Си Бокс - Dark Sky

He picked it up and walked over to the nearest window to see it better. It was a single-shot .22 bolt-action. The stamp on the barrel identified it as a J. C. Higgins Sears and Roebuck Model 41. There was a knob on the back of the receiver that was used to cock it. He tested the action and the spring still had tension. He guessed the gun was likely sixty years old and it had probably been used for plinking or to rid the place of rodents. It was the kind of rifle once given to twelve-year-old boys as their first gun. Joe had had a similar model, but it hadn’t been given to him by his dad. His dad never gave him anything like that. Joe and his brother had found the rifle beneath the floorboards of the rental house his parents lived in. They’d taken it out to kill rabbits, and the single-shot capability made him always cognizant of the importance of not taking foolish shots and of placing each round. The .22 wasn’t good for much else. It was too cheap and underpowered for game larger than a rabbit or a bird.

Then he noticed a box of cartridges on a shelf next to the door. The brass of the small rounds were mottled with age and the lead seemed so soft he could crease each round with his thumbnail.

Would they fire? He had no idea. Would the rifle still operate? Again, no idea.

Would he share the news of his discovery with Price or especially Boedecker?

He answered his own question as he turned back with the rifle to the battered mattress on the bed. He unrolled it and more mice scattered. The mattress itself was so damaged as to be useless. Joe placed the weapon on the end of the thin cushion and rolled it back up with the box of cartridges. He checked to make sure the butt of the stock couldn’t be seen by Boedecker from the outside.

Just as he finished, the door opened and Boedecker thrust the cleaned and plucked grouse inside, holding all three birds by their naked necks.

“Damn, it’s practically cozy in here!” Boedecker said. “Let’s eat.” Then, over his shoulder to Price: “Don’t just stand there being useless. Bring in a load of firewood.”

—

While Joe roasted the birds in a griddle on the stovetop, rolling them with a wooden spoon often to brown the skin evenly, Boedecker rooted through the junk pile for anything, he said, that could be useful to them. Joe kept a wary eye on him to make sure he didn’t roll out the bedroll. His mouth watered as the aroma from the roasting grouse filled the cabin.

Price sat in a chair with his legs splayed and his arms hung down between them. There was a vacant, almost hopeless look on his face, Joe thought. He got up only to peer over Joe’s shoulder at the crude cooking and then sat back down.

“Well, halle-fucking-lujah ,” Boedecker called out. Joe turned as the man hoisted a three-quarters-full fifth of Ancient Age whiskey from a wooden box on the side of the pile. “We just might make it after all.”

“I don’t drink,” Price said sullenly.

“Further proof that you’re less than half a man,” Boedecker said as he crossed the room. “What makes you think I’d offer you some?”

Next to Joe, he unscrewed the cap and sniffed the open neck of the bottle. “I think it’s okay,” he said. “Bourbon doesn’t go bad over time, does it? I think it just gets better.”

He lifted the whiskey and took a long pull. His eyes teared up, and he said, “Damn, that’s the best bad whiskey I’ve ever had. It warms you up inside.”

He offered the bottle to Joe, who sipped it. The burn spread throughout his mouth and down his throat.

“We better take it easy on that,” Joe said.

“Oh, we will,” Boedecker said with a grin saying otherwise.

In addition to the whiskey, Boedecker found two misshapen cans of green beans under the wash table.

“What do you think?” he asked Joe.

Joe shook his head, not sure. The cans had obviously frozen and thawed, frozen and thawed over the winters.

“They haven’t burst,” Boedecker said. “I say we boil the hell out of ’em.”

Which they did. Boedecker wiped the dirt from inside a pot and dumped the contents into it. He drank from the bottle as he watched the pot begin to smoke. Then he wandered back to the junk pile and left Joe to oversee the cooking of the meal.

“What the hell?” he said, and Joe turned around again to see Boedecker displaying a battered eighteen-inch speargun. “Why would they bring this up here?”

“Can’t even guess,” Joe said.

Boedecker located a single spear in the pile. “It’s one of them pneumatic ones,” he said while inserting the spear and attaching a hand pump into the back of the receiver. He tried to charge it with compressed air.

“Be careful, for God’s sake,” Price warned.

“Shut the fuck up,” Boedecker replied.

Even across the room, Joe could hear air leak out of the device.

“Shit,” Boedecker said. “I bet the O-ring dried out. But maybe I can fix it.” He sat down at the table and started disassembling the speargun.

“You do that,” Joe said, turning back around to his roasting grouse. He approved of the fact that Boedecker had something to do other than root around the cabin and bait Price.

—

That was magnificent, Joe,” Price said as he licked the tips of his fingers. “You can taste pine nuts in the breast meat. These birds are fantastic.”

After a few tentative bites, Price had devoured the grouse on his plate and left a pile of thin bones. Since they couldn’t find any utensils, they’d torn the birds apart with their hands and scooped steaming green beans from the pot into their mouths with cupped fingers. There was nothing left to eat.

A single candle provided some light from the center of the table.

“It’s amazing how good things taste when you’re in the mountains and you’ve been on the run all day,” Joe said. He knew the meat had been slightly underdone, but it had been juicy nevertheless and the skin was browned and crispy. He’d been in a hurry to finish it up on the stove so he could douse the fire within it and eliminate the smoke boiling outside from the chimney.

“It’s not just that,” Price said, sitting back and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “This is as basic as it gets, isn’t it? This is what I came here to experience. Those pine grouse gave their lives for us, and I, for one, appreciate it.”

Boedecker moaned and rolled his eyes. He’d finished before Joe and Price and had pushed his plate aside so he could continue to work on the speargun. Joe noted that Boedecker had removed the black rubber O-ring from the receiver and was rubbing it around in the sheen of grease on his plate from the grouse.

“You might not appreciate it the way I do,” Price said to Boedecker, “but I consider this meal a small miracle. This is what I thought about last year when the whole world first self-quarantined because of the coronavirus. I thought: What would I have to do to survive if it really came down to it? Could I provide for myself? Now I know the answer—that it’s possible. I consider the fact that we’re even alive after the day we had to be a small miracle, and I’ve never been religious.”

He turned to Joe. “What about you?”

“I’m a believer,” Joe said.

“It must be of some comfort.”

Joe said, “Yup,” but he knew his face flushed while he said it.

—

After clearing the dishes, Joe returned to the table. Since Boedecker and Price had taken the only two chairs, Joe sat on an upturned stump he’d found outside near the woodpile. The heater on the propane tank glowed red and cast their faces with a light pink hue. The candle flickered. Although the heat from the unit kept the temperature above freezing in the cabin, it couldn’t keep up with the cold that was seeping inside through the cracks and gaps in the logs. Anything in shadow was cold, Joe noticed. They’d all put their coats back on after they’d eaten and the stove was doused.