Lost at Running Brook Trail (6 page)

Elaine looked at her watch. “They might not find us today.” The onions and the mayonnaise in her tuna sandwich were playing havoc with her stomach. She’d waited too long to eat.

“Jesus!” Susan said with a look of dread. “Tomorrow? How are we going to survive until then?”

“I thought,” Elaine said, “you don’t like anyone using God’s name in vain. Three or ten hail Mary’s and all that Catholic stuff. You must have known this was a possibility.”

Susan didn’t respond. Her mind was too taken up with the possibility of spending the night in darkness and bushes with no modern conveniences.

“We made a mistake,” Elaine said.

“Of course we did! We stopped without notifying the group.”

“No, I mean after we realized the group had left us.” Elaine looked out at the tiny islands in the river. They fractured the whole into partitions. “We panicked and ran. We should have waited where we were for them to come and get us.”

“We thought they were right in front of us. I doubt we stopped for ten minutes. They probably took a hidden trail that we ran past and didn’t see. I don’t see what we could have done differently except not stop for selfish people.”

Kimberly scoffed, and Susan, her eyes closed, said a silent prayer.

“We should have just waited where we were, but there is no use debating that now. We have to find someplace to sleep.” Elaine looked again at the river’s fissures. They were joined by numerous creeks, including the one they had stopped at. That seemed so long ago.

“There are no buildings out here.” Susan wondered how Elaine could be so calm about everything. She acted as if she made these kinds of decisions every day.

“When we got those letters, they told us we would be camping, so I guess we’re really going to camp, but in the old-fashioned way.”

“But we aren’t prepared,” Susan said apprehensively.

“Circumstances do not always prepare us, so we do what we must.” Elaine was surprised to hear herself talking like that. That was her mother’s voice and tone, not her own. How had Marjory Johnson hiked out here with her into the forest?

Kimberly took out the Storm again. It was the same story. No signal. No port in this storm. She couldn’t bear to contemplate sleeping on the hard dirt with nowhere to put her face but some grungy place.

“We could stay here,” Susan said.

Elaine and Miriam exchanged glances.

“This isn’t a sheltered spot; we can’t stay here,” Elaine said.

The thickets to the right crackled. All four heads snapped around in the direction of the sound. A brown animal with antlers could be seen among the bushes, its eyes black, shiny and intense.

“Deer?” Kimberly said both hopeful and uneasy.

“Looks like a deer,” Miriam said.

“Now a deer, then something else. Let’s get out of here!” Elaine said.

They passed some boulders and driftwood covered with bright green moss.

“They could still find us,” Susan said.

“That would be great,” Elaine said, “but just in case they don’t, we need to find where we will sleep while there’s still light so we know what the place looks like. It’s hard for them to find us if we keep moving, but if we don’t move now; we won’t have anywhere to sleep if they don’t find us. Catch 22.”

They took a trail away from the river that narrowed and became steeper with every step. Some parts were overgrown with bushes and all sorts of entanglements. They had to use their hands for bushwhacking.

Elaine led the way. No one had appointed her leader, but at five feet, nine inches, she looked like one. Tall, athletic and agile, she blazed a path through the dense forest as best she could.

Susan, who was struggling at the back to catch her breath and keep up, looked ahead at Elaine with admiration. To Susan, she looked like a bronzed Amazon, and the sweat on Elaine’s face only served to add a sheen of resoluteness to her actions.

“Watch your face!” Elaine shouted back to them. She held branches and brambles, lest they flew back and slap someone’s face.

“I prefer to watch where I put my feet.” Miriam held on to the branches. She had Kimberly behind her, and Miriam thought it might be fun to let the branches fly. Good sense prevailed. It would hold them up if she had to stop and have it out with Kimberly, who would know that her actions had been deliberate. Plus the path was steep and was taking much of their energy.

Miriam held the branches for Kimberly, who took them gingerly, as if they would bite.

“Hold the things as if you have life in your hands!”

“You think I want strange things pricking me or my beautiful skin marked up by these strange bushes?”

Why didn’t I whack her with the branches?
Miriam thought.
I still have a chance. There’s always next time.

Susan battled the vertical slope. The others had to wait for her to catch up before even handing off the branches to her.

“Hurry up,” Kimberly said.

“Just wait,” Miriam replied on Susan’s behalf. Susan couldn’t speak. She didn’t know how the three of them could climb this path and still carry on a normal, calm conversation. After the long walk on gravel, this hill was taking the life out of her knees. She didn’t think she’d had to exert this much energy in a long time. Not even gym class was as excruciating. As for those classes and all other sporting activities, she would try to get out of them, often blaming painful periods that she didn’t really have on her inability to participate.

“Aerobics in gym class is coming in pretty handy now.” Miriam grabbed more branches from Elaine and used them as climbing tools for the grade.

Maybe for you,
Susan thought. Not to mention Miriam played soccer. How anybody would want to run up and down for 90 minutes was beyond her. Susan had seen Elaine playing tennis. She seemed good at it too. As for Kimberly, Susan didn’t know if she played any sports, but she was waiflike enough to just float to the top of this slope.

“That and walking to and from school every day.” Elaine held up her right palm. “Let’s take a little breather; this hill has teeth.”

“I’ll second that motion,” Susan said.

“Why do you walk to school every day?” Miriam’s mother picked her up daily. If her mother was going to be late, she would practice soccer or hang around the library until she came.

“My parents moved to where we live now so that my brother and I would be close to where we go to school. They want us to walk. They say there’s no excuse not to walk if you live three or four blocks away. My brother and I hear lots of stories about how much they used to walk when they were young. They’re happy with their decision because they see all this research on the news about obesity and how physical activities in schools are failing children and blah, blah, blah.”

“Even in winter?” Susan lived a ways away from school, but even if she lived two blocks away, she couldn’t see herself walking for even a block.

“You simply bundle up.” Elaine held some plants apart as if she was ready to go on again. “Let’s finish this.”

“When my mom picks me up, we go home together. Are your parents at home when you get there?” Miriam took more branches from Elaine, with Kimberly and Susan repeating the same motions. Every time the gathering of the branches would reach Susan, everyone would have to slow down and wait.

“When I was younger, my father stayed home with me all the time, but now that my brother is seventeen, he’s supposed to be responsible. He gets home before I do. But many days one of my parents is home, usually my father.” Elaine could see a semblance of open space coming up in the distance.

“Your father stayed home with you?” Kimberly was drenched in sweat. The air had gradually become cooler, but the elevation had taken its toll.

“Yes, he did,” Elaine said. “Soon we won’t have to do this anymore. I think I can see a clearing of some sort in the distance, and the ground seems to be getting flatter.”

“And he didn’t feel bad?”

“About what?”

“Staying home.”

“Why would he feel bad?”

“That your mother had to work and he had to stay home.”

The bushes thinned out and the path grew clearer.

“It’s not like he was forced to. They decided, I think based on the fact that he had more flexibility in his job as an information technology consultant and she was the manager of a bank. They wanted one of them to be home with us, and he decided that he would do it.” Elaine had always felt close to her father, and she believed part of it was because he had stayed home. He wasn’t just a man who came home and asked what was for dinner. He had made them dinner countless times. He still did.

“So he was happy?” Kimberly was glad to be on flat, even surface again. The hill had eventually eased away.

“Why do you keep asking as if he shouldn’t be?” After the strenuous negotiation with the slope, Elaine was a little winded. “He’s one half of my parental equation. An
equal
half.”

“Halves are equal parts,” Miriam pointed out.

The trail now continued into a grassy area that looked like a wilderness. They all hoped they wouldn’t be wandering in it for long.

“Kimberly’s questions suggest they aren’t. I just wanted to make a point.”

The place was a bewildering mass of grass, trees, other plants and what looked like a huge hill.

“She spends a lot of time in the bathroom, so she’s missed a lot of math classes. Hence, you have to be patient with her.” Kimberly rushed up to Miriam and shoved her, which caused Miriam to stumble a bit. “She also loves to get her butt kicked.”

They walked around, taking in the scene and doing a survey of the land.

“This place is pretty and somewhat unfriendly all at once,” Elaine noted. It was the unkempt nature that made it seemed so hostile, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

“Sort of like Kimberly then,” Miriam said.

“So you do admit to thinking I’m pretty. Well, it’s clear to see, so why would you be the only one not to see it?”

“Do you ever listen to yourself?” Miriam asked. “Fun and jokes aside—seriously, do you?”

“Why would I listen to myself? Why do you constantly bother me?” The mound in front of them was getting closer. It looked dark as it loomed in the distance.

“Maybe you should listen to yourself so you can hear what you’re saying.” Miriam understood what Elaine had said about the place. It was attractive and delicate in a weird way, but it was also weird in its neglect and abandonment.

“It’s getting cool,” Susan said as she rubbed her palms up and down her bare arms.

“And soon it will be both cool and dark,” Elaine said.

The sun was high, but it was at an angle and had turned to a shade of yellow that suggested the end of day was near. The hill was in front of them now and seemed to beckon to the girls to come even closer. They slowly inched their way toward it and stopped when they realized that the dark hollow gaping at them was a cave.

The Cave
 

What they thought was a hill or a mound was a massive rock with great big walls. Trees and grass overshadowed it. Facing the dark space, they stood their ground, not knowing what to do.

“What are those?” Miriam pointed as she moved toward the walls. There were strange drawings and carvings that looked weathered and faded. Elaine and Kimberly stepped closer to the wall with Miriam, but Susan hung back. The carvings and drawings were of birds, lizards and some animals that looked like small bears. Some of the figures were half human and half animal, and some had birdlike heads and human bodies.

“Petroglyphs and pictographs.” Elaine had thought that she would only see these things in books. She wondered if these could possibly be real.

“What?” Kimberly asked, mystified. She ran her hands along one of the carvings.

“Carvings and paintings.” Elaine could barely make out some of the yellow and red pigments. Exposed to the passing seasons, they couldn’t be expected to last.

“There are no paintings out here in these bushes. You think you’d see these at the Art Gallery of Ontario” Kimberly scoffed.

“The AGO isn’t the beginning and the end of art. If they could lift this rock, maybe. But because it’s not down at the AGO doesn’t mean it’s not what it is.”

Designs of hands, arms, boomerangs and axes with and without handles were depicted all over the walls. Figures in ceremonial garb, hunters, gatherers, more animals and abstracts that couldn’t be deciphered littered the walls. It was another world.

“I guess this is it,” Elaine said, moving away from the cave walls. “We can’t walk anymore.”

“We can’t stay here!” Susan stepped even farther from the cave.

“Why not?” Elaine asked.

“Not with those things.” She pointed to the wall.

“What things?” Elaine was puzzled.

“Those drawings.”

“You’re afraid of staying near the drawings?” Elaine looked incredulously at Miriam and Kimberly.

“You won’t see them when you’re sleeping,” Miriam said. “We’ll probably be sleeping inside the cave, so you won’t see a thing.”

They didn’t discuss sleeping arrangements, but the cave seemed as good a place as any. Inside or outside, it was the same danger.

“Cave? Who says? I’m not sleeping in there.” Susan was adamant.

“Okay, okay,” Elaine said. “We’re wasting time. Let’s take a vote. By a show of hands, who wants to stay here for the night and sleep in the cave?” Miriam had her hand up before Elaine had finished talking. Kimberly, who was in the process of checking the Storm, slowly hoisted her hand. Elaine already had her own hand up. Susan folded her arms over her breasts and looked away.

“The tribe has spoken, I guess.” Kimberly walked away and spat on the ground. Her blonde hair swished into some of the spit as it left her mouth. She fingered it out and wiped it on her shorts.

“Are we sleeping on the cold ground?” Kimberly walked back. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep under these conditions.”

“That makes two of us,” Susan said.

“Nobody’s going to sleep on the cold ground.” Elaine scratched her cornrows and looked around. “We have to make a bed from branches and whatever else we can find, such as leaves and … whatever.”