“Aw, what’d you stop for?” the man facing me called out. He wore a dirty old floppy hat and had a big bushy beard that hid most of his face, and nothing on except a pair of old pants cut off above the knees. The skin of his chest and arms was tanned so dark I thought he must never wear a shirt, but the little bit of his face I could see looked pale beneath the brim of his hat.
“I told you I seen somethin’ movin’ right along here,” said the one at the front. He looked a lot like the first man, but he was taller and heavier. They all looked alike from where I hid, just hats and beards and skin turned to leather by the sun. “They was over on your side, why ain’t you watchin’ out?” The first man rolled his head back on his neck and looked up at the sky before he answered.
“You always thinkin’ you seen somethin’ when ain’t nothin’ there. Waste of time. We already gotta go the long way around the far edge of the damn lake to skirt them crazy hippies, and I’m ready to get home.”
“Just look,” the man in the back said. His voice stayed low and even, and something about it reminded me of Papa. He must be the one in charge, I thought. The first man dropped his head back down to level and made a show of shielding his eyes with his hand while he scanned the riverbank, first one way and then back the other. I ducked back behind the tree so I couldn’t see, and my skin prickled even though I knew he couldn’t see me either. Could he? I got the feeling he wasn’t looking that hard.
“I don’t see nothin’,” he said in a stubborn voice. I peeked out around the side of my tree, but they had already drifted past the edge of what I could see. In a minute, I heard the motor crank up again, but I waited until it faded away to nothing before I bolted back toward the road.
Stupid, I thought as I ran. Stupid stupid stupid. Did I really think I was the last person alive between the compound and Lake Point? I pictured Zeke Johnson, dirty and underfed, and imagined the woods crawling with men just like him. What were the men on that raft out looking for? What would they do if they caught me? Could Papa have hired them to track me down? Surely not—I couldn’t imagine how he would have met up with rough men like that. Then again, I had no idea how he’d met up with Zeke Johnson either. The thought sent chills over my body. Then I remembered my own thought: I might be one of the only fertile females left in the world, but Zeke Johnson isn’t the only fertile man. I’d been so happy to realize that, but now it knocked the wind out of me. There were plenty more men like Zeke out there, only they weren’t buttering up my papa for a place at his table. “You’re not in your own woods anymore, Ami,” I muttered to myself. “You’re out here alone, you’ve cut yourself off from your family, even cut yourself off from God. You got to pay attention now, girl. No more strolling along out in the open! Amber said you were smart, so act like it!”
I’d reached the road again, but I didn’t step out onto it. People travel down rivers and roads, and I knew I had to be more careful. All I’d thought about before was Papa catching up to me, but now I understood that even worse things could happen. I trudged along, following the road but staying hidden in the tree line. It was slow going at first, but after a while, the walking calmed me down some and I realized I was naming the trees I passed, touching the trunks and softly chanting tulip poplar, maple, pin oak, pine. I’d never had much cause to feel scared tromping through the woods back home, and my mind wasn’t used to it. I couldn’t seem to hold on to the scared feeling for long. The trees are hiding me, I thought. They’ll keep me safe. My heart slowed back down to normal, and the soft green light filtering down through all those leaves felt like a comfort. I figured I could be careful and smart without having to feel scared the whole time. I just had to pay attention.
I got into a good rhythm of weaving through the trees and checking the road. After a while, I noticed I was seeing a lot more signs than I had before. They were big rectangles set up on tall poles, I guess so people in cars would see them as they came by. It seemed funny to me that people would need to see a sign that was a message from a dentist, reminding them to brush their teeth, or another one telling them where they could buy some fancy-looking “genuine leather cowboy boots.” Other signs made me feel sad and strange, like the one for the C-PAF that showed a happy mother smiling down at her newborn baby. The sign was old and faded by the weather, but the message was plain as day: BABIES ARE HAPPINESS. The baby’s face barely peeked out of its wrappings, but I guess people back then didn’t need to see a baby clearly to know what it was. Maybe what they needed to see was the mother’s face and how it should look as she held that precious cargo in her arms. I tried to put myself into that picture, with my own face smiling down at my own little baby, but it was hard to do when I barely even knew what my own face looked like. I realized that the woman in the picture had been a real person, and I wondered how it was for her, if she knew her picture was up there so huge and that everyone who passed was looking at her in such a private kind of moment. I wondered if anything about her life was ever really hers after that.
But it was the next sign, a much smaller and simpler one, that made my heart thump: EUFAULA, 5 MILES, it said. And underneath that: LAKE POINT RESORT, NEXT EXIT. A big part of me wanted to turn around and run, all the way back to Heavenly Shepherd and all that was familiar and safe. But the other part of me knew that wasn’t possible, that everything had changed and I could not go home until I could make right what I had done. I couldn’t stop and think about it too much or I would never go. I took a deep breath and headed toward the exit ramp.
Eight
I guess I had this idea that I would walk up to some kind of big fancy gate, and my mama would be standing right there on the other side, just waiting for me like she somehow knew I was coming. And even though she hadn’t seen me since I was a baby, she would recognize me right off as her daughter. The reality was a little bit different. For one thing, Lake Point didn’t have any kind of gate. Instead it had a wide, crumbling parking lot, faded ashy gray in the Alabama sun, that seemed to go on and on until it finally narrowed and split into three little roads. The first led to the big lodge. The other two went in opposite directions around two sides of the lake and were lined with little cottages and cabins. I didn’t know which one to take, but I figured if there was any kind of main office or person in charge, they would be in the lodge, so that’s where I headed.
The big double doors to the lodge were the closest thing I’d seen to my daydream of the gate, and I felt my heart speed up as I pulled one open and stepped inside. But then I forgot to feel scared for a minute because I could never have imagined a room like the one I was in. For one thing, it was huge, with a ceiling high overhead supported by long, polished wooden beams going up into a point. In the far back of the room, most of the wall was made of glass that showed the lake behind, all silver and sparkling with ripples of light. A few sections of glass had broken and been covered over with boards, but they didn’t block the view enough to matter. It almost felt more like being outside than inside a building. Between me and the wall of glass was a long room filled with tables and chairs and couches but almost no people, and nearest to me, a kind of counter where a woman stood watching me.