going to be a problem. If he’s tranquilized, he’ll still need to eat, someone else will have to row for him .
“We’ll take him back with us,” Ben said, and suddenly he was in command. “We’ll need to study him, even if he goes home in restraints.”
For a moment they were both silent. “It’s the separation, isn’t it?” Lewis looked south, toward home. “No one predicted anything like this. We’re not like them! We have to scrap the past, the history books, everything. No one predicted this,” he said again quietly. “If we get back, we have to make them understand what happens to us away from our own kind.”
“We’ll get back,” Ben said. “And that’s why I need Thomas. Who could have foreseen this? Now that we’re aware of how different we are from them, we’ll be looking harder. I wonder where else differences will show up when we’re not expecting them to.”
Lewis stood up. “Coming back?”
“In a minute.”
He watched Lewis slip down the embankment and board the boat; then he looked at the sky once more. Men had gone out there, he thought in wonder, and he couldn’t think why. Singly and in small groups they had gone into strange lands, across wide seas, had climbed mountains where no human foot had ever trod. And he couldn’t think why they had done those things. What impulse had driven them from their own kind to perish alone, or among strangers? All those ruined houses they had seen, like the old Sumner house in the valley, designed for one, two, three people, lived in by so few people, deliberately isolating themselves from others of their own kind. Why?
The family used isolation for punishment. A disobedient child left alone in a small room for ten minutes emerged contrite, all traces of rebellion eradicated. They had used isolation to punish David. The doctors knew the full story of the last months that David had lived among them. When he became a threat, they had isolated him permanently, punishment enough. And yet those other men of the distant past had sought isolation, and Ben couldn’t think why.
Chapter 13
For two days it had been raining; the wind was gusting at thirty knots and increasing. “We have to get the boat out of the water,” Lewis said.
They had covered the entire boat with oiled canvas, but water seeped in through cracks and now and then a wave lapped over the side and spilled down into the boat. More and more frequently something heavy rubbed against the boat or crashed into it.
Molly pumped and visualized the river behind them. There had been a bank hours back, but since then there had been no place they could land safely.
“An hour,” Lewis said, as if answering her thoughts. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour to get to that low bank.”
“We can’t go back!” Thomas shouted.
“We can’t stay here!” Harvey snapped at him. “Don’t be an idiot! We’re going to get rammed!”
“I won’t go back!”
“What do you think, Ben?” Lewis asked.
They were huddled together in the prow; Molly was in the midsection manning the pump doggedly, trying to pretend her aching muscles away. The boat shuddered under a new impact, and Ben nodded.
“Can’t stay here. Not going to be a picnic getting back downriver.”
“Let’s get at it,” Lewis said, and stood up.
They were all wet and cold, and afraid. They were within sight of the swirling waters of the Shenandoah where it joined the Potomac, and the eddies that had nearly swamped them on the first leg of their trip now threatened to break the boat apart. They could get no closer to the Shenandoah until the flood subsided.
“Thomas, relieve Molly at the pump. And, Thomas, remember, you don’t think of anything but that pump! And you keep it going!”
Molly got up, continuing to pump until Thomas was in place, ready to take over without interruption. As she started for the rear oar, Lewis said, “You take the prow.” They put the oars back in the locks. The rain pounded them, and Thomas pumped harder. The water was sloshing about their feet, and when the lines to shore were untied the boat swung sharply into the river. The water inside the boat surged back and forth.
“Log! Coming fast! Eight o’clock!” Molly yelled.
They turned the boat, and it shot forward and they were flashing down the river, keeping abreast of the log that was off to their left.
“Stump! Twelve o’clock! Twenty yards!” Molly hardly had time to get the words out. They jerked the boat to the left and flew past the stump. The flood had changed everything. The stump had been ashore when they passed it before. The current became swifter, and they fought to get closer in. “Tree! One o’clock! Twenty yards!” They veered out again and now the log that was pacing them tumbled and came dangerously close. “Log! Nine o’clock! Three yards!”
And on they went in the blinding rain, flying past a newly created shoreline, staying even with the massive log that turned and tumbled alongside them. Suddenly Molly saw the low spot and cried, “Land! Two o’clock, twenty yards!” They drove in sharply to shore. The boat dragged on something hidden in the muddy water and the front half swung out toward the river. It rocked violently and water sloshed in over the side. Lewis and Ben quickly jumped out and, with the brown water swirling about their chests, waded toward shore, dragging the boat in after them. The boat grated over mud and stones, and now the others jumped into the water and dragged the boat higher until it was beached, tilted, but for the moment safe. Molly lay in the mud panting until Lewis said, “We’ve got to get it higher. The river’s rising fast.”
It rained throughout the night and they had to move the boat a second time; then the rain stopped and the sun shone, and that night there was a frost.
Ben cut the rations again. The storm had cost them five more days, and the river was swifter when they returned to it, their progress slower than ever.
Thomas was in the worst shape, Ben thought. He was withdrawn, sunken in depression from which no one could rouse him. Jed was next hardest hit. In time, no doubt, his symptoms would match Thomas’s. Harvey was irritable; he had turned sullen and suspicious of everyone. He suspected that Ben and Lewis were stealing his food, and he watched them intently at mealtime. Molly was haggard, and she looked haunted; her eyes kept turning toward the south and home, and she seemed to be listening, always listening. Lewis was intent on maintaining the boat, but when he stopped working, that same look was on his big face: listening, watching, waiting. Ben couldn’t assess the changes in himself. He knew they were there. Often he would look up suddenly, certain someone had spoken his name softly, only to find no one nearby, no one paying any attention to him. Sometimes he had the feeling that there was a danger he couldn’t see, something hanging over him that made him look to the sky, search the trees. But there was never anything to see. . . .