Stranded

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Quick as I dared, I raised the shotgun to my shoulder, cocked both hammers, and sucked in a breath. The end of the barrel was less than a hand length from Bub’s temple, that soft, sunken spot between his eye and his ear. I moved it closer.

  Bub started to lift his head toward me. I pulled a trigger and the butt of the stock slammed me to my backside. Bub dropped to his front knees, his head swaying back and forth like someone at a dance who has not been asked to join in.

  I had not wanted to look when I did it, but I was mortally afraid I would miss my mark. That would mean having to touch off a second round, and Bub would be in such pain. I hadn’t wanted to see any of it, but I did. I saw the far side of his head come away. I saw the eye nearest me grow wide and round. The hole was horrid, the sparse snow a bloodied mess.

  He grunted and I held my breath, hoping he wasn’t in pain. Before I could empty the second shell into the same spot, Bub made a wheezing, groaning sound, and his head flopped to his right, folding back on itself, as if he were trying to lick at his side. His big body followed it down to the ground.

  I sat up and lowered the second hammer gently, then I laid the shotgun on the ground. It was done. I knelt and checked for his heartbeat, but found none. Blood bubbled and welled out the ragged wound in his head, a hole I had put there. I had killed the last living creature, at least within sight, that knew me. My heart thumped in my chest, though not enough to make up for Bub’s stilled heartbeat.

  The day was young and the sun, for once these past few weeks, was busy curving upward from the east. I had much to do and none of it pleasant. But the work would keep me from feeling worse than I did already.

  I snatched up the shotgun, and brought it back to the wagon. I gathered two canvas tarpaulins, Papa’s spare skinning knife, and another, larger carving knife. Thus armed I walked back to

  Bub and began the time-eating task of butchering a full-grown ox.

  We had a decent store of salt, so salting is what I intended to do with the meat. Smoking it was not possible, as it is a slow task, days and days of effort, and I do not have the time or patience for it, let alone the knowledge.

  I was hungry, even as I sliced into Bub’s flank and peeled away the hide. My gut growled like how I imagine a baby bear might sound come spring.

  I had intended to save as much of the hide in one piece as I was able, but I do not know enough about curing to make it a useful thing. Would it attract creatures I do not need near me? It was bad enough that Bub’s blood splashed all over the ground. I would have to bathe myself and my clothes in the river, and that would require a full blazing fire to dry everything. But not until I was done with this job.

  The air carried a chill to it, the same sort of bone-creeper Papa always says means a storm is on its way.

  My meat cuts are not pretty, but I did my best to make them ample, to not waste any of that good beast’s ended life. I laid them on a tarpaulin, stacking them according to thickness and size. I made none of them very thick at all, for they all had to be salted. I was thankful it was far too late in the season for great swarms of flies. Nothing will come around to fresh blood faster than flies.

  The ones that like the meat more than hungry wolves are blowflies. Nasty things. Circling and buzzing and not at all fast, sort of heavy and sluggish, and will as likely land on your arm as on your butcher knife—anything at all as long as there is blood on it. Oh, but they are nasty things. Even as I write this I can feel them walking around in the sticky, steaming blood on my arm hairs. They weren’t really there, of course, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what they feel like. I helped Papa with butchering a number of times on the farm, wild critters and animals we raised for their meat. It is never a task that grows easier with time.

  Makes me want to wash and wash and wash. But Bub’s carcass came first. It was gruesome work, I can tell you, and I did not salvage various parts that Papa does, such as the head, the eyes, the brain, all that to boil up and make blood pudding. I could not bring myself to do that to Bub’s face. I console myself with the thought that I had ended his suffering, however slight it was compared with Bib’s, in a kinder way than being dragged down and chewed to death by wolves.

  I was tempted to slice out his tongue, for that is a savory cut of meat. But that would have meant grappling with Bub’s head, and I could not bear to look into those filmy eyes and pillage any more than I had to.

  I tied on one of my older aprons up high above my breasts, under my armpits, and used that as a smock. It was soon brown with smeared blood. I also tried not to kneel down while I worked meat from the bone, but an ox is a big beast and I am not particularly large, though Papa says I am of a good height.

  In my uncharitable moments, I worry he is judging if I will be able to marry one day. Not that it ever did, but the notion of marriage hasn’t much crossed my mind lately. I do not wonder why.

  But back to Bub, I did my very best to keep the skinning knife’s edge honed. The day was turning off clear but cold, carrying a tang of coming snow, I was sure of it. It made me work all the faster.

  Lastly I honed the limbing axe and set to work hacking through Bub’s leg bones. I wish I had the ability to make shorter lengths, but at least I could have marrow bones. They are delectable and though splitting them lengthwise is possible with the axe, it would be tricky, too. I reckoned I would be able to jam a thin branch down the heated length of bone and pull out the tasty cooked marrow. That alone could sustain me for a month of Sundays.

  I stood back and regarded what I had done. Despite the cold, sweat dripped down my forehead and stung my eyes. I wiped with the back of my arm, but only ended up smearing more blood on my face.

  I had stacked a sizable amount of meat and would now have to drag it across the meadow to the wagon. I had intentionally led Bub out across the valley floor, away from the wagon in hopes that when the wolves came for his carcass they would keep well clear of me.

  I left off the meat cutting then for a few minutes, glad to be away from the warm, close stink of it. Nothing smells so wrong as blood. I can’t explain it any better than that. Of all the bad things I have smelled in my life, dung, bad breath, long-dead critters, stale sweated-up clothes of boys, nothing is quite so out of place and ill-fitting as the smell of blood. It feels as if it will never leave your nose, as if it will always be packed up inside there, seeped permanently into your skin and hair and lungs.

  I walked back to the wagon. I had an idea, you see, and wiped clean the blade of the knife on my apron as I walked, breathing deep of the clean air. The sky was high and blue and spread out everywhere. I daren’t look down, as I half expected the blue to continue right around me, as if I was in a glass dish. I rummaged in the wagon, making a mess of things that I had tried to keep tidy. From the start of the journey, I learned neatness was near impossible in such a small space.

  At least without the boys slamming and dragging their way through it these past couple of weeks I have been able to keep it somewhat orderly. Now my main concern was in keeping the bloody apron from dragging over the hanging clothes, trunks, crates, and buckets.

  I found what I was after, much of a five-pound sack of coarse salt, and dragged it out. I looked for more, but found none. The sack would have to do. I scooped out a small handful and tipped that into an empty glass jar for the time being. I would save that for seasoning, unless I needed it, too, for the meat.

  The rest I set on the open tailgate of the wagon, then commenced to empty foodstuffs and kitchen items from one container into others, jamming them together where I could. I needed vessels to pack full of meat. I glanced out the back of the wagon at the tarpaulin, stacked sloppily with raw meat. There was a whole lot of it, and none of it looked appetizing. Once I rubbed it with salt, it would look strange and taste even worse than that. But at least it should preserve the meat—and hopefully cover up the smell enough that I could tuck it safely away.

  But where? That’s a thought I had been avoiding for some time. Even t
hough I was butchering the last of the two oxen, I still had in mind that all would turn out well somehow, as long as the weather held. Might be I would not need any shelter beyond the wagon. So far we’d only received dustings of snow, nothing that I could not trudge through on my way up and out of the mountains.

  But what would I do with all this meat? What was it I was really doing? I did not want to admit what I knew had to be done. I have to leave or stay, no other choices. I do not want to leave because I am afraid of what I do not know beyond this little mountain valley. And I believe I am using Papa and the boys and their return to me as an excuse to wait and not make the hard decision.

  For the time being, I shirked that decision once more. I did the thing I have become accustomed to, the thing that makes bearing all this so much easier—I concentrated on the task right before my nose and did not look much beyond that.

  I lugged the vessels, all I could find, boxes and nail kegs, mostly, six in all, to the back of the wagon. I hopped down with a grunt, dipped the ladle into the water keg, only to find the top crusted with ice. I jammed it in there a few times and the ice broke up. The water, cold enough to freeze my lips, felt good, but soon hurt my teeth as I gulped it. Butchering is thirsty work.

  I looked to the sky again, pausing between gulps to let my teeth warm up. The sun had already begun to head toward the mountains to the west. I had but a couple of hours at best before nightfall came. And with all that raw meat sitting out there pretty as you please, and a cut-up carcass laid out for the world to see, wolves included, I knew I had to get busy. Suddenly that dead ox (I can’t think of it as Bub anymore) did not look far enough at all from the wagon.

  I walked back to the sloppy meat pile. It was sizable. I decided then and there I’d better deal with that much and leave off carving on the rest until tomorrow. Unless the wolves got to it first, then I would have to be satisfied with what I had before me.

  “All depends on how fast you eat it, girl,” I told myself, standing there and looking down at it.

  I had intended to drag the canvas across the meadow to the wagon, but I got worried about leaving a big ol’ smear of a blood trail for the critters to follow directly to the wagon and me, inside and sleeping. So I walked back to the wagon, grabbed a keg I thought I could about lug if it was full, and I went back to that meat pile and filled it up.

  I may have overestimated my strength. I bent to heft that keg full of meat and about broke my back. But I did get it raised, after I took a few hunks off, flopped them back on the stack. I was near to tears when I realized how much work I still had ahead of me. I should have started earlier in the day.

  I made it back to the wagon with my keg of meat, and as quick as I could, given that I was panting to beat the band, I drizzled a goodly portion of salt in the bottom of another keg, then rubbed and smacked and smeared salt all over each hunk of meat as I pulled it out of the bloody keg. Every vein and joint as well as the entire surface of every piece had to have a goodly glaze on it, I knew that much from helping Papa salt meat for keeping.

  Even though it stung in the cracks of my sore hands, the salting went along faster than I expected. Heartened by that I returned with renewed vigor to the piled meat across the meadow. Soon I had salted and stored about two-thirds of the pile. I was growing tired and quick. I was a wound clock nearing the end of my day.

  As I finished off a load, layering it atop other salty hunks in a crate I’d lined with thin cotton cloth, I realized I was squinting. “Oh no!” I shouted. I looked to the sky behind me as I said it and saw the sun beginning its dip down low. I still had so much meat to retrieve.

  “Nothing for it,” I said, hustling back across the meadow. I carried the last two vessels with me, a keg, on the small side, and a canvas satchel with leather strap handles. I hated to fill that last with meat because I rather liked it for ease of toting most anything, but I was plumb out of things to store meat in.

  I had almost filled the keg when I looked up again. I am not sure what I expected to see. It’s not as if the sun was about to slow itself for me. But then I am an optimistic sort. I noticed the sky to the west had laid itself out long and low, coloring my blood-dried hands a pretty orange, reminding me for a moment of the lilies that grew by the front door of our old farmhouse. Only it wasn’t our home anymore. It belonged to Cousin Merdin and his bitter stick of a wife, Ethel, and those two bratty twins. I don’t mind saying it as there is little danger of them ever seeing this diary.

  A sudden sharp yip stiffened me in and out. I stood up straight and looked to the northwest, from where it had come. Another sharp yip peeled off not far from it—though still far enough. Coyotes? Wolves? I didn’t know enough about them yet to tell from that distance. I hope I never get a close-up lesson. The night they’d killed Bib was near enough.

  How could I expect them to stay away when I’d spent the day making a bloody pile of meat and bones? It must have been like fresh-baked apple pie smells to Thomas and William and Papa after a day in the south field.

  I am convinced no one ever carried a keg of meat so fast as I did that late afternoon. I glanced at the sky as I waddled back to the wagon. My breath came out and in, short and fast, timed somehow with my stumbling steps. By my reckoning I had less than an hour before pitch-black night came. That didn’t leave me enough time to do the things I needed to do. I had to get the last of that meat to the wagon. One more lugged load, and I had intended to strip down and wash the blood off me.

  I set to the tasks as fast as I could, the cold coming in with a vengeance, the dark closing in on its heels. As soon as I stepped off the canvas I’d stacked all the meat on I realized I might need it. But if I left the bloody thing stretched on the crusty grass and snow for the night, the wolves or coyotes or whatever hairy, fanged thing was out there might well treat it like jerky, and then I’d have nothing.

  I chewed that over in my mind as I hurried back to the wagon with that last satchel of meat. I’d salt that and the last keg full later. For the time being I sprinkled what was left of the salt over the top, shook it to distribute it, plunked a frying pan on top of the keg, and laid a stack of blankets over the satchel. The meat beneath was salted and half frozen anyway.

  I ran back to the carcass of old Bub, gave him a quick prayer

  of thanks and a head nod, then folded that tarp, half to half to half until it was a square I could carry. It was mighty stiff from the cold by that time, but I could still smell it, bloody and raw, like when you lick metal. As I say, blood is a taste you can’t shake.

  I had an idea I still had light enough to take that canvas tarpaulin and my own bloody self down to the river. It was open down the bank from the wagon, flowing like a burst sore in a circle out from under thin, ragged-edge ice.

  “This could well be another of my foolhardy moments, Papa,” I told myself. But there was nothing for it. I had to get as much of the blood stink off and away from me as I could before lashing myself into the wagon for the night.

  On my way past the wagon I grabbed a hank of stout hemp rope Papa had hanging on a hook on the side of the wagon, one of a half dozen of them of varying lengths and thicknesses. He is a man who likes to have a good hank of rope on hand. Says you can do pretty much whatever you need to with a good axe, a set of willing arms and legs, and a length of stout rope.

  I hoped he was right. I also scrabbled around behind the driver’s bench, and laid a hand on a stiff-bristle brush normally used for cleaning burs out of the oxen’s tails, among other tasks. Then I headed to the river.

  It took more time than I would have liked to strip off my bloody clothes. They were frozen and sopping tight to me, all at once. Next to falling in the rushing froze-over river, standing all but naked beside it in a breeze that felt like tiny blades slicing through the air, is a painful experience, I tell you. And then it got worse. I could see enough yet to tell that my scrubbing with a wad of clean cloth dipped in the frigid water wasn’t rubbing off all the blood. Something had to be done
, and I knew what it was.

  I commenced to scrubbing with the brush, and darn if that didn’t tickle. And by tickle I mean hurt bad. It felt as if I were peeling off at least the top three layers of my skin. But I also saw that the brush, painful as it was, was effective at stripping off the blood. I was still afraid once I got the little wagon stove heated up, all that blood on me and my clothes would commence to stink. I was determined to get it off me at all costs. No way under heaven was I going to make myself a temptation to wolves.

  The blood had leeched through my apron and dresses and longhandles and undershirt to my midsection, and that’s where a body has some tender skin. Rasping and dragging that brush on my belly made me howl almost as much as the cold air did. But I believe I did a fair job of cleaning up, I know I felt numb as a hammer-struck thumb when I was done. And I could only imagine what it was going to feel like the next day.

  Next I dunked my clothes a number of times, working them together hard, sort of mashing them and wringing them all at once, then balled them up in the center of that tarpaulin. I cinched it tight, and shinnied a few feet onto what was left of an old tree that leaned out over the water. My longhandles did very little in protecting my legs, and I figured I’d been so tore up by the brushing I’d given myself that my bare torso couldn’t face any worse. But I was wrong—that bark was rough.

  Judging from the gashed surface on the underside, it felt like that tree had seen plenty of ice in its time. It wasn’t a big tree but it was sufficient enough, I hoped, for my needs. I lashed that rope around the trunk so the knob of bloody canvas and clothes hung out over the river. A wolf would have to be mighty determined to get at that.

  Pleased with my efforts, I struggled up the bank to the wagon. I had momentarily forgotten I was all but naked, when the wind kicked up. It felt like bee stings all over me. With each passing step I got the creeping feeling we were in for snow this very night. I climbed inside the wagon, and managed to light a candle with a sulfur match. It was a lazy girl’s indulgence, I admit.