We raced with him, and by doing so, were able to get the longest rests.
The next day we were scheduled for another hike, this time without Brock to lead us. A man named Talby took over the leadership of the group from the start. He was a corporation executive and was used to taking charge.
We reached our destination, a large jutting rock, easily visible from camp, a distance of about ten miles.
About three in the afternoon, we started back to camp. The route back was more difficult—we had no landmark to follow. About an hour underway, we came to a bend where two canyons forked out.
“This way,” Talby said. “We take the right fork.”
“No,” Lara corrected. “We go left.”
Talby said he knew he was right.
“Lara, are you sure?” I asked.
“Every time we came to a fork, I looked for a landmark and used a memory gimmick to help me remember. I’m sure. We have to go left.”
“If she says we should go left, then we’d better go left.”
“Are you going to believe a woman instead of me?” he challenged.
“I’m going to believe this woman.”
The rest decided Talby was right.
“What kind of man are you—letting a woman lead you around by the nose?”
“She doesn’t make mistakes about things like this.”
They all started off. Talby turned to yell at us. “Brock’s not going to be happy about having to come out here and rescue you!” They disappeared around the bend.
“Sam, what if I’m wrong?” she asked.
“Are you?”
She turned back to check her landmarks. “No, I”m right.”
“Then let’s go.”
In three more hours we were back in camp. Then we drove around in Jeeps for an hour before we found Talby and the others.
Lara and I couldn’t face much more jerky, so we both ate light.
That night Brock made an announcement. “I hope you all ate enough for supper, because tomorrow is your main survival test. At four in the morning we’ll be taking each of you into a separate remote area. All you’ll have is a flint, a jackknife, and a canteen of water. What you eat will be what you’re smart enough to find. You’ll be on your own, but we’ll have observers posted watching you so you won’t kill yourself. And do you know what this will do for you?”
“Wipe us out,” Lara whispered.
“It’ll give you Self-Knowledge.”
Lara and I asked if we could be together for the test. The next morning they got us up while it was still dark and drove each of us to separate areas. The morning brought a lot of heat and no food. Where were the berries, where were the fish, where was the water, where were the wild onions?”
* * * * *
It was late afternoon and the canyon walls were ovens. Lara and I sat in the shade of a large boulder and perspired. We hadn’t talked for over half an hour.
“How you doing?” I finally asked.
She cleared her throat. “Sam,” she rasped, “even my throat is sunburned.”
I went to great effort to turn my head to look at her face.
“Your nose, too,” I said.
“Before they have the viewing, have the funeral director put makeup on my face. If you make it through, promise me you’ll tell him that.”
A few minutes later I continued our conversation. “We’re going to make it through. Do you know why?”
“No, why?”
“Because between the two of us, we paid six hundred dollars to come out here and have somebody starve us. We’re going to survive, and when we get back, we’re going to warn people to stay away. That’s why we’re going to make it.”
“No, we’re going to starve.”
“No, we’re not. We’re going to get up and kill a very large animal and eat its flesh.”
She chuckled. “What animal is going to let us do that?”
“We’ll use cunning and stealth.”
“Sam, the smart quick animals kill the weak ones. It’s the law of the jungle. Now only the smart ones are left. The dumb clumsy ones have already been eaten. There’s no hope for us.”
I reached down and found a small pebble and put it in my mouth.
“What did you do that for?”
“When you’re thirsty, put a pebble in your mouth, and your thirst will go away.”
She looked at me, shook her head, and chortled to herself.
“There’re coyotes around here. Do you know what that means?”
“What?”
“That means there are rabbits around. We will kill a rabbit and eat it.”
“How do we kill a rabbit?”
“We set a rabbit trap and lure it with some food.”
We were both looking at the opposite boulder as if it were a TV set.
“There’s no lettuce here—how do we lure a rabbit?”
My shoulders slumped. “We’ll think of something.”
“Let’s just give up, Sam. It was us against the desert—the desert won.”
“I’m not giving up. I paid three hundred dollars, and I’m not leaving till I’ve had at least as much meat as they put on a Big Mac.”
“You’re going to eat raw meat?” she asked.
No, I’m going to cook it, using flint and steel to start a fire. C’mon, let’s go to work.”
“First give me a drink of water.”
“We don’t have much. You should put a pebble in your mouth.”
“Sam, please? Just a little sip.”
“Okay.” Instead of a tiny sip, she grabbed the canteen with both hands and gulped the water down. I pulled it away.
“Oh, that was good!”
“You said just a sip.”
“I’m sorry. Out here I don't’ seem to have any self-control, or courage, or confidence. Can we sit for a few minutes more?”
“We need to look for food.”
“Let me just ask you one question. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
“Okay.”
“When it’s so hot out, why doesn’t the wax in our ears run out?”
We walked up the canyon. A few minutes later I saw a small rabbit hopping along several feet from us.
“Look!” I whispered.
“Oh, isn’t it cute?” she said. “Once I had a bunny rabbit named Fluffy Toes.”
“I’m going to kill it and eat its flesh.”
“Good—I’ll help you.”
We stalked the rabbit. I found a piece of wood to use for a club. Suddenly I ran toward it, swinging my club. It scurried into a pile of rocks.
“Sam, give up.”
“I’m not giving up. Let’s keep going.”
A little farther I saw a small animal coming out of its den in the rocks. I silently pointed it out to Lara.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A ground squirrel.”
“No, it’s not a ground squirrel. I think it’s a rock-chuck.”
“Whatever it is, we’re going to hunt it. Lara, can you whistle?”
A few minutes later we approached the den of the animal with Lara whistling “Yankee Doodle.” The ground squirrel dived for his hole. Lara kept on walking, still whistling, while I stopped and waited above the den, holding a large boulder. The ground squirrel heard the fading whistling, and thinking all was safe, came out of his den. That’s when the bomb fell.
A minute later I proudly lifted it high above my head and yelled, “We got meat! We’re going to live!”
I took my knife and cleaned the animal while Lara set out to find fuel for a fire. A few minutes later I heard the rattling of rattlesnake near where she was standing. She screamed.
“Lara, don’t move! Just stand perfectly still. I’m coming over to where you are, but you’ve got to be still.”
Carefully I moved to within a few feet of her, close enough to see a large snake coiled near her feet.
“Don’t move, Lara.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
; “It’s okay to be scared—just don’t move.”
She started to cry quietly.
“He doesn’t want to attack you. As long as you don’t press him, he’ll leave soon. While we’re waiting, let me tell you again about the family of ten I baptized on my mission . . .”
In a few minutes the snake slithered away.
She threw her arms around me and sobbed. I patted her back and kept saying, “It’s all right now.”
With my arms around her shoulder, we walked back to our fire site.
“I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. Oh, Sam, I love feeling safe in your arms. You were so calm out there.”
“Shucks, ma’am, ‘tweren’t nothin’,” I joked.
She smiled back through the tears. “All the time you were telling the story about your mission, I kept thinking, Sam’s right—the snake’s going to leave. Do you know why it left?”
“No, why?”
“It was bored by your story,” she laughed through her tears.
A few minutes later I prepared a small nest of tinder, then struck the flint against the blade of the jackknife. After several attempts, a small wisp of smoke curled upward. I picked up the nest and blew life into it. In a few minutes we had a fire going. I took the liver and heart and roasted them over the fire until they were black, then divided them for us.
“Sam, this is the nicest meal I’ve ever had.”
We ate the heart and liver, then put the rest of the animal over the fire.
“I love giving you the food you eat,” I said. “It makes me feel strong and useful. In some ways I wish you had to depend on me for all the food you ever ate—that we were an Indian couple long before the white man came. I’d go out to hunt for food. Some days I wouldn’t find any, and you’d have to go hungry.”
“Wait a minute—what about you? Wouldn’t you go hungry too?”
I grinned at her. “No, I need energy for the hunt the next day. Some days I’d kill a deer and bring it in and lay it at your feet. You wouldn’t say anything, of course, but there’d be happiness in your eyes. You’d skin the animal and prepare the feast.”
“Just a minute—what would you be doing while I was skinning the animal?”
“I’d sit with the other braves and tell the story of the hunt.”
We both started to laugh and had another sip of water and felt good.
“You’re my best friend,” I said contentedly.
“You’re mine, too, Sam. You make me feel safe and protected, and I love that feeling. Look at your arms,” she said, running her fingers up my arm. “They’re so strong. And your shoulders—I love your shoulders. Sometimes more than anything I just want to be safe in a man’s arms, the way I feel now with you.”
“We’re a team, you know that?” I said. “A man and a woman are equal, but they’re not the same. But if we combine our talents, we can do anything.”
I took some grease from the prairie dog and rubbed it on Lara’s sunburned nose.
“Sometimes,” I confessed, “I hear voices in my head. One of the voices is from grade school. It says, ‘You gonna let a girl beat you?’ You know what I’m going to start telling that voice? I’ll say, ‘It’s okay to let this girl do better than me—because we’re a team, and a team may scrimmage, but it doesn’t count as a game. It just makes us better.’”
“Oh, Sam, I adore you. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted to find in a man.”
I gave some of the hindquarters of the roasted meat to Lara.
“We got through this,” I said proudly. “We can get through anything. I’ve got Self-Knowledge now. You know, I’m not always going to be just a computer programmer. I’ve been thinking about starting my own company to sell small computers to homes. It’ll help them budget their money, remind them when their car needs servicing, and turn down the thermostat at night. It’ll be fantastic.”
“You can do it, Sam.”
“Oh, sure, I know it’ll be hard at first,” I said, munching away on the meat on the other part of the hindquarters. “Lara, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.”
“But you’ll succeed, I know you will.”
“Yes, because I have Self-Knowledge. You know what, the better I feel about myself, the more I love you. Lara, I want you by my side all the way.”
She looked down the trail.
“It’s not wide enough.”
“No—life’s way. Will you marry me?”
She sighed. “Oh, wow, will I!”
“That’s what I asked.”
“I will, I will!”
We kissed. Our lips stuck together.
“May I have some water now?” she asked.
“No—but I’ll give you my special pebble.”
“Sam, please, just a little water. Kissing you out here is like sucking on popcorn.”
“Oh, all right.”
After four gulps, I had to pull the canteen away from her again.
Then we tried another kiss.
The shadows crept across the canyon floor and we knew the Jeep would soon be coming, so we started down to the mouth of our canyon.
“Brock says they’re going to have a special hike next summer—fifty miles without food or water in the California desert. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Maybe we can save up for it.”
Lara was wrong. The trail was wide enough for her to walk by my side as we strolled hand in hand.
“Did you happen to read Time magazine last week?” she asked as we walked.
“No, I missed it.”
“Want me to tell you what was in it?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“On page one there was an ad for Ford Granada. And on page two . . .”
* * * * *
Chapter Thirteen
We drove home the next day and announced our engagement. Our parents were delighted.
When Steve found out, he invited us to dinner. He was alone; he said his wife was visiting her parents.
I had him tell how he began with no money and how things grew. Then I explained my dream of having my own store that sold small computers.
“Just do it—take the plunge.”
During the dessert he made his play. “Lara’s told me she’ll probably quit when you two get married. Why don’t you let her work for a while? It’ll give you time to start your own business. You’d be on the way to your goals, and I’d keep the best salesperson I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve got a boy who needs a mother.”
“I’m giving you the chance of a lifetime. You’re not going to just sit on your goals, are you? C’mon, Sam, be an eagle.”
A few days later we decided to follow Steve’s advice. I would work at the computer center until the middle of January, then Lara and I would get married. I’d have my grand opening in February. Lara would continue to work until the store began paying enough for us to get by.
And so reluctantly I became an eagle.
* * * * *
We were married in January in the Salt Lake Temple.
Many of the single adults were in the sealing room with us.
From seven to eight-thirty that night we had a reception at the church.
But there was a second reception, from nine to ten, which was more fun. Lara and I wore our clown costumes for a reception just for the single adults.
We went through the courtship of Wilbur the Clown and Fran the Frazzled Fraulein. I knelt in front of her in the classical proposal stance.
“I want your hand.”
“Vas ist das?” she asked.
“I want your hand,” I pleaded, grabbing at the plastic hand sticking out of her sleeve and pulling it out.
She screamed and I ran away. She started to recite a poem in German. I picked up a large push broom and crept up on her. The second the broom touched her feet, she fell forward.
Sister Hilton, the announcer for our shows, asked me why I’d done that.
“I wanted to sweep her off her feet!” I yelled
.
The part we enjoyed the best was the sharing of the cake. I opened my mouth and she shoved an enormous piece into it. Without a word I did the same to her. What was left over, I smeared on her nose.
She pointed at something inside the cake. When I bent over to look, she pushed my head into it.
After wiping off the mess, we got serious. We told them how we felt about our experiences with the single adults. It was getting pretty mushy, so Sister Hilton had us open our presents. The first one was a whoopy cushion, one that makes strange noises when someone sits on it. Every gift was a gag.
Last of all we sang “Till We Meet Again,” had a prayer, and left.
When I started the car, a siren wailed crazily until I could open the hood, find the gimmick, and pull it loose. Then came a nervous drive up the canyon to my uncle’s cabin in the woods where we were to spend our first night together.
* * * * *
I sat on the bed in my pajamas and listened to the sound of Lara’s shower. Looking at the fireplace, I thought how romantic it would be to have a nice fire going when she came out.
Still in pajamas, I put on a pair of my uncle’s boots and went outside to the woodpile, cut some kindling, and carried it inside. I found a pile of old newspapers and magazines, crumpled and threw some into the fireplace, then carefully laid the wood on top and set the paper on fire.
Then I remembered the axe was still outside and went to get it. As long as I was there, I decided, I’d chop some more wood for later. Five minutes later when I went inside, the entire room was filled with smoke, I’d forgotten to open the draft.
Grabbing the wood that was still smoking, I ran it outside and tossed it in a snowbank. In the process I slid on some ice and fell, twisting my ankle. Limping back, I wiped my forehead, spreading black over my face. Then I opened all the windows to get the smoke out.
That’s when Lara opened the bathroom door, expecting to find her Prince Charming regally attired in lounging robe, about to offer her a glass of ginger ale. Instead she saw a guy wearing sooty pajamas, hiking boots, this face blackened like a coal miner, and the room filled with thick smoke. I was bent over, looking up the chimney, still searching for the draft to the fireplace.
“Good grief!” she gasped.
I limped toward her, no doubt resembling Captain Ahab.
“Hi there.”
“Is this a family wedding ritual?” she asked.