AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After
I AM FINALLY on the move.
I force myself to walk slowly. The rain is thinner among the trees, my jeans are already as wet as they’re going to get, and it’s hours to dark. I have time to do things right. Not to avoid hurting myself—too late for that, with my leg aching and the muscles of my back twisted into knots. But to avoid hurting myself more.
I picture myself the way I was right after the accident, dragging myself step by step with my hands gripped tight around parallel bars for support.
We don’t want a setback, Will would say when I pushed too hard. A setback then meant months of frustration. A setback now will kill me.
Will is another safe memory, untouched by fire. I hold on to his voice, his grin, his terrible jokes as I walk.
The trip is painfully slow. Bo sticks by my side the whole time. When I stop, he stops, watching the woods. Sometimes he whimpers, anxious. I wonder how much he understands about what happened. Does he think Dad’s coming back?
“It’ll be okay,” I say over and over. Bo doesn’t understand the words. I don’t believe them. I keep on saying it anyway.
It takes an hour to get to the rock. Or what feels like an hour. I don’t have a watch. My phone ran out of battery long ago. I’ve already let go of the need to know precise time. There’s only the time it takes, Dad would probably say, if he were here to say anything at all.
The side of the rock is even more canted than I remember, making a wedge of sheltered space more than big enough for one small girl and one big dog. I can huddle against it and be protected from the rain—but the rain’s letting up now, and I’d rather stay warm by moving around. As soon as I rest, my muscles are going to stiffen up, and I won’t be going anywhere or getting anything done for a good long while. So I look around.
We had a windstorm a couple of nights ago, and there are a lot of thin, downed trees scattered around the clearing. They’ll make a good wall for my lean-to, if I prop them up against the rock, extending the space under it into an inverted V. Two solid walls and enough room to sit or lie down beneath them. Once I cover up the gaps between the logs, it’ll keep the wind and the rain out. It might even hold the heat in a little.
Thinking in practicalities is the safest thing of all. No sorrow there, no fear, no rage. No stink of burning gasoline or too-red spatter of blood. Only necessity. I focus all my thoughts on the work of survival, and the heat of memory fades until it’s bearable again.
I set the backpack under the ledge. I limp around the clearing. I can tell the pill is masking my injuries, so I move slowly, paying attention to how I lift my bad leg.
There: a big, thin birch tree. It’s snapped off at the base, the stump jagged and dark with rain. The trunk is only as thick as my forearm, and it’s twice as long as it needs to be. I can’t hope to move the whole thing. I’m going to have to cut it in half.
I get the hatchet out and test its weight. I can’t quite manage a full overhead swing, not with my back as messed up as it is, so I settle for shorter, thwacking strikes. It’s slow going, and by the time I’m through, my arm and shoulder have the hot acid feeling of strained muscles. Then I have to go along the length of the trunk, chopping off the protruding branches. But I have the beginning of my shelter. All I have to do is get the two sections over to the rock.
I gauge the distance. Twenty feet, maybe. Not far, but I know I won’t be able to lift either of the sections up, and I don’t want to walk hunched over—harder to keep my balance that way, and I’ll only wrench my back further. I need something to loop around the trunk so I can drag it while standing up.
My belt’s not long enough, but the strap from the rifle is. With the belt closed in a loop around the trunk and the strap threaded through the belt, it’s long enough that I can stand up straight, lift the trunk a couple of inches—the belt hooked against the nubs of two removed branches—and drag it to the shelter.
I go a couple of feet at a time, stopping to rest. Slow, I remind myself, slow. Like the first few physical therapy sessions after the accident, with Will promising I’d be running marathons someday, but urging me to focus on just a few steps right now.
One foot, three feet, nine feet, twenty. I’m at the shelter. I grin triumphantly at Bo, who sits a few yards away, panting. Success.
And then I realize that I still have to lift the trunk up. And get the other one, and repeat the process. I can already feel the trembly ache that means tomorrow I’ll be in worse pain than today.
I let out a soft, wounded sound. I want to collapse. Cry. Instead I lower myself to the ground and call for Bo. He trots over and lets me wrap my arms around him, my forehead against his ruff.
Smart, not strong.
It’s my father’s voice. I don’t touch the rest of the memory, but I clutch at that. If you can’t be strong, you have to be smart. And smart is better than strong, out here.
“We need to be smart about this,” I tell Bo. His chest rises and falls with his heavy breath. “I’m going to be useless tomorrow. I’m going to have to rest the whole day, or I’ll just make things worse. So I’d better get everything I need today, and I have to get it now before the pill wears off.”
Dad insisted that fire came last. The least important thing out of what you need to survive. Shelter, he said. But I have shelter, don’t I? I have the overhang. It’s not much, but as long as I tuck myself against it the rain can’t reach me. And I’m so tired, and the logs are so heavy, and I’m so wet. A fire will dry me out.
Besides, I have food. The salmon will last me a day, at least. I don’t know how I’m going to get the peaches open—they’re store-bought cans, so there isn’t just a lid to unscrew—but I have them with me. And with the rain there’s plenty of water. Dad even showed me how to squeeze it out of the moss that grows on the rocks.
I picture a fire, warm and crackling. Contained, kind, not like the hungry, tearing beast that destroyed the cabin. I imagine heating my hands by it, cooking food over it. I’ll need fire to survive out here, so I’d better figure it out fast.
Or maybe my dad was right. Maybe I should focus on finishing the shelter.
No. Fire is the smart decision. I’ve got a partial shelter already, after all. Finishing it can wait.
But how can I make a fire? I don’t have matches. Maybe I can rub sticks together. I laugh. It comes out more of a cough.
