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Amy Raye ate a small portion of the cooked meat and, using the gallon-size plastic bag, packed up the rest, no more than a couple of pounds, to bring with her. Despite the sun, the snow was deep, and she was not sure how she would manage over the rocks, but she had to at least try. She picked up the scapula. The triangular bone was about a foot long and maybe nine inches at its widest point. Though it would add extra weight to her pack, it could be of use to her. She scraped the scapula clean. Then she removed the shoelaces from the boot she could no longer wear and picked up one of the longer sticks she’d collected for firewood. Using the laces, she tied the end of the scapula to one of the ends of the stick. The shovel was small enough to strap to the back of her pack. She had no idea what the forecast would be. She could only hobble around at best. It would be days, maybe a week before she could cover enough distance to reach a road or find help. And yet if she stayed in the cave, where she could keep warm as long as she could gather firewood, within two weeks, probably less, she would be dead. Building a fire once she left was not a guarantee, given the snow and the winds that could pick up. She wondered what it would be like to die from hypothermia. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Her body would go numb. She wouldn’t feel anything. She imagined crawling into a fetal position in a soft drift and falling asleep. But she knew hypothermia wasn’t that simple. She’d read enough accounts of the hallucinations of those suffering from a severe drop in body temperature, heard stories of people who had stripped out of their clothes because of an imagined fire and a false sense of heat. She also thought of how difficult it would be to manipulate her legs and feet over the ice-slicked rocks. And what if she were to experience another fall, another broken bone? Maybe leaving the cave was a mistake. But if she waited any longer, she would no longer have a choice, and she wanted that choice. She wanted her children to know she’d done everything she could to return to them. She had already packed her few belongings, had filled her hydration bladder. Even though the game bag had been soiled with the elk’s blood, she’d folded the four-foot cloth and used its drawstrings to create a bootie for her injured foot.
She lay back on the boughs she used as a mattress. She looked up at the cross she had etched into the rock wall. She did not believe the cross would protect her. She was not superstitious in that sort of way, and yet she had found that it brought her comfort.
Amy Raye thought about that comfort and the ways a child is raised. She thought upon the white church where her grandfather had been an elder, and, for years, her father had been a deacon. And while her father had been a deacon he’d visit the sick, and sometimes Amy Raye would go with him. She’d carry the large Bible and her father would carry a cup of coffee and a box of donuts that he and Amy Raye would have picked up at the Donut Barn in Tullahoma. If there were any donuts left after they’d made their visits, he and Amy Raye would eat them in the front seat of his patrol car. And on a warm day, they’d ride with the windows down and sometimes she’d lean her head out the window and let the wind blow her hair.
The big, brown leather Bible belonged to the church. It had been given to the congregation by Governor Buford Ellington in 1967, the same year he signed a bill repealing the Butler Act of 1925 that had outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools. That was also the year he’d appointed the state’s first black cabinet member, Hosea T. Lockard. Some old-time members of the church hadn’t been fans of Governor Ellington. The church was known for its biblical conservatism, so the church didn’t mind that Clyde Surgarton took that particular Bible with him when he visited the sick. He told Amy Raye that the big book carried with it healing powers.
“How so?” Amy Raye had asked him.
“Because it was given to the church by a man capable of changing his ways.”
Those were the most profound words Amy Raye would ever hear from her father. And for a long time, she let those afternoons with him and those words define him.