His mouth was dry from his run through the woods, and the fear that had made him crawl like a crippled baby into the arms of the spruce. A layer of scuzz coated his tongue and teeth like curd aging in some timbered vault. Without sitting up he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes and matches but everything was soaked. The matches slipped and crumbled as he tried to strike them, so he put them back in his pocket.

He lay back flat and watched the rain as it collected into large drops on the spruce boughs above to fall onto his chest and legs where they quickly seeped into his skin, already puckered and dimpled, transformed from the smooth map it had been into one of valleys and strange rubbery mountains, a map on which he could no longer trace his life. Soon he was asleep again.

When he woke up the rain had stopped and the sun was pale and weak through the trees, a bowl of slippery broth, rancid and shimmering in the blue background. He sat up, brushed the pine needles from his shirt and pants and looked down at his ankle again. There was no improvement. He shivered and rubbed his arms as the wind came cold and level off the river. His clothes were still wet and clung to his body. He looked around for something to splint his ankle with so he could move away from the water that made him both cold and thirsty.

There was nothing except the spindly shorts of broken spruce branches, matted into a thorny and rugged carpet, so he dragged himself out from under the tree with his hands. The rough ground jarred his leg. He flipped onto his back and began scooting himself up the hill away from the river, hating the calm water that kept coursing past.

His arms were sore and his ass hurt from heaving it over logs and stumps, the sharp points of beaver-shortened saplings. From the top of the hill he saw the river moving from the north and bend left into the dawning day. Simon lay back and fell asleep.