The Cabin

       Earl poured himself a coffee, grabbing some milk from the propane fridge to top it up. He sat on the bench of his pine table looking about for signs of the flying squirrel. It had kept him up half the night skittering about, trying to scratch its way into the garbage pail.

   Earl was sure it was a ‘flying’ squirrel because it had launched itself into his face one night when he tried to beat it to death with the cookstove poker. He had cornered it by the bookshelves and it ran up and leapt off at him. Wings, or webbing, between its front and back legs were seen by him.

   Earl got up and started rifling through volumes of Foxfire books. His gift to himself. Everything he’d ever want to know about hunting, fishing, roughing it, simple living. Earl was sure there’d be advice on how to trap flying squirrels, or least some sort of repellent made from natural ingredients already found in the woods, or something, something.

   Earl gave up looking, thinking the Foxfire books were like many books; they had so much information in them they didn’t tell him anything.

   He went outside and sat with his coffee on the front porch. The outhouse had been broken into again. Its door hung on an angle near the ground, the top leather hinge had been torn off. It was the bear. Earl had been storing garbage in the outhouse again until he could take it to the dump. He had tried many times to tie the garbage bags high in a tree but they would slip out of the rope onto the ground and draw the bear anyway.

   He heard a loud crack nearby. No doubt the bear was splitting rotted fallen trees to get the grubs living inside. Earl raised a fist in mock defiance.

   He considered driving into town and getting some metal hinges but the drive was so far. Even the dump was too far most days. Coffee running out was the only sure reason to get Earl to go to town.

   He put his coffee down and got a fresh garbage bag from inside. He gathered up the mess from outhouse and took it further down the property to the boathouse. The bear might break in here as well, but at least Earl wouldn’t be caught in the middle of the night needing to use an already occupied outhouse.

   He picked up his rod and tackle box and went down to his shoreline. Earl stood thinking. He wasn’t a catch and release guy, and he didn’t feel like cutting and cleaning today. He put the rod and box back.

   He returned to his porch and his cooling coffee. Looking down he saw a few blueberries growing. They must have been from the stems and twigs he had thrown out from blueberry picking his first year. He got a pail and went up the dirt drive looking for thicker blueberry patches. A half mile up he found some.

   As he started picking a small dark orange shape ran by. He stepped out to the dirt drive and saw a fox escape back into the woods on the other side. Further down a coyote paced back and forth on the drive as if he had lost the scent. The coyote stopped and sat upright looking at Earl. The coyote was scrawny, skeletal, and badly underfed, and seemed to be smiling at Earl.

   Earl backed himself halfway down the drive before he felt it was alright to turn to finish the rest of the way. The blueberries could wait for another day. He sat again on the porch drinking coffee until it was near the gritty bottom of the cup.   

   On the porch to the side was a solar panel. Enough to keep a car battery charged which powered a light for reading his western novels at night and one other thing.

   Earl thought some more. Fishing was off today’s list. The dump. Town. Blueberries. Sweeping. Rebuilding the side deck. Washing his clothes in a pail. Reading was for the evenings...

   His coffee finished Earl went back inside. On the inside windowsill he found the other thing that drew power from the car battery. His cell phone.

   “May I speak to Jeremy Goodis? Hey, Jer, how you doing? No, it’s been just over a year. You know what Eddie told me? ‘The place is the same without you.’ They’ll say the same when your time comes, Jer. No, what are they doing now? Oh, that’s a dog and pony show. They’ll never follow through on that.

   “I don’t think we’re going to go for coffee. Well, I’m a few thousand clicks north of you. Unless you want to drive up here. I bought a cabin. It’s fantastic. It’s way in the woods. Two hours north of even to the smallest town. I got my own little lake for fishing. There’s only a gravel road here because some logging camps use to be here. I got all the wildlife, all the nature, and none of the traffic. It’s beautiful.

   “You should try coffee up here. It’s sweet. The sunsets. The quiet. Birds. Make you feel like you’re in a coffee commercial. It’s that nice.

   “No, I lease a room in town for the winters. It’s paradise, but you can’t live here year-round. You know the fishing, Jer, there’s no limit. I mean, there’s a catch limit, but there’s almost no mercury. All rivers flow north here. You could eat all the fish you want without worry. That’s how clean it is up here.

   “Yeah, well, tell everyone else there. If they’re willing to make the trip, they’re welcome. I mean, everyone that I knew. Yeah, think about it, Jer. I miss ya, buddy.”

   Earl ended the call and sat looking out.

   After a minute he rested the cell phone on his leg and starting turning it over, end over end, in thought. He stopped and scrolled through his contact list, then autodialed.

   “Eddie? Hey, how’s it going? It’s Earl. Earl Wilford. Yeah. I retired. Yeah, last year. Bought a cabin way up north. Oh, it’s my dream come true.”