“Whatever.”
The track led them through tall trees that seemed to reach the sky. All the while the imperial mountains were in front of and all around them like an all-seeing goddess.
“They probably had their breakfast,” Elaine said. It was hard to know whether one was on the right or wrong track when scavenging for food or anything else in an unknown place. “And they are probably saying the same thing about us, that we’re losers because only stupid people get lost by separating themselves from people who know where they’re going. We wouldn’t even need to think about where we’re putting our feet right now. All we needed to do was follow the guide who knows the trail and stay with our group.”
“You sound frustrated,” Susan said.
“I’m responding to Kimberly. I’m past frustrated. I simply want to survive this. We’re walking in kind of a straight line, but we’re not seeing anything new or getting anywhere. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “I’m seeing more and more of the same berries that we can’t eat.”
“So when we get back to school, we’re going to be seen as losers?” Miriam didn’t want to be branded, but she wouldn’t worry too much about it. If she survived being alone in this backwoods with three other girls who didn’t know where they were, maybe she could survive anything. “Maybe now Kimberly will know what it feels like to be called names.”
“I doubt anybody is going to be calling us names. People our age are fascinated by lost and found stories. They’ll probably have lots of questions for us that they wouldn’t ask losers.” Elaine looked at the parallel lines of the rails with the crossties. It was a never-ending pattern of movement. She could imagine a train running on the track, but only just. She wondered what kind of train it was, where it went, its final destination and when it had stopped running. It seemed to have stopped a long time ago.
“Why would anybody need a train out here anyway?” Miriam asked. “It’s not like there’s anybody living out here.”
“Food,” Susan said. “It transported food.”
“You would know that, wouldn’t you?” said Kimberly.
“Maybe it carried people too,” Elaine said. “When we see those western movies, the trains are always running in some lonely, forsaken place. Maybe that’s why they were so easy to rob. People were on the train, but there weren’t a lot of people around on the outside. The towns were far apart and the stations were far apart.”
“So why’d it stop running?” Kimberly asked. “People still need food and the things the train carried. People still need to move.”
“Who knows?” Elaine asked. “Sometimes some ways of doing or carrying things just become outdated and unnecessary. I don’t know. Just look at this place. What would a train be doing out here now?”
They hoped they wouldn’t have to change course from the train tracks. It was a predictable line that they could use as their map. They had travelled on too many unexplored trails already and couldn’t afford to venture into any more new territory and end up even further lost. They needed some amount of control in a situation that already evoked a powerless feeling. But still, how could they get any more lost if they didn’t know where they were?
“You think they’re looking for us right now?” Susan asked.
“Of course they are,” Elaine replied. “And Mrs. Marks is probably repeating herself, saying, ‘Those girls just don’t listen.’”
“Shouldn’t they have found us already?”
“They probably would have if we hadn’t panicked and started running and walking aimlessly.”
At last they came to a bushy section by the side of the tracks that held an unmanaged tangle of compact arching stems. On these stems were what looked like blackberries. The purplish fruit was bunched up together and was surrounded by numerous prickly thorns. They got as close as they could to inspect the fruit and make sure it was in fact blackberries.
“Well?” Susan said and looked at the other three. “We can’t look at them all day—so is it or isn’t it?”
“It has the brambles and thorns,” Miriam said.
“Yeah, the brambles are short too,” Elaine noted. “And then there’s the arching. Yeah, I’d say these are blackberries.”
They picked and ate. Their fingers and hands paid the price as the thorns pricked their skin. The more they tried to avoid the thorns, the more they got caught. The branches and thorns seemed to take over the entire space.
“There are caterpillars all over this thing,” Miriam noted. “How comes they don’t get pricked?”
“Maybe because they’re on the leaves, and they’re smart. They don’t make sudden movements. They’re either very still or they inch forward slowly.” Elaine stuffed some of the blackberries into the side pocket of her bag. She didn’t know when they would be found, and she could surely use some later. While they waited to be found, or if by chance they ran across someone, they still had to survive.
“Ouch.” Susan flashed her right hand and sucked on her index finger.
“Ouch is right,” Kimberly said. “My beautiful fingers.”
The blackberries were good, but it was a big challenge to navigate through the thorny brambles. They ate until they were sated. The tips of their fingers and their palms showed deep purple marks from where the berries had smashed. There were more blackberries that could be had, but they couldn’t get through the density to reach them. The ones that were within reach had been consumed or were tucked away in Elaine’s knapsack.
Having nothing else to do with themselves but be found, they continued along the track. Having something to follow gave them some comfort. They were not able to take a different path because of their fears of getting off track.
“This is tiring, this constant walking. We walked yesterday, and here we are walking again.” Susan wasn’t hungry anymore, but she was tired. She thought they should just turn around and go back to their base. They could sit on a rock until help came. She didn’t see the point in tiring themselves out without cause but followed the other three. Where they went she went, whether she liked it or not.
“Maybe we’ll run into someone,” Miriam said. “We can’t be the only ones out here. People come out here to hike.”
“Out here, yeah, right!” Kimberly said.
“People come to Running Brook to hike, but I’m not sure about this side of the track. We’re off the beaten trail. We haven’t seen or heard anyone at all, and the people we saw last were in our group. The trails aren’t well-defined here. In any case, we can’t just pray to run into someone. We’ve got to be careful,” Elaine noted. Most of the crossties on the track were rotted out. In some sections there were none at all.
“I still want to know why we’re still walking,” Susan whined.
“What is it with you?” Kimberly said. “You found something to eat, and now we should go back and lie down because you’re content. We’re walking because we don’t know what else to do, and we’re going in this direction because we don’t know where to go! We can turn around anytime we want, so just chill.” They said she was vain, but she wasn’t stupid. That was how people operated, wasn’t it? They stuck with what was familiar. There was safety in routine. It was her vanity that had landed her out here on this aimless walk. She had skipped classes too many times to spend time with herself in the bathroom mirror. But in her appearance, Kimberly had found a constant. Everything was where it should be, as it should be, and she was certain that she was pretty. In that certainty was comfort.
“We could go back to the cave.” Susan didn’t agree with Kimberly that they didn’t know where else to go. It was pointless to be travelling along this abandoned track. What were they looking for?
“We’re just waiting for something to happen. Maybe we should turn back.” Elaine saw the black bear at the same time as the others. It was a stone�
�s throw away from them. It seemed to have emerged silently from the bushes. It loomed up and seemed to stand several feet above them. For such a huge creature, it had stealth. Now what were they going to do?
“Run!” Susan said.
“No,” Elaine shouted in a whisper. “Don’t move. We can’t outrun a bear. I repeat, we can’t outrun a bear.”
“I think I’m going to wet myself,” Susan said. They were now in a tight huddle. The bear stared at them and they stared back. Unable to look away from the animal, they tried not to make any sudden movements.
“Don’t do that! Don’t you dare wet yourself! If the bear smells that, it’s going to maul us to shreds.” Elaine tried to make her paralyzed brain think. What did they say? Don’t panic. The bear was probably just as surprised as they were. But now it was coming toward them. They stayed rooted to the spot.
“What are we going to do?” Susan wailed. “We have to run!”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Elaine said through clenched teeth. “We should head for those bushes over there.” She pointed to a tight-knitted clump of bushes that would provide a good shield.
“No sudden movement and no running. Let’s do this slowly, very slowly.” Elaine spread her fingers and moved them calmly to make her point. It was possible the bear wouldn’t get into the bushes. They moved slowly, inch by slow inch, toward the clump. The bear was huge and intimidating as it stood on its hind legs. The animal looked to be about seven feet and three hundred pounds. Maybe it was all the shaggy hair. Luckily for them, they were on a part of the track that wasn’t in the open.
“Play dead, play dead,” Miriam said. “Isn’t that what they say we should do?”
“I don’t think I could do that with a bear standing over me,” Elaine said. “If anyone wants to try that, I’ll be in these thickets. This isn’t the time to be submissive.”
“I’m with Elaine on this one. It would probably eat us, lying there on the ground on a silver platter.” Kimberly had heard of many people who had escaped from bears over the years. However, many had been mauled, and she thought of that now, her face being torn apart by a vicious bear. If that were to happen, she would have nothing left.
They clawed their way into the thickets, scraping their hands and faces in the process. They didn’t care. It was either being eaten by a bear or surviving this experience.
In the thicket, they formed a tight wad with their backs against each other. The bear came slowly toward them, its white chest patch now visible.
“We should throw something at it,” Susan said.
“We don’t have anything to throw,” Kimberly said. They had no rocks, bark or branches. They were in a thicket crisscrossed with small branches and shrubs, but they could see nothing effective to hit a bear with.
“Let’s just be quiet,” Elaine whispered. “If it doesn’t get a good hit, like in the eyes or nose, it won’t go away and will only get mad. Let’s stay quiet and blend in with these bushes like we belong here. Hopefully it’ll go away. I don’t think it can get in here.”
The bear was so close now. Kimberly could see its long, dark-brown snout. She imagined she could see its breath. She was sure she heard it breathing, but it could have been all their ragged breath. But could the bear see her? Its eyes were very small. Kimberly had heard that bears had poor eyesight, but she was not about to move to proof that theory. With trembling feet she watched it circling and scrutinizing her. It stood right before her. The claws were the most frightening. She saw five strong claws curved at the ends. She imagined the damage those claws could inflict.
They couldn’t fight, and now there was no way to flee.
Susan was paralyzed with fear, but she was glad she managed to hold her bladder. How often had they heard that the smell of human urine was attractive to black bears? Who knew she would have been safer in that dark cave with sorcery, death rituals and terrifying drawings than out here in the open. The cave was dark, but that didn’t make it a bad place, just different from what she was used to. This real-life experience demanded her undivided attention. This was a sudden change for her. The school had given her that letter because they claimed she was lazy, mediocre and only participated half-heartedly in anything. Well, now her heart was in this because it was racing uncontrollably. She made the sign of the cross over her heart.
The bear seemed tired, because instead of looking at them as it had before, it began to look away as if distracted. After a while it gave up and wandered off in the direction they’d been headed in only moments before. The girls breathed easier but didn’t relax.
“What now?” Susan whispered.
“We wait. We stay quiet. We don’t move. We don’t know where the bear is. We don’t want to come out of here and find ourselves in the same position. We might not find another thicket to run into.” Elaine had heard that bears would watch from a distance and come back if they saw any sign of movement.
“How long do we wait?” Kimberly could barely be heard.
“Twenty or thirty minutes.” Miriam thought that sounded like a safe bet.
They stood there in silence, looking down at eight boots. The only things they heard were chirping birds and their own terror-stricken breathing. Miriam thought about her letter. Anne Beaumont Private High wasn’t why she was here, her mother was. She had signed the letter and given her consent for Miriam to go. And now here she was cooped up in some bushes, unable to speak from fear. She felt anger rising to her stomach, turning it green, or so she imagined. Miriam always had this bitter taste in her mouth every time she felt this way, and she imagined it came from a green stomach. This silence created by the bear was a silence she carried routinely, like the silence of not talking about her dead father. She felt the bitterness in her stomach now and tried to press it down into the darkness it had risen from.
Perhaps standing there in utter, tense silence was too much for them. A minute seemed like forever. When Susan could stand it no longer, she began to chant in a whisper.
“Down by the river we go …”
And because the others felt like goats caught up in the thicket, boxed in by an impenetrable mesh of brambles, they without thinking began to join in the words of the chant.
“Everything we do is a show …”
The whispered chorus and Susan’s leading lines became a spontaneous dialogue between them. In it they found a way to ease the tension.
“Hold my hand so you can understand …”
They were back at Anne Beaumont. The poem was familiar to them. In their minds, Ms. Carter was standing in front of the class dissecting the poem. If they really closed their eyes, the enclosed bushes they were standing in could become school grounds.
“That we have no master plan …”
How long they chanted in whispers, they didn’t know. They only knew that their steady, even tones were somehow warding off the bear. It allowed them to relax their trembling bodies and their overactive minds. It was an incantation that became a prayer. They chanted the words until there was nothing more to say and then lapsed into silence again.
After twenty-five minutes, counted off on Elaine’s watch, they decided to venture out. They carefully plucked the brambles from their path. They reinjured themselves with scrapes, bruises and pricks. They looked around them and listened to every sound.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Miriam said, “being caged up in those rough, prickly bushes or being out here in the open.”
Scrambling back on the path, they looked right, left, up, down and all the places their eyes could search to see if all was clear. But they remained nervous because they had come suddenly upon the bear before, and it could happen again.
“I felt trapped in there, like an animal waiting to be killed and eaten.” Susan had thought it weird that she could become food for another living creature.
Kimberly stre
tched her hands in front of her. “My skin is all cut up, and my face is irritated. I just know I’ve scraped it up.”
“If you had washed your hair with shampoo, we’d still be in those bushes, and you and the rest of us might have been clawed to pieces. So I wouldn’t worry too much about your face being scraped up.”
“I’m talking about my face here!”
Kimberly reached into her bag and searched around. She came up with a small cover girl case that held a mirror. It had the words Advanced Radiance on it. She held the mirror to her face. “See, I told you my face is all scarred up.”
Kimberly produced a sponge from the case and daubed at some colour inside, and then daubed at the cuts on her face. Concentrating on her reflection, she almost tripped over the tracks.
“You should be looking for bears, but here you’re again with the face.” Miriam wondered how many mirrors Kimberly had in her bag. She thought she had taken care of the problem, but here she was with yet another one. “You’re filled with mirrors, and you’re still not seeing yourself.”
“Maybe you should get a mirror yourself, Miriam, so you can see your own reflection. Then you’d stop picking on me.”
They followed the railway track back. It had become their lifeline. They constantly looked back. The blackberry patch where they had eaten was before them now. They contemplated stopping to search out some more but decided against it. They had experienced enough prickly thorns for the morning.
They picked up speed along the track, wanting to get as far away from their encounter with the bear as possible. Whenever they lost sight of the track, they bent their heads, looked at their feet and found it.
At last they were back by the waterfall. The gushing water was sweet music to their ears because they knew that they were only steps away from the cave.
Harmful Substances
The cave stood before them with its half-opened mouth. The two sweaters still hung from the bushes. It seemed nobody had seen them or had been there. In the blistering sunshine, the paintings on the cave walls, although still complex and varied, didn’t look as frightening as they had in the gloom. The wall provided a record of birds, hunting, religion, sorcery, fertility, death and other events they couldn’t fathom. The drawings showed all things coexisting, even as the girls struggled with their own survival in the woods.
Lost at Running Brook Trail Page 9