"Guess I just wanted to apologize for letting the girl hit you," said MacGyver easily. "And sorta hoped to catch a ride with you folks."
"A ride?" asked Marley, perplexed.
"We don't have time for this," growled Frank.
"You're crating them up for what, a chopper coming in?" guessed MacGyver.
"Not your business," said Frank testily.
"Nope, you're right, it's not," agreed MacGyver in a friendly tone.
"What are you, a Ranger?" asked Marley over his shoulder as he loaded crates.
"Do I look like a Ranger?" asked Mac reasonably.
"A blind Ranger?" Frank sneered. "And no uniform," he added.
"Well, how'd he get away earlier?" asked Marley, coming back for more guns.
"Maybe you're not really blind," concluded Frank, shining his flashlight on Mac's face. Painful as the beam of light felt in the darkness of the cave, he lifted his scarred eyes to stare steadily into its beam.
"He sure as hell looks blind," Frank answered himself. Mac continued sitting calmly.
"Why are you up here?" Marley asked again.
"Thought maybe you guys could give me a ride out of here," said Mac again. "On your chopper?"
Frank snorted. "Won't even be room for us on that thing," he said bitterly.
"Huh. You must be getting paid pretty good then, to be willing to hike all over the place out here," Mac commented.
"Not as good as we could be," said Marley under his breath, but Frank cut him off.
"Shut up and help me," he said, dragging another crate closer."
"Maybe I can be of some service," offered MacGyver casually.
"What can you do, Blind Man," said Marley dismissively. "You certainly aren't helping load these damn crates, are you?"
"I'd probably slow you down," admitted MacGyver ruefully. "Nah, I'm talking about help in other ways. Talking. Negotiations."
"Negotiations for what?" asked Frank skeptically.
"Better pay, maybe. Leniency, possibly," said Mac easily.
"Leniency?" said Marley nervously. "How does he know? He's a plant! He's here to watch us!" Marley's voice rose in pitch with every word, paranoia cracking his voice.
"A blind guy?" replied Frank with even more skepticism. "That doesn't sound like Fist's style. He doesn't have a sense of humor."
"Were you sent by Fist to watch us?" asked Marley.
"Now do you think I'd tell you if I was?" Mac asked.
In the distance they could hear the faint hum of helicopter blades.
"Shit," said Frank. "We got to get these boxes up the hill."
"Show me what to do and I'll help," offered Mac.
"Carry one end of this one," said Frank in a rush as he turned from nailing on a lid.
"Marley is it?" asked Mac. "You'd better go first." He stood stiffly to his feet, raising a hand above his head to find the rocky ceiling. He used it to feel his way forward toward the spot where Frank had been hammering. When his foot found the edge of the long wooden crate, he bent to pick up the end. The crate tilted and leveled as Marley picked up the other end, and when there was a tug, he followed.
They made their way down off the lip of the cave opening and then right around the side of the cave onto a path that snaked its way along the steep face of the hill toward the north.
The chopper was coming closer now, it's rotors beating vibrations into the air.
The path leveled out and Mac could feel that the trees also thinned. "Here," said Marley, setting his end of the heavy wooden crate down slowly. Mac let his end rest gently on the ground as well.
"Come on," said Marley, grabbing Mac's arm to shove him back toward the cave. "Let's get another one."
"You go first," replied Mac and put a hand on Marley's shoulder. The man was shorter than Mac, wiry and wearing a flannel shirt.
"How is a chopper going to fit all this?" asked Mac as they hurried along the steep trail.
"Huh?" asked Marley in confusion, and Mac guessed the answer was probably obvious if he could see. "Oh yeah, it's, uh, one of them big logging 'copters."
Mac didn't have time to reply because they had reached the lip of the cave again, and his attention was kept busy by finding his hold on the next crate. As he did, he found that his hands were beginning to get torn up from the rough wood and he wished he had some work gloves. Pragmatically, he shoved the thought aside and concentrated on following the vague guidance the crate provided getting out of the cave and back on the path. Marley was more intent on hurrying than on helping Mac, and he suspected that Marley kept forgetting he couldn't see, or maybe thought he could see more than he could. He kept his knees bent, stepping lightly so that when he stepped off the side of a loose rock or his toes found a tree root, he wouldn't plummet down the steep hill to his left.
Marley's breath came a bit more labored as well, and Mac realized he wasn't the only one struggling. They set the second crate down in the clearing as the chopper was settling in to land. Gusts of wind whipped against their faces and shirts, and spun Mac's hair in swirls.
Marley yelled something over the noise of the rotors and when Mac shook his head, he pulled him roughly toward the path. Apparently, niceties like greeting the incoming crew weren't important.
Mac turned and grasped the shoulder of the smaller man and they hurried down the path again, nearly at a run. Mac tripped on a half-buried rock and nearly lost his balance, grabbing Marley's shoulder tightly to regain his equilibrium. He must have clutched harder than he meant to, because Marley let out a curse, but he did brace himself for a moment to hold Mac steady until he was back on his feet.
As they approached the cave, Frank barked, "me an… ?"
"MacGyver," he supplied.
"Me an' MacGyver gonna take up the last two. "Marley, you get the tarp and the tools. I don't want to have to pack them out."
"So there isn't room to ride?" asked Mac, dismayed. Frank was too busy muscling the last two crates on top of one another to answer.
"Take this end," he grunted. Mac bent and hefted the double load. Although Frank was stronger than Marley had been, he still obviously strained under the weight. Mac did too; after a few minutes his arms screamed a silent protest and his fingers burned.
When the got to the open clearing on the top of the mountain, Mac noticed a brightening of the night sky that signaled the presence of the moon. It was higher in the sky now and seemed to give plenty of light to the men who were loading crates into the quiet chopper, their voices low. Hands lifted off the top crate from Mac's load without question. Gratefully, he set the fourth box on the ground and straightened his back. In short order it too was whisked away. Marley came up with the tarps and a tool box, which he set on the ground with a clank.
Without speaking to the men from the chopper, Frank and Marley turned to leave. Marley hit Mac's forearm on the way by, which he took to mean he was to follow them. He reached for a shoulder but missed, grabbing only empty air. Marley took Mac's hand, placing on his shoulder himself, with a quick, impatient gesture. Evidently some rule had been made that they were to part company with the chopper quickly.
As the three men started back down the path, Mac heard the revving of engines behind him and the echoing Thwack-thwack as two giant rotors began their crescendo. Soon the trees around them creaked and swayed from the wind of their downdraft and the beast of a machine rose slowly into the air.
By this time, they had reached the cave again. Climbing inside, Frank said, "We'll finish the night here, then out tomorrow."
Marley joined him on the ledge and began snapping twigs off of larger branches that comprised a leftover pile of firewood stacked against one wall.
Mac edged toward the wall to join him and help. His hands quickly found the stacked branches and he began breaking off the smaller branches into handfuls of kindling.
Marley put his handful into Mac's hand and abruptly exited the cave, apparently to find himself a tree to piss on.
Once he had a good handful of small sticks, Mac turned and, still in a squat, swept his right foot around in an arc until he found the dead remains of the previous fire.
"You know, you're really something," said Frank, who had been watching him, Mac guessed.
"How so?" asked MacGyver, setting his sticks down on his left and lightly examining with his fingertips the half-burned charcoal logs that remained from the previous fire.
"Watching you. It's uncanny. I sure couldn't build a fire if I was…" Frank trailed his words off, unsure of how to finish.
Mac didn't bother to help him get the word "blind" said. "You could if you had to," he said shortly, pulling his kit of firestarter out of one of his side pockets. He deftly opened the small waterproof box and removed one of the wax-soaked cotton ball pieces that he always prepared and took into the wilderness with him. Then with his fingertips, he fluffed the cotton until it had plenty of "sticky-outs" as he called them in his mind. He set the cotton next to one of the leftover charcoal logs on the leeward side so the evening breeze that blew in the cave mouth wouldn't give him trouble.
He closed the plastic box, removed the steel striking pin and ran it down the flint striker on the side of the box. He heard it spark but holding his fingers above the cotton he felt no heat. He struck the flint again. The third time the crack of the spark sounded louder and he felt a sudden tiny warmth on the backs of his knuckles. He shoved the fire kit into his pocket and reached for his pile of kindling. As the waxy cotton burned quickly, he began leaning the smallest of the twigs against the log, trying to center them directly above the fragile flame in the cotton. He held a palm over the infant flame, testing its warmth. Like a candle flame, it warmed the underside of his fingers and he heard a few small crackles. He continued building the minuscule lean-to of sticks over the flame, careful not to bump the ones he had already placed and crush the growing flame.
He reached for more sticks, looking for larger ones now, the width of his fingers. He set these in place above the smaller ones, still building a lean-to against the log.
The fire, which had begun to crackle in earnest, now quieted and the heat on his knuckles as he placed the sticks was lessening. The cotton had burned out but the twigs hadn't caught enough heat to hold the flame.
He bent close to the sticks, blowing steadily and gently. Careful to touch only the cool ends of each stick, he gently prodded them closer to one another so that the tenuous warmth would be trapped in the space between and beneath them. He blew again. And then again. Each time he could see a faint orange glow in the darkness and feel the warmth expand its reach ever so slightly.
On the fifth lungful of air, suddenly the glow turned brighter and yellow, and the crackling sound resumed. Mac sat back on his heels, feeling satisfaction. He had fire.
He added more and longer sticks until the flames were well established, and then he was able to set one of the larger logs cross-ways atop the one he had used in the beginning.
Marley reentered the cave and squatted on his heels next to Mac.
"You build that?" He asked with admiration in his voice. "Sure you're blind?"
"Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure," replied Mac dryly.
"How'd it happen?" Marley asked.
"Accident," replied Mac laconically, adding to himself, if a bomb could be called an accident.
"Were you a kid?" persisted Marley.
"Nope. Not even two years ago," answered Mac.
"Damn," said Frank, and Mac couldn't tell if he meant it for sympathy or admiration.
Mac hoped to shift the conversation to the information he wanted, but he knew he'd need to tread extremely carefully. Although they seemed to have forgotten that it was he who had filled the chambers of their guns with sand, and they had accepted him as one of themselves after he helped carry the crates to the chopper, he knew it would take little to remind them that only the previous night he had been their prisoner. He sat calmly on his heels, rocked forward onto his toes, and idly fed medium-sized sticks to his flickering fire, listening to the crackle as the licking flames accepted them. Despite the talk of blindness, he was ironically enjoying the fact that he could see the fire fairly well. It was the only light in the dark cave and he was quite close. He enjoyed watching the color and movement, and noticing how the tops of the flames would hypnotically break off into the air and dissolve into sparks.
Every so often, when he could suddenly see something familiar like this, it was as if something starving inside of him was given a bite of food. There was a moment of pure, visceral pleasure, heightened because of its rarity.