Jens pulled the cart along the old and broken roadway. Tall pines and broad leafed maples covered the horizon in every direction but weren’t so thick right near to the road itself. Many of the maples were just starting to turn colors and drop their leaves. The cart Jens pulled was heavy but well balanced on its wheels. As long as he could steer the cart’s wheels away from the various potholes and ruts, it wasn’t too difficult to manage on his own. From time to time people would come along and try to fill in the potholes and ruts, usually using sand, gravel, dirt, or some combination of the three. It never lasted very long. Within a few weeks, or sometimes even day, whatever had been used to patch the road would be worn away and the original dips and slumps would reappear. As far as Jens knew, the only way to actually fix the road would require them to break it all up using picks and shovels and then smooth it all back out, packing it down as they went. Unfortunately that was both too labor intensive and costly to do.

Of course, Jens thought to himself as he swerved his cart to the side in order to avoid a particularly large divot in the road, the continued cost of all the minor repairs was probably greater.

He looked back over his shoulder at the new rut that was developing by the spot he’d just gone around, signs of the new path travelers were taking. It wouldn’t take long before this particular road was just as horrible and useless as so many others that he had once traveled. Once a road got that bad, it was often abandoned for other, sometimes newer but usually just less traveled, roads. Those other routes would have been slower if the older roads were in good repair, but the time required to avoid, or else get out of, all the pits and ruts made them far slower than going the longer way around.

Jens sighed and wiped his brow with the back of his forearm. A dark stain covered that shirtsleeve from all the other times he’d wiped sweat from his brow and he grimaced at the similarities between his shirt sleeve and the road. Sure he could have bought a handkerchief to wipe his brow, sparing his sleeves, but handkerchiefs cost money. He could always wash the shirt. Over time, though, the sweat stains built up and now it didn’t matter if he washed his shirt or not, and shirts were far more expensive than a handkerchief. Perhaps if he sold well that week he’d be able to afford a new shirt.

It was still a good many miles before he would reach town, however, and he glared up at the sun beating down on him and his cart. He had a sheet of burlap tightly wrapped over the cart to keep dust and bugs out, but there was nothing he could do about the sun. The burlap barely made any difference to the heat from the sun. Time was, the trip to town took a mere two hours. Now, with all the various shorter routes becoming unusable, he had to leave while it was still mostly dark out and he’d still only arrive to market with a few hours to sell his meats.

“Meat,” Jens muttered aloud to himself. “Coulda been a farmer or a tinkerer I s’pose.”

He looked back at the tight burlap and then up to the ever present swarms of hopeful flies, attracted by the scent of the meat but always thwarted by the burlap. Early on he’d tried to shoo them away, or else bring various plants that were suppose to ward off the flies. None of it worked of course. The temptation of fresh meat was too great for their insect minds. Jens probably wouldn’t be bothered by them if they didn’t also land on him with some regularity and make him itch and scratch as their tiny legs tickled his skin.

At least they’re not the biting kind, he admitted.

KU-THUNK!

Jens toppled forward, his foot dropping out beneath him as he and his cart went down a deep pothole he hadn’t seen because he’d been looking back and not forward. When his foot did hit the ground, his leg was held out straight and the jolt knocked his knee back the wrong way. A sharp pain sprang up his leg and Jens cried out. Moments later the cart, no longer controlled by Jens, rolled forward and banged into the back of his head, throwing him forward where he collided face first with the ground.

Everything was darkness and pain for some time until Jens managed to gain mastery over his senses once more. He was lying on his stomach and the cart was resting over top of him. Fortunately the wheels hadn’t broken and dropped the cart on top of him. He first touched the back of his head gingerly to see if he was bleeding. His hand came away mostly clean, just a small bit of blood signaling a small cut. He felt around the area and though it was tender it didn’t feel seriously damaged. Relieved, he turned his attention to his knee. He hadn’t heard a snap or anything, but a broken leg would mean an end to his business for sure.

The joint was swollen and extremely painful to the touch. He tried to bend it but it refused to move, sending sharp spikes of pain up his leg with every attempt. Slowly and carefully, Jens pulled himself out from under his cart. Then, taking hold of the cart handle, he pulled himself upright, putting all his weight onto his good leg. He gingerly began to shift some of his weight over to the injured leg. It bore it for a few moments, but then it was as if a dam had burst and wave after wave of agony crashed over him and he immediately shifted his weight back to his good leg.

Jens looked up and down the road. The road, though still in use, was beginning to see fewer and fewer travelers. He hadn’t seen anyone, in fact, all day that he’d been pulling his cart. Usually he would have seen a couple of other people at least, perhaps even made a few sales to them as well. His cart was stuck well and good. The pothole was fairly deep, and its sides were steep. Pulling the cart of that would be difficult even if he hadn’t injured his knee. With the injury, though, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get it out on his own.

“Well, let’s see,” Jens said to himself and he hopped lightly around to the back of the cart where he kept his traveling pack. It held a few basic tools and spare parts in case he needed to repair the cart along the way, as well as his meals for the day and water bucket. “Can’t be doing nothing with my leg like this.”

He began poking through the bag, trying to see if there was anything he had that would help him splint his leg. He had some rope, though only a couple dozen feet. From the bits he had to repair the cart he took a couple spare wheel spokes. Using the rope he lashed the spokes, one on either side of his knee. He knew it wouldn’t work even before he tried to stand on it. The pressure from the spoke was already terribly painful on his knee. He needed something to pad the area with.

“It’s not much left I’ve got to work with,” Jens observed as he looked through his bag. He had hammers and nails, knives for carving meat, a planer and chisels, some various wood joining pastes, but that was about it.

With no other inspiration coming to him, he sat down on the side of the road with his midday meal and began to eat while he thought over his options. He’d been walking for a good number of hours and had been hoping to be in town by then, but the condition of the road was particularly bad. A series of storms over the past month had proven to be significantly destructive. He figured most other people traveled the road more often than he did, and so they had probably already begun using one of the other roads so his chances of being happened upon by another traveler were slim. He might could fashion a crutch of some kind from a branch off a nearby tree and limp his way either back home or into town. If he went home he could rest and heal a bit better but that would mean leaving his cart and losing all the meat. On the other hand if he went into town he could hire some people to come back with him and help him bring his cart to town, but that would likely take all day and by the time he’d be getting into town the market would be closing and he’d not be able to sell the meat anyway and he’d still have to pay those whom he hired to help retrieve the cart. Even after all that he’d still have to get his cart home.

“Don’t think I could pull it,” Jens said between bites of cheese. “Even if I had a crutch, it would be too unwieldy.”

He closed his eyes and pinched the bit of his nose between his eyes. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d always seemed to do that when he was in a tricky spot and really needed a solution. He wasn’t terribly far from town. Maybe another hour of walking, given the condition of the road so far, and if he could get there, he could sell his meats and his cart. He had a spare back home that he could use in the mean time if needed. It was older and not as easy to maneuver, but he knew he couldn’t pull the cart back home with his knee the way it was. He’d been wanting to buy a new cart for some time anyway.

Getting the cart out of the hole would be the real trick. It was in there good and deep and wouldn’t easily come out. He opened his eyes and stared good and hard at the cart.

“I’ll have to unload her,” he said at last.

It was a blow having to unload the cart because it would mean letting the flies and dirt get onto the meat. One of his big selling points was always having the cleanest, freshest meats, but dirty meat was better than no meat. He lifted himself back up onto his good leg and set to work. As soon as the burlap was undone and pulled aside the flies moved in and all but covered every inch of exposed meat. Jens didn’t waste any energy trying to swat them away. They could have this small victory.

He laid the burlap on the side of the road and began tossing his wares over onto it, trying to keep them as clean as he could. Once all of the meat was unloaded he tucked the edges of the burlap over the meat as best he could, though there were still exposed sections and the flies continued to swarm eagerly over those spots, no doubt gorging themselves and laying their eggs.

With the meat taken care of, he pulled out one of the spare wheel spokes he’d tried to brace his leg with earlier and, using it as a makeshift pick, began chipping away at the edges of the pothole. The dirt was hard and didn’t crumble easily but as Jens chipped away at it, he packed it into the bottom of the hole to form, as best he could, a sort of ramp to try and ease the cart out.

The day wore on and still Jens worked. A few times he thought he’d worn away enough of the pot hole but couldn’t quite get the cart up and out when he tried to pull it. Finally, after carving out several feet for his makeshift ramp, he was able to pull the cart, one legged, out of the pothole. The sun was dipping low in the sky by then and he knew he didn’t have much time if he was going to have any chance of selling his meat and cart.

He shooed the flies away from the meat as best he could while replacing it into the cart. It was a losing battle, but one he was determined to do his best on regardless. He gave the burlap cover a good shake over the meat to disperse the flies and then tied it down quick as he could. He hoped there weren’t too many still beneath it but he knew better than to lift it up to get a peak. The swarms of flies were already regrouping to begin looking for any gaps he may have left when tying the burlap down.

That done, he placed his pack and other belongings back and strapped them down as well. He took a long drink from his water barrel and washed off his hands and head, scrubbing the dried blood out of his hair. Lastly he hobbled around the trees beside the road until he found a forked branch that had fallen that would serve him well enough as a crutch. He took off his shirt and used it as padding in the fork so his arm and shoulder wouldn’t get worn raw by the wood.

“Alright,” Jens said with a hint of a growl as he picked up the front bar of the cart and began pulling. “Still gotta make good time.”

It took some getting used to, but after about half an hour he found his rhythm. By bracing the crutch against the bar of the cart, he could use the forward leverage of the crutch to help push it forward. As long as he could go in a straight line he made pretty good time. Turning was, as he’d worried, difficult to say the least. With only the one hand on the bar to steer it, the cart would swing either very sharply or else not at all whenever he tried to apply any turning pressure. The roads condition remained quite terrible and so he found himself time and again having to stop the cart completely, slowly walk it around whatever obstacle he was avoiding, and then have to slowly build back up his speed only to have to suddenly stop once again due to the next obstacle.

“Could be worse,” Jens said to keep himself preoccupied from the throbbing pain in his leg and head. “Could be dead in a ditch.”

He chuckled at the old saying his father used to use whenever some misfortune befell them. His smile lingered a while as he thought of his dad. It had been some years now since he’d passed away. Long before the roads had gotten this bad, back when the trip to market was a day to look forward to and not some onerous chore.

“And would you look at that,” Jens said, brightening even further as he came around a bend in the road and could finally see the town. “Market’s still up and bustling.”

This wasn’t how he’d wanted his day to go, and he was surely not going to be able to make what he’d been hoping off his meats, but at least it wasn’t a total loss. He’d have a time of it explaining to his mother what had happened, but at least the butchering season was over for now and he’d have time to heal. And maybe he’d take this opportunity to consider his work options. Maybe if he could get enough of the other merchants to provide some labor, or funds for hiring laborers, he could get one or more of the old roads properly fixed.

“Yup,” he said as he made his way awkwardly into town, “Maybe a change for me would be a good change for everyone.”

Jens was able to sell his meats, at a discounted rate for their lower quality, as well as his cart. Before leaving the market and heading for home though, he bought himself a new shirt and a handkerchief.