Be Not Far from Me(37)

“Fuck you,” I say again, this one a breathless gasp, the words tasting like bile and dandelion greens as what little I have in my stomach surges upward. There is nothing left in me, not food or energy, only willpower. Even my own body has turned on me, and all I can do is force it forward, a breaking-down vehicle for the Ashley trapped inside.

The storm has passed, the sun breaking through the clouds, but still I run, simultaneously panicked and invincible. The animals might not know to be afraid of me, but they are learning. There’s movement in the brush to my left when I spook something. I spin, whiskey bottle arcing out from where it’s tied to my belt loop to crash against a tree, glass shattering in a thousand pieces as the sun illuminates the shards, airborne.

I pitch backward, arms spinning, my bad foot searching for purchase and unable to find it. There’s a moment when gravity doesn’t have me yet and I can see clearly through a break in the canopy where a jet leaves a white tail behind it. Civilization is only miles away, but straight up, unreachable.

Then I’m falling.

On the way down the ridge I . . .

Crack my head on a tree, losing a chunk of hair.

Slice my leg on the broken bottle mouth still hanging from my jeans.

Break a rib.

Sprain my wrist.

Lose two teeth.

And the whole time, I am laughing.

I land on my stomach, any air I had left knocked out of me, along with what little food was inside my stomach. It all comes up, dandelion shreds, stomach acid, creek water, and a few worms. Everything I have hurts, but none of it seems to matter as I pull myself into a sitting position and lean against a tree, tasting blood. I left hair and teeth and I’m sure more than a little skin on the ridge above me, a little something to leave behind before nature gets the rest.

“Shit,” I say, and spit out some dirt, along with red-tinted spit.

I’m done in, my fit having taken everything I had left. I’m not dead yet, but I might as well be, because my limbs are so heavy I can’t move, and my eyelids are starting to feel the same. I might’ve knocked myself silly on the way down, I realize. Which could be part of why I’m not so worried about dying now, whether it’s here or a few yards away after I find it in me to crawl for a little bit.

Crawl toward nothing. Nothing and no one.

I look ahead anyway, pure curiosity making me wonder if there’s anything better ahead that I can die next to. The mist clears as a little breeze pushes through.

And I spot a tent.

It says a lot that the first thing I do when I see a sign of another human being is hide. I’ve been too long in the woods, too long on my own. I should be running toward that tent screaming for help, but my first instinct is to hunker down. I’ve been among the animals so long that I’m thinking like one, sure that anything that’s not me is out to hurt and the best thing to do is wait and watch and not give myself away.

That’s what I do, peering through some wild blackberries that are just showing their leaves, though their thorns make themselves known right away. I’ve drawn blood on my forearms twice before I’m settled among them, my legs not able to hold a crouch for long. I sit and watch, but nothing is happening, and soon my brain is calming from the scare and I notice that the pegs holding the tent down are brown with rust, the edges of each tent corner frayed and weathered.

Then I see the backpack resting against the tree. I didn’t spot it right away because it’s faded and worn, with a colony of mushrooms sprouting from one side. I pull myself up, ignoring the thorns that try to hold me back as I go, like they don’t want me to have to suffer this one last thing.

But it’s too late. I already know.

I knew when I took a deep breath and a good look at that tent. I knew when I saw the rotted backpack, one that I’d kept my eyes on as I trotted through the woods, smaller feet trying to keep up with the pair in front of me. I knew before I walked up to it. Knew before I flipped it over, just to be sure. There on the back, embroidered in a proud font his mom had picked out and painstakingly sewed onto the thing her son loved best, it read:

PROPERTY OF DAVEY BEET

I’m screwing up the courage to unzip the tent.

I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life, always putting on a brave face and pulling on my own bootstraps. I said goodbye to my momma, bought groceries with food stamps while keeping my upper lip stiff, lived with a garbage bag for a window instead of glass for a few years. I’ve been left behind, never having the chance or the inclination to do the leaving.

Now I’m standing here with half a foot and a swelling wrist, a broken rib, and a spreading bloodstain on my jeans from where the whiskey bottle got me, so surely I can gather the courage to undo a zipper. I take a deep breath—which hurts like a bitch because of the rib—and I just do it. It’s a simple action, one that doesn’t reveal anything I didn’t already know.

Davey died curled into a ball, either from hunger or pain or the realization that no one was coming for him and the only person he could get close to was himself. His knees are up to his chest, bones poking through the worn cargoes he always hiked in, his skull resting against his kneecaps.

I wonder if he missed his hat as he was dying, if it could have been a pillow or a reminder of his mom or something to hold on to and make him push through and get back home. I crawl in beside him and tear it off my head to put it on his, pulling it down over his ears—which are still there, wrinkled and small, but there.