Our End Of The Line

by Ron Foster

  “You no sing good, Walt! Sound like sick sing-song cat!” Yoshi said with a sour look and followed him to the campfire and when they got there he shoved the duck back in his direction.

  Walt smiled back at him slyly and then dunked the duck carcass carefully, first by holding onto its feet and then he grabbed two suitable sticks off the ground to hold onto its steaming head using them like tongs so as not to burn his fingers while he dunked it again butt first and carried the dripping hot mess of stinking steaming feathers off down the trail towards the creek. After a few minutes of walking with Yoshi trotting along, carrying the entrenching tool and that big old chromed monster pistol of his in his free hand watching out for the occasional branches that Walt was playfully letting fly in his direction if he got too close voicing a chuckling “watch out!” over his shoulder to remind him not to follow so close to him in the woods.

  “Now when we get to the creek, I will show you where I want you to dig a hole. It ain’t much of a creek mind you, it’s pretty much no more than just a trickle of ditch water that can be seen this time of year but we can wash off our hands and the plucked duck carcass in it where I have it dug down and cisterned some. That little cleanup maneuver will send blood scent downstream as a hopeful predator attractant so I want you to wait until we build us a trap or two first before we actually wash up and hopefully ring the dinner bell on something downstream to come up here to investigate. I am predator hunting for carnivores over scavengers but they can be both so some guts and gore on some trap sticks and line won’t matter. What dirt we got on our hands after cleaning that duck might disguise our scent a bit while making some trap sets. That bit of non-hygiene animal specific trap building and snare tying scenting might even improve our chances of getting a solid catch in a neck snare or allow me a better chance to play sniper on a danged sneaky ass bobcat that has been messing with me and stealing prey from my traps. I am hoping that he comes to the lure of fresh blood dribbling down that creek for a mile or so if he is anywhere in the area. Now what I want you to do for me is dig me hole about a foot or so deep and wide while I go find and cut some specific sized green sapling sticks I need. Hey, where is your knife at anyway? You got some big folding spring powered hog sticker of a samurai sword in your pocket to match that zombie gun that I don’t know about?” Walt said scrutinizing Yoshi’s pants pockets for bulges.

  “No, big white hunter San, I don’t, I have pocket pen knife only.” Yoshi said messing with him back and producing only a miniscule pen knife of dubious sharpness and usefulness.

  “We need to get you a “Big Man’s knife!” Walt said poking some more fun and sarcasm back at him and brandishing his big Cold Steel Trailmaster black bladed bowie knife with a wicked “mess with me” grin and lopped off a 2 inch thick sapling with one smooth effortless lick as he performed the maneuver and put it back in its sheath before Yoshi even got a good look at the wicked but utilitarian heavy blade.

  “Ah, you just big cowboy with knife sword and cap pistol in an apron pocket!” Yoshi said with a silly put on angry face before smiling belligerently at Walt knowing his feigned insult at him and the inclusion of cowboy stereotypes in general would get a rise out of him and probably a few curse words aimed at him too.

  “You watch out for coyotes and bobcats, they might just like to vary their diet and have some Asian tasting sushi made out of a man that thinks a pen knife is fit to be seen with these dark southern woods as his only defense weapon or useful tool in!” Walt said pretending to scan the woods carefully before putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head at Yoshi indicating he thought the little man was just wrong for this life before wandering off to find just the right sticks he needed to construct his animal traps with.

  “What bobcat?” Yoshi called after him after a serious look around his surroundings for such fur and fanged threats.

  “Something worse for you to encounter than rattlesnakes if they have rabies!” Walt said after a pause looking back and forth then added a smile to sort of say there were worse things in these woods to be careful of for novices to consider.

  “Rattlesnake get rabies? No, you poke fun at Yoshi again.” Yoshi said eying the woods carefully.

  Yoshi eyed him belligerently for a moment before he began digging the hole that Walt had told him to do interspaced with unintelligible Japanese insults towards Walt’s ancestors and inscrutable rednecks and their backwoods hillbilly families in general and Walt said something back in also indiscernible Vietnamese which he had picked up from his war days and with them sharing mutual happily aggravating thoughts and insults for one another he went to get the fixings for what he hoped was going to be a cure for a trap-raiding worrisome bobcat that had been bedeviling his and Thomas’s efforts to feed the little survival community that depended on each other and the land to get by. That cat ate more than its share of game meant for their dinner table and the additional problem was that it was a master predator itself, it wasn’t a domestic cat that might indiscriminately kill for the primal pleasure of the hunt but Walt thought it took robbing and destroying his traps personally to tell him this was his territory and Walt was the invader that needed to be taught a lesson.

  Yoshi got the hole dug in no time and looked around for his benefactor that had mysteriously melted off almost silently into the woods as soon as he had put his head down. Walt had immediately begun the task of tracking game trails and preparing animal booby traps in likely places hoping the new bait he was going to use would bring in a catch in these trapped and hunted out woods. Yoshi liked old Walt, he was a good man, but he just didn’t know how to take the man’s somewhat aggravating devil may care nature. He had seen the wrinkled worry lines tensing on Walt’s face evidencing hard won experience and fortitude facing violence before when he was running scared away from those crazy looking soldier men that were shooting at him, but he could have sworn he also saw the man smirking like it was some kind of fun. He didn’t understand him much at all but at the same time he was just like an old beloved comical trickster uncle of his that he had growing up that forever liked to tease him and jovially insult him but was reasonably patient and kind when teaching him new things and if needed, Yoshi thought, the old samurai would have gladly fought a bear for him if necessary.

  Walt was something of an enigma that he hadn’t seen before though and that worried him. That the man could be mean as a dragon was a fact he had no doubt about it and why he had just accepted the dire circumstances of their chance encounter under fire and opened his door up to him wide with hospitality in his time of need had something to do with him just not being nice. Walt wanted something from Yoshi, but he didn’t know what that quite was and it worried him. He was suspicious and a bit resentful of Walt’s cavalier attitude, possibly it could be that he was also a bit afraid of his fierceness that the man had exhibited. Yoshi was a stranger in a strange land but if it wasn’t for Walt he didn’t know what he would have done for himself if Walt had just left him where he had found him and went on his way when the fighting was done.

  He certainly didn’t want to entertain any thoughts of going back to his former home at the hotel right now. Not with those mean bad army men lurking about, but where could he go to? If Walt had just dropped him off somewhere to wait on the bad men to leave, how would he have found a new place to sleep or even eat while waiting? Yes, he had his small bag of rice still and he knew Walt wouldn’t steal it from him, but he had in his rush to leave managed to forget even his pot to cook it in and he only had a few bottles of bottled water in his bed roll to stave off dehydration. What if those men didn’t leave what he used to call his new home? What if he couldn’t move back in his little room at the hotel and try to fish the pond for food? What would become of him then? He would starve is what!” Yoshi thought wistfully his mind all a flutter with dark thoughts and he found himself glancing about and moving towards panic mode before he saw Walt coming back carrying an arm full of small sticks. Walt didn’t appear to care about anything, he se
emed in his element in the wilds and with a brief glance at the worried Japanese man proceeded to try to teach Yoshi a bit of what he knew about surviving in them.

  “Ok, Yoshi, that hole’s plenty deep enough for now; you can quit digging. You take those wire strippers I gave you and get to work on that electrical cord and make me up some snare wire. I will show you how to make them little wires as strong as we need them by twisting them and cutting them to length.” Walt said dumping his burden down.

  “You learn this, Yoshi, learn it well and you can always have a chance at feeding yourself and others. Now don’t you kink up my wire in the process of doing this and making any weak spots. We want strong usable snares, the process is simple if you keep an eye towards not scoring the wire or over flexing it and making it weak.” Walt advised as he showed him how to use the tool and explained that the best route to success for the trapper was to direct a particular chosen animal’s behavior to lead it into the trap and also make it harder for it to go around or avoid the set. Animals are just like humans and will take the easiest path even when they have suspicion, Walt advised. That is unless they have a learned trap shy aversion from a close encounter with a badly laid set. Do it right the first time and you don’t get you a generation of foxes and other critters that learn avoidance of man scent or learn to follow the trapper for an easy meal robbing catches, Walt explained.

  “Now if you think you already know the point or have figured out an angle on this trapping thing that I am trying to teach, you tell me and we will discuss it. Could be you consider I haven’t realized a different slant for myself yet so chime in, otherwise hush and listen to an old wood master. I am going to start plucking that duck and throwing the feathers in that hole you dug while you get what we need to lasso us another meal hopefully with a strangulation snare and maybe get that bait and animal robbing bobcat critter off my trail and out of my territory for feeding me and others. Now these fine copper wires you are stripping out are small by themselves inside this cord but twisted all together, I can pretty much catch anything and everything that lives in these woods with a bit of skill and guile. You know what guile is, Yoshi? It means to be crafty like a fox, as smart, cunning and vicious as a wolverine, you don’t worry about the words or animals that you don’t know about yet, you just remember what I do to make a basic snare. I will be teaching you additional techniques and some trapping tricks later. Hopefully over the coming days, I will tell you about all the lessons I have learned to ensure a catch that I have learned from studying animals’ habits and indigenous peoples’ traps from all over the world.” Walt said and commenced to start plucking the duck as Yoshi stripped wire and listened intently.

  “I here to learn, Walt! Thank you and stay patient with me, we both fish in same pond now as they say in my old country I was born in.” Yoshi said as a willing learner to all Walt described as useful and necessary to be a successful trapper and frontiersman.

  “Take this stick, break it in half and make things more efficient and easy for yourself. “ Walt said watching him try to duplicate the first example he had explained of the need to twist wires for strength overhand but not impose brittleness or undue fatigue on the wire in the process of twisting. Yoshi had tried to carefully do it by hand but the simplistic trick of using a small stick to tighten his wire winds made perfect sense to him. The trick also illuminated the concept that it was an easy task if someone had just taken the time to tell you how to do it right to begin with. Not too many old-timers like Walt were still around to tell you those kind of shortcuts and Yoshi did not have to reinvent the wheel or learn the hard way he had decided not long after they met. Walt was all about doing something the easy way if there was one!

  “Oh, much easier, Walt! Not too tight twisting right!” Yoshi said beaming his approval of learning this neat survival skill that might just be serving him well for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, I got me a lifetime of stomping the woods or old timey household skills that my granny taught me growing up that apply to the here and now if you got time and gumption to learn. Granddad had a few of his own trapping tricks he learned from his dad to make getting meat for the pot or tricking wily predators easier also. For example, see this particular feather I got here with a bit of light wavy fluff or down on it that will move in the wind? That feather can catch a bobcat all on its own. It is a perfect irresistible attention and curiosity getter that triggers cat instincts to want to investigate and pounce on its movements. We are going to put this special feather aside over here for now but you get the idea that we are going to make a cat toy out of it. See, that bobcat ain’t anything but an overgrown tom cat with all the innate hunting skills and curiosity of a house cat that will chase a crumpled up cigarette pack cellophane because it makes noise and moves. If that feather is lofting and moving in the wind, that feline is not going to be able to contain itself and not to want to bat it with a paw at least once and come to investigate. Now don’t you be spitting or pissing anywhere around here I forgot to tell you. Keep human presence and the signs we have been here at a minimum. Take over this duck plucking while I get the rest of our gear and dinner getting materials ready.” Walt said.

  “Uh Walt…already did.” Yoshi said sadly looking ashamed.

  “Already did what?” Walt said looking up from notching some snare triggers.

  “I pee!” Yoshi said pointing towards a big hickory next to their game cleaning station.

  “Why you damn old rascal! Oh hell, it’s my fault that I didn’t tell you not to previously, I guess. No worries, hey uh, you didn’t do anything else, did you?” Walt asked raising both eyebrows in his direction.

  “No! No! Not me, I spit in hole but nothing else.” Yoshi confided.

  “Humm, not sure what we do but I will fix it with another trick. You’re a new animal in the woods to them and like a dog smells a fire hydrant to see who has been by, I might use that to our advantage. You go hunting with me, boy, you keep your tally whacker holstered unless you ask, ok? Now then, that bobcat I think is pretty darn trap shy when it comes to be getting caught itself so I am not expecting much but you can never tell. Thing is I am placing my snare and bait directly in line with that deer stand that we passed on the way down here and we are going to sit-up in it awhile and see if he comes to investigate; if he does come around, I can get a shot at him.” Walt said and commenced to finish cleaning the duck. Once they were done, Walt finished making his snare and he and Yoshi went back to the house and got his solar cooker out.

  “We will put this sun oven on top of my storage shed so it will be out of sight and out of mind in case Thomas decides to come back by for some reason but he won’t be around any further today, I don’t think.” Walt said and now that there wasn’t anything left to do but wait on the sun to do its job, relaxed and found him a place to sit down.

  “That cat won’t come around here most likely until somewhere around dusk or early morning around dawn.” Walt said reloading his Henry carbine with higher powered hollow point long rifle bullets this time because he figured they were much more suitable to hunt a potentially dangerous creature with.

  “Yoshi, what all ingredients do you need to make your side dish of rice stuffing?” Walt asked intrigued by the prospect of having something new and different to eat besides the harsh and sometimes bitter wild edible plants and gamey tasting varmints that was his normal fare.

  “I can make lots of ways, it all depend on what you have. Garlic and onion, celery if you have. You show me garden, I fix.” Yoshi said ready to show him he could also make something out of nothing but could shine given the right provisions or add-ons with the spices or dishes.

  “Well, I don’t have any celery; I never had luck growing it personally. Hey, I got a plant that tastes just like celery but I advise you to use it sparingly, it tastes a lot stronger than regular celery.” Walt said and took him out to his garden to show him a lovage bush.

  “I never hear of Lovage plant but I make taste good if show me.�
� Yoshi said looking at a small herb patch Walt had for his permaculture kitchen culinary tweaking.

  “Lovage is a wonderful plant that gets quite large, up to 7 or 8 feet they say. It’s an herb though and you can pick the leaves to add to your dinners fresh for health or taste benefits. Get you the small new leaves. Lovage has a strong flavor, not unlike celery, but it is much stronger than that. It’s great in salads with other greens; it really adds a zing to whatever you add it to. I pretty much tend to add it to soups or stews a lot to spice them up rather than eat it as a green.” Walt said describing the unique plant.

  “You plant it from seed in spring?” Yoshi asked astonished how big it had gotten.

  “You can grow the plant from seed or you can put in as a plant if you can find or start one. You won’t see them as transplants in garden centers but they are pretty common. Lovage grows to the size of a shrub each year which is pretty neat. Since the plant grows so large, you can get a great harvest and share with those that are unaware of this great heirloom kitchen addition! And as a bonus is that Lovage is a perennial! So plant it once, and every year it will come back and grow large again!” Walt said snipping some off.

  “You have nice garden, Walt! You work hard, I see, I garden lot when I home.” Yoshi said collecting Thyme, sage and other herbs that he evidently readily recognized for himself after Walt’s approval to give him free picking privileges any time he wanted and treat the garden as his own.

  “Are mushrooms on your kitchen counter for food or medicine?” Yoshi asked having seen the basket Thomas’s wife Lottie had brought them evidently earlier in the day.