Penny Page: THE LOST ONE

I’m tired, tired, tired. I sink onto my cot, lie on my side, fold the musty pillow in half, and shove it under my head. The pillow is covered in thin blue stripes and grease spots, and I can’t remember where it came from. I draw my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs. Goosebumps jump down my arm as though my skin is pulling away from me. I am cold, cold, cold. My shuddering body forces me to pay attention to this reality. To my surprise, I am naked. Did I take my clothes off? Did I never put them on? I pull the scratchy wool blanket from the wide planks of the wooden floor and huddle beneath it. The source of the blanket is as much a mystery as the pillow.

I manipulate the circuitry within my skull, turn parts of my brain off, turn other parts on. Concentrate to make the blood flow here and there, to my forehead, to the joint of my jaw, behind my eyes, to the top of my neck. All the places where thoughts go to fester. If I can get sparks to flick and worm their way into the channels of my gray matter, I will think clearer. I will sit up. I will put on clothes.

In these woods, at night, the wind builds. It snakes down the valley and through the trees, a low oooh-aah that picks up speed and rises into a drawn-out keening wail that scratches like steel nails at my temples. The wind pounds on the shuttered window trying to get in while the trees’ needled fingers tap on the door and skitter on the roof. Their limbs flail frantically, and the wind screams and howls until I can stand it no longer. I press my rough hands against my ears and shout and shriek from my gut as long and as loud as I can to block out the sound. The screams of the children when our bullets and grenades and rocket launchers tore through their village walls join me. I used to shoot through the door at the wind, at the branches, anything to make the screaming stop. Now, all the ammo is gone. My SIG Sauer useless against the wind and the trees and the screams of the children.

My blood buzz, buzz, buzzes. The buzz cuts in and out like static, like an old radio seeking a station, searching for invisible soundwaves. My bones chatter in the bed, but my mind is out there, in the ether, riding the static, probing infinite blackness. I long for the peace of outer space where sound does not exist. Beam me up, Scotty. Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Time is of no consequence. Night or day, dreams or reality, all mesh into one. When the night wind is still, I lie on the forest floor. The shadows deepen and the crawling moss creeps over my skin until I am one with the dirt. I hear worms as they work near my ear to break down the rotting leaves and decompose, decompose, decompose the shedding forest. During the day, I sit and watch the faces in the tree bark: eyes, nose, mouth, some with chin and hairline. There are so many of them, more every day. Some smile warmly, some leer with contempt, some frown in confusion, some cast their eyes down in shame. Many are angry, or surprised, or frustrated. Everything I feel, they feel, too. They murmur to each other in low voices behind my back, speaking in riddles. They are my only company, and I don’t trust them.

In the dull gray dawn, the ax feels good in my hands. The bang of the chop, the creak of the splintering wood a release, a liberation from my burrowing thoughts.

“Hello?”

A human voice. Odd. I stop chopping.

A young woman stands downhill from me, holding a walking stick. She is wearing a textured shirt, like the long underwear I had before it rotted off me. A backpack hangs from her shoulders, a purple wool cap hugs her skull. Her boots are thick-soled and unworn.

“I took a wrong turn,” she says with a shaky smile, “two days ago. I can’t find my tent.” Her voice is smooth, and yet on edge, holding a secret.

My lips stretch into unfamiliar shapes as my mouth forms words. “Do you have a gun?” For a fleeting moment, I want her to shoot me, to put an end to it. Then I forget why.

Her mouth falls open, just a fraction. She looks right, and then left. “No.”

“Too bad.” I go back to chopping.

If she has a gun, she should shoot herself to avoid the misery. Otherwise, she will bear the torment of being lost in a million acres of northwest wilderness, where the trees mock and tease. They will whisper that she’s been tricked, but they won’t say how or why. Hasn’t she seen their faces moving in the bark?

She shifts from foot to foot, nervous. “Can you tell me how to get back to the main trail?”

She is interrupting me. Annoyed, I stop chopping and stand tall, holding the ax handle in both hands across my groin. It occurs to me that I look manly standing here in the forest, ax at the ready. I glance down at myself. My cracked black boots are without laces, my sockless feet shoved into them. My baggy pants hit mid-shin, the hems shredded, held up by suspenders over my bare chest. My shaggy beard hides food and twigs and bugs. My tangled hair does not know a comb. But I am a person, nonetheless. I deserve respect. This is what the trees do not understand.

I walk toward her. She starts slow, backing up, and soon turns to run. But it’s too late. With three long strides, I close in. I knock her on the back of her small round head with the butt of the ax head. She drops, blood blooming through the purple weave of her hat. I stand over her, breathing hard, holding my ax like a man. It was for her own good because heads talk when silence is needed. The words never end, never end, never end.

How did she find me? Only the Liberty Guard knows where I am. Perhaps they sent her. If so, I have destroyed my only link back to them. Oh, how the trees will howl with glee when they learn of this.

My brothers instructed me to wait, to secure this ground until our militia penetrates enemy lines: the white dome of the capital building, the neighborhood precincts, the offices of the liberal media. Some of the enemy will flee into the forest where I await. I will force them into the valley and eliminate them at the choke point.

Our plans were full of rage and fire and justice. On the other side of the flames, they promised we would all step through the ashes, triumphant. My pitted brain reminds me, “Your bullets are gone. How will you prevail with an ax as your only weapon? You are nothing but a bug in this wilderness.” My mother’s tear-stained face appears in the tree bark.

Where are my comrades now? Do the flames still burn? I obeyed, I came, I stayed. So long ago that I lost my way, lost count of the days, the months, the years. Still, they have not come for me, and the enemy has not fled. My brothers don’t understand this place: the wind and the trees, the slow melting of mind, the whittling away of body. I know it’s too late for me. No one will come before I disappear, disappear, disa . . .