Page 53 of Trapped: Between Sky And Wind

“You know how to do that?” Bren gives me a look that’s half amused and half skeptical.

I determinedly stretch the cloth between my fingers as if I wanted to strangle someone with it. “We had a first-aid class at school and I bandaged Emma.”

“Aha!” Sighing in surrender, Bren offers his arm. “I take it you didn’t find disinfectant in the backpack.”

I shake my head silently, then place a few tissues on the cut and wrap the triangular bandage around it tight to build up enough pressure.

“Lou, it’s called a compression bandage because it’s supposed to be tight.” Bren grins again, which is a rarity. I make a mental note to remember the moment.

“I don’t want to cut off the blood flow, either.”

Bren takes a corner of the cloth from my hand. We pull together and I knot the ends. Hopefully the bandage will serve its purpose.

We learned in school that losing too much blood can cause shock, but Bren doesn’t look like he’s about to collapse, he just looks tired. It’s probably not as bad as it looks, otherwise, he’d be off a lot worse.

“We’ll see what else we have tomorrow, okay?” Bren hands me a water bottle from the backpack. I just nod. I looked inside the bag earlier, but I was fixated on finding bandages. I’m so worn out I can’t even eat the hardtack Bren is holding out to me.

Exhausted, we spread out the sleeping bag and crawl into it in our jeans and T-shirts. Our bodies are cold and frozen stiff and we lie in a narrow depression like sardines. Grey lies at our feet and whines a little. The rattling of the train is probably too loud for him. At some point, he crawls up to us and ends up lying next to me as the third occupant.

I blink tiredly as I look at Bren, whose face is right in front of mine.

“It reminds me of the Flying J parking lot, where I slept next to you when you were in the box,” he says suddenly, wrapping his arms around me inside the sleeping bag.

“Where you were so happy?” I ask.

He just nods and closes his eyes.

I stare at his smooth face and silky dark hair, unable to imagine that he drugged and kidnapped me once. It seems so long ago. The Travel America lettering, the RV, Bren, the kidnapping—everything that used to scare me so much is now a distant memory, almost like I truly left it all in the tunnel.

Bren said we can’t run from the past and its demons. I suppose he’s right as always; he knows a lot more about life than I do. The past is not like a backpack that can easily be discarded when its load becomes too heavy and dangerous.

I still believe what I thought at Crescent City’s Walmart: the more Bren and I experience, the more memories we make. We don’t remove a burden from the backpack but add other many beautiful things to it so that the weight grows lighter even as it increases. This does not correspond to any mathematical logic and it is completely irrational but true nevertheless.

Today, Bren risked his life for me by standing behind me and I was willing to die with him. It wasn’t about whose fault it was. It was all about us. And now I know we will survive anything.

Chapter

Twelve

The next day, disillusionment follows because we lost a large part of our clothes, all the medicine, and also Bren’s chilies. Even though Bren had a pack of painkillers in his cargo pants, a blessing, the antibiotics would have given me more security especially given Bren’s injury. At least the cut has stopped bleeding.

The positive: We have disinfectant tablets for water, our warm jackets, food supplies—also for Grey—and our cell phones. I even found Liam’s gray scarf in the backpack. I tie it around my neck so I can use it to cover my face because the draft is cold, plus this way I can’t lose it.

Our plan is to head east and retreat into the wilderness for the time being, maybe in Quebec where there are a lot of connected forests and lakes. We’ll be safe there for the summer and the rest will fall into place. Bren hopes to find an abandoned trapper’s cabin for us to winter in before heading to Los Angeles in the spring to acquire fake passports. Maybe we can sneak into an internet cafe in a month or two so he can contact his friend sooner. Anyway, Bren doesn’t mention Europe anymore and that puts my mind at ease for now.

On this day, we learn about illegal freight train hopping across Canada. For example, there are several reasons why freight trains stop: when letting another train pass in the middle of the wilderness, at the end station, and for reloading freight cars. Sometimes, some cars are exchanged in a lonely freight yard before the journey continues. Every time the train stops, we pack up everything in no time, climb out, and hide as best we can in the undergrowth at the edge of the tracks to avoid security. Only when a train starts again do we jump on. My ankle makes it much more difficult, whereas Bren’s injury doesn’t seem to hinder him, or at least he doesn’t show it.

We learn to duck as soon as railroad crossings come into view because even in the wasteland there is occasionally traffic and we teach Grey when to jump off and frolic.

Over the next few days, we establish a routine. We save our water supplies, and at some point, we get lucky and stop at a lake surrounded by dark forests. That’s where we climb off the train for a longer stop, fill up our bottles, and splash around in a sheltered shallow spot in the icy water. Grey is happy because he can finally romp around for a longer period, and as a treat, we get to spend the night in the forest with scented fir trees, a crackling campfire, and eat three trout from the lake that Bren impaled with a spear he carved himself. Even Grey gets one, but I don’t think he cares for it much because he leaves half of it.

At night, Bren and I make love outdoors and I’m transported back to under the willow tree by the lake in the Yukon, to a time so dreamlike, tender, wild, and confusing that I never truly understood what was happening. Today, it seems to me as if it were enclosed in a snow globe. I can’t get close, looking at it from the outside, but when I shake the memories, the magic falls like snowflakes and lights up my heart.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and when I wake up early in the morning, Bren is already up. He crouches by the lake, dipping his injured wrist in the water, his back oddly arched.

“Does it hurt?” I ask, alarmed as I walk toward him.

He flinches. Maybe I startled him, but then he turns and smiles. He wraps the scarf around the wound.

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