Roman Cesaro - Fallen Into Darkness

Robert was thinking about his family and trying to ignore his hunger as he sat by the fire. A noise in the tall weeds caught his attention. He rose up and turned to the direction of the noise. Kyle and Richard stopped what they were doing and stood quietly in reaction to Robert’s movements.

“Look, over there,” Robert said, pointing to the tall weeds that moved in unison with the sound of dry grass crackling.

“It has to be an animal,” said Kyle, as he picked up a club-sized piece of driftwood.

Robert picked up a rock and signaled to Kyle that he was ready to jump the animal. Their sprint towards the animal was noisy and the furry creature ran away. It was large raccoon.

“I saw the little bandit,” said Robert. “It went into a hole.” Robert looked at the rock in his hand and said, “I have an idea. Help me find a large flat rock and we can make a deadfall trap. I can see where it ran to. It used a little trail in the weeds to get to that hole. Let’s put a deadfall trap on that trail.”

“What’s a deadfall trap?” asked Kyle.

“We’ll balance a large flat rock up by a stick. When the raccoon uses its path and walks under the rock, it will bump the stick holding the rock. The rock will fall and you get a flat raccoon.”

They found a sufficiently flat rock, but the sun had begun to set before they had it positioned correctly and struggled to see their work in the dim evening light. They decided against using any of their food as bait and went to sleep hoping for catfish or raccoon for breakfast.

A large hawk swooped low over the men and screeched, waking them at sunrise. It was a clear morning. There were no clouds in the sky to block the radiance of the sun’s ascent. Robert had slept by the fire and turned the wood each time he woke from his restless sleep, so that it would be evenly and completely dry by morning. He got up and felt the wood. It was still warm. He thought that if it had been warm all night long, the wood had to be dry, so it was time to apply the finish. Robert retrieved the little bag of walnut hulls and began to crush them with a stone. This created a dark paste that he rubbed on the bows, and then wiped off the excess. The wood was stained black from the hulls and he placed the bows near the fire to let the residual paste dry. Robert looked toward the deadfall trap and then looked again at the bows by the fire. He thought about how convenient it would be to hunt after the bows are finished this morning. They would soon be able to take game down silently.

“I’ll check the deadfall. How about some fish?” Robert asked.

After a quick nod, Kyle stood, stretched, and walked to the fishing lines he had set last evening.

Robert crept toward the trap. He did not want to make noise and scare a loose raccoon. To his delight, he saw that the rock had fallen and a raccoon’s tail was just visible, protruding from underneath the flat stone. Quickly, he lifted the rock, revealing the fatally trapped raccoon. When he picked it up, he realized the body was still warm and was surprised that he had heard nothing when the trap collapsed. Robert proudly showed the raccoon to Richard, then rotated the darkened bows and bundles of river cane drying by the campfire. Kyle was coming back to the campfire with the fish lines. He held up one finger indicating that he had only caught one fish.

Still holding the raccoon Robert looked down at Richard and spoke. “I’m glad we got this. It looks like we only have one fish coming our way.”

Richard turned toward Kyle, who was approaching the campfire, and put more wood on it. He looked back at Robert. “I’m starving. Do you know how to clean that thing?” Richard asked, pointing at the raccoon.

Robert tapped the knife in its sheath and nodded. He took the catfish from Kyle and went to the river to clean both for breakfast.

While Robert was cleaning their catch at the water’s edge, Richard approached Kyle with the map. Richard showed Kyle landmarks on the map as a guess to their location. He wanted the other men to know what to expect before they crossed the Montana state line into North Dakota. Richard pointed at two locations downstream where roads crossed the river. At these locations, there were public recreation areas and there could be people on camping trips who had become stranded after the grid collapsed. With roads so close to these recreation areas, maybe other stranded people who were traveling on the road had decided it would be a good place to stop. He thought there was a good chance for desperate people to be there, so they needed to be cautious. Further downstream he showed Kyle a lake on the map. Using his fingers to measure the lake to scale, Richard determined the lake was at least one hundred miles long. Kyle shook his head and looked away. He knew that meant endless rowing and another dam to get around.

Robert was back at the campsite now with the cleaned catfish and skinned raccoon.

“Richard just showed me on the map what we have to look forward to,” said Kyle.

Robert traded Richard the map for the cleaned game. Richard began to cook the meat and Robert studied the map where Kyle indicated their estimated position was.

Kyle explained to Robert as he pointed to various locations on the map. “We are low on food and have a lot of rowing to do on the lake. I guess it’ll take about a week to get there and a lot of calories to do it. With these recreation areas and roads coming up we could run into some desperate people when we stop to get food or camp for the night.” Kyle pointed to the roasting meat and the two bows by the campfire to emphasize his conclusion. “We have to find more food and get those bows completed.”

Robert nodded his head. “I can finish the bows this morning. We have a dozen good arrows to start with. The river cane will need feathers and points to make them useful. The pheasant feathers will work as fletching, but I have no idea what to use for arrow heads.”

Robert put the map down and inspected the two bows. He rubbed the residue of walnut hull paste off the bows, then for a finishing touch, rubbed vegetable oil on the stained wood to waterproof them. He cut a length of paracord to use for bowstrings and strung the bows, handing one to Kyle. Robert then cut a notch at the end of each river cane and attached pheasant feathers to the notched end. They practiced shooting with the blunt-tipped arrows, not wanting to damage the razor sharp tips of the carbon-fiber arrows that Robert had found in the deer stand.

Satisfied with the performance of their new weapons, Robert and Kyle set their bows and arrows down, and rejoining Richard, ate the fish and raccoon. They were not able to find anything else in their surroundings to eat.

The men left their camp that morning with two new weapons and the hope that those would serve as another means of getting food. The land was barren for miles as they floated downstream. Robert and Kyle had their bows ready just in case they saw something to hunt as they went along. There was nothing but clear sky and grassland until late afternoon, when they came upon irrigated farmland. They could see massive irrigation equipment on wheels that previously allowed the mechanism to be moved in a circle around the field. They went ashore to filter more drinking water and look at the crops in a nearby field.

Robert ran into the field with his bow. He yelled back down to his two companions. “Look, soybeans, a field full of soybeans!”

Kyle and Richard went up the incline of the riverbank and into the soybean field.

“How do we eat them?” asked Richard.

Robert grabbed a pod from the plant. “Just boil them and open the pod. The beans are inside. They are immature right now, but still delicious.” Robert opened the bean pod to show Kyle and Richard the individual green-colored beans inside. “This is something we can take with us.”