Be Not Far from Me

Ashley finds oxycodone in the pill bottles and a bottle of whiskey. She rinses a chemistry flask with stream water and soaks her shirt in whiskey, using it to clean the floor where she plans to sit. She takes an oxycodone and swallows some whiskey before tying a tourniquet with a strip of her t-shirt. She places her supplies on the floor and uses a Sharpie to mark the section of her foot that she needs to remove. She knows her best bet is to strike once, hard enough to remove the section she’s marked. She doesn’t waste any more time and strikes her foot with the flint. The amputated foot section rolls away, and blood spreads quickly across the floor. Next, Ashley pours whiskey over her foot, and the pain is unlike anything she’s experienced before. She’s been in pain at various points in her life, but she has nothing to compare this pain to. She kicks her good leg, a response to pain she’s seen from dying animals. Knowing she only has herself to depend upon, she looks at her foot and finds that the cut was made perfectly.

Ashley bandages her foot with her whiskey-soaked shirt, takes another oxycodone, and crawls to the mattress to rest. In her pain and the oxycodone-induced high, Ashley sees her troubles as different colored balloons. A red balloon represents the pain, but her mind soon floats to Duke, represented by a blue balloon. The pain of finding him with Natalie eclipses the pain in her foot, and she shoves the thought away to deal with later. Ashley then realizes a white balloon represents her mom, and she thinks of a letter her mom sent after she left. Her mother said that leaving was easy because Ashley didn’t need her. Ashley knows, however, that she does need her mom, and she thinks of times when her mother’s presence would have been helpful, like after finding Duke in the woods with another girl.

When Ashley wakes up, she can smell the amputated piece of her foot rotting by the door. She checks her foot under the bandage and finds that the redness of infection is lessening, and, although it’s still swollen, it looks better. She knows she likely doesn’t have long in the camper before the person who owns it returns. Concerned that the owner may decide to harm or kill her for knowing the location of their stash, she decides she will stay only one more day. Ashley would rather leave on her own terms than put her fate in someone else’s hands.

She puts the dead piece of her foot in a sandwich bag and returns to the mattress, where she stares at a TV in the corner. It makes her remember a night driving around with Meredith and Kavita. Ashley spotted a flat-screen TV in a ditch with a cracked screen, and she made Meredith pull over so she could take the TV. She placed it in her uncle Chuck’s dumpster, angry that someone threw the unwanted appliance—one she could have never afforded—into a ditch. Ashley, Kavita, and Meredith spent the rest of the night driving around and picking up appliances and housewares from the roadside before ending up back at Meredith’s house with a lamp they’d found. As the oxycodone takes hold, Ashley thinks of her friends, her mom, Duke, her dad, and the regrets she has in her relationship with each person. She calls for them by name, wishing for their presence with her, and cries.

The next day, Ashley thinks of her days at Camp Little Fish and the differences between her and the other kids at the camp, particularly in regard to their religious faith. She checks her foot, which looks better, and bandages it using a sandwich bag and yarn unraveled from Davey Beet’s hat. She leaves the camper, drinks from a nearby stream, and washes herself as best as she can. Ashley reflects on a few positive memories in her life, like the time Duke’s older brother, Wayne, beat up a sixth grader who tried to kiss her on the playground when she was 10. Wayne taught her to throw a punch that day, too, and she used that lesson just a week ago to break his brother’s nose. Ashley’s thoughts turn to Duke, and she debates between forgiveness and anger toward him. Unable to settle on an emotion, she instead keeps wondering why Duke would choose Natalie over her.

Ashley’s hunger drives her to try to hunt or rather to lure animals to her since she can’t walk well. She thinks of the time she took Kavita hunting and showed her how to scout the deer she wanted before going out to kill it. Though Ashley doesn’t like to kill animals, she knows hunting necessary for her to survive, both at home, where money is tight, and here in the wilderness, where hunger weakens her body each day. She uses the dead piece of her foot to lure an animal, and a possum comes before long. Ashley hits it with her walking stick but misses the possum’s head, and it confronts her instead of running away. When she notices the possum’s babies nearby, she understands why the possum isn’t running, but this realization makes killing the possum much harder. Even so, Ashley kills the possum in front of its young and then chases them away. She starts a fire and butchers and roasts the possum, eating part of it and saving the rest in a sandwich bag. With food in her stomach, Ashley knows it’s time to leave the camper behind. She gathers a few more oxycodone pills and ties the now empty whiskey bottle to her jeans before setting off into the woods once again.