Chapter 4

It was getting to be time for some lunch, but I decided to take my Marlin and head for the stream again to refill my canteen. Suddenly it hit me I'd been a complete dumbass yesterday. The stream I'd found near my handy indoor shitter had completely slipped my mind.

I put the Marlin down and walked back to my indoor plumbing to fill the canteen. For the first time since I'd ended up here I felt happy I was alone since it meant no one was around to rag on me about being an idiot.

Later, while I was eating a big bowl of stew I remembered something else I was missing out on. The seed corn was more than plenty to raise a crop next year if I could find a suitable place and if it would even grow marginally here. A hundred pounds of seed was one hell of a lot. If I could cobble up a way to grind it I could make cornbread. Part of that corn could augment my diet now and I should still have plenty to try raising more next spring. It wouldn't help me for this meal, but I thought I could easily afford to use at least half of it to grind into corn meal.

After eating I spent the rest of the day working on the door. It wasn't much of a job to get it put together or even to make simple hinges. The bitch was getting holes in the rock wall to mount it. I had a couple of star drills and one was three eights inch so I found a good spot and got started. It took more hammering than I'd ever done at one time, a lot more.

I was able to get an eight inch deep hole after hours of pounding and when I tested my work I could see I'd be able to drive the half inch spikes into it since star drills always made larger holes than they claimed. Not much larger you understand, but it was enough to make a good permanent mount.

By the time I had two of the spikes in place I was too damned tired to do any more work on things. I braced my new door up using some of the tree trunks I had left over so I could make it through the night safely without another fire and then I warmed up more stew for supper.

By the time I'd finished eating I was more than ready for bed. Tonight I wouldn't be annoyed by nothing to do after dark, because I was too fucking tired to do anything but lie down. I dropped right off to sleep as soon as I hit the bed.

Next morning I had a bite to eat and then got right to work finishing the door. Things went pretty fast so I started on a chair and table next. Any bachelor knows you can't get by without a coupled of chairs and a table or two. I made them out of more small oaks, stopping to eat around noon, and then getting right back to work.

Building home furnishings took up the next three days. After the two tables and three chairs I built a bed frame to keep my air mattress off the ground and then built a sort of stool to sit on while using my deep crapper.

My small campfire sized chainsaw helped me considerably, even though it was small and would be chancy later if I had to fell large trees. It worked miracles with anything twelve inches in diameter or less, but I knew there'd be trouble with larger trees, so I put them off since I wasn't actually an expert with the device. I was smart enough to know I'd be in serious trouble if I let a falling tree come into contact with me and from the small trees I'd already discovered I wasn't good at figuring out which way they'd fall.

With my home pretty well set for extended use I took the next day for hunting and exploring. Mostly it was for exploring since I still had meat. I was beginning to catch on I wasn't preparing to survive for a couple of weeks until someone rescued me. I'd like to think it would happen someday but had already decided they'd have no way to even get started.

The more I thought about the last look Karen gave me the less I thought she had spread the alarm when she got to wherever she'd left for. Hell, I didn't even know how she left and if she hadn't meant for me to stay where I was it seemed clear to me she could have taken me on the trip.

The completely odd circumstances of where I'd found my pickup only confirmed my suspicions. It was plainly put into a situation with limited travel in mind. I'd looked around closely when I found it and I'd already explored and found no avenue of escape. Not if I wanted to take the truck along with me. I'd been fenced in from the start and I'm sure it was done on purpose. I didn't know who did it and there was no way I could hope to find out. I'd given up on that line of thought as useless and nothing had happened to change my mind.

As a matter of fact I now considered myself lucky. If I was intended to end up here for the duration, they'd at least provided for quite a few things to help me earn a living. The cave I was using wasn't a palace but it beat hell out of being left with nothing but what I'd had in my pockets. I still had no idea why, but at least I could get along.

Getting along was more of what I was trying to do this morning. It seemed more than likely I'd be able to find enough meat to eat. Today I was looking for other things. My next find was about half a mile down the trail they'd left me. I was headed away from the place I'd found my truck. I'd driven over this path, but at the time I hadn't been paying so much attention to what I was seeing.

I found a blackberry patch. I wasn't sure how nutritious they were, but the patch was big - probably three or four acres. Luckily I'd had sense enough to bring a duffle bag with me in hopes I would find something edible and I started picking almost right away.

All the berries that were left were on in toward the center. I figured the vines and thorns had kept deer and such from making much progress. Luckily it had been cool this morning and I'd worn a pair of Carhartts over my jeans and they went a long way toward saving my hide. I had the duffle mostly full within an hour and I headed back to the cave with it.

Setting my fruit down I warmed up a little stew and took a break. After eating I headed out with another duffle, but I wasn't after more berries. I intended to concentrate on looking around and only gather more food while on my way back.

This time I walked all the way to the turnaround on the end away from where the truck had been parked. When I reached it again I took my hatchet out of its belt scabbard and decided I should mark my path on the way out. I didn't think I could get lost, but a lot of people who hadn't thought so either had indeed ended up lost, so I marked my way.

Within two miles of were I left known territory I came up on a sort of grove of small apple trees. They weren't red delicious by any means, but there were forty or fifty of the trees. From the looks there was no doubt it was a natural seeding. The largest trees were in the center and it was fairly plain the largest was the beginning and the apples had worked their way out over the years.

I walked on by the first time and kept looking, but two more hours didn't reveal anything worth mentioning, so I turned around, picked a bag full of apples when I reached them again, and then went back to my cave.

The berries were delicious with my stew that night and the apples were good too. I had to make myself not eat too many. I didn't have to force myself to bed though.

Four more days of exploring was basically same old same old. On the other end of my trail and outward from there I found a few peach trees. They were small peaches but they were tasty. At least the ones that hadn't been gobbled up by animals were good.

I made another trip down to the stream and tried a little fishing, snagging three perch and two nice bass. As luck would have it a young buck wandered by for a drink while I was fishing and I managed a good shot. This time I paid more attention and took the organs and saved the skin and hooves too. Waste not, want not.

Skinning the damned thing and cleaning the hide was more bother but maybe it would be useful later on. While I was tending to it I realized I was slowly getting into a routine of doing what I'd have to do to survive.

Already I knew next winter would be a lot easier than this one was going to be, or at least my diet would be better. I'd already located five bee trees in my wandering. I wasn't going to fuck with them this year, but next year I'd cut one or two of them, not just for the honey but also for the beeswax.

I was pretty sure I could figure out the parts of making pottery I didn't know about already. Next year I could use some beeswax for a seal and put up preserves during the summer and fall and I wouldn't have to go through the winter on meat and cornbread alone. Oh well, it was something to look forward to.

After another week or so I had pretty much explored my surroundings for at least a couple of miles in every direction except behind my cave. I hadn't bothered trying to circle around the mini-mountain, which provided something for my cave to be in. In the first damned place it was too big. I'd walked and looked about a mile past it in both directions and hadn't seen a way to get behind it either way.

This morning I'd decided to see about climbing up the face a little to see what I could from above. It didn't look nearly as tall as it was broad and if the going was too difficult I'd just give up and come down. I'd never done any rock climbing and I didn't have the proper equipment. All I had that I thought might help was a masonry hammer. It would have to do.

I wasn't a rock climber and wasn't a geologist either. All I really thought I knew about the rock face was it wasn't granite and it wasn't sandstone. The sharp end of the masonry hammer would break small pieces off it in places. I'd at least done a little testing before I started up. To me, the stuff looked a lot like iron ore.

On this try I had more time to check out a good way up since I didn't have a prehistoric monster hot on my heels. I found a much easier place to get started and it was even closer to the cave's entrance. As I worked my way up I could tell I'd even be able to use a heavier hammer and the larger star drill to make an easier climb later if I found anything up there worth coming back for.

It went up for probably a hundred and fifty feet or so and what I found was one hell of a surprise. There was sort of a plateau at the end of my climb. It looked like it was maybe ten to twelve miles running along the edge of the path I was familiar with. There were even some animals grazing up there. I could see a few hundred bison grazing and even about sixty or seventy horses in a bunch and doing some grazing of their own.