Be Not Far from Me(15)

I don’t want to ever be that to anybody or anything, so I nearly bite through my tongue to keep quiet as I get up. My foot’s slipped out of the sling, so my leg straightens out, the knee going back to a place it hasn’t been all day.

It hurts.

That hurts, and my foot hurts, and I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but for now I’ve got one goal and that’s water. I make it down to the stream, stumbling in and landing on all fours. It’s so cold it takes my breath, the numbness working up past my wrists before I’m able to scramble onto a rock. I flex my fingers, forcing the blood to flow back through their deadened tips when I get smart and stick my foot in the water.

There’s the shock of the pain first, water flowing into my foot and touching places that have never seen light. Dad always says if there’s a way in, water will find it, something I’d usually hear when there was yet another leak in our roof, adding a new stain to our ceiling. I don’t think he quite had the inside of his daughter’s foot in mind when he said it, but damn, it’s true.

Crushed nerves are drowned in the cold, screaming at the exposure then slowly deadening. I lean forward once it’s fully numb, willing the same feeling into my thoughts as I peel back the bloodied sleeve to take a look.

My bones are a glossy white, like teeth poking through the gummy meat that surrounds them. I can’t even call it a wound, really. It’s a mashed mess of nerves and tendon and muscle. I’ve dressed enough deer in my life to know what’s what in there, and I can’t even begin to sort it out.

But under the moving water it’s got a kind of beauty to it, something I can appreciate now that the pain is lessened. The water creates the illusion of movement, and I can almost imagine my toes are twitching, which means some things are still intact in there.

I pull my foot out of the current, the sun-warmed heat of the rock pleasant against the naked arch. Carefully, I slip the T-shirt bandage off my foot and pry around to see if I can get a sense of the damage. I press a little here, more firmly there, wondering if I’ll be able to tell the difference if a bone is broken or not.

I’m down near the base of my two smallest toes when the slightest pressure from my fingers undoes all the good the cold did me. I can’t even cry out, it hurts so bad, taking the wind right out of me just like Duke’s dad does to his whole family. I make a weak gasp and clutch the side of the rock to keep from going on over into the drink and end up drowned like some drunk dipshit.

I stick my mangled bits back into the creek, let some of the pain subside before I look again. I don’t fuck around, going right for the same spot that near killed me. I take a deep breath before I press down and am not surprised to see a stream of pus leak out from under what’s left of the skin.

Something white coming out of you is only good if you’re a boy.

I’ve got an infection.

There’s stuff I can eat out here; it’s a question of if I’ve got the nerve to do it.

Granted, I’ve had some things in my gut that maybe shouldn’t have been there: a pot roast gone a day too long, the cockroach Meredith bet me five bucks I wouldn’t eat back in sixth grade. She did pay up. I can say a lot about that girl, but she’s honest.

I’ve never understood picky eaters, mostly because I’ve always just been happy to have something to eat. Growing up hungry has taught me a lot, and one of those lessons was not to question what’s put in front of you. I remember one time Mom had something on the table I couldn’t quite put a name to. I came in from the creek bed, mudded up to the knees, plopped down to a plate of warm food, and said, “I’m not eating that.”

Dad had set down his knife and fork real quiet and said, “Then you’re not hungry enough.”

I get it now.

I get it because I just ate a worm.

It happened toward the evening, when I came across another bit of running water. I had to wash my underwear and jeans because I’m still bleeding, so I thought if I’ve got all that out to the breeze I might as well take my bra off too. Part of me thought maybe if I did, my shit-all luck would stay true to form and a group of hikers would show up. Or maybe a rescue chopper and a news crew.

Nobody came.

I stuck my foot in the water, mostly because I don’t know what else to do about it, and leaned back against the bank, knocking loose a rock. It rolled down next to my hand, a big chunk of wet dirt stuck to the side, a marooned worm squirming like all get-out.

His world had shrunk so suddenly, I thought. A moment ago he could have gone anywhere, tunneling across this state and into the next. Now he’s turning this way and that, wondering why there’s nowhere to go and nothing but air to touch and a little bit of mud holding him in place. And then that was gone too, because I crumbled it away and popped him in my mouth before I could think too hard about it.

It moved in there, more curious than panicked, touching the side of my cheek. I grabbed a handful of water and threw everything back, like a child learning to swallow a pill for the first time. Then another. And another. Creek water flowed down my chin until I felt my stomach opening up, taking in what I’d just offered, way worse than anything Mom ever put in front of me.

It hurts.

I haven’t had anything solid in my gut in two days. Every time I found water I drank until I could hear it sloshing in my belly, so I’m not exactly empty. But this is different. This is my body waking back up again, realizing it has a job, and that something needs to be digested.