Hedge of Thorns: Bobby Ought
I hitch Carbon to a nearby sapling. Then I look up, and spot six slats nailed to the maple trunk, ladder-wise, and above them a medium-sized rusting steel platform. Dangling from a short chain on the platform sways a greening copper tag. I reach for it, and read our name. Here, finally, is Dad’s tree stand.
Field dressing the mule deer is more important. I step to the side, and take off the creature’s head. Blood pools, slowly soaking into the soil. Then reaching up, I begin the slit downward through the belly hide, careful not to go too deep and pierce any organs, which would foul the meat. Using the gut hook, I pull the entrails out.
It’s filthy work, a nasty combination of slippery and sticky, but it’s got to be finished quickly, or the meat won’t be good. I haul most of the organs several yards away, but keep the liver, and the heart. Next, I stand on tip-toes, grab one of the hind legs, and cut through the hide around that ankle. I do the same for the other one, working my fingers between the skin and the muscle, and pull. When there’s enough of a gap, I get my knife between the layers, and the process speeds up.
Bobby ought to be here to help with this.
The hide is heavy, awkward to handle, but eventually I yank the last inches off from the deer’s neck, then flip the deer hide hair-side-down, on the ground. Panting, I unscrew the cap on my canteen and take a couple of gulps. I want desperately to go stand under a waterfall, but that’s not an option.
Instead, I build a small fire away from the maple tree, and put the heart and liver in a pan to cook slowly. Stepping back to the stripped carcass, I stick my knife between the fifth and sixth ribs, cut to the spine, work my blade between the vertebrae, sever the spinal cord, and part the fifth and sixth ribs on the other side. The front half drops free. I heave that onto the hide, then go release the rope to bring the rest within easier reach.
Carbon stamps and gives a honking bray.
“Quiet, you beast. I don’t want to argue with anybody over my kill.”
I look and listen, but don’t see danger. He has, however, eaten all the leaves from the sapling that a donkey’s neck can reach. Sighing, I grab my axe, hack a sucker branch from the maple, and drop that where he can get to it.
While I’ve still got the axe in my hand, I return to the deer hide, kneel, and chop the front ribs from the spine. A saw would work better, but I didn’t bring one. I bundle the ribs together with twine, then wrench the forelegs free of the shoulder blades and debone them. I wrap the meat with twine, and lay the long leg bones on the hide. Eventually, I’ll roast those to make broth.
Despite the mess surrounding me, the cooking heart and liver smell ready to eat. Leaving my axe on the hide, I go to drag the pan from the heat. Four palmfuls of water from the canteen are barely enough to clean my hands.
Hedge of Thorns: Bobby Ought is a segment of a serialized Post-Apocalyptic story in which a young artist survives with her family. New posts release on Fridays.
Check the menu on this blog for other, previously posted serialized stories, here.
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