#3 - My First Camp Out

Robin is 10, Sam and Tom are 9 (about 6 ½ and 6 in Man years)
1389 SR
 

“So what do we do now?” Tom asks. He and Robin are a sitting on their blankets, which they use for sleeping rolls, and look at me. I’ve not even sat down yet and already they’re lost as to what to do.

I kneel on my own bedroll and try and think of every story Mr. Bilbo’d ever told me about his adventures. “We should hunt,” I say.

“Hunt? Whatever for?” Robin asks. “We’ve food already. Ma packed us up patties and apples and a jug of water. See?” He pats his little knapsack, stuffed near to bursting.  Missus Smallburrows must’ve reckoned we’d be gone a bit, what with all she’d crammed in there, when really we’d only be staying out the night, no more’n a hundred yards from her own house no less.

“Mr. Bilbo always hunts in his stories,” I point out.  “We ought to do this proper-like.”

“We haven’t naught to be a hunting with,” Robin says.

“We do. There’s rocks all around,” Tom says, getting into the spirit of things. Either that, or he’s just a humoring me. “We could hunt us a rabbit, or a squirrel. They say ‘tis good luck to catch one.”

“We haven’t naught to cook with either,” Robin points out.

“Oh.”

We sit quiet-like for a good long bit, wondering over the problem. Leastways, Tom and I do. Robin just a sits there a clinging to his sack for all he’s worth, like he’s worrit of starving or some such.

“I got it!” I cry and jump up, a bit too sudden-like for Tom and Robin after so much silence. They jump back, startled near out of their skins, and then they giggle for being scared of just me. “We’ll hide the food as we’ve got and make believe we’re hunting that.”

“You want us to hunt apples?” Robin asks.

“They could be goblins,” I say.

“Apples can’t be goblins,” Tom says.

“Why not?”

“Because they’re apples.”

“We’ll pretend they’re goblins,” I try again. “And the patties could be gollums, and the jug of water can be a water monster.”

Tom and Robin just sit there a looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Why can’t we just eat the food?” Robin asks.

“Because we’re on an adventure,” I explain. “You’re supposed to hunt on adventures. Mr. Bilbo says so.” There. They can’t possibly go arguing against Mr. Bilbo.

“We’re just in the middle of me dad’s barley fields,” Robin says, stubborn-like.

Tom just laughs and stands up, and grabs up his knapsack. “Come on. What else’ve we got to do? Where can we go a hunting so we won’t be trampling over things?”

Robin sighs, put out. His plan of hobnobbing the night away are dashed good, seems like. “Fine then, but let’s be quick about it. I’m hungry.”

We get up and go out of the makeshift tent that Mr. Smallburrows had put up for us, just a flap of tarp hanging over a couple sticks pushed into the ground. I duck back in to grab my own knapsack, then Robin points us off towards the barn. We beeline for it, cutting right through the fields, and when we get there, Tom and Robin turn to me awaiting orders.

I scratch my head and look about, not really knowing what all to be doing myself, but they’re waiting for me, so I shrug and say, “How’s about we each hide our own food, then look for the other’s to keep it fair.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tom agrees. “Just remember where you be hiding your food, so as the chickens won’t find it come morning.” He looks at Robin as he says this, seeing as Robin tends to forget things, though I don’t reckon he’d be forgetting his food anytime soon.

“How many you’ve got there, Robin?” I ask more direct like, just to be certain, and then we all count the items in our sacks.

All told, there are eight patties of cold sausage, eleven apples, one loaf of bread, two wheels of cheese, the jug of water and a water skin filled with raspberry tea. Tom was supposed to bring a water skin also, filled with apple cider, but he’d gone and forgotten it as he dashed out the door. Either that, or Jolly’d nicked it when he weren’t looking. We’re reckoning it’s the latter.

Once everything’s counted up, we go to opposite sides of the barn and hide our items. I try to think of where goblins and gollums would hide, and I put the apples in the shadows or under the bushes, and the gollums I hide near the well and the washing tubs. The tea I put near a tree, just because I can’t be thinking of anywhere else to be putting it. When we’re done, we meet up again at the front of the barn.

“Now what?” Robin asks, fair excited now as he’s warmed up to the idea.

“Now we hunt,” I say. “We have to be quiet, so as we can sneak up on them, and be careful we’re not sneaked up on ourselves.”

Tom says naught, but I can tell by his tight-lipped grin he’s trying hard not to laugh at me.  Robin just nods and says, “Too bad we haven’t got none of those cross bows as the Tooks’ve got. Then we could shoot the apples – I mean, the goblins – right through the middle, like they do at the Free Fair. That’s a fancy trick, that.”

Now Tom’s really having to fight from laughing, but he manages to get out, “We could go into the barn and get some pitchforks.”

I just shake my head at them both. “Come on then. You all know your jobs.”

With that, we head off in search of our prey. It doesn’t take too long to find Robin’s stores. He must’ve reckoned the goblins and gollums would all be near to each other, and had put them all in the same place. Never mind the fact that gollums eat goblins, and if the goblins had a known that a gollum was in their cave, they’d have killed and eaten him likewise. So even though they are well hid, once found it is no bother collecting them all together. Then Tom goes to help Robin look for my stores as I go a looking for the rest of Tom’s as Robin hadn’t found.

Now, I know for a fact that Tom doesn’t put much stock into Mr. Bilbo’s stories and humors me by listening as I ramble on about them as I do, but I’d a hoped he’d paid at least a bit of mind to them. Seems as he didn’t though, not one stitch, for he has his gollums out in the bright moonlight (Robin must’ve left a couple of those a purpose for me) and his goblins are up in the bushes, without any wargs near abouts that could a helped them get up there!

I finish up my hunt and go back to the front of the barn, the first to finish. A short while later, Tom and Robin come around the back, laughing over somewhat. Then Tom shakes his head at me. “You near hid your food too good, Sam.”

“That’s near enough a real hunt as I ever want to get,” Robin puts in. “But we found it all, and I found the most!”

“Now can we eat?” Tom asks. “Or are we going to be attacked by giant eagles next?”

“The eagles are on our side, Tom,” I say then decide it’s pointless. “Aye, let’s eat now.”

We fall into line and head back for the tent. When we get there, we split up the food equal for everyone, then settle in for story-telling. We can’t start a fire as we should of for proper story-telling, but Robin folds the tent flaps back to let in the moonlight and we pretend that’s a fire instead. What with the barley waving all about, making the moonlight flicker like so, it’s not all that hard to be pretending it’s a real fire. The night’s plenty warm, so we don’t even miss the heat none.

We lie on our blankets and settle in, and Tom goes first.

“You know as Noakes’s got that ole outbuilding where he be keeping tools and such as he might need for the outer fields without having to go back to the main barn to fetch them?” he starts. We nod. “Well, Jolly and me were out near that outbuilding a couple weeks back, resting in the shade of it, easy as you please. We do it often enough and no harm done by it neither.

“So we’re leaning there, eating a couple of plums as we’d snatched up off the ground, when Old Noakes enters the outbuilding, a grumbling to himself about some such. Then he starts a cursing up a storm, letting it out on his tools, as farmers are warrant to do at times, as you know.” Again, we nod. “Seems Mr. Otho had bought a good many sacks of grain off Noakes, then claimed the grain was bad and refused to pay for it. Noakes said words that day as Jolly and me ain’t never heard afore, not even from Pa, and you know as he can get to cursing at times, though Ma don’t like it much, not one stitch and she’s always a threatening to sew his lips shut. But Noakes now, he could a taught me gaffer a word or two that day.

“Now, I’ve the sense not to go repeating, but Jolly hasn’t. So not a week goes by when we’re in the kitchen helping Ma with the baking when Jolly drops a new bag of flour and it spills clear across the floor. No real harm in it, as it could of been swept up and used still easily enough, but Jolly went into one of Noakes’s rants and Ma nearly dropped her mixing bowl to hear it. She turned redder’n a Hobbit has a right to be, and she grabbed Jolly up by the ear, dragged him through the parlor to Pa’s study and whispers in Pa’s ear what Jolly’d just said.

“I ain’t never seen Pa so besides himself. He was lost for words, truth be told, and you know me gaffer’s always got somewhat to be saying. Pa made Jolly chomp on an old pony bit slathered with castor oil, then asked him where he a heard such speak. When Jolly said Noakes, Pa stormed out the door and near run all the way up South Lane, and I knew when he got back, we’d both have it good. Because we were eavesdropping, see, whether we meant to or not, and hearing things as we oughtn’t to besides. Sure enough, when Pa comes back, with Old Noakes right behind him, we both get laid over his knee and strapped good a couple of times. It’s just this last week we could finally sit proper.”

“That’s naught compared to what my own gaffer did once,” Robin says. “I got into my gaffer’s hard liquor once, and he caught me emptying a bottle out. After the healer come and emptied my stomach and declared me fit for living, my gaffer took a lash to me five times, right across my bum, and said if he ever caught me doing aught again, he’d make sure as I’d never sit again. After that, you couldn’t even get me to sip on mulled cider for a month.”

They look at me, expectant-like. “Well?”

I shrug. “Gaffer yelled at me once for pulling up flowers instead of weeds in Mr. Bilbo’s gardens,” I say.

“That’s it?”

“He called me a ninnyhammer also.”

“He’s never strapped you?” Tom asks, disbelieving.

“Not as I recall,” I say.

“What about your brothers?” Robin asks.

“No, though I reckon there were a couple of times as he would’ve taken Fred to knee, had Ma not stopped him,” I say, “or at least, that’s what Fred told me once.”

“But… he’s so much scarier than our gaffers,” Tom says, baffled.

I shrug again. True, Gaffer is always threatening to strap us good for this or the other thing, but when it comes right down to it, he usually settles on shaking his head and telling us how we’d let him down. That near does us in right there, and I reckon it does worse than any switch could do. If he ever did actually strap us for anything, well… I don’t rightly know how any of us would react, him included.

From there, we go on to ghost stories as we’ve heard. Now, you need to be careful when talking about ghosts, since you never know when any of the ghosts might be about to overhear it. Ghosts love to hear about themselves, see, and if they hear you speaking of them, they’ll follow you about hoping to hear more. But as there ain’t no ghosts on the Smallburrows farm, we know we’re safe talking about them.

First, and most dreaded, is old Mr. Undertow. He was a Willfoot in life, that being about a couple hundred years ago. He shot out of his hole one day, or so the legend goes, and for no particular reason at all, ran clear into The Water and drowned. Sometimes, in the midday when the seasons are in their changing, you can hear splashing in The Water, even though no hobbit’ss about to cause the racket. More than once, some innocent lass or lad would find themselves a fallen into the river thereabouts when the splashing could be heard, and that part of The Water is now avoided during those times.

Then there’s Nodinas Hatcher. Everyone knows he’d fallen into a bog out in the Bindbole Wood about a hundred years back or so, and he haunts both the forest and his old home to this day. You can hear him a whistling up on the Hatcher farm come first light, and those as go into the forest alone never come out of it again. No one goes near the Wood now, and if they do have to the misfortune of going through it, they stick to the paths.

There’s another spook as we call Scalawag, seeing as no one knows who he was in life and most reckon he was from Outside and so naturally likes causing mischief. He hangs about The Ivy Bush a times, mostly around the Harvests, and takes great joy in lifting up lass’s skirts during the dancing. More than one innocent lad has had a lass turn around on him and slap him clear across the face for doing no more harm’n being unfortunate enough to be standing there. Most folk go up to the Party Field now for the Harvests. Mr. Bilbo’s kind enough to let us common folk come up for the Harvest Moon Dance and there ain’t no way that Scalawag will be following us up the Hill. Mr. Bilbo knows the wizard Gandalf, see, and I reckon if anyone knows how to be getting rid of a ghost but good, it’d be a wizard.

Then of course, the most famous of ghosts is Bashful Beryl. Everyone likes Beryl. She hangs around about the Kissing Tree in Cartwright’s fields, at the near end of the apple orchards. She whispers into lads’ ears, telling them to kiss the lass of their choice. If she tells you, then that means the lass is your true love and you’ll be happily married one day. If she don’t tell you, then there’s naught for it but to set your cap somewhere else and hope to hear Bashful Beryl the next time out.

I remember one night last year, afore Hamson left for his apprenticeship to Tighfield, he had taken Azalea Thistleton to the Kissing Tree and waited near the whole night and clear into predawn to hear Bashful Beryl’s whispering in his ear. He never did hear it, and when he kissed Azalea anyway, it’d been less than pleasant. They’re just friends now.

Robin’s nodding off and yawning soon after this and before we know it, he’s snoring on his blanket. Me and Tom stay up a while longer yet, drawing pictures in the dirt by the moonlight. Tom’s a better hand than me at drawing, and he turns the dirt into a garden afore my eyes. Then we start to yawning and nodding off, and go to join Robin before we can fall asleep half in and half out of the tent as we are.

Missus Smallburrows wakes us in the morning, as the farmhands are arriving for work. We need to clear out and get out from under foot, so we drag everything back to the house, then go inside for first breakfast. We all look tired and puffy-eyed, and our hair has tangles like I ain’t never seen afore, but we’re smiling and telling Missus Smallburrows about our adventuring and hunting last night. She gives us looks like we’ve gone and lost our senses, but says naught about it outside of “you lads nowadays.” When we’re finished with our breakfast and cleaned up a bit, we go back outside to the barn to help with what we can.

Our first camp out is over. It wasn’t quite as I’d been expecting, but I can’t say as I didn’t enjoy myself. And even though Tom and Robin grumble about the cricks in their necks, I know they enjoyed themselves too. Elsewise, they’d not a been yammering at the breakfast table as they had been.

I go to milking the cows, with Tom and Robin on either side, and start planning our next adventure.

The end.
 

GF  11/5/05