Life Expectancy

gunman.
        Instinct told me that I was alone. Instinct serves me well when I'm creating new recipes; therefore, I decided to trust it also in these circumstances.
        Although forced to limp, I could move fast. I set off through the trees.
        I had gone some distance when I began to feel confused as to direction.
        The contours of this higher land seemed to have shifted while I'd been below.
        The highway lay uphill, of course, to the east. Consequently, west lay directly downhill. Goldmine Run lay south, behind me. The Explorer waited west of Hawksbill Road and north of my position.
        Clear enough.
        Yet when I rounded another tree and weaved between two more, I found myself back at the stream and almost plunged off the bank again.
        Knowing where all four points of the compass were, I had nevertheless wandered in a circle-and in no time at all.
        Having lived in the mountains all my life, in a town besieged by forest, I had heard stories of even experienced outdoorsmen going lost in bright daylight and good weather. Wilderness-rescue teams searched for and extracted these bewildered and embarrassed hikers on a regular basis.
        Some poor souls were neither bewildered nor embarrassed. They were dead. Mortally dehydrated, starved, bear-bitten, cougar-slashed, broken in a fall… In Mother Nature's gruesome collection, the instruments of death were numberless.
        Any six acres of wilderness could be a thwarting maze. Every year or two, the Snow County Gazette carried a front-page story about a hiker hopelessly lost for days, though he had always been within a half mile of a highway.
        I have never been an intrepid woodsman. I love civilization, the warmth of a hearth, the coziness of a kitchen.
        Turning away from the wordless prattle of racing water, I strove frantically to comprehend the primeval patterns of the wildwood. I ventured forth hesitantly, then with greater haste, though ^with more trepidation than conviction.
        Alone and imperiled, Lorrie needed Davy Crockett. Instead, all she had was me-a hairy-chested Julia Child.
        This I did not see but have been told: Locked alone in the Explorer, Lorrie turned in her seat as best she could to watch me set out into the forest. Considering the depth of the gloom, this took fifteen seconds, after which she was free to contemplate her mortality.
        She opened the cell phone and keyed in 911 again. As before, she could not get service.
        Her wristwatch had clocked off just half a minute, and she had already run out of options to pass time. These weren't circumstances conducive to singing "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall."
        Although I had saved her life (and she mine) on the night of the day we had met, she wasn't entirely confident in my ability to sneak up on the rifleman and overpower him barehanded.
        She later told me, No offense, muffin man, but I figured you had gone off to be killed and I would wind up being the bride of Big Foot or worse.
        Sharp anxiety at once scraped her nerves raw-not so much worry for herself, she says, as for me, which I believe because that is quintessential Lorrie. She seldom puts herself first in anything.
        Our unborn baby was equal to me in her thoughts. Her inability to protect her child in any meaningful way elicited alternate floods of anger and anxiety.
        Awash in strong emotions, she felt that if she just sat there waiting, if she didn't take some positive action, frustration and fear would gnaw at the seams of her mind, loosening the stitches a little.
        A plan occurred to her. If the ground under the Explorer allowed and if her distended belly didn't get in the way, perhaps she should slip out of the SUV, squirm beneath it, and wait there, out of sight.
        If I returned triumphant, she could call to me from her hiding place.
        If instead the rifleman showed up, he might think she had fled either with me or, later, on her own.
        She popped the locks and opened her door. She felt the cold air suck all the color from her face in an instant.
        The winter night was a vampire, its wings the darkness and its fangs the cold.
        Under the Explorer, she would be lying on frozen ground. There would be welcome heat from the cooling engine, but not much and not for long.
        A sharp contraction made her gasp. She pulled the door shut and