Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [3]
She could see that she had been sleeping on the floor of a small clapboard house, in the front room, a woodstove lit and burning. Trina sat up from her pallet of quilts and blankets. “Hello,” she said, hearing nothing from inside or outside of the cabin. She reached down and felt rags wrapped around her feet, stiffness in her thighs. That was when she recalled that she had left Tucson and had been walking for at least three, maybe four days. She lost track of the time after she left Globe and headed onto the San Carlos Indian Reservation. Her last memory of the walk was a truckload of men passing her alongside the road, Highway 60, she thought, seeing the brake lights, watching the vehicle as it stopped and began backing up.
She had jumped across a fence, run beyond the highway, out into the desert. And she had walked for miles, following only the stars and heading away from the faint sound of traffic. She must have collapsed, she thought, and wondered, as she looked around her at the walls of the rustic dwelling, the sparse furniture, the stacks of catalogs, and the worn planks in the floor, who had rescued her and what was going to be expected from her. Turning to her side, Trina noticed her backpack leaning against the wall. She reached for it and opened the top to see that nothing had been stolen. She looked inside the front pocket, pulled out her wallet, and counted her money. Not a penny was missing.
She pushed off the covers and stood. Her legs were wobbly, and she knew, without seeing, that the bindings had been wrapped around her feet because they were blistered and raw. It was painful, but she managed to walk toward an adjoining room, an old and well-used kitchen. An icebox had been pushed into one corner, a table with two chairs was in the other. There was a sink, a small stove, a kettle set on one eye, steam pouring from the spout, and a few cupboards, their doors latched.
Trina glanced out the window and saw an old woman not very far away, bent over, picking berries from a bush. High canyon walls loomed behind her. The woman turned and raised her head slightly just as Trina noticed her, just as if she had been waiting for her guest to wake up and call for her, and then she stood up. She smiled and nodded and turned to walk back to the house.
“Hi,” Trina said as the woman entered the kitchen.
She did not respond. She walked over to the stove, took the kettle from the eye, and dropped the berries into a cup. She poured water over them and handed the cup to Trina. She nodded, motioning the young woman to drink.
“Is this tea?” Trina asked and tipped the cup to her lips and took a sip.
“Tea,” the woman repeated.
Trina thought the taste was slight and bitter, but it warmed her. She took another sip.
The woman sat down at the table, and Trina followed, sitting across from her. The woman wore a thin gray braid of hair that circled the top of her head. She had dark brown skin and narrow eyes, broken yellow teeth, obvious when she grinned.
“Did you find me?” Trina asked. “Did you bring me here?”
The woman did not answer.
“I don’t remember what happened to me. I was walking from Tucson.”
“Tucson,” the woman repeated. “You walk from Tucson.”
Trina nodded. She remembered the phone conversation she overheard from the balcony at the Twilight Motel before she left, Conroe’s betrayal, the way a heart sounds when it breaks. She left without a fight, without an explanation, without hearing an excuse. She packed a few clothes in her backpack, took one hundred dollars from his wallet, a bottle of water, and a flashlight, and left the motel, left her life with the smooth-talking man from Abilene and started walking.
“Where am I?” Trina asked.
The woman lifted her chin, folded her hands as if she were holding a teacup, bringing them to her lips, motioning Trina to keep drinking. She wore bracelets on both arms, silver with large blue stones.
Trina followed the instructions