The Day I Died

by Lori Rader-Day

  I didn’t know about kids. She seemed young to be down at the water by herself, but then I’d always been the girl down by the water by herself. Shhhh, little girl. Or maybe I had never made a noise. Maybe she thought she imagined me, and then woke in the night with dark dreams.

  The man in the truck saved me next. I had dragged myself over a long stretch of shallow water onto a low shelf of grass to get out of the lake, out of the way of the after-work water-skiers and tubers, the pontoons full of people with cocktails. I lay on the shelf of grass for a long while, letting the woods behind me fade into dusk. Our little rental house seemed a million miles away, and the time had stretched so that I wasn’t sure if I had floated through the afternoon or a full week.

  I crawled up the embankment and dragged myself upright to skirt the clearing and any buildings that might be there. I was reminded I was barefoot by a sharp rock.

  “Who’s there?”

  I stood, quiet, waiting for him to go back inside. My ears were ringing and I was cold, quaking. I knew suddenly that he could see me, that he couldn’t believe his eyes, that he didn’t know what to do.

  “Holy . . .” Barely a breath’s worth. “Baby girl, how are you still standing?”

  In his truck, I fell asleep again but he reached over and gently shook me awake. “Don’t die, sweetheart,” he said, his voice reverent, only a prayer. Maybe he only thought these things and I could hear them inside his head because I had already died and before I could be an eagle on the wind, I would be a ghost. His hand on my shoulder was warm and insistent. “Hold on, now.”

  And then the nurse. She wore scrubs with stick-figure drawings on them, as though a gang of children had decorated her that day. She leaned into my view. “Well now,” she said. “That looks like it hurts, doesn’t it?”

  I hadn’t seen it, didn’t want to. Didn’t want to talk about it. The man was gone. He’d let me out close to the hospital and pointed me in the right direction. “You understand,” he said, his mouth barely forming the words. “Tell them what happened to you, baby girl. They’ll fix you up.”

  By some luck the man had taken me to the hospital in the next county, not the closer emergency clinic where my file was thick. And maybe this place had a file, too. A list. When it came to emergencies, I was what they called a known entity. A frequent flier: bones, bruises, casts, ice packs, bloody noses.

  The nurse had a sense of humor. “Now, what brings you in today, sugar?” she said. She turned my chin this way and that and took a long look at my neck. “Bludgeoned head, bruises in the shape of someone’s fingers, or did you have some other complaint I needed to know about?” By now my whole body was stiff, my left arm cradled to protect the shoulder that had caught my fall off the deck.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said.

  “Well,” she said. “That’s good news.”

  I knew she was being sarcastic, but I thought the news might be good. The news could be good.

  “Did the daddy do this to you?”

  I watched her realize that I wasn’t going to say so. It was best to give away less than people wanted. “I got hit by a truck,” I said.

  “How many times?” she murmured and put down a few words on the chart. “They’ll want to ask you about that, so get the color of the truck straight. In the meantime, we need to get you up to a room, Mama.” Neither of us moved. I didn’t know if I could.

  I’d been in pain then, too. Fatigued. What had moved me off the bed and into action? Into the clothes I found on my roommate’s side of the room as she slept, and later, with a twenty the nurse slipped into my hand at the bus station as she dropped me off, onto the bus and away? Away as far as I could afford, and then a shelter that didn’t ask too many questions until I got a job and then the little tin-can mobile home, all to myself. And then the Tennessee state trooper at my door, when I’d only just settled in. “I got to tell them I seen you, miss,” he’d said. “They think you’re at the bottom of a lake, and now they can stop looking.” And then the librarian with a little handwriting knowledge. Then Kent. Who hadn’t I allowed to save me?

  I lay in the foul dust of the forgotten garage, forcing myself back into the memory, sorting the moments of my life and the saviors. Not Kent, not the community center librarian before him. Not the trooper, the nurse, not the truck driver, not the little girl. Each had saved me and yet none of them had, not really. This is why people believed in gods, in magic, in wishes on stars. This is why people believed—in rabbit’s feet and fate and crossed fingers. In yellow rooms—

  Joshua. But it hadn’t only been Joshua who had saved me. Not only the child I carried and thought I might keep and raise. I’d had no faith in that plan or my own ability to see it through.

  What saved me was the child I had been, the child who had not been given a moment of freedom or choice or faith in anything or anyone. Didn’t that kid deserve a chance, this many years later?

  I remembered my mother’s eyes shift away from me to the dirty sink of the old motel restaurant. What’s out there? Something else, but it hadn’t been enough. You can’t trust blue skies, she had told me once. My mother had not believed in luck and so neither had I, because the only luck was the kind you made. From doing something, from standing on your own feet, from kicking down closed doors, from leaping into the wide open unknown from a lakeside boulder—

  From rising out of green water, retching, to find that the girl you’d been had drowned. That girl was still there, under Sweetheart Lake, waiting for me to give in and crawl back into the water.

  I hadn’t come all this way—the apartments, the towns, and the curving roads through pines. Not all this way, just to die here nameless and unknown, alone. I believed one thing: it had to have been worth more than this. What was out there? Everything. Only everything. And no one was coming to save me, not this time.

  I pushed myself up and swung my legs like a clapper in a bell across the floor, striking out for any tool—anything—lying about. Nothing.

  “OK.” Think. Think.

  There was a hulking shape in the corner, just a bit darker than the dark itself. I remembered the sweep of the flashlight, the blink of something there. Firewood covered by a tarp? Or something more useful?

  I inched toward the corner, but my mind raced ahead. Joshua. I needed to get out of here. The police. No, the woods. If that bitch so much as looks at Joshua . . . I’d have to find a road first, or another isolated house, and who knew if someone would even be there. I’d have to break in. Then what? A phone. Police. Would the Ranseys still be there?

  My foot found something. I tapped at it with my shoe, the object answering with a metallic chink. Not firewood, at least.

  I scooted around so that I could yank the tarp with my hands. It caught. “OK.” I backed up into it, reaching my fingers through cobwebs until—

  A lawn mower.

  I used my feet to topple it, flipping it upright against my legs. Accumulated dust shaken from the tarp swirled over me. I turned my back on the thing and fumbled with bound hands until I found the bottom.

  It had blades. Dull, but still there, still in place. Blades.

  With a stretch, I found the right angle to saw at the tape. I fumed and rubbed my wrists raw. Bea’s kids would do anything for her. I nearly laughed. “The difference between you and me,” I said. The difference was that I would do anything for my kid. Big difference.

  At last my hands broke apart.

  I ripped the tape away and then tore at the binds on my ankles with fumbling, swollen fingers.

  “OK.” My voice was more assured now. I stood, shaking, and found the door.

  Locked. I knew that.

  I could still die here. All that maneuvering and I might still die here.

  I couldn’t. I had to get out. For Joshua. For Aidan. For Leila Ransey. For myself and for the chance to take an oar to that silver knot of hair on the back of Bea Ransey’s head.

  I had to get out. And then through the brambles to the dirt path, t
he path to the gravel and through miles of forest on a road that no one else probably used. All to find the paved road that led, if nowhere else, back to the Ransey compound.

  My skull was exposed, the fever raging. I couldn’t think. My legs trembled under my own weight. I slid to the floor and rested my temple against the cool wall. Think, think. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was getting tired and my head hurt beyond comprehension.

  Joshua.

  I came roaring to my feet, clawing along the wall away from the door and through a cobwebbed corner. I ran my hands high and low, high and low along the wall. Another corner, more dusty wall, and then my fingernails grazed a wide crack and a different texture. I ran my hand back and then down the crack to the floor, then up until it cornered and turned.

  Another door.

  There was something covering most of the door, heavy. A wall of thick pressed board. Building supplies? I shoved and pulled and pried, smelling the rot at the bottom of the wood when I gained on it. Water-damaged pressed plywood sheets, heavy as hell.

  I strained at it until I lost track of time and my head began to swim. I listened to my own breath. If I died here—

  I gave one last groaning push. The weight of the wood panels shifted.

  I leapt backward, feeling the rush of air as the boards collapsed and slammed to the ground. My lungs filled with dust, but I fought through the coughing fit and rushed to the door.

  It wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t slide left or right, wouldn’t be pushed or pried open. My fingertips grew raw and splintered. Nothing gave, even a little bit.

  “Goddamn it!” And I heard the sound of my scream going out into the woods, free. This was the way. This was the only way. I had to do this. For Joshua. For the girl I used to be and everything she was due. For the beautiful life I had, for the chance to see the blue sky or black, just one more time.

  Think. Think. And then I realized what I hadn’t done.

  I bent low and, with the last of my will, pulled the bottom of the door up and inward, toward me. A hinge somewhere above my head creaked and crackled.

  Clear air rushed in, along with the sound of a hard breeze rustling the pines. I stood for a moment in the stage of the open garage door, torn hands, raw skin, the wound on the back of my skull furious from the exertion.

  The trees waited to see what I would do.

  I noted the spot of moonlight on the surface of the lake, and limped in the opposite direction. Hoping for road.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The trees began to say my name.

  I stumbled through the woods, briar and brush, everything throwing itself in my way. Stumbled for miles without ever finding the dirt path the truck had taken. I did not find a gravel road. Just trees.

  Trees, trees, and more trees, someone had said.

  A million years ago.

  I wanted to put my head down. My head, so heavy. But I fought on, banging into a tree stump, tripping over a fallen log in the dark.

  “Trees, trees, and more trees,” I said. I liked the way it sounded, my voice alive in the dead silence. Trees, trees, and more trees. The guy who’d said it first had been lost in the woods in his lifetime. He wasn’t just making noise. “Trees, trees.”

  I felt the trees nod toward me for a closer look.

  “I’m not crazy,” I said.

  The wind picked up. Dry leaves from under my feet rose into the wind and rustled all around me. The aspens would be lifting the bellies of their leaves to the wind, the loose yellow pieces dropping to the forest floor like coins thrown into a fountain. I wished I would live to see it. A storm was a beautiful thing.

  The pines nodded deeply.

  I warmed to their solicitude. “Trees, trees,” I sang.

  At the first gray of predawn, my foot hit gravel. I stood in the middle of a thin stretch of pale, crushed rock. From where I stood, the road seemed to lead out of forest and back into forest. But I knew it wasn’t true. It was a road, and it would take me.

  “Thank you.”

  The trees bowed extravagantly, showing me which way. I didn’t know which way. I took their recommendation.

  I started down the road, right down the middle. No one could miss me. I could not be passed by.

  But after a while I had to watch my feet. The gravel kept rolling away and taking my shoes with it. The road was trying to buck me. I’d have to walk to the side of the road.

  The scrub next to the road was thick and punishing. I was too tired, too slow.

  What if the woman, the bad woman—I couldn’t quite come up with her name—what if she came back to check on me?

  The forest presented itself as the best idea of all. I returned to it.

  And then the trees began to call my name.

  They didn’t have one voice, but many. Anna. The high wind made their song hard to hear. Leeanna.

  I stumbled through the trees, patting as many as I could, thankful they could stand when I couldn’t.

  Anna, they sang. And just before I might have found the courage to answer, I tripped over a limb. I fell to my knees, pine needles carpeting the blow to my palms.

  I let myself meet the ground, soft. I could rest here. All the rest of it would take care of itself. This was my job, my only responsibility.

  Lie down among the trees, home.

  IN MY OWN grave.

  I blinked. Above, a canopy of trees and a daytime sky.

  I was soaked. The rains had come and gone while I slept. It had not felt like sleeping and now waking did not feel like waking.

  “Dead,” I said, to test the theory.

  The only dry spot was the ground under my body. I began to shiver. The trees stood straight and disappointed. They had gathered around to watch.

  I reached for one of them and pulled myself up.

  The wind had died back down. Nothing chirped or sang. The woods behind me were waiting. They’d heard something.

  Then I heard, too.

  A car coming, on the road.

  I had lost the road. I stumbled from one tree to the next, blessing each one.

  Through the trunks I saw a black truck. Just as I might have dreamed it. Just as I would have conjured it.

  I propelled myself forward, body stiff, lungs burning. I was too late. The truck passed, kicking up clouds of dust.

  Black truck, Indiana plates on the back.

  It was the sheriff. I had no idea how or why. I threw myself into the dust, into the road, and tried to make any noise I could think of. I knelt in the road and grabbed handfuls of gravel to throw.

  A half mile down the road, the truck’s brake lights glowed red. It stopped, paused, and began to reverse toward me. It skidded to a stop, another cloud of silver dust billowing over me, into my eyes. The figure of a broad-shouldered man hurried toward me.

  “Sheriff,” I said, my voice a croak. I thought I had never been more happy. My eyes stung. I turned my head away, coughing. “Russ.”

  He pulled me gently from the ground and I let him.

  “What the hellfire happened to you?”

  Not the sheriff. I tried to stand on my feet. But still—someone. I would take any help now, any help at all.

  “—looking all over for you,” the man was saying. “—how the hell you managed it—”

  I knew the voice.

  “—what you’re even doing here—”

  Bo Ransey.

  “No,” I screamed, and swung my arms.

  “Hey, hellcat.” He backed away, raising his hands in surrender.

  “Not after that.”

  “Can you get yourself in the truck?” he said.

  “Not after all that.”

  “Didn’t think so. Here—”

  “Get away from me, I swear to God.”

  “We’re at a real standoff, then.”

  I took a step backward into the brush. Wobbling.

  “You’re a mess,” he said. He watched me take another step. “You’re not going to get far.”

  “Sorry yo
u weren’t around to help?”

  “How are you way out here and your truck is being pulled out of the Midnight right now? This lake isn’t even on the same chain as the Midnight.”

  “I’m not buying that innocent look.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Or that one.” I took another step backward, my shoe sliding in the loose gravel at the edge of the road.

  “Where you going? There’s not going to be anything left of you, you keep walking that way. Nothing but trees.”

  “The trees are—” My friends. My army. I didn’t want him to know how outnumbered he was but then I lost my balance and slid down the embankment on my knee. I couldn’t stand. “I want—a glass of water.”

  “Got a Coke in the truck.”

  I let myself slide the rest of the way to the ground. “I wouldn’t take spit from you—”

  “Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t get to choose from a menu right now.”

  He came for me, hauled me upright and dragged me a few feet. “Jesus, you’re a mess.” He knelt and let me fall over his shoulder, sandbag-style. I struck feebly at his back. But he was right. I had no other choice. I’d have to go back to the Ranseys and give Bea a chance to get it right.

  I welcomed the darkness when it came for me again. I only wished, in the blink of thought I was allowed, that since I was going to die, I wished he’d just left me in the woods.

  Chapter Forty-two

  —not out of the woods.”

  In my own grave. I opened my eyes onto a white ceiling. I tried to sit up, to run. I was tied again.

  “Forget it. You’re not going anywhere.”

  The voice. I did not trust it. I had a memory of talking to trees.

  I blinked into brightness.

  “Is that bothering you?”

  A hazy figure walked into my view, pulled the shades. The white room now gray, I could see the outline of the man who held me captive.