Page 54 of Trapped: Between Sky And Wind

“Would you like me to help?” I washed the cloth yesterday and hung it up to dry in the wind overnight.

“It’s okay.” He puts one corner in his mouth and tightens the knot with his left hand and teeth. “I’ve often done it myself—before,” he says. “I simply wanted to clean up the edges a bit—there was still dirt in it. It’s coming out little by little.”

I look at him warily because he appeared to be in severe pain as he sat by the lake so stiffly.

“Lou, don’t look at me with those big eyes.” Bren walks toward me. “Everything is fine.”

“Really?” I ask quietly.

“Yes, really.” He takes me in his arms, locks me in the cage of his body, and I feel him in the morning crispness like a protective warm blanket around me. I breathe into his hoodie a few times, relaxing more with each breath. As if from afar I hear him say, hugging is one of your skills. It still works, even if it’s no longer the past that scares me.

We brush our teeth with the one toothbrush we have, pack up all our things, and walk to the tracks in the twilight. We have no idea where we are exactly, but Bren uses the sun, stars, and vegetation to orientate himself and yesterday he said we were probably in Alberta, a little to the north.

Two more days pass and we are almost professionals. We find suitable cars faster and faster and finally are brave enough to climb onto the roof of the train, but only with slow-moving trains and only during the day so we can spot a tunnel in plenty of time. However, there are now fewer of them than when we started. Wide grassy landscapes glide by, endless prairies with millions of butterflies, wheat fields like oceans, and granaries like lost lighthouses. Bren believes we are in Saskatchewan, where you’ll find the quietest places on earth.

Sometimes, I almost forget we are wanted by the police. It all seems like a new dream to me. The limitless land, the rattling of the train, and us. Space and time are lost somewhere on the horizon. Bren’s nightmares are the only reminder of the past, if he sleeps at all. Since we have to get off the train every time it stops, only one of us is allowed to sleep at a time, although I have a feeling Bren hardly sleeps at all. Whenever it’s my turn to stay awake, I see him lying on the floor with his eyes open, staring at the sky. If he nods off, he wakes up screaming and clenching his hands as if he’s about to defend himself. Most of the time, I can calm him down, but sometimes he clenches his teeth and sends me away. That’s when I climb over the connecting grates to the next car until he calms down.

I can deal with it now that I’ve gotten used to it. I’m not afraid of that kind of demon anymore. I was able to bring Bren back with my mind when it mattered, at least, I believe I did. Maybe it was only my inner attitude he sensed, but whatever it was, it helped. I’m rather afraid he might fall off the train in a situation like that, but he says he won’t be that far removed from reality.

Still, I can’t help noticing how exhausted he seems, but when I ask him about it, he doesn’t want to hear it.

Another two days pass and the trains travel through deep forests, like in the beginning, with countless rivers and lakes in between. Sometimes, the train meanders like a reptile through endless waters. We could be in Manitoba by now, at least that’s what Bren says. Every now and then, we pass weather-worn totem poles and I remember Jay often mentioning that Manitoba was Indian land.

One night, after I don’t know how many, Bren and I sit on the grate at the end of our car. The oversized full moon is perpendicular in the sky and stars are all around us, a quintessential sea on the midnight-blue vault. The wilderness surrounding us glows in dark, silky shades of blue: the green-blue firs, the smoky-blue hills, and the indigo-colored lakes with their shimmering surfaces. Nature appears blurred—like a silk painting where all colors run into each other and only the stars are clear. It’s a bit like Bren and me. We are clear, the world and the future are vague, without contour.

Bren smiles when I tell him this and he points out constellations I don’t recognize. The Bootes looks like a gigantic ice cream cone. “The brightest star—Arcturus—is noticeably reddish. Do you see it? It’s a red gas giant, a star in its final stages of existence.” Then he shows me Auriga. “Its name in Latin means charioteer. Its brightest star, Capella, never sets in the night sky. And over there”—he points to the millions and millions of stars and I follow his gaze—“is Serpens. Its brightest star is Unuk, also called Unukalhai. In the snake’s tail lies the Eagle Nebula.”

“You know almost every star by name,” I say, surprised.

“That’s what happens when you spend time alone in the Yukon.” It sounds almost apologetic.

We remain silent, staring at the sky, when Bren takes my hand.

“If you could have one wish, what would you wish for right now?” I ask him after a while.

Bren doesn’t reply for a long time, and at first, I think he didn’t hear me. But then he says, “I wish time would stand still and that this very moment would become an eternity. And you?”

I watch his profile as he sits there stargazing, his dark hair windblown and his unyielding lips as tight as ever. I already know that this image of him, here on the dark train and in the silky blue of nature, is deeply engraved on my soul, even if one day I forget everything else about our escape. It’s like the picture from when he kidnapped me. Him in the Lodgepole parking lot, the sunlight like will-o’-the-wisp in his eyes, the tall redwoods at his back like a black band. Some moments last forever even after they’re long gone. It’s the feeling that remains. One only notices a few details and everything else fades. But maybe it’s those moments that make an eternity. Perhaps eternity doesn’t mean a span of time but the unforgettable in the soul that still floats through space even after we’re dead.

I look at Bren and want only one thing: for him to be happy. “I would like your dream to come true,” I say. “The one with the farm.”

Bren laughs his short HA laugh that always sends a hot-cold shiver through my veins. “Dreamer!”

I punch his side with my free hand. “Hey, it’s your dream,” I reply, mockingly offended.

“You know they’re going to catch us one day, right?” he asks, his voice suddenly hoarse.

My mood changes abruptly because he sounds serious and sad even though he was just laughing.

“They won’t!” I insist defiantly, but his words sink like a stone into my stomach.

“This isn’t eternity, Louisa. Even if we make it to Winnipeg or Quebec or wherever, what are we going to do? I can’t access my money anymore and we don’t own anything except for what we’ve brought along. What do we do in the winter when the temperature drops and we can’t find an abandoned trapper’s hut?”

“We could steal an RV,” I suggest pragmatically.

“You’re a real criminal.” Bren smiles at me, but I can’t smile back. I don’t know what he’s about to tell me, but there is a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“We wanted to go underground and look for a small place in Canada after nine months. We were going to Los Angeles to see this Ramon to get fake passports and stuff. What’s wrong with that all of a sudden?”

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