Chapter 692

Dessie and Phillip at The Waterfall Campsite

... “I’m fixing fish for my breakfast, and since you have done so well, I’ll bring you some before I leave to check out the field. Okay?”

He didn’t say anything, but his face twitched. Was that a smile? she wondered.

Dessie knew that her husband particularly liked perch and crappie, so she washed the surface of the flat rock she had started using to clean her fish. She had a lightweight, folding cutting board that she used when mixing her biscuit dough, but the rock near the lake made dousing it with water easy when cleanup time came. Since her knife didn’t have a scaler on the back of the blade, and rather than contend with scaling the small perch with a razor-sharp knife, she just filleted it before removing the skin.

The smell of the fish cooking tempted Dessie tremendously, but she would do everything she could to get her husband to eat solid food, so he was going to get all the perch he could eat.

She knew that Phillip would typically eat far more than she had given him with the mashed potatoes this morning. I’m going to be careful, but I think he can swallow the fish without problems. The perch is so tender that it is literally falling to pieces. If he manages to eat the fish, maybe I’ll try him on some roasted rabbit later today — assuming I can kill one, that is.

She tasted the perch and almost drooled. With another fish or two on the stringer, I’ll have enough food caught for safety’s sake. Maybe I can eat my fill later today, but I’m not going to risk not having food for my husband.

As she worked her way into the tent with the fried fish and a cup of water, she addressed Phillip as if he could hear her normally. “Now, with your being only partially conscious, we have to be careful, but you did really well with the mashed potatoes and gravy, so I think you’re ready to try some solid food. Well, it’s almost what I would normally refer to as solid food, but it’s one of your favorites — perch — and it is literally falling apart. I tasted it, and it is delicious. Now, let’s get you sitting up and leaning against me,” she said as she put the plate of fish and the cup of water aside. After sliding behind him, she struggled him into a sitting position with him leaning back against her chest.

Tidbit by tidbit, she fed her husband the fish while interspersing a sip of water every couple of bites. The process was slow — maybe even slower than necessary — but Dessie was worried that he would get strangled and was probably more cautious than need be. Nevertheless, he ate the whole fish, but then again, it was small, and he could normally have easily eaten two of them.

She wiped his face with a damp cloth before easing him prone, while she remained for a moment to watch him. Shortly, his breathing had changed to what she considered to be sleep.

Should I let his beard grow or try to shave him? He brought his rechargeable electric razor with him, and he has kept it charged with the solar charger, but I think he looks rugged with a couple of days’ worth of beard growth. Hmmm. I might just wait and let him make the decision. He’ll probably be awake soon anyway.

After filleting one of the trout, she fried and ate it. Normally, she would never eat that much fish, but after thirty-six hours of meager meals and a lot of exercise, she was ravenous. She didn’t know whether it was the fish or the hunger that made it taste so good, but she couldn’t remember a better meal.

Dessie walked up the lake a hundred feet or so to where a small tree had fallen into the water sometime in the past. The leaves and most of the smaller limbs were no longer there, but she could see the trunk and some of the larger limbs as the tree sloped into deeper water. She had been throwing her scraps into the water by the tree, and this was where she had caught the small trout on the lure.

As she was returning, she thought, I don’t dare leave Phil outside unless I remain close enough to keep an eye on him. No telling how long I’ll be gone this morning, but he should be safe zipped into the tent. At least I won’t have to worry about insects bothering him. She had no idea whether he could hear her while unconscious, but he seemed to try to help her when she asked him to. Maybe he was hearing her after all.

When she was ready to leave, she went into the tent and explained what she was going to do, finishing with, “And, yeah, I’ll be extremely careful and will watch out for snakes also. Maybe I’ll luck up and bag another rabbit. It might have been because I was hungry, but that roasted rabbit was as good as most steaks I’ve eaten. Unfortunately, there isn’t much meat on the critters, and I don’t have a refrigerator, so I can’t accumulate enough rabbit meat for both of us to have a meal together — unless I kill more than one at a time — which probably isn’t going to happen. The area seems to be practically crawling with them, though, so you never know.

“Anyway, wish me luck. Maybe I’ll find us something good to eat.”

After gently touching her lips to his, she turned before he could see the tears in her eyes — should his eyes be open enough for him to notice — and quickly made her way out of the tent. After zipping it closed, she gathered her gear.

With her backpack over her shoulders, her slingshot on her belt with the rest of her gear, and a handful of chosen rocks in her pocket, she made her way to the field. This time, she had brought the binoculars, which she immediately used to scan the area before wading into the deep weeds and brambles.

When she neared the open area where she had encountered the rabbits, she slowed to peek past the bushes cautiously. She had hoped for another rabbit, but luck was on the animals’ side this morning. They’re either sleeping late, or else they’ve already eaten their morning snack and are taking a nap, she thought as she pushed the brambles aside and started across the open area.

She and Phillip knew a couple who raised and sold rabbits. They had joked about rabbit pills, and she quickly realized that the wild bunnies were just as prolific with their pills as the domesticated animals were. Where the rabbits had gathered in the short grass to eat and “gossip,” there were thousands of rabbit pills. (Rabbit poop.)

As she continued on, she realized that she was paralleling a bramble-covered wall made up of thousands of rocks that the farmers had probably removed from their field long ago. She scrambled atop the wall for a better position to view the area. While scanning the land with the binoculars, she realized there was still evidence of terraces that the farmers of long ago had probably used to keep the rains from washing the farmland away on the sloping terrain. All that remained were slight parallel rises roughly a hundred feet apart as they wound across the field as far as she could see.

After jumping down from the wall, she made her way toward the trees in the distance. While hoping to discover some apples that might be edible, she noticed a large accumulation of brambles on the old terrace to her left, but these brambles seemed different — more consistent, somehow. As she drew nearer the area, she realized there was a profusion of dark berries among the brambles. It can’t be, can it?

“Blueberries,” she exclaimed as she snatched one off the plant, blew on the berry to remove anything foreign before popping it into her mouth. As the tangy sweetness hit her taste buds, a smile bloomed across her face. It was, indeed, a big, ripe blueberry, and as she looked down the old terrace row, she realized there were thousands of the plants continuing on into the distance. No wonder she had seen so many birds out here. Birds loved blueberries, and so did she and her husband.

Well, we might get tired of blueberries, but we aren’t going to starve anytime soon.

It took quite some time to fill the pouches, because she couldn’t just pull a whole cluster off but had to pick each berry separately due to the berries having ripened unevenly. Her father had a grape arbor, and she had often cut the stems and taken whole bunches of grapes together, but picking the blueberries wasn’t going to be that simple. Nevertheless, she persisted until she had all four pouches full. Carefully, she put them in her backpack and tightened the compartment over them so they wouldn’t spill. While picking, she had eaten her fill of the berries. It was just too tempting to pop one into her mouth occasionally. As she glanced at what she hoped were apple trees in the distance, she realized that she had come less than halfway to her goal. Oh, well. A bird in the hand and all that, she thought. Then aloud, “I’ve spent as much time as I dare away from Phillip. I’ll check out the trees tomorrow.” She stood looking toward the trees that seemed only a little closer despite how far she had walked into the field

Hmmm. This field is bigger than I realized, and that’s just the part that I can see. No telling how far it extends as it curves out of sight. After deciding that the apples, if there were any, wouldn’t be ripe anyway, she turned farther uphill before angling back toward their campsite, hoping to find more rabbits in the new area.

Because she was hoping to get near a rabbit, she took her time while watching where she put her feet and trying to be as quiet as possible. Since she and Phillip had been backpackers who enjoyed nature and frequently walked quietly so they could observe the animals, she was making little noise. Without warning, something made her sneeze, and suddenly there was a flutter and a screeching as more pheasants than she could easily count took wing, seemingly all around her. Since she had been creeping along while making as little noise as possible, she was among the pheasants before they realized danger was anywhere near. Their squawking, accompanied by numerous wings beating the air all around her, caused Dessie to gasp. However, it only took a second for her to realize what was causing the ruckus, because her husband and his friends hunted pheasants, and she had watched videos of some of their hunts.

Dessie didn’t hunt, but she didn’t have any problem cooking or eating what her husband brought home. She did, however, insist that Phillip clean his own kills.

Now things were different, though — drastically different. This was food and lots of it, but she didn’t have a shotgun. As she stood watching the pheasants settle back into the high weeds a couple of hundred yards away, she realized that she might have shot one with her slingshot if she had known they were there in time. They had certainly been within range — two of them had been practically at her feet. She was so focused on looking for rabbit signs and staring at the ground in front of her that she had walked into the flock of pheasants before she, or they, knew it. After looking more closely at her surroundings, she realized that there was some type of grain mixed in with the weeds here.

What if I come out here before daylight and wait for them? Can I kill a pheasant with a rock from a slingshot? The rock I hit the rabbit with yesterday took a large chunk out of its head. A pheasant’s head is probably smaller than a rabbit’s. Can I hit it? It’s not as if he will stand still the way the rabbit did, though. She remembered that, at least in the U.S., female pheasants were off-limits while the males were fair game. They were easy to tell apart because the males were colorful with long tail feathers, while the females were a drab, speckled grey color with shorter tail feathers. She realized that some of these had been colorful while others had been drab looking. She would try for the males, but if she needed food badly for her husband, the females would be fair game too.

I’ll be here early tomorrow morning.

Back at their campsite, she had washed the berries, although they didn’t seem to need it. My husband loves these bathed in cream and with a bit of sugar sprinkled over them. Well, we have a few packs of sweetener, but that won’t work without the cream. Besides, the blueberries are sweet enough anyway.

A moment later, Dessie had gotten her husband into a sitting position and was offering him her find. She bit the first berry in half before placing half into his mouth. Phillip frowned, then after a few seconds, chewed and swallowed.

“Blueberries, Baby. Thousands of them down what once must have been a terrace row. We may grow bored with them, but we have food for weeks, even if I can’t find anything else. I became sidetracked by the berries and only made it halfway to the trees in the distance. But ... I found something else that you might like more.” She waited for a moment before blurting out, “Pheasants. Can you imagine? Pheasants. They scared the crap out of me as they flew up all around me. There must have been some type of grain in the area sometime in the past. Anyway, I suppose I disturbed their breakfast. Between their screeching and the flutter of their wings, my heart must have skipped several beats.

“Do you think I can hit one in the head with my slingshot?” When he didn’t say anything, she went on, “Those twenty-yard targets weren’t any larger than a pheasant’s head. Of course, the target wasn’t moving, either, but I’ve noticed that pheasants seem to walk a few steps and hesitate, then walk again. Most of the time, we don’t get to notice them on the ground because they see us first and take off, but if I’m really quiet ... Anyway, I’m going back before daylight tomorrow. I’ll find some bushes to hide in and wait for them to come for breakfast. Who knows? I might just luck up and get one. If not, there’s always the rabbits.”