You know you can lean on me

 

"For fuck's sake, I can't believe you would do this to me!" Slater barely said above a whisper as he hung up the third buck under the oak tree out by the playground. "We're going to be in so much trouble." He shook his head. 

Well, Jay didn't know. He didn't know this was what Frank had in mind when he called.

"He, he was just saying the deer kept getting in his garden." Jay was trying to follow Slater's lead with skinning the deer, but Slater didn't wait. He slid the knife between the fur and the flesh and ripped it very steady and quickly as if he was tugging of a tight tee-shirt.

"You told him about the baby didn't you!" Slater was bitter.

"I didn't know, he'd even go straight to your place. I didn't know." Jay kept telling him as he was trying to skin a deer in the coolness of the summer morning before it got stifling.

Naturally, Slater was down one of the carcasses already and started on the next. It was so easy peasy. Before he knew it, Lindy took the knife from Jay and started getting the deer undressed. 

"He's gonna do something with the deer skins," she said as if she knew a thing or two about dressing out a deer.

Jay kept his mouth closed as if it was best not to talk about Frank and his granddaughter. He watched Lindy gather the skins and put them in a trash bag.  He winced a bit thinking Lindy was no more than a slave out there on the farm. He hated to see her have to do such awful chores.

But she came back to help Slater with the venison. It was true, they were quite the team. She could slice up backstrap as well as Slater could. Of course, Jay didn't even know what the backstrap was.

Slater asked her if her dad would want some of it sliced up for jerky.

"I can do that," she told him.

"Let's just get this done and in the freezer." Slater worked quickly with the limbs. There was such a mountain of meat, but Lindy put it in freezer bags. She seasoned some bits and said she'd put a little in the dehydrator. "I promised him I'd fry him up some backstrap."

"Does he kill a lot of deer throughout the year?" Slater wanted to know. Cause it was against the law here and even there.

Lindy nodded. "When I'm home, he'll kill one then I have to go look for it, a lot of times."

Jay shook his head. No way could he live out there on a farm. How would her father be if they kept him in the city?