Chapter 21: Sara
I think I like Carter after this past month. Jon says that Carter almost killed Caitlyn when he gave her the wrong medicine at first, but she looks a lot better now. Before Carter came, she’d been getting worse and worse for more than a week.
Besides, Carter’s been spending a lot of time with Caitlyn making sure she is getting better as fast as she can. I like sitting with them and talking; he has a lot of good stories from when he was an EMT. He said he’d often get called to this house owned by an old man who had frequent health problems, and no matter how bad the man was when he got there, he’d have a candy bar on the shelf for each member of the attending team.
“The first two times, we didn’t accept anything,” he said. “Then, about the third or fourth time, he had these caramel peanut bars, and was really insistent. How can you say no to an old man that’s on your gurney still wearing an ear-to-ear smile under an oxygen mask? After that, it became habit for us.”
He has lots of stories like that. I think the only person that likes them more than Caitlyn and me is Jo, but she won’t admit it. I see her looking over her shoulder and smiling as she pretends to read her books while Carter talks. Once she even giggled at a funny part about a story when he stayed at this campground.
“And just then, while we were sitting around the fire arguing over who would take the last strips of bacon from the cooling rack, a raccoon runs up, grabs the two pieces, stands up on its hind legs and gives us a look like this:” Carter held out two clenched fists as if he was holding bacon, tipped his head, shook it, and rolled his eyes. His impersonation of a raccoon was ridiculous.
Jo couldn’t help herself. I knew she had been listening, and she giggled with Caitlyn and me. But when Carter turned around, she pointed, “I'm laughing at you, not with you.”
She’s out hunting again right now. She still hasn’t brought anything back, but that won’t slow her down. She’s said the same thing all week, “I’ll get one tomorrow.” Then the next day, each time she left, Jon would remind her to be careful, and Carter would glance up at her a few times as she walked into the woods. He has spent some time helping her handle the guns properly. Carter has a little experience.
Jon has been working on basically two things: radishes and archery. He’s set up a really make-shift target behind the house just next to his fields. His “target” is more of a tall pile of dirt, and he aims for empty cans that he’s jammed into the side after taking out both the bottom and top parts of the cans. He doesn’t get the arrows in them very often, but even from far away he hits the mound.
Today, Caitlyn and I are out back with Jon, pretending to write cursive in the dirt with sticks. Really, I want to bother him and Caitlyn wants to watch the bow and arrow. He keeps firing at the piles of dirt in the distance.
“Just another week and we should start to see the plants!” says Jon, pulling the string back for another shot. We hear a muffled “thft” as the arrow embeds itself in the mound, just a few inches from the can most of the way up the side. I continue to bother Jon with all the things that I will try to make with the few things he planted. I have really become good at making stuff up in the kitchen.
THFT. We hear it again. This time, the arrow misses by much more, and on the other side of the can. Jon sighs, and I think I hear him say something under his breath, but I can’t make it out. He drops the bow, not seeming to care where it will land, and unstraps the quiver from his back. Without a word, he walks over to his bucket, picks it up, and heads for the lake. I don't think he is improving like he thinks he should.
“Sara, help me!” says Caitlyn, scrambling up and running over to the bow on the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Help me put this on! I want to try.”
“Jon’s not gonna like this. He’ll be back soon!”
“I just wanna try a few. Let me take some shots, and we’ll put everything back just where we found it.”
I look toward the trees where Jon went. I can still see him. He doesn’t seem to be moving all that fast, so we might have time. “Okay,” I finally say, rushing to her side and helping her shoulder the quiver that is only a little too big for her body.
“Ok, go grab the two arrows out of the target for me.”
As I bring them back to her, she has already picked up the bow and is finding a way to hold it so that the tip doesn’t hit the ground. She’s just barely too short for it to be straight up and down.
“Oh well. I’ll just tip it a little bit until I… wait! A chair!” She puts the bow down and runs into the cabin. I follow close.
“Caitlyn! Shhh! Carter’s sleeping!” I say as we approach the front door. She slows down, and we creep in together to grab the chair.
In no time, we have it out back, and she’s standing straight up on the chair with a big smile on her face as she pulls back her first arrow. She struggles to pull it back all the way.
THFT! I’m getting really familiar with the sound. I tried to follow it as it left her hand, but it was too fast.
“Woah!” I can’t hold in my amazement. She put the arrow right beside the can! I look up at her, at the mound, and back up at her again. “I’ll bet you can’t do it again!”
She giggles. “Okay, you’re on!” She reaches over her shoulder awkwardly, finally getting her fingers around another arrow. She strings it, pulls it back, and fires again.
THFT! I can’t believe it. She put that one right next to the first arrow, except above the can.
She giggles again, just like last time, like she knows something I don’t. Reaching back again, she finds an arrow more easily. This time, she strings it much faster, and the draw is much smoother.
“Caitlyn!” we hear, just as she releases the string. I turn to look, and I see Jon, standing with a big surprised mouth as he watches Caitlyn’s third arrow stick into the mound, just on the outside of the can.
“Caitlyn, did you shoot all three of those?” asks Jon, putting the pail down next to the rows of planted radishes.
She hesitates. “Uh, I dunno,” she says, laying the bow down gently on the ground and fumbling to undo the quiver.
“No no, Caitlyn, I’m not upset,” says Jon, picking the bow back up. “Do it again.”
“Huh?” she asks.
“Do it again. Put another one in the can.”
Caitlyn looks at the target, then Jon, and the target again. She holds out her hand and accepts the bow back from him. He spins her around, pulls an arrow out of the quiver, still on her back, and gives it to her.
“Hold on one second,” he commands, hurrying over to the target to pull the three arrows out of the target. “Ok, pull back, but don’t release.”
Caitlyn does as he asks and holds the arrow by her cheek.
“Ok, that’s just how you want your hand, arms, and shoulders to be. Relax the string without shooting.” He continues just after she’s let the bow come down. “Bring your back foot out to your right just a little bit, and go ahead and shoot again.”
She follows his instruction again, and puts her fourth arrow right back in the middle of the can.
“Caitlyn,” begins Jon, smiling and turning back from staring at the target for a moment, “that’s unbelievable.”
“Yeah, you’re weird,” I chime in.
“I've been watching you closely,” she says to Jon, ignoring me.
We spend the rest of the day practicing. When Carter wakes up, we put on a show for him, and then a repeat performance when Jo gets home from hunting, still empty handed. She’s really impressed with Caitlyn, but it’s easy to see she’s frustrated, too.
“I’m going to start dinner,” she says, sighing. Jon made something awful last night and we are just going to have him clean up from now on.
“I’ll help!” I jump up and scamper to her side. Watching Caitlyn shoot was fun for a little bit, but I’m bored just watching now.
Jo smiles. We walk around the house, past Carter who’s now working on building some sort of outside oven on the side opposite the pump.
“Two of my favorite three girls. Soon I should have this working and we can try baking something.” he says, looking almost at us.
“And how many girls do you know these days?” Jo asks, coyly.
“Not important,” Carter responds, smiling. “So when are you going to bring back an animal so we can cook it in this thing?”
“You see, that’s my problem. I keep going out there thinking, ‘I’ve nowhere to properly cook a deer if I actually kill it.’ Maybe if you’d hurry up and finish, I’d be able to move past that.”
“Consider it done. You’ll need one tomorrow then.” He raises his eyes and continues working.
We round the front corner of the house and head inside.
“How about…” begins Jo, trailing off as she thinks of what’s in the pantry, “canned green beans and some cheese over rice?”
“We had that last week.”
“And we’re probably going to have it at least once a week all winter.”
“Oh.”
“Because of the whole having to live in the woods thing,” she says jokingly with a wry smile across her face, “still working on that.”
I laugh a little bit. “What do I do?”
“Go fill up this pot for me!”
The meal comes together quickly and easily. It’s just a matter of stirring the rice, and pouring on some cheese sauce that I add a little bit of my own special touch to. After boiling the canned vegetables, we’re ready to serve it.
“We make a good team” Jo says, turning to me as we serve up the plates.
I like the sound of that. I’ll make sure we don’t have rice and broccoli over and over again when its her turn.
Jo opens the door and yells, “Dinner’s ready!”