by Watt Key
“Y’all sit out there and watch those bottles?”
“We’d watch for a while. Wouldn’t be long before Daddy’d get to shootin’. He likes to shoot bottles. Sometimes we’d line a bunch of ’em on the edge of the pit and blow ’em to pieces.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Shootin’ bottles.”
Hal stared into the fire. “He said I was his best friend. He cried when I left with Momma. I didn’t like seein’ him cry.”
“My pap was my best friend, too,” I said. “I cried when I knew he was dyin’.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. An owl called from down the ravine. “I just remember the hospitals I was in,” Kit said into the fire. “I got to be friends with a couple of the nurses and doctors, but I’d always have to move on to another hospital or boys’ home.” Kit looked up at me. “I’ve been in a lot of places besides Pinson. I used to live at the Crichton Children’s Hospital in Delaware until they found I had an aunt in Alabama. They sent me down here to live with her, but by the time the paperwork was done and I was on the bus, she was dead.”
“She died while you were on the bus?” Hal said.
Kit nodded. “That’s right. I got to Birmingham and stayed at the hospital there while they decided what to do with me. I got sick again and ended up staying for a year. They stuck me in the back with needles and gave me medicine that made my hair fall out. They said I almost died. When the doctors decided I was better, they sent me to the George Jenkins Boys’ Home in Montgomery. It was the worst place I’ve ever stayed, but anything was better than the shots at the hospital. George Jenkins didn’t have air-conditioning, and it was stuffed full of boys in a bunk room without windows. You could hear people breathing at night like they had honey in their throats and were about to choke. When you’d wake up in the mornings, sweat soaked your bed. After six months I got sick again and they sent me back to Birmingham. I stayed in the hospital another year before I was better and they sent me to Pinson.”
“He’s what they call ‘property of the state,’” Hal said.
“Well, so are you,” said Kit.
“Yeah, but you’re the real thing.”
Kit’s face grew tight with frustration. “No more real than you, Hal!”
“You’re not anybody’s property now,” I interrupted. “Neither one of you.”
“That’s right, Hal. I’m not anybody’s property.”
Hal leaned back on his elbows and spit to the side. “Whatever,” he said.
Kit looked at me. “We’re still going to Alaska, right? You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
“Course we’re goin’ to Alaska,” I said. “Soon as we get you two trained and get supplies. I figure we’ve made close to five miles today. We’d have gone farther if there weren’t so many hills. Tomorrow we’ll walk some more to get far away from Sanders. We can start makin’ camp tomorrow late afternoon.”
“I wonder how big this forest is?” Kit said. “We haven’t seen a road or heard a car since the fire tower.”
“It’s a national forest,” Hal said. “They’re about as much woods as you can find.”
“Are we going to build a shelter like the one you lived in?” Kit asked.
“No, we’ll do that when we get to Alaska. I’ve got another kind in mind for here.”
Kit smiled to himself. He rolled into his blanket and stared at the sky like he was thinking of Alaska. Hal and I watched the fire for a while without speaking. I thought about what Kit had said about all of those places he’d lived and of Hal not getting to see his pap.
“Hal?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You have any paper in your pockets?”
“What for?”
“Pap said I could write him letters and burn ’em and he’d read the smoke.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of. No, I don’t have any.”
“You never heard of that?”
“No.”
“Have you ever heard of that, Kit?”
Kit shook his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.”
“You two are screwed up,” Hal said. “I’m goin’ to sleep.”
I got up and put my blanket over the clothes so that they wouldn’t collect more moisture from the air that night.
“What are you gonna sleep with?” Kit asked.
“I’ll be okay with just my clothes.”
Hal grunted disapprovingly.
I stretched out by the fire again and put my hands behind my head. “Hal?” I said.
“What.”
“Maybe you could teach me some good cuss words sometimes. I’ll say ’em to Sanders.”
“You ain’t sayin’ nothin’ to Sanders while I’m around.”
“I’ll whip up on him, then.”
“No you won’t. Go to sleep.”
22
I woke before sunup and climbed out of the ravine through thick fog. At the top of the hill, the land looked like islands of treetops between the clouds. I sat on a smooth stone and watched the sunlight slide up the trees and listened to the forest come alive. I thought about Hal and Kit still asleep. I was glad they were with me. Then I thought about Pap again. Using a piece of pine bark and a rock shard, I began to scratch a note to him. I soon discovered that it would take me all day to tell him everything that I wanted to say, so I settled for only a few words.
Pap, I love you.
From somewhere below I heard a dog barking, and it wasn’t Snapper. It was too far away. It was another dog coming down the ravine. I shoved the pine bark into my pocket and began to run back down the hill to the pond. When I dropped into the fog again, the sound of the dog was faint and dulled.
Snapper rose as I stumbled into camp. He took Hal’s blanket on his back with him, and Hal sat up suddenly. “Hey!” he said to the dog and then crossed his arms over his chest. “Damn, it’s cold.”
“Shhh!” I said. “Get up, Kit!”
Hal and Kit took their clothes from under the blanket on the drying rack and began to put them on.
“They’re still wet!” Hal said.
“They’ll dry out the rest of the way when you get walkin’,” I said. “Now, listen.”
“What is it?” Kit asked.
“Sanders is back with another dog,” I said quietly.
Hal snatched his blanket from Snapper’s back. “Gimme that!” he said.
“There’s a dog coming, Hal,” Kit said.
Hal scratched his head. He threw the blanket to the ground, frustrated. “I heard. He’ll just have to eat me, ’cause I can’t run. I haven’t had any decent sleep in two days. I’m half frozen. I got a crick in my neck. I smell like a bloodhound that’s got ticks and mud and spit all over him . . . I just can’t run. I can’t climb a tree.”
“Get quiet!” I said. I heard the dog’s bark through the fog again. I went and stood beside Snapper and watched him while I listened. He whined and looked at me. “It’s comin’ too fast for it to be on a leash. I think Sanders got up early and turned another one loose on us.”
“Maybe it’s one of those that’s naturally mean,” Kit said.
I shook my head. “It’s a bloodhound. Sounds just like Snapper.”
We set out that morning with another dog added to our company:
Sawbone
Davy Sanders
34 Big Pine Road
Gainesville, Alabama
“What’re we gonna do with all these damn dogs?” Hal asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders. “We don’t have to do anything with ’em. They’ll do what they wanna do on their own.”
“How we gonna feed ’em if they keep followin’ us?”
“Dogs are better at gettin’ food than people are. They’ll be all right.”
We climbed from the ravine and started up out of the bottom. Along the way I showed Hal and Kit the difference between a red oak tree and a white oak tree, and we collected acorns until our pockets were bulging.
When we came to the top of the hill, we sat down to rest. The fog had evaporated out of the valleys and we saw the countryside rolling away to the south. Patches of green showed the pines and darker gray patches showed the hardwoods. The sky was clear and the forest flicked with life. A broadwing hawk sailed between the hills at eye level. IU lay back in the leaves and the others did the same.
“I’d like to see this when the dogwoods bloom,” I said.
“You got anything to drink?” Hal asked me.
“There’s gonna be water at the bottom of this hill. There’s water at the bottom of every hill.”
“What about the dogwoods?” Kit asked.
“They’re the prettiest trees out here. It’s like white cotton in the air. Plays tricks on your eyes.”
“Can you eat it?” Hal asked.
“No. But you can eat sparkleberries and you can eat honeysuckle. They’ll be out at the same time in most of the same places as dogwoods. A little later we’ll get blackberries and mulberries and all kinds of stuff.”
Suddenly, Hal hollered and rolled over. I sat up quickly and looked at him. He was rubbing his arm and eyeing a thistle plant growing beside him. “That thing’s good eatin’, Hal,” I said.
I got up and walked over to the plant. I used the knife to cut a stem and strip its outer layer. “See here,” I said, holding it up.
“There’s more over there,” Kit said. He pointed to an open field to our left.
We spent close to a half hour picking and peeling thistle stems before setting off down the other side of the hill. That afternoon we stopped at a creek that flowed from a marsh with bay trees and cattails. After a lunch of acorns and thistle stems and our leftover fish, I took off my clothes and waded naked into the cattails to gather our supper. Blue herons rose from their nests high in the leafless tops of the cypress trees and squawked at me.
Hal and Kit were lying on their blankets when I returned. The sun and lunch had made them drowsy. When I told them to look at my armful of cattail roots, only Kit opened his eyes slightly and smiled. I let them rest for a few minutes more before we set out through the hills again. We tromped up from the bottom and across a field of dried clay and rock shards. Once we were in the trees, we walked east along the top of a ridge. It was unusually warm and all of us wore our jackets around our waists.
“Where you reckon that Sanders fellow is?” Hal asked.
“I don’t know. You scared of him?”
“I don’t take to anybody that wants to shoot me.”
“He won’t find us, Hal. Pap and I hid out for years and nobody found us.”
Hal shook his head and didn’t say anything.
“We can stop and set some traps if you want.”
“No,” Hal said. “Just keep goin’ to wherever it is you’re takin’ us. God knows I don’t know where in the hell we are.”
23
Towards late afternoon we had traveled a few miles across hills and down several valleys and through their creeks. I came to the top of a ridge and knelt to examine a track. I’d only seen one such track ever before, but there was no mistaking it. Kit and Hal caught up to me and stood over my shoulder. “What is it?” Kit asked.
“It’s a puma track,” I said. “Pap told me that a puma needs thirty square miles of territory with no sign of people.”
“That means we’re far away from civilization?” Kit asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Great,” Hal said. “In the middle of nowhere with a mountain lion.”
“It won’t hurt us. Pap said I was too big.”
“That boy in Old Yeller was about your size,” Hal said.
“That’s just a made-up story. Pap knew about animals.”
“All right, you fight it then,” Hal said. “With that knife of yours.”
Kit and I smiled at each other and started down the other side of the ridge. Just before the sun fell below the forest canopy, we stopped and sat on a log to rest. I looked around and studied the trees. “This is a good place,” I said. “We’ll camp here.”
“Finally!” Hal said. “What’s for supper?”
“Snake and dressin’.”
Hal looked at me. “Snake!”
“Snakes are good,” I said. “There may be some out since it was so warm today. I’ll make some pine-needle tea to go with it.”
Hal spit at the ground. “I ain’t eatin’ any damn snake. It was bad enough eatin’ fish out of your old sock.”
“I’ll eat some,” Kit said.
“Come on,” I said to Kit. “You can help me. Hal, there’s a white oak tree over there. You collect some acorns from under it while we’re gone.”
“More acorns . . . What about real meat?” Hal asked.
“We’re gonna get some soon,” I said. “We’ll have all the good food we need once I rig some weapons.”
Hal rolled his eyes and sighed. He got up and dragged his feet in the direction of the oak tree with the dogs following. Kit and I set out through an open stand of old pine trees. After a while, I found what I was looking for. I showed Kit a longleaf pine filled with holes starting about fifty feet from the ground. From each of the holes sap ran down the tree, making it look like a giant candlestick.
“Those holes were made by a red-cockaded woodpecker,” I said, pointing at the top of the tree. Kit nodded and stared.
We walked around the tree. “Sometimes, there’ll be a snake climbin’ up to get the woodpeckers. He’ll get to those sap runs, and they’ll make him dizzy. He’ll fall to the ground. If you catch him after he falls, he’ll usually be stunned. You can just pick him up by the tail and knock him against a tree.”
“I don’t see any snakes,” Kit said.
“Poke around in the grass and we might find one. Be a corn snake or a rat snake prob’ly.”
After some kicking around, I found a black rat snake. I grabbed it by the tail and knocked it against a tree. Kit wanted to carry it, so I gave it to him, and he dragged it back with us.
Hal was sleeping against a log when we returned. He opened his eyes and winced at the snake. Kit swung it towards him, and Hal rolled over and shouted, “Hey!”
Kit and I began to laugh. “It’s just a black rat snake,” Kit said confidently.
Hal held up his fist and shook it at us with wide eyes. “I’ll trade a black eye for a black snake! You keep that thing away from me.”
I showed Kit how to make a slit down the belly and around the neck and peel the skin back like a sock. Afterwards, we removed the head and intestine and stuffed the stomach cavity with a paste made from white oak acorns, cattail roots, and thistle.
I found a piece of dead wood nearby and dropped it in front of Kit. “You remember how I started that fire?”
Kit nodded and took the bow drill from me.
“I need a bath,” Hal complained.
“Sweat cleans as good as swimmin’,” I said.
He looked at me and didn’t say anything.
The sun set and the birds became quiet as the forest grew dark. I left Kit and Hal and the dogs and walked downhill to look for a creek. I hadn’t gone far when I found one of the giant loblolly pines leaning over so I could walk up its trunk and stand high above the ground, which sloped away beneath me. I could hear water down below and the tops of the trees swishing to the breeze. I imagined that I would be able to see a long way with daylight.
When I returned, Kit was still drilling on the wood and faint curls of smoke drifted up from the bowl. I had brought some juniper bark back with me, and I shredded it and laid it in the bowl. I blew on it gently, and a tiny flame appeared.
“I found a creek down there,” I said. “We’ll call it Kit Creek. Got to have names for things.”
Kit smiled and I could tell he liked having a creek named after him. We cooked the snake and dressing on a spit and ate it like sausage. Kit claimed that his was better than anything he’d had at Pinson. Hal didn’t eat his share. He put his back to us and chewed on some of the le
ftover cattails.
After supper, I suggested we go drink from Kit Creek. Hal said he would go later, so Kit and I set out alone. I showed him the tree I found and we walked up into it. “This is where we’ll live for a while,” I told him.
“Up here?”
I nodded. “And underneath. We’ll make a lookout up here and build our sleepin’ room down below.”
Gray clouds moved over us, and the forest grew even darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I looked up at the sky and felt a twang of worry. For the first time, it occurred to me that I might not be able to keep Kit and Hal comfortable. I tried not to think about the weather and continued to tell Kit about our new home. “We’ll start tomorrow,” I said. “We’ve got water below and plenty of forest to the east. Hardwood down below and pine forests up top. That’ll give us all types of plants to eat.”
Kit looked around like he was imagining us there. “I’ll bet you can see a long ways from here with daylight,” he said.
I nodded. “That’s what I was thinkin’. We’ll be able to tell better tomorrow mornin’.”
“And you can whip up on anybody who climbs this tree trunk.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Somebody comin’ up here’s gonna get a butt-whippin’.”
Kit became excited and laughed. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get some water.”
We came down the tree and walked to the creek. “I don’t think Hal likes it out here,” Kit said.
Kit only said something I already knew, but I hadn’t let myself believe it. “He’s just gettin’ used to things,” I said.
We bent and scooped our hands full of water and drank. “He was talking some more about his daddy while you were gone a while ago. He says he wants to see him again.”
I took a deep breath. “You think he’s gonna leave?”