What do I do? God, tell me what to do…
The people, whoever they were, could be dangerous; they could be the same people who snuffed out the lives of those we grimly shared a meal around just hours earlier. They could even be someone from Lexington City looking for us. Or from Paducah. Or—
What do I do?!
Or, they could be Atticus’ only chance of survival.
I jumped to my feet and sprinted across the field toward the truck, out of breath within seconds; my legs felt like fifty-pound weights; my lungs and my heart might burst if I went any farther, but I refused to stop.
“WAIT!” I held up my arm high above my head. “PLEASE, WAIT!”
The sun was setting, but there was just enough light left to show me waving frantically in the distance.
“STOP!” My voice rippled sharply over the field.
The truck stopped, the brake lights glowing brighter for a moment.
I fell to my knees, and then fell on my chest; dried grass prickled my face as I lay pressed against it. “Please…wait…” I couldn’t yell anymore. “You…have to…help us.”
Moments later I heard the shuffling of boots moving over the grass. And men’s voices. But I couldn’t make out the words.
A man stood over me, with dark skin and dark eyes; he wore a tattered straw hat, and a curious smile.
“All right, I got you,” the man said, and I felt his gentle hands fit under my arms. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you, girl.”
67
ATTICUS
I felt a cold, tingling sensation move through my thigh, and something small and rough manipulating my muscles, strangely comfortable, yet it irritated the dull, burning ache that had settled in my leg. A mixture of licorice and menthol and something sweet, like vanilla, was as welcoming as it was unpleasant—it smelled nice, but it made me nauseous. The air felt exceedingly warm, but it wasn’t the heat from the sun; it felt different: stifling but not burning, and I couldn’t feel the sun’s rays beating down on my eyelids, forcing me to keep them closed. Instead, I opened them slowly, my vision blurred, and I saw that I was in a room, one made of heavy cloth instead of sturdy walls.
Above me the cloth ceiling sagged between the wooden beams that held the tent up; shadows moved against the cloth walls and settled in the corners where the lanterns that produced them sat perched on tiny wooden tables surrounded by vases and jewelry boxes and shiny metal baskets filled with cotton balls and rolls of gauze and other things I could not make out.
Becoming more aware of being awake, I turned my head to the other side—I realized then that I was lying on something flat and taller than a bed—to see who was with me in the room. When I saw that it wasn’t Thais, I sat bolt upright in a panic.
“Oh, now don’t be doin’ that,” a woman said, as she moved away from my leg and pressed her hand to my chest. “You need to lay there; ain’t nobody hurt that girl.”
“Where is she?” My head dizzied from the abrupt movement, and I had difficulty steadying my breath.
“She’s around,” the woman said, and moved back toward my leg. “I’m bettin’ she’ll be back by here in an hour or so. For now, you just betta lie still.”
“Who are you?”
“They call me Mama,” the woman said, “but since you don’t know me yet, you can call me Edith, if you’d like.” She hardly ever made eye contact with me while she worked on changing the bandage on my leg.
Edith was an older woman, possibly of mixed races; her skin honey-colored with a dash of marigold, and she had long, thin arms, and a skinny, wrinkled face; underneath her rounded, teardrop-shaped eyes the skin sagged like raisins, and at the corners of her mouth, deep lines made her look like a woman who’d spent her whole life laughing and smiling. Although she was not smiling at the moment, she seemed the kind of woman it would take a lot more than the end of the world to make her frown.
“Thais told me your name’s Atticus?” She looked me right in the eyes this time, her bony, wrinkled hand suspended over my thigh.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, because something about her deserved respect.
She nodded, and then went back to work.
“I told that sweet girl you wasn’t gonna die, but she didn’t believe me. Been by your side every night since Ossie brought you back.”
“Every night?”
Edith reached over and took a roll of gauze from a basket and unrolled it.
“Been in and out for nearly three days,” she explained, eyes on her work. “But I knew you wasn’t gonna die; I’ve been seeing death for seventy years, even before that Sickness came through.”
“You were a nurse?” I assumed.
“Um-hmm”—she wrapped the gauze bandage around my thigh—“was a nurse in Japan in my younger years, but after I moved back here in 2005, I’ve spent most of my days working in nursing homes. I’ve been seeing death for a long time, and you were gonna be just fine. That girl will be happy to see you awake.”
“Where did she go?” Where are we, exactly? Who is Thais with? Is she all right? I wanted to know all of these things immediately, but I settled with one question at a time.
“She’s out with Ossie and Ona,” Edith said, and nodded toward the front of the tent. “Ossie’s my husband; Ona’s my granddaughter. They’re out fishing.”
Edith dropped the towel in a wicker basket on the floor.
“Well, you’re looking better,” she told me. “It was a good thing Thais found the penicillin; you might be in worse condition if she hadn’t.” She cleaned the area around me, taking up the old bandages and dropping them in another basket. “The one on your thigh was festering pretty bad; the others”—she pointed at my arm and then my hip with a crooked, arthritic finger—“they were already healing nicely before Ossie brought you in.”
I noted the clean bandage wrapped around my left arm, and the bandage taped to my right hip with gauze tape. I lifted my hand and noticed my broken fingers had been re-splinted with clean, bright white gauze, too. And although I couldn’t see my face, it felt like the swelling had gone down considerably: I could see through both eyes, and my skin didn’t feel like splitting every time I spoke, or made an expression.
“Thank you for your help,” I told Edith as she placed a jar on a shelf.
“Um-hmm, you’re welcome.” She took another jar down from the shelf and came over to me. “I’ve been hearing all about Lexington City long before Thais told us that’s where you came from, and I’ve got to say, I’m surprised you two made it this far”—she twisted the lid off the jar and dipped her finger in it—“especially with them chasing you.”
“She told you about Lexington?” What else did she tell them?