Be Not Far from Me(31)

There’s a chance whoever’s setup this is ended up the same—or worse off. Or maybe they sampled too much of their own product and their return is permanently delayed, the woods filling in all the signs of their passage. Or maybe I’ve been enjoying the hospitality of the same person who smashed in Chuck’s face and won’t take too kindly to me drinking all their whiskey.

I just don’t know.

I pocket three oxys—enough to take the edge off if I need it in the coming days, but not to the point of making me funny in the head. The whiskey is gone, so I rinse out the bottle and thread yarn through the handle, tying it through a belt loop on my jeans. I’m still lame enough to need the walking stick and can’t carry the blanket easily, so I tie the edges around my neck, a moldy cape. I tuck the slice of flint into my waistband and get my bad foot back into the sling.

I put what’s left of the possum on the meth lab counter to rot.

Because fuck them.





Day Eight




Today I’m going to walk until I see something left behind by another human being.

I can’t set a distance goal because each step takes as much energy as a mile would on a normal day. My body is taking a beating that makes me feel like I’m covering more distance than I am, but when I take an oxy for the pain, everything gets fuzzy. Not just the pain, but also time and any sense of the distance that I’ve covered.

So instead I say I’m going to move until I find evidence of someone else, something to tell me that I’m close enough to civilization that a person has passed through. Even if it’s litter tossed aside from whoever is operating out of that camper, at least I’ll know I’m following in their footsteps, and those will lead me out of the woods.

Unnatural things always turned my gut a bit, like the plastic wrappers I’d find alongside the trail or a ball of fishing line left behind in a tangle that couldn’t be undone. But I’d give my good foot to see something that means another person was out here not too long ago, or a flash of neon from a power walker that would lead me to the trail.

Right now, I’m the foreign object, the trespasser, everything from the elastic in my bra to the Baggies hanging from my belt loops declaring me unnatural. My mind has been wandering, maybe because my legs aren’t doing a great job of it themselves. The meat is helping, but I’m not in fighting shape, and my foot feels like I stuck it in a blender, then an oven.

I stop again, take my foot out of the sling, and slide the sandwich bag off to inspect it. It’s still puffed up like a cat taking on a pack of dogs, but the redness is gone. I pull open a bag and eat some more possum, well aware that what I’ve got will go bad in a few days. I eat everything in that pouch and wash it down with whiskey-tinged water.

I’m two shuffling steps away from the big beech I was leaning on when I turn to check that I didn’t leave anything behind, because damn if I’m going to be the only person out here and a litterer. And there, right above where I’d been sitting, is the proof I’d been looking for that another human being passed this way, etched into the bark of the tree.

DAVEY BEET WAS HERE

I saw Davey Beet before he went missing.

We ran into each other at the gas station. He was going out as I was coming in and held the door for me, then did a double take when he recognized me. I’d been too terrified to say a word, but when I heard a tentative “Ass-kicker?” I turned around quicker than a weathervane in a storm.

I was fifteen then, had just gotten my permit and took any excuse to drive, like running into the gas station for a gallon of milk even though there was at least two inches left in the one we had. Davey was twenty, three months from disappearing, and working for a landscaping company. He was tan and fit, hair a little long and curling from underneath his baseball hat.

I could tell he didn’t quite know what to think of me, or where to look. My body had filled out that summer, and Meredith had taught me what to wear to show it off. It wasn’t so bad that Dad wouldn’t let me leave the house, but my cleavage cast a shadow, and I had legs up to my shoulder blades. I hadn’t minded the attention I was getting, but I hadn’t liked it until that moment.

“Hey, Davey,” I said, leaving behind the blast of air-conditioning from the gas station and letting the door swing shut behind me. “What’ve you been up to?”

Not much, it turned out, but all of it was still fascinating because it happened to Davey Beet, and because it was him standing there telling me about it like maybe he was trying to impress me, just a little bit.

“So what’s up with you?” he asked, and I told him about getting my permit, kind of leaning hard on the fact that I could go anywhere I wanted now and didn’t have a curfew. Technically I was supposed to have an adult in the car with me, but I didn’t know too many of those, and Dad was pulling double shifts.

Davey kept nodding, and I don’t think I’m flattering myself to say that there was a pause when I think maybe he was going to ask me for my number or see if I wanted to hang out sometime. I was holding my breath, heat coming back up off the asphalt and baking me, mouth drier than it’s ever been, even now.

Maybe Davey did the math in that moment, remembered I was only fifteen. Davey Beet was being a good guy when he let that moment pass, and damn if I didn’t wish he would’ve gone ahead and been questionable, just that one time.