Mindy Mejia - Leave No Trace

Holding the bandage and gasping, I waited for Josiah to weakly push himself over and lean against the tree before I remembered my manners.

‘I’m Maya Stark, Jane Stark’s daughter.’

His mouth fell open, but no words came out. This was the culmination of my entire life. Every question I’d been too afraid to ask, every answer I didn’t think I deserved to know, every lock I’d learned to pick, every law I’d broken, every patient I’d subdued, every class I’d taken, every palate strengthener, pronunciation exercise, and vocal pattern, every trick and reward, coaxing the nonverbal to speak, bringing words to the wordless, helping person after person because I’d never been able to have the only conversation that mattered.

But now here it was, the moment of fucking truth, and on top of everything I would keep my promise to Lucas, too.

I pulled the gun out of my boot and pointed it at his chest. ‘Start talking.’

Josiah

Leaving Heather Price crumpled on his patio with the money she’d been hunting for, Josiah went back to the truck where Lucas stared ashen-faced out the window. Wrong ad. He’d picked the wrong advertisement, the wrong landlord, probably the wrong life. Throwing the truck into reverse he felt like shit, like the stink of Heather’s sickness had rubbed off on him and was making his own son turn away from the smell.

‘She was trying to rob us.’ He explained as they headed back to the entry point.

Lucas kept his face turned toward the woods that quickly closed in around them. ‘Then why didn’t you call the police?’

Josiah wiped a hand over his mouth and checked the rearview mirror. ‘Because they don’t help.’

Another mile passed before Lucas broke the silence. ‘I don’t want to leave again. I like it here.’

‘In Ely?’

‘The Boundary Waters.’

Lucas didn’t speak again for the rest of the drive. Josiah debated the odds of finding a new rental, a short-term lease to get them through the end of the school year and possibly even beyond. He doubted Heather would actually take them to court when she barely seemed able to leave her house to go to work. They could find a bunkhouse to start and then maybe he could buy a trailer or even an old cabin somewhere nearby. He hated the idea of a permanent ceiling, but at least there’d be no more landlords, and the Boundary Waters would be right out their back door.

With that idea in mind, they paddled back out for their spring break vacation, sticking to the bigger lakes that had already thawed, and set up camp on an island melting in the afternoon sunlight. Lucas was reticent while they put up the tent and tarp. He became listless, crawling into his sleeping bag instead of exploring the campsite with his usual energy. He didn’t want breakfast the next morning and wouldn’t do more than sit at the fire and stare. At first Josiah had chalked it up to witnessing the fight with Heather, but when Lucas’s eyes glazed over he figured he’d caught a cold and let him sleep. In the middle of the next night, though, as Josiah was watching his campfire turn to embers, Lucas began screaming. He thrashed at the sides of the tent, pulling the stakes out and clawing at the fabric. Josiah dove inside and wrestled Lucas free, but he wouldn’t stop flailing or yelling about bugs. Bugs everywhere, attacking him, except they weren’t. It was too early for insects, too cold, but no amount of reason could calm Lucas, whose skin – to Josiah’s horror – felt hotter than the charred wood in the firepit.

There was no medicine in their camp and no way out, not when Lucas could thrash over the side of the canoe or capsize the whole thing in his panicking state. It was too dangerous. He held the last remnants of snow to his son’s forehead and murmured the same hollow reassurances over and over on a loop, willing the seizures and hallucinations away. When he saw a light flashing over the water, he thought he might be hallucinating, too. Then it drew closer and he made out a lone figure in a canoe.

He shouted over the water and pleaded for help. The light faltered and turned off and again he thought it was a mirage, until finally the bow of a boat slid onto the island’s shore.

A small woman bundled in all-weather gear stepped out. Only the top half of her face was visible as she eyed their campsite warily. He explained the situation and asked if she would bring them in. ‘I can hold him still while you paddle.’

After a long pause, where she searched the horizon of trees as if hoping anyone else might come along and volunteer for this job, she finally nodded her head toward the canoe. They loaded the essentials and Josiah strapped a life jacket on Lucas, propping him on his lap in the front, while the woman powered them from the stern, setting off into the night.

They moved slowly, inching through the black. Her strokes were measured and steady and she seemed to know where the shallows and boulders lay even without the flashlight’s beam. He didn’t inquire what she was doing by herself in the middle of a still-frigid April night. She didn’t ask him anything except about Lucas’s symptoms, and showed no reaction when Josiah listed them out.

It was almost dawn by the time they reached a small, rock-filled beach where the woman led him to a cabin nestled in the trees. She pointed out a small bedroom, where Josiah laid Lucas’s unconscious body that had now begun to shake and told him she thought Lucas had the flu.

‘Influenza. My daughter had it once.’

Josiah glanced around at the empty cabin. ‘Was your daughter okay?’

She nodded and turned away. ‘She is now.’

While he wiped Lucas’s brow with a cool cloth, she told him the doctors had given her a prescription for Tamiflu. Josiah asked if he could use the phone.

‘It’s not in service.’

Then he asked if he could use her car as soon as business hours began. She nodded and disappeared out the front door. Ten minutes went by, then twenty. After the night he’d endured, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d simply collapsed into the shadows of the woods. There was something spent about her, as if she’d given away all her vital organs and the frame that was left was fragile, unsupported. Just as the sun cleared the trees, though, she returned with a thermometer and a small manual, a medical reference book they used to look up influenza, its symptoms and treatment. The hallucinations, Josiah hoped, were the product of a fever that the thermometer read to be a hundred and two degrees. Since his breathing was normal and skin didn’t have a bluish tinge, he didn’t appear to be in immediate danger. He just needed fluids and medicine. The woman didn’t have any Tylenol – she didn’t seem to own much of anything the more Josiah looked around – but she handed him her car keys.

‘Would you go?’ He took a step back toward the bedroom. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to move him again yet. I’ll give you money.’

‘They won’t give me the prescription.’ She moved to a window, her silhouette ghostly in the half-light of the morning.

‘Shit.’ He didn’t want to make Lucas endure a doctor’s visit.

‘It’s okay to leave him here. I’ll watch him until you get back.’

He pulled his boots on and was halfway out the door before stopping and turning back. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jane,’ she said and he couldn’t tell whether or not she was lying.

He glanced at the bedroom behind her, realizing that for the first time in nine years he was going to leave his son with a total stranger. She dropped her head, shirking his stare and making him hesitate further, but the longer he stood around the longer Lucas went without medicine. He slammed the door and raced to the car.