Six
Even after sleeping so late that first day, all the walking got me ready to sleep a little earlier each night, so I gradually worked my way back to a more normal wake-up time. I was surprised how good it felt to get up early out in the woods, with the air still a little cool and the sounds of birds in the trees all around me. The outdoors had always been my place. Whenever I couldn’t stand another minute of being cooped up with all those grown-ups hovering and fussing around me, I’d run outside, where I could breathe. By the time I was five years old, I was allowed to help take care of the chickens and collect their eggs. I could weed and water the garden and collect the ripe strawberries and tomatoes and cucumbers in a little basket I had. I liked how keeping my hands busy with those simple tasks gave my mind time to wander.
It was my uncle Jacob who taught me the woods. Ruth fussed a little about it being no place for a girl, but by the time I was eight years old, I knew how to set a snare for rabbits and how to skin and gut what I caught. Jacob showed me how to spot the tender shoots of greenbrier and snap off the ends for a snack, and he taught me which plants would give me an itchy rash so I could keep away from them. When I was ten, he showed me how to load and shoot the hunting rifles we had, but I didn’t take to it. I told him it was the noise and kick that bothered me, but truth was, I couldn’t bear the thought of shooting a deer or anything else. Snaring rabbits wasn’t so bad because they were dead when I found them, curled up like they were just sleeping. I didn’t love dressing them once they were caught, but I knew it would be wasteful not to. And I knew that a deer gave us meat, and we never killed more than we needed to eat, but I still didn’t want to be the one to bring it down.
As I walked, hidden in the trees but always keeping the southbound path of the road to my left, I started to notice a sound coming from deeper in the woods, to my right. It sounded like a low roar. The longer I walked, the closer it got. I wondered if I should be afraid, but it didn’t sound like an animal or person; it was too steady. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to find out what it was. Carefully I made my way through the trees and undergrowth. All along the road, mimosa trees were bloomed out with their little feathery pink fans. They crowded together, almost like they wanted anyone coming down that hi-way to see their show. But farther in were all kinds of trees. Some stretches along the road, all you saw were tall, skinny pines. But here the trees were all shapes and sizes, growing wild and leafy and lush. The light shining down through all those leaves glowed green like jewels, and the air underneath them felt cool and soft, even in the heat of the day.
The sound got closer and closer, and then suddenly I stepped out of the trees and saw that it was water I heard. This was the Chattahoochee that made the border between Alabama and Georgia on the old maps I had seen. It rushed along over rocks like another road, but wide and muddy and alive. Of course! There was a small creek not far from the compound where I liked to go sometimes, but it just bubbled up from the ground and ran on a ways before it made a little pool surrounded by rocks and ferns and moss. The sound it made was like the tiny echo of this river. Jacob had even taken me out to our fish camp a couple of times, but then he said he couldn’t anymore, and I got the feeling that Papa had made him quit. But that was years ago, and I’d forgotten the rushing sound of the water. I realized this must be the same river, only closer to the road down here where I was. For a minute, I felt afraid. They kept some little fishing boats at the river camp. How much faster could those boats move than I could walk? They could be here in a flash, couldn’t they?
Picturing Papa tearing down that river to get me was terrifying, and I had to stop myself from running back into the trees to hide. Amber said she and the others would try to steer Papa to believing I’d gone north toward the cities, and they might not know the river came close to the road here even if they did follow me southward. It made more sense that they would travel the way I traveled if they wanted to catch my trail. I told myself that over and over, but part of me stayed scared. I sat down on the grassy riverbank and let the rushing sound and the sparkle of sun on water calm my mind. They wouldn’t follow me down the river, I thought. They would stick to the road. I wished he wouldn’t follow me at all, but I knew he would never let me go that easily. He would hunt me down and punish me, and I would be even worse off than before I left.
The water looked cool and inviting, and I wanted nothing more than to jump in and rinse off, hot and dirty and scratched up as I was. But the banks were rocky and steep, and the current was swift. I decided it was safer to stay put on the wide, flat shelf of rocks that overlooked it. I could see a long way upstream, too, so I knew I’d have time to run and hide at the first sign of a boat. I noticed a long, thin branch on the ground not far from where I sat, so I dug around in Amber’s pack, and sure enough, I found a roll of fishing line with a couple of hooks wrapped in a little square of paper. My food was already running thin, and I thought if I could catch a fish or two, I’d be in better shape to keep going. I tied some of the line to the end of the branch and tied a hook onto the loose end, then walked around a little until I found a flat rock near the tree line that was small and loose enough for me to pry it up and see the beetles and crickets scrambling away from the light. I caught a cricket and threaded it onto the hook, and I was ready to fish.
I knew I should keep moving. I had to be getting close to Eufaula now, maybe a day’s walk or so to go. I should have been in a rush to get there, but here I was, hanging back. What did I know about this place or what I would find there? If my mama really was at Lake Point, then she wouldn’t be alone. How many people were there, and why? What kind of life had she been living all these years without me? Was she happy? And how did I feel about that if she was?
I needed to believe that if there were people surviving and building a life together at Lake Point, that was a sign that God was ready to let the world heal. It might not matter so much then that I had run away from my place in the family. If everything was God’s plan, did it even matter what I did? Wouldn’t that mean my running away was also His plan? I had heard Papa Solomon talk again and again about free will, but it was still confusing. What if the virus hadn’t happened and the world was still full to bursting with people and babies and children? Would I matter less? Was I more important to God now that there were so few of us left? Did I matter more than others because I might be able to have a baby? Did God care less about Billie and Rachel and Amber than he did about my mother because they couldn’t have children? I didn’t like to think so. But how could I know the mind of God?
It wasn’t too late, I knew. I’d been gone for four days, long enough that they’d be angry but short enough that things could still go back to normal. I could always turn around and go home. But even as I thought so, I knew that I couldn’t really. Or wouldn’t. All my life, I’d been taught to submit to His will, but I couldn’t submit to this. I could not give myself over to that man to be touched in that way, no matter what the rewards might be. There had to be another way. And then I had a thought that made me jump up and laugh. Of course! I might be one of the only fertile females left in the world, but Zeke Johnson wasn’t the only fertile man. And if there were other people at Lake Point with my mother, surely some of them were men, maybe even boys my own age. I could go there and make my own choice. This was the answer, I just knew it.