Part 152
Kevyn and Jorge met Chris and I half way back. Kevyn said, “No wonder you were gone so long.”
“Yeah. You mind helping with some of this?”
“This” was a large canvas shopping bag of wild greens, a pack full of cattails and arrow root, several rabbit carcasses, and the carcass of a large, field-dressed buck.
Chris stopped to offload some of the meat and grimaced at his sticky, bloody gloves. “Weirdest thing I have ever seen. I was catching the roots DeeDee was tossing to me on the bank of this creek when I miss one and it winds up flying into the bushes and hitting this buck in the face. Basically it freaked out. It ran straight into this small stand of trees and broke its neck when it tried to run between two trees too narrow for its rack to fit through. Splat! Crack!” He stopped and tilted his head over and let his tongue hang out for visual effect.
George made that religious sign Catholics do and said, “Es un regalo de Dios.”
Chris apparently had enough Spanish to understand but rather than make fun he said, “Maybe it is a gift from God. That’s way above my pay grade though so I ain’t saying one way or the other. Either way it was too good to leave behind so give us a hand already. This stuff ain’t lightweight.”
When we got back to tree camp we had to explain all over again. I left the three guys to hang the deer and tell the story since Chris was in the mood to ham it up some more and went to finish skinning the rabbits and getting a big pot of camp stew started. Limmer came and surprised me by helping. He said, “You got a mouth on you girl but you can cook, I’ll give you that. I’ll throw in with you and everyone can eat the same thing and save us some work. We may have to water it down some but that shouldn’t hurt nothing.”
“Won’t have to … water it down I mean. I brought back plenty of greens. I was gonna ask if you wanted some. There’s wild garlic in there too.”
Limmer’s nose twitched and he nodded. “Them boys know what they’re doing with that deer? We’re gonna need it all – antlers to hooves – to feed this bunch. Extraction is at least a couple of days off. Whot’s more we have enemy movement on three sides complicating things. Some of this crew that I came in with hasn’t spent much time in the bush and is getting twitchy. They ain’t sure what to make being in these trees like monkeys and having all these infecteds running around. This ain’t the kinda thing they are used to. Ones with more experience ain’t much better off.”
I sighed, suddenly tired of all the people crowding my safe place but feeling like they had some right to complain. “The guys know what to do with the deer or they can suffer the consequences,” I told Limmer, repeating something I’d heard Dad say a lot. “As for the rest of it, I don’t know what they are whining about. They aren’t getting chomped and it was Sgt. Shelly’s order to leave the puss brains alone. This isn’t a family vacation. I suppose we can try and pacify them with food to keep ‘em from getting cranky and foul. I can see it helping with the little boys but geez, we shouldn’t have to treat grown people like they have no sense.”
Limmer snorted and then spit a stream of brown snuff down onto a particularly gruesome looking puss brain’s head making some of the boys cheer silently before Sgt. Shelly gave them “the eye.” “Pip, you might just be surprised how much pacifying some adults take.”
“Uh, maybe not surprised, but I just expect these particular adults wouldn’t need it.”
Limmer snorted again and said, “Soldiers sometimes need pacifying more than most. I’ve not met one yet that takes to sitting around waiting for something to happen with much enthusiasm. Now hand me them greens so I can see what we got to work with.”
I handed the bag to Limmer and after taking inventory in my head I told him, “Looks like I need to lay in more forage just in case the area gets contaminated. We’ll need to smoke most of this deer and try and bring in at least one more for fresh.”
“Girl, you fergettin’ all them infecteds right down below us we were just talking about?”
“No. Even if I wanted to my nose wouldn’t let me,” I answered scrubbing my nose at the dirty, scummy smell of the mess of them wandering around my once neat clearing. “Just look at it this way, right now those puss brains are our guard dogs. Let’s let them do that job, be that tool. Let’s let them become a problem for the enemy. But we’ve got a job to do too and need to be the tools we need to be.”
“Yeah,” Limmer said with a load of sarcasm. “We’ll be tools all right.”
“Huh?” I asked not understanding.
Gayle interrupted by swinging in and saying, “You’re already a tool Limmer. Stop picking on Pip.” She turned to me and asked, “Can you leave this? That kid Miguel is asking for you and refusing to cooperate. He’s gonna open his wounds back up at this rate.”
I looked at Limmer. He said, “Get lost girlie. The day I can’t watch a pot is the day they plant me.”
I would have thanked him if I hadn’t been sure he would have gotten crankier than he already was. I quickly made my way over to Miguel to find Kevyn there ahead of me and trying to calm him down and having zero luck.
Miguel grabbed my hand as soon as I bent close enough and started crying, “Hermanita … I don’t hurt. Am I dying?”
I blinked and slowly turned to look at the tired medics. One of them mumbled something foul before shaking a small vial at me. Recognizing what it was from Doc hording the stuff I sighed in relief and sat down all the way. “What a loco question. Now you’re complaining you aren’t hurting after all you been feeling the last week?”
“I don’t wanna be no ugly puss brain. If I gotta die I want it to be you that fixes it. You won’t let me be no monster and go to hell so I don’t seem my momma.”
‘Don’t be silly Miguel. You ain’t going to turn into a monster. You got shot, not chomped. And you’re not dying either; you finally got the kind of help that Kevyn and I have been trying to get for you you big ol’ Ding Dong.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah. Now mind or I’ll start poking on you again and you remember how much fun that was. What did the medics tell you to do?”
He got a mulish look and said, “Take a nap.”
Seeing what half the problem was as I’d seen the little guys get their pride hurt too easily about some things I snorted. “Naps are for babies and old people. You ain’t either one. You just need to sleep so the medicine can work and your body can heal so you can get up and help us out.”
“I ain’t no baby. I tried to tell ‘em. I ain’t.”
“No you’re not, so don’t act like one. Put your bottom lip in before a puss brain grabs it.”
It took a moment but he grinned a little then finally gave it up and went to sleep; but, I still had to work to untangle my hand from his. I looked at Kevyn and he said, “The guys are going to keep taking turns sitting with him. He won’t be alone … you know … in case.” In case things got bad and we had to evacuate.
I nodded and stood up. One of the more severely injured – a militia woman – snapped, “Could you be a little meaner to that little guy?”
I looked at her but didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say that would explain it. People understood or they didn’t. It wasn’t my job to be their mom or aunt or anything else. They called me Sister but I really wasn’t that either. I was just the closest thing they had to it right now. My real job was to feed them. When needed, I fed them more than just food … and that included telling them what they needed to hear to tough up so they could survive.
Miguel didn’t belong where he was at any more than I had belonged in the city. He shouldn’t have been here, hurt and surrounded by things that wanted to eat him. But shouldn’t bees still sting. I couldn’t stop them from stinging … but I could teach the boys how to deal with the stings couldn't be avoided.