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“A boar?” Duncan said before Margot could. “You okay?”
Obviously, she was. “Yeah, fine. But we can’t leave the carcass out there. It’ll draw scavengers, and might draw more hogs.”
“Vin can dress it,” Margot said. “And we can take into town and have Terry butcher it.”
Terry Groves was the town butcher; in addition to the usual butchering of beef and fowl and such, he had a service for hunters as well.
“Vin can’t dress it in the field,” Phoebe pointed out. “Especially not in this weather.”
His prosthetic came from the VA and was some distance from top-of-the-line; he got around just fine on floors and paved surfaces, and he managed well, carefully, around the homestead, but he did not hike the woods even in summer. Certainly not in snow and ice.
“It’s a huge black boar. Probably weighs two hundred pounds or more. And it’s almost two miles back.” Feeling suddenly exhausted and frustrated, Phoebe stomped her foot. “Fuck! I don’t know what to do!”
“Hey.” Duncan caught her hand. “I’m standing right here. I’ll help.”
“It’s not your job to save me, Duncan.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said that or why it had felt like the most important thing to say.
“I know. I got a job already, anyway. But I am standing right here, and I can help, and I want to. I guess it’s not clear enough for a truck back there?”
“Not at all. We have an old four-wheeler, but even that would be tight back there. Can you ride?”
“Technically, yeah. I got family with a farm, and when I was a kid I rode there a bunch of times. But not for years. I’m not a cowboy, but I know how to get on a horse and use the reins.”
Phoebe tried to think how to handle the boar problem—but her brain simply refused to work on it. She could not get past the question and even take a step toward an answer.
“Fuck!” She slapped her forehead. “My stupid fucking brain!”
Margot pushed in between Phoebe and Duncan and clutched Phoebe’s shoulders. “Look at me,” she ordered.
Phoebe looked at her.
“Take a breath.”
Phoebe took a breath.
“What problem do we need to solve?”
“The fucking boar!”
“Okay. You killed it, right?”
Phoebe nodded.
“So we need to get it out of the woods so we can deal with the carcass. Right?
She nodded again.
“It’s too big to carry, so we need to haul it. How about Titan? He’s big and strong. Could he carry the boar on his back?”
Starting to get purchase on the problem, Phoebe took another breath and had an answer. “Yeah, but he’s eighteen hands tall. How do we get the boar on his back?”
“That’s where I come in,” Duncan said. “I can overhead press two-twenty. I can get a two-hundred pound boar to a horse’s back.”
Phoebe focused on him. “Two-twenty overhead? Seriously?” That had to be close to, if not greater than, his body weight.
His grin widened again. “I mean, I’m not doing many reps at that weight, but yeah. Let me help you.”
Because her thinking still felt shaky, Phoebe looked to Margot, who nodded.
