I reach the first spruce and pause there and listen again. I keep going, arms out front as I walk, changing course whenever my fingertips brush against bark or the sharp point of a branch.
Swallowing hurts. I try not to think about it, that someone tried to kill me, but I can’t help it. I walk and cry, sputtering into my hands because I don’t want to make a sound in case he’s still here, and, oh God, trying not to cry, trying to hold it in hurts my throat and I wonder if there are broken bones in there or if he’s fractured my windpipe because this aching doesn’t feel normal and I think to myself this is trauma, I am traumatized, I am split in two—the before and the after.
I drop to the ground. I try to get up but my feeble legs give way.
I look at the forest. The blackness is impenetrable. All around me, pines creak. Things scamper in the undergrowth. The distant moan of a wolf.
I back up against a tree and stay there, listening.
Something comes near. The crack of timber. Slow, careful steps. I cannot breathe.
I reach out and feel the ground beside me. A rock.
I take a shallow breath and taste iron on my lips. A pinecone comes loose and drops into the leaves. Then nothing. I press myself close into the bony roots of the evergreen and remain there with the rock in my hand. My human scent engulfs me. I wait and listen in the long, dark night.
18
Sleep does not come. The night inches by. Finally, light begins to seep through the treetops. With it, patches of brilliant blue. The forest stirs in ways different than before. Cicadas rasp. Birds flit overhead. A bunch of sagging oxeye daisies stiffen in the sun.
I look around. I am in thick, steep woods. Even so, I feel exposed. Is he here? Hidden where I can’t see him?
He’s gone, I tell myself. I have to believe that or I will be paralyzed with fear.
I spit out some dirty drool and glance down at my filthy skin, the black bruises around my wrists and ankles, my bare feet. I’m trembling from cold and shock. Move, I think.
I stand up and face the woods.
“Okay, I got this.”
But I remain anchored to the spot and before I know it I’m sobbing again. Last night someone tried to kill me. Last night I nearly died. I wring my hands and cry in breathless waves. I am a weak, bewildered child. I bang my head with my fists. Cut it out. Don’t go crazy. You can’t afford to go crazy. Go crazy and you’re as good as dead.
I take a deep breath. Focus. Select a direction. Walk. That’s it.
I begin to calm down. Yes, I can do that. I wipe my face and look at the forest. All I need is the road he took to get in here. It can’t be far—I didn’t cover that much ground last night.
I choose right and move forward into the wilderness, which is like a fairground illusion that just keeps going. Pines, and spruce, and other trees that could be cedar and oak molt gold and copper leaves. Fall has come early. Soon the nights will be cold.
I tell myself that doesn’t matter because a day or two at the most and this nightmare will be over. I will be out of here, clasping a hot drink, foil blanket around my shoulders, telling the police everything I know. The ten things. Kermit the Frog. I will tell them about that and the army blanket and the mint Capri and the brass-rimmed aviators. And him. Rex. His face. It’s right here. I’ll never forget it. His kid’s too, the boy in that dog-eared photograph standing next to a black BMX in his white sports socks. I hope he won’t grow up to be like his father. I hope he won’t hate me for sending his daddy to prison because that’s exactly what I intend to do. It hits me then—I never got the license plate. How could I be so stupid? I search my befuddled brain. Maybe an O, K, 1, and a 7, but that’s it.
I walk all morning long, my bare feet cringing against the hard earth ground braided with roots and rock. I ignore the pain and trudge through the forest, searching for any sign of the road. But there are just trees and more trees.
The poles of spruce sway and creak high above my head and I lick my roughened lips and think of the water I don’t have but desperately need. I wonder how long a person can live without it, and whether I will just keep on shrinking until my body dries up like an onion skin left out in the sun. This makes me think of my mother, the sun worshipper, who would coat herself in baby oil until her flesh was as glossy as a Danish, then starfish on the concrete out in back of our tiny apartment for hours on end. My mother and those ugly watercolors she used to make and the paint-spattered Monet T-shirt she wore for a nightgown. Then I think of my father and how all of us waited night after night for him to come back.
Morning dissolves into midday then afternoon and there’s no hint of the road or the grave. I rest on a boulder and listen to the wind whistle through the trees. It all looks the same and I can’t be sure which way I’ve come. I chide myself for not having some sort of system. Marking trees as I went. Leaving a trail.
I wipe the debris from the soles of my feet, get up, and walk on.
I reach a slope with a series of switchbacks, pathways long overgrown, most likely belonging to an old packhorse trail. I stop and do a 360. There was none of this last night when I ran from my grave, I would have remembered.
But the switchbacks could lead to a hill allowing a better vantage point so I carry on, skirting them as best I can to avoid the brambles and what could be poison ivy. Back and forth I go, zigzagging upward, but the pathways only lead me into deeper, thicker woods.
I step in mud, then a puddle. I kneel down and scoop the brackish water into my mouth and wash my face. Sitting back on my heels, I look at the tiny pool. Branching out from the puddle is a trickle, just a ribbon really, and I wonder whether I should follow it. It could lead to a tributary then maybe a river or lake, and hikers or campers.
I continue on and track the water and it soon grows into a creek large enough to step into and soothe my feet. Every so often, I stop to ladle some into my mouth, and tell myself I mustn’t forget to do this—I can live without food for a while but not without water.
The ground becomes impassible, overrun with thistles, goosegrass, and gorse, and I’m forced to circle back down and leave the creek behind in the hope I can rejoin it on the other side. I weave through a swatch of trees, over some rocky hillocks, and hear the trickle again. I follow the sound until I see the glistening crack. But the creek is no more than a dribble now, and when I walk ten more yards, it dries up to nothing.
Fatigue overwhelms me and I lower myself onto a fallen log.
I have lost all sense of time. I can’t tell if light is fading or if the dimness is just because I am so low in the valley. For all I know, evening could be about to drop.
I pull a splinter from my left foot and watch a kernel of blood appear. I think of the red feather lure. Then him. I think about how stupid I am. For all of it. Believing I could do the trek in the first place, for lifting that God damn tire into that trunk, for being naive and trusting and just plain dumb.
I haul myself up and walk on. The light is deserting me, and I try not to think about how I will have to spend another night in the growing cold, without food, clean water, proper clothes, and with animals I cannot see. My body cries out for rest, especially the soles of my feet, which are being pummeled by the stony terrain. But there’s no choice. I have to keep going.
I ascend the slope, breaking a sweat, my arms two dead weights by my side. I pray the terrain will level out soon but it only gets steeper. Breathless, I wipe perspiration from my eyes and look over my shoulder. Dense woods are way behind me and I’m surprised to see how far up I’ve climbed. I face front and carry on until I’m stopped by a large cluster of rocks. This could be good, I think. Beyond the rocks there may be a summit.