Alabama Moon (16 page)

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.”

 

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.

 

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 her 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.

To save the pieces of the deer that we weren't going to smoke, I made a storage pit in a small shelter under the pine tree. I showed Kit how to line the inside of the pit with hot rocks so that the moisture was steamed out of the dirt. Leaving the rocks in place, we then lined the pit floor and walls with a thick layer of dried grass.

Into the pit we placed the deer's eyeballs, which could be used for paint and to make glue. We also saved the brain to
treat the hide, and the hooves to crush and boil to make waterproofing oil.

I covered the pit with cedar bark to keep away insects and worms. To disguise the scent, I put on another layer of strong-smelling pine needles. Finally, I laid a slab of limestone over the top to protect against pawing animals. What little that was left of the deer I wrapped in a scrap of hide and hung from a branch to use as trap bait.

The cold front moved out and the weather became warm enough so that some days we didn't even need our jackets. Over the next week, we worked on scraping and drying the deer hide and smoking our jerky strips over hickory coals. It was pleasant work under clear skies, surrounded by the smells of hickory smoke and curing meat. We would work for a while and then have a meal of venison jerky and whatever vegetation we'd prepared for the day. With our stomachs full and our faces and hands streaked with soot and animal fat, we'd lie back and nap under the rustling leaves.

Sometimes we went for hours without talking, only smiling at each other and keeping our hands busy with shelling acorns or trimming jerky and rubbing the hide with the deer brains. Kit began to learn how things were done, and I had to show him less and less.

One morning we heard a plane and ducked into the shelter and watched as it passed overhead. It was the small, single-engine kind like Pap and I had sometimes seen flying over our shelter.

“You think it's looking for us?” Kit asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

We heard it pass nearby two more times that day, and then we didn't hear it again.

The next day I told Kit I was going to check on the hanging deer carcass to make sure that the squirrels weren't eating the bones. I made my way back to the ridge, moving silently and watching for signs of game. When I came within a hundred yards of the place, I heard someone shout.

“Heyyy!”

I froze and held my breath. My eyes darted about and took notice of all the patterns that the branches and leaves made so that I could tell if anything was out of place. I knew the voice was Sanders's and it set my heart to pounding in my chest.

I wasn't going to move until I was sure that no one was watching me. I heard Sanders's voice again from across the ridge, although I couldn't make out the words. He seemed to be cursing loudly to himself. I slipped through the trees, careful to always have a large trunk between myself and the direction of Sanders's voice. After a while, I saw movement in the place where we left the carcass. By lying on my stomach, I was able to wiggle close enough to watch. Sanders had cut the carcass from the tree and was pacing around it in circles. His uniform was torn on the jacket sleeves, and the front of his shirt and pants were soaked with sweat. His hair had pieces of straw and leaves clinging to it, and dirt was smeared over his face and hands.