But Boston doesn’t seem like that. He’s curious and suspicious, but not malignant, or he hides it well. The other one, Sidney, I don’t know yet. He’s behind me, so I can’t study him, though I feel his presence.
“Well, if you ask me, you’re lucky,” Boston says after a second. “Most bandits would’ve just killed you in the road and then taken your stuff. You’re lucky they let you go.”
I glance over to him. Boston is looking ahead, but I can tell he’s prodding at the weak point in my story, seeing if I get uncomfortable. He’s studying me like I studied him.
“You can thank Eric for that,” I say quickly. Hesitation here would sound false. “We were all camped one night and he got loose from the rope. By the time I found him and got back to camp, everything was gone.”
“Eric?” Boston asks. “How’d you know his name?”
Damn it. “I don’t know his name,” I say as easily as I can. “That’s the name I gave him.”
“Looks like Eric saved your life,” Boston says, seemingly satisfied. “Lucky.”
“Lucky,” I agree. Boston seems satisfied and gives me a little twitch of a smile. Then his horse gradually moves ahead and leaves us alone again. It’s hard to get a horse to walk as slow as Eric. I notice that Sidney has to stop his horse every quarter mile or so and let us get ahead. It’s a boring, grindingly slow pace, but I’m glad for it. It gives me time to think of how to get us out of this mess.
My immediate worry is that Eric will cough up a big blob of black muck, crawling with worms. That would give him away. Or just the fact that he drools some weird black fluid, that could do it too, so I’m constantly wiping at his face. A couple of times, I do notice a worm or two, and, trying to keep my breakfast down, I wipe them away.
My second worry is myself. I’m tired. Really tired. I’ve already been walking all night and now it’s midday. And I didn’t really sleep much the night before. I’m starting to feel so tired that I begin to think that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if I just stopped, fell to the ground, and took a big, beautiful, fat nap. When you get as tired as I am right now, it’s almost impossible to think straight. Life and death don’t seem as important anymore. I really just want to sleep. If death is just a good long sleep, it sounds pretty good to me right now. My eyes feel swollen and scratchy. My legs are like stone. And I keep thinking the same phrase again and again in my head: Think, Birdie, think. I repeat it like some mantra in my head, and I can’t stop doing it. Think, Birdie, think. Think, Birdie, think. It’s driving me batty. To say I’m miserable is not even close.
Finally, I get some luck.
“Let’s stop for a rest,” Sidney announces behind me.
Almost immediately, I stumble to the side of the road and then sink to the ground. I tug at the rope until Eric stops. He just stands there with him mouth hanging open.
Boston circles around and then walks his horse near to me. He looks down at me.
“You guys been walking all night?”
I don’t see the use in lying. I nod.
“Should have said something,” Sidney chimes in. He has already dismounted. “No wonder you’re moving so slow.”
Before I know it, the two have started making camp. I can tell by the way they do it that they have a system. They’ve been traveling together for a long time. Without speaking, they know who does what. Sidney tends to the horses while Boston unpacks. Then Sidney finds stones for a campsite while Boston unpacks the cooking material. It’s all I can do to get to my feet and struggle with Eric to get him to sit down and rest his legs.
“Unh,” he says finally and lets me pull him to the ground. His legs straighten out and he lays there stiffly on his backpack, his legs off the ground.
I notice that both Boston and Sidney are watching this strange position. I shrug at them and they go back to what they’re doing. I crawl up to wipe Eric’s mouth, trying to ignore the foul odor coming from his mouth. I lay next to him and close my eyes.
Then I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I know, there’s a campfire going and I smell something cooking. Oats, I think.
Which reminds me. I look over to Eric, and it’s just as I thought: he’s looking thin. I can see his cheekbones stick out more than ever before. His head looks like a skull. I have to figure out how to get him to eat.
But my head hurts. Real bad. I need to shut my eyes for a second.
50
When I wake up, it’s late afternoon. The sun is low and weak. There’s no sign of Boston and Sidney, but their horses are tied up nearby, so they haven’t left us. I look next to me. Eric has moved to a sitting position. His head is up, but I have no idea if he is sleeping or not. Or even if he sleeps. I notice unhappily that I didn’t tie him up, which is the kind of mistake that could get me killed. I will have to be more careful. My headache is gone, but I’m still weak and tired. There’s a bowl of oatmeal next to me, and the minute I see it, I feel ravenous.
There’s nothing but oatmeal, no dried fruit or maple syrup or even a dash of salt. It’s cold and so thick, it’s almost solid. It’s like eating half-dried concrete. I don’t care. It tastes like heaven to me. I finish it all off quickly and then notice there’s another bowl, presumably for Eric.
I sit up and take the bowl in my hand. I take out a spoonful and hold it under Eric’s nose. I figure if he smells it, he might eat it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m scared he’ll bite me.
But he doesn’t do anything. No response at all.
“Come on, Eric,” I say. “You have to eat.”
He doesn’t even move.
Looking at his wide-open, disgusting mouth, dark and smelling like week old urine, I steel up my nerves. “Okay,” I say. “Here goes.” I put the spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth. But Eric doesn’t move or do anything. I dump the oatmeal on his tongue and then, grimacing with disgust, I shut his jaw. Eric tenses and then coughs violently with his whole body, spraying out a vile mixture of black bile and oatmeal all over me. For a moment, I’m frozen in horror.
“Oh God!” I yell and leap to my feet. I dance around in disgust, shaking my hands. “Oh man!” I cry out. I scramble for the towel I use to wipe his mouth and then the thought of using that to wipe my own face repulses me, so I go to my bag. I pull out a shirt and start wiping myself down. “Eric!” I tell him. “Gross!”
“Unh,” he answers.
Then I have to clean him up too. There’s black oatmeal everywhere. It’s so disgusting that I feel my stomach rumble, but I resist the urge to vomit. I need the food. So doesn’t Eric. Or he’ll waste away to nothing. I can’t let that happen to him.
“So you’re not going to eat, huh?” I ask him.
“Unh.”
“Great,” I say, throwing down the shirt I used to wipe myself at Eric’s feet. “Another thing to worry about.”
That’s when I notice my gun is gone.
51
Around sunset, Boston and Sidney return with a fat buck. I must have been sleeping so deeply that I didn’t even hear the gunshot. That worries me. I watch the two men toss a loop of rope around the deer’s neck and then, throwing the rope around a tree branch, they hoist it up off the ground. Boston makes quick work with his knife and then Sidney skins it. The deer carcass is bright red. Then they come back to the campfire and sit down, all without saying much to me. I join them.
The two of them are sitting wordlessly by the fire, which Boston is poking at with a stick. They nod at me as I join them.
“Are we staying here for the night?” I ask.
“Think we better stay for a day or so,” Sidney says. His voice is low and smooth. It might be comforting if he wasn’t a stranger who stole my gun. He looks up from the fire. “You two are too tired to keep going. How long you been going like this?”