We made it to Harrodsburg by morning.
“We have to find a place to hide until nightfall,” Atticus said. “We can’t travel out in the open like this.” He pointed at a small house just off the highway. “It’s as good as any. Hopefully no one’s home.”
Yes, hopefully, I thought as we went toward it.
When we were in full view of the porch, Atticus hopped down from the horse.
“Stay here,” he told me, and then walked up the creaking steps.
He peered inside the windows, and then after tethering the horse to the front porch he went inside alone. When he came back, his gun holstered, I followed him into the living room. He slid the backpack from his arms and dropped it on the floor.
“You should get some sleep,” he said, nodding toward the sofa littered with leaves that had blown in through the broken windows.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”
He went over to the sofa and swept the leaves away.
“You need to try. I’ll keep watch.”
I moved across the small room toward him and sat down.
“But what about you?” I asked; my eyes skirted the bruises and swelling on his face, and then down at his hands covered in dirt and blood. His knuckles were swollen; cuts ran along them and the top of his fingers. But it was the way he walked that worried me the most, with one arm sometimes braced across his midsection; the way he limped; the way his face contorted with every step—I knew he held back the true measure of his pain, just like my father always used to do.
“I’ll sleep later,” he said, and then, with difficulty, he sat down on the hardwood floor next to the backpacks.
I sat down next to him, my legs crisscrossed, my hands in my lap. “I can rest sitting here,” I pointed out kindly. “When I’m tired, I’ll go to sleep.”
He glanced at me with disappointment, and then reached for the large backpack, loosening the clasps to open it.
“You should clean those wounds,” I added, looking down at the cuts on his hands. “They’ll get infected.” I had the instinctive urge to clean them myself, but I refrained. He helped me escape, and was still helping me now, but he was still the man who tore my sister away from me.
Ignoring me, Atticus looked through the bag at what all I’d packed, pulling items out one by one and placing them on the floor.
“Infection kills more men than men do,” I added. “History has proven that time and time again.”
He said nothing.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked a moment later. “You had a life back there; you were a free man; you had authority. Why waste it to help one girl?” I knew I had begged him to help me, but I wanted to know the deeper reasons he chose to do so.
He looked at me briefly, not long enough for me to decipher his cryptic expression, and then back down into the contents of the bag.
“To stay there and live like that any longer,” he said, “is what would’ve been a waste.”
I smiled lightly and then reached for the smaller bag. “I hope I packed well.” I watched his face for signs of approval or disapproval of the items.
“Actually, you did,” he admitted. “I think you made out with a better stockpile than I did—I’m impressed.”
I blushed, looking down into the contents of his bag to hide it.
A minute later he said, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
I knew he was talking about the brute.
“You did what you had to do,” I said. “I…well I’ve seen a lot of death.” A flash of my mother’s suicide invaded my thoughts; my father’s burnt corpse; Fernando and his mother shot to death on the path; Sosie hanging from the window by her neck; the mothers I saw bleed to death during childbirth—well, none of that even scratched the surface of the death I’d bore witness to.
I looked at Atticus and tried hard to smile. “Thank you for saving my life.”
ATTICUS
Feeling guilty about accepting her thanks, I pushed myself into a stand again, an arm shooting up to cross my midsection, my face knotted in pain, and I couldn’t look at her anymore. Maybe I saved her life, but the last thing I deserved was her gratitude.
I limped toward the large window nearby.
“Do you think that man was telling the truth?” Thais asked. “About Shreveport?” She paused. “I don’t know, but I think maybe he was.”
I stood at the window with my back to her, peering out at the desolate field. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t trust anyone—least of all men like him.” I turned to face her. “But I don’t see any other option.”
“So, then we’re going to Shreveport?”
I nodded, and turned back to the window.
“Yes.”
After several minutes of silence, I said, “I’m sorry about your sister. I’m sorry I couldn’t help her.”
Thais said nothing else the rest of the night.
We traveled only by night for the next three days, stopping along the way to sleep in abandoned houses and barns and buildings. And when it rained, though it only ever did so in spurts, we collected water and drank; and when we were hungry we snacked on the food stored in the backpacks. But it wasn’t much, and we were already running out of what little we had.
My ribs hurt like hell; they felt like glass when I’d move, but I was sure they weren’t broken. I’d had a broken rib before, and this feeling didn’t compare. But travel was difficult for me, nonetheless, whether by horse or on foot, which I often did to give the old horse reprieve.
We talked little in that three days. I couldn’t tell if Thais was mad at me for bringing up her sister, or if she was just scared. I never asked. I cared little. I just wanted to get her somewhere safe so I could move on with whatever was left of my life. And I didn’t want to get attached to her. Already she was my responsibility; I knew that I had to protect her, not just for her, but for myself, too. I had to hold on to that tiny spark of humanity left inside of me, by helping her. To let her die would be my final failure. But to grow attached, to cling to her friendship, if one grew between us; to hold on to the only other human still a human, as if we were the last two people on earth—I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t deserve the reward of friendship, or to be saved from being alone in a world as cold and dark as my heart had become. My one task, if it was the last thing I did, was to get her to safety, leave her to her life, and in doing so, hope I somehow could be redeemed for all the wrong I had done.
24
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
From a sliding glass door, I watched the sky fade into the gray haze of twilight. I sat at the kitchen table eating a can of sardines with my fingers. Atticus refused to eat, said he wasn’t hungry, and even after trying to convince him he was, I ended up with the whole can to myself.
Guiltily I ate.