"No!" Alan said, as if a million bucks were really on the line instead of our health. He poured fresh water on the cut and tore his T-shirt to dress the wound. It stopped bleeding, but only after he'd tracked blood all over my clean camp.
Figuring the tiki torches in the tree had been some kind of clue, I wandered around Pabst's abandoned campsite and turned up the fuel and canisters stashed under some grass.
Our little fire would burn like the Dresden Firestorm that night, every time we doused it with fuel.
Second Night After sunset and a dinner of Froot Loops — the crab trap had turned up jack crap — the wind began to pick up. The sun, which had never really come out, continued to disappoint us.
Soon we were down to the last few logs we'd taken from other fire remains. They were damp — from the rain, we hoped, not campers' personal fire extinguishers. Water sizzled out the logs' ends.
By 8 or 9 p.m., we were out of wood. We scraped the forest around the site for twigs, pine needles, anything that might burn. Mostly, I poured on citronella.
Alan slept on the paddles to get off the cold, wet ground, and I covered my bare legs with palm fronds. At one point in the interminable night, I woke up to find two frond blades ablaze.
I stamped it out with a wet-socked foot. It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves out there — on purpose, just to be out of our misery. Alan even managed to throw his dive knife at a tree, glancing off and hitting him, yes, in his other ankle.
We shivered and froze all night. We moved the canoe, created a backdraft, moved the canoe again, took turns waking up and trying to keep the fire going. If there was any firewood left out there in the dark forest, it was safely guarded by raccoons, so I wasn't touching it.
Day Three — Captains Disgracious Alan hit the natural snooze alarm by putting more and more clothing over his face to block out the morning light. I don't think that's what's meant by sun block, but it enabled him to sleep past the sunrise. A heavy fog had rolled in; we couldn't even see the other island a few hundred yards away.
I blew on the fire's remains, trying to get some damp grass and paper burning. I'd had no water or Froot Loops, and I almost passed out. Through the spots I was seeing, I saw Pabst walking up, laughing.
Alan got up. His feet had grown stiff, and he had a nasty blister on his left heel.
Pabst said, "Ready for the final competitions?"
"Foot race!" I said. Unfortunately, Pabst had his own games in mind. Before we could compete, Pabst led us, Alan limping slowly along, to another stand of pines.
"What does that look like?" he said, pointing to something under a pile of needles.
"Does it look like a sleeping bag?" he coached as I walked over and uncovered — a sleeping bag.
I laughed, but this was too much. I blamed Alan and his weird fugue the day before for not helping me look for more junk. Mainly, I was mad that I hadn't kept looking around.
Still, I was ready to make like a rat at the pellet dispenser for more prizes.
Pabst led us to croquet mallets and balls. "Actually, I'm glad you didn't find these because you probably would have burned them," Pabst said.
From a mound of sand, we had to hit a ball into a fire pit about 30 yards away. Whoever did it in the fewest number of tries would win a can of Slim-Fast.
Alan went first. The shot went straight but fell 8 feet short. I whacked my ball to the right of Alan's, a few feet closer to the prize.
Alan got cocky. "Doesn't matter, it's the fewest number of tries," he said. He lined up his shot, pulled back, swung.
Wide left.
My shot went straight in. I drank what I could stomach of the goo, then gave half to Alan. I was hungry, sure, but being hungry is better than drinking Slim-Fast.
The next competition was an egg toss on the beach. With each throw, we were to take a step back. Alan dropped it no fewer than five times. I dropped it once. Still Humpty wouldn't break. Just as I started thinking it was hardboiled, I winged the egg fast and furious. It fell short within reach of Alan, yolk splurting on his sneakers. He tried to claim victory, but admits to having catching "issues."