The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis Page B

and leaf litter, didn’t pay no mind to ticks and spiders, they don’t bother me if I don’t bother them. Maybe I’m using their home as roofing but they get a warm sleep and I don’t get rained on. Win-win and when you’re eking out a life in the forests you make the most a’ them little victories.

    Found some nice dry tinder and a flint rock and set me a spark. Set that close to the entrance of my hut and built it up right nice into a crackling little blaze.
    Night fell quick but the moon came out smiling and turned that lake into a mirror. It lit up my glade and I sat ’neath my roof, watching glow bugs dancing on the other side of the water. I ate some canned deer, care of the good reverend, and settled myself down. Something right serene about it, and to tell the truth, I ain’t slept better’n that night in a long while.
    Soon as sunup woke me, I set a dozen snares and decided it would be a fine time to bathe my back. Trapper hated bathing. Said it made him smell too human and told the animals right where he was. I recall only one time he came back to our little home not stinking of sweat and dried blood. Said he did it to smell more human and fit in with them other animals. I didn’t pay no mind to what he was saying back then, he often times talked in riddles but now I think back on it, knowing he’s a murdering son bitch, them words weren’t no riddle, they was instructions.
    I stopped counting the weeks I stayed by that lake. There was magic in that water and my back healed up quick, leaving naught more’n thin scars crossing my skin. I did some exploring in them woods and found the edge a’ the warm. A small clearing ’tween the lake and the road was crisscrossed in tracks what looked human. One time I heard voices what I didn’t recognize as Kreagar or Lyon, but whoever they was they never came close. I never saw no one and I sure didn’t go looking.
    Most days my snares caught a rabbit and I ate fancy. One day I checked my squirrel poles and found me a pigeon hanging by the foot, flapping about and squawking. He’d near ripped off that foot by the time I found him and I tell you, he wouldn’t have lasted a day out in the wild, hopping about. I did him a kindness.

    He was a bit small and the only good eating on a small bird like that is the breast. Trapper taught me a trick when I was eight for getting in and getting out quicker’n a fox after your chickens. First I broke the poor devil’s neck, nice and quick-like so the meat didn’t have no time to tense up with fear. Couple a’ twists and a few sharp tugs and I had his head and wings on the grass in a neat pile. No point being messy. Killing can be clean and neat if you don’t put no fury in it.
    Pigeons are clever birds, see, no matter what the town folk say, and they keep seeds and nuts and whatever they been eating that day stored up in their necks for tougher times. This guy had a couple plump acorns and I figured I ain’t letting these go to waste. Acorns is good eating if you cook ’em up right. I put them in my pocket and dug both my thumbs deep in the bird’s neck. I’d always loved this part when I was a babe, feeling how the bird’s put together, all that fresh, bright blood telling me there’s goodness to be had. Hell, it was like touching God and seeing His thoughts when He decided on the design. Fact that it was so easy told me we was meant to be doing it. Even my young’un hands had enough strength to pull apart breast and back and turn that pigeon inside out. I opened it up like a juicy orange. Scraped out them guts and set ’em close and neat ’side the wings, then just peeled them breasts away in one clean chunk. Dark, purple, heart-shaped goodness it was, still warm and ready for roasting.
    I took it back to camp and skewered it over the fire then cleaned myself up in the lake. Now, it’s just good manners and sense to clean up your kill site so’s it don’t bring bears and such right to your front door.