After we rested on the riverbank, we picked a mess of greens: dandelions and shepherd’s purse, ramps and watercress. Bitsy says you can eat stinging nettles too, but you have to get them when they’re young and tender and boil the heck out of them.
At this point I’ll try anything edible because our larder is nearly empty and so is the root cellar. In addition to four jars of last year’s canned green beans and a few carrots, there are a couple dozen seed potatoes that are starting to sprout, but we’ll need them for planting, and though the peas are up, nothing in the garden is ready to pick.
Last week we had rabbit for two days, kind of stringy but not too bad in a soup. I’m amazed at how many critters I’ve eaten this year: rabbit . . . coon . . . possum . . . duck . . . deer . . . squirrel . . . wild turkey. Since Moonlight was bred and is no longer producing milk, our only supply of protein, other than the game, is two eggs on a good day.
This lack of meat and milk makes me feel nearly destitute, but I forget I still have Mrs. Vanderhoff’s ruby ring and Katherine Mac-Intosh’s golden moon pin, hidden on the top of the closet in an old red Calumet baking powder tin. I promised myself I wouldn’t sell them unless I was truly desperate, and apparently I’m not there yet. Even if I wanted to, where would I go? Who would have cash money to pay me?
As we explore the riverbank, Bitsy and I are surprised to find three tents set up under the trees. From the looks of the first two, constructed with tarps tied over two well-used old pickup trucks, the occupants are on the road with all their household goods. The third, a lean-to, is set about a quarter mile downstream where an older man with a week-old salt-and-pepper beard tends his fire. We give him a wide berth and stop around the bend. Then, while Bitsy readies our fishing poles, I tie Star where she can walk in the shallows and graze in the grass.
“Here, Patience, watch me,” Bitsy orders as, without flinching, she threads an earthworm onto the barbed metal hook. I follow her lead, but it takes something out of me. The worm is still alive, and it’s writhing. I have fished before, but it was years and years ago, when I was a girl, and Papa always baited the hooks for me.
My companion gives me a few tips about casting and moving along the bank slowly in the shade. Then she hands me an old tobacco can with three more worms that she dug out of the garden and heads farther upstream in her high rubber boots.
“Meet me back here when the sun is straight up,” Bitsy instructs. “Good luck.”
I watch as she expertly flicks her line and realize how dependent I’ve become on her. Once I was her benefactor. Now she’s mine.
For hours I wade without getting a bite. Finally I plunk myself down in the grass and just dangle the pole, let my bait drift along in the current. It’s a sunny day with white puffy clouds drifting over me, and I play a game I used to play as a kid, looking for animals in the sky. There’s a horse . . . there’s a chicken . . . there’s the face of a hog . . . Wild pink roses crawl along the edge of the woods, and their sweet scent fills the air.
My musings end abruptly when I feel a tug at my line. At first I think it’s a snag, so I jerk the pole, but the line pulls back. Holy cow! I’ve got one! I stagger to my feet and walk backward into the brush.
“Bitsy!” I call, but she’s a mile away. I whip the homemade willow pole back and forth, back and forth, until a flash of silver hits the air. Oh my gosh! It’s still alive. For some reason this surprises me. The foot-long silver-and-brown-spotted fish lies on the bank, with its gills opening and closing, drowning in the air.
Now I must kill the fish to end its suffering. I pick up a rock and smash the trout in the head until it lies still; then, to keep the flies off, I dangle it back in the river, still on the line.
“Some people just throw them alive in a bucket of cold water. Keeps them fresh,” a low voice comments from behind me. When I twist around, I find one of the men from the tents, a thin swarthy fellow standing in the brush with a string of his own fish over his shoulder.
It occurs to me that this might not be the safest place for a woman alone, but he seems harmless enough, so I smile. “It’s my first catch, and I’m not very experienced . . . It looks like you did all right.” He holds up about a dozen brown and rainbow trout.
“That’s why we stopped here, to fish and rest for a few days, my wife and our two kids and my brother and his family. We’re heading for Pittsburgh.
“Name’s Earl Cook. Came up from Beckley. Heard Carnegie Steel is hiring.” He sits down in the grass and starts to roll a cigarette. “It’s been a long trip. We thought we’d rest a spell. Lost the farm to the bank last month. There’s no work for us back home.”
I’m surprised he’s telling me all this, and I’m thinking there may be nothing for him in Pittsburgh either, but I keep that to myself. All he has left is his pickup, his family, and hope . . . but things could be worse.
It’s high noon, with the sun at its zenith, so Mr. Cook and I part. He goes downstream, back to his campsite, and I look for Bitsy. She’s already started a fire upstream and has gutted her fish on the river’s edge. A quartet of rainbow trout is arranged on a flat rock waiting to be cooked, but my one fish is the biggest, almost a foot long, and I’m proud of it.
“Nice trout,” Bitsy comments and then shows me how to clean the creature. I watch as my fish’s innards are washed away in the current. This self-reliance is getting to be a bit much!
Next she demonstrates how to skewer the trout with a straight green willow limb and hold it over the coals. Everything for our feast is in her knapsack, even tin pie pans to use as plates, forks, and salt. We sit on the riverbank, the green life around us, enjoying our supper, and I think to myself, Things could be worse.
27
Waltz
It’s a sticky night, and I’m sleeping downstairs on the davenport under one sheet in front of the open screen door when I hear an engine chugging up Wild Rose Road. I’ve just blown out the lamp, locked my diary, and tucked it under the sofa cushion.
The sound isn’t welcome. Lately a visitor has meant trouble or another delivery, and I’m still disturbed about Mrs. Mintz’s loss, as if it were my fault, though I know it wasn’t.
“Miss Patience,” a man’s voice calls from out in the yard. I throw on Nora’s red kimono and stand in the dark just inside the screen. “Yes?”