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 He was withdrawn, sunken in depression from which no one could rouse him.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.…

He wondered suddenly when all sexual activity had stopped. In Washington, or immediately after they left. He had decided it wasn't working for him. It was too hard to pretend the other men were his brothers; finally, it had been too unsatisfactory, too frustrating. Somehow it had been better with Molly if only because no pretense had been necessary, but even that had failed. Two people trying to become one, neither quite knowing what the other needed or wanted. Or maybe it was hunger that killed the sexual appetite. He wrote in his notebooks.

Molly, watching him, felt as if a thick clear wall separated her from every living thing on earth. Nothing could get through the wall, nothing could touch her in any way, and where the feeling had aroused terror, never fully dormant any longer, now it simply bemused her to think of it. Every day they got closer to home, and curiously it seemed less from their own efforts than from an irresistible pull. They were powerless not to return home. The pull was steady, dragging them back just as they had dragged the boat up the bank to save it from the flood. Their every act was instinctive. And the terror? She didn't know its source, only that waves of terror coursed through her unexpectedly, and when they did, she felt weak and cold. She could feel her facial muscles tighten during those times, and she was aware of the way her heart leaped, then paused, then raced.