Sullenly Antonio stood up and cast round until he’d found a good rockstone. “Here.”
Chichibud pounded the pegs through the stretched cloth, solidly into the ground. They had a tent. Chichibud straightened up and stretched his back, just like any man.
“If you ever sleep out in the bush like this by yourself, check the tree first. Any hole in the trunk, look for a next tree. Might have poison snake or ground puppy living in there.”
Chichibud showed them how to start a fire with three sticks for kindling and a piece of vine for friction. By the time the fire had caught it was full dark. The dancing flames were pinkish and the burning wood had a slight smell of old socks, but Tan-Tan felt cheered by the circle of flickering light the fire threw. She moved nearer, rinsed her chilled hands in the heat flowing from the fire. The itching in her ears eased if she turned them to the warmth, one side of her head, then the other. One ear was more itchy.
Chichibud built a wooden spit over the fire. He skinned and gutted the rat-thing. Tan-Tan’s stomach writhed at the sight of the raw, split-open rat, but she couldn’t look away. This was a thing she’d not seen before, how the meat that fed her was a living being one minute and then violently dead. The smell of it was personal, inescapable, like the scent that rose in the steam from her own self when she stepped into a hot bath. They had broken open the animal’s secret body just to eat it.
Chichibud chopped off their supper’s head. He smeared the empty body cavity with herbs from his pouch, then with a quick motion jooked the spit through it. Tan-Tan started at the wet ripping sound. Chichibud put the meat above the fire to cook.
“Here, Tan-Tan. Turn the handle slow, cook it even all around.”
He wrapped up the guts and the head in the creature’s skin. “I soon come back,” he told them. “Taking this far away so other beasts don’t smell it and come after we.”
He disappeared into the bush, rustling branches as he went.
“Nasty little leggobeast goat man,” Antonio muttered. “You all right, doux-doux?”
“I don’t like the dark. My ears itching me. Let we go back home nuh, Daddy?”
“No way back home, sweetness. The shift pod gone. Here go have to be home now.”
Tan-Tan sniffled and jerked the meat round and round on its spit.
“I here,” Antonio said. “I go look after you. And I won’t make the goat man hurt you, neither.”
Tan-Tan was more ’fraid ground puppy than Chichibud, but she didn’t say so. Antonio sighed and pulled out his flask of rum. He took a swig.
Chichibud returned just as the browning, smoking meat had begun to smell like food. He praised Tan-Tan for turning the spit so diligently, then took the halwa fruit-them and broke them open. Tan-Tan’s belly grumbled at the smell. It favoured coconut, vanilla and nutmeg. Same way so the kitchen back home smelled when Cookie was making gizada pastry with shaved coconut and brown sugar.
“It best raw, this meat,” Chichibud told her, “but oonuh prefer it burned by fire.”
He hauled out three flat stones from his pouch and put them on top of some of the live coals close to the outside of the fire. “Far away from the meat, yes? So the meat juice wouldn’t splatter?” He balanced the fruit on the stones. In the firelight, Tan-Tan could make out the brown fleshy inside of the fruit halves. Little-little, the sweet gizada fragrance got stronger. It floated in and round the rich scent of the cooking meat till Tan-Tan could feel the hunger-water springing in her mouth. She feel to just rip off a piece of manicou flesh and stuff it down, half-cooked just so. She reached towards the spit, but Chichibud gently took her fingers. Antonio stood up and came over to them. “It hot,” said Chichibud. “You a-go burn your fingers and make me break trail debt.” From his pouch he took a parcel wrapped in parchment paper and unwrapped it. It had a square of something dry and brown inside. With his knife, Chichibud cut off strips for the three of them. He distributed them then bit into his own. When Antonio saw Chichibud eating, he started to chew on his own piece one time. Chichibud said, “Is dry tree frog meat.” Antonio cursed and spat the jerky out of his mouth. He tossed the rest into the bush. Chichibud just watched him.
Tan-Tan bit into the dried meat. It was salty and chewy. She tore off a piece with her teeth. It tasted good.
A little time more, and Chichibud told them that the meat was cooked. He set out three broad halwa leaves around the fire as plates. He pulled out a little brown cloth from his endless pouch and used it to juggle the hot fruit halves onto the leaves. Then with his knife he sliced off three slabs of rat-thing and put them beside the fruit.
“Pickney, everything hot. Go slow until it cool. Use your fingers to scrape out the fruit. Don’t swallow the seeds, you might choke.” He put two long fingers into his halwa fruit and pulled out a shiny purple seed, round like a pebble.
“I go be careful, Chichibud.” Tan-Tan scooped out a piece of fruit, pulled out the seed and put it on her leaf plate. She put the fruit in her mouth. It come in sweet and sticky and hot. The lovely gizada taste slid warmly down her throat. The meat was good too, moist and tender, and the spice Chichibud had rubbed on it tasted like big-leaf thyme. Tan-Tan began to feel better.
Antonio picked up his halwa fruit half with both hands and dropped it again, blowing on his burnt hands. “Motherass!”
Chichibud laughed his shu-shu laughter. Antonio glared at him and started to dig out pieces of fruit, blowing on his fingers and spitting the seeds out everywhere.
“Don’t spit them into the fire,” Chichibud warned. But Antonio just cut his eye in contempt and shot one seed from his mouth prraps! into the middle of the flames-them.
“Back! Behind the tree!” Chichibud grabbed Tan-Tan’s arm and they both scrambled quick to get behind the trunk of the tree, Chichibud hopping on his backwards legs like a kangaroo. But Antonio took his cool time, doing a swaggerboy walk towards them. “What stupidness this is now?” he grumbled.
With a gunshot noise, a little ball of fire exploded from the flames. Only because the sound made Antonio duck that the seed didn’t lash him in the head. It landed on top of the tent. By its glow Tan-Tan could see the tent fabric smouldering. With shrill, birdlike sounds, Chichibud rushed over and quickly flicked the burning ember onto the ground. His ruff was puffed out full. Tan-Tan stared at it, fascinated. Chichibud growled at Antonio, who shrank back, muttering sullenly, “All right, all right! Don’t give me no blasted fatigue. How I was to know the damned thing would explode?”
“I tell you not to spit it in the fire. I know this bush, not you. You ignorant, you is bush-baby self. If you not going to listen when I talk, I leave you right here.”
Antonio made a loud, impatient steuups behind his teeth. He went back to the fire and continued eating his share of the meal. Chichibud inspected the tent. “Just a little hole,” he said to Tan-Tan. “I can mend it.” His ruff had deflated again. Tan-Tan ran her fingers over the cloth and was surprised at how thin and light it felt.
They went back to their dinner. Antonio looked up as they approached. “All right,” he said to Chichibud. “It have anything else we have to know to pass the night in this motherass bush behind God back?”
“Don’t let the fire go out,” Chichibud replied. “Light will frighten away the mako jumbie and the ground puppy, and grit fly like the flame. Fly into it instead of into we eyes. You and me going to sleep in shift.”