Jonah crept with her in the dark woods, led by the sound of spring water tumbling toward his truck. He needed to advance with care. The gaping entrances to the abandoned mines waited in the dark; one wrong step, a step to oblivion.
He negotiated roots and rocks; he could not afford to break an ankle. His flesh around the spider bite felt flayed open, alive and crawling with a raw, fiery itch as pain rampaged from the wound. He was glad the darkness hid it.
He stopped to rest, pickled in sweat. His hand felt as swollen and leaden as a water-soaked baseball mitt. He wanted to cut off the hand. Take an axe to it.
The sound of the spring water sliding over the rocks was too distant. He’d strayed. He could not see her in the darkness but could hear her calm breathing beside him.
She squeezed his good hand as he reached out with his wounded hand, felt a rock ledge. Cold. Soft. Powdery. Soapstone. Talc. They were among the mines. Chasms of death.
The phantom wingbeat of an owl swam overhead in the blackness, the whooph whooph like the rush of blood to his head.
You old idiot, you’ve stolen a child, the voice said. And now you’ve killed her.
This was wrong. All of it. Every second since he’d found her. Kept her. They’d die out here. Or be discovered. He’d go to jail and she’d be taken God knew where.
“Trry,” he whispered.
It was no later than 7:00 p.m., but it felt like the depth of night when those who are awake know that whatever befalls them is of their own making. Paralysis overtook him. He could not move. “Hellpp,” he whispered to the darkness.
“What wrong,” she said. Her voice quiet, unafraid.
The owl swam. Whoooph whoooph.
“Nothiing,” he said. “Justt. Hold my hand tiight. Don’t let go unless. If I faall, let go. Don’t move till liight.”
He waited for his pounding heart to subside. It didn’t.
One tentative inch at a time, he picked along in the dark, moving toward the whisper of running water, crawling on his knees, feeling with his enraged hand for the lip where rock fell away to nothing. Hand in hand, they traversed the slippery vein of ultramafic rock embedded in the harder granite, the schist treacherously slick beneath his boots.
He felt a soft bed of moss beneath his aching palm and stopped and sat her beside him to allow her some rest. He shivered, feverish, on fire. His mouth dry as powdered bone.
They sat in the dark. Invisible to each other. He listened to her breathe.
How’d he gotten so far off track?
A creature clabbered over the rocks in the darkness. She drew closer to him.
“Rraccooon,” he said with no way of knowing.
She drew closer still.
In the dark, he wept.
“Okay,” she said. “You okay.”
He stood. A boot heel skidded on a greasy wet rock. He was falling. “Lettt go!” he cried.
She did not let go.
He crashed on the rocks, his wounded hand crushed under his hip against an outcrop. The dark night cracked open with silver lightning in his head.
He vomited, lay there panting.
“We go,” she said.
He moaned and rolled onto his side, off his ruined hand. He stood as she held his hand tight.
The gurgle of the creek grew louder, closer.
“Thiss waay.”
They hiked through a frigid pocket of air as they crossed the creek. He stopped. Listened. There. Clouds parted and through the trees the moonlight shone in the truck windshield.
He collapsed against the truck. He fished a rolled cigarette and box of matches from his jacket pocket.
He could just see her pale face in the moonlight. He handed her the box of matches.
“Liight them?” he said.
She dumped the matches in the snow and opened his truck door, then went around and opened hers, got up and into the truck.
She latched her seat belt.
She fished the keys from his coat pocket and worked the key into the ignition.
The truck started with a backfire.
He turned on the overhead light and glanced down at his hand in his lap.
Holy fuck.
He shut off the light quick.
“Bad spider,” she said.
He didn’t know how he was going to drive. Slow, he reasoned. Easy.
He backed up the truck, his neck stiff as he looked over his shoulder.
He drove down among dark trees. The headlight beams swam in a black soup. Truck hit a rut and pitched and rocked.
“Seat belt,” she said.
He reached for the belt but could not bring it all the way across.
She reached over and latched it.
The truck lurched along road. Sweat bathed his hot skin, but he heard her teeth chatter. “Turn that dial for heat.” He’d forgotten how many responsibilities there were to keep in mind with a child; at the forefront the yielding of the self to another.