I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore. I put on all the clothes I could find, packed up a sack of food, and headed out into the woods. The forest was perfectly still, and not easy to travel, because there are bushes everywhere and you have to fight your way through them. I left a couple hours before dawn, using the stars to help me find south, and I kept walking past mid day.
I’d been walking for several hours before I smelled the smoke. You can’t see much in the forest cause the trees are so thick, and I think that’s what saved me. That, and shyness. I haven’t spoken since Craig died, and it wasn’t like he and I talked that much. I sat there for what must have been a half hour, just watching them.
They have a tiny little trailer, white with aluminum siding and patches of plywood over the windows. The roof is corrugated tin. It must not keep the heat in well, because water was dripping down icicles on the edge of the roof. There were at least four kids, mean eyed things wearing nothing more than rags. Here I was, freezing to death wearing every piece of clothing I owned, and these kids were gathering twigs wearing what looked like jeans and overcoats. They had fur hats on, but except for one kid who had a blue scarf, they wore nothing over their faces, and everyone’s mouth had frozen into a half sneer of mucus. The woman had a baby on her hip, swaddled in rags, and she screeched orders at the children, swatting them when they moved too slowly. There was a man there too, carrying a hatchet. He yelled at her, and she yelled back, screaming louder and louder until he raised the hatchet, at which point she got quiet.
They didn’t look friendly at all, but I was so lonely I thought about calling out to them. I sat hunched, shivering behind the fir tree, trying to make up my mind, until I saw something that made me feel even colder.
Brian’s glasses, glinting in the puddle that formed under the roof.
And suddenly it occurred to me that Josh had owned a blue scarf.
I turned and slipped away as silently as my terrified body would let me. I ran as much as I could. I don’t think they saw me. I hoped they didn’t see me. Please God let them not have seen me.
I thought I might have gotten lost on the way back, but I’d made a large enough path in the snow that I was able to follow it even in the moonlight. It took me hours. Maybe it was far enough away. Maybe it would snow and cover my tracks.
Inside the house it smelled sweet and warm. I put my hands and feet in the oven to get feeling back in them, tolerating the agony of recirculation in silence. Who knows how far sound carries in the woods?
Right now I’m sucking on candy and shivering next to the oven door. Here in the house it feels safer. It will snow overnight. My tracks will be covered. They won’t follow me.