THE TRASHMAN (17 page)

“I took into account everything. Actually, if we can supplement the protein we have with fish or other game, we can go longer.”

I considered her words. “Honey, that’s great news. Spring is around the corner and berries and fruit will become available. We should do as the two J’s advised and find books on foraging wild foods.

Becky nodded agreement, but added her thoughts.

“I think we should leave roaming until later. I feel safe here and the longer we wait the better the chance the plague will play itself out.”

“I feel safe here, too. More time away from the societal mess wouldn’t be a bad thing, either. Maybe things will sort out and we can locate a functioning… I don’t know… Find a group or small community that we can join.”

“Maybe,” she replied without enthusiasm, “but let’s be extremely sure of what we’re doing before we mix with people. What about the water and gas? How long will the gas last for cooking. Do solar panels wear out?”

“The propane should be good for several months. I’ll be able to pin that down after we’ve been here longer and I see what our usage is.

“The solar panels may need an occasional cleaning, but they should produce current for years. The storage batteries are the weak link. They have to be replaced every few years. The ones in the shed are only two years old.”

Becky made an audible sigh of relief. “So our greatest chore for long term is to find ways to keep the children occupied so they don’t go stir-crazy?”

I had to chuckle. “The truth is, I need to find some way to keep
myself
occupied. Right now my side is slowing me down, but when it’s well, I’ll have to find things to do.”

“Learning how to trap and fish will keep you busy. While the children are out of our hair, let me change your dressing. I haven’t checked it since I stitched it.”

I stood and went to her side of the table and removed my shirt. Becky leaned close and felt the area around the square bandage. It hurt when she pressed my skin.

“Hey, take it easy.”

“I barely touched you. Ralph, the skin close to the bandage is red and I can smell your wound. I think it’s infected.”

“Go easy taking the bandage off. It really hurt when you touched me.”

The rear bandage wasn’t a problem and she told me the exit wound was healing. The process of removing the tape and gauze from the front almost had me in tears. I tried to bend to look past my paunch, but the pain was too much. Becky wasn’t pleased with what she saw.

“Shit! It is infected. The hole closed, but there’s a mound like a boil that looks like it wants to explode. I think I need to open it up.”

“Jeez. You mean you want to lance it. Christ, I can barely stand for you to breathe on it.”

“We need to clean out the pus. I’m not a nurse, but that’s what I’m always hearing on TV and reading.”

I reached to my side and brushed a finger across my wound. I felt the lump she’d seen. I moved my finger to my nose and sniffed. The nasty odor made me know I needed to man-up.

“You’re right. It needs to be cleaned.”

We moved from the dining room to our bedroom. Becky put a towel on the bed and had me strip my shirt and lie on it, and then went to a dresser.

“I found a pack of huge needles at the bargain store in the tool section. I think they’re for sewing leather or vinyl. I put the pack in one of these drawers.”

She rummaged a moment and came back to the bed. When she said big needles, she meant big.

“This is not going to be good,” I groaned.

She frowned at me. “For me, either.” She opened the package. There were several sizes of needles, straight ones and curved. She chose the thickest straight one and cleaned the business end with peroxide.

The do-it-yourself surgery didn’t go well. She’d make a hole with the needle, a little pus would come out, and then the hole would close. She tried mashing and pushing the lump, but no matter how much she hurt me, she couldn’t get a flow. She made more holes with the same result.

“I need to get a knife and cut it open.”

I said, “Anything but the needle. I can’t take much more of that.”

She left the room to go up the hall to the bathroom. When she returned, she was all about getting the job done.

“This is going to hurt, but when the pressure’s gone your side won’t be so tender. I found an iodine bottle with a dropper. I took the bulb off the dropper. What I’m going to do is make a slit in the top of the sore and push the plastic dropper into the hole. The hollow tube should let the pus run out. Roll onto your side and be very still. I’ll do it fast.”

It didn’t hurt at all. She sliced me with a narrow blade she’d forced from one of my disposable razors and pushed the tube in. I felt immediate relief, but Becky shrieked and sprang from the edge of the bed.

The pressure inside my wound was so high that I saw a vile stream of pus follow her as she fled my side. Becky left the room. I looked at the towel beside my belly and saw a pool of yellow pus with streaks of blood that was still growing.

I could smell the stink of it. I didn’t know what to do, so I lay there waiting for Becky to return. I could hear her retching. Her face was pale as she walked through the doorway and back to my side.

“I’m sorry, Ralph, I wasn’t expecting it to come squirting out like a hose. The pus went right in my face, my mouth too.”

“I wish that hadn’t happened. You got it to come out, though.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it. Roll back where you were, so I can see your side.”

She took her time finishing the cleaning. Now that the pressure was gone, it didn’t hurt nearly as bad when she pushed to make more pus come out.

“I can’t get any more to come out. All I can do is clean it and put on new dressing.”

I could tell she was distressed. “I don’t think it’s unusual for a wound like mine to infect. I think you did the right thing and as long as I continue taking the antibiotic, I should heal sooner or later. Honey, thank you, you have no idea how much better I feel.”

“You’re welcome, but I’ll feel better when I’m done so I can go brush my teeth about ten times. If I ever have to do something like this again, I know not to have my face right in front of it.”

*****

The relief Becky afforded me with her effort at surgery was so great that the next morning I decided to try my hand at fishing. I’d only been fishing once in my life. It was so long ago that I forget names, but I was friends with a boy in a rural neighborhood where Sam and I live with a set of foster parents for a short period. He invited me to go fishing with him and his dad.

I went. On the trip out, the two of them made it sound like we were going on the grandest adventure of all time. They made fishing sound glamorous. The actuality was entirely different. They fished from the banks of just north of the city of Bainsbridge.

Fishing was touching squirming red worms, impaling them on a barbed hook attached to a line and then with a flick of the wrist and the release of a button, flinging the mortally wounded worm out into the water to drown if he were lucky, picked to pieces by nibblers if not.

The worm’s true luck came if he was swallowed by a fish. His luck would be to die without further suffering. The fish would end up with the hook through its lip and would swim like crazy trying not to be pulled out of the water. Once out, he got a metal shaft pushed through his gill and out his mouth and strung on a string to feebly swim while we caught more of his brethren.

Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the excursion. I do remember how to clean a fish, mainly because it was such a cruel, nasty affair. This day though, I planned to catch and release. I mainly wanted to see if I could catch some if push came to shove.

I didn’t have any worms so I took along a big chunk of leftover spam. I didn’t have much faith for it as bait, but mostly I wanted to have something to do.

The trail led to a bend in the creek. The water moved at a fast clip and the bed was fairly wide. The outer edge of the curve across from where I stood was eaten away by the current and presented a three-foot high vertical bank. The trees and underbrush had been cut back, and my side sloped gently to a sandy beach. The sand, actually sand and gravel mixed, was not white, but had a reddish hue.

Two split-log benches were in place above the high water mark and were close to a stone fire ring.

I’d chosen a rod we brought from the main cabin. It already had a hook and weight attached. A pinched off piece of tough, fried spam slid easily onto the hook. I cast into the flow and stood there, rod in hand fully expecting nothing to happen. Ten seconds later, there was a tug on the line and then the reel was spinning as the fish ran with the bait. I flipped on the drag and gave the rod a tug.

The fish had some fight in it, but the line was stout. The fish, I think a trout, was as long as both of my hands. I unhooked it and let it slide back into the water. After that, I decided my question about catching fish was answered.

I went to one of the benches and sat, watching the water flow and enjoying the sun on my shoulders. My body relaxed, but my mind didn’t. I had so many things to think about, my wound for one. The amount of pus Becky had removed was worrisome. Not to mention the sick stink of it. I decided to double up on the Keflex for two days.

I wondered how Sam and his family were doing, and where the two J’s decided to go. I hoped they found a place as safe as ours seemed to be.

I heard Becky and the children’s voices on the trail and turned to watch for them. Becky came into sight first, followed by Will and Jen. I couldn’t help but notice that the ever-present lines of stress were fading from their faces.

They came to where I was sitting.

“Decided not to fish?”

I couldn’t keep a grin from my face. “I did fish and caught a giant fish on my first cast.”

“Yeah, where is it?”

“I let it go so we can eat it another day.”

“Let me smell your hands,” she demanded.

I held one up and she leaned to sniff. “Whoa, you caught one for sure, but you need to rinse your hands off.”

“Can I try?” Will asked.

“Sure you can. Jen can, too.”

Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t want smelly hands, Daddy.”

I showed Will how to cast, and let him try a few times before baiting the hook for him. I rinsed my hands off in the cold mountain-fed creek and went to join Becky who was sitting on the bench waiting for me.

“You feeling better?” I asked.

“I feel safe here.”

“I meant feeling better since getting sprayed with pus.”

“Yuck, why’d you mention that? No kidding, though. Don’t you feel safer?”

“Yes I do, but I’m worried about Sam and his family. God I hope the plague didn’t get him.”

Becky reached to hold my hand. “I know what you mean. I feel sort of guilty being here knowing how he must be thinking the woman infected him. Lucy has to be scared, too. If he gets sick, they’ll probably all get it.”

“I know you have to be worried sick for Maggie and Neal.”

“I am, but not as much. Neal made a lot of money and so did my sister. They went to a place in Missouri where the survival club they joined had a retreat built. From what she told me it’s as isolated as this place. Besides, Neal is a sportsman. He belonged to a gun club, and he went hunting and fishing a lot. They have a better chance than most to survive.”

I agreed. “Neal kept himself in great shape. So did your sister. I hate waiting to find out how Sam’s doing. What’s it been, three days since we left his place? Christ, I wish we could just call him, tell him to come on. They could stay in the main cabin until we were sure they weren’t infected.”

A sad expression crossed Becky’s face. “I wish a lot of things, but mostly I wish this nightmare would go away. That I wake up and find out none of this is real.”

Will shouted and grabbed our attention. “I got one. I got one.”

He was holding the rod nearly vertical and the rod bent into a curve so tight I was afraid it would snap. Without thinking, I surged to my feet to run to his aid. A pulse of pain from my side doubled me up and dropped me to my knees. Becky was by my side almost immediately.

“Damn, Ralph. I hope you didn’t open up your side again. Slow yourself down.”

I did open it again. Becky helped Will reel the fish in and then showed him how to release it. After that, we went back to the house.

This time it felt like Becky was doing real surgery. She sterilized a set of stainless steel scissors, gave me a pillow to muffle my grunts of pain, and cut away dead meat from the opening on my side. This time she flushed the wound with alcohol and peroxide multiple times before using three sutures to close it.

I told her of my thought to double the dosage of antibiotics for two days and she agreed it would be a good idea. 

“I cleaned out all the infection I could get to, but I think the corruption is deeper inside. Ralph, I don’t know what I’m doing as far as nursing you. All I know is to clean it and hope for the best.”

“I think you’re underselling yourself. Even a real nurse couldn’t do more than you are. Probably by the time Sam gets here I’ll be better.”

“You have to be. The children and I won’t survive without you.”

Her words made me realize something. “We’re doing it again, getting sloppy like what the two J’s warned us against. Neither of us had a weapon with us by the creek and right now we don’t have any near us. Honey, we have to do better.”

*****

There came the morning Becky said to me. “William has a high temperature. I think he’s sick.”

With those words, my life came to an end. I laid my fillet knife onto the wooden bench I’d dragged to the creek, and went to rinse the fish slime from my hands in the flowing water.

“Is he coughing?”

Becky shook her head.

“Well it could be anything. Kids do get sick from other things besides the plague. Besides, it’s only been nine days since we left Sam’s. The plague takes twelve days.”

“That’s just an average, Ralph. I’m worried. Jen doesn’t have a fever, but she looks a little glassy-eyed to me.”