Walk Me Home (7 page)

Jen says, “Remember when we were at that gas station yesterday?”

Carly feels a lurching in her stomach, like something trying to come up. As if there were something in there to lose.

“Yeah…”

“Remember that sign on the door?”

Carly has no idea where this is going.

The sheep are still clanking along in front of them down the road, and now and then the yellow dog stops, turns, and shoots them a disapproving look.

“What about it?”

“It said it was May twelfth. But didn’t it also say a day of the week?”

Carly suspects she knows where this is headed now. And she doesn’t want to go there. More precisely, she doesn’t want Jen to go there.

“I don’t remember,” she says, which is a lie.

“Was it Thursday?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Because if it was Thursday the twelfth, then this is—”

“Right. I know. Friday the thirteenth. But I don’t think it said Thursday. And even if it did, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.”

“Maybe we should go back to that car.”

“No!” Carly shouts, too harshly, remembering the snake.

“We’d be safer there.”

“Jen. It’s just a dumb superstition.”

“But it can’t hurt to be safe.”

“Can’t hurt? To spend the whole day without food or water?”

“Oh,” Jen says. “Right.”

Carly notices Jen chewing on her lower lip.

About half a mile later, Jen says, “Where’re we supposed to get food and water out here, anyway?”

“Good question.”

“Isn’t it weird that I didn’t think of that day-of-the-week thing the minute I read the sign?”

“Not really,” Carly says.

But it is. It’s very weird. For Jen.

“Normally I’d be all over that, right away.”

“This is not normally, though,” Carly says.

Carly’s arms hurt so bad they feel like they might be about to drop off at the shoulders. And maybe that would be better. Maybe that would hurt less.

They’re walking into the low afternoon sun, holding their spare shirts over their heads—holding them out in front, like the visor of a hat—to keep the sun off their faces.

Jen has a line of dried blisters across her forehead and over the bridge of her nose, cheekbone to cheekbone. Carly can only imagine what her own face must look like. Her lips are agonizingly chapped and split, and licking them only makes it worse. Last time she opened her mouth to talk, it made them bleed.

But a couple of good things can be said about this walk, down this road, on this afternoon. The road is straight. And it points west. Right into the slanting sun.

On their left is a rock face, but it doesn’t provide any shade because it’s on the south side. On their right are some homesteads, maybe four or five to a mile. Off in the distance behind that is a long mesa, the facing side horizontally striped and whittled into what looks like wavy, uneven columns. Thick on the bottom and tapering as they go up.

Jen stumbles. Catches herself.

“I can’t go much farther,” she says.

Carly can’t, either.

But she says, “Just a little, then.”

Just until they come across some kind of option, though Carly can’t imagine what option that might be.

“Oh, shit,” Jen says.

“What?”

“Look.”

“
What?
” But she thinks she sees.

“This road just ends.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. Look. It ends right up there.”

“I don’t think so,” Carly says.

But she already knows Jen is right. She just doesn’t want her to be. She wants to fight the truthfulness of that observation. Fight it so vigilantly that it will give up and stop being the truth.

They reach the end of the road. It’s still true.

They stand in the wide dirt turnaround and look west. Going cross-country looks all but impossible. It’s too brushy and full of long gashes where the earth has cracked open into deep gullies with sheer sides. On a good day, it might be only barely navigable. In the shape they’re in, it might as well be a fifty-foot brick wall.

Jen sways wildly, and Carly catches her before she falls right over onto her face in the dirt.

“Whoa,” Jen says. “Got a little dizzy there.”

Carly walks them both over to the rock face and clears away pebbles with her boot, making them a spot to sit down. She helps Jen down. They sit with their backs up against stone.

They’re still in the sun. There’s no way to get out of the sun.

They drape the spare shirts over the left sides of their heads.

Across the road from them is a tiny, modest brick house with a few dilapidated outbuildings, and a tall metal windmill with what looks like the fan from an old car or truck, spinning squeakily in the light breeze. And a pink trailer. An old, bubble-shaped trailer in bright hot pink, with a horizontal white stripe. It seems to have no tires or suspension. The body of it sits right on the dirt. The brightness of the pink looks absurd against the earth tones and man-made drabness all around it.

There’s an old truck parked under an open corrugated carport. Somebody must be home. Too bad. Otherwise she’d look for a hose. Even take a chance on a dog at this point.

Neither girl speaks for a long time. Maybe half an hour. Maybe only two or three minutes.

Carly watches chickens scratch around in the yard. A few dozen of them. And there’s a skinny baby goat tormenting a tabby cat. Bouncing around as if trying to entice the cat to play. All it gets him is one of those big Halloween-cat hisses, with the fully arched back and raised hackles.

“You see that?” she says to Jen.

“Yeah,” Jen says flatly.

It rattles Carly, deeply, that reply. Because it means Jen sees but doesn’t care. Doesn’t find it delightful. Or funny. And that’s a very bad sign.

They don’t talk for a while longer.

Then Jen speaks, startling Carly.

“In case we don’t get out of here, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Stop,” Carly says, pressing a hand gently over Jen’s mouth. “We’re getting out of here. We’re not going to die here.”

Then she wishes she hadn’t used the word
die
.

She takes her hand back.

“Your lip is bleeding,” Jen says. “People die when they don’t eat or drink.”

“But we won’t.”

“How do you figure?”

“If I thought we were gonna die, we’d just knock on the door of that little house and throw ourselves at the people’s mercy, and they’d call the cops to come get us, and we’d get locked up into the child protective system. But we wouldn’t die.”

Long silence.

Then Jen says, “I think maybe it’s time.”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“I’ll think of something,” Carly says.

It’s meant to end the conversation. It doesn’t.

“Maybe we could knock on the door and tell the people the truth and say we’re desperate and we need a glass of water and some food, and maybe we can trust them not to turn us in.”

“I don’t trust anybody,” Carly says. “Except Teddy. I trust Teddy completely.”

A silence that feels different from all the other silences.

“You shouldn’t trust anybody completely,” Jen says.

“Why not?”

“They’re still just people. They can still let you down.”

“Teddy never let me down.”

“I can’t walk anymore.”

“I know. We’ll just sleep right here.”

“No. I mean I can’t walk anymore.”

Carly pulls in a few deep breaths and lets them out again. Carefully. Care is so important now.

“You’ll feel better when we’ve had something to eat. I know you feel that way now. But we’re just hungry. We’ll get a second wind.”

But, oddly, Carly doesn’t feel hungry anymore. Empty. Shaky. Scraped out. Less than real. But it’s almost as though she’s moved beyond hunger.

“And where are we supposed to get something to eat?”

“Right there,” Carly says.

She doesn’t know it until the exact moment she says it.

She points across the road.

“What? The chickens?”

“Yeah. The chickens.”

“I’d rather die than kill a chicken and eat it raw.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. Chickens lay eggs, right?”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“So when it gets dark, I’ll go over and get some of the eggs.”

“Get? You mean steal?”

“We need them.”

“There’s no address, Carly. This road doesn’t have a name. The house doesn’t have a number. And you don’t know what the eggs cost. So it’s over our line. It’s not honest.”

“It’s life or death.”

“How would we cook them?”

“We couldn’t. We’d have to eat them raw.”

“I might vomit.”

“You could just swallow them whole, really fast.”

“Maybe. But—”

“Jen, eggs only cost around three dollars a dozen. That’s only…like…”

“Twenty-five cents each,” Jen says.

“So if we have two each, that’s only a dollar.”

“Maybe a dollar is a lot to those people.”

“But chickens probably don’t lay the same number of eggs every day anyway. Maybe some days they lay less. So four eggs…it’s just like a day when they laid less. It’s a good plan, Jen. It’ll work. When it’s dark, I’ll go over there.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do have to. There might be a dog. You’re no good with dogs.”

“OK. Fine. Come with me. We’ll get two eggs each and swallow them, and then in the morning we’ll walk straight through west and find the highway again. I think it’s close. We’ll find a way to walk around those cracks. Somehow. Or jump over them. And
then maybe when we get to the highway and know where we are again, maybe we can find a place to hole up for a few days. You know. Really rest up. And use the phone more. It’s a good plan. It’ll work.”

“Not if it’s Friday the thirteenth, it won’t.”

“It’s not Friday the thirteenth. I think that sign said Tuesday. Tuesday the twelfth.”

They fall silent again.

Carly watches the young goat pick his way back to a dozen adult goats grazing on scrubby grass in a corral. He squeezes between the rails and finds his mother. He butts underneath her belly like he wants to nurse. It makes Carly wonder if she could figure out how to milk a goat. If it’s even safe to approach one.

She lifts the shirt off her face and looks west, trying to judge how long before the sun goes down. Looks like another two hours of light baking at least.

She leans back again, closing her eyes.

“Jen,” she says. Quietly. “I have to tell you something. I have to tell you I’m really sorry I’ve been extra grumpy with you lately. It’s just that I’ve been so scared.”

She waits for a time. In case Jen wants to answer. Apparently not.

“And I have to tell you something else, too. I should’ve told you this before, and I’m sorry. Teddy doesn’t live in Tulare anymore. He’s up in the redwoods in Northern California. We’re gonna have to find a way to call every construction company anywhere near this little town called Trinity. But we’ll find him. We will.”

She waits. No reply.

She lifts the shirt off Jen’s face to see that her little sister has already fallen asleep. Sitting up. Head back against the rocks. Dry mouth open, as if hoping.

Just before sundown, an old Native American woman wanders out of the tiny house. She’s tiny, too. Short and round. She waddles slowly around the yard with a bucket, strewing something for the chickens. Some kind of feed.

Carly knows the woman will spot them sitting across the road. But there’s nothing she can think to do about that. So she just holds still.

There’s a pattern to the old woman’s strewing, she realizes. She’s leading the chickens along. Dropping a few bits of something good, waiting for them to come get it, then dropping more farther on. Moving toward an outbuilding.

A henhouse, she realizes.

With a sinking in her belly, Carly gets the picture. The chickens are being put away for the night. But maybe that’s better, she thinks. Because where will she find their eggs outside in the dark? No, this is OK. This is good. They’ll be on their nests all night, with the eggs underneath them.

This will be easy.

Come nightfall, she’ll simply break into the henhouse.

The woman turns her head in all directions before locking up the hens. Carly goes cold, waiting for the woman’s eyes to stop on them. Waiting to be spotted. It never happens. The woman looks right past them. As if they’re not here. Which seems odd.

Then she waddles back into the house.

Just for a moment, Carly plays with the idea that maybe they’re not here.

A nearly full moon rises, just one angled edge off round, yellow, and breathtakingly huge at the top of the mesa. Carly can’t decide if all that moonlight will be a good thing or not. Makes it easier to see. But also makes it easier to be seen. But it seems she’s invisible now. Anyway. So maybe it doesn’t even matter.

She’s halfway across the woman’s yard when something grabs at her shirt. She jumps and lets out a near-silent scream. A mere puff of air when all is said and done.

She whirls around to see Jen at her heels.

“I told you I’m coming with you,” Jen whispers.

“Why did you even wake up?”

“’Cause you weren’t there. You’re always there. Even in my sleep I knew you weren’t there.”

Carly puts a finger to her lips.

They creep around to the henhouse door, but it’s padlocked.

“Shit,” Jen hisses.

“We’ll find a way.”

Bent over and scuffling, they move around the side of the building. Carly examines the windows to see if they can be opened. But they don’t even appear to be built that way.

“Look at this,” Jen whispers.

She motions Carly to a corner of the henhouse where the wood has rotted away near the dirt line, leaving a space maybe two feet high and a foot and a half wide at the bottom. A triangle of rot. The gap has been patched with chicken wire.

Carly crouches down and examines the wire patch closely. It’s attached with those big staples you shoot from a staple gun. She grabs one edge and pulls hard. Three or four staples pop free, and the wire breaks at those that hold firm. She pulls again, and then the wire is attached at one side only. She can peel it back like a door.