A Root from Infertile Ground

by Thomas H. Reed

  Jake looked down at the track and thought. It has to be her. He looked at Mel and said. “Take Rat with you and find her. When you do, don’t do anything, just keep her there and call me.” Mel looked into Jake’s face and didn’t like what he saw there. Suddenly the hot desert wind seemed to have picked up a chill, which ran a cold finger down his spine.

  Just before sunset, Mel and Rat found where she had rested for the night. He took off his baseball cap and wiped his face with a handkerchief he’d fished out of his back pocket. He studied the ground for a long time then grunted a note of dismay. Rat looked at him and asked, “What’s wrong?” Mel put his hands in his pockets and said, “Nothing. Everything. Call Jake and have him come here, I’ll explain it then.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Jake came crashing through the Greasewood shrubs and Salt Cedar. “This had better be damn good. I am getting tired of stomping around out here like a fucking jackass.”

  Mel pointed to the ground and said. “This is where she stopped for the night. We found a place about three miles back where she stopped to rest. She was pretty much done in then, but something spooked her and she did another three miles.” Mel said this with a bit of admiration in his voice, and then went on, “She crawled under that Salt Cedar and collapsed. From the way the ground is trampled down I would say she was here for about twelve to twenty hours before she packed up and moved on.”

  Jake looked down but couldn’t make heads or tails out of the disrupted earth and smeared footprints, and then he looked at Mel and asked. “How soon you think before we catch up with her?”

  “An hour ago I would have told you that she wasn’t going further than here. But this rabbit is changing.” Jake looked at him and asked, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “She should be dead, but she isn’t. She has a purpose that wasn’t there before. It’s like every step she takes makes her stronger instead of weaker. The limp is almost gone, and her stride has improved. When she got up this morning she was pretty stiff, which is understandable for a woman that isn’t used to walking with a heavy load, and especially one in her weakened condition. You would expect to see a steady decline as her strength wore away. Instead, she’s walked it off in short order.”

  He paused then said; “I think she knows that someone’s after her. She dug a hole and buried her trash and scat and then took care to cover her tracks leading away from here. Did a damn good job of it too. I had to double back twice before I found her trail again.”

  Jake shook his head, “Are you trying to tell me that that skinny bitch is starting to grow a back bone? Because if you are, you are sadly mistaken, I know the kind of girl she is, seen hundreds of them. They don’t suddenly grow a set of balls when things get bad. If anything, you find them sitting in their own piss and begging you to help them.”

  Looking thoughtful, Mel shook his head, “Well, this one is different. She might be a skinny strung out addict, but I got to wonder what she was before that. It’s like she’s coming to life. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like tracking in reverse. Instead of getting weaker, moving slower and making mistakes, she’s getting stronger, moving faster and making fewer mistakes.” Then he looked at Jake and said. “She isn’t just a skinny bitch, she’s a skinny bitch with a set of brass balls the size of a bull elephant. More to the point, she’s smart and dangerous.” To prove his point he picked up a large rock the size of a foot ball and threw it to a spot about three feet in front of them. The ground collapsed as soon as the rock hit it, exposing a hole about two feet wide, two feet deep, and full of very sharp wooden spikes. Then he pointed at the end of the spikes and said, “See the tips? They’re slightly darker than the rest of the wood. Probably poison, or covered with shit or snake venom. Not enough to kill you, but enough to make you wish you were dead.” Rat looked into the hole and said, “Man this brings back memories.”

  Chapter 7

  “Hey Baby Cakes, are you with me?”

  “Shut up! I don’t need your voice of doom right now.”

  Maybe not, but you need to quit leaving a trail a sick slug could follow.”

  “I’m doing the best I can! If I could toss half the stuff in this pack I could make better time, but I need all of it.”

  “I’ll have someone inscribe that on your headstone.”

  “Thanks, you’re a real pal!” She stopped, then looked around to get her bearing then said, “Fuck you! I need to rest. And as far as I’m concerned you can carve that on my headstone ... along with a P.S. “Eat Me!”

  “Now I know you’re getting better. You’re charming personality has returned.”

  “No, I’m tired of running around in this damn desert, digging holes and acting like a freaking Commando. I’m tired of pointing this gun at everything you tell me to point it at, and never shooting it. I am tired of you hounding me and tired of eating those freakin’ cork-and-cardboard meals.”

  “They ain’t all that bad.”

  “Really? I think they taste like embalmed flesh that escaped a mausoleum.”

  “Good Lord, girl! You must have been chowing down in some weird feeding places to come up with that analogy. But whatever, this crap will keep the hollow places filled, and it’s supposed to have all the right stuff to keep your brain alive. You can worry about eating a big fat juicy burger when you are out of this place and shed of them boys who’re coming up behind you.”

  “How far?”

  “They are a might shy of that hole in the ground you booby trapped back there. But you do have them wonderin’ what you are. But that big one, he got it bad for you, and he ain’t gonna let go til’ you’re dead.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Those others … the dead women in the river bed ... do you think there are more of them?”

  “That boy is a creature of habit, babes. What he does once, he will do again and again until he’s caught or killed. You can bet there are others, maybe not even close to where you found those three, but there are others.”

  “Before, I just wanted to get away, get as far away as possible and never look back. I just wanted to get back to where I was before I met up with those freaks.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I want to get them, all of them, but especially him. Not just for what he did to me, but for those others too. I keep thinking about them. They had families, mothers, fathers who loved and misses them. People who will live with the pain of wondering what happened to them. He’ll do it again. He’ll find me, and then he’ll go someplace else and he’ll do it again.”

  “I figure that’s about right. So what you plan on doing about it?”

  “What can I do? I’ll be lucky to get out of here alive.”

  “You keep poking along and you won’t be gettin’ out of here alive! What you need to do is get up and start moving. Now listen to me, girl, just walk and listen to me. You ain’t dead yet. And it was you that said until it was time to die you were going to keep on living. So listen to me!”

  She got up, picked up and adjusted the pack, then after looking to see where she was putting her feet, she began moving again, more quickly, and quieter, than before.

  “No such thing as total quiet, Baby Cakes. Everyone makes noise, even when they don’t think they are. But there are ways to hide the sounds you make. All you got to do is listen to the world around you. Listen to how it moves in the brush, how it slithers through the tall grass. Hear how it moves with the wind, and then step into that sound. Mother earth, she sings, and she has a rhythm all her own. You have to listen to the music and move with the rhythm. Then you become part of the natural sounds around you. When things go quiet, then you need to go quiet. Man is a hunter, and he hunts with his eyes, ears, and his sense of smell. He uses all these senses even when he’s not aware of it. But you stay still and downwind of both your pursuer and your prey. They can’t see you unless they know where to look. These here men know where you are going and so they just have to go in your direction. Sooner or
later they will catch up to you because you’re thinking like an animal that is being chased. So stop thinking like a rabbit and start thinking smart. They think you are going this way, so go a different direction. You’re a lot stronger than you were, but you need to be a lot stronger than you are. And that means you’ll have to push yourself. You know pain well enough it should be almost like a friend by now. You’ve lived with it all your life, and it has been sucking the life out of you. Now you’re going to create some pain that will put the life back into you. You’re gonna have to get tough, more so than you ever thought possible. There are plants in the desert that will heal your body and your spirit. Find them and use them. Watch the animals see what they do, and how they do it, and emulate them. You want to beat them boys? You can do it, but you got to get strong, mean, and smart.”

  “You’re asking an awfully lot from a crack whore aren’t you, my noisy friend?”

  “That what you are? A crack whore? Then just turn around and go find them boys, Baby Cakes. They know how to treat crack whores. So if you want to be a crack whore, just keep thinking the way you’re thinking.”

  “Sure! When I was in the fifth grade someone asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up, honey?” And I said, “I want to be a crack whore. I want to pump my body full of drugs so my skin is crawling over my bones. I want to be so strung out that I’ll screw anyone, or do anything, for my next fix.”

  “Damn, girl, looks as if you did all right by yourself.”

  “Didn’t I though. I became everything I’d hoped to be.”

  “Downright successful if you’re asking me! So I’m guessing you’re not ready for a career change.”

  “Maybe I am. My present career doesn’t have a retirement plan, no Blue Cross, no Blue Shield. Nada!”

  “So what you gonna do, Baby Cakes? Seems to me you’re running away from more than just them bad bucks back there.”

  “Sure wish I could get a preview peek at what I’m running to?”

  “That’s up to you girl. There is a whole world out there, and you can do whatever it is you want … if you want it badly enough. How bad do you want to stay alive?”

  “When I woke up, not at all, but seeing those girls bodies tangled in a mass of debris in that riverbed did something to me. I don’t want to end up like that.”

  “There are worse ways to go.”

  “Oh yeah? ... I suppose being slowly chewed up by a giant cockroach might put me in the same ballpark.”

  Chapter 8

  Instead of heading out of the desert, Jodie turned north and went deeper into the desert. Ten miles away from the riverbed she came upon a series of low hills that were mostly sandstone. The hills had been formed by some ancient upheaval.

  In the side of one of the hills was a small, natural cave that had been reinforced and enclosed with native stone. Inside, it was quite roomy with a low laying bench of sandstone. She almost walked right past the cave, but at the last moment, it seemed to just pop out at her.

  She took the small flashlight from her backpack, turned it on and crept cautiously inside. The cave consisted of two chambers, the entrance chamber and a deeper one in back. The entrance chamber was the larger of the two with a high ceiling. The chamber at the back was darker as well as smaller. It was the one that attracted her interest the most because it contained a natural hot spring that fed into a natural basin. She tasted the water then spat it out, the bitter mineral and sulfur taste made it undrinkable. Yet not more than ten feet away from the cave was another spring with clean, cool, and clear drinking water. She wondered what fed the two streams. It was fairly obvious they were fed from completely different sources, but the sources were not visible from where she stood.

  The floor of the outer chamber had been leveled, and a stone floor had been laid. The stones so tightly fitted she couldn’t work a knife blade between the cracks. The floor had been made up of several different color stones which created a strangely swirling pattern.

  This is where this ‘crack whore’ is going to stay for a while. It’s just what I need to regain my physical and mental health.

  She made a broom from Spanish grass by tying the long stiff bristles to a straight stick she’d formed with the help of the machete and the Bowie knife from her backpack. Then she swept both chambers, walls and all, removing pill bugs and spiders.

  “I can’t stay here long,” she said to herself as she scraped at something on the floor that looked suspiciously like animal dropping. “I’m already down to only ten food packs.”

  “Baby girl, you got a whole world of food around you, and you don’t even know it.”

  “I am not eating pill bugs, spiders or grasshoppers!”

  “That stream just outside has cattails and water cress, and maybe even a fish or two. There are cactus fruit and mesquite beans in bountiful proportions, and other edibles as well. All you have to do is gather them. Just leave the distasteful meal packets alone for now. Try a different treat for a change.”

  Her mornings consisted of heavy workout, starting out with a warm up, then onto greater efforts. The side of one wall had handholds that were not much more than just recesses in the stone. These led up to a ledge high in the ceiling of the cave, a good twenty five feet from the floor. She started out slow, climbing to the ledge each day, and then the day came when she went up the wall as easily as she walked across the floor. After a hard workout of weight lifting and climbing, she began practicing rhythm fighting. She would go to the hot spring and soak for an hour. Whatever chemical was in the water began to have an immediate effect on her body. The sores, scars and lesions on her body began to fade, and then finally disappeared altogether. At night she would run across the desert, starting at the cave and then back to the river. Each time she made it to the river, she would check for signs that the men had given up on her, and each time she found another foot print or new motorcycle track. She had seen these tracks so often that she could now tell which person was on patrol and looking for her. Then she would run the ten miles back to the cave. Most of the distance permitted her to run on sandstone or a hard packed surface that left no footprints. She never took the same path twice and always erased any trace of her passing. Sometimes jumping as much as fifteen feet from one boulder to another to hide her tracks. Her eyesight became sharp, her hearing acute, and capable of picking up the slightest sound and knowing instinctively if it were a cricket scratching across the floor or a tumble bug.

  She practiced with the pistol every day, aiming and holding it steady on target, but she never fired it, not once. Yet it became a discipline with her, drawing aiming and steadying the pistol. She finally reached the level of accuracy where she could pull the pistol, aim and place it on target so quick that her motion was just a blur to the eye; her arm as steady as a rock.

  “The bullet will go where you point; there ain’t no reason to shoot. Just trust your eye, Baby Cakes.”

  Each time she pulled the pistol and aimed, her voice companion repeated, “It is going to recoil in your hand, be ready for it. Squeeze the trigger don’t pull it. Take the slack out smoothly and evenly, let the gun go off on its own. Just be prepared for the recoil and be ready to put it back on target.”

  She would squeeze the trigger, pulling the slack from it. There was no click because she never pulled the slide back to cock it. Simply pulled the slack out until the trigger was full back. Then she would replace the pistol and do it all over again. Ten thousand times she pulled the weapon from its holster and aimed it. She practiced dropping the magazine and reloading with a new one.

  “Count, always count your rounds, be ready to switch magazines as quickly as possible.”

  She started out doing pushups with two hands, barely managing more than ten at a time, and only days later, she was doing a hundred one-hand pushups. Fifty with each arm. And there was the rhythm fighting. It started with simply standing in the middle of the floor and doing a straight punch.

  “Straight from the shoulder girl! K
eep that wrist straight or the first time you hit someone you’re going to break it. Rotate your hip; bring it up your side and through your shoulder. Snap it like you’re snapping a rag. Now the other arm again, again, again, again!”

  Then she began to move around. Feeling the way her body moved and stepping according to her inner rhythm. “Kick, roll, step back, move, jab, move, roll, step.” Hour after hour, day after day, her voice companion called cadence as she went through her paces. She worked out in the cave, ran the ten miles to the river and back, bathed in the hot spring. She found herbs, plants, and roots that were edible; she killed rabbits, pheasant, and quail. Day after day from sun up to sun down she worked out, practiced with the gun, and ran. Her body filled out, her stomach and arms became like stone, her reflexes as quick as lightening. Her senses sharp, her mind clear. The nagging need for the drug slowly went away, until it was no longer a pull on her mind. The poisons and the cravings had been removed by the exercises and the herbs and the minerals in the hot spring. If she had a mirror she would not have recognized herself. Her skin had taken on a golden tan from hours in the sun. Her body could have been that of an Olympian Goddess. Her face stern and competent instead of compliant and indecisive.