If We Make It Home

by Christina Suzann Nelson

  “I don’t think so. It’s just the smell. It’s like acid in the air.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.” She sets me down on a rock, and I feel the warmth of the fire on my legs.

  I blink rapidly until the world comes into a bit of focus. The sun is rising and pink clouds color the sky, casting blue shadows across the ground.

  Ireland grabs Vicky by the shoulders and gives her a hard shake. “Stop screaming,” she shouts.

  Vicky collapses into Ireland’s arms, sobbing like a little child.

  “It’s going to be okay. This isn’t forever, and we’re all fine, all right?”

  A snotty yes is muffled in Ireland’s shoulder.

  “The sun is coming up.” Ireland guides Vicky to my rock. “We can go to the waterhole and clean up.”

  My stomach shrinks. I’m sure our dinner was not the only mountain lion on the block.

  “No.” Vicky stands upright. “The book said to avoid places like that at dawn and dusk. This is bad enough without trying to play hide-and-seek with bear and cougar we can’t even see.” She wipes the back of her hand across her swollen eyes. “Can someone hand me the water jug?”

  Now I’m really sick. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”

  She stomps her foot, presses her hands into her sides and whips her head around to face me. She’s off by about three feet, but I’m not going to mention that right now either. “How could you? That was so selfish.”

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I’ll say you weren’t. If I’m blinded from this, well … You’ll hear from my attorney.”

  “Ha.” I jump up. “Good luck finding a lawyer or a court for that matter out here in Skunkville. And for your information, you can have everything I’ve got. That consists of two t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a pair of pants at least three inches too short and five inches too big around the waist for you.”

  “Fine,” Vicky says. “I’ll take them, and the clothes you’re wearing. I can make a tent from my winnings. My own tent. Where I don’t have to share space with takers.”

  “You’re calling me a taker?” I push way into her personal space. “Is this about Mark again? You have a lot of nerve. No wonder your husband doesn’t want you.”

  Ireland steps closer to us. “Are you two serious? Did the skunk spray make you nuts? Just knock it off.”

  My emotions are a jumble. One minute I want to hug Ireland and Vicky, the next, I’m spitting insults at her face.

  Vicky uncrosses her arms. “I’m sorry. I lost it. But you didn’t need to yell at me.”

  “Yes, I did. But I’m over it now. How are your eyes?”

  “Terrible, but I can see.”

  Ireland clicks the safety on the gun and returns it to her waistband. “We need to do better if we’re going to get the two of you home to your families.”

  My family. I imagine Mark seeing me verbally attack Vicky and flush with shame. Ireland is proving to be more levelheaded than we are. Who does Ireland have missing her at home? I’m sick with what I’ve neglected. And I’m sick with what I’ve taken for granted. I have everything.

  Chapter 16

  VICKY

  It’s still cold when we get to the waterhole, but I jump in without taking time to adapt. The icy chilled water soothes my burning eyes. I gulp, drinking until my stomach is so bloated I can’t stand the tension.

  The smell seems better, but my olfactory senses may have surrendered in the Skunk Wars. It’s possible that I’ll never enjoy the scents of Thanksgiving dinner, fresh picked roses, or baby shampoo ever again. Permanent damage.

  My body shivers.

  Ireland and Jenna sit next to me. I imagine we look like three women soaking away our troubles in the warm springs at a resort, but we’re not warm, and this isn’t relaxing.

  “What are we going to do?” My voice is soft. The tissue in my throat so raw and angry, it’s like I’ve been screaming at a football game for days.

  Neither of them answer. Hope is running out of us, and God hasn’t shown up with a miracle yet. Matters continue to get worse each hour. My stomach growls. I’d love another piece of cougar meat. And I hope no one ever finds out that I ate a cat, and I liked it. That’s one of the many secrets we’ll share if we ever get out.

  I watch Ireland drip water off her fingertips onto her arm. She stuck to her guns last night and only ate beans. It must be killing her. A tear prickles behind my eye. Have I ever felt so passionately about something that didn’t benefit me in some way? Even my service to the Lord serves me. So is it really service?

  There’s a shadow at the edge of my vision. I turn my head and my breathing stops. A man, dressed head to toe in fur, scratches the top of his matted head with a stick. Around his waist a vine ties his clothing tight. It must be years since his last shave, maybe tens of years.

  I tap Jenna with my finger and point in his direction. He hasn’t seen us, but by the way he’s wrinkling his nose, I can tell he’s picked up our odor.

  Jenna’s expression goes wild. She nudges Ireland, points to her eyes and then to the place where we killed the cougar. “I saw him yesterday,” she whispers in my ear.

  His head extends higher, and he looks around. Then he spots us.

  “Wait,” I say as he backs toward the trees. “We need your help. We’re lost.” I stand and step from the water. Cold rushes my body, and I convulse with a violent shiver.

  He won’t make eye contact with me, only continues backward, some kind of grunting coming from his throat.

  “Please.” Jenna is beside me. “Show us how to get out of here. We won’t hurt you. We just want to get home to our families.”

  He leans forward, squinting at us, taking us in one at a time.

  I reach for my pack and pull out the cell phone that doesn’t start up anymore and the flashlight, another casualty of the raccoon. “Here. You help us find our way out, and we’ll give you these.” I hold them out for him to see.

  He backs away, cringing as if he’s Superman and I’m offering him kryptonite. Then he bursts through the brush and down the hill, sticks cracking and crunching with each leap. I run after, but he moves like he’s part of the wild and I’m … not. Giving up, I turn back.

  “What was that?” Ireland stares, unblinking.

  “I knew it.” Jenna pushes past me. She cups her hands around her mouth. “Wait. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Really?” I shake my head. “You’re worried the crazy guy who lives in the woods, probably with the skulls of all the lost people before us, is scared of three half-starved, bruised, cut up, and stinking-like-a-skunk women?”

  She turns back. “I saw him yesterday. That’s why I went ahead without you both. That’s why I ran into the cougar.”

  “So, he’s a real gentleman, huh?” I’m less than impressed by this guy. He probably couldn’t help us if he wanted to.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about him?” Ireland asks.

  Jenna’s mouth cocks up in a half smile. “I thought he was just in my imagination. I was so hungry and thirsty. I assumed I made him up, and I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you both thinking I couldn’t hack it.”

  “We know you can’t.” Ireland nudges Jenna with her elbow. “None of us can. But we will anyway.”

  “With the help of God.” Jenna runs a finger over her cracked lips.

  “Then I’m in good company. God wouldn’t let you and Vicky die out here.” Ireland smiles, but her eyes are deep with sadness.

  What happened to the girl who taught me who God is?

  IRELAND

  Today is like giving in to the reality of our deaths. We don’t hike. We don’t break down our camp. We’re utterly lost, waiting for someone to save us. And it’s like waiting for a miracle. They never actually arrive.

  This morning my stomach was growling like a hungry bear, but now even my digestive system has given up. There hasn’t been a rumble from my belly in hours. And it’s not because I’ve eaten. In a panic yesterday, while
Jenna and Vicky were hacking up that mountain lion, I ate my last granola bar. And then we finished the beans.

  “I wish we had some cards.” Jenna sits on the edge of a log, looking into the fire pit. She hasn’t moved in at least an hour.

  The scent of skunk has softened. When I walk near the shelter, I’m hit by the lingering burnt rubber smell that still hangs on. It doesn’t sting my eyes, so I think we’ll make it through that little disaster with no more than another bad memory.

  Vicky returns from a billionth march around the campsite. “If Glenda said we were coming to the waterfall, then there must be a path out of here. Why haven’t we found it? The only place that looks like it’s been walked on is the trail we came in on.”

  I scratch at my scalp, bumpy with dirt and forest fragments. “Could be that somewhere along the line, the path to the truck tied in to the path we were on. Or maybe it’s farther past the waterfall and the original plan was to come at it from the other side.” It’s so hard to pull my thoughts together to form sentences. My mind swirls and jumps from one idea to the next. Do we wait on the old guy to return? Do we keep moving? Do we start to dig our graves? “Or we could be at a different waterfall altogether.”

  A cold wind whips up the side of the hill and across my bones. I’m too tired to shiver, too weak to pull my sweater over my head. There won’t be many more choices for me. I think this is day five, or maybe it’s day six. Either way, we’re close to the time when we should be home. And I’m counting on a search party for Vicky and Jenna to save my life because I don’t have the strength or the desire to save it myself.

  JENNA

  I am the master at fire starting. It’s a superpower given to the one least likely. It’s something I can do that no one else here has managed. In a weird way, it makes me feel more alive than I have in months. Isn’t that funny? I feel more alive when I’m facing my death. Irony, I suppose.

  We kept the cooked cougar meat in the bean can under the surface of the creek today so it remains cold, but I’m still leery about eating it again. Of course, we have little choice. We could go without a meal or three, but tomorrow the meat may be bad. And we don’t have much to waste. Butchering a cougar with a hatchet isn’t efficient.

  I stick the rest of the meat in the pot and pour some water in. Ireland has found a few mushrooms. Some of those go in the pot too. I’m tempted to throw them all in, forcing her to have some meat. She looks depleted. Her skin is pale all the time, and when she stands, she has to steady herself. I’m scared.

  She sits on the edge of our campfire, peeling a mushroom and eating the thin pieces. The sun is starting to fade, but we still have good light. We decided to stay here for another night. Where else could we go? We’ve lost ourselves in this canyon. We vaguely know which way is east and west, but none of us can commit to the direction of the truck.

  “Ireland, please have some meat. It’s so much better than you think.” I pierce a hunk and hold it out toward her.

  “It’s not that. I’m sure it tastes fine. It’s just what I do. If I eat the meat, then what’s left of me if we make it out of here?”

  “I won’t pretend to understand.” I keep stirring. “But I’ll beg if it will do any good.”

  Vicky drops a pile of wood at my side. “I’m lying down for just a moment. It’s my turn first for watch tonight.”

  I nod, but don’t say anything. I’d much rather stay awake on watch than be woken by another skunk.

  With Vicky in the shelter, now’s as good a time as any I’ll ever have. I sit on the ground, poking the fire with a stick. “Ireland, what happened to you? Why don’t you believe in God anymore? Why didn’t you ever have a family?” I’m way out of line, but who knows what adventure awaits us next. There may not be a tomorrow for Ireland, or me, or Vicky.

  “What makes you think I wanted a family? That’s your dream. Maybe it’s not for everyone.” She’s chosen not to respond to the first question and her answer to the second seems convenient. Even after twenty-five years, I know the core of Ireland, and I know she’s not being honest with herself or with me.

  “Sure. Not everyone wants a family. But you wanted one more than any of us. And you deserved one.”

  She blinks fast. “No. I didn’t. It’s so much more complicated than you think.”

  “Try me. I’m a good listener, I’ve been told. In fact, I’ve been told that by you.” I offer her a smile, and it strengthens me that she returns it.

  “It might be better to go to the grave with my secrets.”

  I’m sure we all have those things we don’t want anyone to know, but for me, they seem less relevant when tomorrow is actually in question.

  “Do they hurt you? Keeping them bottled inside. Is it the way you’re choosing to punish yourself, like walking away from God?”

  She tilts her head. “I’m not walking away from God. He didn’t want anything to do with me. It’s always been that way. When we were all together, it was easy to believe that I was loved, and then easy to believe God was looking out for me, for all of us. But the real world is different. When you get out there, you become the person you’re born to be. You’re your parents’ child, all the way through.”

  “No.” I rub her arm. “That can’t be true.”

  Her eyes go cold. “I have a son. He lives with his father, and I haven’t seen him since he was a baby. Now, what kind of mother do you think I am?”

  My stomach turns. She’s hit me where I’m soft. How can a mother walk away from her child? I remember the pain of my father leaving. It’s still so real, I could reach out and physically hold on to it. That’s been well over twenty years. And I was a grown woman. Those are the wounds that never seem to heal.

  “What would make you do that?”

  “I’m my mother’s child, Jenna.”

  “Your mother works at a bakery in Canada. What does she have to do with this?” My voice is rising out of my control.

  Ireland tips her head, looking at me from an angle. “That mother never existed. My mother is a drug addict. The last time I saw her, I was ten. We’d been reunited by children’s services four times by then. Four times I was taken out of safe homes to live with my mother until she chose heroin over me again.”

  I’m shaking from the inside, shocked at the story that’s unfolding. Ireland’s past never made sense. The pieces didn’t fit together the way she told them. But deep in the corners of my crazy imagination I couldn’t have thought up this truth.

  “I didn’t know my dad. I’m just a statistic. A foster child who aged out of the system.” She stands, looking away from me, and walks away from the clearing.

  I should follow, tell her that I love her, that God loves her, but I can’t move. I’m a coward who stays by the safety of the fire. My fire.

  The glow of the sun behind the filter of clouds sinks below the horizon. I add more wood and continue watching the crackle of the flames. The meat has boiled until I’m sure not even one microscopic bacteria could survive. I wonder if any of the vitamins or protein will still be in there.

  The coffee pot sits near my feet, the meat cooling in the air which has turned icy. I scoot closer to the heat.

  “Where’s Ireland?” Vicky settles next to me. The crease along the side of her cheek tells me she was able to sleep for a while. Unfortunately, that means she probably didn’t overhear my conversation with Ireland. Do I have to tell her what I know or is that gossip?

  I shrug. “She walked that way.” I motion with my head to the part in the trees where I last saw our friend. A woman I really have never known.

  “How long ago?” Vicky reaches into the pot and takes a misshaped chunk of cougar then tries to tear the end off with her teeth.

  “Not long after you laid down.”

  Vicky drops her cougar-holding hand to her lap. “That’s been a couple hours, I’d guess, by the sky. Didn’t you ask where she was going?”

  I shake my head.

  “Was she upset? Was she sick?” Vick
y gets to her feet. “We need to find her. That’s too long to be gone. It’s dark.”

  “Duh.” It’s about as mature as any third-grade response, but it’s the best I can do.

  “Are you kidding me? That’s what you have to say?” She shrugs her shoulders then stomps away from the fire. “Ireland?”

  The only answer is the hollow hoot of an owl.

  “Are you coming?” Vicky’s question is a command. I don’t have a choice. I get up, grab a piece of meat and follow her. With the cougar in my mouth I won’t have to answer any more questions. No amount of chewing will break up this culinary disaster.

  “We can’t go far because we could get lost and freeze to death, but we can’t leave Ireland out here alone. I don’t know what to do.” She looks at me as if she cares about my opinion. When I don’t answer she shakes her head and takes another set of careful steps into the darkness. “Ireland. You need to answer us.”

  “I’m here.” The voice is flat, uncaring. Like a mother who would leave her child behind. I hate that my mind went there so easily. “Sorry. I’m going to bed.” She bumps past us and soon we’re back within the glow of the campfire. Ireland doesn’t say another word before climbing into the shelter.

  “What was that about?” Vicky brushes off the surface of a rock before sitting on it.

  She thinks she has the right to know everything.

  Chapter 17

  JENNA

  After completing my morning ritual, a trip to the trees to relieve myself, I come back into camp and stand near Ireland and Vicky. Enough of this waiting to die. I have a home to return to and a life to salvage. I cock my hip and extend my head as high as I can stretch. “We need a plan, and we need it now. We can’t stay here waiting for winter. What happens next time a storm hits?”

  “A plan for what, though?” Vicky seems wired, probably by the mention of planning. “That guy, Grizzly Bob or whatever you want to call him, he must know the way out. I can’t believe he lives out here like an animal year-round.”

  Ireland digs a hole in the dirt with her boot. “I don’t know. He didn’t look like the kind of man who works in a bank during the off-season.”