by Watt Key
Once I got away from the shelter, it felt good to be on my own again after such a long time staying close to Pap and feeling his worries. I looked up into the trees and studied the yellows and reds of the changing leaves. The birds flitted about and made shrill cries from deep in the bush. It felt like I could breathe easier, and the smells of cedar and stinkbugs flowed into my nose.
Without meaning to, I wandered within hearing distance of the lodge. Once the sound of power tools and hammers reached my ears, I was too curious not to slip closer for a better look.
The workmen had moved a house trailer onto the site, and they seemed to be living in it. More lumber was stacked in the yard, along with roofing material and bricks. The lodge was already framed two stories high. I wanted to stay and watch the men working, but Pap’s warnings about contact with outsiders started to play in my head. I crept back into the forest and took a different trail to the shelter.
Pap was sitting outside, weaving a basket from muscadine vine when I walked up. I stood in front of him, ready to tell him why I didn’t have any mulberries, but he didn’t ask about them or anything else.
Finally I said, “They’re puttin’ walls on that lodge, Pap.”
His fingers stopped and he looked up at me. “I don’t ever want you goin’ near it again.”
“But it’s not even finished.”
“I don’t care. You heard what I said.”
“You think maybe when the lawyer moves in we could talk to him and he’d let us stay on?”
Pap looked at me again. “I don’t know, son! Why don’t you get back to work and forget about that lawyer and his business.”
As fall passed, the leaves began dropping from the trees and the forest canopy became a solid green fan of pine needles. We pulled our deerskin jackets from between the cedar boards and waterproofed them with mink oil for the season. The carrots would stay in the ground for a while longer, but the other garden vegetables needed to come out before the first frost. I was always excited about the last harvest of the year because I knew it meant we’d go to Mr. Abroscotto’s store to sell whatever we had.
I was afraid that Pap might tell me to stay behind, but he didn’t. He shouldered the sack of vegetables one morning and told me to get my jacket and come with him. Pap would usually be walking slow and studying the forest. He’d look for deer scrapes and hog rootings and any other signs that might help us find game once the weather turned cold. But that day his mind was on other things and he stared straight ahead and didn’t slow down.
Mr. Abroscotto was sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper when we walked in.
“Mornin’, George,” Pap said.
Mr. Abroscotto set down his paper and stood up. “Mornin’, Oli. How you, Moon?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“What do you two have for me?”
Pap showed Mr. Abroscotto the sack of vegetables. “Cucumbers, eggplant, and beets,” he said.
Mr. Abroscotto took the sack to the scales. He weighed the vegetables separately and then put them all in a brown box on the floor.
“How does twenty bucks sound?” he said.
“If that’s what you can do, I don’t guess we’ve got much choice.”
Mr. Abroscotto nodded and paid him from the register. Pap fidgeted the money into his pocket, and I knew he was in a better mood.
“What more have you heard about that lawyer?” Pap asked.
Mr. Abroscotto shook his head. “Haven’t heard much. See his workmen in here all the time.”
“You know when they’re gonna be done?”
“They’re tellin’ me December. Gonna be moved in for Christmas.”
I stood behind Pap and looked around the store at the shelves of candy and canned food. I was careful not to let Pap see me, because I knew it would make him snap at me. Sometimes he made me wait outside while he went in and traded. He said it was too tempting for a boy inside the store.
“What’s he gonna do with that big place?” Pap asked.
“I hear he likes to squirrel hunt.”
Pap shook his head and looked mad. “All that to hunt squirrels?”
“Guess some people got more money than they know what to do with.”
“Guess so,” Pap grumbled. “Let me have some salt, some .22 bullets, vinegar, box of nails, and matches.”
Mr. Abroscotto left to collect our supplies.
“How about some sugar this time, Pap?”
“Don’t need sugar.”
“How about some canned peas like we had that one time?”
“We’ve got a pile of toasted acorns you haven’t touched yet.”
I figured he wasn’t in the mood to buy extras. “We’ve got everything we need already, don’t we, Pap?”
Pap nodded. “Got everything we need,” he repeated.
We walked back up the road and into the forest, where we took a trail that I liked through a grove of cedars and tall field grass. That was the last time Pap left the forest.
3
Winter had been on us for two months, and the forest creatures were fat and fluffy in their new coats. It had started to snow once, but the ground didn’t hold it, which always disappointed me. I only remembered a few times when there was enough snow to make tracks in. One of those times Pap and I made pine-bark sleds and had races down the riverbank. I’d always wanted to do it again.
On the morning Pap broke his leg, the north wind was tossing the tops of the trees and gray clouds raced over our heads. Pap was always alert when the wind stirred the forest floor and cartwheeled the leaves. It was hard to tell which sounds were natural and which weren’t.
We were checking traps along a beaver dam only a mile from the lodge. With the wind blowing like it was and us being so close to Mr. Wellington’s place, Pap must have been extra nervous. I think he was too busy looking around for signs of people to pay attention to where he was going. He slipped on the dam and got his shin caught between two branches. He had just enough time to turn and look at me before he fell into the beaver pond on his back. The water was so clear I saw his face staring up at me and wincing in pain. I jumped down after him and jerked at the branches until his leg came loose. The rest of Pap splashed into the water, and then he dragged himself out of the pond. After he was propped against a cypress knee, I went and found some sticks to use for a splint, and we bound his leg with the leather shoelaces from my moccasins.
That afternoon, I got Pap back to the shelter in the wheelbarrow. He pulled himself inside, and I saw how much his leg hurt by the sweat that soaked his face and clothes. I helped him up on the hide pile and stayed next to him to give him water as he needed it. Pap didn’t like doctors, and he didn’t like medicine that you couldn’t find in the forest, so there wasn’t much else for me to do.
Sometime that night Pap told me to take his boot off. I watched his hands white-knuckle the roots above his head while I pulled slowly on the heel. He didn’t make any noise because it was nighttime.
When I got the boot off, bloody water and sand poured out of it. I cut the sock away with my knife and placed it to the side. We saved everything. Even a bloody sock could make a rag to patch clothes.
In the dim light of the grease lamp, I saw parts of Pap’s bone coming through his shin. Seeing bone and blood and wounds was nothing to me. I dealt with them almost every day killing, skinning, and butchering animals. I only hesitated so that Pap would tell me what to do.
“Get a rag and wipe it off,” he said. “Boil some water and put the rag in the water before you do.”
“So the wound won’t get infected?”
“That’s right.”
I went to the wood stove and did as he said. When I returned and began to gently wipe his leg, I watched his face. I saw his expression change when the rag went over the jagged portion of bone.
“Does it hurt?”
“Just keep wipin’.”
“You want me to go get Mr. Abroscotto?”
“Nothin’ he can do you can’t do you
rself, boy.”
I nodded and kept wiping. I stayed up with him that night after the wound was cleaned. After a while, Pap didn’t seem to be concerned that we stay quiet anymore. He lay there and talked to me and told me most of what he was thinking.
“Tell me again why we live out here,” he asked me.
“Because we never asked for anything and nobody ever gave us anything. Because of that, we don’t owe anything to anybody.”
“Who is it that thinks we owe them somethin’?”
“The government.”
“That’s right.”
After a moment: “And what’s gonna happen to everybody that relies on the government?”
“When the war comes, they’re not gonna be able to take care of themselves,” I said.
“They’ll have forgotten how to grow food and trap game, how to make their own clothes and shelter,” he said.
“How to find their own medicine in the forest,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“How to shoot rifles.”
“That’s right,” Pap said. “All of those things.”
“And I know how to do it all.”
He nodded. I stood, walked over to the stove, and put some more wood into it. Even when Pap let us burn it all night, the heat was rarely enough to keep our breath from streaming in front of our faces.
I returned to the hide pile. “I’m not gonna get better,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not gonna get better.”
“You’re gonna die?”
He nodded.
I felt my stomach twist. “Tonight?”
“No, but soon. Somethin’ like this leg won’t heal.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Think about it. Think about a deer that breaks its leg. What happens?”
“But you’re not a deer!” I yelled.
“There’s no difference. We’re all animals.”
I felt like I would get sick on the floor. “What will I do?”
“That’s what I’m gonna tell you.”
Pap said that it might not be long before Mr. Wellington ran me off the property. I would have to find someone else to live with. Pap said there were many other people like us all over the country. He said there were more now than ever. Most of them were out west, in Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Alaska was even better. A man could still homestead in Alaska. He could get to places where no one would find him. People could still make a living off trapping up there. Hides were worth something in Alaska. I’d have to find my way there.
“But how?”
“You’ll figure it out. You can’t rely on me anymore. Just remember the things I taught you. Take cover durin’ the day and move at night. Use the stars. Don’t trust anybody. Write me smoke letters if you get lonely.”
“Do you talk to Momma with smoke letters?”
“Sometimes I do,” he said.
“Does she say anything back?”
“She does, but not in the way you’d think.”
“How will I get answers from the smoke?”
Pap didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You just do what I tell you,” he finally said.
For the first couple of days I tried to keep our regular routine each morning while Pap was sick. I rose before daylight and checked the traps. I brought back what I caught, skinned it, butchered it, and prepped the hide. I hauled water from the creek and cut needles for tea. In the late afternoon, I did my reading lessons.
But it was hard to keep my mind on these things with Pap lying in the shelter getting worse. Suddenly it seemed like there wasn’t a reason for doing anything. Mr. Abroscotto hadn’t bought our hides in years. We had plenty of water stored up already, and if Pap was going to die soon, why did we need more? And how would I find a place like Alaska on my own?
I couldn’t clean Pap’s wound without him twisting about in pain. Finally, he told me to stop worrying over it and leave it alone. “It won’t do it any good,” he said. “It’s too far gone to trouble over.”
“It’s not too much trouble, Pap. I don’t mind.”
“Leave it be. Put that rag away.”
“What if we cut it off?”
“Too late. Infection’s up my whole leg.”
I started crying. “I can’t live by myself, Pap!”
He shook his head. “Shut up, boy. You don’t cry, you hear me?”
I wiped my eyes and nodded at the floor. I put my arms around his neck. “I can’t do it, Pap. I can’t make it to Alaska. I can’t fight the government. I like it here. I don’t see why I can’t get Mr. Abroscotto to come help you.”
“He’ll just get the law down on you.”
“I can run from the law. I can get away.”
Pap didn’t answer me. He was quiet for a long time. “You’ll be all right,” he finally said. “I don’t wanna hear any more about it.”
4
I wrote Pap a letter that first night after I buried him.
Dear Pap,
I’m going to see Mr. Abroscotto in the morning and ask him if he knows anything about getting to Alaska. Seeing as how I’ll be leaving soon, I’ll pull up the traps tomorrow and pack them in the boxes. I am going to take your watch and sell it to Mr. Abroscotto. I thought about keeping it for myself, but I don’t need it and you were never much on things a person didn’t need. I’m scared, Pap, but I know I can lick most anything three times my size. I know I can survive on my own and keep away from the government. I’m lonely, too, but you said that will go away after a while. It doesn’t seem like a feeling that goes away easy. But you always knew about things, so I’m not worried.
Love, Moon
I burned the letter in the woodstove and then walked to the back corner of the shelter where Pap kept his personal storage. It was a metal ammunition box containing his watch and a few other things he called his “valuables” and never let me see. The first time he brought out the box was when Momma died. He showed me the watch and said she gave it to him when they were married. It had “Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Blake—1968” etched into the back. On my eighth birthday I asked about the watch again. I think it made him remember Momma, and he let me study it. He told me that one day it would be mine.
When I got the box out that night, I realized that Pap hadn’t told me where the key was that opened it. I didn’t want to bust it in case I damaged the watch and anything else in there that I might be able to sell. I searched under Pap’s bed and up in the roots of the ceiling. I felt around the hole that led to the stage-two area. After a while, I gave up and sat with the box between my legs on the hide pile.
The fire in the stove went out, and I didn’t feel like starting it again. The shelter grew cold and damp and dark. I thought I would have nightmares if I slept, so I tried to stay awake and imagine what it would be like in Alaska. But I got so lonely that I decided nightmares were worth it. I closed my eyes and slept.
The next morning I woke before daylight and went to pick up the traps and release or throw away anything that was caught in them. There were two dead coons with stiff, matted hides. I pulled them from the steel jaws and tossed them into the brush because the meat was spoiled. When I returned, I packed the traps in the two wood boxes we used to store them and stacked them beside the shelter.
After watching Pap die, I found that his finally being gone had made things easier on me. I still felt a deep, lonely hole, but as much as I missed him, I could now concentrate on what he’d told me to do and get started to Alaska.
5
I put my box on the floor of Mr. Abroscotto’s store and sat on it. I was tired and breathing hard.
“You all right, Moon?” Mr. Abroscotto asked me.
I nodded at the floor.
“You carry that box all the way from your place by yourself?”
I nodded again. Finally catching my breath, I looked up at him. “I was hopin’ you might wann
a buy the stuff in it.”
“Where’s your father at?”
“He’s dead.”
Mr. Abroscotto put his hands on the counter and leaned towards me. “Dead!”
“Yessir.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“How?”
“He broke his leg and it got infected.”
Mr. Abroscotto frowned and shook his head. “I guess he didn’t want you comin’ after a doctor.”
“Nossir. He always said when it—”
“I know what he always said. You wait here while I call the constable.”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Mr. Abroscotto. I already buried him up in the cedar grove near Momma.”
“Moon, you can’t just go off buryin’ somebody without lettin’ the law know about it.”
“Pap wanted it that way.”
“Well, your pap wanted lots of things that don’t make sense. I don’t mind tellin’ you that.” Mr. Abroscotto walked over to the wall and lifted the telephone receiver.
I stood and grabbed my box off the floor. “If you call the law, they’ll take me away. I don’t aim to go with ’em.”
He watched me for a moment and then put the receiver back on the hook. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Put your box down,” he said. “Get that chair behind you, and pull it up here.”
I did as he said.
“What do you want to eat?” he asked me.
“I don’t have money for extras. I gotta save it.”
“That’s all right. It’s free.”
“Bologna and cheese.”
“Mustard?”
“No thanks. That’s all.”
Mr. Abroscotto began to fix me a sandwich. My mouth watered at the bologna, cheese, and bread that I only saw when I came to his store.
“I’m sorry about your father, Moon. I didn’t mean to sound like I wasn’t.”
“That’s okay. He said I’d feel better after a while.”
“Where you headed when you leave here?”
“Alaska.”
“How you plan on gettin’ to Alaska?”
“Sell the watch and things in this box. And I’ve got the money left over from last time we were here.”