Jane Davitt - Wild Raspberries.pdf - Jane Davitt - miilliicciicca

Wild Raspberries

TOP SHELF

An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers

Chapter One

T he woods were a wild green maze around him, and Dan was lost, panic long since

muted to a dull despair.

He was hungry, too, hungrier than he’d ever been, including that time he’d gone fishing

for the day with Billy, setting out before dawn without breakfast. Their food had fallen in

the first stream they’d crossed and been ruined. They’d kept going; they’d eat fish for

lunch, wouldn’t they? Sure, they would!

They’d crawled home, endless hours later, their bellies empty and aching, filled with

nothing more than gulps of teeth-numbingly cold water, and Dan’s father had taken one

look at him, swept his hand around in a blow Dan had been too exhausted to dodge, and

sent him to bed hungry for coming back too late to help with the chores. Waking the next

day, he’d been dizzy and sick, his hearing fading in and out, until breakfast had put the

heart back into him.

This was worse. He’d eaten the day before -- ham and eggs and toast, with the trucker

who’d given him a ride, smiling benevolently at him as he beckoned the waitress over to

refill their coffee cups.

And he lost every bite and swallow an hour later, throwing up on the side of the road,

while the dust from the truck’s wheels scoured his eyes as it drove away. He was glad of

it, too; he’d thrown up more than the food. The rank, bitter taste of the trucker’s come

had lingered in his mouth even after he puked, though that might have been his mind

playing tricks on him. The woods had called to him then, safe and tempting because they

were familiar. He marked the way the sun was headed to find north and left the highway

behind him.

These weren’t the woods he knew, though -- small, contained, bordered by farms where

a knock on the door would bring a woman, smiling tiredly, to muss his hair (they all did

that since his mom died) and hand him a chewy, raisin-studded cookie and some cool,

fresh milk. No, these woods were vast, limitless, and empty. They were trees and earth

and a soft, sighing wind that made branches creak oddly and the summer leaves whisper.

He found himself staring out across a valley of nothing but more trees, higher up than

he’d realized, with the sun unhelpfully directly overhead, and he came close to crying.

Too old to cry, though. Shit, only babies did that, and he wasn’t a baby. Babies didn’t get

pushed to their knees, their mouths split open and filled with -- He turned his head and

spat, his belly restless again. God, had that man ever even heard of soap and water?

He walked until it got dark, slept huddled in his thin jacket close to a small stream the

summer heat had shrunk to a trickle, and now it was morning again, and he was walking

because it was better than lying down to die.

His feet hurt. The boots he’d decided to wear when he left had been new and stiff, and

his toes and heels were bumped and rubbed. He’d taken them off the night before and had

plunged his feet into the stream to cool them off. The scream he’d given as raw, blistered

skin met water had echoed among the rocks on the banks like a bowling ball striking the

pins. And then the silence settled back around him, a thick, green blanket of it, warning

him to be quiet, so he’d all but tiptoed back to the patch of ground he’d cleared of stones

and twigs.

It had seemed so simple. Head north to Canada, walking or hitching rides. Wasn’t far;

he’d estimated a week would do it, if he could get picked up by someone at least once a

day. He’d felt proud of himself for being realistic and having enough food money to last

two weeks, not one.

He still had a few dollars left; he’d lined his boots with some of his savings, as a

precaution, and the trucker hadn’t found that with his large, inquisitive, impersonal

hands. The dollar bills, sweat-soaked and crumpled, were in his pocket now, and much

good they were out here under the trees.

He found himself walking easier and frowned, jolted out of his absorption with the

hollowness of his belly and the red agony of each footstep. He’d been walking with

stones shifting under his feet and brambles catching at his ankles; now he was on a

narrow path, without being sure how he’d gotten there. He turned and looked back, but

the woods had closed behind him and were pushing him on.

The path was no wider than a man’s shoulders, a meandering series of bends with short

stretches where it ran straight, but it was definitely used; he could see a heel print in what

had once been a patch of mud, the shallow depression baked solid. Maybe he was in a

National Park? He didn’t remember seeing one marked on the map, and there were no

trail markers on the tree trunks, but it could be. They’d have places for the tourists --

washrooms, people, food .

He felt a faint stirring of hope, and it let him stumble along just a little farther. He

rounded a corner and the path ended in a clearing. He moaned; he couldn’t help it.

Raspberry bushes, the bright, acid green of the leaves stirred by the breeze to reveal the

fruit. He walked forward and snatched at the nearest dangle of berries, heedless of the

sharp prickles guarding them. That didn’t really work too well; the ripe berries tumbled,

lost among the canes, so he forced himself to pick them, one by one, with a hand that

shook as it worked. He picked four or five, filling his cupped hand with the light, sweet

fruit, and then opened his mouth and crammed them in.

The sun-warmed flesh split against his teeth, and juice and seeds spurted out over his

tongue. Oh, God, so good, so good. Ravenous now, swallowing saliva from his watering

mouth to make room for more raspberries, he picked and ate until his fingertips were

stained red and full of tiny thorns, hair-thin and itchy.

He moved deeper into the canes and reached out eagerly for another berry, almost out of

reach inside the clustered brambles. His fingers brushed something -- string -- and he

paused, his hunger still acute enough to have blunted his thought, so that reasoning

flowed sluggishly, like a silt-choked river.

String? Why would there be --?

The quiet, chilling sound of a rifle bolt sliding home froze him in place, as terrified as a

baby rabbit, his breath caught in his throat, his heart thudding fast and sick. Shit. Fuck .

His retreat cut off; nowhere to run. Oh, this just wasn’t happening to him. He wanted to

scream, but that would bring death, sure as taxes, at best a bullet in his leg to keep him

from running, so he stayed still and quiet and waited.

A raspberry, dislodged by the weight of his body against the snaking brambles, fell to the

ground, the small sounds of its passage through the leaves magnified by the silence. It hit

earth and Dan shuddered. As if that had signaled the end of the waiting, in some way he

didn’t understand, the person holding the weapon finally spoke.

“I was looking to pick those for jam. Did you leave me any, boy?”

He turned slowly, hands held up high, and met the cool, unfriendly gaze of a man with a

metal pail at his feet and a rifle in his hands. The man was maybe twenty feet away, no

more. For him to have gotten that close, unnoticed, he must walk like a cat, or, Dan

reflected bitterly, Dan’s own greed had left him deaf and blind. And now he was going to

pay for it. Well, at least he wasn’t going to die with his mouth empty of anything but the

taste of spit.

“I left you plenty, mister.” And he wasn’t going to beg, either. “’Sides,” he continued,

“last I heard, the woods don’t belong to no one, so I’ve as much right eating them as

you.”

The sun was in his eyes and he couldn’t see what the man’s face looked like, not clearly,

just the anger there, but the barrel of the rifle dipped and then there was the welcome

sound of the safety going on. The man held the rifle across his body, the weight looking

easy, familiar.

“The woods might be free and clear, but this is my land, boy, bought and paid for, and

those are my raspberries you’re stealing.”

The man walked over and paused, far enough away that Dan would have had to have

taken three steps to reach him. He didn’t think it was because the man was scared of him;

it was just natural caution, like the kind his daddy had taught him. Except the lessons

hadn’t stuck, had they, because here he was, guts rumbling, head aching from sun and

hunger and just plain tiredness, with trouble looming and bruises from a beating the best

he could hope for.

“I didn’t know that.” He dredged up a sullen, grudging “sir” and tacked it onto the end of

his words where it flapped loosely.

Jane Davitt - Wild Raspberries.pdf

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