CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I woke before the sun with my head full of calculations.
I had thought Mom might walk ten hours in a day. I would have about fourteen hours of daylight, from dawn to dusk. Allowing for rests, searching for food and making tea, and at least two hours to make my camp for the night, I thought I’d be able to walk eight hours a day. Maybe nine, if I felt strong. That seemed like a lot. It seemed unlikely. For one thing, I didn’t feel strong. I was starving. Literally starving. I worried whether I’d actually be strong enough to walk it.
Well, it didn’t matter. I had to try. It was going to be a beautiful day, too. The sun was just coloring the sky above the woods with a warm, pink glow. I stood up to make my fire. There was something lying on the log beside it. At first I thought it was a mushroom and my thoughts went to my survival book and the caution it had about eating any unknown mushrooms in the woods. But when I got closer, I saw that it was a frog. A dead frog. Its legs hung down across the log just like the frog that had been in the fox’s mouth the day before. I swiveled my head, looking for her. Had she brought me this? Was that possible? However it ended up here, it was a gift and I wouldn’t hesitate to eat it.
I stoked up my fire and put on my tea water to heat. How to cook the frog?
Last fall, I’d gone to take the garbage out one Sunday afternoon and I saw across the back lane that Duncan’s garage door was open.
“Come and look at what I’ve got,” he called.
I was surprised to see a deer hanging from the rafters. Definitely dead.
“I got it a few days ago. Clean shot. P-p-p-perfect.”
“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Wanna watch me butcher it?”
When he saw the look on my face, he said, “You could learn something.”
Because I like learning anything about survival and because I liked hanging out with Duncan, I said, “Okay.”
“Pull up a stool. I’m just sharpening my knife.”
As he worked, he told me what he was doing.
“The worst of it, I did in the field. Taking the guts out, all of that. It’s best to do it right away. And then I leave the guts for the coyotes. That’s only fair.”
“I don’t know if I could do that.”
“But you eat meat, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I only eat the meat I kill myself now. Otherwise I’m vegetarian.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you eat?”
“L-l-lots of stuff. Vegetables. Obviously. Rice. Beans. Lots of people around the world don’t eat meat. Some people say they don’t believe in hunting, but they eat meat every day. Two or three times a day. They don’t want to know where their food comes from. To me that’s hypocritical.”
I didn’t say anything, so he added, “You know, when someone says they believe something but they do the opposite.”
“I know what hypocritical means. I was just thinking.”
“The worst,” Duncan said, “are the people who say they just eat chicken. They should go to a chicken barn. See what a chicken’s life is really like.”
“You’ve been to one?”
“Worked in one a couple summers ago. That’s what made me start to think. A wild deer has a pretty good life compared to that. And this one I got with one clean shot. Right through the lungs. Perfect.”
“What do you do in the field?” I asked him.
“You make a fire. That’s what I do. To warm up my hands. Then you have to cut out the anus. Do you know what that is?”
I rolled my eyes. “I guess I know what an anus is. How old do you think I am?”
He shrugged. “You have to get the stomach out without puncturing it. You don’t want to puncture any of the organs. That spoils the meat.”
Laying the frog on a rock now, I took out my jackknife, took a deep breath and made the first cut.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just trying not to pierce any organs. And whether cleaning a deer was anything like cleaning a frog, I had no idea. It seemed to have a lot of organs. It seemed to be almost all organs. I used my knife to scrape them out as best I could. But I realized the only real meat was on the legs, a little on the front, more on the back. I took a pointed stick and skewered the frog with it, the way you’d skewer a hotdog. Hotdogs are made of animals, too, I told myself. Duncan would say I was being hypocritical to be squeamish about it. I had just never had to see how a hotdog was made.
While the frog cooked, I packed up my sleeping bag. The aroma of the cooking meat began to fill the air; like a switch had flipped, hunger pains tore through my body. I doubled over; my head swam. I thought I’d be sick, so I sank to the earth and lay there with the cool mud against my cheek and I tried to calm my breathing.
Strange that except for the first couple of days, the hunger had not hit me like this. But now, so close to eating something solid, I felt like I’d die if I had to wait another second. But I had to wait. I couldn’t risk poisoning myself with undercooked frog when I’d come this far.
To take my mind off it, I considered my pack. Was there anything else from the truck I should try to salvage before I set out?
I ticked off the things I’d be carrying: water, matches, stove, the almost-empty fuel canister I’d had in my backpack, the pot, jackknife. That took care of my needs for eating. Rain jacket, hoodie, Dad’s toque and Mom’s sweater, my sleeping bag. That was for warmth. Even if I could have gotten the other sleeping bags from under the tangle of the fallen tree, I probably wouldn’t have taken them. Another one would likely not fit into my pack, and tying it on top would make it too bulky. The tarp would have been handy, though. But it was hopelessly buried under the fir branches.
Actually, I thought, stretching my arms over my head to get out the kinks…I went to the back of the truck and stood pondering it. The sun at that moment peeked through the trees and streamed warm golden light on my shoulders. Actually, I thought again, hoisting myself up into the truck bed, it was true there was no way to get the whole tarp out, but I could cut a piece of it. It could be useful for a lot of things—covering my pack if it rained, sleeping on, catching water, attaching to the roof of my lean-to. I pushed aside the larger branches with my body, then cut into the tarp at one edge. When I was done, I had a piece about six feet by three feet. Perfect. Not too heavy or bulky, but big enough to serve some purpose. I folded it neatly and stuffed it into the bottom my pack.
Compass, paper, pencil, what was left of the Oregon map. Back at the fire, I sipped my tea with the sun warming me. I turned the frog on its spit. Its skin was crisping up and peeling off. I could eat it soon. Then, because I was so ravenous, I ate two mints. One left. I folded the crinkly package closed and tucked it into the pocket of my backpack. As I did, I felt again the certainty that it was the right time to leave.
The frog, when it was ready, tasted like you might expect a frog cooked over a fire to taste—smoky, slightly swampy, a bit like pond water and pinecones. But it revived me and I felt stronger. I silently thanked my little red fox, and then I was ready to leave.
I wrote a new note:
PLEASE HELP. I’ve been stranded on this road for eleven days. I’m walking north along the road back to the highway. P.S. I’m thirteen years old.
I put it in a corner of the windshield where a bit of glass was left to protect it from the elements. I thought of someone coming upon it: forest workers or hikers, hunters or Dad or Mom. I took it back out and wrote: P.P.S. I’m okay, but hungry.
It occurred to me that if a helicopter did come out searching, they would not get any clues if they saw the truck from the sky. So I took a few minutes to gather some of the fallen branches and I formed them into two giant arrows on the road, pointing north. The wind might blow them away eventually, but maybe they’d be there long enough to do some good.
I did one last walk around the truck. The hood still rested open a crack and the crowbar jutted out where I’d left it.
Something told me to take the crowbar. It’ll be heavy, I thought. What would I need a crowbar for in the woods? I started to walk away. Then I glanced back at the truck once more.
Take the crowbar, said a voice in my head.
Okay, okay, I would take the crowbar. I ran back and grabbed it, wrapped my hoodie around it and shoved it in the side of my backpack. The extra weight tugged at my shoulders as I lifted my pack back on and cinched the waist strap. I could always abandon it on the road later.
As I picked my way carefully along the road, slightly off-balance with the bulk of my pack and aware of the throb of my injured shin, the truck tugged at me, like a long elastic band had been tied from my ankle to it, and the resistance against it pulled me backward.
The red Mazda had been my nest since I could remember, me in the back, my knees up, my view sideways as trees and hydro poles and vehicles flashed by, Mom and Dad in the front, Dad’s big tanned hand on the gearshift in the middle and Mom’s feet against the dashboard, her hand sometimes trailing out the window, the curls of her hair lifting in the breeze, one sometimes catching a draft that wound it in a tighter circle. When we were little, Phoebe sat sideways in the seat opposite me, reaching out her feet to mine as we tried to get our toes to touch.
The truck smelled of sunshine, old lunches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples left too long under the seat, the perfume scent of an air freshener from Midas Muffler that hung from the mirror for years and said “Trust the Midas touch.” And exhaust. After a drive, the rubbery tang of it hung in our clothes and wafted from Phoebe’s hair as we played on the floor in our room.
The sun rose higher; my body relaxed in its warmth, my muscles loosened. I watched my steps, made them deliberate and sure. I stopped to take off my rain jacket. In the sunshine, wisps of steam rose from the mud; the forest breathed a rich, warm scent of earth and sap, and my ears tuned to the Oregon jungle noises: distant birds singing and near ones cackling over nests, woodpeckers hammering at trees and ravens shouting orders.
When I began to walk again, the backward tug was gone. I breathed in fresh air. This mild, sunny day stretched out before me. But for now I just had this step then the next, finding the solid ground.