A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

Instead, I walk in the ditch beside it so that when a rare car comes
soaring past, I drop down in that muddy ditch and hide.
I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve never
been in this place before, not so far as I know. But I don’t know
where the house is that the man and the lady kept me; I don’t know
what it looked like from the outside. With all my running last night, I
got turned around. I couldn’t ever find my way back, which makes
me think that the man and the lady could be living inside any one of
these houses here; that Gus could be inside any of these houses
here; that the shed where I spent my night could have just as easily
belonged to them.
I’m worried about Gus. But I don’t got any idea what to do. All I
know is that I got to save myself first before I can save Gus. The
thought of that knocks me sideways. It just don’t feel right leaving
Gus behind, though I know if I go back to the man and the lady,
we’re both dead.
I try and memorize my surroundings. If I’m ever gonna find my way
back I got to remember things like the fence, which sits waist-high
and is brown, falling down. I got to remember them smokestacks
billowing not so far in the distance. I got to remember the houses,
which are old, every single one of them, with paint that flakes off.
There are trees on one side of the road, but on the other there’s a
field, with crops that grow. I go to the crops and snatch an ear of
corn for myself. For a moment, I hide myself in the field and take a
bite of that corn, not remembering the last time I ate, but especially
not remembering the last time I ate something that wasn’t mush. The
corn is hard and starchy. It ain’t tasty at all. It hasn’t been cooked.
But that don’t matter at all. I’m so hungry I’d eat dirt if it was my only
choice.
I rise back up to my feet when I finish that corn. I’m tired, but I
don’t got time for napping. I trudge on through the edge of the
cornfield, which hides me some. It’s not easy on the feet. The ground
here is mushy from last night’s rain, and soon the bottom half of me
is covered in mud.
The sun keeps coming up. After a while, it dries the puddles some.
It warms my skin so that I go from cold to hot real quick. The fields
thin and, little by little, trees crop up so that soon I’m marching