It’s All Gray Now

It was a cold morning outside his cabin that nestled between the pines and the snow.  The glow of the wood stove lit up the dim room while it heated the coffee and baked beans atop it.  Both the beans and the coffee had a little bit of sugar added to them to get him through the day.  It was everything he ever wanted; the boards beneath his feet, the wind through the trees, the smell of cedar and smoke.  The right man could live a very happy life here, all alone in the northern wilderness.

He thought back to when he was married, how hard he tried.  She was a sweet thing that never gave him many problems other than the occasional cry over how little he talked.  God did he miss her.  She used to work overnights at the hospital and still came home with a smile on her face, ready to make corn beef hash and french toast.  She always made sure to burn the hash a little on the bottom because she knew he liked the skin.  They’d go on walks and he’d talk about road trips and seeing the world and she would smile and listen.  Then she’d talk about finding a good paying job and living in the same town as her family, the town both of them grew up in, then they’d both be quiet for a while.

He had purchased the land from an old man who grew tired of not having all the amenities we take for granted, heat, running water, electricity.  The man sold him the forty acres of land for a steal, wanting enough for a small place on the lake where they had recently built condos. Right after he shook the man’s hand and signed the papers he got to work.  He staked off the borders of the land and blazed a trail that started at the edge of an old gravel road.  He dragged all of his hand tools up through the woods and used hedge clippers to make most of the path, raking debris away until he found a suitable plot.  When he finally found a canopy wide enough to give him sunlight for a small garden he was exhausted.   Even so, his first few weeks in the woods were invigorating as he leveled the land, cutting the timber and making his home.  But now that he was living in it, he felt his home was empty, a living postcard.  He didn’t want to live in a postcard, he wanted to live with her.  

They grew up four miles from each other.  They had met at the local grocery store where she ran the counter and he unloaded the trucks.  The boy would watch her from the stockroom, through the loading dock curtains as she made idle chit chat with the old folks that would shop during the day.  She had a smile that released all the tension in your shoulders and made you think everything was going to be okay.  But eventually he’d have to leave work and go back home to his father’s house in that tired old town.  It was in the same town where her parents had nurtured her, filled her college fund to the brim and dug an in-ground pool, that his father had beaten him over and over after long nights at the brass mill.  Some nights, when his father had switched shifts with someone at work, the boy would sleep and feel someone watching him and there his father would be, the glow of his cigarette barely lighting his scarred chin.  

One night while his father was on the losing side of giving up smoking he stomped into the boy’s room where he lay sleeping.  He  grabbed his neck, pinning him to the bed.  The boy woke up but knew not to move because fighting back only meant it would last longer.  His father, breathing heavily, pulled a bottle of brown liquor from his back pocket and pressed the glass opening to his son’s ear.  The boy was still adjusting to being awake when the molten pain poured into his head.  His head felt like it was disintegrating and he could only see flashes of color like firework inkblots in his eyes as the violent stabbing, popping, and hissing swirled in his brain.  He violently squirmed, trying to claw at his ear canal, anything to get the pain to stop.  His father let go and the boy thrashed onto the ground, screaming, unable to see through the alcohol filling his sinuses and throat, burning a hole into his eardrum.  His mother walked in for a moment and whimpered “stop,” which was meant for the boy to stop yelling, not for his father to stop hurting him.  He finally was able to turn his head and feel the liquid pain dribble out, his screams becoming short gasps.  

His father stood over him and said, “clean off the fucking table before I get home from work, I don’t need this.  I don’t need to wonder where the fuck I’m going to put my lunchbox after an eighteen hour shift.  Now I’m going to go downstairs and go to sleep so I can get up and work some more,” his voice raising, “next time clean off the fucking table!” He screamed, it ringing in the boy’s dissolved inner ear.  

He laid there, dreaming of a cabin in the woods.  He saw himself sitting in a rocking chair, like the ones they sell at restaurant chains off the highway, the one with a country store in front.  He saw a wood burning stove and a bookshelf full of books.  He could see out the cabin window and took in the stars and the snow-covered pines.  He saw deer prancing and squirrels chasing each other through the snow.  For a moment he thought he saw a beautiful girl, then he thought he saw his father, but no, not here.  No one was here but him.