Stranded

by Matthew P. Mayo

  And that led me to the most frightening thought of all—what shall I do with the soiled cloths? They will no doubt carry a more pungent scent than I am able to detect. And that means animals, the lions and wolves, will be drawn to my camp more than ever.

  Not for the last time do I wonder why I had the misfortune to be born a girl. I am tired writing this and my day has just

  begun.

  DECEMBER ?, 1849

  * * *

  I have done what I vowed to myself I would not do. (And who else would I vow to?) I read over what I wrote three days before today. It was a Saturday, I think. In truth I have muddled the days of the week. My method of keeping track was to be a simple one, a notch for each day, cut in the stick I fashioned from a stout branch for this purpose.

  I used Papa’s skinning knife, careful to nick only the rod and not my own hand. Where would that leave me? A wound in this vast place? Bah, one notion leads to another. Back to my first thought. I reread what I wrote days before, something I try not to do. It is so muddled, little more than a waste of paper and effort.

  Later the same day and it is so cold, I cannot continue to fritter words nor ink nor pencil nor the breath it takes to warm my fingers. I daren’t leave them long outside my mittens.

  There is one finger, the one that points on my left hand, or more to the point, ha ha, it has gone a dark shade of violet, like a bruise. Though I prefer to think of it as one of the many colors that make up a sunset. A pretty one, though, as in summertime, when it is still warm, so warm, that only the lightest of clothes are necessary. The finger does not like to move when I tell it to. This is troublesome. I have heard tell of people losing parts of themselves to the cold. If ever there was a person in danger of this, it is me.

  I have nothing more to say tonight. Except that soon, the cold wind will become padding, scuffing feet. And they will become grunting breaths that become that devil of a wolf or whatever it is my mind conjures.

  Then I will sleep no more until morning, when there will be too much to do—fetch wood for the fire, as that is all there is to do. Unless I can make up some housekeeping. Yes, that will be a good thing to think about while I try to sleep. Any sleep will be welcome before the wolf in my mind won’t let me. Mama, I need you here. I will think on you instead of housekeeping.

  LATE DECEMBER, 1849

  * * *

  I am certain that Christmas has come and gone. I always enjoyed it, but the thought of it now saddens me so, I cannot even think of it, let alone write of it. When I think of you all, Mama and Papa and William and Thomas, I am heartsick. You are somewhere, all of you, without me. And I am here, without you. It is too much and I fear it will never become less so.

  JANUARY ?, 1850

  * * *

  It is a new year, must be by now, and I hate being in here, in this dark, cramped, smoke-filled hovel. And yet I find myself not wanting to leave it. For when I force my way through the many safeguards I have set up, when I crawl up through the snow to the surface my head will be swiped clean from my shoulders. It will be a bear or a lion or a wolf or some other beast no one in the world has ever seen, except me. But as it will be the very last thing I see, it will not matter so much.

  JANUARY, 1850

  * * *

  I dreamed last night of Calbert Bentley. I call him Cal because I have never liked the name Calbert. Sounds like someone with a long neck whose teeth are so far-spaced he could eat corn through a picket fence. That’s one of Papa’s not-so-kind comments, but he mostly keeps them to himself.

  Of all the people I could spend my time dreaming of, it is funny that he should come to mind. But I’ve come to realize that when it’s asleep, the mind is a curious thing. My dreams here are all one way or all the other—exciting and pleasant or dark and filled with unspoken things that make me fearful of going back to sleep. But the dream of Cal was a good one. It should be, as he flattered me like no other.

  I have not written about him before now because I have forced myself to think of other things when his face came to mind. He was a handsome boy. I say was because I doubt I shall ever see him again.

  As with the farm and Mama’s grave, my thoughts of him are best tucked away, and if not forgotten then certainly laid in the hope chest in my mind. It is the one with all the memories of Mama. And of other moments, such as that time I was alone at the pond, and saw the baby ducks. One of them mistook me for its own mama.

  It came so close I touched its wee downy back with one finger, then its real mama called. Before it paddled away, it looked at me, and I swear it looked confused. I think I was, too, for a moment.

  That’s where my mind’s portrait of Cal Bentley has been, until last night. He came unbidden into my dream and everything that happened that Saturday afternoon in late May happened all over again.

  In my dream we knew we would be staying on the farm forever (that is the caution of dreams, they are far too safe and tidy). This time when Cal stood by the oak along what we called Teacher’s Lane, which leads back to school and church and town, he looked as if he had been waiting on me forever and would have kept on waiting, even if I never happened along.

  But in my dream I had come along, and I was happy to see him. That is about all there was to it. The feeling was a nice one, and we were two happy people. What really happened that day has stayed with me, as if I experience it over and over for the first time. And it still leaves me feeling torn in two.

  I had known Cal for a long time, nearly all my life, and had always paid him little heed. He was always there, someone to josh with at the schoolyard, that sort of thing. But on that day in late May, I was walking back home from the mercantile where I’d gone to fetch cinnamon sticks for baking, and leather scraps and a tack needle for Papa. Clem’s patch-covered harness was in need of another mending. In truth it was more mend than collar, but Papa is always talking about making things wear out before you give up on them. That is sound thinking.

  I spied Cal from a long way off as I walked down the road. I took my time, figuring he’d walk with me the rest of the way, at least to his parents’ farm. He looked odd, sort of leaning against the tree but not really leaning, like he was trying too hard to lean. It made more sense then, so you’ll have to take my word for it. And since I am the one who will read this, I reckon I’ll know what I meant. Bah!

  I should have known something was off right then and there.

  But I can be thick in the bean at times, as Papa says of Thomas, before he pats him on the head like he’s a confused puppy.

  The closer I walked toward Cal, the more jittery he got. I swear it was like watching someone who knows he’s about to catch what for when he’s done something bad. And then I recalled all the times he had joined Thomas in calling me Miss Prim and pinching the back of my arm in class—they gave me purple welts—so I slowed down.

  I finally wandered up alongside the tree and stopped, shifted the straps of my tote sack to my other shoulder. “Cal Bentley, what on earth are you up to? Seems to me you ought to have better things to do than stand beside a dusty road looking all fidgety.”

  He stepped down off the roadside out from under the shade of the tree. Then he took off his hat! I was about to tell him he needed to have his hair tended to—it was spidery and too long. He worked that brim between his hands, round and round, getting nowhere except in circles.

  “Put that hat back on your head, Cal. Blonde as you are you’ll get a sunburn right quick.”

  He looked at the hat as if wondering how it came to be in his hands. “Oh, oh yes,” he said, but he still didn’t put it on his head.

  That’s when I knew for certain something wasn’t right with him. I stopped funning him. “Cal, is something wrong? Are your folks ill?”

  “No, no, nothing like that . . . Janette. I was hoping . . .” Then he went silent again, looked back toward the tree, at the road, toward the hills behind me, anywhere but at me.

  “Cal Bentley, I don’t understand what it is you’re u
p to, but you’re acting like Thomas, and even he doesn’t act so squirly most of the time.”

  “Janette,” he said again, swallowed, then moved another step closer.

  He was still a good arm’s length away. Right then he looked taller to me. I hadn’t seen him in a month or more, come to think on it. He’d been busy planting with his pa and uncles, not in school much. But there he was, grown bigger somehow, like his shirts didn’t fit him so well over the shoulders.

  I noticed such things because I had to add gussets to Will’s shirts as he grew to be a young man. And then it dawned on me that’s what was happening to Cal. He was growing up. I had always been taller than him, now I never would be again. And it hadn’t taken long.

  He cleared his throat. I’ll give him this much, he tried to look me in the eyes, but the sun was behind me, so I think that’s what made it difficult for him. When he finally started talking, his words came out fast, each new word stomping on the one before it. I had a time following him for a few seconds.

  “Janette . . . I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Only I need to talk with you before I can talk with your father.”

  “My papa? Why, Cal, if you want to talk with Papa, just—” “No, I mean I, aw.” He smacked his hat against his leg. “Hang fire, Janette, I only wanted to know if you wouldn’t be too offended if I came to call on you one day soon.”

  “Call on me? Why, whatever for, Cal?” And do you know, at that very moment, I still didn’t understand what he was asking me. But as I watched his face redden even deeper, like a hammer-struck thumb, and saw his blue eyes sort of lose their shine, that’s when I understood what he was on about. And then it was my turn to go all red in the face.

  I saw what he found so interesting in the dirt road at our bare feet. And when I was in mid-blush and about to say something to encourage him, I felt the weight of the burlap satchel on my shoulder, and I remembered the trip west. I knew

  I had no right to plant seeds of hope in Cal’s mind. That would be unfair.

  Now I realize that what I said next was even more unfair. I should have told him we were leaving. We hadn’t told many people at all, though I assumed he would have heard. Everyone always knew their neighbors’ business, anyway.

  “I’m sorry, Cal. I . . . I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  And that was it, that was all I said to him. Like a shamefaced child I hugged that bag tight to my belly and walked fast all the way home without once looking back. I spent the time jumping back and forth from one feeling to another.

  Firstly, I was angry with Papa for making us go. Then at myself for being so foolish in front of Cal. Then at the sky for being such a pretty blue on such a horrible day. Then at the sparrow hawk flapping then falling like a dropped stone to snatch up some poor field mouse.

  The next moment my guts felt like a ball of snakes writhing around at the thought that Cal Bentley wanted to pay a social call on me. On me? Me! The way he reddened and lacked for words, he wasn’t funning me.

  Blonde, blue-eyed Cal, whose father was a farmer and wheelwright and mother was always so kindly, though she often came down with the vapors—Papa always smiled when he said that. Cal, who I had known forever and a day, Cal who had gotten taller and older-looking since I last saw him. Or at least since I last paid attention to him. Had I ever?

  And now, as I write this in my journal, sitting in the doorway of my nest, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, not yet to Oregon, not anywhere I know by name, alone and nothing but alone, now when it is far too late, I find myself thinking about Cal. I wonder if he ever thinks of me.

  The last time I saw him was the morning we left. He stood beside his parents. I had already climbed up into the wagon. There were perhaps a dozen people there to wave us off, not including Cousin Merdin and his brood.

  Right then I wished for Cal to run to the wagon and tell Papa no, no, this is not right, tell him he needed to speak with him. And part of me said no, that would not be right, don’t let it happen.

  My second wish was the stronger one. And I hate that. Not because now I am alone, but because when it came down to it, neither Cal nor I had the courage to do anything more than offer a weak wave to each other. We were two people who had been friends our entire lives. Surely that held some meaning, some importance to us. But it did not.

  He turned away east to his parents’ farm, and I turned in my seat and faced west, not looking back. Like that day I left him standing in the road, his old brown felt hat in his hand, and his clean shirt and messy yellow hair. And those pretty blue eyes.

  He had the courage then to hint at what he had in mind, his deepest thoughts about me. And I had the courage, I see now, to do what I thought was right. But knowing that didn’t make it easy then, and it doesn’t make me feel any better now.

  JANUARY ?, 1850

  * * *

  Yesterday, a break in the cutting wind and pellets of ice filled me with boldness. I ventured further away from camp than I had since my second day here. I wonder if I would have been better off had I been lost then. Such speculation is a fool’s game, still I get up to it far too often for my own good. Perhaps I am a fool. Who is to debate the issue with me? The crows? The mice? The wolves? The wind? These cursed mountains?

  What I was thinking yesterday, I will never know. I blame the weather and my need to stretch my legs. The nest may well be snug, but it is also dark and small and stifling. And if I am to be honest, it smells bad, like the cave of an animal. Which is fair, for that is what I am at present.

  I am an animal in a dark hole in the earth, with all my sweated-up clothes, the socks and boots offending the worst. Save, perhaps, for the stink of meat always on the edge of greening, or the off scent of burnt fat dribbling and mixing with the sharpness of wood smoke.

  Smoke curls its way into everything, the cold clouding of my own stale breath, the low stink of my thunder pot, though I empty it each morning well away from the nest. And there is the ground beneath it all that I long ago gave up on keeping clean with fresh boughs. They have since been worked into the churn of frozen muck beneath my booted feet.

  I do my best each day to air it, to clean what I am able, but the daylight hours are short and my strength has ebbed in keeping with the thinning of my arms and legs.

  “Weight is all,” Papa had said when loading the wagon. “We will be able to replenish our supplies, first at small-town mercantiles, then as we roll westward, at trading posts, where we will purchase the goods we cannot shoot or gather. But if we were to load the wagon at the outset with all the foodstuffs we would need, especially with your brothers’ appetites”— here I recall Papa’s eyebrows rising as if he had learned he had come into a vast fortune—“why, the poor team would never be able to pull the wagon a dozen feet, let alone thousands of miles.”

  And that is why we had barely enough dried beans, coffee, cornmeal, flour, and sugar by the time we stopped in these mountains. Papa reckoned we were not many more weeks’ travel from the place we sought. I am the one who has paid for that judgment.

  It is the dank hole in which I live, and my need to crawl up and out of it at every opportunity to see the light of day and feel the snow crunch beneath my boots that drove me out along a path I had not followed much beyond the edge of my woodgathering place. But yesterday I did.

  The light, though gray, was plentiful, the hour early, and the air cold enough to brace me, but not so frigid it hurt my lungs to take it in. Most days lately have not been like that, so I indulge in outings when I can.

  I deliberated on whether to take along the shotgun, and decided I had better. There is always the chance I will spot something worth shooting, or at least I might frighten off a menacing critter. Had I known the truth in that, I would have stayed put, stink or no.

  The trail is little more than a sightline I stick to. But I commit to memory waypoints I know will lead me back to camp should a sudden storm fill in my boot tracks. Since much of this place is sparsely treed, I mark
my route with thin branches and dried grasses as long as my arm that I stick upright in the snow every little while. In the trees I snap branches, but as that is how I also gather my tinder sticks, there is little point in marking a trail in such a manner.

  For a long time I dithered on hacking a slash mark in tree bark with the knife. I imagined the trees react much the same as I would were someone to cut on my legs with a blade! But the thought of perishing in a squall within trekking distance of my nest gave me pause.

  I now make two cuts in tree bark. One straight in, at chest height—high enough, I hope, to surmount the height of the winter’s snow—and another downward thrust to meet the first. In that manner I am able to make a simple two-cut blaze on a tree. Sometimes it takes me three. I always hold my breath whilst I cut, and then I apologize to the tree.

  Back to my breathy tale. (It is worth it provided my pencil holds out!)

  It was slow going, even though I stuck to the stretches of snow where the wind keeps it thin on the ground. In this manner I picked my way along, circling, then climbing in a left-to-right fashion up a rocky hillside.

  It is curious, but when you live in one place for any length of time you come to think it is the whole of the world. That knobby slope is not far from camp, but I had not laid eyes on it.

  Pine trees of some sort jutted from it like bony fingers trembling now and again as if in a troubled sleep. The sun poked a hole in the clouds, and for long moments I enjoyed the feel of its warmth. The lightest of breezes touched my face, and I flexed my nostrils, taking in the clean, cold air.