Be Not Far from Me(36)

I get soaked just crawling out from under the pine, cold drops leaving chilly rivulets on my skin. I tie the blanket at my neck, but I can’t do much to keep it closed while I’m walking. It billows out around me, what’s left of my shirt barely hanging past my bra. My jeans are wet up to my knees in under a minute, Davey’s hat a soggy mess.

I put my sling on, tucking my bad foot behind me and ignoring the complaint from my knee as I do. My good foot has been washed clean by the rain, and it looks soft and naked out in the light, skin already puckering into folds.

“Time to go,” I say, as a way of making it final.

I’ve learned how to make decent time using the walking stick as a crutch, and I set a good pace at the outset, spotting the best place to plant the stick, swing myself forward, and bring down my good foot. It’s exhausting work, both physically and mentally. I get a headache fast today, probably half from wearing out my eyes in the rain and half from being hungry again.

I’m back to being in pain, and part of the reason I didn’t just wrap up in my moldy blanket and stay under that pine until people or coyotes found my body was because if that happens then I killed a momma possum for no good reason. If I decide to just sit down and die, then all she did was give me a few more days to hurt in, and I don’t think that would square with her, or her babies. I’m determined to save my own life, not because it’s worth living but because I don’t want to disappoint a dead possum.

It’s a dumb thing to think, but it makes me laugh, distracting me from the gathering storm right up until it almost kills me. Thunder breaks overhead, so close that I jump, walking stick going out from underneath me as I stumble forward, landing on my hands and knees.

A tree goes down behind me, whacking branches left and right from its neighbors and hitting the forest floor with a shudder that I feel in my bones. It falls right where I had been, trunk only about as wide as my waist but that’s more than enough to knock the life right out of me—or worse, not kill me outright but leave me crushed, trapped and dying with days to go.

“Fuck,” I say.

A fresh gust of wind pushes through the woods, blowing everything that doesn’t have roots in front of it. Leaves fly past, a stick goes tumbling by to whip my face, and another crash fills the woods. It vibrates right up into my fingers, the very ground shuddering because something big just met its end.

“Fuck,” I say again.

This is a real storm, not a bit of rain or a gust of wind that’ll blow over in a minute or so. There’s something menacing in the air, everything tinted with a faint pink that means trouble, and I was too busy thinking about a dead possum to notice it.

I get onto my good foot, easing the walking stick back under my armpit. The rain falls so heavy I can’t even see individual drops, just a wall of water coming down from the sky that changes directions every time the wind gusts, but always seems to be landing in my face anyway.

Lightning breaks nearby close enough that I can smell it, sharp and acrid. That gets me moving again, but I don’t know what toward. I can’t go low because all the water will be rising, streams good for me to drink from just minutes before now wanting to pull me into them. I can’t climb either, because lightning always hits high spots, and standing near a big tree is like asking to be electrocuted—or crushed. The wind rises once more, strong enough to push me forward.

I stop where I’m at to wipe the rain out of my eyes, a futile effort. I’ve got no cover and no way to know which way safety lies, or any chance of making it there if I did. Everything is against me: the wind, the rain, the trees themselves. The nature I’ve respected all my life has no interest in showing me the same.

“So fuck it,” I say, quiet.

I get another push from behind for that, the wind not happy with me.

“No, really,” I say, tossing my walking stick out into the trees, no longer a tool but one of a million sticks. I’m done trying and being careful and doing my best. If a tree is going to fall on me I’m going to be standing up straight when it happens.

“Fuck. It,” I say again, yanking my foot out of the sling.

And then I run.

I am a wild woman.

I run through the rain, though it spits hard enough to leave welts on my skin, my blanket flying behind me. There is a snap to my left and I change direction suddenly, like prey evading a predator. The tree falls, splinters flying to slice my face. I do not care. I am still running, reveling in the speed, rejoicing in the freedom, moving fast toward nothing.

I do not know if I am panicking or if this is the most sane I have ever been. Have I finally lost it, or did I only realize that there is no hope, and to run through a storm is better than to die curled under a tree? There is something freeing in giving up and accepting that I am going to die out here. If the woods will have me, then first I will drink all it has to offer, a child once again, uncaring as to how I look or what others may think. I am utterly alone, untethered.

My balance is off, the severed part of my foot no longer there to hold me, but I learn the new steps quickly, ignoring the pain. My lungs burn, rain flies in my face, my legs ache and my foot is a savaged piece of meat, but I press on. I’m punishing my body, angry at it for not being strong enough to get me through, for succumbing to weakness and starvation and wounding. It is only a husk of the real me, deep inside, the Ashley who isn’t done living but whose body can’t keep going.