Never Too Far (9 page)

Joe stopped the wagon in front of the entrance to the forest. The size of it was like nothing he’d ever set eyes on before. The tops of the looming trees rustled and shook in the wind like the
clouds of a thunderstorm or the wave of an oncoming duster billowing across the plains. Joe felt at any moment that the rolling treetops were going to crash over him and send him tumbling away. 

He flicked the reins and the wagon moved out of the sunlight into the dark forest depths. Everything became eerily silent, as if they had entered the belly of an animal, where the sounds of the outside world no longer existed. Dark tree trunks lined both sides of the road like giant stakes speared into the ground. Anything could be hiding behind them, waiting and watching. The wagon creaked and bumped over the rough road. Joe scanned the forest, trying to peer through the thick web and see what was hidden.

No more than a few miles in, the driver’s side tire blew with a loud pop. The cab dropped abruptly to the left. Mary flew across the bench and crashed into Joe, which knocked him out the door. But he managed to twist his body in time to grab hold of the doorframe before falling onto the road. At the same instant, the horses reared up. They jerked the tilting wagon and took off running. Joe’s legs smacked against the ground and flailed in the air. He didn’t panic, though. Not even close. A few seconds later, when his legs fell against the road for a third time, he kicked his feet against the ground. His legs popped high and he hooked a knee over the edge of the wagon bed. From there he worked his body over enough to swing himself into the wagon.

Meanwhile, Mary caught the reins. She was doing everything she could to stop the horses. Joe crawled through the back window and toppled into the cab. He landed head first on the floorboards, where he curled around
and scrambled onto the bench. Mary gripped the back of the bench with one hand as she bounced around. The reins were twisted tight around her other hand, all the way up to her elbow. They were pulling at her sleeve so much that Joe thought the coiled reins were going to rip the sleeve clean off her skin or yank her arm out of its socket. He lunged forward and snatched the taut reins at the end of her hand while he hung onto the dashboard to keep from bouncing out the front window.

“Get your arm out!” Joe shouted.

Mary shook her arm. 

“Easy!” he shouted at the horses. “Easy!”

Finally, Lester started to slow, which made Sam calm down enough so that they both slowed to a trot.

“Whoa, boys. Whoa. Whoa.” 

When the horses came to a full stop—their heads shaking and nodding, their muscles twitching and shivering—Mary leapt out. She ran to the side of Lester’s neck and spread her hands over his skin. She combed her fingers through his mane and pressed her cheek against him. His shivering muscles relaxed until there was barely a ripple. Joe watched in amazement until he noticed the rip in his pants and the red scrape alongside his knee. When he stepped out of the cab, his knees buckled under a jolt of pain. He hobbled over to the blown tire and knelt on his good knee.

The tire was shredded down to the rusty wheel rim. Joe had no idea what had happened. The tires were old and cracking, for sure, but for it to just blow like that was unusual. He looked back down the road and spotted what appeared to be a row of spikes sticking up like the tongs on a garden rake. It didn’t take much to realize that someone had set a trap and sprung it just as the wagon rolled near it. And whoever set it must still be lurking in the trees somewhere. When he looked ahead at the horses, he didn’t see Mary right away, and he jumped to his feet.

“Where are you?” he said. There was no answer.

He hurried around Lester and found her on the other side of Sam. She was stroking him and pressing her cheek against his flank.

“There you are. Why didn’t you answer me?” he said, as if she was a regular chatterbox. “We’re not safe. We need to get out of here. Get in the cab.”

Mary stood there like she didn’t
understand, or else showing some kind of defiance. Whichever it was, Joe didn’t care. He didn’t have time for explanations. He grabbed her by her thin shoulders and spun her around. He shoved her to the cab and pushed her in.

On the other side of the wagon, he grabbed the rifle and quickly glanced into the murky forest. After that
, he hauled the spare tire out of the wagon bed and dropped it on the ground. He could feel something about to happen, a presence, a portent, a static in the air.

Suddenly, wild whoops and cries shattered the air. Joe twisted around to see what it was. A stampede of men flew out of the dark forest like shrieking bats swooping out of a cave. The men beat on shields and wielded clubs and machetes and spears. The terrifying racket scared Lester and Sam. They bolted down the road again, dragging the limping wagon behind them. He heard Mary scream. One of the wild men dropped to a knee, raised a bow, and slung an arrow at the horses. A hard plastic mask was pushed up on top of his head. He pulled another arrow from a quiver on his back and shot that one too. Then he slipped the mask over his face before he darted off toward the runaway wagon. A tail of hair swung behind him. His bare legs flashed.

For a moment, Joe stood stunned by the ferocity of the men’s attack, almost in disbelief. They were akin to wild animals, covered in skins and furs and helmets. When Joe finally kicked into action, he flipped the Calvin rifle up to his shoulder. He steadied the sights on the man chasing the wagon. He zeroed in and fired. The man stumbled. He skidded to his knees, then crashed and rolled to a stop. That made the stampeding herd slow up, long enough for Joe to cock the Calvin again and shoot. The shot didn’t go awry. The bullet ripped into one of the men’s shoulders. It jerked him to one side as if gaffed, before he fell to the ground. 

Joe swung the rifle back and forth across the dumbfounded herd of men to let them know that anyone of them could be the next to take a bullet. That’s when Joe realized it wasn’t really a whole herd of men at all, but only a ragtag assortment of about ten. Joe was expecting one of them to fire at him, but they all stood there staring at him as if they were waiting for someone to tell them what they should do next. They looked genuinely perplexed. Joe took the opportunity to take a sidelong glance down the road. He was relieved to see the wagon sitting there in the distance. Mary must have gotten control of it and they must be all right.

The man Joe hit in the shoulder writhed and groaned in pain. It was the only sound. When no one fired a gun, Joe assumed they didn’t have any or maybe they did but they didn’t have any bullets. Old guns were easy to find. Ammunition wasn’t. Then a man in a red helmet lunged forward, wailing and swinging his machete, but no one took up the charge with him. The rest stayed still. When he realized he was all alone, the man stopped and looked behind him at the other men stuck in their places. He must’ve had a change of heart because he turned around and ran back to the group, wailing and thrashing his arms like there was something better in the other direction. At that point the whole pack of them turned and fled back into the forest. They left their wounded behind.

Joe sprinted along the road toward the wagon. As he passed the first man he shot l
ying in the ditch, he stopped. The man was sprawled out on his stomach, his head twisted toward Joe. His mask-covered face stared up in a way that made Joe feel uneasy. The white mask that circled his whole face made the man seem inhuman. There was a little bump where his nose must’ve been and black and red stripes painted across the flat cheeks, but there was no mouth. The most disturbing part was the way the man’s eyes stared out of the round holes. His eyes didn’t move or blink. Joe stepped off the road and stood above the man. Blood bubbled from his neck. Joe still couldn’t see the man as real, as a real human being. He seemed more like an otherworldly creature, especially with his white mask. Shooting him had felt more like shooting a beast.

Joe nudged the man with the tip of his rifle to see if he was still alive. His body was limp. Joe knelt down and pulled the arrows out of the quiver and peeled the fingers away from the bow he still grasped in his hand. Then Joe noticed a canteen on the other side of the man’s hip. It was clipped onto the belt. Joe removed it and shook it. He heard water slosh and he slid the clip onto the waistband of his pants.

After he gathered up the arrows and the bow, he ran along the road again until he reached the wagon, where he found Mary standing beside Lester’s rump. An arrow had pierced him and a trail of dark blood ran down his skin from the wound. Joe inspected it and saw that only the tip was embedded and no further. Fortunately, it was in a thick slab of muscle and hadn’t hit Lester in a more vulnerable spot. Joe grabbed the base of the arrow right next to the wound and slowly twisted it. At the same time he gently pulled on it. Lester didn’t like it. He stamped his hooves and shook his head. To calm him, Mary nuzzled his big head and caressed his cheeks. The arrow tip gradually emerged, forcing more blood to leak out of the wound, until the tip slid free. Joe wiped it on his pants and tossed the arrow into the bed of the wagon.

“He’ll be alright,” he said to Mary.

After they got in the wagon, he turned the horses around and they rode back to get the tire. The tilted wagon tottered along. When they got to where the skirmish happened, the man in the mask was gone from the ditch and the tire wasn’t sitting in the road anymore. The groans of the injured man had vanished along with his body.

Joe was at a loss now. That tire was the only spare. The hobbling wagon would only put more strain on Lester and Sam, who were both showing signs of fatigue and weakness. Their tongues hung out and their heads drooped.
Even so, there was no time to rest. They needed to get moving. Those wild men were still nearby.

Chapter 17

They traveled on through the forest, which seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer by the minute. It was like they were sinking further into a hole they would never be able to get back out of. What Joe hated the most was that he couldn’t see the sky. The cover of dark trees was relentless. At least back home the trees along the bluff were spaced far enough apart that light always got through. Plus the woods weren’t that big anyway, not like here in the endless forest. Never seeing the sky was more disturbing than he realized. He was used to it hanging above him at all times, night and day, like a constant companion, a comforting friend.

Before nightfall, Joe spotted a narrow trail. He steered the wagon up into the trees for about a quarter of a mile and then weaved around the trunks until he was off the trail a ways and stopped. At first he sat there without moving. The tops of the trees hovered around them. The dark trunks staggered off someplace where it was all shadows. He watched the darkness spread like black oil. It seemed to
crawl over his skin as if alive. He got out of the cab. The wind suddenly stirred. He listened to the scrape of leaves and the crackle of twigs until the wind vanished.

As they got the blankets out and spread them on the damp ground, Joe noticed how labored Mary’s movements were. When she bent over or knelt down and then stood up straight again, she pressed her hands into her lower back, arching it, so her belly bulged out
even more. He couldn’t remember her acting that way before, or maybe he simply hadn’t noticed. Maybe she had been moving around like that for a while, so it didn’t seem unusual. In any case, he was very aware of it now. He wondered if she was in some kind of pain from lugging around a baby inside her all the time. Or maybe she got hurt when she was tossed around in the wagon cab when Lester and Sam ran away from the ambush.

“You sit down and rest a while,” Joe said. “Curl up in the blankets and I’ll take care of the rest, okay?”

Mary stood still and didn’t say a word. Joe stared at her small figure, shadowed in the thickening darkness. He thought maybe she was too scared to answer him, or perhaps she was only being her usual non-responsive self.

“Okay. Stay standing if that’s what you want, but let me do the rest.”

He realized he was whispering. He wondered if Mary had picked up on that and now she was reluctant to make another sound.

“Everything is fine.” He raised the level of his voice a bit, but then it felt as though he w
ere shouting. Anything above a whisper sounded extremely loud. “We’ll be safe. You’ll see. We got a little water. Here—”

He grabbed the canteen he took from the dead man and unscrewed the cap. Before he gave it to her, he tested it first. He dribbled a little liquid into his palm before he dipped the tip of his tongue against his wet hand. It sure tasted like water.

“Only two swallows,” Joe said. “The rest we got to give to Lester and Sam.”

She reached out and slid her hand around the dented canteen and gulped two big swallows. Then he poured the rest of the water into a pot, along with what was left in the jug from Nahum, and gave it to Lester and Sam. They were so thirsty they nearly tore the pot out of his hands. He hoped they would come across a creek soon because they couldn’t go much longer without water. He checked Lester’s wound again. The small bottle of corn alcohol would’ve come in handy now to help disinfect it, but the alcohol was lost in the duster. The wound was as big around as the tip of his thumb, but it was clean and crusting over, so it looked like it would be okay. Mary stood close to Lester and stroked his broad neck. She went so far as to rest her head against his skin.