Lost at Running Brook Trail (14 page)

“It’s hard to know what to do when we don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Elaine said.

“It’s not like we can do anything,” Miriam said. “What good is it to know if we can’t do anything? She has to stop puking at some point.”

“It would still be good to know.”

“Elaine, do you have medicine in your bag?” Miriam asked.

“Not really, but we don’t know if this requires medicine. It might require time or something else. If it’s time, how much time?”

“We have all the time in the world.” Kimberly plucked two of the berries and crushed them in her right hand.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Elaine said.

“Why not?” Kimberly looked at the ink on her hand.

“She’s asking me why.” Elaine threw her hands up in the air. “You see what’s happening with Susan.”

“She ate it; I touched it.”

“But you don’t know the many ways stuff gets in. That’s what we’re talking about; we don’t know what this is. If we don’t know how it gets in, how do we get it out?”

“Geez, you see how it gets out. It’s lying in purple liquid on the ground over there.” Kimberly held her hand up. “This would make a really nice dye.”

Elaine was frustrated. Not only could she not understand Susan’s need to eat so soon after they had all eaten, but here she was trying hard to explain to Kimberly how dangerous the berries were. Kimberly was acting like an idiot.

When they walked back to Susan, she was sitting on the ground. Her vomit had changed from deep purple to a light watery solution that had only a light tinge of colour.

“How many did you eat?” Elaine asked

“Don’t know.” Susan could only remember mindlessly plucking the berries from the tree and popping them in her mouth. She had not felt hungry, but the berries were there, and she felt a need for something.

Susan sprang up suddenly. “I need tissue, Elaine!” She sprinted away past the unknown berries, through some trees, out of sight.

“Losing it from both ends,” Kimberly said.

Elaine looked in her bag and took out the roll of tissue. It was wet with blackberry juice. Some of the blackberries must have been pressed up in her bag. She had to roll away several sheets to get to the dry section.

“Now there’s a bunch of tissue nobody will ever use. Total waste,” Miriam said.

Elaine took the half-crushed blackberries from her bag and handed them to Miriam. “Put these somewhere while I go give the tissue to Susan.”

She cut through the trees and found Susan stooped down by a tree. She handed her the toilet paper.

“My entire inside is coming out.”

“No,” Elaine replied, “just the bad stuff that you ate. It’s probably a good thing it’s coming out.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. My tongue’s burning, I feel dizzy, my head hurts, and it feels like there’s a storm inside me.”

Elaine walked away a little to give Susan some privacy. She stood among the trees with their crisscrossed shadows and light.

“The feeling will go away. Just get it out.”

“I have no control over any of it staying in, so no problem there.” When Susan came back the puking continued, but there seemed to be nothing left. She was just retching.

“Drink some water,” Miriam said.

“She’s going to bring that up too,” Elaine said.

“But she’s dry vomiting. At least she’ll have the water to bring up.”

“She has to go through the process.”

Susan alternated between the front of the cave and dashing off with pieces of tissue out of sight into the trees. She was among the trees so much she became part of the shadows.

“We should bury that.” Elaine looked at the vomit. “Or at least cover it with dirt.”

“It’ll dry up naturally.” Kimberly scratched her face. It felt particularly itchy. “The sun’s hot.”

“Maybe, but it’s going to curdle. If you think it looks bad now, just wait.”

Elaine took out the Swiss army knife. She thought of stale, sour milk. It wasn’t a pleasant image. She searched out three sticks and sharpened the ends into points. She handed one each to Miriam and the Kimberly. She kept one for herself.

“Where’s Susan’s stick?” Kimberly asked. “It’s her stuff.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Miriam asked. “She’s sick. You don’t expect her to do this in her state, do you? Her head’s hurting. She’s so dizzy she can hardly stand up.”

Susan sat by the rocks. She rested her head on her bag, her face to the sky. She had stopped vomiting.

“In any case”—Miriam looked at Kimberly—“it’s our mess now.”

They started digging, using the sticks as slender shovels. The earth was hard and they didn’t immediately see the effects.

Kimberly dug a little further from the site of the spew. “I don’t want to see it.”

“Neither do we, and that’s why we’re covering it.”

The dirt slowly broke up. It was compact and dark. Everything was hard without the right tools.

“Weird; this smells good enough to eat,” Elaine said.

“The purple stuff or the dirt?” Kimberly asked.

Elaine took a handful of loose soil and threw it at Kimberly. Some of it lodged in her hair.

“That is weird,” Miriam said, “but I had a craving for chalk once. It’s gone now, but that’s usually a lack of something.”

“Funny, isn’t it, that when we need something we crave something else? What do you think that’s about?” Elaine had heard the theories before about people who craved strange things like dirt, chalk and paint. She’d heard somewhere that meant they lacked iron. So why didn’t they just crave iron? Craving all these strange things would only make sense if they contained iron. As far as she knew, they didn’t.

“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just good at transference. You know, like hiding behind one thing because we don’t want to face the real thing.” Miriam dug hard into the ground. She figured she would get a greater yield of dirt if she put all her strength into it. She had managed to make an indentation. She would bet that if she tried to fill this small depression with the dirt she had removed, some would be left over. That was another mysterious thing with digging—things can never go back to the way they were. Maybe the dirt was compressed and when it was unpacked, it became too much for the hole from which it came.

Susan, who had been staring intently at the sky, suddenly jumped up and ran toward them. “Why are you digging without me?” she said excitedly. She grabbed Elaine’s stick and started to dig ferociously as if her life depended on it. The jab, jab, jab of the pointed stick was loud as she tried to force the point into the ground.

“Thought she was weak,” Kimberly said.

“We all did.” Elaine, now without her stick, used her boot to kick and carry the tilled soil over the vomit. She would have to find another stick.

“Nobody’s going to bury me in a grave that I didn’t help dig.” Susan continued to stab at the earth. “Why don’t we dig inside the cave? That’s where they bury dead people. Can you imagined if it caved in? All those dead people inside would be buried again.” She laughed but didn’t stop digging.

Elaine, Miriam and Kimberly looked at each other. Here was something else that they didn’t know what to make of.

“She’s bloody crazy!”

“I’ve never seen her move so fast or work so hard,” Miriam said. “It’s like she can’t stop digging.”

Susan’s face was sweaty and bright red. She threw down the stick and ran over to where the shards of broken mirror lay. She seemed to look at herself in them for a moment. She turned her head this way and that. Then she started to cry.

“See that?” Susan cried. “My body is all broken up. That’s what happens when you’re made of glass.” She started to walk on tiptoes. The others followed her with interest and worry. Susan moved carefully and cautiously as if her limbs were brittle and any sudden movement would break them.

“I don’t want to be broken.” She rushed over to where the stick lay, took it up and started her wild digging again. She almost immediately threw it down again and rushed off toward the mouth of the cave.

“If I don’t move, I’ll break.” She peered into the cave. “It’s too dark inside; I should stay out here in the sun with you guys.”

She ran toward the rocks and sat down. She jumped down again, ran toward them and picked the stick up again. But instead of digging, she pointed the stick at Kimberly.

“That’s your mirror; why did you break it?” Susan thrust the stick at Kimberly’s chest.

“You know I didn’t break it; you were there when Miriam threw it, smashed it and used the heel of her boot to crush it some more.” Kimberly held her hands up to tell her take it easy.

“I would be careful how I answer her right now,” Miriam said. “She has a spear in her hand. I guess you were right after all. There are people around here with spears, but not who you would think.”

“No, no it was you. You love to shatter things.” Susan’s face became stern and hard. There seemed to be rage and fury written all over it. She pushed the stick harder into Kimberly’s chest. “That’s why you broke it. Plus you’re scornful, and that’ll break things. How do you expect people to walk around here in one piece if you break stuff? Piece here and piece there, I’ll get cut to pieces, and who’s going to put me back together? You? I don’t think so!”

Kimberly felt skewered. She imagined herself a kebob, a big piece of meat with a stick running through her. She felt the sharp edge of the stick against her chest. It was pressing so hard she was sure it would leave a mark. Susan didn’t have it all together, but why would she think Kimberly had broken the mirror?

“You’re hurting me!”

Susan laughed and pressed harder. Her eyes were glazed over. “How would you like to be broken like that mirror over there? Your body would be in fragments. In misdeed we constantly play, maybe the water will wash it all away.”

“Susan,” Elaine called out. She was afraid Susan might do something drastic. It was enough that one of them was sick; it would be too much if another was injured. But Susan seemed not to have heard. She looked straight ahead at Kimberly and turned the stick at her chest like a skewer.

“She’s hurting me!” Kimberly’s eyes pleaded with Elaine and Miriam.

“Just step back from the stick!” Miriam advised.

“You aren’t looking directly into her eyes. She has crazy eyes. I step back and she might just strike out at me.”

They stood there frozen, Susan pinning Kimberly, Elaine and Miriam looking on.

“How dare you!” Susan shouted. “You only think of one thing, don’t you?” The stick jabbed at Kimberly’s chest.

Kimberly wondered what she could say that wouldn’t rile Susan any further. “What one thing?”

“It’s all going to cave in, you know. You feel that? Raindrops. Why are we standing in the rain?” With that, Susan threw the stick down.

Kimberly breathed a sigh of relief and looked down at her chest.

“Darn, it’s not raindrops. It’s just these things crawling on my hand.” Susan brushed at her hand.

“She’s bloody mad. Look at what she’s done.” Kimberly pulled away her blouse and showed them a round, bright-red spot on her chest.

“She’s not herself.” Elaine watched Susan, who was still brushing at her hands.

Susan stopped brushing at her skin and now ran back and forth from the rocks to the cave. She laughed, sang and cursed.

“She’s just feeling the effects of being out here and ingesting poison.” Elaine picked up her stick and looked at the tip of it. She didn’t know what she expected to see; maybe a piece of Kimberly’s skin or a bit of blood, but there was nothing there.

“Let’s finish this and throw these sticks far away.”

The vomit was only half-covered. It had dried up a bit and looked like a purple, lumpy pancake mix left in the sun. They started to dig dirt again with the constant movement of Susan around them.

Kimberly laid down her stick. She wondered if she had a little bit of what Susan had because she felt an urgent need to scratch. The itching felt particularly bad on her face, neck and hands.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asked.

“My skin’s on fire.”

“You probably just don’t want to dig.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to dig, but I’m doing it anyway. My skin is really itchy.” She continued to scratch. It was as if she couldn’t help herself.

“Wait a minute.” Elaine kicked more dirt over the exposed vomit and then walked over to Kimberly. “Your face has rashes. They’re like little red bumps that are lined up straight. Weird.”

Kimberly touched her face. She slowly traced her fingers over it to feel the rash. It felt like welts. She looked at her hands and saw red streaks all over them. What was going on?

Susan continued to move about, laughing and singing. Sometimes she would stoop behind the rocks and covertly peer at them as if she was playing hide and seek.

Miriam looked closely at Kimberly’s skin. “I can tell why you feel like it’s on fire.”

“You shouldn’t have crushed those berries,” Elaine said.

“I squeezed just two berries. That can’t be it.”

“You can never tell the strength of a thing until you mess with it. Did you eat anything?” Elaine helped Miriam scrape more dirt over the vomit.

“Why would I eat anything?” Kimberly continued to tear at her skin. She wished she had two more hands to scratch her face, neck and hands simultaneously. “I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t drink anything. I just touched two berries.”

“Poisonous berries,” Elaine reminded her.

“And those plants up above.”

“What plants up above?” Elaine stopped to look at Kimberly.

“Some shrubs, plants, whatever. I don’t know what they are. I just ripped at them to pass the time. It’s just leaves.”

“What did those leaves look like?” Elaine asked.

The vomit was now fully covered. The spot was slightly raised, like a freshly covered grave.

“The way leaves usually look. Green with green stems and green stalks. What do you want me to tell you?”

“You know what Elaine wants.” Miriam walked over the fresh dirt and stomped on it, the track marks from her boots crisscrossing it. “She wants to know exactly what it is, like that berry tree over there. It’s going to eat at her brain if she doesn’t find out.”