Jonah Havensby Read Free

more things stored in other places. How could he not have figured this out before? He had never asked. He had never thought to. He had just assumed all of this was simply storage. A bizarre storage area to be sure, but hadn’t at least some of the supplies come in handy when they camped out?
    So if his father knew these men and knew they would come, what were they after? Jonah couldn’t be sure.
    His mind reeled and his heart ached and his stomach rumbled.
    After what seemed like several hours walking the perimeter of the woods, he went back to the cave with an armload of sticks and dropped them by the fire pit. He knew his father had put a few newspapers and a torch somewhere in the footlocker because Jonah had seen him make fires here many times. He dug in the footlocker until he found the paper and the torch and took a can of baked beans and the small iron pot.
    His father had never actually let him light the fire before, but he figured he had watched enough times to know. He set a small pile of sticks into the pit and then ripped a few sheets of the newspaper. He balled up the paper and put it in different places in and under the wood. He didn’t know how much paper was needed, so this part was going to have to be trial and error. He touched the torch to one piece of paper and flicked the switch. The fire lapped at the newsprint, but quickly went out. He tried another and got the same result. So, he lit all of the balls of paper in rapid succession. What he got was more smoke than fire. His eyes burned a bit, and he considered abandoning the cave for a while, but through the smoke he could see that a few of the smaller twigs had actually begun to light. After a few minutes, he had succeeded in making a campfire.
    He peeled back the top of the can of beans and emptied the can into the pot. Fortunately, all the cans he found were pull-tops, so that made opening them easy. He forgot he would need something to stir the beans, much less eat them with, so he put the pot right down on top of the fire and walked back to the footlocker.
    He found the plastic bag they stored the silverware in. There were two spoons, two forks and a hunting knife. He looked at the hunting knife. A weapon. He’d need a weapon if the ‘dangerous men’ came, wouldn’t he? He put the knife in his back pocket, took out a spoon and went back to the fire.
    What he found was a bubbling mess. The place where he had put the pot down had crumbled, leaning the pot sideways, and the beans were bubbling over that edge. He instinctively reached for the pot to correct it. Burning his hand, he cried out, and dropped it into the fire, which almost immediately smothered the small flames.
    He looked at his hand. The burn wasn’t bad, but it would sting for a few days. Then he looked at the mess. He’d have to let it cool and then clean it up if was going to try again, but he was too hungry for that. He went back to the footlocker, took out another can of beans and ate them just as they were.
    There were two large empty water bottles in the footlocker as well.  He dropped the empty can of beans and picked up one of the water bottles. At the mouth of the cave, he made a quick scan of the area. Still no one around. That was good.
    He walked to the pool of water and dipped his burnt hand in. It was cold, but not freezing. During the summer months it warmed up considerably and was really refreshing to swim around in. The water stung the burn, but there was some relief of it as well.
    As he took the bottle of water to the waterfall, he tried to fill it without getting very wet, just as his father had shown him. When the bottle was full, he took a long sip and then capped the bottle. The water didn’t taste as good as the water at home, but his father said the waterfall acted as a natural filtration system, so it was safe enough to drink.
    He walked back to the cave, removed the hunting knife from his back pocket and put it just under the hammock, within arm’s