Hold Fast (17 page)

Not only did one get in, but two more of his buddies too! In by the neck all of them, dead as doornails. And we only had ten slips out. Think what we might a had if we put out any more or if it had stayed clear all night. We'd a trotted home with a back load.

Holy dyin, three was plenty! More than plenty. That'd give us food enough for a good spell. Two of them was in slips I set out myself, the other in the one Curtis put out and I fixed up for him. He was a happy man all right — sorta his first rabbit in a way, with a little bit of help from me. He was no happier than I was, I tell you. Three rabbits in ten slips. Not bad atall. I hadn't lost my touch, even if it was inside a national park.

When it gets cold like it was that night before, then rabbits don't last long in the slips. Once they gets that wire around their neck and then starts struggling, well the cold starts wearing them down right away. If the wire is on nice and tight on the standard, then it ain't long before they're dead, out cold, stiff as a board. If it stays cold, then they'll keep like that in the slips a good while.

Sometimes, rabbits lying dead there in the slips can be a bad-looking sight. Some you gets, if they're caught by the hind legs, they'll have the fur chafed off the leg and the red flesh showing through. It don't look too nice. Some others might have parts eat off them, say, by a shrew or an owl. Some could be alive and you got to kill them. The most pitiful-looking thing I ever caught in a slip was a real young one one time. It was so small that I carried it home dead in my coat pocket. I didn't like it atall having caught something so small as that. I would a thought he was small enough to jump through the slip. But when that
happens there's nothing you can do about it. You just got to put up with it and hope it don't happen again.

These fellows was all in by the necks. It took a bit of time getting the wire off from around them because it got caught up in the fur. We could a taken them snares and all, I spose, but I didn't want that. I'd string the snares out so no rabbits would get caught, but I wanted them left there on the standards. I couldn't very well fix them all up again and us with three rabbits already. If we caught any more the next day, we'd never be able to eat them. So I figured I'd string them out and then if we wanted to come back later on and set up for another feed, there'd be no problem. And by the looks of the tracks around in the snow, I knew there'd be plenty to catch.

We left the slips and walked on back then to the cooking shelter. We left two of them tied up inside the shelter, guts and all. They'd keep okay off the ground like that. Then it was the matter of cooking up the other one.

I gave Curtis his instructions on how to go about skinning a rabbit, the way I learned it from Dad. It took two people the way we used to do it — one fellow to hold the rabbit by the hind legs, the other fellow to haul off the skin and gut him. The pocket knife I had was pretty sharp, not as good a knife as I'd like to've had, but it had to do.

While one fellow holds him up by the hind legs, you starts in skinning him there, working your way down to the head. The skin comes off inside out, like you'd peel off a tight sweater. You got to be careful with it though and know what you're doing cause you don't want to wind up with fur on the meat. The hardest part I always found to
skin is around the head. That don't come off too easy, like in around the ears.

The guts'll drop out while you're doing it, but you should make sure to save the kidneys and the liver, and the lights too, if you likes them. They're some of the best parts. Once he's skinned, then you can cut him up — the hindquarters, the forequarters, the rib cage, the meaty parts down the back, and the head. You should always make sure to cut off and fire away the snotbox from the head.

That's it then. Curtis wasn't use to the blood and the bit of a stink, and I don't think he went too much on it, but he never complained. We washed the meat and our hands, and we was all ready then to start cooking. We had no pot, only tinfoil, so we couldn't make a real good job of it. And no pork fat or onions, that was the worst thing. Nothing to give it that extra bit of taste. We just had to make do with what we had. It smelled good just the same, once we got it on the fire. We wrapped up a few spuds with some butter and tossed that over the fire along with it.

And later when we hauled it out cooked and sunk our chops into the meat, I tell you it was all right too. Not so good now as Mom could fix up with the onions and the salt pork, but pretty good considering what we had to work with. And then for a drop of tea. Only we had to settle for lousy old baker's loaf. That's enough to spoil a good dinner if you're not careful. Not half as good as the homemade, perhaps not a quarter.

But we made a feed out of it all, and a darn good one at that. No need to be ashamed of our cooking, that was one thing for sure.

Only for everything outdoors being so wet as it was, and the fact then that we had no more dry clothes, we might a gone off in the woods somewhere, away from the campsites altogether and fixed up a shelter out of boughs — a boughwiffen we calls it — and stayed there for the night. Just to get away from all signs of having to depend on someone for a place to live. Just to prove something, I guess. I might a wanted to do it, but I've got sense along with my stubbornness, so I figured it was best not to. Not this time, anyway. It wasn't that I couldn't a done it if I had to. But what was the sense of taking chances, especially when it got so cold in the nights.

So that afternoon we wasn't left with much to do. There was only so far we could walk without getting bored. We was done with rabbit catching for the time being. Fishing was outa the question that time of year. The fish would be too slubby to eat even if we did catch any. And the seven cans of Ajax and twelve packs of paper towels left in the janitor's place wasn't exactly the best things in the world to amuse ourselves with.

The only other thing that had been left in the room
when we came there was a coil of nylon rope about thirty foot long. We had part of it tied up for a clothesline.

After a while of thinking it over, a second good use for it suddenly came to me. We rigged up a rope swing in one of the trees. You talk about the neat little outfit, my son, once we had it done.

I was a long while finding a sensible tree that we could tie it to — a tall one with no real big branches except up high. I could cut off any small ones with the axe I had. And the tree had to be out in the open so's we wouldn't bang up into any of the others when we swung around.

I shinnied my way up this spruce, cutting off the few branches as I went along, and then tied on one end of the rope where I thought it would hold good and solid. When I came back down to the ground, I tied the other end up in a few knots, so's we'd be able to get a nice tight grip on it. The way we had it rigged, you could leave this little hill when you grabbed onto the rope and then make a full swing right around the tree till you pitched back down on the ground where you started off.

I was on rope swings lots of time before, but as for Curt, I believe it must a been his first time. You could see by the way he swung off it that he probably never ever seen one before. He never got out far enough and instead of swinging right around, he came back and rammed smacko, right into the tree. I never said anything. Almost killed himself he did. Not really, but he gave himself a pretty hard goin-over.

After that, I didn't think he'd try it a second time, but in five minutes he was up at it again. This time I gave him a shove off and made sure he got away right.

Once he had the hang of it then, there was no giving up. He swung his guts out. Wonder he didn't chafe through the tree, he went around that many times.

It was a great bit of fun all right. In Marten, we use to have one something like that in by the pond summertimes, for swinging off into the water. What a time we use to have with it. You'd draw back, my son, and swing off from the bank as hard as ever you could go, trying to see who could pitch the farthest out in the water.

I guess you could say we glutted ourselves with swinging around that spruce tree. We was at it that long I was getting dizzy. It's some feeling, though, to be off on the loose like that, to have all your weight straining down on your hands around just a few knots on a piece of rope. Sometimes you figures, cripes, I'm going to fall, but you hangs on and after a while of being all loose and free, you finds that there you are landing right back down on the spot from where you left.

Well, to be honest about it, most of the second night we was bored stiff. There was nothing new left to do. It was dark by five o'clock and we played cards till we was blurry-eyed. And, when I thought about it, I knew there wasn't even a hell of a lot to look forward to the next day.

On top of that, I had it on my mind all that day about Brent and Aunt Flo and Grandfather. I knew they must a been worried sick by then. What was it — three days since we was missing? I knew Aunt Flo would be just about gone crazy if I didn't turn up soon.

So we agreed, right there on the spot, that the next morning we'd get up early and drive the car back to the
parking lot and then thumb a ride to Marten. What would happen after that? Well, we'd just have to wait and see.

Once we had our minds made up to go, it seemed that we was all the more anxious to see the time pass. But we had nothing to rush around for and get done. It was only shove all our stuff into the knapsacks in the morning and take off. We had supper already — another rabbit. That left one hanging up in the shelter. I'd find something to do with that one in the morning.

By eight o'clock we was back at the cards again, trying to pass away the few hours until we was ready to go to sleep. A pretty dull racket. Except, that is, for the bit of a row me and Curtis got into. I spose you couldn't really call it a row. A misunderstanding was more like it. All caused by me having my big tongue going again.

Curtis was in the mood for talking that night. All the time since we'd come there he'd been in the mood for a good lot of stuff that he wasn't so hot on doing before. If someone had said two months before, when I first laid eyes on the guy, that we'd be there in the woods, laughing and carrying on like we'd done, I would a said they was nuts. Goes to show how much a fellow can change. Or perhaps it was just that he was having a chance at being himself.

He told me first that he didn't care whether we went or stayed. That he'd just as soon not have to face his parents for another week. I bet he must a been doing a lot of thinking about what would happen to him after we got to Marten. About his parents coming after him and all that.

“Maybe I could stay in Marten, eh, with you?” he said, pretty timid about the whole thing. We had the cards put away. We was lying down in the sleeping bags.

“You want to?”

“Sure.”

“Cripes, but I don't even know what I'll be doing myself yet. One thing I do know for sure though, I won't be going back to St. Albert. They can make away with me first. I'm not even sure if Aunt Flo'll let me stay with her for frig's sake, let alone you too. I was thinking of maybe staying in our own house. Of openin it up again. Only I can't see where I'd get the money to pay for the food and the electricity and all that. I thought of cutting wood and sellin it, but how much bloody wood would you need to cut to get that much money. I don't say I'd be able to get it to work.”

“Maybe I'll have to go back home then.”

“You care?”

“I guess I do. I don't know what to think. I can't run away for good. I guess I don't really want to anyway.”

We both knew that what he was on wasn't no running away from home and never coming back deals. We wasn't on the lookout for no circuses to join. We'd been out to prove something. And by then, maybe we'd done it.

“You know if I go back home it's going to be ten times worse with you not around,” he said quietly.

I wasn't sure how to take that. “Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe the old man's wised up in the last few days.”

“I doubt it.” Almost laughing, like it was a joke.

“Shit, you never knows.”

“I hate to think what will happen if you're not there.”

“Ah, whata ya after? You trying to flatter me up to get me to come back to your place? No way sir am I going back. No way. No matter what. Cripes, if you hates it that much why don't you leave it for good. I thought by now you'd have a little bit more guts at least.”

“Guts! Frig off, Mike. You think it's that simple. Guts, guts! Frig, that's all you talk about isn't it. If I listened to you I'd just up and take off, never go back. You just remember it's my home, the only one I got, where I've been all my life. It's all right for you to talk. They're not your parents.”

“Thank god for that!” I snapped back at him.

“Frig off, will you! Frig off! I know you got no use for them. But just leave it at that. They're the only bloody ones I got you know!”

“Ay, I'm sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“I really am.”

“I said forget it. Okay!” he shouted.

He was mad at me, like I'd never seen him before. I knew I should never a said what I did.

We was in the sleeping bags, with just the light of two candles flickering around in the shadows. He turned on his side with his face in against the wall and we didn't say anything for a long spell. I didn't know what to say to him. It took a lot for him to get that mad. I guess I'd opened my mouth once too often. I thought I could put myself in his place and know what I'd do if I was him. Probably it wasn't as easy as I made it out to be.

He stayed there and stayed there, not moving.

“Hey, Curtis,” I said after a while, “wanta have an arm wrestle?” I was gonna maybe let him win.

“Frig off.”