Woman on the Edge of Time

Though she was eager to get back into the dark again and away from the intersection, on the chance that there might be a key left in the ignition, she checked all the cars parked behind the garage. They had taken the keys. In one, however, she found a state map, in another a pair of sunglasses (for disguise, maybe?), and in the trunk of an old white Thunderbird, someone had left a denim jacket. She tried it on. Better than the lab coat. She rolled back the sleeves and transferred her ten dollars, five cigarettes, the precious matches, the map to the pockets of the denim jacket. Then she folded the smock and tucked it under her arm.

Then a panic whirled up in her for spending half an hour at the station and she began trotting down the drainage ditch beside the highway. Fatigue made her weak. As she trotted, then slowed to a walk, she nodded out and dreamed in snatches. Dolly and she were drinking café con leche very sweet in Dolly’s steamy kitchen. Nita sat on her lap, cuddling. She was letting Nita take a bite of her doughnut, soaked in the sweet milky coffee.

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.