Woman on the Edge of Time

Sitting up, she rubbed her legs. What a mess her feet were. The shoes had begun to fall apart; the soles were parting from the uppers. Rising stiffly, she hung them on a branch to dry. If only she could manage to look neater. If she had a comb. If her dress were cleaner. Clothing made such a difference in how people saw you. Often clothing was all they saw. A clean, neat dress and she could break through and be gone. But in her dirty green dress and borrowed man’s denim jacket, with the white smock as second hope, she shook her head ruefully.

Peeling off the yellow outer leaves, she nibbled the raw cabbage from her pocket, while her stomach cringed, not having had anything tougher than stew to work on in months. She chewed and chewed the cabbage. Then she gnawed the carrots. Although this food didn’t feel like food, it was something. She dreamed of bread and cafй con leche–all the breads of New York. French breads in long bakery loaves. The dark Jewish pumpernickels. Then tostadas, tortillas. The spoon bread Claud had liked her to make. Big hot pretzels men peddled on the streets from carts, keeping their hands warm in the winter over the fires.

She leaned back on the trunk of her pine, trying to think what to do. The poor vegetables had eased the dryness in her throat, but she must find water and food. She could not leave her cover until darkness, and in the meantime she would rest her feet. She still had ten dollars, she had a road map, she was free. The woods smelled wonderful. The light slanted between the trunks and trickled through the pines over her: the needles were soft and fragrant under her. But she hadn’t the faintest idea how to look for food and drink. She couldn’t eat a tree. Her head against the trunk, she watched small birds flit to and fro while a bigger bird kicked up the needles, looking for insects. “Luciente!” she summoned.

“How does it fly? I finally caught the error in our experiment. I stayed up most of last night working, but I caught it. Did you escape?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Come over. Today let’s take a skimmer and visit the shelf farms.”

“You come here instead. I need help.”

Luciente came, looking about nervously. “I admit, I prefer it the other way. Your time frightens me. Also makes more sense for you to exist in the future, where at least you may be a memory, than for me to poke around in the past, where I have no right to be!”

“Never mind!” Connie said. “You train for surviving in the woods. Like the boy scouts. Well, here I am. My feet are bleeding, I have nothing to eat but raw potatoes, and I don’t know one tree from another!”

“Oh, a wilderness exercise. Haven’t done this since I took out some kids two years ago. When Dawn almost mistook water hemlock for Queen Anne’s lace.”

“It was a test she failed?”

“Test? I don’t follow. One is poisonous, one is edible.”

She giggled weakly. “I hope you passed that test.”

“I myself have not only studied but have also taught such things, I am telling you. Feel no anxiety!” Luciente glanced around with quick enthusiasm. “First of all, white pine is edible if not tasty. The cambium layer. You have a knife?”

“Luciente! I only have matches because I found them. In the institution we eat with plastic spoons. I have one of them too.” She held it out.

“Okay. First we look for tools. In this Age of Greed and Waste, surely we can find something handy that has been discarded?”

“Is nothing thrown away in your time?”

“Thrown away where? The world is round.”

Cautiously they crept back into the second growth beside the roadside and poked through the weeds and bushes. Numerous aluminum beer and soda cans lay there, as did pop strips. They also found intact bottles and jars and some usable sharp pieces of glass.

“Luciente, I am thirsty. I need water soon.”

“We’ll look running hard. Oh, this reminds me of scavenging,” Luciente said cheerfully, grubbing among the weeds and occasionally pulling one with a pleased grimace. “When I was fifteen I went on work crew to the ruins of Providence, where we were demolishing old structures.”

“Like with wrecking balls? I’ve seen that in Harlem.”