Chapter Nineteen

No business near ’em, no business at all. The Holey Man mumbled to himself as he shuffled along checking his traps. He had seen the two kits haul the trap up. They hadn’t seen him, not then, even though he knew that they had been watching him. They’re only kits, young ’uns and you leave those alone. Old Man had beaten that into him — don’t trap when the critters have kits and don’t take the young ’uns. Old Man had told him a lot of stuff, but he’d never been able to remember all of it. Don’t eat anything unless it’s in the trap or you seen it die. Don’t eat dead stuff you just find lyin’ around in the woods. He remembered that one. He’d found the remains of a fawn that the coyotes had taken down. Something must have scared them away — they’d probably heard him coming — and only the crows were there when he’d arrived in the clearing. He’d been hungry, oh so hungry, although he didn’t know the word for the gnawing ache in his belly that happened when Woman hadn’t filled his bowl for a few days. He’d grabbed a haunch and begun to gnaw. He liked venison. But then Old Man had been there, coming along behind him and had ripped the meat out of his fist and smashed him across the face with it. You don’t eat dead stuff, boy.

He’d thought that maybe the young ’uns he’d seen were hungry, too, but they hadn’t taken the fat, glossy she-muskrat that had been in the trap. They’d looked at it and poked it with a stick, but then they lowered the trap back down into the hole they’d made in the ice, muskrat and all. He’d gone and retrieved it later, after they’d gone, and he’d taken the carcass back to the shack. There he had carefully peeled off the pelt with his hands, the way Woman had taught him, so there wouldn’t be any nicks or cuts in the hide. He’d pegged it down and set it to dry in the wind. Sometimes, when Old Man had taken down a deer, Woman would do something different with the hide. Something that needed a lot of grease mixed with the deer’s own brains, but he’d forgotten what it was exactly that she did. He saved all the grease he could anyway, in a big tin, just in case he someday remembered what it was he was supposed to do.

He had quite a big stack of rawhide pelts, muskrat mostly, but some mink, as well. Now that Old Man was gone, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with those either. Old Man had taken them to where the big shacks were, crowded along the water opposite his woods, but he had never gone along to see exactly which shack you were supposed to go to. After Old Man came back there would be flour and sugar and tea, and sometimes potatoes; he remembered that all right, but he had no idea how you went about turning pelts into potatoes.

He set the dark red muskrat meat to soak overnight in some salt and water, just like Woman had always done. He’d boil it up the next day if he didn’t catch anything nicer. He didn’t like muskrat much, but he’d used up all of the good meat from last winter. He didn’t know what this good meat was called, but it had a lovely sweet taste and there was a lot of fat under the skin. The pelts were difficult to get off, but they were easy enough to dry. It had been cold enough by then to freeze meat solid, so he had simply chopped the carcasses up and put the pieces in the meat barrels. He’d rolled the barrels back behind the cabin to the stone hut built into the side of the dune, and made sure the heavy door was firmly shut so the coyotes couldn’t get at the meat. The coons had somehow got in anyway and gnawed at the sides of the barrel, but he’d set traps for them. The big ones, Old Man had told him, were for bears, even though he’d only ever once seen a bear, but Old Man said they were plentiful once. He’d caught three coons. The traps kept his meat safe, but he’d eaten it all up before winter’s end, and then there was nothing but muskrat and rabbit, squirrel and fish, for a long time.

He’d found good meat again in the marsh, not long ago, on one of the little hummocks of solid ground that stuck up here and there among the cattails. Don’t eat stuff you find dead in the woods, Old Man said. Only if you seen it die. But he’d eaten the other sweet meat and it had been good. Maybe dead sweet meat was different from other dead meat.

He’d tied a rope around the critter’s feet and hauled it into the skiff. When he got it back to the cabin, he skinned it and cut it into pieces just like before, but he knew that it was not yet cold enough to keep for any length of time. He knew that Woman had packed salt all around the pieces she put into barrels, but he had hardly any salt left. He’d packed it anyway, but after a week or so he could tell from the smell that he’d done something wrong and that it was turning already. He’d only really got a few good meals from the whole carcass and now he was back to eating muskrat again.

He wished he could take some venison, but he would need the gun for that, and he wasn’t sure how to use it. Old Man had always done the shooting. There was no powder left anyway; Old Man hadn’t got any more and then the shack had fallen on him.

Most of his traps were empty, the bait still rotting in them. He wondered if the smell of the young kits had scared everything away. He sniffed the air. The wind was shifting around a little to the north, and that always brought colder air. Maybe that would blow the smell of them away.

He shuffled around the shore of the island that was closest to the woods, and then rowed the skiff across to the sandbar. It was a good place for traps. The muskrats liked to burrow into the sandy banks.

The first trap he checked yielded only a mink. It, too, had been looking for muskrat. He tossed it aside. Old Man would have treated it carefully, its pelt a prize, but it was no good for eating, so he didn’t bother with it.

He pushed farther along the shore. Nothing. And nothing again. The gnaw in his belly grew as he worked his way along. He had circled the lake and was nearly back at the cabin and still he had found nothing. He would row back out into the lake and try for some fish, he decided, despite the fact that his net was full of holes and his hands didn’t seem to have the knack of fixing them. The best he could do was to fish with a pole, but it took a long time to pull in only a fish or two. He would use some of the spoiled sweet meat as bait.

He pulled the skiff up on shore and shuffled past the cabin to the clearing behind, panting heavily as he climbed over the dune that screened the root cellar from view. As he crested the hill his eye caught a glimpse of something that was a strange colour, a colour that didn’t belong here in the woods. He didn’t know what it was called, just that it belonged to no critter that he knew of. He crept closer. It was a piece of cloth and it was lying beside a bear trap that he had set underneath one of the bushes that screened the door to the stone hut. Whatever had been caught in the trap had managed to free itself and had left the cloth behind.

The critter had made a distinct trail as it left the clearing, easy enough to follow, up over the dunes and down again. At the top of the third rise it must have fallen and gone sliding down the sandy slope. It would be hard walking these dunes with an injured leg. The trail led toward the smaller lake, but the critter had never reached the shore. There, lying face down in a small clearing, was more sweet meat.

He approached cautiously, but the critter didn’t move. He could see that it must have hit hard when it fell down the hill. There was a large gash on one side of its head and quite a lot of blood in a pool underneath it. He found a largish branch to poke it with. It moved then, and opened its eyes, and when it saw him it tried to scramble away, but it was too weak to move far. This would be very good meat, he could see. The critter was fat and, most important, it wasn’t dead yet. Don’t eat the dead meat. Just what you find in the traps or what you seen die.

He settled back on his haunches. He would wait patiently until it died, just like Old Man said to do, and then he would eat well again.