CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Of all places.
Of all the possible places that a tree could fall in this forest, this one had to fall on our truck.
I stood staring at it, my mind not ready to believe what I was seeing.
It was a huge tree. That thought kept circling in my slowed-down brain. A tree lying down looks even bigger than a tree standing up. This one’s trunk was limbless on the bottom part that had fallen across the east side of the road. Just about where it hit the truck, the limbs began. They were taller than me, fanned out in a dense green web high above the truck. Some pieces had snapped and landed on the hood and road. If trees had blood, that’s the smell that hung in the air—raw, fresh resin, and ripped-open bark.
The roof of the truck was crushed nearly to its wheels. As I moved closer, I could see that the backseat and a corner of the toolbox had been flattened. The windshield had shattered but the dashboard was still recognizable. The note I’d left still sat there, barely visible under the web of branches. Limbs draped the hood. It had sprung open a crack, but hadn’t been crushed. The rest of the tree continued across the road onto the west side and had gotten caught up in another tree’s branches in the woods on the other side.
A single word formed in my head and I spoke it out loud. “Why?”
Then I screamed it at the top of my lungs.
Fear came rolling over me then like a billowing cloud of black smoke. My supplies—the sleeping bags, matches, stove fuel…
“Mom!” I cried out. “Mom! Where are you?”
I called her over and over and over, until my throat was raw.
A sputter of tears caught and died. The glass of the broken windshield glimmered in the sunlight. Trees tossed gently in the breeze.
I was doing it again. I was hoping for rescue—for Mom or Dad or both to come dropping down out of that helicopter, with hugs and kisses and warm blankets and a basket full of food.
Where was Fierce Francie?
I couldn’t hear her voice, but I thought I knew what she would do.
What supplies could I save? What could I reach in the truck? I fought back the branches and tried the driver’s door. It gave only a crack, as I’d guessed. There would be no way to get in the truck that way. If only I had the crowbar. But it was under the front seat.
No, it wasn’t! I’d used it to make my drumming noise and I’d left it in the back. I climbed onto the truck bed and under the strong arms of the fallen fir. I could see it, but I couldn’t reach it. There were too many boughs in the way. I’d have to try to break some of the branches, but they were big and supple and I couldn’t do it by hand.
Eighty-five pounds is not enough to break live branches from their trunk, I discovered. I climbed to the edge of the truck bed and jumped down on the branches. They bent, but didn’t break, except for a few twigs.
More likely to break was my ankle. I considered the toolbox, which lay twisted and bent under the weight of the fallen trunk. There might be something in there I could use to clear the windshield glass. It had popped open slightly on one end, but to try to get anything out of it would be to risk tearing my arm open on the sharp metal edge. But I might be able to get a branch in there. I jumped down and searched for a sturdy branch the right length.
When I found one, I climbed back up and found an opening in the toolbox to wedge the branch in. I wriggled it in farther and pressed down with both hands. The toolbox lid gave a little, but when I released the pressure, it caved back in. I tried again. Both hands and one knee pushed down like a big can opener. The lid rose, rose, rose and then—slam. The branch slipped, I fell backward, tree limbs scraped my back and the branch popped up, gouging my shin.
My body had sunk into the tangle of branches. I couldn’t get up at first. I lay there a minute, catching my breath. Now that I was down there, I found I could almost reach the crowbar. Carefully, I reached my arm a little deeper under the limbs. My fingers touched the claw and closed around it. I pulled it toward me and untangled it from the web of branches. Then I used it to help me push myself from the mess of boughs I’d landed in.
I climbed down from the truck gingerly. I’d have a big gash on my shin. My jacket wasn’t ripped, but it was streaked with sticky resin, and the skin over the bony part of my spine stung from the scrapes.
My brain frothed like a pot of potatoes boiling over. Getting frantic would not help my situation. I had to calm down and think clearly. I had not allowed myself a cup of tea and a mint this morning; I’d been in too much of a hurry to find my way back to the truck. I needed to do that now. I only had four mints left and I’d been reluctant—no, afraid—to eat the last ones. What would happen when I ran out?
I got the stove out of my backpack and set it up. Then I squirted water into the pot from the bag I’d collected at the creek and put it on to boil. As I stared into the water, waiting for it to bubble, a few drops of rain speckled the surface. My work with the toolbox had kept me from noticing the sky had clouded over. The air had grown chilly, too. The icy rain made a hiss as it landed on the warm water. Then the hiss grew to a gentle peppering on the truck hood, the leaves and grass along the side of the road, and in a moment, big white snow crystals filled the air.
I shivered. My back hurt. As soon as the water rolled to a boil, I threw in a few fir needles and carried the pot to my lean-to. I had to be careful. With my luck, I’d trip and burn myself. It just seemed like everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. I tucked in under my lean-to and blew on the hot water. Fishing a mint out of my meager supply, I popped it in my mouth and sucked on it slowly.
The torn roots of the toppled tree lay only a few steps from my lean-to. Fast-falling snow sifted over it. I couldn’t believe my bad luck. The safe place where I could have ridden out the storm lay smashed under a tree. No other trees had fallen on the road.
What would have happened if the wind had been blowing from a slightly different direction? If the roots had been weakened in one spot by a burrowing animal? If the roots had let go of their hold on the earth a moment sooner? A slight change in anything and my lean-to could have been crushed. I could have been in it.
My teeth chattered as I took a sip of tea. Each crystalline flake of snow landed on my jacket and melted. I knew I should start a fire before everything got too wet. A few dry twigs lay close at hand and I gathered these into a pile in my firepit. It occurred to me that I should have had all the kindling I would need with the fallen tree on our truck. But green wood doesn’t burn easily, and it’s especially useless to start a fire. I lit the match and held it to the twigs, watched it catch and gobble the kindling. I needed bigger branches for the fire, but that would mean getting up.
My shin had begun to throb where the branch had gouged it. Gingerly, I pulled up my pant leg to have a look. It was worse than I expected. A line of blood ran down my leg and into my sock. The wound itself looked like an animal bite, a ragged hole surrounded by red skin. I knew it would get more painful before it got better. I needed to make some kind of bandage to keep it clean. I needed to get warm. I just didn’t want to do one more thing.
Sick and tired. That’s what Mom said when she was really mad: I’m sick and tired of this. What did she mean by this? I never knew exactly. It could be whatever she was doing at the time: scrubbing dishes or angrily chopping potatoes, sending them skidding across the counter and onto the kitchen floor. Or sometimes she said it more gently, doing some ordinary thing like opening the mail, and that was worse. But now I thought I knew what she meant. Because right now I was sick and tired. I wanted to stop trying. I was cold and wet to the bone. I just wanted to stop.
The little fire I’d started struggled to burn. The kindling was mostly ash already, trailing a thin wisp of smoke. In another minute or two, it would sputter out altogether. Each flake of snow landed with a tinkle; those that landed on the ashes hissed as they died. A metallic taste filled my mouth, then a buzz filled my ears, traveled to my eyes, and everything went black.
“Francie?”
Phoebe. I struggled to open my eyes. Suddenly I was warmer, as if someone had wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. The soft smell of Phoebe surrounded me. Snow crystals tinkled and whispered softly. I could just let go. I could sleep here for a while and maybe someone would find me. I tasted the hot chocolate I’d drink then, the sweet heat of it traveling down my throat and into my stomach, warming my whole body. My pillow from home under my head, heat blowing from the vent under my desk, the stars on my ceiling glowing happily. In the morning the sun would shine through my bedroom window.
Somewhere deep in my brain, another thought stirred: shivering. Something about shivering. Was I still shivering?
I needed to open my eyes.
Hear the snow falling? That’s the real world.
A flake landed on my cheek and then another. I opened my eyes. A white sky with long green fingers reaching across it. Snow peppering my face. Yes, I was still shivering. I was shivering like a shrub in a stiff wind. But that was good. That’s what my brain had dug up from somewhere in its memory: that one of the signs of hypothermia (that’s basically on the way to freezing to death) is shivering. But an even worse sign, a sign of being too far gone to recover, is if you stop shivering.
My fire had died. Everything lay drenched under a crust of icy wet snow. I wanted warmth. My brain stubbornly wanted it to just appear, as it had when I closed my eyes. But that was not going to happen.
If it happened that way, I would die.
There was nothing else to do but force myself to stand up. I stomped my feet. My limbs felt heavy, like my boots were full of rocks. A sharp stinging sensation ran through my toes and heels. I jumped up and down and cartwheeled my arms a few times. Finding dry tinder or anything bigger to keep the fire going was going to be a problem now. Each needle on the tree boughs, the bark on the trunks, the dry grass along the road, the forest floor and fallen logs were coated in wet crystals. Even the lichen hung from the branches like the white beards of old men.
I gathered some of that and shook the ice out as much as I could. Then I stripped some branches whose needles had turned orange and I beat them against the fallen trunk to knock out the ice. The needles fell off, too, which I should have known they would do. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I remembered that I had stashed some larger branches under the truck. Would it be possible to get to them? I had shoved them under the driver’s door, in just about the worst place to try and get to them now. That’s where the thickest branches of the fallen tree fanned out.
I gave up that idea and scraped the sticks I had into a pile around some lichen. I mentally crossed my fingers, then lit a match. The flame licked at the damp lichen and caught. The dead needles threw up a bright tongue of flame and then died. In a few seconds, the pile became a smoking, soggy mess. I tried again, my fingers shaking crazily. I dropped the match too soon and it went out. At this rate, the matches I had left would be used quickly.
One match. That’s what Grandma taught me to do—light a fire with one match. The reason, she said, was not to be cheap with matches. Using only one match taught me to take time with the preparation. A good fire was all about the preparation. I knew that. But I was freezing and if I didn’t get warm soon, I was pretty sure I’d be in big trouble.
All the more reason to take your time, Francie. One match. Get it right.
All right, all right. What could I use? I blew on my trembling red fingers, stood and stomped the blood back into my feet again.
Maybe I could get to that dry wood under the truck after all. I might be able to shimmy under the truck from the back. I walked to the rear, which hadn’t been crushed by the tree, and I looked underneath. I’d have to get down on my stomach and elbows. It would be wet and muddy, possibly oily. I ducked under a little more to see if I could even reach any of the wood.
That’s when I smelled gasoline.
I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before. Now that I did notice it, the smell seemed to fill the air. Obviously, gas was leaking out of the tank, which must have been damaged by the crash-landing of the tree.
My first thought was to wonder whether there was any danger of the gas igniting. My fire was far enough away that it seemed unlikely. My second thought burst into my brain like the spark of flame I so badly needed.
Gasoline would be a good fire starter! But how could I get it out of the tank? Could I find the leak and try to catch some of it? That would mean crawling under there and probably coating my clothes in gasoline, not a good idea. I’d seen Dad siphon gas from the truck when he needed to do a repair. He’d stuck a hose in through the fill hole, and then sucked on it to get the flow going.
“I don’t recommend this method,” he told me. “You have to be super-quick. I’ve ended up with a mouthful of gas more than once when I didn’t pull the hose away fast enough.”
I could probably use my jackknife to cut a piece of hose from somewhere in the engine. Then I’d need something to catch the gas in. I looked around, considering what I could use. But then I got a better idea.
I didn’t need to put the gas in a container. All I needed to do was get some on a cloth. And to do that, I could just stick something down into the tank and pull it back up. The bonus to this idea was that I wouldn’t have to take the chance of getting a mouthful of gas.
Beside the road, I found a bush that looked like a willow. I cut a long, flexible branch and stripped off the side twigs. I considered tying a piece of cloth from my backpack to it, and then I considered my fluorescent orange T-shirt. But I didn’t want to use either of those and, also, I didn’t think those types of fabric would absorb gasoline that well. I thought about cutting a piece of the hood off my hoodie, but the hood was good protection against the cold. So instead, I cut off one of the pockets. I pulled out the drawstring and wound it tightly around the fabric, fastening it to the willow branch. It looked almost like a wiener on a roasting stick, a thought that made my mind wander again to Carly and the field day and then to Carly’s dad’s barbecue, burgers and wieners lined up sizzling on the grill.
It took a few tries to get it to work. First, the fabric was too bulky to go in the fill hole. Then I broke my stick. After that, I lost the cloth down the hole and had to cut another, smaller piece from my other pocket. And I’d forgotten the tank was nearly empty. In the end, the cloth didn’t get soaked; only a corner was dampened with gas. But that would be enough.
I poked the cloth, still on the stick, under the tinder and kindling. I didn’t want to get too close to light it. The map was still on the dashboard, under a corner of cracked but not broken glass. I carefully reached my hand through the broken part of the windshield and pushed it along the dash until I could fish out the map. I tore off the southern third. I wouldn’t need it now. Scrunching it into a ball, I pierced it with another long branch. Then I lit it.
With the long branch, I touched the ball of flaming map to the pile of kindling. Whoosh. It ignited in a burst. I jumped back.
Within minutes I had a hot, good-sized fire that wouldn’t be drowned by the drizzly snow. The blood began to warm in my hands and feet. My shivering gradually calmed. I could breathe, I could think again.
A spot of color caught my eye. My first thought, crazy as it sounds, was Phoebe. Was I starting to lose my mind out here? She felt close somehow, as if she was with me. But it was the red fox, tiptoe-tiptoeing through the slush, with something hanging from her mouth.
“You’re back,” I said, and she stopped and stood watching me, her bright eyes intense, as if she were trying to tell me something. Her bushy tail nearly touched the ground.
“What is it? What do you want?”
She stepped closer and I saw that the thing hanging from her mouth was a frog, its legs dangling limply.
“Where did you get that?”
Could I eat a frog? Frogs were edible.
All frogs? I didn’t know. My survival guide was in the truck, buried under a tree. But if the fox could eat it, I assumed I could, too.
She tiptoed softly away, melting back into the woods on the other side of the road. It seemed miraculous to me that a little creature like her could survive out here on her own.
If I could get over the fact that it was May and snowing, and my only protection was a lean-to made of sticks and a fire I’d had to light with gasoline, I could have better appreciated how beautiful it was. But it was beautiful anyway. Not just the little red fox. Not just the clear crystals landing softly on my knees, their intricate structures dissolving within seconds. Not just the snow frosting the road and bush in sparkling ice. Something else poked through like the crocuses that poked through the snow in our garden in spring. It wasn’t exactly happiness. It was just—warmth. My face was warming and a glow spread from a tiny spot deep in my chest. I was alive. And that was something.
I realized I’d been seeing this all wrong. I could have been in the truck. I would have been in the truck, huddling against the windstorm last night, if I hadn’t been lost and holed up down by the creek. It wasn’t bad luck at all. It was good luck. Amazing, incredible, stupendously stupid, wonderful good luck.