The New Wild (12 page)

We walk as
far as we can without Kitten, who has disappeared once again. I’m almost
starting to get used to her comings and goings, but every time she leaves, I
worry I’ll never see her again. It’s not long before we find a softly flowing
stream that seems clean in the glow of the firelight. As Xander sets up the
tent, I slip out of most of my clothes and into the water. I have to get this
nasty, putrid stank off me as best I can. It stings a little where the bandage
holds firm against my side, but I need to wash that off, too. I don’t want
whatever was in that manhole giving me gangrene. I palm my compass in my hands.
It’s waterlogged now and filled with debris. I open the case and rinse it out.
Oddly enough, it still seems to be working. They really don’t make things the
way they used to.

When I’m out of the water, I rinse
my clothes, then use a little more of the whiskey in our kit to wash out our
wounds. Xander’s appear to be healing nicely, but mine need a thorough cleaning
after that manhole debacle. I tremble every time I think of it.

In the dim glow of the fire, I can
faintly make out Xander’s smile. Maybe it’s because I watched him almost die,
or because he saved my life, but I suddenly want to give up our snarky back and
forth for good and hold him. After the way I rejected him, I wonder if he could
ever trust me. Lately, we seem to tiptoe around each other. Life is hard enough
as it is without throwing love into the mix.

When I look over into his eyes, it
feels like it’s the first time I’m really seeing him. He’s beautiful.

“Yes, woman?” he says, snide as
ever.

I smile, thinking how grateful I
am to have him here. “You saved my life.” I say.

He laughs. “Well, I couldn’t have
saved yours if you hadn’t saved mine,” he says. “Call it even?”

“Deal,” I say, though secretly, I
want to kiss him for pulling me out of that rat-filled abyss. I wonder what it
would be like. He seems like he’d be a good, firm kisser—he’s spirited
and steady at the same time.

Walking
the next morning, the plains seem to stretch out forever, rolling back to the
horizon. The sky above us is a perfect, bright shade of blue, the clouds like
billowing balls of cotton. Bubbles float around us again. I race after them
with a stick to pop out tawny black-eyed susans and fuschia pom-pom-looking
things that shoot over six feet tall the second I burst their bubble. When they
open, they release a fragrance so thick and spicy I might as well have stuck my
nose in a jar of nutmeg.

Kitten comes back out of nowhere,
walking straight up to us like she’s been there all along. I know we should be
terrified to see her, but Xander’s right: I think she does love me. I’m not so
scared. And she’s never really threatened Xander, either. Besides, if she’s
alive, there might be other unicorns, too. Not-so-nice unicorns that stab
people through the heart. I try to focus on the halfway-nice unicorn in front
of me instead. She drops to her knees, and we silently climb on. When she’s
around, we go as far as we can, sometimes hundreds of miles, sometimes at full
gallop, sometimes full trot, stopping only to eat and sleep. Every time she
runs off, walking gets harder and I want to call it quits, curl up, and die,
but Xander snaps me out of it, reminding me that she always comes back. Life
continues this way day after day, week after week, until somewhere in the
middle of nowhere, I start to think we’re lost.

We‘ve been moving west according
to Bernard’s compass. But now part of me wonders if maybe we’ve been going
south
west
for days. We’ve been passing giant cacti and the occasional waddling armadillo.
What’s more southwest than that? The sun sets over the Pacific in Mexico the
same way it sets over the Pacific in Oregon. Couldn’t we be way off? Xander
thinks I’m crazy, but I can hear a little uncertainty in his voice. What if I’m
right?

When I’m starting to freak out,
Kitten stumbles into a ditch, and we go flying. I hit the dirt, and my vision
goes white. I take a few seconds to recover, blinking hard, while Xander
scrambles onto his feet. I stay there in the dirt, looking into the sky,
terrified that I’ve seriously injured myself and I’ll never have my mom to hold
me when I fall again.

If we’re heading southwest, we’ll
hit the ocean and then have to walk north until we get to Portland.
No
thanks.
I’m starting to worry that we’ll never make it. What was I thinking
trying to cross the country on a freaking unicorn with nothing but an old-ass
compass to guide me?

I can’t help it, I start to cry.
First because of the pain from the fall, which truly knocked the wind out of
me, and secondly, because I’m pretty sure we’re screwed. Like, super-screwed.

Xander rushes over to me. Even
Kitten comes over and sloppily licks my face.

“Are you okay?” Xander says,
concern spreading over his expression.

“I’m
fine
,” I manage.
“I think
…
”

“Can I lift you?” he asks.

“You can try,” I say. Being the
hulking man he is, he picks me up off the ground with little effort. My back
tingles where he touches me—an electric jolt.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

“No, not really, I guess
…
I just
…
” I’m actually
blubbering. If I wasn’t so defeated, I’d be embarrassed.

“What, Jackie?” Xander blurts. He
has no patience for me and my tears. He can probably taste Montana in the air
and doesn’t want to wait a second longer.

“We’re going the wrong way,” I
shout.

I’m sad and mad all at once. I
feel like we’ve been facing death every day for nothing. We could have stayed
back in Amish country and been totally fine. I could have stayed with Deb and
probably built my own house by now, right on the grounds of Camp Astor.

He looks around, his brow
furrowed. “No we’re not,” he says. “We’re not going the wrong way.” His voice
sounds oddly certain all of the sudden.

“How do you know?” I beg, tears
rolling down my cheeks. The thought of getting to the west coast, but the
south
west
coast, has me sobbing.

“Well, Kitten didn’t fall into
just any ditch,” he says.

“She didn’t?” I say, looking at
him cockeyed.

“No. Look closer.”

He’s so goddamned full of himself
right now I half want to punch him in the face. But then I do as I’m told. The
ditch is about a foot wide, two or three feet deep, and goes on for miles,
toward the sunset. There’s another identical one sitting parallel a few feet
away.
Weird
.

“Can you tell yet?” he says.

“Dude, shut up. Tell me what
you’re trying to say.” I hate know-it-alls.

“Did you ever play the Oregon
Trail app?” He asks me, before adding, in a computer’s monotone voice, “You die
of dysentery.”

“Oh yeah!” I yelp, staring at the
ruts. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” The ruts from the wagons of the actual
Oregon Trail, which led from Missouri to Oregon in the early 1800s, are still
imbedded (almost fossilized, really) in the dirt. They should help point us
most of the way home. Beyond that, the thought of people having made this
journey before—under slightly different circumstances, but with a lot of
the same challenges—seems to put some wind in my tired sails.

“Crazy,” I sigh. My eyes follow
the ruts all the way to the west horizon line. Chimney Rock stands in the
distance, a three-hundred-foot tower of sandstone. We definitely did get turned
southwest somehow from Chicago
—
we should be in the Dakotas. Instead, we’re somewhere in
western Nebraska—but I’m glad this route will at least point us the right
direction.

We follow the wagon tracks for
hundreds of miles, carefully avoiding the ditches themselves. I can’t believe
people did this hellish trip back in the day with kids and
babies
,
though I guess they did have wagons and plenty of other supplies. Still, it’s
insane. Xander keeps cracking jokes and quoting the game. “Your baby is run
over by a wagon wheel,” “You are mauled by a bear,” etc. It would be funny if
it weren’t so completely possible.

 As soon as we get to South
Pass in Wyoming, which still has a sign etched into a boulder courtesy of the
National Park Service, Xander turns to me, a sad look in his eyes.

“Jackie,” he says. “This is it.”

“What?”

“This is where I get off.”

My stomach sinks, and I look away.
Tears are pooling in my eyes, and I don’t want him to see. I knew this would
happen when we got close to Montana. But I didn’t think it would come up so
quickly.

“They’re alive, Jackie,” he says.
“I know they’re alive. And I’m so close to them! So close. All I have to do is
head north here, right up the continental divide, and I’ll finally be home.”

At the word home, Xander’s face
brightens. I can tell he’s excited. I couldn’t imagine how sad this would make
me, or how nervous. I’ve gotten so used to having him around, and I can’t see
proceeding without him now.

“They won’t believe how I’ve
changed, Jackie,” he says. “I am a totally different person than the one that
left for camp. God, my dad is going to flip.”

Xander’s practically dancing, he’s
so excited.

I shudder and scoff.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
he says, his eyes pleading.

 “You can’t just leave like
that, Xander!” I practically scream, my heart sinking in my chest. “We’re a
team.”

Xander looks down at his feet for
a while, like he’s thinking things over. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so
nervous. My pulse is racing.

“So
…
” he says, looking deep into my eyes for a moment too long.
“You’ll come with me?”

I think about my mom and Bernard
and how they could be right at the other end of this trail. Then I put myself
in Xander’s shoes and picture my whole family just a little bit north of here.
Xander’s eyes are pleading. Despite everything, I have to say I’ve come to care
about him, and I know he cares about me, too. I’ll detour. If we work it right,
it won’t be that far out of the way, and I feel like he’d do it for me.

“Yeah, I’ll come,” I say. “But
once we find them, you have to come on to Oregon with me.”

“Okay,” he says without a moment’s
hesitation.

“Okay?” I say, grinning.

“
Done
, woman,” he
says, shaking his fists to the sky. “
Done
.”

We’re a
day north of South Pass when we see the buffalo. I remember learning in school
that they used to be everywhere around here. At some point in the 1800s, these
prairies reverberated with millions of them running, the constant pounding of
their hooves so intense that people called them “the thunder of the plains.”
But later that century, they were all but extinct thanks to Buffalo Bill and the
government, who killed them off to cut off the food supply for the Indians. When
I was in middle school, we would drive out to the country to see the last
standing breeds, but even they were more beef than bison. Within the confines
of their feedlots, they looked tired and inconsequential.

With the sun rising over hills
topped with corn and wheat twisting in the breeze, the buffalo are back and
stronger than ever. I can spot them from miles away. Their humped spines are chocolate-brown
and furry, and double horns rise from either ear like tusks. This morning, their
hooves pound the earth again, hundreds upon hundreds of them, hurdling over the
land.

I see them first and let out a
whoop, super happy that they’re kicking once again, and Xander thinks I’ve lost
my marbles. Maybe I have. But Kitten, that’s a different story. The minute she
notices them, I feel her whole back tense up. As we get closer to them, her
horn goes from its typical luminous gold, to a terrifying, mesmerizing, blood red.
It’s lit from within, crazy bright, and it’s spinning around in its socket.
My
breath catches in my throat
.

I don’t even have the power to say
anything before
she gallops toward the bison
at full speed. When we’re within spitting distance, she drops us, deftly
crouching and tossing us gently to the ground. She charges toward the bison so
fast we can barely see her. When she catches up to them, which doesn’t take
more than a few seconds, they start making a groaning sound. They know what’s
up.

I brace myself for her to stab
them all and get it over with in a giant bloodbath. But she takes her time,
running with them for a while, herding them apart. Even though they’re huge,
not one of them tries to fight her—they go with her flow. Eventually, she
picks out a buffalo, the weakest of the bunch, and within seconds, she’s pierced
it through the skull with her horn and killed it instantly. The hundreds of
others flee as fast as they can, but she drops to her knees and digs into the
flesh of the fresh carcass in front of her. Even from a hundred yards away, we
can see the fur flying, the blood squirting into the sky.

Kitten rips into the flesh for a
long time, until the carcass is nothing but a skeleton. We walk toward her
slowly, scared she’s going to turn around and head for us next. But she
doesn’t. When we’re a few feet away, she looks toward us, her horn restored to
its brilliant, golden shine, her eyes now calm and knowing. She motions for us
to come aboard.