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With a small metal scoop I moved the hot coals from the grill into the fire pit, and then grabbed a handful of kindling and threw it on top of the coals. Wisps of smoke escaped through crevasses in the pile of dried pine branches. I took off my t-shirt and used it to fan the coals with animated strokes until a flame burst through the twigs. I added several larger sticks and fanned some more. Before long fire filled the ring and cast dancing shadows on the cabin wall. It lit the dimming twilight and radiated enough heat that I didn’t need to put the shirt back on to ward off the chill from the falling temperatures of the June evening.
I lay back on the soft pillow that cushioned the wooden deck chair, and closed my eyes. An image of small gray stones appeared, an impression etched into my visual cortex as a result of moving crushed limestone all day. In the morning a big tri-axle dump truck deposited six tons of grade 2-B gravel at the end of the driveway. We spread the load with just a couple of shovels, a metal rake, and a wheel barrel. I could feel my aching muscles complaining about the job.
Every weekend since spring weather made outside work feasible, Eric drove the five hours from Baltimore to join me at the cabin, located in the northern Pennsylvania woods. We worked together on taming his twenty-eight acres, although it still remained a very rough patch of land, a wild territory with an ironic twist. The attractive natural setting of woods, fields, and stream bordered an interstate highway. Fortunately a stand of pines obscured the traffic from the cabin, which sat about one hundred yards from the road, although the whine of truck tires on pavement penetrated the dense branches with enough intensity to keep me from mistaking the setting for an isolated retreat.
A mountain stream cut the property into two pieces, eight acres on the side with the cabin and twenty acres of woods on the other side, inaccessible by road. Before they built the interstate, you could drive across the stream via a sturdy wooden bridge. However, the highway construction crew rerouted the water, so that the old bridge now went over a dry stream bed. The new route of the water, a straight v-cut channel west of the old creek bed, ran seventy-five feet below the concrete pillars that supported the interstate traffic. With nothing but low brush growing along the banks of angular rocks, the new channel had a sterile feeling. In contrast, the old meandering trail that the stream once took now gave the appearance of a museum, housing masterful works of rounded rock sculptures, interspersed with oak and maple saplings, all shaded by majestic hemlock trees.
The three-room cabin sat in the middle of four acres of woods on a hill above the creek. The construction of the highway left the four acre field below the cabin a wasteland. It resembled a reclaimed strip mine, like those found in that area of Pennsylvania, a moonscape of rocks where nothing could grow except some scrubby looking pine trees.
It’s not paradise, I told myself, when I first came five months earlier. A bit of an understatement, considering that in addition to much of the land looking like it had been raped, I didn’t have running water in the cabin. I used an outhouse for a toilet, and I took baths in a very cold stream. But I was willing to put up with the inconveniences for the dream the land harbored.
Six months back I had met Eric at a party, me just about to graduate from college without a job lined up, and him looking for someone to live in his cabin for insurance purposes.
“I am trying to develop the property,” he had said. “Eventually I would like to make the place self-sufficient, where I could make a living breeding my dogs and growing my own food. My ultimate goal is to make a community for like-minded people to live, work, and play together.”
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t paradise, but it had potential. Eric’s goals resonated with my affinity for the locavore movement, and even better, it offered free room and board and somewhere to live unhassled by parents.
Honk! Honk!
I opened my eyes and looked at Eric. “That sounds like it’s coming from the gate,” I said. The gate at the edge of the property was about two hundred yards away.
“I bet I know what it’s about,” Eric said, getting up from his seat and tossing his plate on the picnic table. “Some locals paid a visit last night. They arrived at the same time as I did. They told me that they were looking for the nudist camp.”
“The nudist camp?”
“Yeah, a couple of weekends ago after you finished washing at the stream and left for the cabin, two guys with fishing gear came walking down the other side of the creek. I was still naked, just taking my time finishing my bath when they appeared. I stood there drying myself off, not hurrying to get dressed. I didn’t care if they saw me.” He opened the back door, reached around the corner, and grabbed a shotgun, one he had borrowed from our neighbor earlier that day.
As Eric walked down the driveway he let his words trail behind him. “I told them it was my land and they were trespassing. They left without talking. I’m guessing they started the story about the nudist camp.”
I called after him. “So what are you going to do?”
“Scare them off.” He didn’t look back as he headed down the steep section of the road. “This time for good.”
“So that’s why you got the gun,” I said in a low voice that Eric didn’t hear.
I shook my head as I got up and picked up the used paper plates and threw them into the flames. I watched them catch fire and then closed the bag of chips and took them and the ketchup inside, where I sat down with a book. In the next few minutes shotgun blasts twice interrupted my attempts to escape into another world.
About ten minutes after he left, Eric came in, out of breath. He put the gun back in the corner before sitting down next to me with a grin on his face.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“I doubt they’ll be back,” he said, his chest still heaving from running.
I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
“There were about five or six of them. Instead of coming up the road they had crossed the field to the creek. I saw their heads poking above the top of the bank as they snuck along the edge of the water. So I hunkered down behind the big oak where the road turns, and waited. They got to where the creek comes closest to the road before they climbed the bank and headed in my direction. When they were about twenty yards away I stepped out and fired a shot over their heads.”
Eric let out a big laugh as he leaned forward and slapped his knee. “You should have seen them run. Every which way. Some back along the creek. Some down the road. I ran down the road after two of them and fired another shot as they reached the gate where two cars were parked. They got into the second car and took off. I ran up to the other car, and…” He paused as he reached into his back pocket and took out a leather sheath. With a grin he pulled out a large hunting knife and held it up.
“It felt so good when I sunk this into each of those front tires.”
I gave a slight shrug and turned back to my book. My eyes followed the words on the page, but my mind didn’t register their meanings. I wanted to believe that Eric had just told me about a mundane everyday experience, but the after effects of the image he just painted made me feel as though something had grabbed my intestines and started twisting.
Eric got up and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher in the refrigerator before coming back in the room and sitting again.
“After I slit the tires I waited in the woods above the gate, about half-way up the side of the hill. In another couple of minutes I saw several others coming up from the creek along the fence row. They hopped into the car and slammed it into reverse. Whoo! They hit the gas so hard they tore up a big patch of dirt.” Eric took a big drink of water.
“It would have been funny if they had had front wheel drive.” He laughed out loud and then put down his glass and stood up.
“I’m going to go hang out in the woods above the gate,” he said. He walked back into the kitchen and picked up the shotgun. “I’m guessing those guys won’t be too happy when they discover the flat tires. I don’t know if they might want to get some revenge.”
“Why don’t you just call the cops?”
“Well, if they come back…” He didn’t finish his statement before he went out the door.
The rest of the night proved uneventful. Perhaps the trespassers had enough. I knew I had my fill, even at the distance from which I participated.
The next day Eric left for Baltimore before noon. Just after I sat down at the picnic table to eat lunch I got a call on the cabin’s phone. It was the neighbor.
“Two men are down here at my place and want to know if it is okay for them to come up and pay a visit,” he told me.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said, without thinking about asking who they were and what they wanted. Weeks at the cabin without any contact from anyone except Eric on the weekends made the thought of visitors attractive, but after I hung up the phone thoughts of the previous night came back to me. Nobody ever visited me at the cabin before, so reason told me that today’s guests had something to do with last night’s episode. The thought of an encounter with two angry men brought back the tight feeling in my gut and a surge of adrenalin. I hurried outside and headed to the dog kennel.
Eric housed two of his borzoi breeding stock on the grounds of the cabin to keep me company and to give the rest of his dogs, in his main kennel in Maryland, more room. A borzoi, or Russian wolfhound, as a rule doesn’t show aggression to humans, but not everyone knows that and their impressive size and athletic body can be imposing. Both dogs got up when I jogged over to the gate. Caesar, a twelve year old male, walked as if in slow motion over to the food dish. Gertie, a three year old female, stretched before prancing in front of me in anticipation of a chance to run. Although bigger and more intimidating I didn’t trust Caesar enough to let him out ever since he had run away for over a day one time. I knew Gertie would listen to me. When I left her out she ran two wide circles around the pen at top speed before following me over to the picnic table, where she lay down at my feet as I went back to eating lunch.
When two young men dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts walked up the lane two minutes later, Gertie ran to greet them. She got three-quarters of the way to them before they stopped in their tracks. I smiled when I saw them hesitate, and then called the dog back to my side. Once she sat down I motioned to the visitors to join me. The two walked up to the edge of the concrete slab that served as the cabin’s deck.
“Afternoon guys. What can I do for you?” I greeted them with a smile, but did not get up from my seat or even put down my soup spoon. They did not return my smile.
“This your place?” the taller one asked.
“No. I do live here, but I’m just the caretaker, not the owner.” I avoided their piercing glares by looking at my food.
“You here last night?”
I poked at the last bit of chili in my bowl like I was looking for a piece of courage. Then I looked up and replied. “Yeah, I was.”
“Did you hear some shots last night?” The question came from the shorter, stockier fellow.
“Yes, I did. Eric, the guy who owns this place, told me he fired some warning shots at some people he caught trespassing.”
The shorter man crossed his arms on his chest. “He told you, huh? You weren’t there?” It sounded like a challenge.
“No. I stayed up here in the cabin. I was reading a book while it happened.” I said, scraping the remaining chili onto my spoon and trying to keep my nerves steady.
The taller one put his hands on his hips and tilted his head to one side and used a confronting tone. “Where’s this Eric guy now?”
I looked the tall dude in the eye and let my voice hover somewhere between cocky and patronizing, not a good recipe to win a friend, but a great smokescreen to cover up fear. “He left for Maryland about an hour ago. He lives and works down there. He comes up here some weekends.”
Finally, the tall one issued the ultimatum he had come to deliver. “Well, someone slit two of my tires last night and I aim to make them pay for it.”
Gertie raised her head in response to the man’s tone. A growl might have served me better, but at least she noticed the tension.
“I don’t know nothing about no tires,” I said in an even tone, as I focused on spooning the last bit of my lunch into my mouth.
The two men scowled but remained silent while I chewed.
When I finished the bite, I said, “Sorry I can’t help you fellows out. Maybe you could come back on a Saturday. That’s your best bet on catching Eric here.” I held back a smile. I didn’t need to overdo the patronizing.
With looks of disdain and a slight snort from the taller man, the two turned around and retreated back down the lane.
Eric called me Friday morning to tell me he planned on arriving that night. I fed the dogs and left. Yes, the place had potential. Had.