REPOSTED ON MY PROFILE.
Matthew hears the man's voice on the radio and knows he has to get to that boat. Months out in the wilderness and on the run, he's sure this is his only - and perhaps last - chance. The girl in the mall might change his mind.
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Matthew didn't know the day. He used to but he stopped keeping track in the winter when he couldn't decide if February had thirty days or thirty-one. It could have been the cold or the threat of frostbite that caused the lapse of common sense but the cursing fit that occurred when he remembered the damn month had twenty-eight days was bad. Real bad. He was glad there had been no one was around to hear him. It was one of the few times he appreciated the loneliness. They don't happen often.
But it was whatever when it happened. Too much time had passed from then to then to go back and reconcile the differences. Knowing the day of the week, the day of the month, wasn't important anyway. Who cared right?
Wrong.
He was regretting it. Big time. He should have made a guess. He should have gave an attempt. Right now even being a few days off of the date would be helpful.
He wasn't even sure what month it was.
"What damn day is it?"
Matthew asked himself the question out loud. It hung in the air before he left it behind, pulling himself onto another branch of the really tall - really, really tall tree.
Talking to himself was a bad habit. He did it only when he was mad or irritated. Always when he had a problem. He'd managed to bring the damn thing under control but in the past year any progress he'd made went down the toilet. Months alone on the road, the choice was to either talk to himself or spend the entire time in absolute silence. That wasn't happening so he went from expressing himself only in moments of extreme stress to making note of the weather.
And that was why he spoke every word out loud as he racked his brain for a date he knew he didn't know.
"The damn date?" Matthew asked again as he pulled himself onto another branch.
Matthew learned to climb trees when he was really young - about five or so years old. Old enough to learn the skill and remember it with his body and not his mind but young enough still to not succumb to thoughts of the danger. It was dangerous - scrambling up trunks of trees that towered well over his little boy body by the barest of handholds. He didn't think about the danger when his cousins coaxed up the tall oaks of his grandmother's backyard, much to his mother's disapproval. She'd talk down sternly to them every time she caught Matthew up in the branches. Her reprimands only sent them further out from her watchful eyes. By Matthew's next birthday he was a tree climbing expert who awed his friends by retrieving a runaway balloon that got tangled ten feet up in one of his grandmother's trees.
His mother stood silent at the base of the trunk just that one time, waiting for him to return. She pinched his cheeks and told him what a kind kid he was for retrieving his friend's balloon like he did and the plastered smile lasted until the last person left and then it cracked and she screamed at his grandmother that this climbing foolishness was all because of her stupid stories and that the children were going to break their arms listening to all of her crap. His grandmother yelled back and maybe louder and they had to be stopped by a neighbour who came to see if everything was okay. Fine, his mother smiled. A buncah shit, his grandmother spit.
