*** Chapter Three: Cousin Michael Day 1 ***

“What do we do with this one?” I asked my uncle George, who had just cut down a foot wide tree.

“Clean it,” he replied. “This one is good for building.”

“Ok,” I nodded and got straight to work. Beside me Alex and Tony helped chop through the branches with machetes in hand. After clearing up the branches the tree was cut at a certain point where my uncle had marked with his axe.

This tree was then moved towards a growing pile of trees.

Not everyone could dig the outhouse ditches, there were only three shovels, a pickaxe, and a single hoe. That meant there were only four diggers, because the one with the hoe was basically shaping up the hole more than digging.

Another group was made to cut down trees and move the lumber and debris. There was a single headed axe, one double headed axe, three hatchets, and six machetes. The amount of machetes was a surprise, but apparently cutting wayward limbs was a common practice in many of my family members’ jobs.

Since the forest was incredibly thick cutting down trees served two purposes, the gathering of materials for future projects and clearing paths.

We were in the middle of dropping off another tree when someone started calling everyone over excitedly. We three ran over to see what the commotion was about. It was my uncle Raphael who was calling everyone.

“Look!” he shouted excitedly. In his hands he held a large bunch of tree nuts. “They are walnuts!”

“Why are they so excited?” Tony asked as the cousins and uncles who had come over started picking through the forest floor for the walnuts.

“Remember what I said about needing more than just meat?” I asked him.

“Oh,” he nodded. “This is really good then.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Go to the house, see if you can find some buckets, bring everything you can find.”

Bucket after bucket load was soon being filled and transported over to the house where the aunts and younger cousins started peeling the outer husk of the walnuts leaving them in their inner casing, piling them all in the garage floor. The husks were placed on a tarp that was periodically dumped in a neat pile outside.

*** Santos Day 1 ***

“I found some!” Samuel, my younger brother, cried out showing everyone a small handful of decently sized worms. We were currently collecting more bait for the fishing rods. He ran back towards my cousins tending to the poles.

So far we were having excellent luck, the lake is wider than the eyes can judge with a waterfall feeding into it. At first I worried that there might not be any fish, but after the first few catches we were on a roll. Bait was currently the great limiter.

The house had appeared close to the fall, which was currently the best fishing spot. I had taken to doing the long walk around the lake to get to the top of the waterfall. I wanted to see if there were more fish in the waters above.

I was surprised by how clear the river was. The river was more than twenty feet across, but it didn’t appear more than a person deep at its deepest. Fish were also abundant above, though the river bed soil appeared strange. There was a strand of very dark soil coursing through the middle and the further I traveled upwards the wider this strand of dark soil expanded.

After taking off my socks and shoes and hiking up my pants I waded into the water to get a sample of the soil. I sniffed it and a very familiar smell struck my senses, when I licked a little bit of it my tongue confirmed what my nose was already telling me. Ever since I was young I was prone to bleeding from the nose, so I quickly became familiar with the taste and smell of iron, and from the soil I got the same experience.

“Iron sand,” I whispered to myself.

I tossed back the soil, it was an interesting discovery, but there was nothing I could do with it now.

I came back to the group, the riverside soil up there was poor for worms as it was too rocky and sandy making it far too difficult to dig.

“What did you find up there?” Maira asked when she saw me coming back.

“There’s a whole lot of fish up there too,” I replied. “I don’t think we are ever going to run out of them.”

“Great,” she made a face. Maira didn’t like seafood, she hated the smell and said the taste was too weird.

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “We have enough food that you can eat something other than fish for a few days.”

“That’s the problem though,” she puffed her cheeks. “Eventually, I will have to eat fish or starve.”

“There might be wild animals out here we can hunt or something,” I said, hoping to comfort her.

“Yeah,” her face remained pouty. “I guess there could be that too.”

Her face suddenly brightened then glummed again.

“What is it?” I asked curiously.

“I want to go for a swim,” she replied.

“Why don’t you?” I asked.

“Doofus I only have one set of clothes,” she stated.

“I have a spare set of work clothes,” I replied.

“I’d be wearing a parachute,” she pointed out. It wasn’t much of an exaggeration, she is small compared to my overly large and bulky frame. She could probably make a dress out of one of my shirts.

“Welp I tried,” I shrugged.

“Fine,” she pouted more. “But, you have to jump in with me.”

“What am I supposed to wear?” I asked.

“I’ll take your shirt,” she said, “but you can take the pants. You can be shirtless you know.”

“Well,” I scratched my head. “You do have a point. I would like to swim.”

“What are you guys up to?” a voice suddenly cut it. It belonged to Moses, my cousin, whose father owned the house we were all currently living in.

“We are going for a swim,” I replied.

“Everyone’s going to get mad if we start playing around right now,” David spoke up, he was never too far from Moses.

“Even if they get mad they’ll just blame it on me for leading you wayward scrubs into trouble,” I said. “Besides we’ve caught enough fish for today, not like they’ll eat most of it. Come on and let’s go jump in.”

“Debate all you want I’m going in,” Maira turned and ran straight for the lake and splashed her way into the water.

Moses followed close behind. David hesitated, so I rushed into the lake without him. He followed seconds later, even though he didn’t want to get into trouble, he probably didn’t want to feel left out.

The boy’s large body hid a timit heart.

Our splashing in the lake drew the attention of the little members of the family, which annoyed the adults who wanted them to do chores, which in turn frustrated the little ones and there was a lot of crying involved before the adults gave up and let them jump into the lake. It was clear that they didn’t think about the fact that they had no spare clothes, because after everyone had their fun in the lake there was a panic in the house. Almost everyone got their clothes wet and as expected, there was a shortage of what to wear.

The women took the upper left room of the house and the master bedroom on the first floor.

The men took the living room and the upper right rooms of the house and were mostly bare chested wearing what they could to cover their lower halves.

Moses, David, and I took to the upper floor of the storage where we had plenty of space and was frankly much cooler out there than in the house. Moses easily obtained dry clothes, David was wearing a pair of shorts that belonged to our uncle George, while I had the use of my spare clothes. I couldn’t hand Maira my spare shirt, because after the women had realized that they were short on clothing, the men were pushed to the other side of the house.