Soda Crackers

I imagined the walk would take one day—thirty-six hours at most—so the backpack I swung onto my shoulder as I lurched off the bus lay almost flat against my back.

“You sure you’ve brought enough?” the bus driver called out when I stepped onto the curb.

I turned around and gave her a small smile. “It won’t be long.”

She shook her head, but said nothing more. The doors snapped shut, the bus rumbled forward, and then I was alone.

Utterly, truly, completely alone. Nothing new.

I blinked into the rising sun, then took a breath and studied my surroundings. Densely packed trees lined the highway, their trunks pressed so close together that not even a breeze could force its way through and ruffle their leaves. I frowned. Where was—?

Ah, yes. There. I quickly walked over to a small sign jutting from the ground. Behind it lay the road.

It was a thin road. The asphalt was cracked and faded, and a root bulged through the surface every few feet. I sighed.

“Here goes nothing,” I said aloud. The road said nothing back.

I took one last look at the highway, whispered a good-bye, and set off.

It was a selfish thing, to grumble and swear as I sidestepped the faults in the road. I knew that. But shouldn’t my final walk be a bit more dignified? Instead of marching off into the sunset, head held high, I tripped and slammed into the ground five minutes into my journey. I groaned as I stood and examined my hands, which I’d used to break the fall; they were scratched and embedded with bits of dirt and rocks.

“Ouch! That was quite a tumble.”

I jumped and snapped my head up. A short, graying woman had seemingly materialized out of thin air next to me.

“Hello,” I said cautiously, confused. Shouldn’t I have known her?

She took me gently by the elbow. “Come on, dear.”

I blinked. There, right on the side of the road, was a small, bright house. The walls were pained purple, the door a lemon yellow. A vibrant flower garden bloomed in the yard.

“I love all the colors. And the smells,” I said as I sniffed deeply.

She beamed. “Thank you.”

She led me inside and into a quaint kitchen, where she pushed me into one of two rickety chairs around a well-worn table. I watched as she bustled around the room, filling a bowl with water and plucking a bottle from a cupboard. She grabbed a few paper towels before settling into the chair across from me.

“Hands up on the table, dear, that’s a good girl.” She dipped the towels into the water, then gently dabbed and washed the detritus away.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, my face warming, “but I—I don’t remember you.”

She had a loud, squawking laugh that made me instantly grin. “I should think not! You were only one second old when we met.”

“Ah. The midwife?”

She nodded. “Couldn’t help but love each and every one of my babies. And my mothers. Your mother was a trooper, you know. Thirty-two hours, one of the longest deliveries I’ve experienced in my forty years on the job.”

I looked away. I didn’t like to talk about Mama.

The midwife said nothing as she continued to dab at my hands. When her fingers lightly brushed the scars at my wrists, I finally turned back.

She gazed at the thin lines. My cheeks warmed again. I suddenly wanted to lie. It was an accident. I tripped. I was holding a knife. I—

“You’re very strong, you know,” she said quietly. “It takes a strong person to walk this road.”

I blinked tears away as she opened the bottle and applied the ointment onto my scraped hands, which instantly dulled the pain.

She clapped her own hands together as she admired her work. “Speaking of this road, you best be on your way. Plenty of people wanting to see you.” She winked.

I widened my eyes. “P-plenty?”

She gave a disapproving glance toward the backpack settled at my feet.

“They never pack enough, do they?” she muttered, almost too low for me to hear. She jumped up, rummaged through a cupboard, and set a full sleeve of soda crackers onto the table.

“Thank you,” I said fervently, “for more than the food.”

She just smiled as she led me to the door.

“Enjoy your walk, dear,” she said. She hugged me, and my heart stuttered.

I don’t remember the last time I was hugged.

It was short-lived, though, as she gently pushed me out the door. I inhaled the intoxicating aroma of her flowers, closing my eyes as the floral scent swirled around my body and settled into my heart.

I turned to wave good-bye, but the house, the garden, the yellow door were all gone. I sighed and stepped forward onto the road.

I’d never even asked for her name.

———

I hadn’t expected my first encounter to be so soon. I also hadn’t expected to already be famished. I was halfway through my crackers when I stopped short at what lay on the side of the road: a running track.

“About time. You and your soda crackers.” Cam snorted as he grabbed three from the package, shoved them all into his mouth, and chewed noisily. He swallowed. “You always had these before a meet. Right before; Coach yelled at you constantly for that. ‘Why didn’t you eat those have an hour ago?!’” He chortled, then grabbed another cracker and gazed at it fondly.

Cam. I hadn’t talked to him in years, but he looked just as he had when I met him freshman year of high school. Tall, lanky, hair a fiery red that stuck up in all directions.

“Come on.” He jerked his head toward the track. “I’ll race you.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “I haven’t run since college, Cam, I don’t think—“

He grabbed my elbow—much less gently than the midwife—and pushed me onto the track.

“Ready, set, go!” he shouted, and then, suddenly, I was running.

I was running!

My feet pushed off the ground, my arms pumped at my sides, my heart fluttered in my chest. I expected to feel a cramp at any moment, but all I felt was lightness, and speed. This was good, this was right, all of it: the wind in my hair. The sweat at the back of my neck.

I didn’t even look behind me until I ran all the way around and crossed the finish line. Cam pulled up a full ten seconds after me, already laughing, and I joined him.

It had been so long since I’d laughed.

He pulled me into a rough hug, and suddenly my laughter turned to tears.

“Oh, honey, don’t cry,” he whispered into my hair.

I gently unentangled myself so I could fully look him in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Cam. I know I haven’t always been the best at keeping up….”

“I sent you so many texts,” he said, not unkindly. “Invited you out to meet the baby. But when you stopped responding, I just … gave up.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just—after the injury, and then seeing you with … everything. It was a lot.” The medals, the wife, the kid. And there I was, a college dropout with a leg that never healed quite right after the accident. The accident where Mama….

“I was selfish,” I said quietly, looking down. “But you should know that I was always, always happy for you. And proud. So proud.”

He put his hands on the side of my head and forced me to look at him. “When you go back, you give me a call.”

“I’m not going back, Cam,” I said softly.

He just laughed. “You’ll go back. No one knows you like your first best friend.”

He gave me another quick hug. “Gotta run. Literally.” He grinned and then took off down the track. I bent to pick up my backpack and an unopened sleeve of soda crackers; I hadn’t noticed he’d given me a new package. I smiled. When I looked up again, Cam and the track were gone.

I stepped back onto the road. I had walked for less than an hour, yet I still looked behind me, the way I came, and felt the smallest of tugs.

I shook my head. Stupid, stupid. I turned and walked on. Walked forward.

———

The next few people I met along the road were unexpected.

The mother whose card had declined at the grocery store checkout, whereupon I leaned forward and paid without a word. (I was useless in all things except money; the insurance payout from the accident had seen to that.) She whooped when she saw me, and tucked a few peanut butter and banana sandwiches in my backpack when I waved goodbye.

The quiet kid in third grade who I had lent my crayons to. He sat at a school desk set right into the grass, as if it had grown there. He slipped a purple crayon into my pocket.

The dog who, a couple of years ago, I’d returned to his owner. The dog licked my hand before bounding off into the trees.

The famous author who I’d written to thank for writing my favorite book. She read and kept all her fan mail, she said, but never wrote back for security reasons.

And then there were, of course, the expected folks. All my track coaches. Most of my teaches. My first and third therapist. (The second one and I did NOT get along.) My roommate in college. My only two boyfriends; I thought those encounters would be awkward, but they were instead full of laughter and good-natured riffing.

Almost every person gifted me food. The first night, at Mr. Grady’s cottage, he cooked up a delicious beef stew before showing me to the guest bedroom, where I promptly fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow. I woke up on the grass the next morning, the cottage and Mr. Grady gone.

The second night, I stayed with the camp counselor from my seventh grade summer. She wanted to see if I still remembered how to make a fire, then helped me when I struggled.

On the third day, Dr. Fellows treated my blisters. I thanked her profusely. She let me pick from a jar of lollipops, just like I had when I was eight.

It went on like this for seven days.

My forty-ninth encounter was with a semi-stranger. That was the term I used when the person brought on a faint fluttering in my head, the most quiet of familiarities. Where had I seen them? Think, think ….

He was sitting on my bathroom floor.

It was the first time, in forty-nine settings, that my own apartment made an appearance. Houses, schools, grocery stores, doctor’s offices, even the zoo had shown up in the woods along the road. I came to an abrupt stop upon seeing my own bathroom among the trees.

He sat leaning against the bathtub, his hands covered in blood.

“Oh,” I said softly. He watched with tired eyes as I sat down next to him. “I’m sorry,” I said. I remembered his eyes through the foggiest of memories. In fact, his eyes were all I remembered from that night.

He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s the job.”

“Still. I’m sorry.”

“You know what’s interesting?” He glanced at my wrists, then flicked his eyes to mine. “It’s not your attempt. That’s not why I’m here. It was the call after.”

I tilted my head. “The call?”

“We had just put you in the ambulance—it was a close thing, you know—and your cell phone rang. The caller ID said ‘Mama,’ so I braced myself and answered, but it was a young women’s voice on the other end.

“‘Hello?’ she said, sounding frantic. ‘Are you ok?’

“I explained who I was, that you were still alive when I saw you, that you were in rough shape. When I was done, she was crying, and she talked all in one breath.

“‘She had sent me a text—I got the phone number after her Mom died, you see, and she kept texting it, for years, but I didn’t want her to know that, I didn’t want her to stop texting her mom, so I didn’t say anything, but I was able to find out all sorts about her, like she lived above this bakery called The Brown Egg, all the way across the country from me, and that’s how when, ten minutes ago, when she said she’d see me—well, her mom—real soon, that’s how I knew what address to send the police to, even though I’d never met her, and—and—’

“‘You did good, kid,’ I said. ‘You saved her life.’” He looked at me expectantly at the end of his story.

“But—but then where is she?” I asked, my mind reeling. I wanted to meet her. To thank her.

“I can’t be sure, but I think she died,” he said matter-of-factly. “Those who’ve passed can’t come to the road, you know. So I think I was sent in her place.”

I didn’t expect for the news of a young woman who I’d never met to hit me so hard, but suddenly I was sobbing. The paramedic started crying, too.

When our blubbering had quieted a good twenty minutes later, I turned on the bathtub faucet, gently lifted the paramedic’s arms, and washed my blood away.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “You know, it struck me, that night. How young you looked.”

I did not meet my fiftieth visitor. I turned around and walked back down the road, the way I came.

———

Seven more days of walking. My backpack—stuffed to the brim of food—sustained my nutrition needs, and I found plenty of berry bushes along the way, too, plus several streams for water. I hadn’t noticed these things before. Perhaps they had just cropped up now that the people had disappeared. I’d seen stranger things, to be sure.

As I passed each spot of forest where I'd had an encounter, the visit played again in my mind, as clear and as fresh as if I was reliving it all over again. The dog bounding around the bushes, yipping as I laughed. The beef stew at Mr. Grady’s, still steaming. I could almost smell the flowers in the midwife’s yard.

Then, at long last, I reached the small sign jutting from ground, and the long stretch of highway. A bus idled a block away.

I took one last look at the road behind me, and nodded at the sign, which read:

“At the end of this road, you’ll find only death,

no more pain, no more strife, as you breathe your last breath.

But the catch, dear reader, is the road only ends,

when you’ve visited each and every one of your friends.

Every life you have saved, every heart you have touched.

Every person you’ve loved, who’s loved you as much.

On this road, you’ll see those who have not met their end,

who are changed because they’ve had you as a friend.”

I boarded the bus, the driver nodding approvingly at my bulging backpack. The bus rumbled forward as I settled in my seat. When I looked out the window, the sign and the road were gone.

I took out a package of soda crackers and my cell phone.

“Hey,” I texted Cam. “Can I give you a call?”