Page 14 of Be Not Far From Me

That’s hard because the only reason I’m not getting rained on right now is that he taught me how to make a shelter with nothing more than what nature could give me.

I was ten the year Dad sent me to camp and I’m old enough now to realize that the woman he’d been bringing around to watch baseball and have a beer with was more than just a friend, and he’d discovered what I’d learn years later—that there’s no such thing as privacy in a trailer.

I didn’t want to go. I stomped my feet and called him an asshole and told him he was abandoning me same as Momma did. Dad just pulled my hat down over my eyes and told me not to kick the boys in the balls and drove off, leaving me holding his old army rucksack and a pile of hurt feelings.

Throwing a fit didn’t do a thing, and I was never the type for pouting. So I settled in at Camp Little Fish, a place where they taught me who Jesus was and I found someone I admired a hell of a lot more—Davey Beet.

Davey was a counselor and though he seemed ages older than the rest of the cabin leaders, I found out he was only fifteen and did the math on my fingers to figure out how old he would be when I could legally get married. And while I harbored that crush for the rest of my life, it deepened into something else on the first day he led a group of us into the forest—respect.

Davey carried a machete in his belt, using it to whack through brush and slice open a wild grapevine as thick as my arm. All us kids took a drink from the juice dripping out the end—not quite like something from the store but somehow better—and then he asked us if we wanted to learn how to stay dry in the rain, warm in the cold, and fed in the middle of nowhere.

He had my attention, which was a hard thing to get. I didn’t like many people and found less worth talking to. But when Davey spoke I listened, and that’s why I’m not getting soaked right down to my spine again tonight.

I heard thunder today in the midafternoon, low and rolling, far in the distance. The trees weren’t kicking up a fuss yet, so I knew I had a little time. I found a big maple with a split down the middle, a place where twenty or thirty years ago two branches went their separate ways, creating a fork that I can prop a dead limb against. It’s just above my head, and I need both hands to get it raised high enough, so I have to drop the walking stick and balance, my bad foot jammed in the sling and snug up against my ass.

It’s not easy, and I’m shaky when I’m done, limp and pooling onto the ground. I land right where I unearthed the piece I lifted, uncovering grubs, fat and glistening. I would never say that they looked good to me, or that I didn’t gag once or twice dry-swallowing them, but protein is protein, and if I’m going to finish building this thing I need something to digest other than my own stomach lining.

My gut clenches again, angry at being asked to do something once I’ve let it slumber. But I’m ready this time, and I let it have its way for a minute, kicking and screaming same as I did when Dad dragged me out of the truck and left me at Camp Little Fish.

I haul myself hand over hand and pick up my crutch. It started rubbing a sore spot this morning, a little nub from the curve that reaches around to the soft meat behind my armpit, digging in. It’s like wearing the same bra too many days in a row and having the clasp leave a welt where it’s gotten cozy against your skin. I knocked off that little knob against a tree and kept going, but all it did was start a new sore just below where the first one started.

I straighten for a second, letting all the muscles that have been hunched most of the day take a breath while I lean against the maple, eyeing everything around me for what I can use for the sides of my shelter.

Davey taught us how to do this, prop up the big center pole and then lean smaller branches against the side, tight against each other. The thunder rolls again, closer this time, and I hunch back over my walking stick, scuttling from one piece to the next and tossing them in the general direction of my shelter.

I get one side done and the other half up before the first sprinkle hits my nose, so part of the west wall is a shit job, and I don’t think Davey would have much nice to say about it, but I got to get a covering over what I did manage to construct before the rain gets serious about what it’s doing.

There’s a dead pine a ways off, but that looks like a new development. An ash that the borers laid claim to fell across it lengthways, shearing off boughs slick as a razor blade. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me since my underwear dried all the way through. The needles aren’t dead enough to fall away yet, so I drag limbs back to the shelter I’m making. They lie across the sticks I propped, like a grass roof that I layer some dead leaves on top of, and not a second too soon.

The next bit of thunder is more of a snap than a roll, a loud, brittle noise that I feel in my teeth. I grab the last thing I’m going to need, a flat piece of the ash that fell—wide as my hand and about half the length of my arm—and a broken branch off the same tree. I tuck them into my armpit and get back just as the rain starts, sliding under the lean-to I’ve made.

There’s one thing I forgot to add on the list of things I’ve got: pants, shirt, underwear, bra—and my own hair. I yank it out a few strands at a time, rolling them together in my palms until they’re twisted so tight nothing’s going to break them loose. Then I tear out some more, lengthening and thickening the cordage as I roll it until I’ve got something that can pass for rope.

I’m not Rapunzel, and nobody could climb this, but it’s good enough for what I need. I take the bit of ash branch and tuck the cordage into a split end, pressing the other against the flat piece. Then I start to spin it.

Davey Beet taught me to do this, years ago when he asked if anyone knew how to make a fire. I watched him spin a branch against a flat piece of wood, fingers pulling down on a bit of string he nocked through the top, pushing down and spinning at the same time, the sinewy muscles of his arms distracting me for a full minute. This may be where my fascination with boys’ arms started, come to think of it.

Physics applies no matter where you are in the world, and Davey Beet made fire in the woods with nothing but friction, his face red and arms shaky with effort by the time a bit of smoke rose up, but he did it. Then he showed us how.

I was the only one that managed to follow his example that day, and I’ve done it since because it’s not a skill you want to lose. I’d never tried it with nothing but grubs and a worm in my stomach and half a foot open to the world, but science is a solid thing, and I get a thin line of smoke just in time, right before my arms are about to give out. I feed it with dead leaves and a puff of my breath, my heart thrilling at the sight of a spark, then the lick of a flame. I’m not going to starve, and I’m not going to be cold, and it’s all because of Davey Beet.

And the reason why I don’t want to think about that is because he’s more than likely dead.

Davey Beet walked into the Smokies with a full pack and a broken heart, his girl having gone off to college and found something that fit her better than already broken-in shoes. I was twelve and ready to show off what I had, packing only tank tops and ripped jean shorts in my bag for Camp Little Fish, a few years before he left.

But it was my brain Davey liked. He was seventeen by then, running a whole program about trail survival. I signed up for it the day I got to camp, hoping he’d notice me as I stood there uncapping a Sharpie and putting my name big and bold, first one on the poster for his class.

He saw me, sure, but it wasn’t my boobs that he cared about. Davey was a good guy, and while there were plenty of others who might take a look at something too young to touch (and some that didn’t mind taking the risk of touching something that was illegal), all he cared about was my mind.

And my attitude.

Davey started calling me Ass-kicker Ashley the second year I went back to Little Fish, when I bashed a fellow camper on the back of a head with a stick for putting a toad in the fire. He said he just did it to see what would happen, so I used the same line of defense, although I could hardly claim surprise at the trickle of blood that had seeped from behind his ear after my first swing. I also can’t blame pure curiosity once the discovery had been made and I took a second swing anyway.

The directors would’ve sent me home, but no one could get ahold of Dad, and I didn’t know Momma’s phone number, so they had to keep me. I was separated from the other kids, which was fine because they were all a bunch of assholes anyway. That’s when Davey took to calling me Ass-kicker Ashley and showed me how to set a snare.

So when he saw me come back that third year, all leggy and sunburned and taking my time writing out my name in cursive on his class roster, he smiled and asked if I wanted to know what plants I could eat and which ones would kill me in return. I fought down the blush rising in my already burned skin and told him hell yes. He took the Sharpie from me and scribbled out my last name, writing Ass-kicker in front of my first.

“That way I know who it is,” he said.