The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [190]
For dessert there were no end of wild raspberries. He was careful not to overindulge and give himself indigestion. Later in the cabin, noticing the shard of mirror still hanging on the wall, he brushed the grime from it and took a look at himself: a fright, but a comical one, with the red all around his mouth. He made no attempt to wash it off.
He fashioned himself, from a limb of Osage orange, or bois d’arc, a digging-stick, an all-purpose pointed tool for turning up roots or for spearing: he spent part of the afternoon digging up a mess of wild onions, slowed by having to use the stick with only one hand: it was more a poking-stick than a digging-stick. But he quickly acquired dexterity in wielding it, so that once, when he stumbled upon a rabbit hole just as the animal was emerging, almost by reflex he stabbed it with the digging-stick, enough to maim it, and then administered the coup de grâce by using the stick as a club. He gutted the rabbit by venting it and squeezing its innards toward its middle and then holding it high overhead with his good left hand and swinging it with great force downward and between his legs, causing its entrails to be expelled. He saved the heart, liver, and kidneys, roasting those too in the fireplace, for a supper of both raw and roasted onions with rabbit meat, washed down with good well water, and another dessert of wild raspberries.
But before roasting the rabbit he had carefully stripped away and saved the tendons of the muscles, planning eventually to dry them and twist the sinews into the cord of the bowstring for his bow and arrow. He was that optimistic: that he would somehow regain the use of his right hand and arm.
Sitting in front of the cabin after supper, watching the sun go down, feeling free and safe and contented, and even burping a few times, he did not even hear the dog sneaking up on him until the dog, the same one he had encountered earlier, was within a few feet. The dog began to bay, as if it had treed a coon. It did not come any closer, within reach of his digging-stick, but continued baying until, moments later, its owner appeared: a man with a long beard, face hidden beneath a floppy fedora, and cradling in one arm a double-barreled shotgun.
The man did not raise the shotgun to point it at Nail but carried it loose in the crook of his arm. He regarded Nail quizzically for a while before saying, “What’s yore name?”
Nail was tempted to answer truthfully but paused. Could this man know that there was a wanted escaped convict by his name? Was this man’s house, hereabouts, within reach of the news of the escape? For that matter, where was he? Nail had no idea, except that it was near the river; the drifting logs might even have carried him beyond Little Rock. “Where am I?” he answered.
The two questions remained there in the air between them, exchanged, unanswered, for a long moment. Did they answer simultaneously, or was the man just a step ahead of him? No, it seemed that both answers, in the form of that one word, were spoken by both men at once.
“Nail.”
Then they just regarded each other with further cautious surprise for a spell until, again simultaneously, they spoke: “What?”
“I ast ye, what’s yore name?” the man said.
“And you jist said it, didn’t ye?” Nail said.
“Why’d ye ast me whar ye are, if you done already knew?” the man asked.
“What?” Nail said again. “You aint said, yit. Where am I?”
“Nail,” the man said. “What’s yore name?”
“I aint about to tell ye my last name till you tell me where I’m at.”
“I done did. You need to know the name of the state too? Whar’d you float down from? This here’s Arkansas.”
“I know it’s Arkansas,” Nail said impatiently. “What part of it?”
“Nail,” the man said again. “I don’t need to know yore last name. What do folks call ye?”
“Just Nail,” Nail said.
“That’s right,” the man said.
And so it went until it dawned upon first Nail and then the man that they