Granite
Ilook first at the destruction of everything that I had been working on so hard for the past days in order to build our lives here, and then at Pete. What in the world could have caused him to do this? I know he’s kind of a weird kid, but I attributed that mostly to his parents. He didn’t seem like a violent or destructive boy, so seeing that he has completely trashed the start of our cabin, and even our tent, is more alarming than I can put into words. I am speechless as I stand there facing him, even when he warns us to run. I don’t like running from things, unless I know what it is that I am running from. It’s not long before that question is answered.
Tom and Lana come up the side of the hill looking for their son. They look at the destroyed scene in front of them and then look at Pete. As soon as Lana sees what Pete has done, she becomes furious and starts to run toward him.
“Why, you little—” she hollers as her face turns the vibrant red shade of an overripe tomato.
She looks as if she is making a direct path toward him when suddenly Tom grabs her by her arm to stop her from scolding Pete. What happens next seems as if it is playing out in slow motion, but even so, it’s too quick for me to do anything to stop it.
Lana looks outraged that Tom has grabbed onto her. She looks around quickly and spots the ax that I had left out on the ground. For a split second, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and I start letting go of Amber’s hand as if I can somehow make it forward in time to stop what is about to happen. But I can’t. Lana picks up the ax and plunges it straight into her husband’s skull. The blood from splitting his head open, splatters onto her face and makes her look like a monstrosity as she stands there completely unfettered by what she has just done. Beside me, Amber screams so loudly that it sends a flock of birds fleeing from out of a nearby tree. When Lana turns around again to face us, with the ax that she has just wrenched from her husband’s skull still gripped tightly in her clenched fist; Pete takes off into the woods faster than she can push off from her feet.
I grab Amber’s hand in mine and run.
“Where are we going?” Amber shouts as she pants heavily to keep up next to me.
“As far away from here as possible,” I answer.
We don’t stop running and we don’t look back. I try to lead us as far around to the other side of the mountains as possible. It’s difficult to run over all the wild land, especially when there is a fresh dusting of slippery snow on the ground, but we manage to quickly be able to put a great distance between us and the scene we ran from. When I feel like we are probably in the clear, I find a small alcove among the trees and duck inside of it with Amber.
“What the hell just happened?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say as I try to catch my breath. My heart is pounding furiously inside of my chest and it’s not just because of the vigorous run. We’ve literally just witnessed an insanely brutal murder. Lana murdered her own husband, in front of her own child, with a psychotic blow to the head in what seemed like a completely unhinged and rage-filled loss of control.
“You were right,” I say as I wrap my arms around Amber’s shaking body. “You were right about there being something wrong with that woman.”
She trembles in my arms and I know that it is mostly because of fear and not the cold.
“What about Pete?” she says. “We should have helped him. He was trying to warn us.”
“There isn’t anything we can do,” I say. “Hopefully he’ll be okay. He’s definitely faster than she is, and he seems like a really smart kid. He should be able to outrun her and get to a nearby town for help before she reaches him.”
“Maybe Tom was abusive,” Amber says.
I know she doesn’t really believe that. She knew from the start that something was off about Lana, even though I told her that I thought she was just being paranoid. I think Amber is just trying to find some excuse to make sense of what we had just witnessed in her mind because it is simply too much to process.
“What are we going to do now?” she says with no shortage of worry lining her voice. “We have no house, no tent, not even any supplies. What if she finds us?”
“I don’t think she’s going to find us here,” I say. She’ll likely go after Pete and he ran in the other direction. Besides, this path direction is difficult to navigate and very far from where we were. Lana won’t risk getting that far away from her home, especially not at nighttime and not without anyone else around her. She’ll be too worried about freezing to death.”
“I hope you’re right,” Amber says.
“We can’t stay here long either,” I say. “We have no supplies at all, only the clothes on our backs. Even with all of our knowledge about how to live off the land, we don’t even have a simple shelter or any tools in the middle of winter. And with you just getting over being unwell, it’s too great a risk for us to try and survive out here for more than a night or two. If it were summer, that would be a different story; but it’s not.”
“Then where will we go?” she asks.
“Into town.”
“No,” Amber says as she shakes her head. “We can’t go back to town; they’ll arrest us on sight. We’ll be taken away from each other and God only knows what will happen to us. I’d rather take my chances out here.”
“We won’t go back tothattown,” I say. “We’ll go to the town on the other side of the mountain. That’s why I ran in this direction. I could barely think straight after what happened, but I knew that we had to get far away from everything and that there is a town on the other side of the mountains.”
“But what if they recognize us there too?”
“They won’t,” I reassure her. “We’ll change our appearances when we get there. We can get some hair dye from the store and maybe cut our hair and get colored contacts. We’ll keep a low profile and stay to ourselves. From what I’ve heard of the towns on the other side of the ridge, everyone kind of keeps to themselves there anyway. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Amber still doesn’t look very comfortable with the idea, but we really don’t have much of a choice. Even in the best of circumstances, living off the land with absolutely nothing, not even a small backpack of supplies, is difficult. But trying to do it with no supplies, in the middle of winter, and with the smallest possibility that Amber might be pregnant –thatis completely impossible to even consider.
I brush away all of the snow from the ground beside the wide trunk of a nearby tree and then dig into the warm earth with my hands until I can see the rich, dark brown, soil that is much warmer than the top layer of snow-covered earth. I dig a space that is big enough for us to sit in and then sit down and lean up against the trunk of the tree. I pull Amber to sit down closer into me and wrap my arms around her tighter as she buries her face in against my chest.
“We’ll be safe here for the night,” I say. “I know it’s hard but try to rest because tomorrow we will need to make the rest of the journey across the mountains to reach the town on the other side.”
I feel her sigh and I kiss the top of her head.
“It’s going to be okay, Amber,” I say.
She doesn’t answer me and I’m not sure whether she believes me or not. Hell, I’m not sure whetherIbelieve me. But one way or another we need to make it to the other town tomorrow and try to blend in. That’s the only way that I can think of to make it be okay. As much as I hate to let go of our dream to build our own little cabin sanctuary in the forest and live completely unbothered by anyone or anything for the rest of our days; the only important thing right now is making sure that we survive. And unfortunately in order to do that; we need to get to a town.
