“Dad.” Nora’s clear voice cut through the icy weather. “I can’t feel my toes. They really hurt.”
We’d been traveling for a few hours that morning and even I was starting to feel the bitter pinch of the frigid temperatures. No matter how briskly I moved through the snow, I couldn’t get myself warm.
“Well, which is it, Nora?” Mr. West snapped. “Can you not feel your toes or do they hurt?” I think the combination of cold and fatigue was starting to wear on everyone in our group.
“They hurt.”
“How many pairs of socks are you wearing?” my dad asked.
Nora looked startled by the question or simply because my father had spoken to her. I assumed the latter. I didn’t think he’d addressed her directly since they’d joined our group. “Um, like four or five,” she guessed.
My dad rolled his eyes for the first time in his life. Nora, however, looked lost. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I layered. I didn’t want my feet to get cold.”
“You’re wearing too many socks,” I said. I tried to keep my tone even because it seemed that both of our fathers were losing patience with her. “You should have on two pairs of socks, max.”
She breathed out heavily through her nose. “I didn’t know.”
My father stopped and dropped his pack on the ground. “Go ahead and fix your feet,” he said gruffly. “We need to check our location anyway.”
Nora purposely put distance between herself and our fathers. She sat down in a pile of snow and focused her attention on taking her boots off.
I shuffled in place, wiggling my toes inside my boots. Normally when we took a break for water or to consult the map and compass I took the opportunity to rest. Today, however, it was all I could do to keep moving and stay warm.
I regarded my father and Mr. West. Although Mr. West seemed to be able to handle the Frost with the rest of us, he still exuded a persona that suggested he had lived exceedingly well before Apophis. It wasn’t just that he wore the outdoor gear that looked like it had come straight off a store mannequin. His straight, bleached teeth, healthy tan, and all-American good looks appeared out of place in the wilderness and more at home at the local country club. He was a shorter man, probably no taller than 5 feet 9 inches, but he carried himself with the confidence of a man a full foot taller. My father, tall and broad shouldered, dwarfed Mr. West in stature, but it was clear that he too sensed there was more to Jerry West. It seemed to me these two men never would have socialized before Apophis. Yet here they were, working together towards a common goal, even if it was apparent neither trusted the other explicitly. It all made me think of my grandmother’s plea that I be nicer to Nora.
I looked over again at Nora. She was still struggling to remove her boots. I knew how my father operated. If she wasn’t finished fixing her socks by the time he was ready to be on the move again, he’d leave her and our ticket to Eden behind.
I tromped over to where she sat. She’d removed her gloves and was working on a particularly stubborn knot. I watched how her fingers shook as she fumbled with the laces.
“Can I help?”
She looked up at the sound of my voice. Her eyes were wide and startled. “No, I’ll get it.”
I dropped to my knees in front of her and grabbed a booted foot. “I’ll do this one and you get the other,” I said. I tugged my gloves off with my teeth and dropped them next to me. “It’ll go twice as fast that way.”
She didn’t protest or kick me, so I bent my head and focused on the tight knots. My fingernails were luckily longer than I usually kept them, so I was eventually able to pry the double knots loose. When I’d finished with the first boot, she was still working on the knots on her other shoe. Her hands had started shaking even harder than before. There was no way she was going to be able to yank the laces free. The knots were too tight.
I placed my hands over hers. Her fingers were icy compared to my much warmer hands. “Put your gloves back on,” I instructed. “I’ve got this.”
A short while later I’d untied the knots in her other shoe. I knew how much her nearly numb toes would be aching with pins and needles so I gingerly pried her feet free of the boots. I needed to check for signs of frostbite before she put her shoes back on, so I carefully peeled away each sock, layer by layer, until I got down to her bare feet. Her toes felt like solid icicles against my fingers, but there wasn’t any discoloring of the skin, so I knew she was just cold and not in danger of losing any toes.
I started to rub her feet to coax the circulation back into them. I massaged each toe, one by one, starting with the big toe. I gently but firmly pressed my thumb into the top of each toe and rubbed in small circles, going for deep tissue. She remained silent as I diligently went through all ten toes.
“Better?” I continued to rub hard into the arch of her right foot.
She nodded. I didn’t comment on the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. As fast as a tear appeared on her cheeks, she immediately wiped it away.
I chose two pairs of socks out of the five total that would keep her feet warm and dry without squishing her toes together and allowing them to freeze again. I slipped them both over her left foot, making sure not to pull the material too tight and then I did the same for her right foot.
“You can put your boots back on now,” I said. “I’d keep the laces around your foot a little looser and then keep them tighter around your ankles so they don’t slip off if you get stuck in a deep drift.”
“Thank you, Sam,” she murmured quietly as she started to lace up her left boot. “I didn’t know about the sock thing.”
“It’s okay,” I brushed off, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. I leaned back on my haunches. My knees were starting to get cold from resting on them in the snow. “You couldn’t have known all those socks were hurting rather than helping you.”
“How did you know about it though?” she sniffled, wiping at her nose.
“My dad. I mean, once it started to get colder and the snow was still thick on the ground even in July, it seemed pretty important to learn those kinds of things.”
She nodded. Her eyes still looked wet and the extra moisture made them practically glimmer. “You just said another full sentence to me,” she remarked. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to get used to that.”
I slapped the top of her boot and she whimpered a little. The circulation must have still been coming back to her toes. I instantly felt guilty the moment I nudged her. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I was so physically awkward sometimes. “Yeah, well, don’t step in a bear trap or something just so I’ll talk to you more.”
I rose and brushed the snow away from my knees. I left Nora’s side and went back over to see how my grandma was doing. While my father and Mr. West consulted their maps, she had taken out her yarn and needles again. She never was content just to sit and rest; she always had to be doing something. It amazed me, at her advanced age, how resilient she’d been this entire crisis.
“That was thoughtful of you, Sam,” my grandma remarked as she continued to knit or crochet. I didn’t know the difference between the two; that kind of thing had never interested me.
“It’s no big deal,” I shrugged off. “I just knew that neither Dad nor Mr. West were gonna help her.”
“She seems like a nice enough girl,” my grandma said nodding. She twisted the yarn around her gloved hands. “A little clueless, perhaps, but I’m glad there’s someone your age tagging along so you don’t just have your very old grandma to keep you company.”
“You get better with age, Gran,” I protested.
I hazarded a glance toward Nora who’d recently finished tying up her boots. She grinned broadly in my direction, and I quickly looked away, embarrassed to have been caught looking again. I needed to stop doing that.
“Help an old lady up, Sam,” my grandma said, reaching up for me. “My knees are as old as I am.”
“I don’t know why you talk like that, Gran,” I chastised as I help
ed her to her feet. “You’re going to outlive us all.”
She smiled gently at me. “It’s because I’m so stubborn, dear. Neither God nor the Devil wants me.”
+++++
The next morning I woke up to an empty tent. My grandmother had always been an early riser. The traveling should have been taking its toll on her aged bones and joints – the long, brutal days made even my 20-year-old body feel decades older – but she’d proven herself just as capable of the long days as anyone in our group. Her sleeping bag was rolled up tight along with the sleeping pad. On top was her knitting. The scarf she’d been making was completed and neatly folded on top of her sleeping kit. I wondered what she’d make next.
I squinted into the sun when I unzipped the tent’s front flap to go outside. Sunglasses had been an oversight – I’d never thought of needing them. It was perpetual winter, after all. But if anything, the glare of the sun was even harsher the way the daylight reflected off the snowy ground cover.
The fire had been re-stoked from the previous night. I felt like things were getting more comfortable between Nora and myself – or at least I’d stopped having childish tantrums and stomping out the fire prematurely. The smell of campfire and charred meat greeted my senses. Mr. West and Nora weren’t up yet; my dad sat by himself, tending to a hunk of unidentifiable meat.
“Smells good,” I observed, sitting down beside him on a sleeping pad he’d thrown over the cold ground.
He grunted and turned the meat on a homemade spit. “It’s rabbit,” he said without emotion. He picked up his hunting knife and carved off one of the meaty legs for me.
The meat was still hot from the fire, and I gingerly tossed what had been the animal’s left leg back and forth between my fingers. “Rabbit? Did you catch it with a Y-branch spring trap?”
He nodded and poked at the fire with a stick.
I was impressed; we had practiced making all kinds of small animal traps back in Williston, but we’d only ever caught squirrels and chipmunks. This was the first rabbit he’d caught. It also was encouraging to know that rabbits still existed. Most larger animals like deer and bear wouldn’t have survived this long of a winter freeze.
“Where’s Gran?” I asked around a mouthful of rabbit. The meat was greasy and warm, and I wiped the juices off my mouth with the back of my hand. The meat on the squirrels and other small animals we caught were getting leaner, but I tried not to let signs that things were getting progressively worse worry me.
“She left.”
My teeth sank into the dark meat of a tiny thigh, and they stayed there. “What?” came my garbled question around my breakfast.
My dad stoked the fire with a sturdy-looking branch. The hot embers glowed hotter. “She took off early this morning. She thought she was slowing us down, so she left.”
I let the rabbit meat fall away from my mouth. I had been starving when I’d first woken up, but now I’d lost my appetite. “And you just let her go?” I demanded.
“It wasn’t my decision to make, Samantha,” my dad said in a low, even tone that maddened me. Normally I found his stoicism comforting, but right now he was coming across as an emotionless robot. “She thought she was doing us a favor.” He breathed in through his nose and it made a rattling noise. “I gave her my tent, so I’ll need to bunk with you from now on.”
I stared down at my breakfast, blinking away the tears. “Okay.”
I suddenly remembered seeing my grandmother and father talking near the fire the previous night. I hadn’t been able to hear what they’d been talking about; they’d spoken with heads bent close and Nora had been chewing off my ear about something that now seemed vapid and unimportant. Whatever they had been talking about had seemed serious though. The light from the fire had cast an eerie glow on their serious visages.
I stood up abruptly. “I’m, uh, I’m gonna go find some more wood for the fire,” I announced.
My dad stared at me for a moment. We didn’t need more wood; the fire was big enough to melt snow and he’d already cooked the rabbit meat. We’d be packing up and leaving in a short while. But he seemed to understand that I needed space. “Okay,” he said, nodding slowly. “Don’t go too far though.”
+++++
I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in deep, gasping sobs as I crashed through the thin forest, putting distance between myself and our campsite. If any bandits had been lurking nearby, they would most certainly have heard and found me. But I didn’t care. I threw myself down on a built-up snowdrift when it felt like my lungs were going to explode inside my chest. I wanted to scream. I wanted to howl. I hadn’t properly mourned my mother’s death and now, combined with my grandmother’s unannounced departure, the flood gates had opened. Tears stung my eyes and burned down my sunburned cheeks.
I had bonded better with my father growing up. We talked sports; we talked cars. I had few things in common with my mom besides shared DNA. She loved gardening and baking and scrapbooking. She was always reading the latest chic-lit novel from the New York Times bestseller list or going to the movies with her friends to see the newest romantic comedy starring whichever celebrity People magazine had named Sexiest Man alive. I didn’t have the patience for any of that. What I wouldn’t do to be able to go back and watch Love Actually with my mom.
I stopped and tensed when I heard the unmistakable sound of twigs snapping beneath boots. What had moments ago been uncontrollable sobs, stilled in my throat. Now you’ve done it, Sam. I scolded myself. You’ve announced to the world where you are.
I held my breath, expecting the worst. I was sure a bandit had found me.
“Do you need help?” Nora’s annoyingly sexy, yet concerned voice alerted me. “Your dad said you were getting wood for the fire.” I didn’t know how she’d found me, but I’d probably made footprints the size of Yeti’s in my scramble to get away.
“No, I’ve got it.” I scooped up a handful of twigs, hoping she hadn’t seen me crying. My errand was of the futile variety and I wondered if she knew that.
“I want to help. I feel so useless,” she said, flapping her arms like a flightless penguin. If I wasn’t so concerned about masking my emotions, I might have actually found it endearing. “Your dad won’t let me help either.”
“He probably figures you’ll just mess something up,” I answered truthfully. My statement wasn't meant to be a reflection on her competency, but she seemed to take it like that. She made a frustrated noise, huffing and scowling. My dad was a very independent man, but I also think he harbored some OCD tendencies. He was unusually particular about certain things – like how you folded bath towels – and his quirks had worsened since we’d left Williston. Things had to be just so for him to feel a sliver of stability or control. I guess I could understand why he felt that way. I was craving some stability as well.
“I’m sorry about your grandma.”
I felt my lower chin start to wobble and tremble. No, not now. Not in front of her. Keep it together, Sam.
Nora continued staring at me and I was in awe of her boldness. I hated confronting sickness or sadness. Whenever people told me sad stories it made me uncomfortable. Nora, however, seemed unaffected, yet genuine.
“We should sleep in the same tent,” I blurted out. As soon as the words tumbled out, I recoiled. I didn’t know why I had said the words out loud. Perhaps my grandmother’s departure had left me feeling a little vulnerable and needing to make connections.
Nora arched a pale eyebrow. “Is that a pickup line?” Her mouth curled at the edges. “Does that kind of fancy talk work on the kids back where you’re from?”
I could feel a blush warming my normally icy cheekbones. “My dad gave my grandma his tent when she left, and I really don’t want to share a tent with him,” I said, ignoring her jab. “He snores like a semi-truck downshifting.”
Nora smirked at me. “So I’d be doing you a huge favor, huh?”
“It’d help you, too,” I interjected. “Our combined body heat will keep the tent at
a higher temperature if we stay together. We could share a floor pad so you don’t have to keep blowing up your air mattress.”
“I had no idea you were a cuddler. You don’t look like the type.”
“Can you be serious for a second?” I said, throwing my hands up in frustration.
“Probably not. I say inappropriate things when I’m worried or scared,” she admitted. “It’s kind of my thing.”
“Well there’s nothing to be scared about,” I said with a confidence I didn’t know I possessed anymore. “My dad knows his stuff. He’ll get us where we need to go.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, but finally gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod.
“And what do you mean I don’t look like a cuddler?” I demanded.
She grinned at me, almost mischievously, and walked back in the direction of our campsite, leaving me on my own to wonder about her comment.
+++++
My dad pushed us harder than before after my grandmother left. I didn’t know if it was his way of coping – to just keep moving and put as much distance between us and sadness – or if there was a reason for his haphazard actions. My stable, reliable rock seemed to be falling apart.
My mother had always been the voice of reason on those rare occasions when he acted recklessly. With her gone though, I supposed that task fell to me. I’d never been very good at communicating with my dad. Maybe he and I were too similar, too stubborn, too convinced of always being right, to really get along.
I was keeping up fine with our hurried pace and long hours, but I could tell that Mr. West was struggling. When I noticed the redness of his face and the ragged tug of his breath, I jogged up to my father’s side at the head of our small caravan. “We should stop for the night soon.”
He glanced at me, meeting my gaze without blinking, but said nothing.
“Mr. West is really starting to struggle,” I added.
He made a noncommittal sound. It was a move I’d pulled a hundred times and now I knew why it pissed so many people off.
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