Stranded

by Matthew P. Mayo

  I had tried for ages to clear the roof of snow, and while I did manage to shift a goodly amount, it still leaked like a slow rainy day inside the nest. Some better solution had to be found. Since I had grown tired of being wet and cold and forever dwelling in the dark, I resolved I would once more set up my camp back in the wagon.

  It took some doing to get to it from my nest, as the mud close by the river grew deeper overnight. It was nearly to my knees. I tossed ahead of me on the path the rangiest branches left over from my recent efforts at shoring up the nest. They were ragged sticks useful for little more than stepping on. I still sunk into the muck, but found if I moved quickly I kept from disappearing. I could have lost a boot had I not stepped lively.

  Still, by the time I made it to the wagon my skirts were black. It was cold enough that mud caked in frozen clumps that swung and knocked into my legs as I walked.

  I made it to the nearest wheel. Thankfully I had taken the socks off my hands before I set out on my short but eventful ramble. I hoisted myself up and sat, leaning to one side because the seat is broken. For a few moments, the stiff breeze wound down to a tickle, and something warm and lovely touched my face like the gentlest of hot breaths. I looked up to see a thing I had not witnessed in what felt like weeks. The sun, unadorned by dark clouds!

  Gray threads of the cuffs of Papa’s woolen shirt danced on my grimy knuckles. I closed my eyes, my face bent upward. After a moment I smiled and pulled off my hat, then slid the rawhide thong out of my messy, stiff hair. I shook my head a little, not daring to tempt the devil who manages that wind.

  I sat that way for a time, let my shoulders sag, felt the heat on my cheeks. I turned my face this way and that, not daring to open my eyes for fear that precious sun might turn tail.

  It was then I heard a far-off sound, a cracking rumble to the west, from that narrow mountain cleft I had trekked so many times. I opened my eyes and looked upstream, quite sure I looked like Belle, our old hound, when I would ask her if she wanted to take a walk around the fields. She would tilt her head, her eyebrows rising together. So there I sat, performing my best confused dog pantomime.

  The sound was still there, but louder. A thunderstorm? No, this was different. I decided to get back down to the nest where I’d have a better view upriver. I had given thought to hauling some of my goods back to the wagon anyway, as the nest had proven far too wet. The task would take a month of Sundays, but time was a thing I had in abundance.

  I snugged my hat back on my head, and from inside my coat pocket I felt this very journal and pencil nub bump against me as I stood. I tugged it out—a corner caught on the pocket edge, snapped threads. I set it on the bench seat, then climbed down, splat into the muck. I tugged myself free, leaning on the wheel for support. The mud sucked at my rag-wrapped feet, but I freed them enough to climb onto my mess of branches. All the while the sound grew louder.

  I slid down the path toward the nest, reached for the curve in the root I knew would be there, the same handhold I had used all winter, gone smooth with use, and swung myself around.

  There was the river in a raggedy angle, still mostly silverwhite and topped with ice and snow, though brown rocks had prodded through for days. That meant the ice was shrinking beneath.

  As I watched, dank brown water seeped from beneath the ice up around the rocks. New cracks in the ice lengthened, widened, and filled with that brown ooze. I didn’t have long to puzzle it over. I soon realized it wasn’t the sound I had to worry about, it was the thing beneath it. It was the river.

  Imagine a huge gate blocking the river, holding back more water than you ever thought you’d see at one time. Now imagine that gate lifting and that water bursting straight at you. That is what I saw.

  My mind did its best to snap to attention, but it was like a weary soldier who has marched too long. The river, I thought. The river, of course it’s the river, flooding, rising with the melting snow. I had built too low, too close to the river and now it was all going to be over in seconds.

  Move, girl! I shouted at myself.

  I clawed my way back up the muddy bank, and I nearly made it, too. But then my rag-wrapped foot caught on a root. I swear it poked right out of the mud like an old crone’s hand, and snagged hold of me. There wasn’t much I could do, as by then the water was on me. It slammed me, foot to head, and burst over me. I was upended, pulled away from anything solid, but not for long.

  All manner of hard things poked and slammed into me, knocked me upside my head, tugged at my hair, whipped my arms in unnatural directions. I tried to scream but I was surrounded by muddy water that filled my nose and mouth and ears and eyes.

  When I thought I’d reached the end of my luck, I was shoved into a run of fast-moving water that carried me with it and stopped me from being thrashed and pulled and pushed in every direction at once. It popped my head above the water long enough for me to see I was far downstream from where I had spent my winter.

  I knew it because in that glimpse above the brown water I saw the top of the wagon ribs in the distance. Everything between me and it was a sea of brown water. I have never seen the ocean, but that’s what it must look like. Water, everywhere.

  I was dunked, then pushed up above the water again. So quiet below, yet so loud, like thunder, above. I spit water, gagged, and tried to breathe all at once. I reached to grab onto something , anything , and found myself shoved into the riverbank. Alders and spiky, mashed trees poked up in a sort of line that must have been the edge of the river. If I followed that to my right I might be able to get into shallower water.

  To my left ran the channel where the river had been—still was—though now it was a killing thing. Everything around me stunk like muck and raw earth.

  I was a sight, I am sure, coughing and retching as I grabbed for the wagging ends of a riverside tree, its top sticking out of the bubbling brown mess. Then I could move no closer—my left foot was stuck fast. I tugged and tugged, shifting my position in hopes of twisting my foot. Must have been roots. I faced downstream, and saw the white boil of floodwater far in the distance, still racing.

  I could not believe the river I had known for so long, the frozen, quiet, low thing among the rocks, could be the same as this. I hoped animals drinking downstream had more wits about them than I did. Of course they would. Wild animals are smarter than any person could ever hope to be.

  As I turned upstream, still working on freeing that foot in the bouncing, jumping root tangle beneath me, a tree came at me, bigger around than what I could circle with my arms.

  It was a dozen feet from me, spinning slowly in the flow and fixing to slam me a good one. I had nothing to protect me, no way to save myself. In seconds it would hit me hard. So I did the only thing I could do. I gulped air fast and dunked myself under once more, this time choosing to do so. I prayed I was low enough for the log to pass over me.

  It never occurred to me that the log would have horrendous branches under the water acting as rudders. But that’s what it had. Long, raking claws drove into me. I felt something push and push into my breadbasket, as Papa called his chest, then something snapped. I wasn’t sure if it was my chest caving in or the branch giving way.

  It pushed me along with it, this time underwater. I was in a world of hurt. Water filled me again and I felt whatever little edge of light I had regained slipping away, fuzzing and numbing me. I hurt less and my arms and legs stopped thrashing.

  Then the log must have rolled and spun away in a different direction. And like that I was up once more, bobbing head above water. Needless to say my foot was free, though it throbbed like a bag of stinging bees. I figured it was broken, but I didn’t care. I was alive, and thankful to be freed of whatever roots had held me, trying to make me one of their own. I pictured a tangle of my bones snagged in roots, picked clean by fishes and whatever else was down there.

  I thrashed and flailed and tried to recall how to swim. To my right, maybe fifty feet away but coming up fast, was a slope of grassy, snow
y riverbank.

  For every dragging stroke I made toward it I was pulled downstream another thirty feet or more. Still, I made for the bank. I decided I could not let the water win, not when I was so close.

  Sooner than I expected, my feet touched something, bounced off, touched again. It was the bottom, and with each reach and pull I made through that rushing water, I felt more land beneath my feet. Soon I was touching the river bottom with each step.

  And a good thing, too, as I could not last much longer. It was a race between me and the water. Would I make it to safety before my body gave out? As soon as I let that thought worm its way into my brain, I grew angry with myself, an emotion I am familiar with, having lived cheek by jowl with it for so long.

  I collapsed sooner than I ought, but there was nothing for it. As played out as I was, and despite all my talk of feeling a strength inside me, I was willing to lie there and let the water, warm in the shallows, bubble up and around my face. I had been so wet of late, the feeling of more water sliding into my nose, plugging up my ears, and clamming into my eyes didn’t much bother me any longer.

  That would have been the end of me had the thing not touched me, nuzzled up to me like I was a mother and it was fixing to suckle.

  I say “thing” because that is all I could think of at the time. In truth it was not an unpleasant feeling, this warm, weighted soft . . . thing. There’s that word again, but that is what I thought as I lay face down in the water willing myself to give up and die.

  But the thing kept touching me, bumping up against me as if to get my attention. I let go of the notion of dying, and with all the strength God has given me on this mortal world, I lifted my face from the water. Mud, ice, and muck creamed together, drizzled down my cheeks. I looked to my left side, for that’s where the thing was.

  I screamed.

  Let me tell you, nothing revives a near-dead girl quicker than a scream. Especially one from her own self. With my arms behind me, I churned in the mud to get away from that soft, warm thing. Then I saw what it was . . . a freshly dead animal. Only I didn’t know at the time it was dead. I saw a fanged snout, black lips pulled back over red-black gums, long curvy teeth, white, gone yellow at the root, one had snapped in half. The eye stared so like a person’s, as if to tell me I’d best prepare myself because it was fixing to lay into me and peel flesh from bone.

  But it didn’t move. Not of its own strength, anyway. The unending push and slop of the water moved it. Finally I looked away, knowing it was dead.

  Though the river was still a mighty snake of brown filth, pulsing and thrashing, I had been lucky enough in my unwitting way to have steered myself into a side channel. I am inclined to think it’s called an oxbow. I may be incorrect.

  A gust of wind and a rush of current nudged the dead thing into me once more. I admit I yelped again, and did my best to crawl from it. But this time I did not take my eyes off it. I saw it for what it was, the carcass of a dog of some sort, perhaps a wolf or coyote.

  It looked to have died fighting , filled with anger and determination and a lack of fear. None of which I felt. I had, after all, been willing to let myself drown. Then along came that poor creature, nudging into me with its open-face snarl, staring me down.

  I raised a toe to nudge it. The body spun slowly, bobbing, the muddy water edging up, puckering its fur and washing over its unblinking brown eye. As it floated free, bobbing near me, I saw it was not full grown. Likely it had been caught unaware, maybe snug in a den, then unearthed by water and thrashed beyond its will to live.

  Wouldn’t you know it? Tears like I had not felt in a month of forevers ran down my mud-packed face. I tried to wipe them but only succeeded in cramming more mud into my eyes. That stung and I cried some more because it all was so unfair, and the whole while the poor half-grown wolf lay in the shallows staring at me.

  Pretty soon I decided I needed to do something, anything that was a boldness, a defiance toward that river, toward the mountains, toward this entire place.

  I dragged myself off my backside and faced the river, as if I did not trust it—which I most certainly do not. I plunked down on snow and poking grasses. The dead critter stared at me. I stared back. Then I pushed myself to my feet, wobbly at first. I reckoned I took more of a knock-around than I first thought, but I waded back in the ten feet or so to the sodden mess of fur and teeth and grabbed it at the shoulder. The skin was still loose and its body limp. It had not been dead for long.

  I dragged it up to the knob of high ground I had seen from the river, and laid it at the top. It was the sanest thing I could think of doing at the time. It was a dead beast, I know, and maybe its parents were my tormenters, but they did so because they had young. This one, maybe others.

  All I could think of was how alike that little wolf and I were, both half-grown, both snug in our dens, both taken by surprise by something doing its best to kill us off. I was still sobbing, for the wolf and for me. I deserved it, and I reckon the wolf did, too.

  I knelt by the young thing, even younger-looking out of the water, its dark coat matted with mud. I patted it a time or two more then pushed myself back upright, an old woman long before my time, and made my way slow as I’d ever moved back toward the only thing I had left in the world, that old wreck of a wagon. I hoped it was still there.

  MARCH ?, 1850

  * * *

  March is for suckers, as Papa says. I heard him mutter that my entire life, whenever that month came up in the almanac. I never gave it much thought beyond the fact that he never looked happy when saying it. As I stared out through the cracked and sprung ribs of the wagon, past the flapping, ragged canvas I had dragged out of the swollen river. A cold wind bit at me like a starving rat. Yes, I finally knew what Papa meant about March.

  I was looking at what he always looked at when he said it—a heavy, wet snowstorm. It pulled the pins right out from under me, a sucker for having fallen for the allure of spring.

  As far as the jutting peaks in the distance, I saw nothing but a blue-white land. And it was all snow. Nearly to my knees. The river was even shrouded by it, puffed clumps as pretty in the sun as a confection I could only dream of baking. Yet, despite the deep heartache I felt at seeing all that cursed snow clinging to everything, I knew it could not last long. The calendar would not let it.

  I played a little game and closed my eyes. I told myself when I opened them all that snow would have turned into pan-fried cornbread. As you may have guessed, I opened my silly eyes and wonder of wonders, it was all snow, not a crumb of cornbread in sight.

  There is one good thing to have come from this morning’s depressing view: If Papa is correct, that might mean it’s March, though something in my mind nudges me into thinking it is closer to April. Does it really matter?

  Days back, after my nest flooded, I had made my way upstream to the wagon. I was sore and tired, so it took longer than it might have, but I made it by nightfall. It was all I could do to climb into the wagon. Finding this diary on the seat, waiting for me like a friend, warmed me nicely. That was all that did, however. In a way I was glad it was near dark, so I wouldn’t have to see what a wreck my nest had become. That night I curled up in the wagon and pretended I was not cold. It did not work so well.

  The next morning, I watched the sun brighten the valley. The river had become a slow-moving brown thing three times as wide and deeper than it had been. I had no food, no way to make fire, no possessions to speak of, save for the wagon and the jumble of crates and few tools I’d left in it. There is a shovel, Papa’s scythe handle, a broken wooden pail, short, frayed hanks of rope, a chain.

  I was hungry, but that was not a new notion. Without any food at hand, even rotted meat, my weak feeling would soon become worse. I climbed down from the wagon once again and made my way to the river. The nest was mostly gone, though some of the ribs poked above the slow brown water. Might be my stove was under there, but it would do me little good. I wondered how long the river would stay high.


  The valley is filled with snow, though it is melting, as told by the number of brown bumps of grass poking through, like heads of critters waking up. That said, there is a whole lot of snow still to melt. The mountains all around are mostly white, top to bottom, save where patches of pines and gray boulders show themselves.

  Then all that snow will find its way to the lowest place. Papa always said water seeks the easy path. Then he would look at Thomas and say, “Don’t be like water, son.” Here, that would be the river. So any chance of finding my goods was gone for a time, or for good. Most of it likely washed far downstream. I didn’t much care. Still don’t.

  My spirits perked as I walked along the bank. As I said, I found a ragged bit of the wagon cover, which had been the roof of the nest, snagged in alders that whipped my face, refusing to give it up. I dragged it back to the wagon and laid it across the ribs to dry in the sun. Might keep me warmer at night.

  I went back to the river the next day and had nearly given up when I found two more of my things. Only two. One of them was a cotton sack I almost passed by, so black was it with mud. Its drawstring had tangled in the roots of a washed-up tree. I untied it and found two or three handfuls of wet cornmeal. I am quite certain I made all manner of animal sounds as I ate that foul paste. I forced myself to eat but half of it, knowing the rest would have to last me. It tasted of river and mud, and not at all of cornmeal, but I knew what it had once been and that was enough.

  The second and last of my possessions I ever found was my most favorite, and the one thing in all this long winter that made me feel good inside. You might think it was the cornmeal that would do that. But no, this was a piece of the last of Mama’s china teacups. That one I had been saving. Now there isn’t enough left of it to be useful in any way except to look at. The little loop of a handle and a wedge of cup, that’s all.