Chapter 693

Dessie and Phillip at The Waterfall Campsite

...”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 got 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 are always the rabbits.”

“Okay, let’s check your towel.”

After taking care of that, she washed the towel and hung it to dry before replacing it with a dry one.

After washing and drying his hands and face, she brought in a small bowl of select blueberries that she had washed. “Well, let’s see how this goes. These are huge blueberries, so to start, I’m going to cut them in half. If you have a problem with them, I’ll cut them into even smaller chunks. You don’t mind if I eat with you, do you?” she asked.

Phillip hesitated before chewing slowly and very deliberately, but he got the first half-berry down without a problem.

“Good, huh? We’ll stick with a half berry at a time. We don’t want you to choke.”

It was slow, but she was thankful that he could eat even this much. Finally, he had eaten a half-cup of the berries and showed signs of fatigue.

“Okay, let’s get you lying down again. While you’re resting, I’ll see if I can add to our stringer. Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on you all the time.”

There didn’t seem to be any insects or gnats swarming in the immediate area, and with the breeze, it was a pleasant day in the deep shade under the trees. Of course, the heat would come as the day progressed.

She checked her stringer, and the two fish on it still seemed active. Just for fun, she changed to another lure and cast into the area where she had been throwing her food scraps. This was a different lure, of which she knew nothing. She waited a moment before doing anything, then moved the line a little, which caused the lure to jerk forward a bit.

With a flash of sunlight on scales, something hit the lure with a vengeance before heading for deeper water.

Ten nerve-racking minutes later, when the fish had tired sufficiently, she slipped her net under what she guessed to be a five or six-pound carp. At least, she thought it was a carp, because it looked like one her husband brought home a few months ago, only this one wasn’t nearly as big as his was. Phillip had told her that carp in the U.S. were frequently thought of as “trash” fish, but in other parts of the world, people fished for them just as they did any fish. She remembered that he had skinned it because carp were sometimes challenging to scale, and the skin had an undesirable taste anyway. She also remembered him saying that carp were bottom feeders and didn’t usually hit lures. This one didn’t seem to know that. Once Phillip’s fish was filleted and skinned, there had been plenty of meat, and it had tasted great, even though there was a profusion of bones to contend with. Bones or no bones, this one was going into the pan.

I can’t afford to be picky. If this thing is edible, it will mean that I will still have fish on the stringer for tomorrow. There’s certainly plenty of carp for me, and there will be more than enough for Phillip also.

Preparing the carp wasn’t hard, and it wasn’t long before she had it ready to fry.

Thirty minutes later, she set her plate of bones aside and took a long drink of the lemon/lime mix. Amazing how good things taste when you’re hungry, she thought. Well, time to see if I can get some of this down my husband.”

As soon as she had cooked Phillip’s piece, she pulled it apart to make doubly certain that all the bones were out, then double-checked as she fed him tiny piece after tiny piece. She was pleased with how much he ate. After feeding him, she took a short nap while lying beside him in the tent.

Before going to bed for the night, she ate as much of the fish as she could, then put the leftovers with the chum and tossed everything into the water where the tree had fallen into the lake.

When her watch alarm went off well before daylight, Dessie turned the battery lamp on in the tent and told her husband what she was going to do. This time, when she asked him if he needed to pee, he somehow seemed embarrassed.

“Would it help if I stepped out for a few minutes?”

She couldn’t see a response, but she told him that she would get some things ready for her little excursion and would be back shortly.

When she returned, his towel was wet. She washed him and replaced the towel, then washed the used one before hanging it on a limb to dry.

She had already selected a handful of stones that she thought would be the correct size for the rabbits as well as the pheasants.

“I know that you would tell me to be extra careful if you could talk,” she told her husband, “and I will be. So, wish me luck. We haven’t eaten pheasant in a long time. Maybe I’ll be lucky, and we can have some for breakfast, huh?”

For the first time in several days, she wasn’t feeling starved. She could eat, but she wasn’t going to waste time cleaning and cooking a fish just now — not with the chance of a pheasant or at least a rabbit to roast over the fire.

The sky was clear, but the moon had already set, and the first rays of dawn weren’t yet showing as Dessie made her way along with only a narrow wedge of light from her flashlight showing between her cupped fingers. She let out a quiet hiss as she stubbed her toe on a rock before admonishing herself mentally to be more careful. She tried to forget the momentary throbbing pain that shot through her toe as she continued toward the area where she had startled the pheasants.

Dessie and Phillip, being experienced backpackers, had long since developed the ability to find their way back. It was nothing more than making a mental note of their surroundings as they hiked, but it had come in handy many times. Because of that, she had little trouble finding the area where she had startled the pheasants, and a few minutes later, had taken up a position that both afforded her cover as well as giving her a shooting window that overlooked where she hoped the pheasants would return to this morning.

During their hiking and backpacking trips, both Dessie and Phillip had learned to walk reasonably quietly in the woods. Today, she had been doubly careful where she placed her feet for the last fifty yards. With a rock loaded in her slingshot, she quieted her breathing and crouched down to wait.

Will they smell me? Maybe my having been here yesterday will confuse things if they do.

Just as the sun was beginning to lighten the eastern sky, she heard a sound. Still not seeing anything, she drew the slingshot back halfway while scanning the weeds and undergrowth around her in the faint golden light of the approaching morning.

After a couple of moments of staring at where she thought she had heard a sound, she suddenly realized that she was staring at a pheasant that had appeared almost like magic not ten feet in front of her. With years of playing with their “toys” as they prepared for the yearly contests, she slowly stood, even as she drew back and fired, all in one many-times practiced motion. The pheasant’s head didn’t exactly leave its body, but the effect was quite similar. The bird fell over without so much as a squawk.

Dessie almost ran over to pick the bird up, but reason took over. I haven’t heard any of the other pheasants make any noise. It would be better if they never knew what happened to this one.

Step by quiet step, she eased over, picked the bird up and just as quietly, made her way for the next hundred yards. She was so tense all the way that she had to fight an impulse to giggle.

Finally, she was far enough away from the area that she felt she could walk normally without startling the remainder of the flock. When she arrived back at the campsite, the sun was just beginning to peek over the mountain.

Dessie put the pheasant down and hurried to check on her husband. After turning the light on, she knelt beside him. “I’m back, Baby. And guess what? I killed a big, fat pheasant, and I don’t think the rest of them even know that I was there — which means that I might just be able to do it again. And you know what? I’d be willing to bet that there are hundreds of those pheasants in that big field. It just seems to go on forever. If I had a shotgun, we could have pheasant practically forever. But the one I got was so close I could have almost hit it with a stick. I know that was just luck this morning, but I’ll keep trying. Oh, Baby. I’m in a great mood. Between the blueberries, the rabbits, the pheasants and the fish, we will have plenty of food while we wait for your leg to heal.”

I wonder how bright pheasants are. I was there yesterday, yet that one came into the same area. Maybe they won’t even realize that one of their flock is missing, which means that I might be able to do this again.

She checked his towel while continuing to prattle on. “Now, we just need to get your leg healed up and you conscious again. Speaking of that, I need to check on your stitches to see how your wound is doing.”

After putting the items she would need near her husband, she thoroughly washed her hands using dish detergent before slinging most of the water off, not wanting to touch anything she didn’t have to.

While kneeling beside him, she carefully grasped the edges of the dressing and lifted it away. Since it was actually resting on his hair, it wasn’t stuck to the wound.

The swelling had diminished only slightly, and the stitches were still pulled so tight that they had almost disappeared into the skin of his scalp. Yet again, Dessie thought that the stitches being drawn so deeply into the flesh like that would be very painful should he be able to feel it, and she sincerely hoped he couldn’t.

With an alcohol pad, she cleaned around the injury while being careful to always wipe away from the wound and never actually touch it. That done, she squeezed antibiotic ointment onto the injury, again without actually touching the wound or the ointment. “It’s been long enough now, Baby, so I’m going to leave the dressing off altogether.

“And by the way, Baby, your scalp is looking great, there is hardly any redness, and there isn’t any blood leakage at all. Want a sip of water?” she asked, but she was the one who needed the water more than her husband. What’s wrong with me? I sewed his scalp back together with blood everywhere, and now I almost throw up from just cleaning around the wound. Stop acting like a wuss and get your husband some cool water.