by Gary Paulsen
Once you’d seen C, Fishbone said, there was no more dreaming about cars or families or girls or parts of things. It was all real. Too real for dreaming. Now go and fetch cool water from the creek and make nighttime coffee so it will be there cold in the morning to wash the night taste out of our mouths.
And I did.
And that night I dreamed about rooms. Or a room. My room. And how big it was getting to be.
I slept in one corner of the cabin behind a short wall that came out from the sidewall of the cabin. Not a room so much as a slot. Fishbone slept on the other side of the cabin in the same kind of slot. I slept on an old strap-iron cot just wide enough for one person with iron ends that were decorated with little designs so it looked like the little posts that held up the ends of the bed were stuck in a kind of flower. Fishbone said the cot belonged to an old Confederate soldier from the Civil War name of Season, or maybe Ceesen. He never spelled it. Said the old soldier died in the cot when he was over a hundred years old and he was alone and they didn’t find the body for going on a week. Not here but in another cabin-shack. During a warm summer month. And the body went off, he said, as bodies and other meat does when it’s warm, so after they found him and buried him in a rubber sack—Fishbone said it was before they had plastic—nobody wanted anything to do with any of the old soldier’s stuff. Said it smelled too bad. So they burned the shack with all his stuff in it. Bed too. Fishbone came along later, maybe a year later, and the bed was still there, standing in the ashes, only rusted a little after the fire took off the finish a bit. But all there, springs and all. And the stink was gone. Burned away.
Fishbone took it home, never one to waste anything. Still had the box he might have found me in when I was a baby. Still had old work boots so worn they were falling to pieces. Said he might need the leather from the tops to fix other things that wore out or were broke, the way cowboys who were rustling cattle in the old days sewed old boot tops together to make pouches to carry cartridges on the side of their saddles. I had used the sleeve of an old canvas jacket to make a quiver to hold arrows, held up with a piece of clothesline rope over my shoulder, so I understood how he could have taken the cot. Used the cot.
He slept on it for twenty years, was still sleeping on it when he found or got me. Kept me in a box on the floor. Same box he might have found me in. Or not. And when I got too big to sleep in the box, he had another cot, a little bigger, and he put me in the old soldier’s bed and moved to the other one.
Still the same.
Still the same now. Box in back of the stove with my baby stains in it to hold stove wood. Probably never be moved again. Old boots in the corner by the door. The same. Old coats hanging on nails, just the same.
But the dreams changed. I dreamed of my room first as it was, and then out, out and out and wider, until it was bigger and bigger, outside the cabin, outside and out until it was all of everything. All of it—all I could see and be in—all felt like my room. My own room, my own place to be. To be.
Told Fishbone about it, about the dream, and for a few minutes he looked at me, like he was studying on something. And maybe not something he liked much. Like when he talked about getting shot some in Korea. Then he leaned back in the rocker and closed his eyes.
Thought at first you were a familiar, he said.
What’s a familiar, I asked.
Witching thing, he said.
I don’t understand.
Don’t suspect that you do. Don’t suspect on it at all. There’s a lot of things you don’t understand. It’s because you’re young. Ain’t had time to understand a lot of things, being young and all.
I waited. It was the only way with him. It never helped to push on a thing. You had to wait for an answer. Problem was, sometimes you had to wait a long time. Might be he’d answer right away, might be in an hour when he took some ’shine, might be tomorrow. Might be never, like some of the questions I asked him about women. Grown women. And what it was that made a man think on them so much. He never did answer. Just looked off into away and sipped ’shine and smiled. Dozing, he said, dozing on his memories. Some you might like to get shed of, wear them off, burn them. But now and again a memory was so fine you wanted to keep it. Like a warm cloud you could doze on. Just sit in the chair, and sip on a jar of good ’shine and close your eyes and doze on the memory. Part of getting old, he said. Maybe the best part of getting old.
This time wasn’t so long. Took a sip of ’shine from the jar, really just a lip wetter, said you came three ways. In a box, from family and guv’ment, and from a witching stump. Can’t pick one because they’re all the right way at different times. After you were here with me and learned to suck a milk rag, then a calf bottle, one night I took you to a ghost stump glowing in the dark, and put you on the ground to see if you were a familiar. See if the light jumped from the stump into you. It was on a cold night, soft cold, and you caterwauled some. Sounded like an old hog stuck in a gate. Might have been the cold. You were partial to being warm when you were small, and I maybe had a bit too much ’shine in me that night. Wasn’t so good at controlling it then, like I am now. So I held the blanket open a bit to see if the light jumped into you, but it didn’t. It didn’t. You just got cold and let out more noise. So you ain’t. Ain’t a familiar.
Again I thought. Again. What’s a familiar, I said. Or who?
They help witches work when it comes to casting spells. Sometimes be a little boy, sometimes a little girl, sometimes a cat, and now and again just a candle. Lit, of course. Candle won’t work unless it’s lit. And it helps if it’s a beeswax candle or tallow. Not store wax.
You believe in all that, I said. Witches and the like.
There are things we don’t understand to know. To know. And maybe if we don’t know about how a thing is, how it works, how it can be—just because we don’t know how it is doesn’t mean it’s not real.
And so there are witches, I said.
Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never seen one, known one, but I’ve heard. Heard things that don’t make a lot of sense. Knew an old lady once, could touch her elbow and tell you if it’s going to rain. Tell you when. To the hour. Some can take a willow fork and walk around and tell you if there’s water and how deep down it is. Seen that many times. The stick bends down when they find water. Sometimes bends down so hard it strips the bark off in the man’s hand. They call it witching water, or divining water, but I don’t know if they’re witches or not. Just know I don’t understand it. And I can’t do it.
And I’m not one. I can’t hold a stick and find water.
No, no. He shook his head, sipped his ’shine. No. And you ain’t a familiar either, or it would have showed by now. But you have these dreams, thick dreams, that don’t make a lot of sense, except. Except they do, they kind of do make sense. They come from thinking of things, thinking of things around you, and I think that just means you can see. See out and around and front and back. See new and old things. You dream-see your cot, your sleeping place, your living place, going out and out. Getting bigger, and I think it means you are more, want more.
So what do I do, I asked.
Was me, he said, smiling that soft, no-tooth smile. Was me, I’d go out and out and see where it led to. Go find the edge of the dream.
And so I did.
Took the bow and a sleeve-quiver with a half-dozen cane arrows and forty or fifty strike-anywhere wooden matches, what Fishbone called Lucifer fire sticks, and an old steel pot with a bent handle, and at the last minute a small role of stovepipe wire I found on a nail on the back of the cabin. Fishbone had talked of making small rabbit and squirrel snares with the wire, and I had a thought of trying it.
Also took a small paper pouch of wheat flour and corn flour mixed. Maybe two cups worth.
Didn’t know where I would go or for sure why. Was just going to go, go see. Go and do. What Fishbone said. Go to the edge of the dream, wherever that turned out to be, and even starting loose that way, nothing hard in my thinking. Even that
way, I found myself hunting. It was that I couldn’t not hunt, if that makes any sense at all. I could walk in the woods, could think I was just walking in the woods along the creek, where I started, but inside of four steps I was hunting. Looking deep in the water, not just at the surface, looking deep in the creek for fish or crayfish or big leopard frogs. Looking not just at the bushes on the shore or out ahead of me, but looking inside, deep into each bush, looking for that line or motion that didn’t belong, wasn’t part of the natural line or motion. Studying tree limbs for a jerk or twitch or shape that wasn’t part of the limb, part of the tree. Might be a grouse or a squirrel on a tree limb, or a grouse or a rabbit on the ground. A sound that didn’t fit, a line that didn’t fit, wasn’t part of the natural line or sound. Might be alive. Might be, might be . . . something.
Might be food.
And even not to kill.
Not yet.
Not to kill everything or even anything. Later, later, but not yet, not now. Just moving, moving through and around and of the woods and trees and brush and water, fitting in, making myself part of that natural line, natural sound, natural feeling.
Hunting.
To see and feel and know the woods. Moving out to the edge, to the edge of what there is to know, to know more, understand more, see more, learn more.
Hunting.
To know. To learn. To see and feel and hear and look inside, inside of everything you see. Not just the surface of the water, but deep down into it; not just the squirrel or the rabbit or the grouse but inside it, inside to where you know, know the arrow will hit and will kill and will make food where there was no food.
To the edge of all you know.
To hunt.
To be a hunter. To see the edge of your dream, go right to the edge of your dream and then through it. Through the edge of all you know and think and into the next thing, the next part.
I moved along the creek down past three big bends it made around small hills, barely rises in ground. And on the moss sides of the hills, the north side, I found some mushrooms, some morels, and I picked them and put them in the pouch with the flour for later. Little Christmas trees is how they looked and was the only kind of mushroom Fishbone said was always safe. Easy to see. Easy to know.
Where the creek hit the swamp where I had found the shypoke feathers that I used for the arrows, it made a sharp turn to the left, and it was this bend that marked the farthest I had ever gone from the cabin. I’m not sure of distance, but if a person walking slow while watching, hunting, made maybe a mile an hour, then it was close on a mile from the cabin.
The longest away. Here—if I came this far—I usually headed in a big circle to the right, skirting the edge of the swamp and working back around to the cabin in a great loop through the woods. That’s when I was hunting, strictly hunting for food for the cabin, either squirrel or rabbit or grouse. And usually I took something in that circle. Or got a good shot at something. And just what distance I had gone so far I had seen plenty of game—several rabbits, a couple of grouse, one opossum, and big leopard frogs in the creek. All close. One grouse was on a freeze and stood so still I had to walk around him. Or her. Couldn’t tell from looking at it. I could have almost grabbed it and if we’re telling the truth, I was tempted. Grouse boiled in fresh creek water with morels thrown in made a great soup. And my backbone was steady moving toward my stomach, as Fishbone said when he was hungry. And more truth, I was always hungry. It seemed. I could just eat. And eat.
But.
I was moving. Hunting. Not killing yet. So I passed over the easy kills I saw and kept moving, moving. I went off to the left of the swamp throughout the morning, off to the left and then the land started to rise. First in a gentle slope and then steeper and steeper until I was moving onto a ridge made of a large gray rock outcropping that stood out like the backbone of some giant animal skeleton. I worked along this ridge, not on top because I had learned that all things look to the top of a ridge or a hill and I didn’t want to scare away animals that might be in the same area.
Below the ridge line and slow, two, three steps, pause, stop, study what’s ahead, start again, stop right away, and study, study, breathe in slow and out more slowly, wait, wait.
Two more steps, stop. Think of fitting, fitting in to the ridge line, into the grass under my feet. Think of being the weather, air, all of everything. Fit in to the edge, edge of the dream. Slow. Sloooow. Looking for a line, a curve that doesn’t belong, doesn’t fit.
Down the face of the ridge moving that way, watching, seeing, but more, more, feeling, feeling everything, feeling all things, knowing all things. Closer to the creek where it wound around the side of the ridge, water against the rock, cutting away until it left a small clearing back against the rock face and out to the creek, with thick brush and grass coming down to the water on the other side of the creek.
And there.
Right . . . exactly . . . there.
A grouse. Sitting low in the grass. Body down, head up a bit. Frozen. No motion.
Slowly draw the arrow back, feel where it’s going, how it’s going to go and then without thinking about it, release. Soft “thrumm” of the string and the cane arrow is gone, clean and gone, hitting the grouse just below the head, through the neck.
One flop.
And done. Dead.
Food.
I had an old two-bladed pocketknife that Fishbone had given me, only one blade, the other broken off, and I used it to cut the bird’s head off and the lower part of the legs and feet. Then tore the skin away—easier to skin than to eat feathers because they never all come off when you try to pluck them—and then a small fire, creek water in the pot with the whole grouse. Small bird. And the mushrooms to let them boil until the meat falls off the bone. Gather more wood while it’s cooking, all night wood, then before dark set a trap for crayfish.
The creek is alive with them and the tails taste almost sweet. Fishbone says they taste like lobster, or shrimp. I don’t know. Wouldn’t know. Never tasted them. But crayfish make your mouth water just thinking of them. Well. So does grouse. Or rabbit. Or biscuits and flour gravy. Or anything.
Fishbone says most people eat the tail and the guts, but I could never get into scooping the guts out and eating them, so I stick to the tails. Don’t eat rabbit guts. Don’t eat squirrel guts. Don’t eat frog guts. Don’t eat guts.
Just the heart. Sometimes. Throw it in the stew as I did with the grouse heart. Just meat. Good meat.
Where the creek curved away from the little clearing, the bottom was almost free of weeds and grass from the current picking up speed around the corner. On the side of the bank there was a U-shaped gouge that came back into the dirt about two feet. The water in the U was about five inches deep with a clear, sandy bottom. I took flat rocks from the ridge stone and made a small underwater wall across the face of the U and left a two-inch opening in the center. In the back of the U I put the grouse guts, head, feet, and feathers, except for the outer wing feathers that I saved to use on cane arrows later, and I weighted the guts down with stone. Kept the good parts on the bottom. Meat, skin, guts bring all the scavengers in—fish, crayfish, even leeches, which will come if the water is still. Leeches don’t do very well in fast current. Which is just as well because I don’t want to eat a leech.
I figure through the night some shiners might come in, and crayfish, and I could sneak down in the morning and cover the front of the trap and have a hot breakfast with what I catch in the night. I also took some of the wire and made a snare over a rabbit trail that tunneled back into the grass. About a four-inch loop, a half inch off the ground and straight across the little packed trail, tied off to a small ash tree on the side. All the way Fishbone said to do it.
Then more wood for the fire, and still more. The grouse stew bubbled away until the meat fell away from the bone and the mushrooms were soft, and I drank the stew water and ate the grouse and mushrooms, and put the leftover skeleton and bone bits with the bait in the water
trap.
Pulled a bunch of leaves back against the rock wall for a bed, the fire kicking heat in under the ledge, warm around me, nestled back in and closed my eyes.
But no sleep.
Not yet. Questions kept popping up. How, I thought.
How.
How did I know what I knew, how to hunt, how to move, how to work a ridge, how to be, how to . . . everything?
How to hunt.
How to be a hunter. A knower. A learner. A person who sees things. Not just to kill. That was part of it. But not only that. Not just to kill but to hunt. How could I know that?
And I knew. Fire flickering, heat coming back into me, dark in the woods around and I knew, knew what it was, how it happened. It wasn’t me. I was just a place that it came to, came through.
It was Fishbone.
It was his stories, his shuffle-pat story-songs that came into me as whole ways of being, knowing. Came into me like heat from the fire, came in to say one thing, maybe about fast cars or running ’shine, but it would work for all things. Work for thinking, make thinking better, so it would make me more whole, make me think smarter and better about everything I was, everything I did.
Don’t know if he meant it.
I think he did. I think he knew what he was doing with all of it, his thinking, the rhythm of his thoughts and voice. Maybe the way he smiled. Sipped ’shine. Way he looked away just when he should look away, answer just when he should answer.
Make me think just when I need to think. Do. Feel. Be. Give me an answer when I need one. Straight out. Hold back when he didn’t think I needed one.
What with the grouse and mushroom stew, I was full as a tick and feeling dozy, so I pulled back in the leaves and went to fast sleep. No dream. Or at least not one I could remember. But it was summer just when it was warmest, before it turned into early fall, and later at night when the fire went down and out and the night air came in and found me it cooled some, a little, and I started to wake up. But I pulled in more leaves, brought them up and over me and went back to sleep until splashing nearby woke me again when it was full light.
