Treeborne by caleb johnson

Author:caleb johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

This is How She Survived

1958

For a while Janie was able to track the days. Eight since she left Elberta, six since she left Lyle and Goodnight, five since her run-in with Big Connie Ward. Then one morning she woke up and had lost count. She wasted a whole day trying to remember. Crusoe no help. The dirt boy seemed to be withdrawing into hisself, like a piece of paper folded till it could not be folded anymore. Janie nearly wanted to beat him to pieces against a tree trunk. She spent two more days like this before she understood that she had no choice but to start counting from when she could last remember. “Three,” she said. “Three three three,” she repeated to herself as they walked deeper into The N. W. Barfield National Forest.

She cussed herself for leaving behind her bag. No clothes, no food, no map. She tried to draw one in her head. Maybe on The Seven she could of; not here. She ate what she could find: handfuls of blackberries, unripe muscadines that popped out of their hard skin like snotty pimples. She plucked honeysuckle flowers, removed the innards and sucked sweet sticky drops of nectar while annoyed bees bounced off Crusoe’s face. Gradually, a crusty yellow disc grew over her blind eye. She scratched off the crust and rinsed in the river. Each morning it came back. Her eye itself throbbed day and night. After one long day of walking that in volved crossing many streams and creeks, her boots rubbed dime-size blisters on her heels and pinky toes. She stripped barefooted and let Crusoe smear hisself onto the sores. She tore her dress and wrapped pieces around her feet. They camped in Authority ruins, an abandoned pilot house, clearings doused in canted light. Crusoe built fires, and they watched bugs drift down toward the flames till they got too close and burnt up. Morning came and they walked again, crossing abandoned strip pits grown over with pine trees and tall grass, clear-cuts dusted with a fine layer of gray ash and sparkling coalgrit, leaving behind all signs of man, walking wide creekbeds that looked like busted-up roads, returning to the Elberta River and following as it wound through The N. W. Barfield National Forest.

In spite of the pain it was hard not to notice the wonder and beauty of being among such wilderness. Her grandmomma had driven this notion into Janie so hard and true it never would come out. Stretches of the forest were how the girl imagined the innards of churches and castles she’d read about in books from the library where her momma worked. Quiet, enormous. Moss ran across the ground like carpet. The animals here were not easily spooked. Herds of deer with wet black noses, a gray fox toting a robin in its sharp pointy teeth, owls roosting in knotholes and split stumps, groundbirds searching for seed and materials with which to craft nests. Janie and Crusoe could get right up on them.

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