Stranded

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Imagine in the dark, as dark as dark can be—not even moonlight or star shine can break into my little nest—something that shouldn’t be there breaks in and touches you. In the small space you have carved for yourself, something knocks into you hard enough to wake you up. I can tell you this is not a good feeling. I had heard no noise to let me know what was coming.

  Maybe I was sleeping soundly after being awake for so long with the aching, but I was more awake in that moment than I have ever been. I was so wrapped in nearly all our quilts and clothes, before I could sit up and swing my feet down off the low bunk I’d made, whatever it was raked me along my back. I yelped and shouldn’t have, I know, but it was not something I could keep from doing.

  It had dug down through the packed snow and clods of earth and canvas and lashed through my meager wall. It knew right where I was. And dark or no, I saw an arm of some sort, ripping and clawing at the air. It appeared long enough to reach across half the space of my little nest.

  I rolled from the bunk, slammed into the little stove hard enough to knock the pipe loose. Then I heard it, the same as the night before, only closer and more frightening. A growl, long and loud, started high and dropped low and kept right on growling without taking a breath.

  The shotgun, where was the shotgun? I wormed all over that little floor on my hands and knees, kicking at the quilts to get them off me, my hands shaking and me trying and not succeeding to keep from screams of my own. I scrambled in the sloppy mess that is my floor—half-frozen mud matted with dried and snapped pine boughs, clothes and bedding, a bit of canvas I had hoped would keep me from the mud.

  My hands raked in the mud looking for the shotgun while that thing’s arm sliced at the air above my bunk.

  It lashed downward and grabbed a claw full of bedding, dragged it backward toward the hole, tried to force its way further in, as if it were being born in reverse somehow. But that is fanciful thinking as I write this and not what I was thinking at the time, I assure you. I cried out, shouting and sobbing, “No! No, no, no!”

  All that did was make the thing more excited, and I saw more of that hairy leg and paw slashing through the hole. And the hole looked to be getting bigger with each second.

  In the dark my hand slapped something solid, I felt along it— the shotgun—and dragged at it, pulling it closer to me. My hands shook so badly I felt certain I would drop the thing before I could pull back on the one hammer that still worked. I finally managed it and held the big gun tight to my shoulder, barely

  recalling the one meager shooting lesson Papa had given me so long ago.

  I aimed above the bunk at the wall where I saw that arm grabbing air, knocking snow and bits of black things, what must have been my wall, slowly making the hole bigger. I saw the poles moving with the jerking and thrashing of the thing. Why I did not hear it when it had dug down for me, I also do not know. At that moment I did not care, I pulled the trigger and the shotgun clicked, nothing more.

  I screamed loud, not so much out of fear, but in raw anger. “Papa, no, don’t do this to me! No more, I can take no more!” I ranted, shouted oaths I am not sure are even words, but they are now. And all the while that beast lashed away, getting closer than ever to barging in on me.

  I realized I was spending more time cursing the gun and fumbling and pushing myself away on my backside than I was fixing the problem. I yanked on the hammer again and felt it click back once, twice. I held the gun up, aimed at that horrible lashing arm, now shoulder and chest. I closed my eyes and pulled back hard on the trigger.

  My nest exploded into millions of pieces! At least that is how it felt to me. The sound of the shotgun, something I had not heard in a small, tight space, was terrible. It filled my head with the roar of a thousand waterfalls and brass bands.

  Yet even above that packed-cotton-ticking feeling inside my head, even through the blue smoke and sputtering sparks and tiny flames of the wall and cloth from clothes I had jammed against the wall, even then I heard the roar of pain and deeprooted squealing and squawking of that beast.

  The arm, the hairy clawing brute arm, disappeared by the time the smoke cleared, but the sound had not. I saw another leg, maybe a back leg, as the thing twisted around in the small tunnel it had dug for itself.

  It kicked another cascade of snow in on my bed, but by the time I thought of shooting again, it had gone. I might have killed it had I been able to shoot again. Would that have been wise? I do not know. It would certainly have been one less animal out to kill me, one less thing to be frightened of.

  These mountains are filled with hungry animals, and I am one of them. Though not as hungry as some. I suppose my hunger should be for life, not only for food. Then again, food is life, is it not? Oh, this is all too much for my addled brain, and my head is still filled with fuzz, and it echoes with the blast of the shotgun.

  I take heart in the warm thought that I, too, have teeth, and I fight back. Now at least one of the beasts of the night knows this.

  FEBRUARY, 1850

  * * *

  I spent a lifetime of minutes waiting for dawn to come.

  Thin blades of cold light finally sneaked through the raw wound the cat and I made in my wall. The light found me still leaning against the disrupted stove. I was near frozen through. Where I’d been sitting, heat from my backside melted the icy mud of the floor and I felt as if I were sitting in my own filth.

  I was not, and God willing I never will be, that helpless. But I sat as such for too long a time, cold as sin and beyond shivering. I knew I had to stand, and right the stove to make a fire, but none of it mattered. My mind could not make my body do a thing. I forced a sound that came out not as a word, but an animal growl. Still I did not move. I am dying, I thought. This is how it feels to die from too much of something, too much cold, too much fright, too much sadness.

  One thing told me I was alive, and that was my breathing. I heard it rasping in and out of my throat, saw my breath before my face in the still air of my little hovel. As I sat thinking and not thinking, breathing, I learned, truly learned, I am alone in the world, and that I can only rely on myself.

  It is something I should have learned months ago, but until that morning after the lion attack, I believed deep in my heart that Papa and the boys would come along any minute. I was certain, as soon as I’d busied myself at some task, I would hear grass or snow crunching underfoot, and turn and see them. They would be weary but smiling, striding toward me from out of the trees.

  But that possibility died months ago. The horrible truth I have always known is that I am alone and will die here, newly fifteen years of age, not to see sixteen. All that remains is for me, Janette Riker, to make up my mind as to how long I want to live. I reckon this means I have given up on hope. So be it.

  What other thoughts should I have?

  I sat in stiff mud, shotgun in my lap, my frozen fingers gripped so tight around it I dared not move them for fear they might snap off. My left, for I am left-handed and rely on that hand more than the other, was uncovered the entire night. But it did not feel any colder than the right, which still wore the wool sock I’d pulled on when I went to sleep. I’d ripped the sock off my left when looking for the gun in the dark.

  It took some convincing, but I managed to tell myself I should not give up, at least for as long as I have food. Food means strength, and if my body has strength, my mind will have it. When I run out of food, I will have no choice about life and death. It is a simple matter, really.

  Until then, the mind needs to be fed like the body. But the mind needs fancier things than food. It needs to read and smell the fresh air, and then think about the words it reads and the air it breathes, where they come from. It needs to see birds and hear their pretty songs. It needs so much I have not thought of.

  In such a manner I convinced myself to move from my frozen spot. One twitch at a time, one movement of a toe, one fingertip. I moved my lips, then my jaw, was able to open and close it, and my eyes, too. I must hav
e blinked them all along, but it felt as if I hadn’t in years.

  I went on and on in this manner, and after a goodly while I dragged myself up off the frozen floor. At one point I grew convinced the beast was still outside, waiting to claw his way back in at me. This helped me move faster.

  I kept at it and managed to stand. I am certain I looked like an old person, my legs all shaky and my hands aching so that I had to let go of the shotgun. The problem came when I tried to uncurl my fingers from it. I set the fingertips against the edge of the cold stove and pushed down to open up my frozen claws. It hurt mightily, and I moaned out loud, but it did the trick.

  As soon as the gun dropped to the floor, I held my hands up and breathed on them, wondering if I had ruined them forever. That would make quick work of all that fancy thinking I did earlier. As soon as the stinging needle feeling ran up and down my fingers I suspected I was not going to lose the use of them.

  Finally I was able to climb out of the nest. And I was glad I did, for the sun was up high, and though it was a cold day, the light cut through well enough and it warmed me like no fire could.

  There was little wind, so I built a fire up by the wagon, somewhere above where the old fire pit sleeps in the snow. There is so much snow hereabouts it doesn’t matter what is under it.

  It’s odd to build a fire in deep snow because as it burns the heat sinks the fire down until it hits whatever is at the bottom. I climbed back into the nest and pulled out two sizable hunks of salted meat and the shotgun.

  I feasted like I hadn’t eaten in months. I ate every bit, gristle and all, licked my fingers, licked clean the sticks I’d stabbed it on to cook it. All the while I kept a sharp eye for any critters that might be attracted by my feast.

  The smell of cooking meat does not attract a killing beast such as a wolf or mountain lion or bear near as much as a fresh kill. It’s the blood, I reckon. The cooking replaces that death stink with some other smell, one that beasts other than humans don’t care for.

  At least that is my theory. I don’t much care if it is agreed

  with by anyone else. It makes me feel better, so that’s all there is to it. But it did not stop me from trying to look in all directions at once. You never know when an animal will come at you.

  After I ate, I sat by the fire and lost all caution. I dozed, though for only a short time. I woke to a pretty blue sky, but with a worrying thought. I was sleeping away precious time when I should have been repairing my damaged shelter. I also needed to fix up the stove.

  Food has a way of making the hard things in life more tolerable. I hemmed and hawed and sighed and did everything I could to avoid the job at hand. I was acting like Thomas. None of it helped. So I got the axe and used it to smack loose the last of the logs I’d worked so hard to drag to camp for my firewood stores before the weather turned on me again some days back.

  I had more wood than I remembered, which was good, as I figured I’d need much of it to help plug the tunnel that foul cat dug. I managed to free up five logs, leaving me one.

  I climbed down into the hole. That gave me a creeping feeling, not only because I was right down in there where the cat had been, but because the hole it made wasn’t big enough for me to climb through into the nest if I got trapped from above. Also, it stank something awful. I thought I smelled something off earlier when I was still inside. But man alive, it was worse down in that hole.

  I got to scratching around down there, trying to wedge one of the logs in the gap it made, then patch the hole in the tarp. The dirt clods I’d spent so much time on? That cat had hauled them on out of the way like they were a child’s woodblocks.

  The stink, I soon discovered, was where that thing had fouled itself. It was frozen, so I did my best to scoop it up, blood, urine, and mess, and tossed it high up out of the hole. I’d deal with it later. Then I climbed on out and pushed the logs back in the hole.

  I felt a small amount of satisfaction by seeing all the blood in the snow from that horrible creature. Which means I did get a good lick in at least. I admit to being disappointed on not finding the cat dead, or at least a ragged, bloody part of it frozen in the snow. The trail it took on out of here, its tracks flecked with blood, is about where I thought it to be, back toward the high rocks northwest of here. I will be satisfied if it stays put in its cave and licks its wounds. I will do the same. I call a truce, you vicious cat.

  I reckon I will spend the next couple of days fetching firewood. Some of the trees, especially the wide, rooty ends, will have to be sacrificed down in the hole to line the outside of my nest. I hope that will keep out any other beasts looking to unearth me. There is the chance it will only slow them down.

  Later, near dark, I loosened all five or six layers of coats and shirts and dresses and reached back behind me. It had not ripped my shirts or dress top. My fingers are still numb, and have trouble doing my bidding, but I felt welts in the middle of my back, raised and angry. The cat’s claws had not cut into my skin when it pushed me, but it had gotten to me. In more than one way.

  That cat haunts my waking dreams. I close my eyes and I see that slashing arm, hear the screeching and growling of it.

  I will not sleep close to the wall again. I will build up more protection between me and the wall. I will sleep closer to the stove. I mostly end up all but hugging that little thing anyway.

  FEBRUARY, 1850

  * * *

  While I poked my back, feeling those welts, I also felt something else. My bones. The bumps of my backbone popping out like knots on a stick. My ribs are spaced so that I can drag my fingertips up and down them. My shoulder blades, I don’t even like to think about how they feel. Like the wings of a bird plucked bare.

  I have all but given up on stripping down over the washbasin of warmed water to bathe. Not only because it is cold as blazes, but because it makes me feel bad about myself. I always was strong, had plenty of muscle, had to deal with the boys. But now, all this wood chopping and hauling is a trial. And I cannot get ahead on sleep. I am tired all the time.

  My body is a sad thing. I fear if I ever took my clothes completely off I would look like one of those spring birds that has fallen too soon from the nest. You find them once in a while, dead or nearly so, on the ground, a mother robin swooping and fretting and hopping mad on a limb not far away. But the bony little thing isn’t going to make it, and you wonder if maybe that is nature’s way of saying something.

  I wonder, too often for my own good, if this is all a trick. If it is nature or God or whoever playing with me as if I am a curiosity before putting an end to me. I wonder.

  FEBRUARY (PERHAPS), 1850

  * * *

  It took all of my strength to climb out from under the bedding this morning. I had little choice, as there was no more warmth to be found in it than out of it. I soon learned why: The smoke hole was plugged with snow. I cleared it with much effort.

  The days are short, so I force myself out. It is good to go into the daylight and move my legs. I dare not bathe much more than my face and hands. It is that cold. And besides, I could not bear to see my body now, all bones. My hinges, as Papa calls his knees and elbows, hurt more each day. My teeth, the same. Some are loose and they bleed, and feel as if they are growing, or else the rest of me is shrinking.

  Everything about me withers and bleeds. How much blood can a body hold? How much can it give up? The teeth and the hinges ache so they keep me awake. Even the thin pleasure of sleep is taken from me.

  MARCH (THOUGH I AM UNSURE), 1850

  * * *

  I cut myself. It is far from the first time, but it is the deepest. I have the bleeding staunched finally, though this page has a few dribbles of blood on it. I smeared them off and they look brown now, like all the rest of the mud on everything else I touch. The cut hurts like the devil, but it is my own fault. I was in a rush, and now I must pay the piper, as Papa used to say.

  I have struggled with keeping an edge on the axe. I honestly don’t know why, except
maybe I am weaker than I was. I find it difficult to swing the axe, too, but that is not how I came to cut myself. As I say, I am no stranger to little cuts and stings and scrapes. I am about as blemished as a body can be, I expect.

  One bit of goodness in all this is that my homemade leather mittens have worked suitably well. I cut them out of the satchel Papa used for lugging tools. They have saved my hands a heap load of pain, I can tell you. They let me grab wood I’ve lopped without digging into my skin.

  But as to the cut I delivered to myself: I was hacking on a log like I usually do, sort of with my heels on the ground and my boot toes wedged against it. The dead tree, more of a pole, really, with the bark all but flaked off, rattled with each swing. When a dry stick like that is old it tends to put up a fight. It makes chopping tricky because it sends the axe back up again, even when you have a solid, honed edge.

  I was cutting on that springy old pole, doing what Papa called making big pieces of wood into smaller pieces of wood, also known as making firewood, and I knew I should have stopped to sharpen that blade. But I was nearly through with the pile I’d dragged out of the trees. I thought I could finish, then sharpen the axe once I was done, get it honed for tomorrow.

  I drove down with a mighty last blow, and instead of it springing outward like it had been doing, it whipped to the side. I think it was a combination of me being tired and not holding it firmly enough, plus that blade was dulled like an old tooth.

  The axe head skidded off the wood, popped askew, and caught me in the shin. I felt it dig right into the bone. Then it bounced off me and flopped to the side. I dropped the handle like it was a hot coal, and froze for a few seconds.