Page 25 of Be Not Far From Me

They’re lined up at the edge of the clearing, waiting for the momma’s permission to come in and have some of what she found. Then I showed up and whacked her a good one, and she’s going to fight me rather than run and leave her babies behind.

It’s so goddamn sad I can’t take it.

But I also can’t die out here, so I’m crying when I take the next swing, right on the side of her skull. The momma goes flying, still spitting and doing her best to keep my attention on her and leave her babies alone. She gets back up, coming at me with what she’s got left, and I cave in her head with a last thump that should send her babies running but they don’t.

They stand there, looking at me.

I just killed their momma right in front of them, and they’re so young they don’t even know to run from me. I’m the scariest thing they’ll ever see in their life, a wild woman with their momma’s blood spattered on her face, and all they can do is stare at me, shocked.

But there’s another part of me that knows they’re an easy kill, and fresh meat.

“Get out of here,” I scream before I change my mind. I drop my stick and charge, so that they scatter, their tails the last thing I see as they disappear into the night. I taught them that there’s nothing worse than humans. And while I learned it young myself, I didn’t ever want to have to be the one bearing the message.

I grab my kill and, after a second of thought, pick up what’s left of my foot and stick it in the bag. I can’t give a good reason other than I keep thinking about the deer skull I found by the trail on the way in, flesh long since rotted into the ground underneath. I love the woods, more than a roof over my head.

But damn if it can have me, even a little bit.

I tear some tin off the side of the camper, careful not to slice a finger off in the process. My fire starts easy, another burn hole added to my fireboard. I strike off a piece of flint with a good edge and skin the possum, taking away every last thing that will cook up. The meat sizzles on the tin as it warms next to the fire, and in all my life I have never smelled anything so wonderful.

I have meat, and it helps with the guilt. Taking down a deer was never easy for me, but knowing that it would get us through the winter without having to pay for grocery meat was what made my finger pull the trigger. The methodical business of butchering takes concentration, and busy hands don’t allow for an idle mind. I don’t think of the motherless babies in the woods when I take my first bite of real food in a week. All I think is how damn good it is to eat again.

I take it slow, letting the pain pass in my stomach and the business of digestion begin before I eat a second strip of meat, my foot resting on the steps of the camper. The sun is edging into the sky by the time I’ve cooked up everything and sealed it all away in Baggies, making a tiny hole above the sealing line with the tip of my flint and stringing yarn through them.

It’s time to go, and I’m ready.

I’ve scoured around the trailer looking for any sign, a hint of a trail they use to come and go, but there’s nothing. A smart person would come a different way every time, letting new growth fill in what they trampled. A really smart person would leave by a different route, too, and I seem to have crossed paths with the smartest drug dealer in the county, as luck would have it. I think of Uncle Chuck, beaten unconscious beside his burned-out trailer, a harsh warning to leave off what he was doing.

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.