Woman on the Edge of Time

Car. She fell forward blindly and struck something sharp with her arm. She lay still, her arm hurting, while the car swept slowly past. Something rusty. Luckily it had not cut her but had only bruised the skin. The jacket had protected her. She crawled forward and then shakily rose. She walked and walked. The moon sank into the trees. Trucks passed. She spent as much time lying in the ditch as she did on her feet walking. She stumbled. Fell again.

At the next intersection she waited, looking in all directions before that stretch of pavement. There had been a gas station here too but it had gone out of business and the pumps hauled away. On the comer nearest her a produce stand was shuttered and padlocked for the night. She could find no easy way in. Behind it fruit and vegetables were thrown in the garbage, not good enough to sell. A rat stood its ground, then leisurely waddled into the tall grass as she approached. She was afraid to poke around. What a smell. Rotting fruit, rotting greens. Her stomach humped. She shook her head hard. She must eat. She forced herself to pick through the garbage until she had rescued some carrots, a yellow cabbage, some black but edible bananas, and a few sprouted potatoes. The denim jacket held them all except for the bananas, which she ate as she walked on.

Her hands stank. Patience. Wait. In the drainage ditch on the far side of the intersection, a small stream was running. Water in this drought. Taking off her shoes, she tried to wade in it but the water stank and the bottom was slippery with muck. She chose to walk on the side of the ditch away from the road, nervous because hiding was more difficult and the going rougher. Tall weeds tore at her legs and slowed her. She felt visible when she saw headlights or heard an engine and crouched in the tall grass beside the stream.

Her feet were raw. When she sat on a stone, she discovered her sole had worn a hole. She tried to patch the hole with a paper towel, but that created a lump that blistered her foot. She could not walk farther and the sky was beginning to lighten. She had to get off the road.

Limping now between the stream and a barbed‑wire fence with some crop growing on the other side, she could see no escape but forced herself on. The air was a thin gray, watery as institutional soup. She hardly had the energy to drop flat as cars approached, and in fact in her stupor a car came from behind without her realizing until it had gone past. By luck it was not searching for her, for it never slackened its speed. She was too exhausted to march on, but she could see no place to hide. She tried to walk faster on her last strength with oozing feet, through the air that betrayed her, growing thinner at each step. She forced her sore and sweaty legs on, swollen, bruised, stumbling beside the polluted ditch with its water flowing sluggishly in the same unknown direction.

She saw a patch of woods across the road. She had to wade the foul water again and then scramble up the embankment to the road and make a run for it. But she could no longer run. She hobbled across the pavement, vast and gray in the half light. Forever she picked up her leaden hoofs and crumpled forward. Her feet were damp with blood and fluid from broken blisters. She crossed the wide pavement with skid marks etched on it. At last she flung herself down the other embankment without pausing to look, because she heard the sound of an engine. No stream ran at the bottom here. She landed on a pile of broken bottles she rolled over limply. Hunched, she began to make her way forward, falling on her belly as cars approached. Lighter still. Now she could see clearly as far as a city block–and be seen. Then she reached the first scraggly tree of the woods. A barbed‑wire fence ran along this side of the highway also, but she found a spot where she could use a wad of weeds and her white smock to push the rusted wires till she could crawl over. Then she thrust blindly through the brush until she was out of sight of the road. She collapsed.

Something crawled on her leg. She picked off a tick and flung it. Got up. With the road behind her, she forced her way through the brush toward taller trees. Finally she stood in a grove of tall feathery white pine with occasional young oaks coming up beneath them. The floor was reddish brown needles, beautiful and sweet‑smelling. She picked a spot under a tall tree and spread the smock. Lying down with her head on it, she slept almost immediately, collapsing into the thick sleep of exhaustion.

TWELVE

When Connie awoke she lay a moment, confused. Her brain felt swollen. Her head ached as if she had really had concussion. Her legs were stiff, sore, and itchy with bites. The sun stood well into the western sky. Yet she was free, she was still free. She felt bewildered with space and half drunk.