Pops looked off into the night as he continued the story. “Ray said he just wanted to thank me for lending him all those books and helping him with his writing all these years. I told him when he came back safe and sound from the war, I would convince Grubby to let him go to college. He just smiled and said nothing—he just knew it wasn’t going to happen.”
“How did he get killed?” Buzzy asked. “I heard it was in one a them enemy tunnels.”
“What were the tunnels?” I asked.
Pops continued, “The Vietcong were guerrilla fighters and had spent years digging tunnels throughout South Vietnam. They used to live in them by day and attack at night. Because Ray was small, almost jockey size, he was the one who had the job of rooting in the tunnels they found for any VC. One tunnel turned out to be a division command post. He surprised a whole room full of VC colonels and generals. Then the VC attacked and his platoon was driven off and Ray was captured. Rather than kill him immediately, the VC tortured him to see what he knew.”
I went cold. “What did they do to him?”
“What they did to him isn’t important.”
“Oh, come on, Pops, we gotta know what they did to him to make the story. Come on, we’re old enough to know this stuff.”
Pops declined. I kept pestering him for the next five minutes to tell us. Finally, he lost patience with my badgering.
“You really want to know what they did to Ray Mitchell?” he said with a stripe of anger. It was one of the few times Pops had been visibly irritated with me. I knew I should retreat, but I had to know how they tortured Ray.
“Okay.” He put his sour mash tin down and leaned forward, looking straight at us. “They brought him into a room in one of the tunnels. First they beat him to a pulp… broke his jaw in twelve places. Then they hammered bamboo slivers under his fingernails and pulled them off, one by one. They beat the bottom of his feet with clubs until his feet were ruined. They punctured both eardrums with sharpened chopsticks. Then they cut off his thumbs and were working on his fingers when they were overrun by the army. They strangled him and retreated. That’s what they did to young Ray Mitchell. You boys satisfied?”
Buzzy and I swallowed in unison. “I’m sorry, Pops, we didn’t mean to make you angry. We were just wondering.”
“I know you were just wondering, but sometimes wondering is better than knowing.”
We were all silent for a while. I helped Buzzy watch the campfire embers; Pops was considering the cooler air that collected off the lake. Finally he spoke. “I didn’t mean to snap at you, boys. It’s just that I hadn’t thought about Ray in a while and maybe I felt guilty about that.”
“Did he make it up the top a Red Cloud? “
“No, son. He didn’t.”
Pops stood and went off to bed and left Buzzy and me at the embers.
“Man… what do you think he was thinking when they were torturing him like that?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. I was overtaken with thoughts of young Ray Mitchell and how, the week he was held captive, the soft life in Medgar continued unabridged. Smith’s was open to brisk hot-weather business when they brought Ray to the underground room and shattered his jaw with an iron stave. Miss Janey’s was crowded that Saturday, with still-shiny mirrors and fewer clippings in the corners when they broke the bones in his feet for the first time. Biddle’s had just reopened after the expansion with new red vinyl seats and shiny chrome about the time they pried off the first of his fingernails. Jesper Jensen was the newly crowned Hivey’s pinochle champion when they burst Ray’s eardrums with a sharpened chopstick. Everyone in Medgar went about their business that week. Pops waited anxiously for his daughter to come home from her third year of college as Ray lost his right thumb. Lo was packing powder at Juliet Seven when they cut off the left one. Grubby was tending his growing stock, trying to raise a grand champion steer while his only son, tortured, then garrotted, was left naked by the retreating Vietcong.
“I bet he was thinkin he shouldn’tve tried to please his daddy so much,” Buzzy said after a while.
Chapter 29
THE HUNDRED-YEAR STORM
Pops was already at the fire frying fatback and boiling coffee water when we woke the next morning. He cooked four bass filets in the fatback grease with wild garlic and black trumpet and bear’s head tooth.
After breakfast Buzzy and I hiked off to check the snares. At the top of Jumping Rock we scanned the lakeside for the strange visitor, but he was nowhere around. Then through the trees to the snare field.
The first snare was tripped but empty. The next had caught a huge brown rabbit, which was hanging upside down, eyes closed, body still, noose around its thigh. I reached to take it down and its eyes shot open. It shook frantically, writhing in abject terror for twenty seconds, then went still, chest heaving. I grabbed the line and the rabbit shuddered and quivered again until I let go. “How are we gonna get him back to camp?”
“We’re gonna chop his head off.” He pulled Pops’ hatchet out of the large pocket in his pant leg.
“Oh man, I don’t think I want to see that.”
“Don’t look then.” He grabbed the rabbit’s hind legs and slipped off the snare. The rabbit fought ferociously, twisting and shaking in Buzzy’s grip. He slammed its head on a rock, stunning it to quiet, then laid it across a fallen tree and lopped off its head in a quick motion of the ax. He strung the rabbit up on a tree branch for blood draining. The animal’s hind legs moved rhythmically, as if it was blindly hopping around in search of its severed head.
We caught two more smaller rabbits, which Buzzy dispatched with a quick flick of the ax. The fourth snare was tripped but empty, the others intact. We reset the triggered snares and carried the headless rabbits back to camp.
“We will make quite a stew for lunch,” Pops said when he saw our haul. “Let me show you boys how to field dress a rabbit.” We followed him down to the water. He took the bowie and pressed the tip into the rabbit’s back, then peeled off its fur like he was skinning a banana. He chopped off its four feet, then slit its belly. “You want to tease out the entrails so the intestines don’t break open. Then remove the heart, liver, lungs, and other organs.” He gathered up the rabbit guts and flung them into the lake. “Always wash the game thoroughly so no bacteria remains.” He rubbed the carcass vigorously in the water, then held up the rabbit by its leg stubs. “You are going in the stew,” he said to the varmint. “You boys dress the others while I ready the pot.” He handed me the knife and walked back to camp.
I shook my head and passed it to Buzzy. “Come on,” he said, clearly perturbed. “I’m only doin one.” He cut the fur, then quickly stripped and gutted the animal, washing it in the lake. He gave me the bowie. “Your turn, Indiana.”
I hesitated.
“What? Don’t they got dead rabbits where you come from?”
“Only roadkill.”
I held the headless rabbit. Its fur was warm and downy. I made a two-inch cut in the nape of its neck and pulled the skin away from its back. It came off easily, as if I was pulling rabbit-fur gloves off a delicate hand. I cut off its feet and pulled the skin free. The rabbit was scrawny without its fir, glistening like a newborn.
“Now for the gross part.” I cut into the underside and opened its belly. I considered the entrails, unsure exactly how one is supposed to “tease out” guts.
“Reach in an pull the intestine out gentle; then the rest’ll come.”
I did and the guts spilled like colander-poured spaghetti.
“Now cut the organs out.”
I scraped out the heart, lungs, and everything else.
“I’ll do the gut chuckin for you.” Buzzy picked up the innards and cast them into the lake. “Go on an wash it good.”
I briskly rubbed the rabbit inside and out; then we walked up to camp. Pops had gathered a half bucket of hopniss and some chanterelle and shaggymane. He added water and more wild watercress and cut the rabbit carcasses into thirds and threw them into the pot, bones and all. In an hour we were eating one of the best stews I had ever tasted.
Then to our hammocks, digesting wild everything and watching the clouds morph across the splendid sky.