Thumbs

Fleeting

Katie awoke to the sound of birds fluttering in and out the roof of the truck. They were smaller than Maurice's little finger, but they made an awful lot of noise in the morning, even with breakfast stuffed in their beaks. She slowly blinked her eyes open to see the sunlit room and a charred log sitting on top of an unlit fire pit. Jason was no longer sitting across from her. In fact, neither he nor his backpack was anywhere to be seen. Katie sat up and turned around to see if Maurice was awake yet.

His face was placid as he slept with his back to the giant tire. Katie liked to watch his bandanna rise and fall with his breathing. It proved that he had a mouth under there. She then noticed that there was a large wooden stick propped next to him.

Katie slowly got off of Maurice's leg to approach the wonderfully carved staff. The wood was pale brown and smooth with only a few stubs towards the end. There was a strip of leather from an old belt tied around the top, with a few sharp, raised bumps that emerged from the leather strappings like a crown. She attempted to tip the staff over so that she could look at the top of the handle, but the staff was much too heavy for her and it fell loudly to the ground. Katie winced and looked over at Maurice. To her relief, he was still sleeping. Normally he would wake up to the tiniest noise, but he must have been really tired.

Katie tip-toed over to the top of the staff, and upon a closer examination, she noticed that the bumps were much more than a simple extension. It was a little larger than her hand when her fingers were extended, and was about two hand's width above the strappings. The carving was an intricate depiction of a grouping of mountains, each one coming to a staggering point at their peaks. She imagined what an apple would look like if it was impaled with these mountains.

There was suddenly a loud cracking sound coming from outside of the truck, making Kaite spin towards the entrance. The sound happened again, only this time Katie recognized the phenomenon as the sound of wood being chopped. Who could be chopping wood out here? Was it Jason?

~By looking outside she confirmed that it was in fact Jason, who was slamming an ax down on a bundle small logs. She scurried outside and up to Jason, who was too busy chopping logs to pay any attention to her. Walking around the wood pile so that she was in his view, Katie watched his movements as he brought the small ax down on the wood, and how the logs split like fine hairs into splinters. Jason paused after a while of her staring.

“What?” He grumbled.

Katie looked up at his scruffy face and shrugged. “Nothin’,” she said as she started walking away towards the largest tree in the clearing. She ran towards her favorite tree with a smile on her face. The wind played with her hair as she ran, tossing her curls in every direction and creating bigger tangles in her hair than what was already a knotted mess. She brushed her bangs out from her eyes when she came to the base of the tree that had black doodles made from charred wood covering its bark. Katie stood there for a moment, admiring her past art work. She started drawing on that tree the first night they stayed in the truck. It was right before last winter, and it was after they had to leave their first home, which was located in the attic of a Ramshackle. That place was always cold, and it was always being visited by people. Maybe that was why Maurice decided that they had to leave? Either way, she was glad that they came here instead. It felt safer.

Katie picked up a charred stick that she had always depended on as her nature crayon. She began drawing about the most recent events of her life. The black markings seemed to simply flow from the stick, and Katie was just there to hold it. It took at least five minutes of her scribbling on the bark till she could no longer hear Jason’s ax hitting the wood stumps. She turned around to see if he was still outside or if he had gone to take a break. But no, he was just standing there with his ax in hand, staring at the truck where Maurice had stumbled out.