The Wall

The landscape was peeled back. It whirred past us and held no interest to me anymore. Bleak and brown. Greenery mottled the background like camouflage clothing but I was blind to the beauty. The leaves rustled like the trees were shaky fingers scared to touch us. They reflected my anxiety. I still couldn’t decide if I’d done the right thing. I hoped maybe when my feet hit the grass and I was trekking towards my mother, I would feel differently. But my purpose escaped me. It was like trying to find my key; I knew it was on me somewhere.

The spi

I spent the first break, and every one after that, quickly peeing and squatting on a rock. I sullenly dug in the dirt with a stick to see how big a piece of dirt I could excavate without it breaking into smaller pieces. The others practiced their moves and went over their plans. Gwen approached me on the first day. She put her hand on my shoulder, an unfamiliar move for her, and it felt more like a slap. Her face scrunched, showing those odd dimples on her cheeks. “Is it Cal?” Her voice wavered. Did she grieve him or was she just nervous?

I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure. It could be. My brain refused to deal with his death the same way it had refused to back down from coming out here in the first place. It threw ineffectual but heavy covers over the things that might stop me. I sucked on my lip and let my eyes brush over to her for a second. I couldn’t speak, if I did, I would cry.

She patted me again. “Look, if it is, you shouldn’t blame yourself, no one does. He was sick long before you arrived. You should put it behind you.”

I nodded and watched her feet as they shuffled away from me, kicking a rock in frustration. I think that was the problem or at least part of it. I had put it behind me, but not dealt with it, so it just sat there. An angry ball of anger and sadness that kept a steady distance behind me, but always followed. And I always knew it was there.

I dragged at myself, my own company as irritating as being with people. I knew this wasn’t helping but I did nothing other than feel sorry for myself. I wished I’d done things differently but it was too late. I could feel Joseph moving through the town, his heavy footsteps heavier still with the weight of my desertion on his mind.

I saw Matthew through the shifting trees, his face as dark as the bar-like shadows cast across his face. He was as miserable as I was. We never spoke. I wondered if we would ever speak again or if he was done with me. It would be fair enough if he was.

By the time we got to the last stop before Pau Brasil, everyone stopped bothering to talk to me and left me to my self-pitying behavior.

Doing my usual scratching in the dirt, I etched a pattern of concentric circles when my arm was wrenched up violently. “I’ve had it with you,” Pietre snapped. “I thought you wanted to be here. If we’re going to get through this mission, you need to get yourself together.” He was shaking me like a ragdoll and I let him.

“I’m s-sorry,” I said between shakes. But he was sewn-up furious and couldn’t be undone with an apology. The world was wobbling in my vision, trees were wriggling like snakes, the world was heaving. “Stop, please! I-I said I’m s-sorry, Pietre.” My voice quavered with the world as his fingers pressed hard into my arm. I felt a pang of pain as the joint in my shoulder started to strain from him twisting it.

In my reverberating vision, I saw red hair alight in front of brown, scratchy trees.

Without a word, she punched him hard in the jaw. I heard the crunch of knuckles co

“What? He was taking it too far. He needed to be taught a lesson.” Smiling with her perfect white teeth, she held out her hand and I took it. She looked into my eyes seriously. “He’s right though. You need to snap out of it and focus. You have a job to do.”

She was right.

We walked away, with him cursing her in the distance. “Shouldn’t you go apologize or something?”

Careen raised one eyebrow in a perfect arc and smiled wickedly, “He’ll get over it. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.” She grabbed my arm somewhat urgently and we skittered across rocks and dirt towards our spi

We climbed in the carriage. Careen closed the door and pressed the lock button down. “I’ve had enough of him today, haven’t you?” she said. I smiled. I’d had enough of Pietre from the moment I met him. I was glad Careen was starting to agree with me.

A bit of light poked through the trees now and settled in our hair. I could do this. Despite Pietre’s stupid way of demonstrating it, he was right. I was here and I had to stand by my decision. One more night and we would set off for Pau, for my mother and my baby brother or sister. I needed all the strength I could muster for this. The rest of my woeful feelings would simply have to wait.

The weather had been mild right up until the last stop, the sun lightly warming and only the slightest breeze to rustle our hair. But the temperature started to drop as soon as we pulled up to the Pau Brasil stop. We shrugged on our packs, and the door hissed open. The cold wind hit our face like a block of ice had formed around the outside of the spi

It was barely light. Just enough to see the black mass of rock and the dark, thickly wooded forest sprawled beneath it, the trees leaning towards it as if in worship. Everything else could be shadow or form. It was too hard to tell. I imagined eyes watching us as we traipsed headlong into the howling wind, each drop of rain pelting our faces like sharp bits of gravel.

Pietre yelled, his voice barely cutting through the wind, trying to convince himself as much as Careen and me, “Bad weather is a good thing. It will keep the predators away.” I thought, After a night of walking through this, I might want a wolf to end my misery.

We walked all night. Freezing cold and soaking wet, there was nothing to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other. I was sandwiched between an angry and determined Pietre in the lead, and an unrepentant Careen in the back. I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, could only walk. We couldn’t hear each other anyway. The way the wind swirled around us and slammed against the grey rocks that seemed to continue to rise higher and higher out of the ground to our left, it was like some deranged woman was screeching in our ears, her hands cupped to her jagged mouth, warning us to turn back. It went on for hours, endless hours.