Bad Ground by W. Dale Cramer

Author:W. Dale Cramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2004-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

By the time he got back to camp, Jeremy profoundly regretted coming along on the hunting trip. There was no mercy, and no escaping the relentless roasting he took as the guys straggled in and Luke told and retold the story of how the world’s biggest trophy deer had caught Germy with his pants down. He told it to Snake first, and then Tino, Nanny, Griff, and Weasel, and the story grew a little with each telling.

Fortunately, Griff came back with a small doe slung across his shoulders, which drew some of the attention away from Jeremy. Since the deer was small, they decided to go ahead and skin it out, cut up the meat and pack it in a cooler at camp rather than to haul the deer to a processing place. Weasel pulled a charcoal grill from a storage bin on the side of his trailer and started the coals while Griff took the backstrap and some of the choice cuts from the deer.

‘‘Hey man, what are we gonna have with it?’’ Tino asked. ‘‘We can’t just eat meat.’’

‘‘Why not?’’ Luke asked.

Tino made a face. ‘‘Ain’t good for you, gringo. Mess up your stomach.’’

‘‘We got liquid grain,’’ Luke said, popping open a beer.

Jeremy saw a chance to redeem himself. ‘‘I’ll take care of it,’’ he said. ‘‘I brought some stuff.’’ He broke out his box of groceries and set to work peeling and slicing. Making three large foil packets, he loaded them with sliced potatoes and onions, then laced them with cheese, garlic, butter, salt and pepper, wrapped the packets up tight and laid them in the still glowing coals from the morning’s campfire. He then made up two more packets with mixed vegetables in an Italian vinaigrette sauce and laid those in the coals.

It was a grand feast.

‘‘Not bad,’’ Griff said, shoveling down potatoes.

‘‘Heard that,’’ Nanny seconded.

Tino said, ‘‘Hey, this stuff is good, kid. Where you learn to cook like this?’’

‘‘My mother had to work a lot, so I had to do the cooking. No big deal.’’

‘‘You’re gonna make somebody a good wife someday, Germy,’’ Luke sneered. ‘‘Long as they don’t expect you to bring home a deer.’’

He was only half kidding, and everybody knew it so they only half laughed at what he said. Jeremy had put himself in this awkward place and he really had no defense. Anything he said back to Luke would only make matters worse. Men have rules about such things, and so they laughed at Luke’s cheap shot and pretended not to notice that Jeremy didn’t laugh with them. In fact, he never looked up.

At first he felt sorry for himself and wished he hadn’t come on the trip, wished he hadn’t come to Georgia, wished his mother hadn’t died, and almost wished she hadn’t left him the letter. But it was then, while thinking of the letter, that a small anger began to grow inside him. After all, he hadn’t wanted to be here. He was a victim of circumstance, a victim of his mother’s illness and her dying wishes.

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