Finding Time to Smell the Flowers

I found myself moving through more mountainous terrain. The Ozarks, I guessed. Didn’t know for sure.

Blue and I had settled pretty quickly into something like routine. We’d camp a few days or more in places where game was plentiful. I’d smoke some of the meat to keep, and trade the rest.

I still stayed away from people most of the time, but with Blue by my side those times I couldn’t stay away weren’t so bad. Blue wasn’t unfriendly exactly, but he had a way of making himself known and most people weren’t too interested in finding out how friendly he was or wasn’t.

And I didn’t feel so anxious with him there next to me. Pushing into me even before I realized I was scared. He always seemed to know what I was thinking or what I was feeling and he’d let me know I wasn’t alone anymore.

I’m not sure I even remember the last time I just sat and talked with someone. The sound of my own voice surprised me sometimes, sitting near the fire at night I’d catch myself just talking away to Blue. He always looked interested no matter what I was babblin' about.

One time, he turned his head sideways when I said something kinda funny and I laughed out loud. I didn’t even know I’d remembered how to do that. To laugh. It kinda made me want to do it more often. Maybe talk to someone again. Someone who could say something back.

So, I guess that’s why it happened. I guess that’s how I was ready to make another friend - a human friend. Maybe learning that I could trust Blue helped me know that maybe trust wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe I could trust a person too.

We were moving through the woods one day. I could tell it was day now, because the sun was starting to shine through the haze a little more. Maybe the skies were clearing, maybe it was being higher up. I didn’t know.

We were picking our way through a rough trail. Blue stopped. Stopped in front of me, making me stop too. I could feel one of his low growls sending his warning straight into my leg where he leaned into me.

And then I heard it too. Someone talking. Just one someone and she was talking kind of like I talked - saying thoughts out loud that were probably just wandering around aimlessly in her head.

Some of those thoughts lined up and I heard her say a bit louder, “prolly a-nuttin’ to worry about. A girl and a dog. But could done be trouble and I ain’t a-wantin’ no trouble.”

“I ain’t trouble!” I said. Mainly just because it’s true and seemed to me like I should say it.

I heard her cackle. Like actually cackle. Kinda gave me goosebumps, though I hate to admit it, and Blue kinda looked up at me like he didn’t know how to feel about it either.

“Well, of course’n you say you ain’t trouble! Trouble don’t never be done a-knowin' itself.”

That’s what she said.

I was trying to work out exactly what that was supposed to mean and didn’t know what I should say back. I looked at Blue for help, but he just wagged his tail. I guess he agreed. But agreed with? I didn't know.

Before I could sort out what to say, she hollered down to us, “keep on a-comin’ up the trail, girl. You and your little dog too!” This last part seemed to make her cackle again and I was kinda thinking I might better just turn around. But Blue went running on up the hill so I followed him on, hoping he knew what he was doing.

I came into a clearing. And there was my dog. My big protector. Wagging his tail and getting his chin scratched by a little old lady.

She stood a couple feet taller than him. She could’ve jumped on his back and gone for a ride if either of them had wanted any part of that idea. She had long hair streaked with gray that was twisted up and mostly pinned on top of her head.

She had the look of someone who had spent a lot of time out in the weather but it had been nice to her. The sun had made her skin brown but also gave it a warm glow. The wind had played with her hair and styled wispy curls around her face. Her eyes were bright blue and reminded me of what I remembered the sky had looked like in the summer. She had the smell of rich earth and fresh-cut herbs lingering about her.

It was clear Blue liked her. I wanted to like her too.

“Name’s Polly, girl, you got’s a name?” She kinda barked it at me and the warmth I’d seen while she was greeting Blue seemed to have been all used up.

“I’m Hannah,” I replied, feeling funny saying my name out loud. “And that’s Blue,” I said nodding at the traitor.

She laughed. “Ain’t what he done told me, but okay, if you done be a-sayin' so."

I was confused again but didn’t have too much time to think on it.

“C’mon up to the house. I ain’t decided if you’s trouble or not, but the dog’s a’right and he done put in a good word for you. And I’d be ok with some a that smoked fish you done got with you.”

I don’t think I need to keep saying that I was confused. I’d soon learn that’s pretty much how I ended up feeling most of the time after Polly said most anything. But she seemed to make perfect sense to Blue who liked just about everything she ever said.

So, there I was sitting in a crazy old lady’s little cabin in the middle of the woods, up in the mountains, about to eat something that came out of a big black pot on her old-timey wood stove. Was I about to become some weird statistic? Something about this scenario felt very Hansel and Gretta-ish to me.

It was kinda like she could read my mind or something. I looked up and she was looking at me with those bright eyes and she cackled - again.

“You’s a-thinkin you done ended up in one of ‘em horror movies, ain’t you? I ain’t no witch, girl. Done been called one a few times an worse’n that more’n a time or two. Ain’t no fairytale neither. No time travel. It’s 2042, here same’s it is anywhere else. I’s just a-livin’ off grid afore livin off grid was cool.”

She cackled again as if she’d just cracked a joke.

“Been through the war like everyone ‘as too. Lost people too. Jus’ like you, girl. I done lost ones I loved.”

She didn’t laugh at this and I looked at her. Really looked. Our eyes met and it was all there to see. Yeah, she’d seen things too. Been through things. Lost people. Lost bits of herself she’d never get back.

I nodded. Nothing to say. Nothing I could say. Nothing I wanted to say in that moment and nothing she wanted to hear from me. We knew. We both knew. It was all that was needed.

We shared a meal together. Mostly in silence. But a nice silence. The kind you can nestle into, not the kind that makes you feel like you’ve been standing in the snow too long.

She offered a place to sleep inside, but I didn’t like sleeping with walls around me anymore and I told her so. She just nodded and said some things that seemed to make sense to her and Blue as she showed me out the door and took us to a nice spot of soft earth.

“G’night, girl, and dog you call Blue,” she muttered as she walked back to the cabin.

When I woke the next morning, Polly was already up and cooking breakfast. I wasn’t sure I trusted what my senses were telling me. Because what I saw on the little kitchen table looked an awful lot like eggs and pancakes and … that had to be bacon!

But it turned out I wasn’t imagining things. After eating more breakfast than any one person had any right to eat, I followed Polly around behind her cabin and was shocked at what I saw there.

A small meadow was cradled there with a swift stream running down from the higher side of the valley. Polly had a water-wheel generating electricity. A little further downstream was a long, kind of low structure that I found out had been a hog pen but had been converted to a garden under grow lights powered by the generator.

There was also a large chicken coop and several pens that housed a few pigs and some small-breed cows that looked similar to the highland cows I’d seen on a trip to Scotland before the war.

“Aaaahhh,” Polly grinned at me with eyes twinkling, “it still ain’t no fairytale, girl! There’s lotsa work done need a-doin’ and it ain’t a’doin’ itself.”

She was right. We didn’t really talk about me staying. We didn’t talk about me helping out and earning my keep. We didn’t do much talking at all. But from that morning on, I got up early and worked alongside Polly tending to her livestock and the land. We worked hard. We ate well.

I slept well. I slept like I hadn’t slept in a long time. Slept without nightmares stalking me through the night, slept without jolting awake with my hand on the hilt of my knife.

And every day, the sun started showing itself more and more. I don’t mean figuratively, though I guess there was some of that too. I mean the actual sun. The sky was slowly clearing.

More and more birds were making themselves known with happy chirps and early morning songs. They’d been there all along, I guess. But it’s like the sun was reminding them how to sing again.

I was squinting into the daylight, something I was having to get used to again, when I noticed some flowers that had bloomed in the beds around the cabin.

Polly was squatting on the ground near them and as I got closer, I could hear her chattering to them. She looked up at me and grinned in that lopsided way she sometimes did.

“Look, girl! The marigolds done started a-bloomin’!”

“I remember marigolds,” I told her, sitting down beside the old woman and running my fingers lightly through the leaves. “Herb of the sun, that’s what Mama called them. She told me that her grandmother had always grown them in the garden and that she always grew them too. I even have a box in my backpack with some of her seeds in it.” I had almost forgotten about them.

“Aye, girl, every garden done be a-needin’ some marigolds. A bit o’ luck, a bit o’ joy, some healin’ too. When you get to a place where you feet done a-travelin’, you plant those seeds. Time’s a-comin’, girl, when you done be ready for joy again,” she said, patting my hand. “You done gonna see.”

Ready for joy? Maybe. I could almost believe that as Blue got up from rolling in the grass and plopped down beside me, dropping his big head on my lap and looking up at me. Almost.