Chapter Three
Noontime brought another cheerless meal, a can of soup and rusty tap water, and a deeper exploration of the garage. Red was relieved to find a cache of tools, old clothes, blankets and other such detritus that the previous occupants of the cottage had deemed unworthy of salvage. She carried it all inside in trips, then carefully cleaned and sorted everything into piles. The water here was free, and so she was able to wash clothing and bedding in the bathtub and hang it up outside on an old clothesline to dry. She cleaned and swept the cottage, every single room, and opened the windows to the rainy chill to air out the musty scent. Bandit clambered up into the window in the bedroom, pressing his nose to the screen to sniff at the exciting new fragrances wafting in from the forest, the meadow, the thundering sea.
Red smiled at him as she made up the narrow double bed with worn sheets and woolen blankets softened from their fresh washing. She'd found them wadded into a hold in the garage, and they had taken three long soakings to make them serviceable, but now they smelled fresh and felt soft to the touch.
"It's coming together, by and by. A place to sleep, a place to eat, and a place to hide the car. Later on I'll get some wood. There's an ax outside in the shed. I've never used one, but I've seen it on television. How hard could it be?"
The cat gave no answer of course, but Red knew he'd be glad of the warmth soon enough when night fell.
The day wore on. Red worked unbelievably hard, and finally she was ready to cut the wood. Bring it in maybe. Light a fire and heat up her soup this time. She was slightly concerned…only 8 cans of soup remained. About two weeks' worth of cat food, too. She would have to figure out a way to feed herself and Bandit, a way that did not involve using identification or traveling far. Odd jobs perhaps, or maybe working as a farm hand somewhere nearby. She didn't know yet, but it would have to be soon.
Gamely, Red went outside and lifted the ax over her shoulder, then walked towards the tree line. In books the characters always went into the forest to fetch wood, then magically reappeared with enough fuel to create a bonfire that lasted all night. Somehow, Red didn't think it would be that easy.
She was wary as she stepped under the silent trees, ax in hand, eyes peeled for bears or wolves or good old boys with semiautomatics. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of rainwater falling from chilly leaves and needles. And not a sound besides. Red laid the ax down against a tree and began to drag branches over, but she didn't see any logs. Her fingers hurt with the cold. Everything was wet. Her coat was pathetically ineffective. But she kept at it. By the time the sunset lit the western sky on fire, she'd gathered a respectable pile of planty debris in the center of a small clearing. She surveyed it, wondering if it would be enough to even get her through the next three hours, let alone the whole night, the next day, the week. It was going to be cold for awhile. She needed and wanted to be warm, and did not relish the thought of yet another night of cramping cold, cold soup, shivering herself to sleep. It was bad enough being hungry and dirty.
The ax stood ready by the tree, gleaming dully in the red light. There were trees all around. Wood. Free fuel for the taking. If she could learn this, maybe she could learn how to hunt and fish and live off the land. She had to learn somehow, and cutting wood was a good place to start. No one was born knowing how. Even Paul Bunyan must have started out a novice.
Red bit her lip, wiped her hands on her filthy jeans, rubbed her dripping nose on her forearm and walked over to the ax. She wrapped her untried fingers around the hilt and lifted it up, then casted her eye about the clearing in search of a likely tree. Nothing too large. And not a sapling. Even she knew not to use green wood. She needed something big enough to keep her warm for at least five days. Enough to rest and emotionally heal and gather her strength again to decide what to do next.
Her eyes landed on a mid-sized oak tree across the way, leaning against two of its fellows out of the rain in a little hollow. It looked like it was listing at the right angle for ax blows to fell it rather easily. Didn't appear to be too thick, either. She thought she might just be able to drop it and chop off quite a lot of it in just a few hours, then tie ropes to it and haul the pieces home to stack in the corner of her kitchen and dry.
Thunder pealed in the distance. Red could see her breath. The sky was getting dark, both from the storm and from the oncoming night. There was no more time. Not a moment to spare. And so, with a determined set to her jaw and the kind of willful optimism that only experts and idiots enjoy, Red stalked over to the tree and took up what she hoped was a lumberjack-like stance.
'Here goes nothing,' she thought glumly, 'I'll bet this blade is too dull to cut a thing anyway.'
As it turned out, she was wrong.
The ax hit the tree and the blade bounced off, spinning around the shaft as though it had been oiled. The momentum of the blow sent the tool ricocheting back toward her, and faster than her mind could comprehend it she had laid open a huge gash in her shin, right down to the glint of bone.
A second passed. Then another. She stared down at her leg in shock, watching the blood well up like spring water from the stunned meat of her shin. And then she dropped the ax with a thump on the muddy ground. Thunder crashed again, closer, and the wind began to pick up.
Thirty full seconds went by before realization fully set in, and then her screams split the sky even louder than the thunder. The ground rushed up to strike her in the face and she lay still in the falling darkness, blood pooling all around her.
When Red came to, it was the pain that woke her. The pain, the cold, and the distant ominous howl of a coyote or wolf. She was alone in a dark forest, soaked to the bone and bleeding to death, starving and wracked with agony, miles from any possible help. With great feeling, she threw her head back and shrieked her agony to the rude spitting sky, summing up the whole of her horrific situation in four words.
"FUCK YOU, PAUL BUNYAN!"