The Troop Page 17

  “Let me see!” Dad barked grabbing Luke’s hand.

  Luke fought to keep his hand close to his chest. Dad pulled it away then studied the two puncture wounds positioned between his thumb and fingers.

  “Luke! Luke, look at me!” Dad shouted. “I need you to calm down. I know it hurts but you have to calm down. Fight it.”

  Luke pulled his hand back and coughed, “It…was…in…the…trap.”

  “OK,” Dad said. “OK. Breathe. I need you to calm down.”

  Luke nodded then suddenly vomited and started to fall over but Dad caught him and helped him lie down on the ground. Luke was still crying and holding his hand in pain.

  72

  “Taylor.”

  The name seemed to come out of nowhere.

  Like I was in a dream.

  This couldn’t be real.

  “Taylor!” Dad repeated himself. “Look at me. I need you to run back to camp. Tell Johnny what happened and to come help me.”

  I nodded, looked at Luke once more, then ran toward camp.

  I’ve never been very good at running long-distances. I mean, I ran in baseball and soccer but never very far and never for something as serious as a matter of life and death. My lungs were on fire by the time I got to the living room.

  Carl and Matt were sitting on their car seats when I arrived.

  “Why are you running?” Carl asked.

  “Where’s Johnny?” I huffed.

  “The radio, I guess,” Carl speculated.

  I ran through the living room and to the side of the trailer where Johnny had his radio room. He wasn’t there but came over within a minute of my arrival.

  “What’s up buddy?” he asked. “How’d the hunt go? You outta breath or something?”

  “Luke was bit by a rattlesnake,” I blurted out on what felt like my last lung full of air. “Dad said to come tell you and for you to come help.”

  Johnny ran to Dad’s tent, which was the closest to the trailer and up ended the cot inside. He folded it up then ran toward the road. I ran after him.

  “What’s going on?” Carl yelled after me.

  “Luke got bit by a rattler,” I yelled while on the run.

  Carl and Matt bolted out of their seats and were running next to me in no time.

  Luke was still on the ground crying when we got there. His hand and lower arm were dark purple and swollen really bad. Puddles around him told me he had vomited a few times more since I left.

  “Hey man,” Johnny spoke in a calm reassuring voice. How he wasn’t out of breath from running that far while carrying a cot was beyond me. He unfolded the cot and placed it next to Luke. “Mr. Hammond and I are going to move you onto the cot so we can get you back to camp.”

  Luke nodded through tears then dry heaved.

  “That’s all right,” Johnny said. “Get it out if you can.”

  Luke stopped heaving and Dad and Johnny lifted him onto the cot. Dad grabbed the rear of the cot and Johnny the front.

  “How do we help?” Carl asked. His voice was as shaky as I’ve ever heard it.

  “We’re good,” Dad replied.

  He and Johnny started carrying Luke toward camp.

  “Carl,” Johnny began again. “You and Matt run on to camp. Get some towels and wet them down. Soak them then ring them out and bring them to the living room.”

  Carl and Matt nodded in unison and ran toward camp. I picked up the AR as we passed it and followed Dad and Johnny as they carried Luke.

  Both Dad and Johnny kept talking to Luke telling him to calm down and to try to stop crying. Luke nodded then mumbled, “I’m dizzy.”

  “Bet you are,” Johnny smiled.

  “That’s what you get for letting a snake bite you,” Dad joked. “Liam gets sprayed by skunk...”

  “Hey, don’t forget my badger attack,” Johnny laughed.

  “I didn’t,” Dad said. “Luke are you trying to top what happened to Johnny and Liam? Did you figure a snake bite would be a cooler story than a skunk spraying or badger attack?”

  Luke paused his crying and almost smiled and then I realized that Dad and Johnny were trying to calm him through humor.

  We reached the living room and Dad and Johnny put Luke down gently. Johnny grabbed a wet towel from Carl and put it over Luke.

  “That better?” Johnny asked.

  Luke tried to answer but his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he began to dry heave again. Johnny took another wet towel and used it to mop Luke’s sweaty brow then helped him to lie back down.

  “Matt, get some water,” Dad decreed.

  Matt left and came back with a Camelback and handed it to Dad.

  “Try to drink something,” Dad instructed holding the Camelback’s straw out to Luke.

  Luke’s eyes rolled back again then closed.

  73

  “Luke!” Johnny almost yelled. He grabbed Luke by the shoulders and gently shook him. “Luke, come on! Luke, wake up!”

  “Come on Luke,” Dad joined in. “Luke wake up!”

  Carl and I stood there unable to turn our heads. Matt lowered his head in silent prayer. Johnny continued shaking Luke then rubbed his face with a wet towel. Luke coughed and opened his eyes and coughed some more and pulled his swollen hand to his chest.

  “Let me wrap a towel around your arm,” Dad offered. “That will help with the swelling.”

  Luke tried to speak but couldn’t. He held out his arm and I saw that it was almost black in color and his hand was almost four times as big as it normally was. It looked like it was about to explode. Dad wrapped Luke’s arm gently in the wet towel and laid it at his side.

  Luke’s eyes rolled back again, and he exhaled a really loud breath as if struggling to breath and his eyes shut.

  “Luke!” Johnny called. “Luke! Come on!”

  He grabbed Luke’s shoulders and shook him then jerked his hands away and put his head to Luke’s chest. Johnny’s head jerked up and he looked at Dad then tilted Luke’s head back and blew into his mouth.

  Then he started CPR.

  Dad took me by the shoulder and gestured for Carl and Matt to follow. He led us out of the living room and to under the tarp where Johnny’s radio was. Carl was tearing up and Matt was full on crying and I remembered how Carl told us about performing CPR on Bob and how seeing Luke like this was probably like reliving painful memory.

  “There’s no need to watch this,” Dad said.

  “Is Luke going to…I mean…he’ll be OK. Right?” I stammered to Dad.

  “I don’t know,” Dad replied honestly. “I hope so.”

  Matt choked back tears and started to pray. “Lord we ask...we ask that you watch over Luke...and that…and to guide Johnny’s hand...amen.”

  We all said “amen” and Matt continued to pray in silence. I looked up and saw Jack, Andrew, and Liam returning to camp with several dead rabbits in their hands. Liam looked at Carl’s and Matt’s tear streaked faces and asked, “What’s up?”

  74

  The look on Johnny’s face told us Luke was gone.

  Johnny walked over to all of us maybe 10 minutes after Jack, Andrew, and Liam got back. Johnny looked worn out and his eyes were welling up with tears.

  “He must’ve taken a bunch of venom...and he weighs almost nothing...,” Johnny trailed off.

  Dad put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder in a gesture of understanding then hugged me. Johnny hugged Jack then hugged Carl because Carl leaned in for such. Everyone stood there in silence with some of us crying and others of us trying not to. Matt choked back his tears and wiped his face and offered, “My dad will watch over him. He’ll make sure he’s OK.”

  I don’t know how much time passed before we said anything else or before we moved from that spot. Just like when I first saw Luke after he got bit by the rattlesnake, I couldn’t believe that he’d had actually died. It was like a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.

  It didn’t seem real.

  Luke’s dying didn’t seem real.
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  Our burying Luke didn’t seem real.

  And even two weeks after his death it didn’t seem real.

  None of it did.

  Nothing.

  The fact that the U.S. was without power and was at war with some country, that Bob died, that we were stuck in the middle of nowhere trying to eek out an existence, that our lives depended on hunting and gathering,…none of it seemed real.

  But it was.

  Every day was a reminder of such.

  I think everyone in the troop was starting to feel that way. We were all tired of the life we were forced to be living. I guess Dad and Johnny realized this and did everything they could to get us to change our attitude and our outlook. So, when Jack took another pig with his bow, Dad and Johnny saw it as an opportunity to help lift our spirits.

  “Get that pig gutted and up to the beach,” Dad instructed. “Andrew you and Taylor get some prickly pear fruit. How many Johnny?”

  “That’s a good size pig,” Johnny congratulated. “So, I’d say 20 to 30 pears. And Taylor, watch out for snakes.”

  “Everyone pack up your stuff, do what you were assigned to do, and let’s get up to the swimming hole,” Dad decreed.

  We all kind of a dragged but soon got our act together and made our way up to the swimming hole. We started a fire and placed the pig on a spit and soon the air smelled of cooking meat. It smelled even better once we started basting it with the prickly pear fruit Andrew and I collected.

  We swam and jumped from the rocks above and sunned ourselves dry and began again. Before we knew it, we were all laughing and joking and having a great time. We took turns bugging Johnny to somehow make the pig cook faster then laughed at how Dad had to use a rope tied around his waist to keep his swim trunks from falling down because of all the weight he’d lost. We were gathered around the pig waiting for the first cut strips of me when Johnny suddenly shushed us. He looked upward to the sky then burst in the cheers of elation. “Look! A plane!”

  We all saw it and watched it as if the small passenger plane was something completely foreign to us. Like we were seeing one for the first time.

  “Is it looking for us?” Andrew asked.

  I wouldn’t think so,” Johnny said. “It was way too high to be a search plane.”

  “But it was a plane,” Dad said. “And if it was a U.S. plane then that means things are starting to get repaired.”

  “What if it wasn’t a U.S. plane?” Liam scoffed. “We’re pretty close to Mexico.”

  “Then it could be someone flying into the country to maybe help,” Dad retorted. “And either way is a good sign.”

  Dad paused then said, “The last few months have been hard on all of us and I wish I could change a lot of what’s happened. But we’re doing pretty good overall considering.”

  Johnny nodded and grunted in approval.

  Dad continued.

  “We’re all safe. We have shelter. We have plenty to eat and we have time, like today, to goof off. We’ll have ups and downs and we’ll face them the best we can. Together. But based on how we’ve been doing, I know we’ll survive.”

  I knew we would too.

  We all knew.

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