Off Trail

There were signs that told hikers not to wander off of the trails, but Carly was not a hiker, she was an art student. More specifically, she was an art student with a landscape sketchbook assignment due the next day. She had no desire to sketch the same few landscapes that her classmates would be finding on the trails in the state park near campus. How predictable, and how bored Professor Stanz would be. So, she dipped her hiking boots into the detritus on the lip of where the trail met the forest floor and tried not to trip over hidden tree roots as she waded deeper into the woods.

It was fall in Georgia, with the threat of winter on the wind. As Carly traveled, her boots kicked up the smell of forest rot through the leaves, which were deep enough to touch her ankles in some parts. She was glad that most of the snakes would be hibernating in their burros by now. Copperheads could easily be justified in biting into her ankle if she stepped onto their tail. But, as far as her biological knowledge went, she was safe.

The deeper into the forest she walked the thicker the canopy became. It was still the afternoon, but felt a few hours closer to evening under the shadow the forest created. In some gaps between the leaves the light seemed thick, like a liquid, and forest dust floated in it like faeries. On a nameless hill with light like this and a nice boulder to sit on Carly stopped to draw a softly babbling nearby stream. It was pretty enough, and if Carly couldn’t capture the movement of the water she could just draw the stream dry.

She crossed her legs on the boulder and pulled her black Moleskine out of backpack. For her college student budget the sketchbook was a splurge, but she loved the way her fingers could swim across the creamy pages, and the soft way they held her pencil’s lead. It was the only thing she never bought second hand, and the concrete simplicity and meditation she found in drawing on paper kept her away from the drawing tablets her classmates were quickly switching over to. She liked the smudge marks and how she was forced to live with her mistakes within the paper, and thought they made her a better artist.

Carly got to work sketching the scene, being sure to use the entire page, allowing the trees and stream to reach off the paper as if the viewer was looking out a window. She kept her sketch loose, which may not have been hyperrealistic, but felt more organic. Professor Stanz would say it was “breathing” She was lost in the lines as well as the motivation to draw before the light changed more when something distinctly non-organic flashed in the corner of her eye. A few feet away, lost amongst the leaves, was a single 100 dollar bill. Ben Franklin’s face was folded in half, with his left eye staring at her though the forest, the first thing that had looked at her since she left the trail head parking lot. It seemed so absurdly out of place, to have something of relatively large value in a place that didn’t value it at all. Still, that was a few Moleskines, and who says no to $100?

Carly put down her sketchbook and went to pick up the bill, but then her eye flashed again, and another bill scutted in the light breeze. And then another, and another. Carly saw a slew of bills creating a money-crumb trail. Had she not been alone, she might have squealed, or laughed in disbelief, but these are not the kinds of things that one usually does when alone, much less Carly, who often felt she was masking her composure with emotion in front of other people. So, puzzled but intrigued, she picked up first 2, then 10, then 20 of the bills, leading her down a small gully. She even crossed the stream, which to her surprise had some boot prints in the mud. Then, she saw a jacket. It was worn by a body that was face down in the detritus. The faint smell of rot hit her nostrils and teased her gag reflex, while flies, the few that still braved the cold in the air, flew around the body sleepily. Almost before she knew it was a body did she know it was dead.

The body was wearing a business suit, which the black jacket was a part of. The skin donned a patchy appearance of yellow and grey. The arms and legs were bent in ways that would be uncomfortable to any living being, and Carly was glad that the face was out of view and against the ground. The left pocket of the jacket boasted what looked like a roll of money, that was loose and, in the moving air, released a bill that fumbled across the leaves into the direction Carly had come from. If Carly had been with someone, she once again knew she would have acted differently. She would have acted disgusted. Had she been watched, Carly would have jumped back in horror, agreeing with her companion when they would have inevitably suggested heading back and calling the police. But, alone, Carly thought differently. As surprising as this was to find, it was not the first time she had seen a dead body, the first being her mother, after being dead all night at the bottom of the stairs when Carly was only 3. Carly lived for 2 days in that house with her dead mother and all the flies that flew in from the chimney before her Father came home from his business trip. She was glad when the men came to take her Mother away, and happier still when the smell was gone. Therapists told her she still had not “processed” the moment, and if that was the case, Carly never cared to. For now, she was processing what to do.

Carly knew she could get in trouble for not reporting this. There were no signs of violence, but she knew enough to know that if discovered, she would seem suspicious, and what a headache that would be. Professor Stanz probably still would not excuse the absence, saying being detained by the police was her fault, and in a way she knew he would be right; this could all be avoided if she simply did the “right” thing. But Carly already had a wad of cash in her hands, close to $2000, and it was the most money she had ever had at one time, with even more being held in her eyes and the jacket pocket of the body.

It was so strange how naturally the thought came to Carly, a thought which she knew would be highly criticized if anyone ever found out: take the money, leave the body. Someone would find it eventually, sure, being less than a mile from the trail but still far out of sight and well hidden, it would likely be some time before someone wandered this way. This cash would do her good now, and who knows what evidence would be gone, like footprints of hers, by then. So, with no concern for whoever the body used to be, Carly crouched down, holding her breath, and grabbed the cash from pocket, then quickly jumped away and sucked in air, which was still fowl. When she looked back at the body, she half expect it to be angry with her, but it stayed where it was, waiting for the floor to swallow it.

On pure instinct, Carly sprinted back to the boulder, picked up the sketchbook, stuffing it and the cash in her backpack before leaving three times as fast as she came, the forest light flashing across her shoulders as she ran. When she re-emerged on the trail, she tried to carry her breath normally, so that the frequent passing hikers would not notice her panting. She was lightheaded, but committed to this act until her breathing and eyesight re-aligned. She would count $20,000 in the bathroom, an almost too perfect number. She would keep this under her bed, and spend hardly any until she graduated. Professor Stanz noted how unfinished her sketch looked, but she paid him no mind. To her, it was a $20,000 sketch.