Once the piles were made, King dug a ziplock bag from his pocket and pulled a ball of what looked like cotton from it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Cotton balls that I soaked in lighter fluid,” King said.
King put the cotton on the ground, and lit it with a match. As the cotton ball flamed up, he began piling the smallest twigs on top of it, and then, as the fire caught, piled larger sticks on the fire. In twenty minutes he had a good fire burning two-inch diameter wood.
I thought about it for a while and then I asked. “King, I don’t mean any disrespect, but what are you going to do when you can’t find cotton balls or lighter fluid?”
“I’ve been pondering that question myself,” King smiled. “I reckon I’ll come up with something when I need to.”
We cooked some venison on a spit over the fire and soon I was thinking more about filling my belly than anything else. So was Sackett. He drooled on my leg.
When we were done eating, I asked King, “What do you think will happen? Will the lights come back on?”
King was silent for a bit. “I doubt in my lifetime. Maybe in yours.”
“Is it bad in town?” I knew it had been bad when I was in a town, but I was hoping that maybe things were better than they seemed to me.
“Yes, it’s bad, Trevor. Food has been scarce and a lot of people have died from starvation, or have been murdered. I’d say that, at least in our town, over fifty percent of the population is dead, and it’s only been eleven weeks since the lights went out.”
“Will it get better?” I asked.
“Maybe,” King paused. “But I think it will get worse before it gets better. The worst weather around here is in January. I think quite a few people alive now will starve then. I’ve thought about this a lot. By spring, I doubt there will be twenty-five percent of the original population alive, and maybe a lot less.”
We sat in silence for a while after that. I debated showing King what I’d learned about starting fires with black match, but there would be time for that later. Right now, I felt like I was in mourning for all the people who had died. I guess I was. I kept thinking about my mom and sisters. And about my dad. He was a no-account drunk, at least that’s what everybody told me, but I loved him and missed him. I hoped he was okay.
After a while King pointed to a pile of small green sticks he had cut. “It’s time to make some figure four triggers for deadfall traps.”
King chose a green stick, maybe three quarters of an inch in diameter and three feet long.
I sat down beside him and he showed by example how to make a figure four trap. It only took him a couple of minutes and it looked easy.
“Now you try, Trevor,” King said. “Copy the one I made.”
So I did, only mine didn’t hold together like his.
King looked my work over. He held up the diagonal piece. “See here, Trevor, the double bevel end you cut doesn’t line up with your notch.”
I looked. He was right.
“And the notch you cut on the horizontal piece is more than 90 degrees. It won’t grab the square section on the vertical piece. Why don’t you start from scratch and try again?” King handed me another stick.
I took it and started to cut a piece to length by cutting in from both directions, like an axe cutting a tree down.
“Are you going to make that end square?” King asked.
“Yeah, I’ll whittle it square after I get it cut in two.”
King picked up a stick and said, “Try it like this.” Holding his knife edge perpendicular to the stick he ringed it with the blade. The he cut a series of short cuts from one side into the first cut. He repeated the process a few times and then snapped the stick. The end was square except for a few pith fibers, which he shaved off with his blade.
His way was much faster than mine, so I tried it. It was easy.
I practiced making figure four traps until I got one right. King looked my triggers over and said, ”Not bad for a first session.” Then he showed me how to set one using a small log he had chopped with his axe for a deadfall.
I was proud of myself. I knew how to make a figure four deadfall trap now.
“Okay, Trevor. Make twenty-five more figure four triggers tonight. You better cut the sticks you’ll need before dark.”
Man, twenty-five more. My hands were already getting tired from all the whittling.
I started to say something but I forced myself to think before opening my mouth. Why did King want me to make so many? I wasn’t sure so I asked him, as politely as I could.
King laughed as he hung a piece of deer meat over the coals on a spit. Sackett looked like he was trying to help himself to a piece of meat before it even made it to the fire.
“For two reasons,” King said. “First, because you need the practice, and secondly, because one trap is never enough. You’ll want to set twenty at least, and, when the game gets scarce, which it will, you may need to set a hundred of them.”
So I made figure four triggers until my hands ached. King looked through my trigger sets and choose eight.
“These will do,” He said. “Take some cordage and tie these up in sets. Throw the rest on the fire.”
Shit, eight out of twenty-five. That was thirty-two percent. I’d just failed my first lesson in survival trapping.
I did what King said and then wrapped up in my blanket and tried to go to sleep. I wished I knew the Cherokee word for idiot, but English would have to do since King hadn’t taught me that word yet. Sackett curled up beside me and nudged under his share of the blanket. He didn’t seem to mind that I was stupid. His breath smelled of deer meat. I wondered what kind of a place the winter camp would be before I finally fell asleep.
Chapter 10
King led the way. After an hour he stopped and said, here we are. I looked around and saw nothing unusual. I could hear a small creek running at the foot of the hill, but nothing else.
“What's so great about this spot?” I asked.
“Take a careful look at the bluff behind us.” King said.
I looked. It was a vertical wall of rock behind a small grove of trees not much larger than saplings. What did King see in this spot? Rather than look like an idiot, which I was beginning to believe I was in spite of making mostly B’s in school, I thought about what was around me.
Obviously there was water. We were at least twelve miles from the nearest road that I knew of anyway. I studied the bluff behind us. It ran south to north and then curved around running west to east, creating an alcove of maybe an acre. The bluff would protect the alcove from the worst of the winter storms. I said as much.
“Pretty good, Trevor. Let me show you the best part.” King led the way to the bluff. I noticed that the rock was a mix of horizontal beds of tan sandstone, dark shale, and light gray limestone. Cool, I remembered the single geology lesson we had had in school. That had been it, how to tell the difference between sandstone, shale, and limestone. Budgets in Arkansas schools being what they were, I figured us kids were lucky to get that.
I saw the cave before King pointed it out. There was an overhang almost twelve feet deep where the rocks had caved below a thick bed of limestone. Behind that was a darker hole in the rock. King let me look around the overhung area before taking a flashlight from his pack and showing me the cave in the back.
The cave was almost twenty feet deep and curved around until the entrance could no longer be seen. There was a fire pit near the back, and several big, gray wooden boxes with padlocks on them.
“Welcome to my families’ hunting camp Trevor. My grandfather found this place and we Kingcades have used this as a hunting camp ever since. My father showed it to me as I have showed it to my sons, and now you.”
“The cave looks man-made.” I said, feeling the grooves in the rock walls.
King's eyebrows rose. “Yes, it is. My grandfather started it, and my father and I finished it. My father and I brought in a mining drill and drilled a smoke hole int
o the tunnel from the top too.”
“This may be the best cave I ever saw,” I said, failing to mention that I’d never been in a real cave before since I missed the school trip to Mystic Caverns because Mom said we didn’t have the money for a ticket.
King seemed pleased. I was amazed he showed me this spot. I thought he and his family might need it. But then, he might have a number of good spots that I knew nothing about.
King gestured at the boxes. “The boxes contain camping gear which you’re welcome to use. I’ll open them later today.
King and I spent the rest of the day setting up camp. I gathered firewood and stacked it along the wall of the tunnel. I was dog-tired when Kingcade looked over my firewood stack. “Very neat Trevor, but a lot more will be needed for the winter. Tomorrow, take the axe and cut down some six-inch diameter trees and buck them into three-foot lengths. They will dry quickly once stacked in the tunnel.”
“How much wood do I need to cut?” I asked.
King smiled. “About thirty to forty times this much, and even more would be better.”
I think King saw the hesitation in my face. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry, Trevor. I’ll teach you how to use an axe, fell a tree, and buck it into lengths. And I'll help cut wood so you’ll be ready for winter.”
I admit it. I was relieved. I just couldn't see how I was gonna cut that much wood by myself. Shit, I’d never even used a full-sized axe before. We never owned one at home.
But I learned how to use an axe and how to sharpen one with King’s file. In a day or two I was felling small trees efficiently with my small axe and chopping didn’t wear me out as bad. Then, after I thought I was doing good at chopping, King taught me how to really swing an axe.
“Never get in a hurry.” King swung an easy stroke that cut deep into the tree. “Start the swing strong and then back off and let the axe do the work. If you’re still forcing the swing when the axe strikes the wood, you’ll feel the collision in your hands. After a while that will hurt your hands.” King handed me the axe. “Now you try.”
I swung and relaxed the force behind the axe just before it struck the tree. I didn't feel the vibration in my hands as much as before.
“That's good, Trevor. Keep practicing.”
And so I did. In another couple of days, I found I could not only chop wood much longer at a time, I was also cutting more wood every day as my muscles toughened to the task.
We cut wood on top of the bluff. Then we hauled the firewood to the edge and tossed it over to be gathered and hauled into the cave later.
We used a sledge to haul the wood. King built it using only an axe and a knife. He pinned it together with wooden pins made of hickory. Sackett helped me pull it with a harness King made for him. I think Sackett enjoyed dragging the sled more than I did, but it usually took both of us to pull it when it was loaded.
Of course, we didn’t cut wood all day every day. Sometimes King took time out to teach me other skills like what plants are good to eat and how to identify them. With the weather growing colder, there weren’t as many plants available to eat, but there were many more than I would have thought. King showed me how to identify watercress where it grew in green bunches close to the stream. He also taught me to dig and prepare cattail roots and to make pine needle tea, which he said I should drink every single day because it prevented scurvy.
I paid attention because I didn’t have the Internet to look things up any more. Now I had to remember them. With focus, I found remembering much easier than it had been for me in school. If I went back to school now, I knew I could make straight A’s. But what boy would trade school for this life? I looked around me and reveled in the wildness and isolation. There were no women to tell me I couldn’t pee outdoors, or that I had to take a bath. Oddly, I found myself bathing in the stream more often than I had at home, even though the water was cold and nobody told me I had to.
King also taught me how to track and a lot about the habits of woods critters like rabbits, deer, and bear, and lots more about how to trap game. I learned how to make a noose trap for deer and other game, and a handful of other trapping methods that I was sure were illegal. When I asked King about that he just smiled and said nothing.
In two weeks the winter camp was stocked and in good shape and I even had a working bow and six really good arrows fletched with duck feathers.
King couldn’t teach me about bows and arrows. He said he had always gun-hunted and never even drawn a bow.
King showed me how to smoke meat and soon one of the gray boxes was full of smoked meat. King and his dad had built those boxes. They were lined with welded stainless steel to keep mice and insects out. King said the lining kept the boxes from leaking when iced down game was transported home on horseback too. I wondered why they didn’t just use ice chests, and then it struck me that they might not want anyone to suspect what was in the boxes. This time I asked no more questions.
One morning, there was a heavy frost on the ground. It wasn’t the first frost so far, but it was the heaviest.
I shrugged into my deerskin jacket when I crawled out of my blankets. I’d sewn the jacket myself, while King watched and advised. Man was I proud of that jacket. It fit loose and the deer hide was brain-tanned and supple. Tanning the hide was a disgusting process, but I was glad King taught me how. I’d do it again if I could kill a deer.
But, with the coming of deep winter, I was gonna have to sew a blanket liner into the coat and into my jeans, and make some deerskin overshoes to cover my tennis shoes, which were starting to keep my feet nice and cold during the day.
“Today I have to go back,” King said.
I was shocked. I didn’t realize that the time had passed so quickly.
“You can come with me, Trevor. We have room for you.”
I thought about it for a minute. “How many people are there in your camp?”
“It’s not a camp. We all live in a big old farmhouse that we heat with wood. There are twenty-three of us, mostly my family and my friends' families.”
“And Tolliver?”
“He just showed up one day with two of his friends. They talked their way into our group, mostly because we needed more able-bodied men.”
Man, twenty-three people in one house. Shit, that was too crowded. I thought just living in a house as part of a family of five was bad enough. I looked around camp. I didn’t want to leave. I liked having King there with me, but I liked it being just me and Sackett even more.
“What about Sackett?” I asked. “Could he live in the house with me.”
“No, I’m afraid not. He’d have to live outside in a dog house.”
“Then I’ll stay here.”
“I thought you might,” King smiled. “If I was your age, that’s what I’d do too.”
“Then you’re not mad at me for staying?”
“No, Trevor. I have no way of knowing what the future will bring, but I think it may be a long time…” King paused. “A really long time, before things get back even close to the way they were. You may need to know how to survive on your own for many years.”
“Thanks for teaching me so much,” I said. “And thanks for sharing this camp.”
“You’re most welcome, Trevor. As you probably figured out, my family has other spots scattered around that are as good as this one. This forest is our families’ old stomping grounds, from long before Grandfather.” King put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll check back on you as the weather permits. Be careful, Son.”
“Yes Sir, I will.”
Sackett and I watched as King shouldered his pack, and, with the shotgun in one hand, walked away with an easy stride. I crouched beside Sackett and was surprised to find tears flowing down my cheek. Sackett licked them right off of my face. I guess he didn’t want me to be embarrassed acting like a girl and all.
It took me a few days to get into the swing of things after King left, but I developed a routine of sorts.
In the morning, b
efore breakfast, me and Sackett climbed to the top of the bluff where I stood on a tall rock and looked all around to see if I could spot smoke from a campfire, just to be sure no people were in the area.
Then, assuming there was no smoke, and there hadn’t been any so far, me and Sackett ate a breakfast of either smoked venison, fresh-cooked fish with watercress salad and pine needle tea, or of spitted rabbit and roasted cattail roots. Sometimes we ate what we caught in the deadfalls, but that was mostly mice and an occasional squirrel. Mouse stew wasn’t my favorite but Sackett liked it just fine.
Next I’d practice with my bow and think about how to make a better one. The one I was using was starting to show a few tiny slivers where the bow bent the most. I doubted it would last the winter. I made a deerskin case to protect it anyway, just like I’d seen in a museum once, only without the decorative beads.
It was now early January and the weather was beginning to get colder. Using some needles and heavy thread from King’s stuff, I cut up a blanket and sewed a liner into my deerskin jacket. I also used part of the blanket to turn my jacket into a hoodie.
I made some deerskin overshoes that I could stuff with dry grass. I lined my jeans with blanket material as well. When I was done, I felt like an old time mountain man. Sackett just looked at me like I was fuckin’ nuts. I don't think he had clothes figured out yet.
One night I went to sleep in the back of the tunnel and awoke to Sackett’s growls and fierce barks. I looked. On the other side of the fire was the biggest damn bear I’d ever thought about seeing and he was coming towards us.
Chapter 11
Me and Sackett were trapped by the bear.
There was snow on the ground when I went to sleep. I thought all the bears were hibernating by now. Apparently this one stayed out late like my adopted dad did every weekend, and most weeknights. I picked up my bow and nocked my best arrow, the one tipped with the sharpest point. The bear just stood there on all fours, swinging a paw from time to time in Sackett’s direction. Its shiny black coat rippled like a beaten carpet with every swing.
EMP (Book 3): 12 Years Old and Alone Page 9