Chapter 405

The Prison Planet

With breakfast over, Morales buckled on his weapons, put a couple of handfuls of corn in a pocket of his fatigues, grabbed some dried blueberries and went over to Gertrude. When he squatted and held his hand out, the chicks noticed and she had help eating the berries. When his hand was empty, he slowly reached out and picked her up. She made the puck, puck, pucking sound and fluttered her wings a bit, but didn’t make any definite resistance. Today, he didn’t try to hold her against his chest so she couldn’t flap her wings, but just tucked the big hen under his arm, called to the chicks and walked on out of the cave.

It was obvious that the chickens knew where they were going, because, in addition to Gertrude not offering to cause problems, the chicks hurried on ahead, fluttering their wings to add to their speed. Only Junior held back to walk beside Morales.

At the fence, he pulled the gate open and tossed the hen in, the whole brood rushing in to immediately begin searching for bugs as they scratched in the soft forest dirt.

Morales stood watching them for a moment before shoving the brush gate back into place. Smiling as he remembered the chickens so industriously going about chicken things, he called Lobo, who had been circling, then headed back to the cave with a smile on his face.

Inside, he found an egg in Gertrude’s nest. “Hot damn, Lobo. With another one, we can have eggs for breakfast again.” Grinning, he put the egg on the back of one of his dug-out shelves so the treasure wouldn’t get broken.

After moving the flat rock away from the oven opening, he realized that he needed something better to clean out the fire residue with. He had been using a stick, but there had to be a better way. After thinking about it a minute, he glued two pieces of two by two to make a “T”. Crude though it was, it made dragging out the ashes and unburned wood a lot easier. With a small piece of hide wrapped around the thing, he swabbed out most of the rest so that he could inspect the inside without getting too much soot on him.

“All I have to do is keep rinsing the hide, and I can get the floor of the oven reasonably clean so I can put my bread dough in – if I ever manage to make some dough, that is. The hide will be stiff when it dries, but I can either work it again, or just throw the piece away. Sure wish I had something to bake my bread on, but the people who made the vid just put their bread dough on the floor of the oven. Might have a little wood ash baked into the bottom of the bread, but that won’t kill me.”

After another inspection of the inside of his oven, and failing to find any cracks, he started a slightly larger fire before putting the flat rock back to hold the heat in.

I have so many other things I need to do, but I definitely need storage containers.

Soon, he was pounding more of his clay into dust. With the clay screened, he added a small amount of water and began to work in the fine sand. When the clay felt right, he ran the video again before starting to work up a big mud ball, the clay feeling perfect in his hands. With a supply of clay ready, he dug out a bowl-shaped hole in the hard ground and smoothed it out as best he could.

Again, he ran the pertinent section of the video, stopping it as he worked his own clay until he was at the point the African woman was before he restarted the video. He struggled to make his jug look like the woman’s. As the time ticked away, his respect for the old woman increased to even higher levels. Time and again, he pushed too hard on a side and had to add more clay to work out his screw-up.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, he had something that looked similar to what she had. Similar, but his jug didn’t stand up straight and the top wasn’t quite round, but it did resemble a somewhat potbellied jug that should serve if he could fire it without breaking it. If. If. If, he thought.

Knowing he had little chance of the jug remaining in one piece while firing, he made another one, which didn’t take quite as long, but looked marginally better.

Frustrated that it had taken him hours to make two jugs while the old woman did hers in much less time, he nevertheless shrugged his shoulders and hoped to get faster with practice.

After drinking a cup of coffee, he started another jug, taking his time, but not watching the video this time. When he was finished, he put the jug next to the others and thought, Well, at least there’s a progression that seems to show some slight improvement. This shit looks easy when the old woman does it, but it damn sure isn’t.

“Shit, I’ve screwed the morning away, but hopefully I’ll have at least one jug and a bowl left after I fire them. Hmmm. One of the articles said that most of the breakage during firing was caused by uneven thickness or too much moisture in the clay.” Wondering if he were doing the right thing, he took the bowls and jugs outside and left them in the sun to begin drying.

After a trip inside, he approached the brush fence with the chickens’ water pan. When they saw him through the fence, they came running over, but he had come prepared with corn as well as the water. Grinning, he pulled the gate open, put their water pan down and scattered corn for them.

Gertrude paused in her eating to look up at him, and it seemed as if her stare was not quite her usual murderous one. Laughing, he closed the gate, wondering if it was the dried blueberries. What the fuck? Surely, the chickens can get all the blueberries they want from the same place I picked mine. The only difference is that these are dried, he thought with a frown. Back in the cave, he took a few of the dried berries and popped them into his mouth, considering. “Hmmm, the taste of the dried berries is much more concentrated. So, do I have blueberry connoisseurs?” he said with a laugh. Then, grumbling, “The damn chickens are too smart for my own good. If they were just your average stupid chickens, I could eat them. But nooo, they have to be smart and even have personalities. Ah, well, I suppose I can share a handful of dried blueberries with my smart chickens on occasion, particularly if I get an egg out of Gertrude on a regular basis.”

He was fed up with cutting down trees, preparing the logs and putting them on his wall every day, but griping about it didn’t get the wall done, so he filled a pocket with jerky for a working lunch for the two of them, and started for the area where he was getting his logs. Only a few hundred yards from the cave, Lobo sniffed the air and quietly growled. Morales let go of the wheel assembly and swung the crossbow around on its lanyard. “What is it, Boy?”

The wind was blowing from behind them, so he assumed that whatever Lobo had smelled had already detected them if it was still in the area.

Morales was even more concerned because Lobo seemed hyperalert as they continued forward. The man, worried because of the way Lobo was acting, even scanned the trees, concerned that something could be waiting to attack from above. A little farther along, the wolf stopped to smell the straw-covered ground under the pine trees that were prevalent in the area. A few steps later, Morales saw it: a partial bear track – gigantic. Again, he experienced the sensation of the hair standing up on his neck. “You son-of-a-bitch. I thought you lived in the mountains. Why in the fuck are you hanging around here?”

The crossbow suddenly felt inadequate in his hands. He knew the spoor had not been here yesterday because Lobo came through with him and hadn’t reacted. As he carefully scanned the area, he wondered if he should go back to the cave and wait a day or two in hopes of the bear leaving the area.

“Fuck that shit,” he growled. “I’m not going to hide like some scared pup. We live here, huh Lobo! That big fucker might kill my ass, but we’ll make him leak while he’s doing it.”

Finally back in the cave with the log, he put the bars up while letting out an unconscious sigh. What in the hell am I going to do about that bear? Thinking about water in case the animal tried to dig them out and wouldn’t give up, he took two buckets to the spring to fill. I’m going to put on a pork roast for dinner tonight, so I need to go to the freezer, anyway.

After starting a cook fire, he called Lobo. “Come on, Boy. I don’t want to leave you here in case that damn cave bear comes calling. I’m afraid you’ll go for him and we do not want to fight him on his terms. One swipe of the big bastard’s claws and either of us would be dead. I intend to fill his ass full of crossbow bolts while he’s wedged in our entrance passage trying to dig us out.”

In the freezer area, he put the two buckets of water down before cutting off a large roast that should feed them for two meals. Back in their living area a few minutes later, he salted the meat and put it on to boil. “I’ll put in some cut-up carrots and potatoes just before the meat is done,” he told Lobo.

Now that the fire had burned down to a bed of hot coals, it was much easier to control the heat, but he still missed a modern stove where he could set the temperature exactly.

While the roast slowly cooked, he began working on the log, first stripping off the bark, then moving it to an ever-increasing pile just past his shelves. Between the bark and wheat straw, I should have something to start fires with practically forever, he thought as he threw the last shovelful of bark on the pile.

He knew he wasn’t much of a cook, and he didn’t have a lot to work with, but with all the physical labor, his appetite wasn’t nearly as picky as it once was. Basically, he thought, If it stands still long enough, I’ll eat it, and Lobo is even less picky than I am.

****

After flattening both sides of the log, he drilled the dowel holes, manhandled it into position on the wall, glued and pegged it into place. With a cup of coffee in hand, he sat to take a break before dishing up their meal. Just as he was finishing his last sip, he heard Gertrude and the chicks coming down the entrance passageway. With a grin on his face, he hurried to pull the bottom bar out of the way. A moment later, Gertrude marched in, the chicks following in a line.

After he and Lobo ate, he put the scraps for the chickens on a flat rock, then scattered their main meal of corn.

Cleanup over, he slipped his boots off, turned the light out and sat on his butt, his hands locked behind his drawn-up knees as he stared through the bars into the night, thinking. Lobo laid down, his body barely touching the human’s, both content. Gertrude, her head tucked under a wing, was asleep with her chicks crowding under her fluffed feathers. Junior wormed his way onto the human’s lap and was sound asleep within moments.

After a time, the sound of distant thunder brought Morales’ thoughts to the present. “No,” he grumbled. “I don’t need rain right now. There are a whole lot more of those vegetables, not to mention the wheat.” Mother Nature didn’t pay any attention, though. Shortly, he could smell moisture in the air as the storm drew near. “Shit, I’ll be wading through mud again. Oh, well, there are still other things I can do, I suppose.”

Suddenly, it dawned on him and he scrambled to his feet cursing. Continuing his muttering, he turned the lantern on and quickly donned his weapons. “Shit. Shit. Shit. How could I be so fucking stupid?” Barefooted, he hurried out the entrance to retrieve his attempts at pottery. A few minutes later as he brought the last of the clay jugs and bowls to safety, the first big drops of rain began.

After a drink of water, he put his weapons in their place, dropped his fatigues and stretched out on his bed with Junior claiming his position by Morales’ side. Just as he reached for the lantern switch, there was the flash of a nearby lightning strike, its brilliance almost as startling as the accompanying sound. Gertrude squawked and Junior shivered, the other chicks chirping nervously, but the hen clucked to them and quiet soon returned to the cave.

Oddly enough, there wasn’t the usual sound of pouring rain, but only a short sprinkle. Morales let out a sigh when he realized that the major portion of the storm must have missed them.

Fall is coming. I have to get my wheat in before a major storm and wind ruins it for me. Damn you, Robinson; two people stand a hell of a lot better chance than just one man alone on this planet. But I still don’t regret killing your ass. If I had let you live, you wouldn’t have helped me, anyway, and with your arrogance, we would both have been dead by now. Mistakes here will kill you ... and if that fucking cave bear comes visiting, I’m going to be in a world of shit, mistakes or not.

Sleep was slow in coming as he worried, but he eventually drifted off.

As usual, he was up with the dawn, and, although the hen had not scared the shit out of him with her blood-curdling squawk this morning, her beady-eyed stare was there just the same. No sooner was he on his feet than the chicks surrounded him demanding breakfast, Gertrude waiting only a couple of paces away.