Chapter Text
Spider simply loved her. It didn’t matter how scary she’d get hunting that spring. It was jitters…. Jake wasn’t there and that was that. It was jitters and every so often it emerged as growls at her kids' attitudes, at her kids’ Americanisms, at her kids’ friend especially. He’d deflect by being useful. She’d let him be useful. And so he learnt to read her moods better than her own kids. Goodness because he’d need to. But she was a lot easier to deal with than his father – she at her worst was better than his father at his best.
It was for those moments, that came and went like blinks of the eye, that past by almost unnoticed except by him … when ever her arrows fell her targets … and, and it didn’t matter how long it would be for Jake to return. She’d celebrate with those yips and those dances. And it always put a smile to Spider’s face.
Colorado permitted hunting with archery during spring; a narrow window of time that the Sullys took advantage of whether or not Jake was present.
The deer, a buck with a rack, went down. It fell head then body right into the dirt.
Tiri, that’s what Jake called her. But her kids never called her that. And Spider never dared. She was mom. Mom rushed into the site of its death. She dropped the massive bow then raised a massive blade. A frightful tool of chipped obsidian that dwarfed her hand. With it she finished the deer with a chant.
Spider and Yammy approached to watch Tiri’s ceremony. That’s when she gave her eldest son the blade. Yammy repeated the mantras and the movements while Tiri directed. It had to be a ritual from their aboriginal ways; of which Spider was privy to yet ignorant of – he wasn’t initiated.
Afterward the boys tied that catch onto the logs. They carried it lengthwise shoulder by shoulder. While Tiri lead the way through the trail. By then it would be a mile’s worth of hiking across level grade turf to reach their impromptu campsite.
That’s where Tiri connected with Junior, her youngest son, and Cici, a girl, a neighbor of theirs. Junior and Cici spent the morning chatting together instead of preparing for the butchering. That was enough to wake Tiri’s ire but that wasn’t everything. That girl just didn’t know enough about hunting for her liking. Few Americans, even, Coloradans were adept with the skill.
But she wasn’t going to press it, or so Spider thought – at least not the way she usually pressed Junior’s dates.
“We got to work while the meat’s fresh,” Spider said as Yammy and Junior started to cut. Tiri watched them, grading them perhaps with her expressions that they followed as if life or death hung in the balance. Spider made himself useful as the boy’s goffer. Go for this. Go for that. He learnt that skill from his father those (rare) days he accompanied the colonel and the crew on their hunts.
Spider continued to soothe Cici into the fold: “It’s never as fun with my father. He makes the crew do everything. While he paces, barking orders, commanding not relaxing. He doesn’t know how to relax. I swear. And me? Me…. I only ever get to watch. With the Sullys I shoot. I’m not bad with archery. I’m not as good as Mrs. Sully. Goodness, no one is as good as Mrs. Sully. She out-hunts the men. Even Jake. So I follow what she does one hundred percent.”
Crouched over the bloody mess the boys made of the carcass, Tiri kept her ears more than her eyes fixed onto the Spider.
“Boy,” she commanded, pointing to the gash Yammy and Junior made into the belly of the beast. “You work that.”
Spider smirked and worked his way onto the ‘wound’ like a surgeon.
“OK so the innards are about to be the outtards,” he warned Cici while the boys laughed.
“Snap, oh no, your innards are outtards,” Junior echoed the Colonel’s drawl.
Tiri growled – “no jokes.”
Yammy smirked at Spider – who worked diligently under Tiri’s gaze. He formed a pile of organs onto that turf. Cici kept ever and ever distant. As he stacked the entrails, Tiri inspected and sorted. Two piles. The first for the coolers. The second for the dogs.
“You two,” she said to her sons, “the hide. Careful like this boy was careful. I want only one try this time,” mom warned.
Spider and the boys took their blades and switched to the deer’s hide. It was to be degloved with the fewest cuts. The feat took several yanks and hisses before it was done to Tiri’s satisfaction. It wasn’t but she let it slide.
By then Cici retreated into an ATV.
“Good. Wash. Pack. We go back.”