I often asked if she wanted to call it quits and go back to the cabin—Thais was drenched in sweat and discomfort—but she convinced me she was perfectly capable of enduring the same discomforts as me. Truth was, I knew she could endure it, I just didn’t like for her to.
She reached over as we sat together under the shade of a tree, and she pinched the flesh of my waist over the top of my shirt. “You’re losing as much weight as I am,” she told me. And we hunted another two hours before I finally spotted a wild turkey.
We took it back to the cabin, and I cut off its head and plucked its feathers and did the things to it that Thais never wanted to do.
“Would you ever do it if I wasn’t here to do it for you?”
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
I looked into my plate. I chewed for a moment. My father had said things like this to me, told me how important it was that I know how to do such things. But like with my father, I never wanted to think about having to do it myself. Because it meant that I would be alone and Atticus would be dead.
Atticus’ death was unacceptable. It wasn’t possible. No. I refused to believe it ever possible!
I looked up at him nonchalantly, and took another bite. “I know I won’t have to.” I didn’t want to be having this conversation; I looked back down into my plate.
Atticus sighed.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I did too answer it,” I said. Please Atticus, just stop talking.
“Do you know how to skin and gut a deer?” he asked. “Do you know how to pluck a chicken? Could you—would you—kill a turtle if it was all you had to eat and I wasn’t here to do it for you?”
Atticus, please…
(I just wanted to know if she would; I knew that she could.)
“Stop it!” I dropped my plate on the table beside me and sprang from the chair; it rocked back and forth wildly.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
After a second, I sat back down, but refused to look at him.
Atticus set his plate on the porch railing, hopped down, and laid his arms across the top of my thighs, hooking my waist on both sides with his hands.
“Look at me, Thais.”
I wouldn’t look at him.
“I said look at me,” he ripped the words out, shaking me.
Reluctantly, I raised my eyes.
“I want you to promise me something,” he said. “Can you promise me, Thais, whatever I ask of you?”
No, I can’t. I can’t because whatever it is, in my heart I know it’s something I won’t be able to do—it’s something you’ll think is best for me, but my heart will think otherwise and I won’t do it. Because I always listen to my heart. Always…
“Thais?”
I shook my head; my eyes began to well up with tears.
(I cocked my head to one side, studying her, debating her defiance and what I would do about it, what I could do about it.)
“If you can’t promise me this,” he said, “then no matter what happens to me, or where I am, whether I’m alive or dead in the ground, I won’t be at peace. I’ll never know peace again like I’ve known it since I’ve known you. I’ll toss and turn in my grave, Thais, if you can’t promise me this one thing.”
Please, Atticus, don’t make me promise this!
Salty tears streamed down my cheeks; he wiped them away with his thumbs, then he kissed my lips.
“It’s the only thing I’ll ever make you promise me.”
“What is it?” I said, but could hardly get the words out.
“Make the promise first,” he said, his hands resting at the sides of my neck, his fingers splayed to touch my face.
After a moment, I nodded with reluctance.
“I promise,” I said, and regretted it.
“If something happens to me,” he began, “promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to get somewhere safe—promise me that you’ll fight to live. Promise me that you’ll go on to live your life to the absolute fullest, that you’ll be strong. Say it again.”
Tears tumbled from my eyes, tears of pain and of anger. How could he force me to go on in this godforsaken world without him? For a moment, I despised him for it.
“Say it,” he repeated, his features hard, his gaze penetrating.
“I promise. I promise that I’ll find someplace safe. I promise that I’ll fight to live. I promise that I’ll go on to live my life to the absolute fullest, that I’ll be strong—I promise.”
Atticus kissed my mouth.
Why do I feel like one day I will break that promise?
ATTICUS
By the end of July, there still had been no sign of human life in the Shawnee National Forest other than the two of us. And the solitude, the cover of the dense trees, the beauty of the cabin and the flora around it and the shimmering pond beyond it, it made us more comfortable.
We began to feel safe.
We began to get lost in one another as if we were the only people left in the world and there would be no one to tear us apart.
I even felt it was okay to let Thais stay alone in the cabin when I went out to hunt. But I never went far, and Thais kept a gun with her always when I was away. And I couldn’t get back to her fast enough. I couldn’t wait to see her. To kiss her. To touch her.
I was giving in to her more the past couple weeks. She had this way about her, how she’d look at me with sad eyes, and how sweet her voice was when she’d ask me to touch her. And I couldn’t refuse her. But I still didn’t trust myself with her, either.
“Why won’t you ever let me pleasure you?” she asked as she lay tangled with me on the sofa.
Because I don’t deserve you.
I stroked her hair, kissed her hair.
“Is it because you don’t think I can?”
I laughed out loud—that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life.
She wasn’t laughing.
Oh, was she being serious?
“Oh, love, you have no idea,” I said, and squeezed her.
THAIS
I sat upright.
“Well, I don’t think it’s fair,” I said, refusing to find the same humor he’d found in it. “You do just about everything around here—hunting and fishing and planting and skinning and…well, everything. And you pleasure me anytime I ask for it—”
He laughed again, and then smirked, narrowing his eyes at me. “So you admit it then?” he said playfully. “You know I’ll do just about anything you want me to do.” He held up his pinky finger and swished it around as if to say “wrapped around your little finger”.
I did not laugh, nor did I smile.
“And,” he continued, “you do all of those other things too, so don’t try to make it seem like some unfair situation.”
I sneered and crossed my arms.
“That doesn’t count,” I argued.
Atticus’ smile broadened. He shook his feet crossed at the ankles on the end of the sofa. Then he crossed his arms, too, and just looked at me.
“Okay,” he finally said, “what would you want to do for me then? Go on, tell me what you had in mind.”
I looked away, feeling the blush in my face. But then I stood my ground; I wanted to be brave, to at least seem like I had some idea I knew about such things. I couldn’t let him believe otherwise. Because then he’d know the truth. And he could never know the truth.
I glanced at his lap nervously; he was grinning when I looked back up.