by Ison, S. A.
We did, but it wasn’t easy, because the ends of the heads of grain were kind of sharp and stuck. We spent about ten minutes doing this until we got the bright idea to bend the stalks over and rub the grain out with a big stick. This loosened the grain and it fell out easily. I let Harper do that while I picked up and scooped up the grain, putting it in my basket. There was plenty of dirt mixed in, but I figured I’d sort that out later, at the cave.
From time to time we stood, looking around. You don’t dare ignore the world around you here. You could end up with a mountain lion on your back, sinking his teeth into the back of your skull. Our spears, now tipped with stone spearheads, were always with us and Harper had of course, brought the smaller spears. He carried those in a quiver I’d made him, that was strapped across his back. It was three feet long and held fifteen long thin spears. They were sharpened, and hardened with fire.
Our run in with the wolves had taught us to be heavily armed. I had my quiver on my back as well. I’d practiced quite a bit after the wolves as well, trying to strengthen my arms and throws. I’d hurt the wolf, but the spear hadn’t penetrated far enough in the animal’s tough hide.
We estimated that we had roughly twenty pounds of grain. When we got back, I’d set two or three pounds of it away for next years planting. Though I have no clue how to plant wheat or oats, I knew we could come back to get more if this worked out. I was excited at the thought of making flat bread.
What a day, if we didn’t get a large animal, it would not have been a wasted day, we had grain and beans. I was amazed at what the land produced. It was later in the year, but it was here, for the picking. If it turned out the grain wasn’t a kind of oat or wheat, I’d figure out something to do with it.
We walked on, we saw in the distance, herds of deer and elk, and they were large, so much larger than our modern-day animals. Rutting season would be heading our way, that would be interesting. We watched them knowing if there was a predator out there, they’d let us know as well. We stopped for a break after five hours of walking. We got in the river and sat for a bit, cooling down. The sun was hot and I was sure it wasn’t even noon yet. The water helped.
We sat and ate, some of the dried fish. It was actually pretty good. We’d left the skin on, needing all the fat we could get. We also ate dried dates and I’d picked some plantain leaves and we ate those as well. Finishing up we got back to walking. We left the grasslands behind and it was becoming more forest, though it wasn’t a dense forest.
We had come to a little rise and Harper stopped, and I almost ran into him.
“What is it?” I whispered, knowing he’d seen something ahead.
“I see some kind of pig, and she had a bunch of half-grown babies with her. They are about fifty feet ahead. How would you like bacon?”
“Oh, holy God, I’d kill for bacon.” I whispered and water filled my mouth, and I swallowed hard.
“Stay here, I’m going to get as close as I can.”
He pulled four thin spears out and then notched the fifth. He was hunched low and the cattails gave perfect cover. My heart was slamming into my chest painfully. This pig, if we could get it, would provide us with the fat we so desperately needed. Not only that, bacon. Holy crap, it seemed like forever since I’d had bacon.
My hands were shaking, if he missed, we’d have to keep going. All I wanted to do was go home and we were within reach of it. He disappeared from my view and so I simply stood there, keeping my eyes peeled for predators. If we were hunting the pigs, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that something else could be hunting as well. Again, I will stress that Harper and I were at the bottom of the food chain.
I was jerked out of my thoughts by an explosion of squeals and grunts, I started running forward, looking for Harper. He stood and turned and grinned at me. My heart soared, he’d gotten one. I ran up to him and looked past him and saw two pigs down. I whooped in joy and we hugged each other. He’d gotten two of the piglets. We walked forward and looked at our prize.
“Oh my gosh, you are a friggen master hunter!” I crowed in joy.
He hugged me and we looked at the two beautiful pigs. They each looked to be about two hundred pounds. It was going to be hell getting them back, but by god, we would do it. Harper pulled his knife from behind, and we immediately started to gut the pigs. We didn’t want their bodies to overheat in the sun. Thankfully they were at the water’s edge.
“I’m saving the intestines and the stomach.” I said, I was proud of myself, having lost my squeamish ways. After tanning over thirty rabbits, I stopped puking. Now, I saw this as our chance to live, to actually survive the long and unknown winter ahead. This was our chance to add the precious fat to our diet. And bacon, oh lovely bacon.
“I’m leaving the hide on for now. We will stay here for a couple hours, to let the meat sit in the cold water. Cool it down, but I think we need to take all this back to the cave to process. There is no way we can do this in a day.”
“Will we be able to reach home by tonight?”
“No, but we can get started that way. We’ll have to build a bunch of fires around us and the pigs. The smell will draw predators I’m sure. But don’t worry, I’ll stay awake all night to guard you and our prizes.” He grinned.
“I’m not thrilled, but I understand. You’re right, this is a lot of meat to process.”
We finished gutting the animals, and Harper helped me clean the intestines of both. I had one of my clay pots and filled it with cold water. I would let them soak and refreshed the water every so often.
“Hello!”
We jerked and stood, hearing a familiar language. Someone had found us. And it was someone who spoke English. It was someone from the future.
ELEVEN
Our heads swiveled around looking for the voice that had called to us. Nearly five hundred feet away, we saw two men, one tall and very thin, and no surprise there, and the other man, shorter. The tall man was white and the shorter man was black. Harper and I both lifted a hand.
“Hello, Bill Wexler I presume?” Harper shouted.
We heard the man laugh and waved wildly. We waited until they came into talking distance. As the wind shifted, I brought my hand up to my nose. Their smell proceeded them. It was rancid and a sickly sour odor. As they drew closer, I dropped my hand and looked at them. Harper reached around and pulled me behind him. When he spoke, it was relaxed, but I could feel the tension in his body.
The men came closer and they were smiling. They were missing many of their teeth. The tall man was tanned but he had an unhealthy pallor to him. Both men were reed thin, but had large guts. It didn’t make sense. What also struck me was that the tall man had a gold watch on, it looked like a Rolex and he also wore a huge diamond ring on his middle finger. None of this added up.
“I can’t believe it, people like us. Man, oh man. You’re a sight for sore eyes. We thought you were Squanto at first.” The tall man said. I saw that Harper had put his knife in the back of the waist band of his loin cloth.
“I take it you’re Bill? And what is Squanto?” Harper asked.
“Sure am, this is Mike Duval, we’re the last of our group. Everyone else has died. And you know these damned Indians. We killed a couple, here while back.” Bill said, though he said it in a jovial tone. That made the hair stand up all over my body, my brain clanging with warning bells. Something was very wrong here.
“Those are some nice pigs you got. Can we have one of them?” Bill asked.
“What?” Harper said, and his body stiffened.
“You know, you have two, so you can give us the other one.” Mike said, his voice edging toward derisive.
“No. Sorry, this is our winter meat. This took us a long time to track down. We busted our asses for this and this will keep us alive through the winter. I’m sorry. No.”
“Well, that isn’t very neighborly of you. We should help each other. You know, share the bounty.” Bill said, the car salesman smile gone away from his face, his
tone snide.
“I’m sorry, I’m not your neighbor. We’ve almost died trying to survive in this place. You know as well as I do, everything you hunt and gather has got to last. We don’t have the luxury of giving it away.”
“Well it sure as shit doesn’t look like the two of you are starving. In fact, you look pretty goddamn healthy, especially sugar tits, behind you.” Bill said in a nasty tone.
“That’s because we’ve been busting our asses hunting and gathering, trying to survive. We can’t even wear our original clothing, because we’ve lost so much weight. This shit hasn’t come easy for either of us.”
“What she can’t speak for herself?” Bill sneered. The overt hostility was shocking to me. I wondered if this man was crazy. Perhaps living here for seven years has driven them both mad? By now, he and Mike should have been well established into their environment. We’d not been here six months and we have not stopped gathering and hunting and working toward the winter and survival. This is not a place for idle hands or indolent times.
“She could, but since she isn’t, I’m talking for the both of us. Now, I’ll give you a hind quarter, but that is all I’m prepared to give up.”
“Oh well thank you so much.” Bill said with heavy sarcasm. Once more, I was stunned. There was no grateful thank you. Only anger and resentment and an enormous sense of entitlement to our food. I could only guess that in our time, he was a powerful man and got what ever he wanted, whenever he wanted and from the look of him, it appeared that he’d not tried very hard to survive. He wanted others to give it to him. I wondered if Mike was the same way. I also wondered how they had managed to survive.
“You keep speaking to me like that, and I’ll just keep it. And you can go fuck yourself.”
“Bill, let’s just take what we can get and go back to camp.”
“This is bullshit, they have two fucking pigs and won’t give one up? What if we just take it?” Bill said, his tenor over the top, antagonistic now.
“Then I’ll kill you. You’re taking food from our mouths. You are jeopardizing our futures. You’ve been here seven years. We’ve only been here about five months and since we’ve been here, we’ve done nothing but damn near kill ourselves to survive. I’ve offered you the hind quarter. Do you want it or not?” Harper snarled, I’d never heard him raise his voice like that.
“Fine. We’ll take it. But know this, this is our territory and you’re trespassing.” Bill said.
“Right.” Was all Harper said. He pulled out his stone knife from the pack and began to cut away the back quarter of one of the pigs. I had taken the knife from his waist and hid it now under my arms that were now crossed over my breast. These men truly frightened me. The two of men were something ugly from the future and they were not in tune with the here and now. I wondered at them. Had they not done as we had done? Had they not set aside food? They were in rags and a foul, nauseating stench wafted off of them. Vicious and hyper aggressive and just plain repugnant as hell.
Bill wore trappings of his old life and it seemed he’d not let go of it. Not let go of the entitlement mentality. He wanted what was ours, just because we had it. It filled me with rage, because though we weren’t starving, this meat meant survival for us when we would need calories and fat to keep ourselves alive during the long winter. They had wasted seven years it would seem.
I watched as Harper handed over the meat, nearly throwing it at them. They began to walk away.
“If I see you again, I’ll kill you. If I see you again, I’ll figure you mean me and mine harm.” Harper called.
Bill held up his hand and flipped us off. Both men walking into the forest. Harper looked down at me and I saw that his hands were shaking, just like mine.
“Let’s get these carcasses packed up and let’s get the hell out of here. I want to put distance between us. I don’t trust that bastard.” Harper said.
“I agree, Jesus. He gave me the creeps. My God, I can’t believe them. What have they been doing for seven years?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not giving over our hard work. I’m not here to serve them or feed them.”
It took us about fifteen minutes to load the animals on the travois and secure them. The carcasses were heavy as hell and it was an effort to pull them, but we had no choice.
“If we walked in the water, in the shallows, couldn’t we kind of float these things down, instead of drag them?” I asked.
He stopped and looked down at me, his gray eyes light. He laughed and pulled me in for a hug.
“You know, you are the smartest woman I know. Hell yeah, we’ll give it a try.”
We took off our boots and packed them into the baskets. It did work. As we walked down the river bed, the travois floated behind us. It got stuck quite a few times but we manage to get well away from those horrible men.
“You know, we won’t leave foot prints for those guys to follow us.” He said.
“I’m glad. I’m not kidding. They stunk so bad. Worse than the insides of the pigs. I can’t believe he killed the locals, and so dismissive about them and their friends.”
“I hate to say, but I think Bill and Mike ate them. I almost want to say those two had turned cannibal.” Harper said in a low voice.
A shiver rippled over me, like a breeze blowing over a still pond. It made sense though. They looked very unhealthy and the fact that he was jovial over the loss of the others spoke volumes.
“I think you’re right Harper. Neither man seemed upset about their losses. My God, I hope they don’t follow us.”
“I don’t want to scare you, but I have a feeling they will. Tonight, when we stop, I’ll build fires around the pigs, but you and I will stay up in a tree. It’ll be a full moon tonight, and I think we’ll be able to see them coming. I’ll kill them both with my spears. We can’t have them sneaking up on us when we least expect it.”
“I hate to say it, but I agree and if Isi and her group run into them, I’d hate to think what would happen, especially to Takhi.”
We were both silent for a long while, walking through the cold river. It was growing late in the day when we got to the flat grassland.
“Let’s get out and walk the rest of the way. My feet are numb and the land is flat enough, it might be hard to drag, but not as hard as before.” Harper suggested.
“Yeah, my feet are freezing.”
We hauled the travois out of the river and began pulling it along the flat ground. Though the travois was heavy, it was easier than when we’d first started out. We were only about four hours away from home when we found a spot to spend the night. We laid our burden down and dragged the travois to the river to let the pigs cool while we got things ready.
We began to gather large limbs and deadfall, as well as drift wood. We made a circle that would go around the travois, keeping the wood far enough away, so it wouldn’t heat the pigs. Then we gathered more wood to keep handy so we could add to the fire throughout the night. This would hopefully keep predators away from the meat.
Harper was good on his word, he found a place with a small grove of trees. We selected a tree with a thick low branch. It would be big enough for both of us to sit comfortably in the crotch of the tree. It was about six feet from the ground, yet gave us a clear view up and down the river and flatland. We made a dinner of roasted pig, cutting steaks from the animal that had already butchered earlier.
I added the dates and found some watercress. It was a wonderful dinner, I have to say and the fat sizzled and popped. As it grew darker, we pulled the travois from the river and placed it within the circle of fire and then closed that circle. We added more thick and heavy logs and climbed up into the tree. I’d brought a small rabbit skin blanket. It was still a work in progress, but I knew that the night would be chilly and it would keep us warm.
We both settled in and talked. Harper cradled me against his chest. Then we heard the cry of a cat, a big damned cat and it was close by.
“Don’t worry, it won’t come near th
e fire. The fire is too big and smells like a forest fire.” Harper assured me.
“How do you know?”
“Because if he was hunting, he’d be quiet. Right now, he’s just complaining about the fire. Because he smells the pigs, but I don’t think he knows where it is because the fire is masking it.”
“Good. I hope not.”
“I have my spears, and if it gets too close, I’ll send a few spears his way.”
“Thanks, I’m glad you’re such a good shot. I mean it. We have food for the winter, fat. I can’t believe you got two. I’m proud of you, I really am. I need to practice more myself.”
He squeezed me and I smiled in the dark.
“You’re doing great, I’ve been watching. You hit that wolf, and that was a damned fine shot. Don’t underestimate yourself Ivy, you’re doing great.”
The moon was making its way across the sky and I began to get drowsy. I felt bad about leaving Harper to keep watch, but I was so damned tired. You try walking for roughly twelve hours, half of that dragging four hundred pounds of pork, looking over your shoulders for both two legged and four legged predators and then tell me.
I don’t even know how long I’d been asleep when I felt Harper’s body stiffen. He placed a warning hand on my shoulder and gripped it in warning. My heart jumped into my throat. I felt his beard tickle my face.
“I see Bill and Mike coming. They are about fifty feet up the river heading this way with clubs. They mean to kill us.”
“Bastards.” I hissed softly.
We watched as the drew closer, the moon illuminated them easily. They were moving with deliberate intention and stealth. I tracked their movement and advancement, they were close to the river’s edge, using some of the cattails as cover.
“What are you going to do?” I asked softly
“Wait until they get about twenty feet away, then I’ll slip down and before they know it, I will launch my spears.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. I couldn’t believe these men were coming after us. I had known it was a possibility, but still. I also knew that when we put the fire around the pigs, that we would be a beacon in the night. That was why we were up in this tree. But to know these bastards were going to kill us because they were too lazy to hunt for themselves, or too evil, boiled the rage within me.
