 
DAVID SHATH SQUARE Chapter Sixteen
God knows I wanted to sleep. But the harder I concentrated the more difficult it became. As I tossed and turned, I realized Thoreena was right. We didn't have time to rest. Shadow's wound needed attention, we needed food and the dismal little cabin needed serious renovation if we intended to live in it.
Thoreena was rummaging in the root cellar. I got up from the bunk and stumbled down a tamarack ladder that didn't collapse under my weight. She was examining a tangled ball of fishing line and a rusty frying pan the size of a giant tennis racquet.
"This is great, Hardy. There are hooks in this line. You start unravelling it while I look for other useful stuff."
"Oh sure, make me do the hard work. Have you ever tried to untangle 200 yards of 20-lb test line with barbed hooks holding the mess together?" I asked.
"Hardy, this is no joke. Our lives may depend on that line."
"Okay," I said, "but first I'll take a look at Shadow."
"I've already changed his poultice. He's sleeping near the stove. I think he'll be just fine," she said without conviction.
Shadow lay on the section of floor that still supported the cast iron cookstove. His breathing was rapid and shallow but the wounded leg looked less swollen, at least that's what I told myself.
I took the ball of fishing line and walked out of the cabin so I could see what I was doing. I sat down in a clearing of juniper bushes dominated by a single, large jack pine with scaly bark and hundreds of pine cones. As I worked at the line, I could hear a red squirrel busy in the branches of the tree collecting food for his winter store. At the thought of food, my mouth began to salivate. I was really hungry. I tried to think of something other than food, but images of fried fish and roasted game crept into my mind. My rational brain warred with my instinctive brain -- one tried to subdue the other with the result that I wasn't concentrating on the task at hand. Which was probably a good thing, because that's when I noticed a slight movement in the juniper bushes in front of me.
At first, I thought it was a garter snake on the prowl for a warm place to sun himself. But as I continued to watch, I saw a tufted head with a red slash over the eye poke out of the bushes, look around, and disappear. A few feet away, another head appeared and disappeared. A covey of ruffed grouse was feeding among the juniper bushes. Without looking away, I dropped the ball of fishing line and felt around for some weapon -- a rock, a stick, anything. As the small flock moved toward me, my hand fell upon a long branch that had fallen from the jack pine. I waited for the birds to get a little closer. They approached at a slow, painful pace. I couldn't risk a premature movement. I had to remain still. When the lead bird was almost touching the toes of my running shoes, a grabbed the stick with both hands and brought it down with a thump.
The air resonated with beating wings as terrified grouse flew in all directions. I got to my knees and crawled through the brush searching for prey like a starved coyote. I was finally rewarded with two corpses. The first had had its head decapitated by the force of the blow; the second had a broken spine. I snatched up the dead birds by their legs and held them up to the sky like an offering to the gods.
"Thank you, thank you," I said out loud.
I felt like dancing as I ran back to the cabin with my prize. Thoreena met me at the door as I brandished the dead birds. Her look kind of sucked the joy out of my heart like the air out of a balloon.
"This is good, Hardy," she said, stroking the barred plummage, "But it's a shame, too. They're such beautiful creatures."
I suddenly felt remorseful, kind of like I 'd killed a puppy dog.
"You're right, Thoreena. They are beautiful. But we have to eat to stay alive."
"I know," she said. Then she kissed me on the lips and went back into the cabin.
I carried the two birds about fifty yards into the bush for the final desecration.
My grandfather had taught me a way to skin a grouse which wasn't pretty but got the job done fast.
He'd lay the bird on the ground breast up, place a foot on each wing where it joined the body and then jerk the legs upward toward him. The result was a ready eviscerated grouse, minus the wings.
I performed the operation on the birds and walked back to the cabin with two handfuls of warm, pink breast meat.
As I approached, Thoreena came out the door. She looked terrified.
"Hurry, Shadow has stopped breathing."
To Chapter Seventeen
Copyright © 1998 David Square/Log Cabin Chronicles/11.98 |
