“Kid, what do I do if one or more don’t go behind something?”
“My dear, make a solid judgment. Don’t be afraid to fail.”
“Thanks.”
“Cock the .410 as I showed you. Use your modifications.”
Samantha pulled the trigger all the way to the rear with her left index finger. Next, she drew the hammer back, using both thumbs due to the strong spring on a .410. She released the trigger with the quietness of a sunset. She needed no further preparation.
The ease of her motions, the flash in her eyes produced a lump in the Kid’s throat.
A six-inch hickory tree in front of his face gave him some protection from the eyes of the turkeys. This allowed him to move and see Samantha. Her blood took over. Her eyeballs swept back and forth to analyze the territory. Her eye movement stopped.
The Kid peeked with his left eye.
A couple of big toms, a pair of large hens, and two lesser birds stood ninety yards to the front. The woods’ curtain, in the mature forest, rested behind the turkeys. Past the screen, no eye could penetrate.
With the gobbler side of the device, the Kid clucked again. The six marched forward. They halted. Stretched necks put the larger males’ heads to hip high level. They stood, unmoving, seeming to say, “We have endured. We will endure.”
One of the large toms answered the cluck. The other male, the dominant one, spread his wings and lowered his head to challenge his partner for vocalizing. In addition, still annoyed, he simulated an attack with a weak peck as the non-dominant bird sprinted several steps sideways to avoid a hassle.
“Samantha, guess which is the leader.”
“Gotcha, Kid. Can they recognize our whispering?”
“Naw, too far away. If they come closer, you must stop shuddering so you won’t spook them.”
He sent another gobbler cluck, causing four to march forward. They drew to within sixty-five yards, but this time, the bigger males didn’t advance. They departed.
“Oh, me, Samantha, turkeys show their unpredictability. Those weighed twenty pounds, too. Perhaps they’ll change their minds. They do strange things sometimes. Some hunters say these birds are wired different from other forest beings.”
The four advanced to within forty yards. He became mute; calling this close might have spooked them.
The largest were mature hens, while the two lesser were an immature tom (jake) and an adolescent hen. The jake wore a three-inch beard and had a black body with a pink face. The young hen had lackluster brown feathers.
The older birds weighed about thirteen pounds. Their brownish bodies, weights, and blue heads identified their sex. One of these stood taller as she issued a cluck. By vocalizing, she showed herself as the dominant member.
The four turkeys posed with their heads pivoting on eighteen-inch necks. Their eight eyes sought the tom or anything different.
The hunters crouched in the pine boughs; they realized their chance to bag a turkey lay with the missing males; hence, unless those birds reversed course and reappeared, this hunt would fail.
All the birds walked forward, shrinking the range to a mere fifteen yards, a good viewing distance.
Twenty minutes had passed since the six birds had appeared.
Snow fell. Heavier gusts of wind blasted the flakes in at a fifteen-degree angle. The deposits pasted the once-windblown leaves. Neither the hunters nor the hunted paid attention. The flock relaxed. They grazed; nevertheless, those eight eyes studied the wind-thrown pine and the surrounding area, not only for danger, but also for the male they thought had clucked.
The hunters’ camouflage, this time, succeeded; however, Samantha quivered. The birds caught the movement, and with a burst of energy, the escape started. They spun rearward, wings popping, struggling for air speed. The turbulence from the thrashing feathers all but cleared the ground of snow, swirling and churning the white powder. They erupted skyward, climbing like rockets. With the aid of air currents, they accomplished a fifty-mile-per-hour horizontal escape.
“Wow, Kid! Wow, Kid! Wow, Kid!”
“Some show, huh, Samantha?”
“Fantabulous!”
“Don’t forget. Your trembling spooked the turkeys.” The Kid pulled the .410 from the snow.”Here, Samantha.” He offered her the gun. “You’re learning better than expected. Remember to care for your firearm. Be ready. Some animals carry rabies. Who knows? You might run into a hooligan or two, robber, rapist or worse, but I doubt anything like that will happen.”
She failed to recognize a word, since her brown eyes stayed glued to the clearing where the turkeys had vanished.
“Samantha, are you listening to me?” He received no response. He seized a shoulder in each hand. He jiggled her.
“What, Kid?”
“Things might get a little dicey. The temperature falls. The snow flies faster. The snow’s sticking. It’s twelve thirty. The weatherman miscalculated. Remember: we travel two miles through this slippery stuff. Ready?”
She shivered. She nodded.
“Don’t worry, Honey. The return trek will get your juices flowing to warm you up. Follow my orders and me, too. Can you walk back?”
She nodded.
“No more whispering, Samantha. The hunt’s over for today. If you’re in shape, we’ll try another area tomorrow.
“I’ll cut the heat up in my motel room. By midnight, the place will be ninety degrees. I think.”
***
They came to a small gully fifty inches wide and eight feet deep.
“Samantha, it’s getting bad out here. Time’s important. We can’t go around things. Gotta jump or climb over. Now, I leap first. Grab me when you jump.”
He walked three paces behind Samantha. He turned. With fast strides, he cleared the opening. Without waiting, Samantha sprinted after him but to his left. As he landed, she glided. Her foot struck a softball-size stone. She screamed. She turned her ankle. She crashed. Trying to stand, she slanted backwards, spinning, while grabbing at the opposite bank. Her fingers dug into the dirt. Losing her grip, she slid into the bottom.
He jumped into the channel.
“Didn’t listen,” she berated herself. “From now on, I will. The design of snow tells you what lies below. Go ahead. Fuss me out.”
He helped her to get up. He locked his fingers and turned his palms up. He nodded. She put her uninjured foot in position. He boosted her to the bank.
“Your ankle’s swelling. Are you able to stand?”
Samantha struggled to her feet. She shrieked. He caught her before she hit the ground.
“Sugar, you broke a bone, maybe. Hopefully, you just caused a mean sprain. Let me call Spiffy. I’ll talk him down here. He’ll come to our rescue.”
He snatched off his gloves and blew on both hands. Opening the cell phone revealed a dead battery. “The cold killed it. Spiffy follows my orders. He won’t come. Honey, we face problems. If we don’t stay calm we chance at best losing some fingers or toes. At worst, we might die here. I’m unable to carry you out. I’m too weak for that. Sit on this coat, which will be a sled. I’ll try to drag you to the truck.”
He paced.
She put the .410 butt plate on the ground, knelt on one knee and centered the muzzle on her throat. She positioned her thumb on the trigger. “Don’t move.”
The gold necklace slipped out of her clothing and looped the barrel. The wind swung the ornament. The metal tapped, tapped, tapped six inches below the front sight.
The pinging reminded the Kid of Mrs. Jones’s “get quiet bell” in the sixth grade. He remembered one day sitting by the radiator when she sent all but him out to recess. Instead of drawing a picture, he took his crayon and heated the wax on the radiator. After it had melted, he pulled a string from his shirt to build a candle. When Mrs. Jones approached, his hands sweated, his eyes blinked faster, and his heart raced. She’d rubbed his hair. She’d complemented him on his imagination and charisma, but above all, his resourcefulness. She’d smiled, “Your
originality will always save you.”
They remained in place.
The slanting snow changed to sleet.
Their eyes locked.
The corners of her mouth turned down, while her eyelids became slits.
Oh my, look at that face: a picture of depression. “Don’t want me to move, okay; at least let me put my gloves on.” He thought. Condition her to movement. When you get a chance, run toward her.
“Go ahead.”
“Samantha, with the large sleet striking us, the tree limbs sound comparable to a crackling fire. Don’t you agree?”
“No.”
He took one-step. “Samantha, why this extreme reaction?”
Her breathing slowed. At six-second intervals, frost appeared from her nostrils. “Simple—-I refuse for you to drag me out of here. I am not a piece of side meat. I’m tired. Just don’t care anymore. You forget—Native American blood runs in me. Don’t take another step.”
“Yeah, Sugar, but before the white man, I’ll bet Native Americans gave their companions support in times of trauma.”
With her right hand, she made a swipe at her runny nose.
The Kid stampeded, cutting the distance in half.
She placed her finger into the trigger guard. With the muzzle pressing into her windpipe, she snatched the trigger!
He ran.
Seizing the gun, he ripped the firearm from her!
With a deep breath, his blood slowed.
“When I picked the shotgun out of the snow, I lowered the hammer to the safety position. Something most people do. Learn this.”
The Kid’s peaceful deep voice stroked her. He caressed her hair. “Now, Miss, you put your right arm over my left shoulder, together we will hop down this hill and up the next. But first, did you take a tranquilizer this morning?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t think I needed to.”
“Where are they?”
“My backpack.”
“Swallow two now.”
“Ervin said one.”
“Did Ervin tell you to keep them at room temperature? Should’ve placed them close to your body.”
She pulled her chin into her chest. She licked her lips. She shook two into her palm and showed them to him. Her left hand went to her hip. “I’ll gulp ‘em.”
“Okay Samantha, up we go.”
“We can’t make...” She sobbed. She shivered. He held her until the crying stopped, but she still shook from the cold.
She can be yours.
They stumbled. Midway to the ground, he grabbed her; she fell on top of him and together they slid to the base. The Kid received the worst of the accident, since snow crammed into the neck of his coat.
“Kid, you okay?”
“I can make sixty yards up that hill.”
“Why?”
“At the top lies a rock overhang. The ledge points south. I put you under the shelter. I’ll go for supplies and return if I can. If I can’t…Tell you later.”
She looked upward. “Our luck changed. There’s a boulder inches from our heads. Wow. We stopped in time.”
“Remember, Samantha, we are Christians. We don’t believe in luck.”
“Yup.”
“Samantha, if I help, can you get up the hill?”
“Sure.”
The rock ledge formed a partial cave. The strip thrust out seventeen feet from the base, leaving a six-by-eleven-foot interior.
They reached the spot, crawled under, and stretched out to catch their breaths.
His face drowned in misery. “Listen.”
She stared.
He put his index finger perpendicular over her lips to keep her quiet. “Sugar, when I looked into the little stream earlier, my doppelganger appeared. He spoke to me today.”
“What did he say?”
“Don’t ask.”
He threw a wad of toilet tissue on the soil and doused the paper with gasoline from his metal flask. With the dull side of the knife, he struck a rock made of quartz. Sparks landed on the target soaked with gas, igniting a fire. He lit a candle, dripped wax on a flat stone. With a twisting motion, he mashed the base into place. “Put your hands around the flame as a wind guard.”
“Wow, Kid!”
He sheathed the high-carbon blade. Drawing his favorite knife, he opened a container of beans. After pouring the food into two plates, he cut out the bottom of the can. “Here, a lamp shade and six candy bars. The flavor will surprise you.”
“Will you return, Kid?”
“I think so; for sure I’ll leave markers for Spiffy with the blaze orange tape. He’ll come back tonight with a sleeping bag. Take my heavy coat. No time to argue.”
“But—”
“But, nothing.”
He draped his large wool-lined jacket over her, stripping an extra toboggan from a side pocket. He crammed the stocking cap over the one she wore.
“Kid, you’ll freeze.”
“Not to worry. I’ll give you my word that I’ll arrive at the truck. When I do, I’ll take five minutes to call Jennifer and tell her everything’s hunky-dory—”
“What’s hunky-dory?”
“Means fine. Don’t interrupt again. Then I’ll take five minutes to call your dad.”
“And ask about my brothers.”
“Oh, Samantha, I hope to come to you with a queen-size sleeping bag. I can’t promise it.”
Without saying good-bye, he left.
Chapter 12
Wind, snow, and the darkness intensified.
She shivered more from loneliness than from the chill.
Famished, she annihilated both plates of beans and wolfed down two candy bars. Yes, the Kid spoke wisdom. The food tasted terrific.
The Kid’s coat provided warmth; yet the biggest improvement sprang from the candle. but the more the flame fought a battle with the increasing darkness and the determined temperature drop, the more the wind shrieked and moaned and struggled to exceed its allies: the cold, the snow, and the dark. Samantha huddled over the precious flame, while the glow fluttered, suggestive of a frightened bird. She peered from under the overhang. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” she sobbed. A tree or branch crashed, which she observed as a denial to her plea and a shattering of her faith. She yelled. She bit her bottom lip. “Come on. Suck it up now. The tree falling has nothing to do with you. Stay busy. Make up a game or something.”
Studying the eerie dancing light cast on the overhead rock gave her an idea. She manipulated her hands above the candle to form a silhouette on the ceiling. As she failed to shape a sheep’s shadow, so too she botched a big butterfly. At a minimum, she learned the light needed to come from the side, not the bottom, to fashion profiles.
Drowsiness swept. Through her mental fog, a catch-22 swamped her. Would she die from exhaustion, by freezing, or both?
Out of the darkness came a voice; however, the air currents dimmed the words.
She shook her head to bring back reality. Was the wind playing tricks? Why not? Stories tell of the eye sending confusing signals to the brain. In one turkey story, a huntsman opened fire on a stump because a cardinal was perched on top.
She questioned her sanity. She forced a smile, but again, closer, she heard the utterance. “Don’t be frightened, young lady.”
Perplexed, she trembled, mashed her eyelids shut, hoping the Kid would come. When she opened her eyes, a business card fell. The paper came to rest beside the candle.
“Pick up the item.”
Hesitating, reaching again: if the card is real, the voice was genuine; on the other hand, the article could have been an illusion. If an hallucination, lunacy overtakes me. Show nerve and afterwards deal with the situation. She scooped up the rectangle. Blank. She flipped it. In bold raised type, two words appeared.
THE CHAMELEON
“May I enter?”
“Will you pull off your mask and let me see you?
“Nobody sees the Chameleon.”
“C
ool! Don’t kill me. Hey, you carrying an extra blanket?”
He chuckled. “Yes.” He squeezed inside until he drew close enough to spread a black throw over the shivering girl. “Keep the throw. Paid $5.88, tax not included.”
“Thank you, Mister.”
“Why do you say Mister? The Chameleon could be a female.”
“You sound like a man.”
“I can camouflage anything, including my speech.”
“Sir, you may be a woman camouflaging your voice, but I doubt it. Besides, you wear men’s English Sparrow aftershave lotion, too.”
Samantha’s observation brought forth a masculine tidal wave of laughter. She flinched. The surge lasted to such an extent, she considered the possibility that she faced insanity, but her fear would be short-lived.
He halted the straitjacket pose, and his arms dropped to his sides. He reclined while sucking in breaths.
Samantha imagined that beneath the mask lay a smiling, contented man.
She could not remember an outfit like his. The white was the hue of salt crystals. The thin black stripes, with lesser streaks of brown and gray, further interrupted the pattern.
She mulled over his clothes. Little wonder this man could hide himself, since the suit he wore blended with nature’s background, allowing no eye to distinguish the material from the natural landscape. The name Chameleon, likely self-chosen, indicated a clever, nonetheless appropriate, choice.
“Miss, where did you learn the fragrance of my lotion?”
“Dad wears the brand.”
“He must possess discernment, judging by the jewelry you wear. Let us talk for a while. The Kid will return soon.”
“Are you sure? He’s weak. The drinking over the years put him in a bigger mess than a pickpocket at a nudist camp.”
“You are correct. Listen. He’ll come back tonight. He’s the Tobacco Land Kid.”
“You respect him, don’t you, Mister Chameleon?”
“Yes, I do. Please, just Chameleon. Indeed, you could win a part in a Hollywood script as a Native American.”
A bond formed. When he inquired as to the honor of her word, she informed him she was of the first Americans. Satisfied, he nodded and led the conversation, beseeching her not to reveal certain details of his visit.
“Chameleon, give me your cell number. I’ll let you know where we are so we can work together.” With this request, he scribbled the information on the back of one of his cards. She glanced at the digits. Smiling, she burned the message in the candle, nudged him in the ribs, and touched her right temple with her index finger.