In Camp

My deer camp with Brian Loveland of Sand Springs is a two man deal. That’s about all a 12x14 wall tent, plus sleeping, hunting, camping gear, and a wood burner will hold comfortably. We could squeeze another guy in there, but he’d have to stand on his head after the lights went out.

The camp is set up along a brushy creek which is bordered on one side by a bean field, and a two-hundred acre Bermuda pasture on the other. Our tent guy lines are tied on one side to an old corral fence which is just at the edge of the pasture.

The corral fence helps keep the tent from flying away during a hard south wind. When the wind is high out of the north, we pray, and park the trucks as windbreaks as close to the north side of the tent as we can.

The tent door faces east, as any tent door should, and the creek, no more than thirty yards to the west, sometimes has deer in it that blow at us during the night on their way in and out of the bean field, and trips up and down the creek to the river. The Arkansas River. Big Bend.

There are coyotes all over the place. They howl all night long. Sometimes we do, too, when Brian brings his guitar; three chords and the truth. Hank. Senior. It’s what you get from old guys.

Camp is two miles off the black top, two more miles off the gravel road, and a good half mile off the gravel down a loblolly two-track to the level spot by the corral. Sometimes there is skim ice in the loblollies so cold is it in the river bottom, which tells us nobody has been in there. As if anybody would want to. Spooky, after dark. Crazy.

Cell service is “iffy”, and only got that good this year. For years we have had no bars back in those boondocks. Perfect. Now, you have to hold your cell up high over your head there in the tent to hope to get out, maybe, between six and midnight. We are not important enough to receive, or send, important messages. Nearly perfect.

We talk at dark around the wood burner preparing supper. This, that, and the other talk. The day’s hunt, what we saw, and have seen; wives and family often, and the “other.”

We both bring food, dealer’s choice; share and share alike. Steak (often), homemade pork sausage; chili of course, tamales, and occasional fruit pies; fresh, hot biscuits we make in a Dutch oven with coals from the wood burner, and slather with fresh butter and apple butter; hardly ever anything heart-healthy. We are neither one of us planning on dying with a bitter taste in our mouths.

The talk might begin like this did last week, owls hooting in the creek, coyotes warming up maybe a hundred yards away, bolder, now, in the dark.

“Conrad, you ever notice nobody ever talks about a trailer house being haunted?”

“No, Brian, I never did,” I said, flipping a ribeye atop the stove and griddle to make sure it had good grill marks. Brian comes up with questions like this all the time. The late Bruce Scott did, too, except that Bruce was always making a joke. See? Ghosts all over the place.

“Well, think about it a minute, and tell me why you think that might be. It doesn’t make sense.”

I agreed, and had to think a minute to come up with something.

“Maybe because there aren’t any basements or big abandoned rooms in a trailer house. I don’t know. What kinda’ question is that? Where’s a ghost gonna’ hide, in there in that cramped room with you and the old lady, or in that other little room with the five kids and the meth lab? No ghost would want to live in a place like that.”

I turned the steaks, and poured a little red wine vinegar into an opened spinach can set atop the stove. I love spinach, all vinegary, sweet and sour, in camp. It was quiet for a little bit before Brian came at me again with something else.

“I made Julie mad at me this past week.”

“What about?”

“You know, I don’t even remember. I fixed it, though,” he said, running a big spoon into the middle of a giant can of molasses-sweet baked beans I knew he was quite capable of eating all by himself without gaining a pound. I’ve seen him do it.

“What’s the secret? I need a few tricks.”

“I don’t even remember now what it was, but she was pretty mad. Something I said at supper, I think. She’s been writin’ a master’s degree thesis; tensed up all the time gettin’ it finished.

“I waited until she calmed down and left the room. Then I went into the kitchen and unplugged the dishwasher, went back into the living room and sat down in front of the TV, and waited. In a little bit, she came in and said, still mad, ‘ There’s something wrong with the dishwasher.’”

“Well, give me a minute,” I said, “and let me finish this show, and I’ll check it out.” I waited ‘til she left the room again, went in the kitchen and plugged it back in. In a little bit I heard the dishwasher start up, she came in, hugged my neck, and said, “I don’t know how you do it, but you’re a genius.”

“Oh, it weren’t nothin’”, I said, “Just a little electrical problem.”

“Geez, Brian, you might be.”

“Be what.”

“A genius. You need to write a thesis.” 

Deer camp. Stuff like that all the time. Better than cable.

The owls hoot, and the coyotes howl. It’s why we keep coming back.

 © 2015 Conrad M. Vollertsen