Page 10 of Be Not Far From Me

I turn my tee inside out, inspecting the seams of the sleeves. Most of my clothes have a few years’ wear on them, and this one is no different. It’s an old softball jersey from a co-ed summer team that I played on with Dad’s bar buddies. They put me on the roster as an alternate until a pregnancy and a breakup wiped some of the ladies off the list. I showed up with my bat and told them I played infield or I didn’t play.

They laughed in a good-natured way, told me of course I’d be in the dirt. They wouldn’t think of putting Vern’s daughter anywhere else. Dad had let his buddies give me a hard time, knowing I’d take care of it myself. So I turned a double play and ran down a tag on a guy who’d been staring at my ass from the other dugout, leaving him with no more catcalls in his mouth, just a bunch of grit in his teeth from where he dove for second. But I beat him there.

I wore this shirt two more seasons, until injuries, new babies, and at least one case of addiction left us with a sad lineup that couldn’t take a trophy in a seniors’ league. We faded out, but I kept the shirt, and now I’m eyeing a loose string I think I can get at with my teeth. It comes away easy enough, so I start picking with my fingers, careful not to break what’s already pulled free.

I get pretty far before I lose too much light. The storm’s rolling in and stealing hours of daylight, bringing in the dark before the sun is actually gone. I’ve got a length of loose thread about as long as my hand, and I might be able to get the sleeve off with a good yank. I’d be smarter to wait until morning, take the time to pull each tedious stitch so that I’d have a bandage for my toes and some string. But I can’t do that.

I can’t do that, because I’m Ashley Hawkins, and I have not accomplished a damn thing today except panic, cry some, and bleed all over myself in more places than one. That is not acceptable, and I will not sleep with no shirt on and nothing covering an open wound in my foot.

“Nope,” I reassert, yanking the sleeve free.

It comes off easier than I expected, and my hand hits the tree trunk hard enough to bring a sting that burns past the cold that’s soaked down to my bones. It’s like stubbing your toe, there’s a moment where it doesn’t quite hurt yet and then . . .

“Fuuuuucccccckkkkk,” I say, cradling my hand to my wet stomach and rocking over it like it’s a baby I’m trying to put to sleep.

But I got what I wanted.

I slip the sleeve over my injured foot, the name of our team—Designated Drinkers—facing up. It’s not much, but it’ll keep dirt out. I squeeze as much water as I can out of what’s left of my shirt and slip it on. It’s cold against my skin, and every inch of me shies away from it. But I’ve got nothing else, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining any time soon. I turn on my side, curl into a ball, and, amazingly, fall asleep.

Day Two

I wake up to pain.

My foot throbs with each push of my heart, which I can’t imagine means anything good. And I’m freezing. No. I correct myself, knowing that once I start using words like that I might have to learn a hard lesson about the difference between being cold and actually dying from it. That’s what freezing is. And I’m not dead.

“Nope,” I agree with myself.

A few winters ago we had what the TV weatherman called a polar vortex. It was so cold you had to bring your car battery indoors with you if you wanted to go anywhere in the morning, and you didn’t go outside unless it was worth maybe not coming back in. We didn’t have school for a week, and of course I’d managed to drop my phone in the toilet, so I was cut off from Meredith and Kavita and Duke sure as if I’d died anyway.

But my dad didn’t raise any pansies, so when the garbage can got full I figured it wasn’t so cold that a person couldn’t burn trash. Our cupboards were low, and we’d been eating tuna for two days, so the trash can had a funk about it that filled up the whole trailer. I was done with smelling it, done with staying inside, and done with people on TV telling me I couldn’t go outside. So I bundled up same as I would in any cold, grabbed some matches, and went out to the burn barrel.

The wind cut through my clothes like I might as well have been naked, and by the time I reached the barrel I knew I’d made a bad decision, but I was already out there and I wasn’t leaving a garbage bag with rotting tuna scraps in the yard. We might be poor, but we aren’t trash. The first match I tried to strike blew out. My fingers were already numb when I went for the second one, fumbling and stupid. I dropped it.

My legs were aching when I pulled the third, a steady thrum that had started at my feet and crawled to my knees, already stiff and locked against the wind. I realized too late what was happening and turned back to the trailer only to fall flat on my face into the snow. My legs were useless, dead sticks attached to a living body that wasn’t going to be that much longer if I didn’t figure some shit out, fast.

I managed to get back up, forcing my feet—so heavy, so awkward—to move by sheer willpower. I made it about ten yards before red filled my vision and I went down again, a little oof coming out of my mouth that blew up snow in a tiny blizzard in front of my face.

No mattress had ever been as comfortable as that snow, and I had never been as tired in my life as I had been in that moment. I’ve heard that drowning people hear singing, and then have a moment of calm before the end. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone that’s almost frozen, but I saw cans of tomato soup.

Meredith laughed when I told her that, but Kavita got quiet and looked at me hard.

“Why did you see soup?” she asked, her intensity drawing Meredith’s attention away from trying out new braids in her hair.

“I don’t know.” I had shrugged, body still sore from the experience. “I guess maybe I knew I wasn’t going to make it, and my brain wanted to give me a good thought, let me think of something warm to make me feel better as I went out.”

Tomato soup was the best it could come up with, one nice memory I still have of my momma before she split. She wasn’t much of a cook, but you really can’t screw up tomato soup. So that was a winter-weather meal at our house, complete with grilled cheese that Dad usually did because Momma’s tended to be burned.

Dad spotted me lying in the side yard, seeing lines of soup cans that weren’t there. He hauled my ass inside and put me in front of the kerosene heater until I unfolded my limbs, each one of them still shaky and weak. We couldn’t really afford the copay on our insurance unless one of us was bleeding out, so he just did what made the most sense to him for someone with hypothermia—kept me warm and fed me chicken broth. I slept forever once I found the couch, maybe could have even faded on out if Dad hadn’t kept waking me up to ask me if I was alive.

I was alive then. I’m alive now.

So I know I’m not freezing out here under this tree, because I sure as hell haven’t seen any tomato soup, and if I did, you can be damn sure I’d have eaten it already.

I’m not starving either, that’s the other thing. I’m hungry, which means I’m fine. I’ve gone a day or two without food in my life, always playing up like I’m on a diet or something when I show up to lunch without anything to eat. Meredith would make a joke, say she’s getting chubby anyway and slip me half her sandwich. I’d try not to eat it in three bites, really focus on not tearing into bologna and cheese like it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

But sometimes it would be because Dad wasn’t getting any overtime.

Meredith might be dumb, but she’s not stupid—there’s a difference. She was always watching, and if I went a couple of days on one of my so-called diets she’d have me over for the weekend and order in everything, from pizza to Chinese to the one questionable Thai place that’s totally run by a white guy.