Chapter 19

The protracted stillness in our fabric cave floated from awkward to uncomfortable as we each waited for the other to speak. Silence and rubber bands share at least one thing in common. If you stretch them far enough, they’ll snap. In our case, the break came when Alice’s stomach rumbled in hunger. A few moments later, my gut responded in kind.

“I’m famished. What’s for dinner?” Alice wanted to know.

“We’ve got bouillon and tea. What’s your pleasure?” I inquired.

“I want something to munch, not something to drink. Any energy bars left?” the blue dot asked.

“Nope. Yesterday we had the last crumbs for dessert. It’s about time we take a trip to the python pantry and go shopping for serpents.”

I gathered my clothes and began to dress.

“I don’t think I could ever eat a rattlesnake,” Alice said with a shiver and a disgusted frown.

“Unless yah can survive on breezy sandwiches, I don’t think we’ve got a choice.” I took a bite out of the air in front of my hands and chewed with gusto. “Umm, light and fluffy, the way I like it,” I winked.

We were both hungry as hell. I had skipped meals from time to time without fear. I always knew there would be something to eat waiting for me on the other side of the clock. This time, there would be nothing in our cupboard unless we stocked it ourselves. Starving to death is a miserable way to die

“I don’t care. I still don’t think I could eat a rattlesnake.” Alice shook her head as goose bumps covered her chest.

Tragic stories of lost travelers who starved while surrounded by nourishment litter the pages of history. The truth is, our gut isn’t terribly fussy when it comes to dinner. As long as it isn’t poisonous or toxic, our digestive systems can extract protein or vital nutrients from almost any organic matter. There is never enough food if we don’t consider everything on the table.

“Get up and lend a hand; you don’t gotta eat ‘em, but you have to help.”

We quickly got dressed. Alice held the Rayovac lantern aloft and played streetlight while I made our selection from nature’s deli counter. A fat slumbering rattler with a body the size of my arm and about as long as I am tall became the catch of the day.

“Want to do the honors?” I offered her my hunting knife, which she promptly refused.

“I hate snakes. You take care of it.” Alice took a step backward.

I was pissed and perplexed. My partner, the wild mountain woman, had no problem slaughtering Bambi but went AWOL when it came to putting food on the table to keep us alive in our Godforsaken cave. Go figure.

Except sucking on my mother’s tit while a baby, everything I ate in my life came from the supermarket in jars, cans, boxes, and little Styrofoam platters wrapped in clear plastic film. I lived the sheltered life of a city dweller.

I placed the mess kit on the ground and with the survival manual in one hand and my hunting knife in the other, I did a quick review and set about dispatching Rocky the Rattler. Even though the handbook was in Spanish, the illustrations spoke the universal language of the illiterate. A picture is worth a thousand words.

“Don’t take this personally, buddy.”

I stepped on the snake’s head and drove the point of my knife through its spine. I gritted my teeth and stifled my gag reflex as I felt the crunch of the poor guy’s bones. Aside from a few rodents in mousetraps, I had never killed anything larger than a fly. Having to kill to survive added an entirely new perspective to my place in the food chain. My grandmother used to remind me, “You are what you eat.”

Rocky, before he went to meet his maker, had been sluggish and hardly moving. His body came alive in death as it wriggled and kept coiling as if to strike. Oh, shit! Dinner had gone zombie. Yuck!

Husking the poor guy like an ear of corn didn’t appear to slow him down as Rocky continued to coil and spasm like a runaway kielbasa. After stripping off the skin, cutting open the belly, removing its entrails, and washing him in ice water, I fought against the temptation to gag. The damn thing was still moving.

“What part of being dead do you not understand?” I muttered under my breath as I cut him into chunks about five inches long.