EIGHTEEN

Mary peered into the shadow beyond the willow tree. At first the dark green pines and yellowing grass seemed no more revelatory than any other stretch of forest, but then something caught her eye. If she tilted her head at a certain angle, she could see a small line of trampled weeds heading west, up into the mountains. Instantly her pulse began to thrum like a timpani. She knew what had happened. The barefoot man had taken a prize, and that prize had been Alex.

“Not that,” she pleaded out loud, her voice sounding like something trapped inside a jar. “Please don’t let it be that.”

She stood there, almost woozy, beseeching the Old Men for some other, more acceptable scenario. But nothing happened. As always, the mountains remained aloof, unaffected by her anguish. When their chilling breezes brought her nothing but the sad moaning of a million trees, she turned away from the willow and walked back down to Joan.

Joan sat small and trembling, her sweatshirt tugged down tight over her knees. Her gaze focused inward, as if she were struggling to make sense of some private horror movie that played on the back of her eyes. Mary sat down beside her.

“How are you doing?” She put her arm around Joan’s shoulders.

“I’m cold.” Joan’s teeth chattered. “Where’s Alex?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Joan’s mouth curled down in surprise. “You’re supposed to know these things, Mary. You always know these things.”

“I don’t know where Alex is, Joan. There’s a trail leading west from the willow tree.” Mary shook her head. “I think the barefoot man took her with him.”

Joan made a choking noise that could have been either a laugh or a cry.

“He took our supplies, too.” Mary noticed Joan’s delicate little toes poking out from under her shapeless sweatshirt. “All we’ve got is what we’re wearing.”

“You’ve got lots of clothes,” Joan tittered with a brittle hilarity. “And paints.” She sniggered. “And my underpants!”

“That’s right.” Mary nudged the dirty white panties that lay beside the metal box at her feet. “We’ve got all that, plus one hell of a drawing of a maple tree.”

Joan kept laughing, like Mary had just told her the best joke in the world.

Mary put her head down on her arms. At that moment she hated Joan. Hated her accent, hated her whining. Hated the mole on her thigh and her sophisticated perfume-and-tobacco smell. It was all she could do not to slap her and run into the mountains, screaming for Alex like a lunatic.

Stop it, she ordered herself, digging her nails into her palms. Don’t think like this now. Just concentrate on how to survive. Because if you don’t, we’ll all die.

She turned her face up to the afternoon sun, a hot orange ball sliding down a blue sky. They might have two more hours of warmth, then it would be dark. And what would darkness bring? Frost? Bears? The barefoot man returning for some late-night fun and games?

Mary looked over at Joan. Her manic laughter had stopped and she sat picking at the dried smear of blood on her leg. A thin rope of snot dangled from her nose. Joan was crying without making a sound.

Mary rubbed her eyes, then said gently, “Why don’t we go wash off? The warm water will make us both feel better.”

Joan sat motionless as if she’d grown deaf. Mary repeated her question, then she finally stood up and pulled Joan to her feet. Wrapping one arm firmly around her waist, she led her toward the spring. Joan’s legs moved stiff and bowed. When they reached Atagahi, she locked her knees like a balky brat and refused to go any further.

“Come on, Joan, just a few more steps. It’ll make you feel better.” Mary coaxed her toward the water.

“No!” Joan stared at her as if she’d never seen her before, as if they hadn’t been close friends for the past eight years. “You can’t make me go in there!”

“But it’s just water.” Mary knelt down and splashed water on her own face. “It feels good.”

“Stop!” Joan shook her head in horror. “You don’t know what he might have put in there!”

Joan’s quivery words caught Mary so by surprise that she stopped splashing and let the water drip from her chin. She stared at Joan, then she realized what had happened. Joan was standing there, yet she wasn’t. The real Joan had flown away, to someplace where the spring and the barefoot man and even Mary were not allowed admittance. The thing that stood before Mary was just a small, frightened husk of Joan. You’ve got to take care of her, Mary told herself, wiping the water from her eyes. And hope the real person returns.

“Maybe you’re right, Joan,” she answered quietly. “Maybe washing isn’t such a great idea. Why don’t you put your underpants back on, though? That way you’ll stay warmer.”

Joan stood frozen, still gazing at the water. Her face was badly bruised, one eye swollen shut. Blood leaked from her nose. Mary grabbed her panties and held them out in front of her. Obediently, Joan stepped into them, but Mary had to pull them up over her hips.

“Put these on, too,” Mary said, shucking off her own jeans and holding them out. “You need them more than I do.”

“What’s this thing?” Joan fished Wynona out of the pocket while Mary snapped the jeans around her waist.

“Just the little statue my mother made me.” Mary held out her hand. Joan had seen Wynona what—fifty, a hundred times? “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“What are we going to do now?” Joan wobbled on her feet, as Mary stashed Wynona in the pocket of her sweatshirt.

“We need to find a safe place to curl up for the night.” She bent and cuffed up the pant legs for Joan, a full five inches shorter than Mary. “It’ll get cold when the sun goes down.”

Joan said nothing.

Mary looked around the spring. If the barefoot man came back here, they would be trapped. It would be better to hide back in the forest, but it would also be considerably colder and much easier to lose their way. Mary frowned, then she spotted the top of the old maple tree, its yellow leaves fluttering over the highest Atagahi boulder.

“Let’s go back up to the maple. The ground’s soft up there, and the tree’s big enough to protect us from the wind. It’ll be easier to hear if anyone sneaks up.”

Joan’s unswollen eye rolled like that of a horse about to bolt. “Who do you think is going to sneak up on us?”

“Just some animal.” Mary gifted Joan with a lie as she reached down and grabbed her paint box. “If a skunk decides to pay a call, I’d really like to have some warning.” She smiled.

This quieted Joan and she followed Mary meekly back up to the maple tree, making no further protests. Already the air beneath the tree was blowing far crisper than Atagahi’s caressing breeze. Mary knew that if Joan became hypothermic she would die, and at this time of year they would be lucky if the overnight temperature stayed above forty degrees. She shook her head. Joan had survived a rape and a horrific beating. Now Mary had to figure out how to keep her from succumbing to a simple nighttime chill. She unlatched her paint box and emptied it on the ground. Oil paint and drawing pencils tumbled into the grass along with her little sketch pad. That and the palette knife were all the tools they had to survive.

“Joan, do you feel strong enough to sit on this root and keep watch?”

“Watch for what?” Joan’s eyes darted around as if panthers might be slinking through the trees.

“Skunks. Coons. Possums. Just sit there and let me know if any four-legged beast comes by.”

“Okay.” Gingerly, Joan lowered herself to the ground and peered intently into the forest.

“I’m going to scoop out a trench with this paint box,” Mary explained. “We’ll line it with pine needles to make it soft. Then we’ll pack ourselves with leaves, lie down and spread more leaves over us like a blanket. That way we’ll stay warm tonight.”

Mary began to scrape furiously at the ground with the metal edge of her paint box. With dead eyes, Joan watched the woods.

Later, as the cool evening air rattled through the dying leaves, they sat beside a small trench lined with pine needles. Mary lifted her sweat-soaked hair off the back of her neck; her shoulders burned with fatigue. A job that would have taken twenty minutes with a shovel had taken her and her paint box two hours.

“This looks like a grave.” Joan’s voice twanged through her grotesquely swollen nose.

“I know,” Mary replied, breathing in the trench’s damp earth and pine aroma. “But it’ll keep us out of the wind.”

They watched a vermilion sun sink behind a crowd of inky trees, then Joan touched her nose and whimpered and started to cry again. Mary handed her two soft willow fronds she’d stripped from the tree near the spring. “Chew these,” she told Joan. “They’ll make you feel better.”

“Is this what the Cherokees used?” Joan sucked the willow like a lollipop.

Mary nodded. “My mother said people used willow before they had aspirin.”

Suddenly, Joan pulled the leaves from her mouth and began to sing. Though the tune was pretty and the notes came out in perfect pitch, they sounded ragged, like a bell with a damaged clapper.

“That’s Puccini,” she announced proudly when she’d finished, tears smearing the blood on her face. “What do you think?”

“Sounds great, Joan.” Mary smiled. “Beautiful.”

“Liar.” Joan’s upper lip curled in a vicious sneer. “It sounded like shit and you know it.”

She sucked the willow fronds for a while, then yawned. “I want to go to sleep,” she whined.

“Okay.” Mary stood up and walked over to the pile of yellow maple leaves she’d managed to gather. “Then let’s get ready for bed.”

Joan followed Mary to the leaves, now docile as a lamb.

“I’m going to stuff these inside your shirt,” Mary told her gently. “They’ll help keep you warm.”

She filled the back of Joan’s sweatshirt with leaves, then she did the same to the front and the sleeves. Finally she pulled the hood up and tied it tight under Joan’s chin. “There.” She smiled. “You’re insulated.”

Mary gathered up the rest of the leaves and knelt beside the trench. “Which side do you want?” she teased.

Joan shrugged. Stiffly, she lowered herself into the trench and curled up tightly. Mary got in beside her and piled the remaining leaves and pine needles over them. She fitted her hips and legs close against Joan’s back and wrapped her arms around her, in an embrace of survival. Not exactly a thermal blanket, she thought, but it would have to do. She only hoped it would be enough.

The leaves crackled as Joan twisted to face Mary. “You’re not going to sleep, are you?” she asked fearfully, the quiver returning to her voice.

“No. I’m going to stay awake and make sure you stay warm,” Mary promised.

“All night?”

“All night.”

“You don’t think the barefoot man will come back, do you?”

“No. I think he’s gone far away.” And taken Alex with him. She tightened her arms around Joan.

That seemed to satisfy Joan. She turned away and spoke no more. Mary could feel the tension slowly uncoil from her small body as her arms and legs relaxed into an exhausted slumber. “Sleep well, Joan,” Mary breathed.

“Buona notte.”

For a long time she lay with her eyes open in the darkness, her friend cradled in her arms, keeping watch as the moon floated across a field of stars. Questions about Alex pricked her like stings, accompanied by a chorus of guilt. How could you let this happen again?

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. But then, she had never meant to do anything. She had never meant to make love to Jonathan that afternoon. She had never meant not to defend her mother. She had never meant to go off sketching when her two best friends needed her most. Yet somehow, she had failed them all.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed herself closer to Joan, the hard lump of Wynona digging into her stomach.

“Make me strong as Eagle,” she whispered, repeating the old bird prayer her mother had taught her. “Swift as Hawk, and clever as Crow. And let me wake up tomorrow.” She added her own final line, “with some idea about what in the hell to do.”