Be Not Far from Me(21)
But I wanted that hat, and I got it.
And I wanted it because it’s Davey Beet’s.
No one ever found him.
They sent in search parties and sniffer dogs, family and friends, ex-girlfriends and enemies trying to make better what had gone wrong. I wanted to go, but Dad wouldn’t let me, too aware of my confidence and my connection to the missing. Dad was afraid I’d go into the woods after Davey Beet, his girl hero come to save the day but gets lost in the woods and ends her own life. Davey was so gone it was like he never was, even if I could still look at his picture in the camp mailing I kept every spring when it showed up in the mailbox.
Rumors started, some people saying he went in there with no intention of ever coming out, others saying that no way the woods got the better of Davey Beet, that he’d come home any day now with a great story and a better smile.
I was a fervent believer in the latter.
I blew up at Stephanie’s cousin over the campfire for saying a bear got Davey, because while that was something that could have happened, it’s an option that leaves no room for doubt. In my mind, Davey Beet is alive and well, using all he’s got to walk these woods and make a way for himself, maybe trying to find his way home, maybe not. To me, whatever Davey decided to do was the right call, and I bet the bears ran away from him.
It got to be an issue between me and Duke, the way I held Davey up in my mind. One time when we were hiking we hit a spur neither one of us knew too well. There was a lonely trail sign stuck into the ground, showing the length of it but not clarifying the distance. I took one glance and told him no way we could do that spur and get back before dark, and neither one of us had flashlights.
Duke said it was fine; the spur didn’t seem that long to him. Three hours later we were hustling it, flashing our phones on when we needed them to spot the blazes, trying to conserve batteries. We broke out onto the trailhead past midnight, thirsty, exhausted, covered in bug bites, leg muscles flickering from the pace. We’d had to pick it up after dark fell, and more than once we heard things larger than us moving off-trail. I’d kept my mouth shut the whole time, knowing that arguing about whose fault it was wasn’t going to get us home any faster.
But my silence irritated Duke just as much as if I’d said anything, and when we climbed into his old truck, I didn’t get an apology for what could have been a tense night in the woods. Instead I got his jealousy, all stopped up and simmering from every word I’d ever said about Davey that he let pass by.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Duke had said, knuckles white on the steering wheel as he drove me home. “You’re thinking if you were hiking with Davey Beet he would’ve known better than to take that spur.”
My own anger jumped up at that, for one thing because I hadn’t said a goddamn sideways word to Duke even though he could’ve gotten us killed, and another because I didn’t like the way he said Davey Beet’s name, like it tasted bad.
So I hit back, hard.
“If I’d been hiking with Davey Beet, I wouldn’t’ve minded spending the night in the woods.”
It was a low blow, and it hit him right where it was meant to. Duke didn’t talk to me for a few days, but we picked up like it had never happened when he came to my door with fishing poles and a can of worms. For my part, I did try not to mention Davey quite as much, even when Duke was casting wrong and I knew Davey could’ve done it better.
But Davey Beet was never far from my mind, now or in the time when he first went missing.
I sat in Dad’s recliner (the foot permanently flipped up because it got stuck that way) watching the news every night for a week. Davey was the lead story, then a follow-up, then a late mention. Soon he was dropped entirely, because there was nothing to say anymore. Hope had faded, just like the pattern in the knit cap I’m holding now.
He kept it clipped to the side of his pack even in the summer, because he said he never knew if he was going to stay out all night, and it could get chilly in the woods after dark no matter what the season was. His mom had made it for him, carefully counting stitches as she wove tan yarn into brown, knitting antlers into her son’s hat. Davey told me it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him, even if she did only think of her son as an eight-point.
I put it on my head now, though I’m sweating.
I’m wearing the only thing anyone has seen of Davey Beet in two years.
People have been using flint since forever to start fires and make tools, to kill animals and each other. I’m not aiming to kill anything—including myself—and while having some tools would be nice, I’m not exactly fixing to stay around long enough to build a house. What I need is a good edge on something with enough weight behind it to go clear through my foot.
I’m half hoping to find it, half hoping not to.
It’s taken the better part of the day, and I’ve sweated right through Davey Beet’s hat, but I’m not taking it off because I know another tree will steal it. I follow the sound of running water when I notice the shadows getting longer, take a few deep drinks and check my leg again. My scar is a white blaze surrounded by red, the skin around it puffed and itching.
“Shit,” I say, and stick my whole leg into the water to cool it off while I think.
Mostly, I’m thinking about running.
It’s a dumb thing to worry about when I can’t even walk, but running became an obsession after that first practice, when I had to show Coach that I could do it, and then the next, when I had to show him I could do better. It’s a sport that we could afford—no equipment needed except a good pair of shoes. Even that could sometimes push Dad’s worry lines a little deeper, but after I broke the state record in cross-country Coach started buying shoes for me out of the athletic fund.