by Watt Key
“I don’t know.”
I drank the cool water and stared at my hands as I swallowed. “I don’t want him to go,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“He’s really not mean.”
“I know.”
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I stood up and started back, and Kit followed. We passed Hal tromping down the slope to the creek in the dark with the dogs following him. I looked up at the sky again, and it was heavy with storm.
“It’s right down there, Hal,” I said. “It’s not far.”
“I’ll find it,” he grumbled.
“Just let the dogs show you where to go.”
Back at the fire I told Kit my plans to build our shelter, then begin to make weapons and traps. I could start by making a bow out of the fish spear I made the night before. It was hard not to wonder about Hal, though, and if he was going to leave. I didn’t want to bring it up when he returned for fear that it might make the idea come to his head if it hadn’t already. Instead, I thought of everything I could to make him comfortable.
“Take some of these pine needles, Hal, and put ’em under your blanket. You can stuff your jacket with dry marsh grass and it’ll make a better pillow.”
Hal sprinkled the pine needles I handed him across the ground halfheartedly. Then he looked around like he might see more marsh grass nearby.
“We can go back down to Kit Creek, and I’ll show you where the soft grass is,” I said.
“I didn’t have a soft pillow last night. I don’t guess I’ll be missin’ one much tonight.”
The thunder rumbled closer, and I looked up at the sky. Don’t rain now, I said to myself. But I knew by the thickness of the air that a storm was closing on us. I looked over at Hal with a sinking feeling. He was spreading his blanket and didn’t seem to notice the weather.
Kit and I watched the fire after Hal rolled up in his blanket to go to sleep. After a few minutes, Kit leaned over and whispered, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s going to rain tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not going to like that,” Kit said.
“We just need to get the shelter built. We’ve gotta get it built fast and get him comfortable. First thing in the mornin’ . . . Then we’ve gotta get him some food he likes.” I looked at Kit. “He’ll stay then. Don’t you think?”
Kit looked at me and nodded quickly, but I could tell he wasn’t sure.
“He’ll stay then,” I repeated to myself.
Kit eventually lay on his side and watched the fire until he fell asleep. I stared at his closed eyes and felt myself getting lonely again. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the crumbled piece of pine bark I’d written to Pap on that morning and dumped it on the hot coals. I lay down and watched a little flame lick the edges of it, creating a thin line of smoke that curled up into the darkness.
24
The rain came hard that night, and red clay ran down the hillside into our hair and down our backs. The three of us sat shivering with wet blankets hanging over our shoulders. I realized I’d made a mistake. Pap had always told me that shelter was the most important thing in the forest. He said you could go for days without water and even weeks without food, but being caught out in a storm would get you sick and maybe dead.
The one thing I knew we had going for us was that it wouldn’t get too cold as long as we had cloud cover to keep the heat down near the ground. The temperature was still well above freezing. We might not get sick if we made a shelter and dried our clothes and blankets before nightfall the next day.
“Let’s go find a magnolia tree!” I yelled at them through the storm. “The leaves are big enough to keep the rain off.” They looked up and nodded at me with chattering teeth. We walked stiffly through the darkness, trying to place our feet where they didn’t slide from under us with the mud. The dogs followed like they didn’t care and didn’t feel the rain at all. I located a magnolia and pointed for them to get under its broad leaves. The three of us crawled beneath and sat with our backs against the trunk.
“Holly trees can keep you out of the rain, too,” I said. They didn’t respond. The dogs settled a few yards from us and watched with their chins on their paws.
The rain didn’t come as hard under the tree but still dripped on us steadily. Hal was the first to put the wet blanket over his head for protection. Kit soon followed, and I was left staring at the two lumps beside me.
“We’re gonna have shelter tomorrow,” I said loudly. “And weapons. We’ll be able to kill a deer and get meat.”
Neither of them replied or moved from under their blankets.
“And no school,” I reminded them. “And we’ll—”
“Shut up, Moon!” Hal yelled.
I grew sick with worry as Hal’s words echoed in my head. I wanted to ask Kit if he was mad at me, too, but I was afraid of what he might say. I lowered my chin to my chest and let my own teeth start to chatter. The rain poured around us and dripped from the leaves down onto my head and then off my bangs and into my lap. After a while, I pulled the blanket over my head and crossed my arms and shivered.
The storm slowed to a cold drizzle in the dark early-morning hours. No one else stirred when I got up and left for the leaning pine tree. Even the dogs nestled deeper into the leaves and seemed to want no part of moving about.
I found my way to the place where we’d made the fire and then walked downhill until I saw the black shadow of the leaning pine and heard the roiling of the swollen creek below. I worked until just after daylight placing long poles of shaved bay branches against the trunk and crossing them with fans of green pine needles to shed the rain. On the inside of the shelter, I cleared the ground of rocks and sticks so that it would make a smooth surface for the marsh grass I would put down later. When the lower shelter was complete, I dragged the soft boughs of bay trees up into the limbs and crisscrossed them to make a platform. On top of those, I laid a bed of dead pine needles that were dried of sap.
An hour after daylight, I had mostly completed a rough shelter that would keep the three of us dry. Above was the lookout platform where we could also sleep when the weather was warm. The drizzling rain had stopped, and the forest was overcast and dripping.
When I returned to the magnolia tree, Kit was there with his blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He smiled weakly.
“Where are Hal and the dogs?” I asked.
Kit hesitated for a moment. “Gone,” he finally said.
“Gone?”
Kit looked worried. “A while ago he got up and left. The dogs followed him.”
“Back to the fire? Lookin’ for me? Where?”
“He said he was going home.”
“Home?” I said.
Kit nodded.
“Already! Which way?”
Kit pointed up the hill. I spun around and ran. I broke from the trees and searched right and then left and saw Hal and the dogs sitting in the distance.
“Hal!” I yelled. The dogs looked back at me, but Hal stared away.
I ran after him, jumping fallen timber and ducking low branches. Once I tripped and fell on my face. When I got up, Hal was watching me. He made me walk the rest of the way until I was stooped before him with my hands on my knees and catching my breath.
“I thought . . . I thought you were leavin’?” I said to the ground.
“I am. Soon as I figure out which way to go.”
“Don’t leave, Hal!”
“I just can’t do this anymore. I’m cold and wet and hungry. I got ticks in my hair—”
I stood up. “I can get ticks out. All you have—”
“I know you can do all that. I’ve never seen anybody that knew more about livin’ out.”
“The shelter’s almost built. I’m gonna make my bow today. I got up early so I could get everything done,” I pleaded.
“I wanna get home,” he said.
“Hal, you know
all that I said about not carin’ who came? Dogs or people? Well, I like it that y’all came.”
Hal looked down like he didn’t know what to say.
“I cared who came,” I said.
“Be honest with you, I could probably take all this for a while longer, but I wanna see my daddy. I got a few more years before I’m eighteen and the state releases me. If I’ve got to spend ’em hidin’ out, I wanna hide out with him as long as possible.”
I didn’t want him to go and I felt like crying, but I knew he was right. “You go ahead, then,” I said. “I wish you were gonna stay with us, but I know about paps and I’d wanna be with mine, too. I thought you just didn’t like me.”
Hal shook his head. “I just wanna see my daddy.”
“Well, you best turn around and go back down the hill, where you can follow the creek. If you trace any water long enough, you’ll get to roads and people. You takin’ those dogs with you?”
“I don’t seem to have much choice. I didn’t ask ’em to come.”
“I’ve never seen dogs take to anybody like that.”
Hal spit. “Well, I ain’t one to be mean to ’em,” he said. “I’d better get on if I’m gonna find a road and hitch a ride to Daddy’s place.”
I nodded.
“Good luck with Alaska,” he said.
“All right. Good luck hidin’ out with your pap.”
Hal smiled weakly and turned to go. I was sitting there watching them walk away when Hal turned and looked at me again. “Thanks for gettin’ me out of Pinson, Moon.”
25
It wasn’t hard to lift Kit’s spirits when he saw the shelter I’d started making. After we set our blankets and jackets out to dry, I moved the wall supports in closer since there would only be the two of us. Then we added another layer of magnolia branches and collected marsh grass to dry in the sun and then spread across the floor later. I explained to Kit the importance of building between two hills with a creek at the bottom. We would be sheltered from the hardest wind and rain of the storms and have plenty of clean water to drink. The leaning pine was green enough so that it wouldn’t collapse, and the giant fan of its wrenched-up root structure diverted water as it came downhill. Since the forest was thick around us, we cleared some branches to the south where sunlight would provide the longest-lasting heat and light to warm and dry out the shelter. Our entrance was cut out of the southeast wall, where we would catch the most daytime sun.
The ceiling of the room was only a few feet from the ground and the walls just wide enough for us to sleep side by side. I explained to Kit that, unlike the shelter I lived in with Pap, this was aboveground and didn’t insulate as well. But with such a small space, our body heat would help us keep each other warm. When the weather wasn’t cold, we would sleep up on the lookout platform.
I was relieved to have our shelter finished. The sky had cleared to blue and the temperature was dropping. A breeze swayed the treetops in our little valley, and I could sense a cold front moving in. But I didn’t want to tell Kit in case it worried him.
Before noon, we gathered rocks and made a cooking pit about fifteen feet away so that we wouldn’t catch fire to our shelter. Kit found two logs that he rolled over to the pit for our seating and looked from the logs to me with pride. When the sun was directly over our heads we had a camp area that would have made Pap proud.
For lunch we boiled acorns in a soup can that Kit had found floating in the creek. While he was straining the acorns using a sock, I caught a snapping turtle. I cut the meat from its shell, and we boiled it in the same can with some sassafras root.
After lunch, the sun mostly dried our clothes. We were tired after our long morning and lay back in the sun with full stomachs and the treetops swishing gently overhead. I looked at Kit and he was smiling at the sky. “It’s good, isn’t it?” I said.
Kit nodded without looking at me.
“That storm washed away our trail,” I said. “Sanders won’t be able to get any more dogs after us now. We’re gonna be okay, Kit.”
“I know,” he said.
I closed my eyes and napped.
Before the sun set, I finished making my bow and two arrows. The arrows were made from cattail stems I’d gathered earlier. An owl or a hawk had dropped the carcass of a dead squirrel nearby. I used the leg bones to shape tips for my arrows, which I tied with some intestine from the turtle. Holding the arrows high over the fire shrank the intestine until the points were secured tightly. My shoelaces didn’t make the best bowstring, but they would have to do until I was able to kill a larger animal and make a string from its sinew. I told Kit we would be ready to hunt in the morning.
The temperature was dropping quickly and we put on our dry jackets. Looking at the blankets, still on their drying sticks, I knew they wouldn’t be enough to keep Kit comfortable. I sent him to collect several large stones from the creek. When he got back, we let them heat in the coals of our fire until they were hot to the touch. Then we dug a small depression in our shelter floor and placed them in it. After covering the floor again with about four inches of dirt, we laid down a few inches of the dry marsh grass. The stones would remain hot into the next day and keep us warm from beneath that night.
We ate what was left of our acorns, turtle meat, and sassafras turtle broth for supper. I could tell Kit was ready to sleep and didn’t want to admit it, so I told him there wasn’t anything left to do. I spread the three blankets on the floor of the shelter. Kit’s eyes were half closed as he crawled inside and pulled the top two over him. I walked down to the creek with stiff legs and a sore back. I washed the soup can and brought back water for putting out the coals. As the fire hissed and smoked, I sat and listened to the forest and felt proud of all we’d accomplished.
26
The warm stones beneath us and the thick walls of the shelter kept us warm that night as the icy front settled over the forest. When morning came, we lay on our backs between the blankets well after daylight, not wanting to face the cold.
“I hope Hal made it,” Kit said.
“He made it if he followed the creek.”
“What if he had to spend the night out there?”
“He had his jacket and those dogs to huddle up with.”
Kit was quiet with his thoughts. “Bet he likes those dogs now,” he finally said.
We laughed at Kit’s joke.
“When do we have to get out from under here?” he said.
I lifted the edge of the blanket and exhaled into the air. My breath clouded out before me. I let the blanket back down over my face. “We’ll let the sun warm things up for a little while.”
“Good,” Kit said.
I guessed it to be about eight o’clock when we crawled outside. It was just below freezing and the leaves were brittle and icy under my feet. We pulled the blankets out of the shelter and draped them over our shoulders for warmth. I gave Kit the extra one, but he still shivered and I knew that, as thin as he was, the cold probably passed right through him.
“Maybe we should make those deerskin clothes,” he said to me.
I was determined to make sure that Kit didn’t get uncomfortable and leave like Hal. “You stay here,” I said. “I’ll go huntin’ and get a deer for us.”
Kit nodded and started gathering wood to rekindle the fire.
It wasn’t long before the sun warmed the forest into the low forties. I moved silently along the top of a ridge where I hoped to spot a deer feeding near a wide creek below. Even though I knew I would be able to find game, I was worried about my weapon. Pap and I had made plenty of spears and bows and arrows, but only for practicing in case there was ever a time when we wouldn’t be able to get bullets. We had killed squirrels and rabbits with our homemade weapons, but never something as large as a deer. I wasn’t sure that my hickory stick and shoelaces would shoot an arrow with enough force.
After I crept across the ridge for close to twenty minutes, I spotted a doe. I angled downhill, stopping whenever she lifted he
r head and looked about. I slipped quietly through the trees until I was about twenty yards from her. She didn’t detect me because there was no breeze and the ground leaves were moist and silent from the melting frost.
I placed the tree between myself and the doe so that I had cover while I prepared my bow and arrow. Once I had the nock of the cattail shaft fitted to my taut shoelace string, I craned my head around the tree. The doe fed with her head down again. It seemed that the entire forest had become quiet, watching me and the deer. I lifted the bow, pulled back the arrow, and leveled it on the doe’s neck. When I released, the bow thwonged noisily and the doe leaped into the air as the arrow caught her just above the shoulder. She crashed through a gallberry thicket at a full run, and I felt myself shaking uncontrollably. Pap had told me about buck fever, but I had never had it until then.
I found her a hundred yards down the ridge by following her blood trail. The arrow was broken off near the skin where she fell on it, and a faint trickle of blood came from the wound. Her glazed eyes told me she was dead. Just to make certain, I nudged her with my foot and she didn’t move.
Even after I had field-dressed the deer, she felt over a hundred pounds, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get her back to camp alone. Taking a long piece of wisteria vine, I strung her up a tree. I made sure her head swung a few feet from the ground because I didn’t want coyotes to get to my kill before I returned with Kit.
When I told Kit I’d killed a deer, he leaped up from shelling acorns and followed me to the ridge. We skinned and butchered the doe on the spot until all that was left was the carcass hanging from the tree. I explained that we’d return when the ants and sun had cleaned the bones, and we’d make tools from them.
“At the bottom of this hill is a big creek,” I told Kit. “We’ll call it Deer Creek. It’ll be a good swimmin’ place when we get some warm days.”
We pulled the rest of the deer on one of the blankets. Back at the shelter, the first thing I did was make two drying racks. On one we placed the stomach, intestine, bladder, and sinew. These first three items could be cleaned and used for food storage, while the sinew could be pounded and separated for thread, fishing line, traps, and bowstrings. On the second rack I put the venison that I planned to build a fire under and smoke.