The Troop

by Gayne C Young

  “Of course drinking gas will kill you,” Liam argued before Johnny cut him off.

  “Now for the second surprise of the morning…breakfast is fresh deer jerky.”

  “How can jerky be fresh?” Andrew laughed.

  “Hush Andrew,” Johnny laughed back as he handed everyone a stick of dry deer me. “OK on the count of three. One…two…three.”

  We all bit down into the meat and the compliments soon followed.

  “That’s pretty good,” Carl offered.

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “I like it.”

  “Real good Johnny,” I said.

  “I could live on this,” Andrew admitted.

  “Good,” Dad laughed. “Because that’s about all we got.”

  35

  The hike up to the waterhole was an easy one compared to the 14-mile round trip excursion we had completed just hours earlier. Those of us that had gone on that supply run were tired and dragging compared to the others. We were all carrying small daypacks loaded with Camelbacks of water and diluted Gatorade and towels and swimsuits while Dad and Johnny carried the javelina on a pole similar to the way we carried the chicken wire. Just looking at them carrying our food that way made my shoulders hurt.

  The high cliffs surrounding part of the waterhole were still casting shadows on parts of the beach when we arrive. The air was warm, and we were all happy to be there. We all worked together and in no time had a fire going and a 20-pound javelina cooking on a spit just above the flames. We set up a tarp at the edge of the tree line to give us more shade and we all spread out our towels and packs out underneath it and underneath some of the larger scrub oaks that provided shade. I was the first to hit the ground but was soon followed by Carl, Jack, and Andrew.

  I don’t know about them, but I fell asleep almost immediately after lying down in the shade.

  When I woke it was to the smell of roasting meat and sunscreen. I looked to my left to see Liam greasing himself down with plenty of SPF 35.

  “Were you just too tired to stay awake?” Liam joked in baby talk.

  “I guess,” I mumbled as I sat up. “Was I the only one to zonk out?”

  “No way dude. I think everybody that went last night but me got a little nap time in.”

  “You’re not tired?”

  “Oh yeah. But I just couldn’t sleep. I’ve been helping to keep the fire going. It’s your turn now.”

  I stood and stretched and tried to get rid of the kinks and soreness from hiking so much then sleeping on the ground. I looked around to see that Carl and Jack were still asleep. Matt, Luke, and Andrew were heading to the fire with armloads of wood and Johnny was tending the meat. I looked to the waterhole to see Dad scrubbing his shorts with what looked like a handful of gravel and leaves. I walked over to him and said, “No scrub brush?”

  “Nope. Of course, I forgot it back at camp.” Dad held up a handful of what actually was gravel and leaves. “But this is working to get most of the gunk out of my shorts.”

  Dad bent down to the water and scrubbed his shorts some more. He rinsed them out then stood and twisted them to ring the excess water out.

  “I’m really proud of you guys,” Dad said again. “The stuff you brought back is really going to help.”

  Maybe it was being so tired or the soreness in my shoulders and lower back, but I was suddenly hit with a wave of sadness. I’m not sure where it came from. Dad just told me how proud he was of me and all the sudden I was anxious and worried. Dad must’ve noticed it because he asked me if anything was wrong.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I tried thinking of what was bothering me and when I couldn’t figure it out, I just started talking to see what came out. “I don’t know…I’m just tired…I guess…I’m worried. Worried about mom and wondering how she and everyone else are doing.”

  “I’m worried about your mom and your sister,” Dad said emphasizing that I’d left out my sister. “I’m worried about everybody too.”

  “You don’t show it,” I argued back suddenly angry.

  “You don’t have to show that you’re worried to be worried,” Dad said.

  “I know,” I admitted now more sad than angry. “I just hate not knowing anything and not being able to do anything about what’s going on at home.”

  “You are doing something,” Dad insisted. “You’re helping us and you’re doing a great job. You’re helping us all to live. And that’s what we have to concentrate on now. Making sure that we’re all OK because that’s all we can control right now.”

  I agreed and Dad pulled me into a hug.

  “Come on Dad,” I mumbled. “The guys are going to see me and I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  36

  Even though talking to Dad for that short amount of time didn’t really resolve anything, doing so made me feel a lot better. I was still worried about mom and my sister and everyone back home but just telling Dad how I felt about not knowing how they were and not being able to help them seemed to ease my worry a bit.

  The rest of the day was fantastic and did a lot to help raise everyone’s spirits. Even Matt ended up laughing a lot and having a good time. We swam, jumped off the small cliffs into the water below, splashed around, had some chicken fights, and relaxed on the gravel beach. Despite all the sunscreen everyone got a little paint from the sun.

  Everyone except Liam.

  He’s a mess.

  His being almost as white as Johnny means he burns pretty easily, even with lots and lots of sunscreen covering his body. And by the end of the day his side had turned black and blue from falling off the gate the night earlier. It looked really, really nasty.

  He looked really, really nasty.

  So nasty that I almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  The only thing that wasn’t great that day – beside Liam’s appearance - was our roasted javelina. It’s not that it was terrible but it sure wasn’t very good. It tasted like a really old and really tough pork chop. Johnny said this was because we didn’t let him marinate the meat with his ghost pepper sauce. Dad said it tasted pretty bad because javelina tastes pretty bad. He then went on to tell everyone how javelina we’re hunted for their hides way back in the 1800s and how companies turned javelina hides into shaving brushes and paintbrushes. Javelina were hunted so much that they almost went extinct.

  Dad turns everything he can to a history lesson.

  “I think a paintbrush would taste better than this meat,” Carl jokingly complained.

  “That’s a real shame, Carl,” Dad replied. “Because we’re all out of paintbrushes to eat. All we have to eat is the skunk pig.”

  Everyone laughed and continued eating their cuts of javelina meat.

  “Speaking of paintbrushes,” Johnny announced like some crazy game show host. “Should we tell them about our planned construction projects?”

  “Construction?” I questioned.

  “I think we should!” Dad replied in the same kind of goofy voice as Johnny.

  “Then be my guest!” Johnny said.

  Dad explained how since we were going to be living at our camp for the unforeseeable future, we should make some improvements. He said we needed to replace the dinning tent with something that offered far better shade and protection and because of that we were going to be constructing a permanent roof.

  “Out of what?” Andrew asked.

  “Lots and lots of cut cedar staves,” Johnny answered.

  “We’ll cut the cedar, haul it back to camp, then build a permanent dinning facility,” Dad explained. He went on to say that we’d also be using the chicken wire we brought back to make traps for rabbit, dove, and quail.

  “And we’ll start making bricks,” Johnny exclaimed.

  “Bricks?” everyone asked.

  “Yep. Adobe bricks,” Johnny said. “We’ll need a lot of them to make Carl’s dam.

  “A dam,” Carl beamed. “We’re really going to make one?”

  “Yeah,” Dad said. “
It’s a good idea. It’ll be nice to have water that much closer to camp even if we do have to filter it.”

  “And it’ll attract more game,” Johnny offered.

  “Then we can make a waterwheel,” Carl dreamed. “And start generating electricity.”

  “Do you know how to do that?” Dad asked already knowing the answer.

  “No,” Carl sadly admitted.

  “Neither do we!” Dad laughed.

  “One thing at a time guys,” Johnny chuckled. “One project at a time.”

  “I don’t know if I can do any of that,” Liam halfway complained while holding his side tight. “I think I’m just too injured.”

  Everyone laughed and rolled their eyes at Liam and then started pelting him with chunks of cooked javelina.

  “OK! OK! I’ll work!” Liam laughed

  37

  I don’t think I’ve ever slept as hard as I did that night. I mean it seems like I just closed my eyes and then it was morning. I’m not even sure if I moved an inch. I woke up in the same position that I started in when I hit the cot.

  It felt good.

  After a breakfast of deer jerky and water we all headed across the valley to where there was a pretty big stand of cedar trees. We call them cedar trees here in Texas but they’re really called ash juniper or blueberry juniper or even Mexican cedar. They grow about 10 feet tall and have lots and lots of limbs that make for good fence posts and, according to Dad and Johnny, really good roof planks. The only problem with Texas cedar is that most people are allergic to them and get really bad headaches and itchy eyes when they bloom in the spring.

  I’m starting to sound like my dad with all this explanation.

  We cut down two old trees and stripped them down until there was nothing but straight limbs. We cut these off the trees and hauled them back to camp to under the dinning fly. The first thing we constructed was several traps. These were easy to do although they took a lot of time to make. The traps are more or less a big box made from cedar stick frames tied together with wire from our tool kit. We covered the frames with chicken wire and made doors of smaller cedar limbs that were spaced apart and looked like jail bars at either end. These bars would swing forward – or inward I guess, it’s kind’a hard to explain – from the top of the cage. When they fell, they got caught on the bottom of the cedar frame. These jail bars were light enough that birds and rabbits could push them inward to enter the cage trying to get it at the bait.

  “How come they can’t open them from the inside?” Luke asked. “The animals I mean.”

  “Because birds and rabbits don’t have hands you idiot,” Liam almost screamed.

  Luke smiled and said, “Oh yeah” but I’m not sure if he really understood.

  We made four of these traps and when we were finished, we carried them out to the road and baited them with a few kernels of corn that we smashed with a rock into an almost powder. Once that was completed, we all gathered back at the dinning tent to make plans for our new covered area.

  Johnny explained that getting long pieces of skinny cedar for the roof would be easy but getting bigger posts to hold the roof up would be more difficult. “Not only that,” Johnny added. “But digging holes in this packed rock soil will be a nightmare. The desert floor isn’t exactly conducive to post hole digging.”

  “So…” Dad started. “Ideas?”

  We all looked around then offered our suggestions.

  “We could bring the roof off the top of the trailer,” Andrew proposed. “It’s high enough and sure sturdy enough and it’s not going anywhere. That’s at least a couple posts we wouldn’t have to deal with.”

  “Good thinking,” Dad and Johnny agreed.

  “We could tie a few smaller posts together to make a thicker post,” I added. “That still means we’d have to bust out a hole in the ground but it could work.”

  Dad and Johnny nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” Dad said.

  “Can we make a few supports out of brick?” Carl asked.

  “Making the bricks, it’s gonna take time,” Johnny said. “We’ve got to form them then let them dry. Making brick supports will push back our dam plans for sure.”

  “Ha!” Liam laughed. “Our dam plans.”

  “I think better shade should come first,” Carl offered. “We can hike for water like we’ve been doing no problem.”

  “Agreed,” Dad said.

  “I agree as well,” Johnny said. “So, let’s make some bricks.”

  38

  I never would have thought in a million years that I’d be making mud bricks in the high desert for summer camp.

  But then I guess I never would’ve thought that the US would go dark following some kind of military attack either.

  Go figure.

  Making adobe bricks was a lot more involved than I thought it’d be. The first thing we did was make the forms. We did this by splitting some cedar staves in half then tying them together into a rectangle with the flat sides facing inwards. We made eight molds, but Johnny said we’d be making more in the days to come.

  We carried our forms and two shovels, two machetes, and a bucket down to the creek across from camp. The water there was barely ankle deep for most of the creek but there was a small pool maybe five foot by ten foot that was almost knee deep.

  “We’re gonna build our dam right here,” Johnny said gesturing to the front of the pool. “And if we do it right, it should back up quite a bit.”

  “How far back is that,” Andrew asked looking up the creek bed.

  “That depends,” Johnny replied. “Depends on how high we build the dam but to build the dam we first have to make lots and lots of bricks.”

  “Lots and lots?” Andrew asked looking for an explanation as to how many that was. “Is that more than quite a bit? How many is lots and lots?”

  “Lots and lots,” Johnny repeated with a huge smile on his face. “Lots and lots.”

  “Like the Great Wall of China lots and lots?” Liam joked.

  “Lots and lots,” Johnny repeated again. “Lots and lots.”

  We followed along as Johnny showed us how to make the bricks. We dug shovel full after shovel full of mud and dirt on the bank into a pile. We watered the pile down with creek water then covered it with straw and grass that we’d cut with the machetes. Andrew and Jack were chosen as the ones to knead the material, which meant that they took their boots and socks off then stomped the vegetation into the mud. After they did this for a while Carl and Matt folded the mixture with their shovels. Then Andrew and Jack would knead it some more. Once the mixture was thick and felt kind’a like clay, we shoveled it into the forms. We scraped the top of the mud bricks flat and level with the mold then pulled the mold free from the newly formed bricks.

  “OK!” Johnny exclaimed. “If we got the consistency right, which I think we did, we should have some fully dried bricks in a day or two.”

  “Yeah but I guess eight bricks isn’t lots and lots,” Andrew theorized.

  “No,” Johnny replied. “So, let’s get busy on round two cuz I want to get at least 32 bricks on the ground and drying before we break for the day.”

  39

  I woke up to Dad shaking my foot. I rolled over to see him at the edge of my cot, his frame partially silhouetted by the fading moonlight.

  “What?” I moaned still half asleep.

  My dad shook my foot some more and said, “Don’t wake Liam.”

  “I’m already awake,” Liam growled. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing Liam. Go back to sleep,” my dad whispered before turning back to me. “Get up n’ get dressed. We’re going hunting.”

  “Hunting for what? You can hunt in the dark?”

  “Deer,” Dad whispered. “And the sun will be coming up soon enough so come on.”

  Liam set up in his cot and said, “Wow. I’m going too.”

  “Are you sure?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah man. I want to go.”

  “OK. Well then both of yo
u hurry up. Time’s wasting,” Dad insisted.

  I grudgingly got out of bed, put on some shorts, laced up my boots, then put on my glasses as it was too dark to put in my contacts. Liam got dressed and I noticed that he moaned when he pulled on his shirt. I guess his side still hurt pretty bad.

  We headed out of our tent and into the darkness and toward the dinning fly. Johnny sat at his radio illuminated by the glowing dials and he raised his hand to wave as we passed. Dad was standing just outside the fly holding his AR rifle and one of our long wall tent poles. He thrust the pole forward and I saw that one end was wrapped with a coil of rope.

  “One of you carry this,” Dad whispered.

  Liam reached for it but did so with a slight groan - from the pain in his side I guess - so I took the pole instead and leaned it over my shoulder.

  “Y’all ready?” Dad quietly asked.

  Liam and I said we were then followed Dad as he hiked out towards the road. It was still really dark, and the moon wasn’t near as full or as bright as it was even a few nights ago but what little light it did reflect, along with the starlight, made seeing the road before us easy enough. We hiked up the road and to the small branch wall we used as a blind when we hunted rabbits. There were three camp chairs sitting there now - I assumed Dad put them there - and we took a seat in them and listened as Dad whispered his plan.

  “The sun should be coming up pretty soon. We’ll be able to see a bit before that. Hopefully a deer to will come out of the brush and next to the road to feed. When that happens, I’ll hand you the gun Taylor.”

  I nodded that I understood and leaned back and into the chair to wait for the light to come up. I guess I nodded off because the next thing I knew, Dad was shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes to a soft light that hinted that the sun was just about to rise. Dad held his finger to his lips to keep me quiet then pointed through a small horizontal slit in the brush before us. I looked through it and to the road before it. I spotted three does feeding on the short grass along the right side of the road some 80 yards out. I looked over to Liam to see that he was nodding back-and-forth trying to fight sleep. I think, but wasn’t sure, that he was awake. I looked back to Dad who whispered, “What do you think?”