Chapter 15: The Logging Road

The logging road was gravel, then dirt, then two ruts through the pines.

The man beside me kept one hand on my arm and the other on his phone.

The driver kept looking in the mirror.

"Nobody's behind us," he said.

"Makinen's got horses," said the man beside me. "Keep going."

I held the green ledger against my chest and counted the turns.

Left at the dead cedar, right at the cattle gate, then a long climb with the creek on my side.

I had never seen this road, but I knew it.

Janet had described it on nights I couldn't sleep.

It was the way Jonas drove the herd up to summer pasture.

At the top of the climb there was a hairpin turn above a steep drop.

I put my hand on the door latch.

The man glanced at me.

"Don't be stupid, miss. It's a long drop."

"It's shorter than where you're taking me," I said.

He laughed.

I pulled the latch, shoved the door, and threw myself out.

I hit the dirt on my shoulder with the ledger in both arms, and I rolled.

I rolled off the shoulder of the road and down through the ferns and the dead needles, and the world turned over four times.

When it stopped I was face down in a creek bed with a mouthful of mud.

Above me the truck's brakes screamed.

"She jumped! The little bitch jumped!"

"Get her!"

Boots hit the road.

I got my knees under me.

My knees did not work, so I put my hands in the creek and pulled, and dragged myself under a fallen log, and pushed the ledger in ahead of me.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.