For a couple of hours she slept underneath the big sun, and when she awoke she found herself curled into a fetal position, shivering against the cool air. She sat up and pulled on her clothes. She hugged her right knee to her chest and massaged the aching bones and muscles of her left leg. Her thoughts turned over the lyrics to a Billy Bragg and Wilco song. And as she watched the trees, she was still hearing those lyrics in her head—We walked down by the Buckeye Creek. To see the frog eat the google-eyed bee. To hear the west wind whistle to the east. There ain’t nobody that can sing like me, ain’t nobody that can sing like me. Inside the grove of trees was an opening, and inside that opening she could swear she saw the hide of an animal. She slid down from the rock, reached for her crutch, and made her way to the small clearing. Lying in front of her, and scantily covered with snow and broken branches, was the carcass of a deer, and next to the carcass, the rakings and prints of a cougar. She had discovered another cache.
She did not have her backpack with her. She did not have her knife. And she would barely have enough strength and daylight to make it back to the cave, much less return again that evening to pilfer the cache. But where the lion’s teeth had bored into the deer, Amy Raye was able to tear away at least a couple of pounds of meat. She was tempted to eat the meat raw; she was that hungry, and she thought of the minerals that the deer’s blood would provide. But she didn’t eat the meat raw. Instead she stretched out the tail of her thermal shirt and laid the meat against the fabric. With her left hand, she held the game close to her stomach. She would carry the meat in the same way she used to carry Matchbox cars and Legos when she was picking up after Trevor. She did not look for the lion. She thought only of getting back to the cave, and so with the crutch tucked beneath her left arm, she began making the slow ascent to her shelter. She stopped a couple of times to rest, and by the time she was inside the cave’s walls, the sky was mostly dark. She cooked the meat but was only able to eat a small portion before she became full.
With her stomach satisfied and the fire now a slow flame and the cave warm, her thoughts settled around Farrell and home and the children and a second chance to find her way out. Despite her weakened state, she knew she could not postpone another attempt. She also knew that with her depleted state, it could take her days to travel even a mile. And she would need food to sustain her. She would have to return to the cache site, and this time she would bring her pack. She would prepare her things before she left: water, her metal bottle, parachute cord, fire starter, emergency matches. She would also make sure her left foot was properly insulated. Though she had not experienced complete frostbite, her toes had blistered and peeled after her last attempt. When she returned, she’d cut a V out of the right side of her boot and made slits down the other side as well. She had found that she could wear the boot this way, and that it allowed her to put some weight onto her broken foot. She would leave at sunrise and stop first at the cache site, where she would take as much meat as she could manage to carry, maybe twenty pounds, maybe only ten. Though she would be working her way down the mountain in snow cover, more and more patches of land were becoming visible in the distance. She had already thought of taking a different route than the one before. Instead of heading directly west, where she knew there were steep drop-offs and where there might be drifts, she would make her way southwest, moving in the same direction as the tracks made by the large dog and the set of boots. And she remembered having seen a road toward the southwest corner of the map. The road could be ten miles away, but without knowing her exact location, it might be closer, and she felt certain the descent would be more gradual and eventually would put her at a lower elevation, which would mean less snow.
She would need her rest, but her eyes danced with anticipation. The cougar no doubt had already returned to the cache, would have consumed more of the carcass. But the deer was a large animal, and the kill was fresh, with plenty of meat, as if the lion had barely fed on it at all. The vultures had not taken to it yet, and the carrion beetles were still underground. Amy Raye gave thanks for the deer. She gave thanks for her full stomach. Then she realized the lion would have already known she’d been at the site. Perhaps he would be waiting for her return. She’d known about making herself seem large should she come upon a lion on a trail, about throwing rocks and making noise. She would tie her jacket to her crutch and wave her crutch in the air. She would sing the songs that had played in her head. And she thought of Farrell and all the songs he had sung to her, and that clear winter night they placed their lawn chairs in the snow and Farrell had set his turntable on the stone porch, and they’d drunk from a bottle of Glenlivet and listened to Victoria Williams sing, You are loved, you are loved, you are really loved.
As she lay in the cave, as she waited for sleep, she dragged the index finger of her right hand along the soft sand of the cave floor, and with her eyes closed, she wrote Farrell’s name beside her.