Page 11 of Be Not Far From Me

“So I’m not starving,” I say aloud, breaking up the memory of Meredith and piles of food. Because while I’m grateful to her and always will be, thinking of that food and not having it in front of me hurts.

No, I’m not freezing and I’m not starving, and I know both these things are true because I’m in pain.

When you can’t feel anything is when you need to worry.

My foot doesn’t look any better in sunlight.

The day snuck up slow, and I watched it come, along with a momma raccoon leading her babies back to their den, the smallest one stopping to pick up things with its little hands. It turned over a few sticks just to see what was under them, then its momma came back for it, rounded it up with the brothers and sisters, and the little family filed out of my sight.

Those things are so cute you’ve got to remind yourself that they’re actually nasty little bastards that’ll tear kittens into pieces while they’re still alive just to get to the tasty bits. It’s a good reminder that my own tasty bits are hanging out of my foot, so I crawl out from under the spruce once daylight is full-on.

My foot is wrinkly from having a wet sleeve wrapped around it all night, the skin pulling back from the wound even further. I have to tug on the sleeve harder to take it off than I did to put it on, so I must be swelling. Everything looks clean, but I know by the time I can see an infection, it’ll already be too late.

The sun gets high enough that I can feel warmth from its rays, so I strip down, taking everything off. I throw my clothes over branches and let the breeze do the rest while I sit, hunched and naked on a downed tree.

My skin is mottled, red and white, the sun not doing enough against the chill of the wind. I look like marble, blood and flesh instead of rock and mineral, and I wonder if anyone were to come along if I’d yell for help or ask them to admire me for a minute first.

It’s funny, and I laugh again, wondering if this is part of the process of losing it, which is something I don’t get to do.

I don’t get to, because I thought about my situation while I lay in the moonlight under the tree and realized not only did I get left behind but also no one’s coming to look for me either.

Dad’s pulling a double shift and then crashing at a buddy’s, probably pulling in more pay if he can, and headed right back to the factory after grabbing a few hours of sleep. I can assume my friends thought I headed for home, and somebody picked up my pack for me, my phone buried deep underneath layers of clean underwear and more than likely dead by now.

Whoever took my stuff might drive it over to the house and leave it there for me, not thinking anything of the fact that I’m not home. If Dad’s there—and awake—there might be a conversation where two and two gets put together, but I can’t count on that. To be honest, Duke’s probably the one who would’ve thought to grab my gear, and I doubt he’s in any hurry to come face-to-face with me or anyone I’m vaguely related to any time soon.

I give it three days, maybe more, before connections are made and everyone realizes I’m still in the woods.

I look at my foot, turning it different ways in the morning light.

I don’t think I have that much time.

On a good day I can put in eight miles on the trail.

I assume I will not be having a good day, but I do know not having shoes isn’t the setback it seems. More than once I’ve been on trails with people who put a lot of money into serious boots, not realizing that their leg has the job of lifting that extra two pounds on each foot with every step. And that adds up, taking them down by midday and draining them empty by nightfall—if they don’t give up and turn around.

I’ll take my shoes off when I’m hiking if the trail is clear, loving the freedom of dirt in between my toes. So my one good foot being bare isn’t too much of an issue. It’s the other one I need to come up with a solution for.

I tear back into my shirt once it’s dry, biting a tiny, puckered hole with my canines that I widen with my fingertip, then I push my whole finger through. I rip off a section from the bottom as wide as my hand, and loop one end over my right arm and let the other end dangle near my ass. It’s not easy, but I get my bad foot up and hook it through the other end, looking back over my shoulder and inching the makeshift sling down to my ankle.

It’s not bad. My heel is practically touching my butt, and my knee will be screaming in a few hours, but the wound is out of the dirt and I don’t have to waste a bunch of energy holding my leg up.

The next thing I need is a goal. When my familiarity with punching got me kicked off the basketball team and Dad suggested the nonconfrontational sport of cross-country, I was less than enthused. I wanted to be in it, fighting for something, swinging elbows while I grappled for the ball.

My attitude must have been obvious on the first day of practice, ’cause Coach pulled me aside and told me I looked like I wanted to fight somebody. I told him maybe I did, and what the hell kind of competition is there in running?

“Competition?” Coach had asked, pushing his hat back off his forehead. “Okay, tell you what, smart-ass. Give me three miles, then come back and see what kind of fight you got left in you.”

I had shit left, but I took his point. My opponent was myself, the very deep pain that welled within me from mile one the only thing I had to overcome to keep going. I couldn’t run the whole three, puked twice, and got back to Coach with swollen feet and a blister the size of my ass on one heel.

He’d pulled me up off the ground, settled my palms on top of my head so I could take deeper breaths, and said, “Tomorrow, try harder.”

Coach saw me for who I was right from the beginning—someone who wasn’t going to back down from that kind of an insult. So I came back the next day and tried harder, and the next, pushing past pain to the runner’s wall, where the only things that exists are your feet, the ground, and a point in the distance.

Which is exactly what I need right now. A point in the distance.

“Today you’re going to walk two miles in one direction,” I say aloud, making it official. There is no response, not even that one chatty squirrel. Just the wind, taking my words.

I didn’t make a fire last night, but I’ve got to leave something behind so that if anyone is looking for me, they’ll know I was here, and where I went after. I gather enough stones to form an arrow, pointing the direction I’ll be headed once I set out.