by Finley Aaron
“What is it?” Judy asks.
“I don’t know,” Dad admits. “But if someone tried to burn it….” He makes a face.
“Like destroying evidence?” I guess aloud. “There’s plenty of firewood out front, if they wanted something to burn for heat. This doesn’t even look like it was very flammable.”
Mom’s lost interest in the charred shell and is shining the flashlight beam along the perimeter of the room. She stops at a wastebasket in the corner and gasps.
“What is it?”
Mom doesn’t answer, only shakes her head and lifts a flutter of something plastic from the bin. Her lower lip is trembling.
“Muriel?” Dad steps close to her, concern in his voice.
“It’s a bottle liner. The same kind that came in the duffle bag with the babies.” She looks at us.
“So, you think…” I start slowly.
“I think you were here.” Mom gulps like she can’t breathe properly, although it’s been long enough since the run from the Bronco, she’s had plenty of time to catch her breath. “You two were here as babies. Someone fed you these bottles, and no one’s taken out the trash since then.” She lifts a few more plastic liners, then lets them fall back into the wastebasket.
“You were a week old when you were found at the rest stop,” Dad recounts, aloud. “That’s a thirteen, maybe fourteen hour drive from here.”
“But they were here,” Mom insists. “They may have been the last persons here—along with whoever carried them out. They may have been born in this cabin.” She looks around the room and shivers.
I glance at Judy. She looks worried.
I understand. Twin births are complicated. We had a teacher a couple of years ago pregnant with twins. She told us she was considered high risk, just on account of having doubles. So many things could go wrong, even in a hospital, even with advanced medical science. This cabin doesn’t even have electricity.
Judy’s been hoping to find our birth mother. I know she has. But what if our birth mother didn’t make it? Maybe that’s why we were abandoned.
“Is there even running water in this place?” I ask, moving toward the two unexplored doorways near the side of the cabin, opposite the fireplace.
Judy carries the lamp closer, and together we peer through the first doorway.
It’s a small bedroom. A twin-sized bed—more like a camping cot, really—occupies the bulk of the room.
Were we born on that bed?
We peek through the second doorway. There’s a hand pump, some shelves with bowls and plates and cast iron cookware, like for camping. A narrow table set against the wall like a countertop. Not much else.
“Do you suppose they cooked in the fireplace?” I don’t see any kind of stove, or fridge, or real sink like with running water. Just the hand pump. No indoor bathroom, either.
“Well.” Mom’s voice shivers as she looks past us into the rustic kitchen. “I think we’ve seen all there is to see. We should go before it gets dark, before the weather gets any worse.”
“But we’ve only just found this place.” Judy’s voice hitches up an emotional notch. “We haven’t found any answers—only more questions.”
“We can always come back now that we’ve found it,” Mom offers, though I suspect, from her dread of the place, she’s not eager to return.
Dad’s looking out the window at the swirling snow. “We might actually be safest if we stayed here for the night.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Mom sounds utterly appalled.
“Look, the snow is getting thick out there,” Dad notes. “We could get stuck on our way back to Boulder—and I didn’t see any hotels in Boulder, anyway. It will certainly be dark out by the time we could get to a town with a hotel, and the storm could get even worse by then. This is shelter, the best shelter I’ve seen for miles. We have plenty of firewood. You packed enough food to feed us for days, plus blankets and everything else we need—”
“We don’t even know if the water pump works.” Mom stomps her foot.
“We can melt snow,” Judy says, her voice eager for the first time since we left the hotel in Laramie. “We’ll be fine. It’s a perfect idea! If we stay here, we’ll have time to explore. It will be just like staying in Grandma’s summer cabin in Maine.”
Grandma’s summer cabin has electricity and an indoor bathroom, but I don’t point out that difference. Instead, I add, “You know how much we love Grandma’s summer cabin.”
“This is not our cabin,” Mom protests.
“No one has been here in forever,” Dad reminds her, crossing the room to place his hand on her arm. “And for all we know,” he casts a meaningful look at me and Judy, and swallows so hard his Adam’s apple bounces visibly in his throat, “it is our cabin, or the kids’ cabin, anyway.”
Mom’s chin is quivering. She looks at the window and blinks rapidly.
The snow is collecting in a thick blanket now. I can see the wood pile, but barely. I’m not even convinced we could find the Bronco from here, let alone drive it all the way back to Boulder.
While Mom and Dad have been talking, I’ve been easing back toward the main empty wall that butts against the back of the cabin, the end buried in the side of the mountain. There’s a rustic beamed couch that looks like it might unfold into a futon, but it’s scooted closer to the fire, leaving a six foot gap between the back of the futon and the wall.
The wall appears to be carved from the stone itself. I lean against it.
It moves.
I jolt forward.
“Roo?” Judy whispers, carrying the kerosene lamp toward me.
Mom and Dad are deep in muted conversation over by one window—Dad’s still trying to convince Mom that we should stay.
I meet Judy’s eyes and try to communicate with a look, but I don’t know if there’s a way to say the wall moved without using words. So I whisper, “The wall moved.”
Judy holds the lamp close to the stones.
I feel the cold surface with both hands. It’s all jagged rock, rough-hewn and uneven, but my fingers slip into a narrow ridge that extends down toward the floor. I trace it with the tip of my index finger, then follow it back up again as it arches above my head. “There’s a door,” I whisper to Judy.
But before I’ve even finished speaking those three words, Mom turns to us and announces, “Fine. With the weather being awful, and since everything else seems even more dangerous, against my better judgement, we’ll stay here.”
“Thank you!” I stand with my back to the seam in the wall, as though my mom might spot it from where she’s standing.
Probably not with her vision, but still.
“Now.” Dad clears his throat. “We should make the trek down to the Bronco before it gets completely dark out…if we can find it in all this snow.”
“Tie a string!” Judy bounds toward her backpack, which she set on the table, and pulls out her crochet thread. “It might not help you find the Bronco, but it will keep you from losing the cabin.”
“Great idea.” Dad grabs the spool with a flourish, like we’ve embarked on some grand adventure. “Now, Ladies, if you don’t mind staying here and getting a fire started, Rudyard and I will brave the cold and wind, and bring back our supplies.”
Though I’m eager to see what’s behind the mysterious stone door—if it is a door, which I can’t be sure of until I try it—I understand the need for haste. It will be dark before long, and at the rate the snow is falling (a full-out blizzard now), we’re going to have to wade through deep drifts if we don’t hurry.
Dad ties the thread securely to the screen door handle and sticks a pencil through the center of the spool, letting it unwind as we go. Once we’re past the woodpile, we quickly lose sight of the cabin, but I’m able to find a trail rut between the drifts, and I follow it by feeling with my feet.
Dad’s behind me, one gloved hand on my shoulder, the other holding the string, spool upright, unwinding it as we make our way downhill.
>
The swirling snow is disorienting, even dizzying. The trek back to the Bronco seems ever so much longer than the trip away, and just as I’m beginning to wonder if I’m in the right rut at all, I spot it through the blinding snow.
“There it is!” I announce, turning back to Dad.
He looks visibly relieved—so relieved, I wonder if he isn’t more scared than I am. We run to the Bronco to gather up the most essential supplies.
But once we start rooting among our bags, it becomes clear we won’t be able to carry everything in one trip, or even two.
“We’ll have to start with the food,” Dad decides. “If we can make it back for the rest—”
“Dad?” I cut him off. “Why don’t we just drive it to the cabin?”
Dad scowls at the snow-filled path. “Do you think we can?”
“The snow has filled in the deepest holes. If anything, the road is more passable now than before. And even if we don’t make it all the way, if we can get it closer to the cabin, that means we won’t have to walk as far for the rest of our things. We have plenty of gas. I think it’s worth a try.”
Dad’s got his eyes pinched shut, maybe because he’s thinking, or maybe to shield them from the relentless snowflakes. Then he opens them just a slit, peers back in the direction of the cabin, and lets out a heavy breath that clouds the air in front of his face. “We can try,” he agrees, cautiously. “We’ll have to be very careful that we don’t lose the path.”
“I’ll walk in front of the car with the string. We’ll go slowly.” While I’m talking, I retrace my footsteps back fifteen feet or so to a large boulder alongside the rut. “I’ll wait here while you turn the Bronco around.”
As Dad bounds back to the vehicle and executes a careful multi-point turn, I start to rewind the string. It’s going to take a lot longer going back to the cabin, winding instead of unwinding, especially since the wet snow has been sticking to the string, freezing it into a brittle thread.
Once Dad has the Bronco turned around, he opens the door and gives me a thumbs up sign. I signal back to him. With my feet planted securely in a rut, I start to shuffle forward, slide-stepping uphill, winding the thread as I go.
It’s a slow journey. Dad keeps the Bronco well enough behind me so that even if he lurches suddenly over a rock or something, he won’t run me over. Given the low visibility, that means the Bronco is barely in sight behind me. I’m alone in the midst of the crazed flakes and deepening darkness, with only my string to guide me.
The wind howls, tugging at the brittle string, threatening to wrap it around the snaggly tree branches that stretch across the trail from all directions. My hands are numb inside my gloves, and I shuffle forward, wind the string, shuffle, wind, shuffle, wind, shuffle—
Stop cold.
The string is broken. One icy tip dangles from my spool of thread. The other half—the end that leads to the cabin, is blowing around somewhere in the woods, or buried in snow and ice. Who knows?
There’s no way I’m going to find it in this storm.
I don’t even know if I can find the cabin.
Chapter Six
The Bronco’s headlights dip on either side of me as Dad maneuvers the vehicle over another bump in the trail. I glance back.
Should I tell Dad the string is broken?
What difference would it make?
I’ve still got my feet securely in the ruts. The ruts lead back to the cabin. I can do this, string or no string.
Frenzied snowflakes blur the beams that protrude from the Bronco, lighting the way. If the tires are in the ruts, and my feet are in the ruts, we’re good, right?
Never mind that my feet feel numb, and I could be shuffling us off into the mountains never to be seen again.
No, as I shift my freezing toes from side to side, I can feel the walls of the tire tracks. We’re on the path.
We’ve got to be.
Slowly, I start forward again. My face stings from the cold. I flex my fingers inside my gloves, forcing warmer blood into the icy appendages. I won’t be warm again until we get back to the cabin, back to the fire. Mom and Judy should have it blazing by the time we get there.
I wanted to come here.
I started this.
No way am I quitting now.
Even my knees feel frozen, locked in place by the forced stiff-leg shuffle that requires me to keep my feet in line for fear of losing the track.
Shouldn’t we be back to the cabin by now?
I can’t see anything but two streaks of headlight beams piercing the whiteness on either side of me. Everything else is darkness and blurring flakes.
Again, I shift my feet to the side, searching for the reassuring feel of the rut walls.
My toes are too numb to feel anything.
I stomp, shuffle my feet from side to side, kick at the flat ground, but that’s all it is—flat ground.
The ruts are gone.
I have no idea where we are.
Dad honks the horn behind me.
I’ve been standing here for a minute or more, but I don’t know which way to go, or where I got off course. I don’t know anything.
The Bronco door slams shut behind me and Dad bounds through the light beams to reach me. “Where are we? Why did you stop?”
I look down, though I can’t see anything but a blanket of white snow. “I don’t know where we are. The ruts are gone.”
“Gone? Where’s the string?”
I hold up the spool, broken line dangling.
Dad’s face is reddened by the cold, but somehow, he still turns pale. For a minute he stands still, looking all around, but I’ve already determined his vision is not nearly as good as mine. I can’t see anything but snow, so I don’t expect him to find a way out from here.
“We’re still headed uphill,” he notes. “That’s something.”
I don’t tell him that the mountain range is thousands of miles long, that you can head uphill a bit to the north or south and end up missing the cabin by miles, still going uphill.
He doesn’t need to hear that. It won’t help anything.
“Let me kill the lights.” He tromps back to the Bronco, flips a switch, and the woods go dark.
Is he just trying to save the battery, or what? I search the woods.
Darkness has fallen completely now, made thick and silent by the falling snow. It would be beautiful if we weren’t in danger of freezing to death in the midst of it. This is how people die in the wilderness, isn’t it? One minute, they’re following a string, secure in their ruts…the next, they’re off track and broken.
Dad shuffles toward me again.
I stare ahead.
Something twinkles in the distance.
It can’t be the moon or stars. The snow is far too thick for that.
“Light!” I scream and point.
Dad peers that way.
He doesn’t have to tell me he can’t see it.
But I can. It’s got to be the light from the cabin windows. There’s nothing else out here.
Is there?
“Get back in the car and keep the lights off this time. Follow me!”
Dad still looks worried, but he turns around and gets back in the Bronco.
I bound toward the light, heedless of ruts or anything else. He guns the engine behind me and follows.
The lights grow brighter, more clear, the outline of the door and windows more obvious. There is Judy, standing in the doorway, shouting for us.
“Judy!” I scream. I’m running full out now, and nearly stumble over the edge of the wood stack as I round the pile.
Dad drives the Bronco around the wood pile, right up alongside the porch, and kills the engine.
Mom’s carried in a huge stack of wood and has been brushing off the snow, setting the pieces near the blazing fire to dry, but now she runs out to help us carry in our things.
Besides the cooler, which holds enough food to feed us for at least a few days—longer if we ration it (for onc
e I’m glad my mom was worried we might get stuck in a blizzard), we carry in plenty of blankets and sleeping bags, and our backpacks with our toothbrushes and everything else we need.
Then I peel off my gloves and stand close to the fire, which is crackling cheerily.
Mom digs lunchmeat and bread out of the cooler, dispensing carrot sticks and juice boxes to tide us over while she assembles sandwiches.
Unwilling to leave the heat of the fire, I explore the room with my eyes. There’s a bookcase on one wall, its shelves cluttered with dusty notebooks and binders. I crunch down my last carrot and cross the room, lifting the top notebook off the pile and blowing the dust away.
“Careful where you blow that,” Mom says, waving dust away from the sandwiches, though I’m across the room from her and the food.
Judy steps over to see. “Anything written there?”
“Not on this page, but it still has a faint impression from whatever was written on the page that was torn off from on top of it.”
“Can you make out what it says?”
I brush away the last of the dust and angle it toward the firelight. “Looks like a column or list of something, but I can’t read it.”
“Let me get my crayons.” Judy riffles through her backpack, pulls out a purple crayon, and peels off the paper wrapper. She lays it on its side on the notebook and swipes it back and forth, pressing ever so gently, leaving faint color across the paper, exposing the white lines that were impressed by the writing on the page above.
“Numbers.” I read them off from the top as Judy works her way down the page.
“Forty-eight, forty, eighty-three, twenty-five.” My heart nearly stops. “I know these numbers.” I’ve only been keeping myself entertained with them the whole way here. I grab my notebook and compare the numbers, just as Judy reaches the bottom of the page.
“What is it?” Mom hands over sandwiches and looks over our shoulders at the two notebooks lying side-by-side on the small table.
“It’s the mileage from town to town. This is my list, heading from Hastings to Boulder. They’re the same numbers in reverse order.” At the bottom of the purple crayon-smeared page, there’s a line followed by the mileage total, 690.
