Chapter 9
The Petty Foils of Man
The crickets were still loudly chirping when Janet woke up the following morning. It was still quite dark, but signs of the breaking dawn slowly reared their heads – a hazy blue sky poked its way through the trees, the birds stirred and began to sing, and the activity of the unknown forest made itself known through the snaps of twigs and the rustling of leaves.
Before she even opened her eyes, Janet could feel Jack's arm protectively wrapped around her torso. His warm chest was pressed firmly against her back while his head nestled comfortably in the crook of her neck. She didn't move for a moment. She knew if she did that she'd have to let go and gently nudge him off of her, that she'd have to acknowledge that this was not her regular life, and that Jack wasn't hers and she wasn't his. Eventually she let her eyes flutter open and she sighed as they landed on his hand, which was still entwined in hers.
She let their hands slip apart as she turned around to face him, still sound asleep. She wasn't awake yet, she assured herself, so it was okay to caress his cheek with the tips of her fingers, which slowly glided across his skin and stopped briefly at his lips. She was still quite asleep, so it was fine to run her fingers through his hair as a faint smile formed on his peaceful face.
"Oh, Jack," she whispered, their faces so close to one another's that she could feel his soft breathing. "What am I going to do with you?"
He moved slightly, and she pulled away, startled. When he continued to sleep, she let out a breath of relief. God, he terrified her. He absolutely terrified her and he always had – or not him, rather, but how he made her feel. No one made her feel that way. No one.
Phillip.
She scowled. Why on earth was she sitting here thinking about Jack when she had a husband? A husband! The very husband whose respect she was out here fighting to earn, a man who was so aloof that he had absolutely no clue just how much – or why – she was hurting in the first place, a man who never truly got to know her before they rushed into marriage, a man who...
Where was he? She looked down at the watch on her wrist. It was nearly 5am. Had nobody even looked for them? They couldn't have even gone that far off the trail. Surely Mick would have known the best course of action to take to get her and Jack back to safety. Send out some sort of search team – something. And yet here they lay, seemingly completely alone in the world, but together. She sidled up closer to him and allowed her eyes to rest once more. She didn't care anymore. She didn't care if anybody ever found them.
...
It was Jack's turn to start, this time in response to a rustling outside their tent. The sky was lighter now and he began to wipe the sleep out of his eyes before wincing at the tenderness still present from yesterday's mishap. Janet was curled up in the fetal position next to him with her head nestled near his chest. The smile that formed on his face was a sad one. He raised his hand to move a stand of hair out of her face, but before he could react any further, he remembered the rustling outside as it began to grow louder. Moving slowly and quietly so as not to wake Janet, he unzipped the tent and peered outside.
His eyes instantly landed on the looming, magnificent sight before him. She stood there, all seven and a half feet of her, some mere feet away peering directly into the depths of his soul. He froze. She froze in response.
"Old Sally," he whispered in a mixture of stunned terror and genuine awe.
The bear dropped to all fours and did not move, her eyes never leaving Jack and the tent.
"Janet, old – "his voice came out in a high-pitched squeak and he cleared his throat to bring it back down to its normal tone. "Janet, it's Old – it's Old Sally. Janet."
He began to shake her awake when she didn't respond, and she mumbled incoherently before sitting up. "W-what?" When he didn't speak any further, she followed his gaze out of the flap in the tent to where Old Sally sat waiting. She quickly zippered it back up and turned her back to it. "Jack."
"What?"
"There's a bear out there."
"I – " he did a double take in response to her stating the obvious. "I know there's a bear out there, Janet, what do we do?"
The truth was that she didn't have the slightest clue. For all the strategic planning she had done to prepare for any possible emergencies, she hadn't considered the mind-numbing terror she'd experience when faced with an actual threat.
"Janet, what if we die out here!"
His panic snapped her out of her shock. "We will not! Jack we are not going to die out here. Just let me think for a –" Just then her eyes landed on the can of bear spray that lay in the corner of the tent. Hopefully Jack hadn't wasted all of its contents on his own face. She held it in front of her with the same energy with which she'd held ladles past and, gulping, unzipped the tent once more with Jack anxiously looking over her shoulder.
But Big Sally was no longer there. Instead she had walked some ways away, stopping momentarily to look back at them.
"Please don't tell me that bear wants us to follow it."
"Don't be ridiculous, Jack. There's no way she..." Her words faded as the grizzly let out a low grumble while staring her dead in the eye. Then she turned and walked toward, she was almost positive, the exact way in which they'd first come.
"Oh my god. The bear wants us to follow it," she said under her breath.
"But that – but that'd be suicide, right? We're not actually going to...we couldn't possibly..."
Jack and Janet turned to look at one another, exchanging glances of uncertainty coupled with an almost telepathic agreement that they quite literally had nothing left to lose. In defiance they turned back toward the bear with a synchronous motion. There was no time to pack their things. Jack, in a moment of bravery he didn't know he'd had in him given the circumstances, gulped and reached out for Janet's hand. As soon as it was wrapped tightly in his, he led her toward Old Sally, making sure to keep a comfortable distance.
Old Sally didn't look back after that, but they knew to keep following her as they stumbled through the thickets and heaps of mud and boulders. Soon the surrounding woods gradually turned to more open land. The rock formations Jack had noticed before they'd veered off the path soon became visible and he was unable to constrain himself from shrieking with relief.
"A rock!" he exclaimed pulling away from Janet and kissing one nearly as tall as he was. "Civilization! Janet, we made it!"
Janet couldn't help but smile as she shook her head, all while Jack kept touching and pointing out all of the things that indicated they were no longer lost and in danger.
"A signpost, Janet! A signpost!"
He was still clinging to the ropes of a bridge that ran over a small brook when they heard the low grumble of the large bear once more, indicating that they hadn't quite yet reached their destination. They looked at each other and shrugged. The bear seemed to be leading them right back to their cabin, so there was no reason not to continue following her (aside from the small fact that she could murder them with one swipe of her gigantic paw if she so chose).
They eventually came to the edge of the trail, where Old Sally stopped abruptly as if she were bound to and unable to cross the threshold between the trail and the rest of the park. It didn't matter – at this point Jack and Janet knew exactly where they were. They stood there for a moment, silently contemplating how one might thank a bear, when they saw a familiar shape with his ear to the ground as if listening for something. Waiting.
Mick jumped up in one fell swoop. The smile on his face indicated that he'd been expecting them. "There you are!" he exclaimed, with absolutely no measure of concern in his voice whatsoever. "Took you long enough."
Jack and Janet glanced at each other once again, the expressions on their faces heavy with bewilderment. "Took us long enough?" Janet was the first to speak.
"Sure. But I knew she'd find you eventually," he lightly tapped Jack on the shoulder before ruffling the forehead of Old Sally, who demurred in response. Jack opened his mouth to speak, but he was so stunned that nothing came out. "The question is – did you find yourselves?"
Janet ignored his last seemingly nonsensical question. "I'm sorry, let me get this straight. You...you waited for a bear to find us instead of looking yourself?" She paused for a moment when Mick only responded with a wide grin. "Mick, where are Phillip and Vicky? Why aren't they out here looking for us?"
Jack stiffened at her last question and turned toward Mick as he awaited his answer. The man turned away from the bear, who slowly began making her way back into the dense forest. He paused for a moment in deep contemplation before he spoke. "The thing about nature," he began slowly, "is that it doesn't care about the petty foils of man. It takes its course, one way or another, whether you want it to or not."
Mick smiled and gazed up toward the sky as a loon flew overhead and the other two followed his gaze. By the time they looked back down again, both Mick and the bear were gone.
"What the hell?" Jack mouthed, turning around multiple times in an attempt to spot the man who seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Janet looked over her own shoulder and shrugged with a mirroring expression of befuddlement on her face. Neither of them could process what had just happened, but they were so relieved to be safe and not far from their cabin that they did their best to brush the moment off before sprinting the remaining way back.
They stopped just within sight of the cabin and relief poured through and flowed out of them in bursts of laughter. Caught up in the moment, Jack gently grabbed Janet. He lifted her up and spun her around, creating a slight wave of dizziness in the both of them. He steadied himself with his hands firmly supported by her waist, and her arms clung around his shoulders as she found her footing. The laughter soon faded, and they were left gazing at one another as the sensation of their hands on each other's bodies took full effect. Their eyes were both full of questioning and longing. Janet gulped – the intensity of his eyes as they looked into hers was doing nothing to quell the feeling that world was still spinning around her. She opened her mouth slightly but was interrupted by the sound of a soft giggle coming from the cabin. They pried their gaze away from one other to turn toward the source of the sound.
Janet's arms fell from Jack's shoulders and she led the way to the door of the cabin, turning it slowly, a hard, sinking feeling in her chest suddenly weighing her down. The laughter continued, this time accompanied by a man's voice. She knew that voice.
She turned, then, back toward Jack and the concern on his face matched hers. In that moment they both knew. Rage boiled within her and Jack grabbed her arm to steady her as her fuse burned faster and grew shorter. She unknotted her fist and placed it on the knob of the bedroom door, turned it, and busted it open with her other hand.
"Phillip Dawson," she bellowed.
"Janet!" Phillip cried, clamoring for the sheet covers alongside Vicky, who'd let out a shrill shriek.
"Jack, I – " Vicky began, but he was not looking at her. His icy glare was firmly fixed on Phillip as he began to walk swiftly toward the man, who had thrown on his robe and now stood with his hands up, somehow finding the nerve to beckon for peace.
Janet was the one to stop Jack, placing her hand on his arm as he raised it in a fist. "Jack, no."
"No?"
"If anyone is going to kill him," she began, then turned toward Phillip with daggers in her eyes. "Then it should be me."
"No! No, please. Nobody is going to be murdering anyone," Vicky pleaded. She had also managed to throw on her robe and proceeded to walk around the bed toward the others. She sighed remorsefully, but more at the sudden shock of being caught in the act than anything else. "I know you're angry, but that's not really fair. How can either of you feel that you have the right to be angry with us after everything that's been going on between the two of you?"
Jack and Janet looked from Vicky to one another and exchanged glances.
"Vicky, now is really not the time to not to be making any sense," Jack said through his teeth.
"Come on, Jack," Phillip tried to speak like they were pals. "You can't pretend you don't know what she's talking about." He looked at Janet, "And neither can you, for that matter."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Janet growled.
Vicky sighed. "Look, we know, okay?"
"Know what?" Jack and Janet spoke at the same time.
"About the two of you. The way you've been acting this entire trip. And then last night you – you run off together, and we're supposed to think nothing of it?" Phillip said.
Jack and Janet both exhaled as they slowly began to realize what was actually going on, that the scheme they had concocted and spent their entire trip executing had actually worked after all – perhaps a little too well. So well, in fact, that Phillip and Vicky had deemed it fit to play games of their own.
Janet thought she was going to be sick.
"So, what, you slept together to get back at us?" Jack shrieked.
"Not to get back at you." Vicky exhaled at looked down, then looked back up at Jack. "Look, with you two spending so much time together during this trip, Phillip and I really got to know each other and..."
"And?" Jack barked.
But before she could reply any further, Janet had gruffly turned and walked past Jack out of the room. He turned to go after her, but Phillip stopped him. "Jack, what's really going on here?"
Jack still couldn't bring himself to look at the man without killing him, so he spoke with his eyes focused anywhere else. "There was no affair. We staged it. We made it all up to make you both jealous. We – " he cut himself off now as he realized how ridiculous it all sounded. "We thought that if you got jealous, that it'd make you both respect us more and stop taking us for granted." He ran his hand over his face in exasperation. It all seemed so nonsensical now.
Phillip and Vicky's eyes went wide as the truth set in and they realized their fatal error.
"That's...but that's...how could we have possibly known?" Phillip stuttered, his obliviousness preventing him from truly understanding the full nature of his wife's penchant for cunning schemes and the way in which she used them to tackle her problems instead of actually, well, tackling them. After all, only one other person had shared in that world for nearly eight years, swept up alongside her with his own foolish tendencies. Stunned, Phillip went to make his way out the door before Jack stopped him, and his hand squeezed the other man's arm in a death grip. He stared him in the eyes for an uncomfortably long period of time before lamenting and letting him go. He wasn't worth it.
When Phillip had left the room, Jack turned toward Vicky.
"Jack..."
"I'm not interested in anything you have to say, Vicky." He shook his head and an angry snicker escaped his mouth in response to the ridiculousness of it all. "We both know it's over between us, but Vicky that's...that's another woman's husband."
"Jack, I'm sorry..."
"I'm not the one you need to tell that to."
He glanced at her and sighed, unsure of what would happen or what to do next, then left her alone in the room.