This novel, 3 Lives in Jury, is delivered, a chapter or two, every Thursday.
See the forest, see the trees. Table of contents
The truth is, of course, is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
— David Bowie
Chapter 11
Lucy urged the others forward.
“It’s not far. It’s just around the next bend.”
A half-hour later, they trudged onward because all other options were worse. They slipped along slowly and fell repeatedly, began to question Bull’s directions. The mood bump they gained from Bull’s advice quickly faded.
Lucy concentrated on the path. She had no time for visions, no more missing minutes. She was convinced hard work and laser focus could keep her peculiar intuitions at bay. She had convinced Whit and Frank to come out here, and she’d get them to where they needed to be. She would see them through. But her confidence tumbled as their shadows disappeared with the clouds and the rain dripped faster. She hollered to the others, hoping to raise their spirits as much as her own, with a montage of movie quotes, poetry and cheesy rip-offs from whatever sprang to mind.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you.”
She knew only part of the Kipling poem, but no matter. Anything would do and words flew out into the dreary wet.
“If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
Then look at me. I’m the captain now.
Three-quarters of an hour and a kettle full of mixed-up quotes passed. Lucy worked through what she knew of Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan; Die Hard and Captain Phillips; Finding Nemo and Rupi Kaur.
“Yippie-ki-yay motherfucker.” She shouted. “Just keep swimming.”
They rounded a bend only to be disappointed again. No sign of an intersecting trail.
“…I was not made with a fire in my belly so I could be put out. I was not made with a lightness on my tongue so I could be easy to swallow. I was made heavy; half blade and half silk, difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow.”
Lucy put up her hand signalling for them to stop again. They were lost. She corrected herself. No, we know where we are. But the land is fighting us. We have to wait for it to turn to our favour.
“It’s hopeless.” Whit was dripping wet and shivering. The trees sheltered them from the worst of the rain, but a steady dribble found its way through gaps in the branches.
Lucy was better outfitted and drier, but still cold and sniffling.
Frank was worst by far; pale face, no words spoken.
Best to keep moving, Lucy thought. “Onward,” she shouted and they pushed off again.
“Sometimes the things we lose while in battle are not physical things, but rather characters of ourselves”
Whit rolled his eyes.
Frank raised his head and one arm, poised to say something to Lucy, but Whit pushed his arm down and shook his head to let her be.
Lucy raised her voice once again.
“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.
An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day!
This day we fight!”
Another hour passed. Whit and Frank utterly exhausted, collapsed against a fallen tree next to the path, sheltered under the forest canopy.
“Keep moving,” Lucy shouted. “Chop, chop! It’s better if we don’t stop and keep our energy up. It helps to stay warm.”
Frank was already deep into his pack. “Boost,” he held the nutritional drink aloft like a trophy. “Yay,” he weakly cheered.
“We need to think about going back,” Whit said. There. He broached the unspeakable.
“Let’s head back and wait for another day. Otherwise, we’ll end up stuck out here overnight and our parents and everybody back home will shit themselves. At least, let’s get back to Bull’s camp where we can get cell service up on the ridge.”
Lucy paced the trail in front of them.
“What? No we can’t go back now. We’ve come all this way.”
“Lucy, it’s over. For today anyway, it’s over.” Whit nodded toward Frank, who sat slumped to one side with his head down, sipping at his drink.
She sighed. “Frank, what do you think?” She kicked his shoe and repeated the question louder. “Frank.”
Frank lifted his head, face like a ghost, eyelids nearly closed, hair plastered down wet to the side of his head. He tipped the drink up and swallowed. “What?”
“Are you done? Do you want to quit?” Lucy chose words like “quit” and “done” to trigger Frank. Words to raise his hackles.
“You don’t look good Frank,” Whit said. “It’s no sweat for us to stop. We’ll try again another time. No big deal.” He looked at Lucy. “It’s not just Frank. I’m not feeling too good either.”
Lucy huffed. “Really? This is happening? What are you, wee men? Mousey men?” After shouting quotes for more than an hour, she was well warmed up.
“No, you are not mousey men.”
She cracked her bicep muscles and struck a pose like a skinny body builder and spoke with a thick Scottish accent, hoping to sugar coat the speech with humour.
“You are men of the Frontier, boys born to the Wild. You do not run from rain.”
“Lucy, look, I just think it would be better if…” Whit began, but Lucy cut him off.
“… all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do,” she was shouting again, but forgot the rest of the quote and scrambled to grab onto something new.
“Jesus, fuck Lucy,” Whit said. “Is the rain softening your brain?” He stood and pulled Frank up.
Lucy flung wide her arms and paced again, up and down in front of them. She pointed fingers and drew great circles in the air with her arms.
“Riding the dark green sea,
scenting leather and hoof
while fortune soars and rains gold onto thee.
We, the intended. We the Three.
“The sky opens limitless.
The ground alters endless.
Yet we risk the crossing
We, the intended. We the Three.
“What nameless knife follows?
What secrets sequestered?
Yet we risk the caverns.
We, the intended. We the Three.
“Rain-rusted-over dreams,
Mud and shit and lost hours
And still we dare the darkness.
For at the end of all things
There is only ourselves;
Again.”
She turned away from them, bent low and farted. They broke down and laughed, coming up for air in a huddled circle.
“Fuck. No wonder they call you Kooky Lucy Kloot,” Frank shivered.
“Where’d you get that speech?” asked Whit.
“Nowhere,” Lucy shrugged.
“No shit?”
They slogged forward once more and travelled only a few minutes when Lucy screeched.
“Look.” She jumped to see over the tops of the bush to the right of the path and, glimpsing blue-green water, she sprinted ahead. She skidded off onto a new trail and headed toward the water. She fell, scrambled to her feet and took off again, until she burst into a small clearing.
It was the same as she remembered, with a few minor alterations.
“This is it. This is fucking it,” she called to Whit and Frank, who wobbled their way much slower.
The site was a dry island amid the valley-wide swamp, owing to a slight rise in the ground. Luminescent green shoots sprang up throughout, and large clumps of tall grasses clung where they could.
The pond was roughly the size of two standard city homes with yards, surrounded by thick underbrush on all sides but one. The side that opened to the clearing had a tiny spit of sandy, sodden beach.
About 20 steps from the pond, a hut teetered close to falling over, the back half of it almost hidden by small trees and scrubby bush. It consisted of a plywood floor and two shoddy rafts of thin, lodge-pole pine lashed at the top to form an upside-down V for a roof. It was smaller than Lucy recalled, and its floor was raised knee-high off the ground by four tree stumps, one at each corner.
Seeing it decrepit, obviously unused for a long time, should have gladdened Whit but he thought it looked haunted, foreboding. To look at it unsettled him and he came close to teetering over. The tall thistles around the entry, the grey, splintered wood, insects and worms creeping, moss growing through the cracks, all of it brought forth half-remembered shapes and vague notions of a former self.
He knew this shack. I’ve dreamed this, he thought, the whole thing: the pond, the beach, the cattails.
He stood empty and shapeless, loose arms, shoulders slouched, his head too heavy for the neck, his chin sagged to his chest, while the rain pelted him. He rolled his shoulders while standing mute and fastened to the spot. Lucy nodded toward the cabin. Whit did as he was told and followed.
Frank crumpled beneath a tree next to the beach and watched.
An old blanket was nailed above the entry. Lucy pushed it aside and was mugged by a buzz of horseflies and heat. She stepped back and fanned the flies aside, letting them gush out, then stepped up again to look inside.
The hut was empty. She estimated its length at twice her height. It could fit two people snuggled in tight. She ducked and stepped all the way inside. It was tall enough so she could stand with head bowed, but the sharp angles of the roof made that possible only in the centre. The floor was fashioned from two pieces of weathered plywood. That’s all there was.
Whit grunted and stepped up, pushing Lucy further in. The light, even on this dark day, leaked through the roof between the tree trunks, none thicker than an ordinary kitchen table leg. Someone tried to plug the gaps with mud but it had dried, cracked and mostly fallen away.
Water dripped in and splashed onto the floor, which was rotten through in several spots.
It smelled of, what? Sulphur? Eggs? Decomposing mud? Whit bent over and picked up an orange from the floor. It was black and partly devoured by wriggling maggots. He dropped it.
It fit. Scenes from inside the shack cascaded back from the deep nooks of his memory. This site and his memories came together, the smells, the mottled light. He imagined where he might have lain, day after pitiful day.
He struck his head against the roof. Fuck.
“Whit?” He felt Lucy’s hand on his arm. “Let’s go.”
She tried to coax him out of the doorway. “Come on. Are you OK? Let’s get outside.”
Whit held up a hand to hush Lucy. Complete recollection was close, but he didn’t know how to summon it, wasn’t sure he wanted to.
They stood together, flies buzzing, the humidity filling their mouths and noses until Lucy found it hard to breathe.
Whit saw Horseface flash behind his eyes, pressing in on him. Imagined fingers squeezed his throat until he blacked out.
He cried out.
In a vision, he awoke in this shitty hut with his ankle chained to the wall. He had lain through the night, fading in, fading out of consciousness. The blackness blinded him. During the day, the light burned his eyes. His nose filled with snot, the wind roared, fear gorged on his heart.
He screamed for his life, for his soul, and after several days of being chained, he screamed for God or the Devil, it didn’t matter which. He jerked and worked the chain that held him, but to no effect.
He stopped eating and drinking the food and water set out for him, choosing to end his life, but his willpower betrayed him and he ate and drank like an animal in his sleep. He fell further, reduced to a speck of blood and bone lying in the mud.
He was ready for death, craved it, but then Horseface turned up, toothy and drunk.
He fed Whit a hamburger from his own fingers because Whit was too weak. Then he hauled Whit to his feet and removed his soiled shirt and pants. He ordered Whit to clean himself and gave him a cloth to wash the urine and feces from his body. Once it became clear a rag washing was nowhere close to enough, he carried Whit to the pond and dropped him in.
The cold jolted Whit awake and Horseface threw Whit a bottle of dish soap and told him to scrub.
The Whit of today lurched and fell out of the shack entrance to the wet ground, gasping between hysterical moans.
Horseface, large gleaming rock salt for teeth, smirking, the whiney voice. The memories surged back.
“Whit, Whit. For fuck’s sakes, Whit.” Lucy was shouting at him.
Shut up, I need to think. Whit tried to shut her out but what could he tell her? What could he say?
“Whit, Jesus, are you having a heart attack? Say something. Whit. Whit.”
“Fuck off. I’m thinking,” he blurted. “Fucking leave me.”
Whit’s mind was a disjointed movie; days and days of sweltering heat, drifting in and out of sleep; nights, black and icy. But most devastating were images of Horseface, reaching down to unlock his chains, carrying him to the pond where he scrubbed and scrubbed till he was raw, prolonging the cleaning as long as he could to delay the horror that always followed.
Horseface yanked on the rope tied around Whit’s waist, signaling it was time for him to come to shore and Whit’s body would lie on the beach, his mind elsewhere, until it was over.
Whit gagged. The shame, the pain.
The worst of the abuse stopped when Whit fell sick, horribly sick. His bowels and stomach emptied and his husk shriveled.
Horseface continued to come and go every day, but he no longer dared to touch Whit, afraid of contracting something incurable and infamous. Whit laid for days, too weak to even test the chains. He became too weak to stand, and Horseface no longer took him to the beach to clean. Whit simply stopped existing.
His next memory is being woken by Rupert McBride’s left foot in front of Big Heart Bakery.
Lucy stomped around Whit, shoved her hands under his armpits and tried to lift him.
“What can I do?”
Whit stayed down. The cold, wet earth against his cheek refreshed him. Lucy let him be and sat next to him.
Frank watched from the sandy spit of beach and rationalized he was saving Whit from embarrassment by keeping his distance.
Whit eventually sat up, turned his face to the sky to let the rain clean off the mud and tears.
“Want to talk about it?” Lucy asked.
Whit let out a low moan that reminded Lucy of an old gate creaking.
He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said.
“Meh, it’s fine.” Lucy waved away his apology.
He rubbed his arms through his soaked jacket. “It’s fucking freezing here.”
He and Lucy joined Frank under the tree.
“Jesus,” Frank said once they huddled together beneath the boughs. “I’m sorry, man,” he said to Whit. “I can’t imagine what a man would do in your situation.”
Whit ignored him and stared straight ahead.
“Whit, you OK?” Lucy asked.
Whit held up a hand for silence.
They sat. Whit stared. Frank breathed, gurgling like a stream.
Lucy toed a hole at the root of the tree. She toyed with a small divot, using her foot to pry beneath it, then kicked the clump of earth out of the way.
It made a considerable dent. She smacked it with her heel, watching more earth fall inward. She clambered to her knees and started digging with her hands, when the surface suddenly gave way, swallowing Lucy to the shoulder. Fuck, shit, she squirmed to back out, fearing she’d stumbled across an animal burrow.
She looked at the others, saw they were too devoted to their own miseries to notice her, and started digging around the edges of the hole. Fuck, it looks big enough for my head and shoulders. But she wasn’t about to test that theory. No way.
She bent closer and listened. She thought she heard something. Maybe an animal scratching about inside. The sound was faint. Humming? No, something was crying.
She kicked aside more dirt, laid flat on her stomach and stuck her ear next to the opening. Whit and Frank were paying attention now. She hushed them with a finger to her lips, then pushed her head further inside to hear better and waited.
Frank kicked the earth near her head, causing loud thumps, hoping to get her attention so they could start back. Whit was itchy too. He wanted to be anywhere else. He pulled Lucy’s jacket sleeve. “Come on.”
Lucy turned directly into the hole, cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered something the others couldn’t hear.
Then she stood up. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
Whit was on his feet. “Wait one sec.”
He fumbled through his pack, dug out a small cannister of camp fuel, grabbed dry leaves and twigs from beneath the tree, ran to the hut and threw the leaves and branches inside. He tore the blanket from the doorway and threw it inside as well. He made three more trips for dry kindling, poured the camp fuel over the entire works and struck a match.
The instant he tossed the match in, the fuel erupted, forcing Whit back, almost singeing his arms and face. The fuel Whit tossed in, combined with the dry, broken wood of the floor inside the hut would burn easily, despite the rain and the soaked outside state of the exterior.
It took only seconds before flames licked out through the roof, and seconds after that, the hut was a giant orange fireball.
“Right, ready.” Whit waved for the other two to start down the trail in front of him.
They were eager to get away. All three felt the cold bite deeper as dusk changed to dark. They walked as quickly as they could, but progress was slow and walking faster only led to more falls, bruising their already raw bodies.
Frank started to shiver again. He bobbed and swayed and shone white in the low light. He would have been feeling much worse if he hadn’t been wearing Whit’s fleece between his jacket and skin. He felt hot but when he tested his forehead, it felt cold and wet. He stopped often, eating the final remnants of his trail mix, his dried apricots. He fell more often and his breathing spiraled downward, coming in heavy, thick ropes of phlegm.
Whit tried to mush him along, but Frank could sustain the pace for only a few steps before slowing again.
Fuck. Whit wanted to be far from here and he pushed Frank harder. He hoped to at least get off the valley floor.
“Whit take it easy. He’s got nothing left,” Lucy said, after Frank collapsed into the heavy underbrush, in the shelter of a giant spruce.
She was right. Frank lay on his back almost passed out, his nose and mouth dripping mucus.
“What now?” Whit bent over and listened to Frank’s chest. It wheezed but rose and fell in rhythm.
Lucy looked around, up the trail and back, worried.
Frank muttered incoherently, swore at “that fucking Marco” and passed out.