I looked over at him, for the first time noticing how far apart we’d slept, and saw that his face was drenched in sweat, and his breathing was choppy, labored.
I tossed the opossum aside and crawled on my hands and knees over to him, ignoring the strange unevenness of the ground beneath me. I placed my hand on his shoulder and shook him. “Atticus, please wake up,” I said calmly at first. “ATTICUS WAKE UP!” The real possibility he could be dying punched me hard in the stomach, sent a panic through me. “ATTICUS! YOU BETTER WAKE UP NOW!” I said angrily.
And he did.
His eyes opened faintly at first, and then all the way. Relief ravaged my body and I nearly lost my balance and fell on top of him.
He reached up weakly and stroked my hair from my face.
“Oh, Atticus”—I kissed the back of his hand, and then his mouth—“you scared me. You scared me…” My chest shuddered.
“I’m all right,” he told me, though I knew that he wasn’t, but I couldn’t think about that right now. Because I could do nothing about it right now.
“Trick found us, and he brought food,” I told him.
“What…did he…catch?”
“Opossum.” I left him and went over to grab the carcass, brought it back to show Atticus. “See?” I gave it a covert sniff to make sure decomposition wasn’t setting in yet.
Atticus scarcely nodded.
“Help me up,” he told me, and reached out his hand.
ATTICUS
Thais helped me up, and I sat upright, swaying as I tried to steady my balance; my eyes filled with spots, and my head felt like it was on fire, and I was drowning in sweat all over my body.
“I don’t…suppose you’re any…good”—I stopped to catch my breath, and wiped sweat from my face; my head was spinning, and so I shut my eyes for a moment—“…any good at…making fire without a lighter?”
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
“What makes you think I’m not?” I joked. I laid the opossum on the ground, and told Atticus to drop his pants so I could look at the infected wound, but instead, I inhaled sharply and froze where I stood.
“Oh…dear God…”
Atticus raised his head slowly. “What is it?” he asked, but as his gaze followed mine, he didn’t need me to tell him.
The ground beneath us was littered with bones—human bones. Bones that still wore the clothes the people had lived and died in; bones separated, smashed to pieces, torn apart; human skulls unattached to their spines, tossed in every direction, marred by bullet wounds and axe fissures and other large, blunt objects. The dead stretched outward in front of us fifty-feet and led to a sloped drop-off. I, eyes wide, horrorstruck, saw the dirt rim of a mass grave with the circumference of a small pond.
“Thais, don’t…”
But I had to. I had to see, to bear witness to the scene of what had once been a place of terrible violence and horrific brutality.
Bones crunched underfoot as I walked over them, unable to step around them there were so many. There was no fear in my heart, only sadness; my mind so fixated on what I was about to see I barely noticed Atticus following closely behind.
I stood at the edge of the mass grave, a deep, deep hole, where at the bottom, hundreds of skeletal remains were scattered like rocks on a hillside. Hundreds of people who once had lives, who had sons and daughters—who were sons and daughters. Hundreds.
I felt Atticus’ hand on my shoulder; I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight.
“Atticus, there are…children.” My fingertips rested on my lips; burning moisture brimmed my eyes.
Atticus took my other hand into his and he squeezed it.
Every unimaginable kind of horror about what happened here went through my mind, but all of them were unjust. I could have allowed myself to believe these people were executed because they had done awful things—they could have been savages—but the bones of dead children among the massacre was evidence those who did the killing might have been the savages. Or cracks. Or a tyrant like William Wolf of Lexington City. Or any number of evil who did, and always had, outweighed the good in this world.
I couldn’t look away.
“This can’t go on,” I said aloud to myself. “This can’t be how the world continues, how life continues…”—my hand fell away from my mouth; I stared into the mass grave, unblinking, picturing the smiling faces of the dead, when they were alive and happy and free—“This can’t be all that’s left.”
“It won’t be,” Atticus whispered.
“No, it won’t.”
After a moment, I said, “Let’s cook this opossum,” and I turned away from the grave, forcing it behind me because I’d break down if I didn’t.
I skinned and gutted the opossum myself, despite never wanting to.
“I’m still here,” Atticus told me as he watched.
I smiled. “Yes, you are,” I said. “You’re too stubborn to die; I know that now.”
Atticus chuckled.
Then he pointed to his festering leg wound. “I don’t know,” he reasoned. “I’m starting to wonder.”
“Ah!” I waved the idea off. “That won’t be what kills you—I know that, too.”
Atticus raised a brow.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.” I reached over and patted Trick on the head; the dog had been sitting patiently beside me, slobbering, waiting to be rewarded with a treat.
“Then what will be what kills me?”
I thought on it a moment, squinting my eyes and pressing my lips together in a hard line on one side. “Hmm,” I said. “I’m going to say old age.”
Atticus laughed under his breath.
“I hope you’re right,” he told me. “Though growing old has its downsides. Are you gonna feed me when I’m too old to lift a spoon? Clean me up when I’m too old control my bowels?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. “I’ll be with you until the very end. Don’t ever forget that.”
(I smiled slimly, with an ache in my heart. “I’ll never forget it,” I said.)
I took an hour to get a fire started. And we cooked the opossum on a tree-branch skewer and filled our stomachs with the most amazing meat we’d ever tasted—starvation made anything taste amazing.
Trick got his treat, and he took off in the darkness afterward. Atticus and I were disappointed the dog didn’t stay around to keep us company, and to help us find food, but it was what it was.
Close to nightfall, Atticus wasn’t talking much anymore, and he hadn’t moved from his spot on the ground in hours, and I had a dreadful feeling deep in the pit of my stomach but I tried not to show it, for Atticus’ sake.
Until I couldn’t help it anymore.
“Atticus, you need to stay awake.” I shook his shoulder gently, and his eyelids broke apart.
“I’m awake,” he insisted, but I wasn’t convinced.
Moments later, I had to shake his shoulder again.
“Don’t go to sleep; stay with me, Atticus.”
I heard the grumbling engine of a truck again, and seconds later I saw the white glow of headlights moving over the landscape.
I looked down at Atticus. Back at the truck. Down at Atticus again, my heart and my mind racing. Back at the truck again as it was getting farther away.