The Onion Girl (31 page)
Authors: Charles de Lint
“If they decide to come after us,” I tell him, “we have to go deeper.”
He nods. “How did you even know they'd start shooting at us?”
“I didn't.”
“But you had us running before we could even see who they were.”
“I knew there was a possibility,” I tell him. “That's all. I figured better safe than sorry.”
He shakes his head. “You hear about this kind of thing, rednecks and their guns andâ”
“Don't call them that,” I say. “They're just assholes. Most people you run into around here ⦠well, maybe they won't like the length of your hair, but they'll keep their feelings to themselves.”
“I was justâ”
“I know. But saying âredneck' is like saying âblue-collar.' Like there's something wrong with people whose necks get red because they're outside working all day, or who don't wear a nice white shirt and tie because they're a plumber, or a mechanic, or they work in a factory. It bugs me.”
“But you're always telling me how you grew up white trash.”
I smile. “It's different when I'm talking about myself. And besides. We
were
trash.”
were
trash.”
He starts to smile back, except we catch movement out in the field. Whoever was arguing to go back to the truck must've lost.
“Come on,” I tell Geordie, grabbing his hand. “We've got to go deeper. But stick close. If we're going to get lost, I'd rather get lost together.”
He gives me an unhappy look, but I just shrug and start off at a trot, trying my best not to leave too much of a trail. You know, no broken branches, try not to kick the mushrooms or leave scuffs in the grass. I don't know what I'm doing, really. I spent a lot of time in the woods when I was growing up, but I wasn't Daniel Boone or some Indian scout, and I had no reason to hide my presence. I can only hope that those boys out there aren't trackers.
Happily, the land dips and rises so by the time they reach the forest, we're well out of sight, up on the far side of a ridge I spotted when we first stepped under the canopy ourselves. We come across a game trail on the ridge and I get an idea.
“Can you climb a tree?” I ask Geordie.
He gives me a disgusted look. “What do you mean, can I climb? I grew up in the country. Not the country around here like you did, but we did have trees.”
“Okay, okay. So start already.”
I point to one of the pines up here on the ridge. Because they get better light than the ones on the slopes below, their lower branches are more filled out. If we can get high enough, you'd have to really be looking up to find us. I'm guessing these boys won't do that much.
“My fiddle,” Geordie says. “I can't leave my fiddle.”
“Loop the handle through your belt,” I suggest.
He nods and does, starting up the tree when he's done, the fiddlecase banging against the back of his thigh. I take my sketchbook out of my backpack and stick it down the back of my jeans so that my own hands will be free. My little tin of paints is flat and can fit into my pocket. I toss the pack onto the game trail where it runs down the other side of the ridge. The pack goes rolling down the incline and I check to make sure it's visible before I pull myself up that broken off branch and start to climb as well.
Maybe Geordie can climb, but I soon pass him, sticking out my tongue as I go by. I don't know why, but the tightness is leaving my chest. I just don't feel so scared anymore. I guess it's because we're actually doing something, instead of running like a pair of startled deer.
We're pretty high up and I can't see the ground easily anymore through the thick cover of branches, when I hear them coming. Geordie and I freeze. I hug the trunk, then grimace as I realize I've put my face against a gooey stream of pine sap. When I pull my face away, my hair's still stuck. Great. This is going to take forever to clean out. But that could be the least of our worries.
My fear comes rushing back, a sharp adrenaline rush that makes it hard to breathe again. I look down at Geordie a branch below me. When he lifts his gaze to mine I see my own fear mirrored in his eyes.
“Fer Christ's sake, Roy,” says one of the boys.
And they are just boys, I realize from what I can see of them. Nineteen, twenty tops. Greasy-haired, T-shirted trailer trash. I should know. I as much as grew up with their kind.
“You plannin' to tramp right up the mountain after 'em?” he goes on.
“Hell, no,” the one called Roy responds. He horks up a wad of phlegm and spits it out. “I'm just havin' me some fun.”
“Hey, lookit,” a third voice says. “There's somethin' down on that game trail.”
I hear them move off the ridge and almost lose my grip and fall out of the tree when they start shooting again. It takes me a heart-stopping moment to realize that they're not shooting at us, but my knapsack. When the gunfire stops, the three of them start to laugh.
“Well, that's one backpack ain't gonna cause us no more trouble,” one of them says.
“Think there's anythin' in it?”
“It's all shot to hell if'n there was. 'Sides, who wants to touch that shit an' get hippie cooties?”
“Fuckin' hippies. You cain't tell the boys from the girls.”
“Sure you can. The girls got their titties all floppin' loose under their shirts.”
“Well, I ain't haulin' my ass after them boys.”
“Maybe they're girls.”
“Naw. Girls cain't run like that pair done. They'd just fall down an' start in a-cryin'.”
“Man, they was like rabbits, the way they went tearin' across that field.”
“Bet they pissed their pants.”
More laughter. So witty. Just like my brothers were. You wonder how they ever survive to grow up to be men when they start off with such little brains.
Their voices have been getting louder as they come back up the ridge. They stop to light cigarettes and the smell of the tobacco comes drifting up to where we're hidden.
“What the hell do you think they was doin' out here?”
“Who knows? Who the fuck cares?”
“Bet they was gettin' back to the land.”
“Or blowin' each other.”
“I'd like to see 'em blow the end of my rifle.”
“Your rifle gets more 'n you.”
“Fuck you, Thompson.”
“Fuck yourself.”
The voices begin to fade as they wander back to the field. Geordie looks up at me, but I shake my head. Not yet, I mouth. I want them to be good and far away before we start back down and maybe make some noise that would bring them back again. So we wait, butts getting sore from our awkward perches, arms and legs cramping. We don't start back down until we hear the pickup starting up, a dull coughing engine sound that carries clearly in the still air.
We're all wobbly when we're finally on the groundâas much from the adrenaline rush leaving us as from cramping muscles.
“When they started shooting,” Geordie says, “I almost did pee my pants.”
“Me, too.”
Once my legs stop feeling so wobbly, I go over to my knapsack, but it's pretty much beyond salvage. So much for a change of clothes and my toiletries. I manage to scavenge my toothbrush and some underwear that have bullet holes in them, but otherwise are wearable.
“So now what?” Geordie asks.
I look down the game trail, picking at the pine sap that's gumming up my hair. All I manage to do is make my fingers sticky. I wipe them off on my jeans without a whole lot of success.
“I don't think we should go back to the road,” I tell him. “At least not for a while.”
“You think they'll wait around?”
I shake my head. “But it's a long stretch of road and they'll probably cruise up and down it for a while. I think we should try going cross-country. How's your sense of direction?”
“Not as good as Christy's. You can put him down anywhere and it's like he has this compass in his head.”
“Mine's pretty good, too,” I tell him. “I know we're southwest of Tyson right now, so it's just a matter of keeping track of the sun and steering ourselves in the right direction.”
Geordie gives me a dubious look.
“Do you want to chance another encounter with Roy and Thompson and whatever that other idiot's name was?”
“When you put it like that ⦔
This tramp through the woods would be much more pleasant if we hadn't been driven to it by that bunch of yahoos. Although I know they're long gone, I can't help starting every time a squirrel runs through some dry leaves, or a jay gives us a sudden scolding. Geordie still has trouble believing it even happened and can't stop talking about those three moronsⓠ⦠just shooting at us like that. Maybe they were only kidding around, but they could kill someone ⦔
Like it'd matter to them, I think, but all I do is nod in agreement as he goes on. Just because I grew up with guys like that doesn't mean the bizarre makeup of what passes for their brains makes any sense to me either.
We've finished the apple juice and eaten one of the chocolate bars by
the time we reach the stream. I rinse out the juice container and fill it up with water.
the time we reach the stream. I rinse out the juice container and fill it up with water.
“Are you sure that'll be drinkable?” Geordie asks.
“No, but what's our choice? Besides, it's coming down from the mountains. The most we'll have to worry about is squirrel poop.”
I take a long drink, then pretend to retch. Geordie steps forward, features full of concern, then he whacks me on my shoulder when I grin at him. He finishes the water in the juice container and then we fill it again.
Neither of us have a watch, but by the height of the sun I figure it must be past six. It'll start to get dark soon. I don't say anything as we keep walking along the trail, but I'm not planning to keep walking once it gets dark. It's easy enough to get turned around in these hills in the daytime. There's no way I'll take the chance at night.
The mosquitoes come as the light starts to leak from the sky. They don't bother me, but they're driving Geordie crazy.
“Stop swatting at them,” I tell him. “That just eggs them on.”
“If I stop swatting them, they'll suck every drop of blood out of me,” he says, squishing another that was on his temple. He gives the bloody goop between his fingers a disgusted look. “How come they don't bite you?”
“It's just this gift I have. My blood's not appealing to either biting bugs or creatures of the night.”
“Right.”
“Actually,” I tell him. “That's not entirely true. My real gift is that whenever I'm around bugs, I always manage to be with someone who tastes better than I do.”
Happily, just as the twilight begins to really deepen, when Geordie's going completely mad from the bugs and I'm seriously looking for a place to camp out, we come up over a ridge and find somebody's hunt camp. It's no more than a one-room cabin, log walls, with a flat tin roof that overhangs a woodpile, but it'll do us just fine. For one thing it's got shutters on the window and a door that closes. We can leave the bugs outside.
Geordie gives it a dubious look.
“What if whoever owns it shows up?” he asks.
I know he's thinking about the yahoos that chased us into the woods in the first place.
“It's not hunting season,” I tell him. “And look around. Nobody except for mice have been here in ages.”
We sweep it out, find blankets in a tin-lined chest, get a fire started in the cast-iron woodstove. With a candle burning on the windowsill, it's actually cozy. Geordie finds some cans of brown beans, stew, and soup in the cupboard and we make a supper of the beans and some vegetable soup. We leave a couple of dollars on the shelf to pay for what we've used. In the morning I plan to go out and scavenge some kindling to replenish the box beside the woodpile. It's just common politeness.
I guess this is the night that something romantic could have started between us, but we get to telling war stories about our family life, going into more detail than we ever have before about how we ended up on the streets and the kinds of things we had to do to survive, and I guess that kind of puts a damper on any ardor the situation might have otherwise generated. I mean, it's about as intimate as you can get, sitting together on the bed, heads leaning against each other's on the backboard as we talk, and it certainly cements the fact that we're going to be best friends pretty much forever, but when we've finally dismantled those walls we've both got there inside us to keep the rest of the world at bay, there's not a whole lot left over to start thinking about boyfriend/girlfriend stuff.
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