by Jeremy Bates
Did she really have to sit over that? But what other option was there? Go behind a tree like Rex suggested? That was almost preferable…
Carefully, Tabitha laid out toilet paper on the seat. She undid her belt and pushed down her jeans and underwear. She couldn’t hear her urine hit the bottom of the pit, which made her wonder as to the depth of the hole.
What if some animal was down there? A family of raccoons or rats? What if she was peeing on them? What if they climbed up and…?
What? Bit her in the butt?
Suddenly and alarmingly, a sharp crack sounded outside the outhouse, the distinct sound of a branch splitting in two.
Her bladder froze.
“Hello?” she said.
Nobody replied.
“Rex?” she said, knowing he wasn’t out there; if he was, he would have announced his presence.
An animal then?
Would have to be a pretty large animal…
A bear?
God, she hoped not!
She finished her business, yanked up her jeans, and secured her belt. She inched open the door a crack and poked her head out. The forest was dark and cold and silent. The gray sky continued to spit rain. She looked to the left, the direction where the sound had originated.
Nobody was there. No animals either.
But she hadn’t imagined the sound.
Folding her arms to ward against a chill that had nothing to do with the foul October weather, she hurried back to the cabin.
***
After collecting two plastic buckets from the shed behind the cabin, Rex picked his way down the pine needle-covered hill to the lake, following a path that was no longer visible but that he remembered vaguely from his youth. The massive conifers he passed beneath eclipsed the darkening sky and made him feel small and unimportant, a reminder that they had been standing here long before he had been born and would remain long after he had died.
When he emerged from the last of the saplings and sagebrush, he stopped to take in the view of the still lake, which, in the dying minutes of dusk, spread away from him like a narrow black abyss. A dock supported by pontoons had once floated on the water a little way out. Now it was gone, likely destroyed by the ice that scabbed over the lake in the wintertime. The only indication it had ever existed were the skeletal remains of the gangway pilings that had linked it to the rocky shore.
In the distance, the haunting wail of a loon echoed over the dark water, sounding eerily like the howl of a wolf. A different wail answered it a moment later, though this one more closely resembled the crazy laugh of a hyena.
Man, I’ve missed this place, he thought to himself as a kaleidoscope of memories rose to the forefront of his mind. All the summer afternoons he had spent down here as a kid with Logan on inflatable rafts and tires that always seemed to lose their air. Snorkeling with their ill-fitting rubber fins and cheap K-Mart scuba masks, the head straps of which had all snapped so you had to rely on air pressure keeping it suctioned to your face. Fishing for sturgeon and trout, char and steelhead. And just goofing off in the sun doing kid stuff while their mom watched on from beneath a rainbow-colored parasol.
Pushing aside the nostalgic images before they overwhelmed him, Rex continued to the lake where he filled both buckets with ice-cold water. He scanned the rocky shore to the west until he spotted where the pump’s black intake pipe emerged from the water. He followed it with his eyes to the pump house twenty feet or so inland. He went to the small structure, pleased to note it appeared to have weathered the years well, keeping its four walls and shingled lid intact. He set the buckets on the ground and opened the lid. His optimism that the pump might be serviceable went up in smoke. The pressure tank and valves and pipes were so covered in rust they looked like they might have been salvaged from the Titanic. He tried a valve, and it snapped off in his hand.
Guess nobody’s going to be showering this weekend, he thought with a sigh as he picked up the buckets of water and returned up the hill.
He found Tabitha sitting with Ellie in the front room of the cabin, both of them studying the chipmunk.
“How’s it doing?” he asked. “Sorry—she?”
“She won’t eat,” Ellie said. “We gave her some banana and peanut butter, but she won’t eat. She won’t drink her water either.”
“She’s probably just a bit overwhelmed by everything that’s happened to her. Imagine if a family of giants picked you up and brought you to a strange place.”
“Come on, Miss Chippy! Get it together!”
“Whoa there, sweetie!” Tabitha said. “Cut the little critter some slack. One of her legs might be broken. Each time she tries to get up, she falls over on the same side.”
Rex had a look at the chipmunk. It was flopped on its belly. “Broken leg’s not good,” he said. “But the vet should be able to do something about that.”
“Do we have to give her to the vet?” Ellie asked.
“We had a deal, Missy,” Tabitha said pointedly.
“But if we give her away,” Ellie complained, “I won’t ever get to see her again. But if we let her go here, then she’ll be here when we come back again, and I can be friends with her every summer until one of us dies first.”
“I hope it’s the chipmunk that dies first,” Rex remarked amusedly.
“I hope it’s me,” Ellie said, “so I won’t be so sad when she dies.”
“Don’t say that, sweetie,” Tabitha said with a note of motherly concern in her voice. “You’re going to live much longer than a chipmunk. And you’re being a bit presumptuous to think that Rex will want us to come up here every summer. He might never want us to come back.”
Tabitha kept her attention fixed on the chipmunk, but Rex sensed the statement was for him as much as it was for her daughter.
“Of course I’d like you guys to come back,” he said.
“That’s good news!” Tabitha said playfully. “Isn’t that good news, sweetie?”
“Do we have to wait all the way to next summer?” Ellie asked. “I’ll already be six by then.”
“To be honest, I haven’t really given it any thought, Ellie,” Rex said. “But if that’s too long to wait…how about Christmas?”
“Really?” Tabitha said, looking up at him.
“Why not? The fireplace would heat the place. We could bring up some portable gas heaters too, if we needed to make it extra toasty.”
“But will Santa be able to find us here?” Ellie asked skeptically.
“Don’t worry about Santa Claus, sweetie,” Tabitha said. “He has a list with the addresses of every child in the world. He’ll find us.”
“Does he use Google Maps?”
“His list is much better than Google Maps.”
“Okay!” she decided. “Then let’s have Christmas here! We can even use a Christmas tree from right outside.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, hon. Christmas is still a couple months away. It’s not even Halloween yet.”
“Can we have Halloween here too?”
“You’ve opened Pandora’s Box,” Tabitha said to Rex with a smile.
“My bad—do people still say that? Oh—and now for some genuinely bad news. The generator looked fine in the shed. I think it should fire up tomorrow. But the pump down at the lake has gone kaput. Which means we’ll probably have electricity, but we won’t have any water except what we lug up from the lake in buckets.”
“So I don’t have to have a bath tonight?” Ellie asked happily.
“Or tomorrow,” Rex said.
“Yeah!”
“But that also means when you need to use the potty,” Tabitha said, “you’re going to have to pour your own water into the bowl to make it flush. I’ll show you how before bedtime.”
“Speaking of toilets,” Rex said, “how was the outhouse?”
“Ugh,” she said. “However, I did appreciate the star cutout in the door. Bit of a change from the usual crescent moon.”
“Ah,” Rex
said, holding up a finger, “here’s something that might come in handy on your next trivia night…”
“Our resident armchair polymath,” Tabitha remarked.
Rex would consider himself more of a humble trivia buff than an armchair polymath, but in any event, he did love learning, and one of his favorite studies of interest was how mundane things people took for granted in the present originally came into being. He said, “The tradition of carving symbols into the doors of privies began in the early eighteen hundreds, because back then most of the population was illiterate.”
“What’s illyate?” Ellie asked.
“Illiterate,” Tabitha said, “means you can’t read or write.”
“I’m not illyate. I know uppercase and lowercase.”
“A sun was usually used on the men’s door,” Rex went on, “and a moon on the women’s. But over time, when restrooms with plumbing began to replace outhouses, the outhouses that were first to be torn down were the men’s, because they were never as well kept up as the women’s. Eventually the only outhouses left were women’s with the moons on the doors. These became unisex—and the reason why the crescent moon is the symbol for all outhouses today.”
“Where do you read this stuff?” Tabitha said, shaking her head.
“Gotta read something on the long-haul flights. Like everybody says, planes fly themselves these days.”
“So you have yourself an original gem out there?”
“The outhouse? I suppose so. Maybe I should put it up on eBay? Where’s Bobby?”
“He’s upstairs in bed,” Ellie said, her attention once again on the chipmunk. “He doesn’t like being here with just my mom when you’re not here too.”
“Ellie,” Tabitha said sharply, color rising in her cheeks.
“I’ll go check on him,” he said.
Rex went to the next room and climbed the steep staircase, deciding that he’d block off the top with cushions from the sofa later on, so the kids didn’t inadvertently stumble down them if they got up during the night.
The attic was an oblong triangular-shaped room. A window at each end allowed light during the daytime. The hodgepodge collection of furniture included a chest he knew was filled with children’s books, an old dining room set in a corner, a rocking horse in another corner, a metal filing cabinet, and a small dresser. A threadbare red rug of Native American design covered part of the floor.
Bobby lay on his belly in one of two handmade beds, the LED flashlight he kept on his single-key keychain clutched in one hand, the bright beam illuminated a book open before him.
Rex crossed the room, bending so he didn’t smack his head on the exposed beams of the pitched roof. He sat on the edge of the bed.
“What’re you reading, bud?” he asked.
Bobby showed him the cover. “Sesame Street.”
“Good?”
“So-so.”
A few other books from the chest were beside him. Rex picked up the top one. The Secret of the Old Mill. The 1950s-illustrated cover showed Joe and Frank Hardy peeking between a gap in the floorboards of the eponymous old mill—and if Rex’s memory served him correctly, the plot had something to do with counterfeit money.
“Isn’t it a bit early to be up here in bed?” he asked his son lightly.
“I’m not sleeping,” Bobby said. “Daddy?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“Why do my little things hurt when I squeeze them? My intesticles? They’re not even attached to my body.”
Rex blinked. That certainly hadn’t been the question he’d been expecting. “Well, first of all,” he said, “I think you’re mixing up your testicles and intestines. Your testicles are down by your penis, while your intestines are inside your stomach. As to why your testicles are so sensitive, I don’t really know. Maybe it’s your body’s way of telling you not to go get them all banged up, because they’re important in making babies.”
“Do you have to kiss a girl to make babies?”
“You have to do a bit more than that, bud. But let’s leave that discussion for another time. Ellie and Tabitha are trying to feed the chipmunk downstairs. Do you want to come back down and feed it too?”
“No,” he said simply, and lowered his eyes.
Rex considered giving him another lecture about his mother, how she would be coming back soon, how Tabitha wasn’t taking her place and never would. But instead he said, “Want to see something cool?”
Bobby perked up. “What is it?”
“It’s a surprise. It’s outside.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll show you. C’mon.”
Rex led the way back downstairs to where Ellie and Tabitha were still fussing over the chipmunk.
“He eating yet?” Rex asked them.
“No,” Ellie said despondently.
Bobby pulled on his shoes. “I’m getting a surprise!” he said.
“What is it?” Ellie asked, alarmed she wasn’t in on the know.
“My dad’s going to show me something cool.”
“I want to see too!”
“This is only for Bobby now, Ellie,” Rex said. “You can see it tomorrow.”
“That’s not fair!”
“That’s enough, Ellie,” Tabitha said. “You can stay here with me. Rex said he’ll show you tomorrow.”
“But I want to see it now.”
“We won’t be long,” Rex said, retrieving from his overnight bag the Maglite flashlight he’d packed. “And when we get back we’ll roast some wieners over a fire. How does that sound?”
“Poop head!”
“Ellie!” Tabitha said, stunned.
“Come on, bud,” Rex said softly, ushering Bobby outside to escape the inevitable melodrama that was about to play out.
He closed the door just as Tabitha told Ellie she had lost her iPad privileges during the car ride home, and Ellie shrieked in indignation.
Rex took Bobby’s hand and led him away. It had stopped raining, and a damp heaviness weighed over the forest.
“Is she going to cry again?” Bobby asked gleefully.
“That’s not for you to worry about.”
Playing the flashlight beam ahead of them, Rex picked a path through the dense growth of trees, the ghostly trunks of which all looked the same in the black of night. He thought he was heading in the right direction, but after a hundred paces or so, with each step taking them deeper into the woods, he began to second-guess himself.
Then he saw it.
“There!” he said, aiming the yellow beam at the wreck.
“What is it, Daddy?” Bobby asked.
“Let’s go have a closer look.”
“A car!” Bobby exclaimed as they drew closer. “It’s a car!”
It was indeed a car—some type of Ford, according to the hood ornament and badge, and one probably dating back to the 1920s or 30s.
The years had certainly not been kind to it. Rust had eaten large holes through much of its body, which appeared to have once been painted tan. At some point someone had taken its four tires, so it sat flat on the axles and black fenders. The fifth wire wheel remained mounted to the trunk. Only tattered scraps remained of the canvas convertible top.
Rex hiked Bobby into his arms so he could see inside the car—though there was little to see save for the aged steering wheel and the brown seats spilling their guts of foam and springs.
“What do you think, bud?” he said. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“How’d it get way out here?” Bobby asked, clearly in awe.
The story Rex’s father had told Rex and Logan went something like this: The car belonged to an old prospector named Barry White. Barry had amassed a small fortune during the Cayoosh Gold Rush, but his wealth had turned him paranoid over time. Believing his partner was planning on robbing him, Barry invited the man over for dinner one evening and sunk an axe in his back. Barry dumped the corpse into the trunk of his car and went looking for a spot to bury it. Unfortunately for him, he drove off the road and
crashed into a tree. Injured but alive, Barry left the wreck where it was and resumed his life as normal. And to this day—cue the dun dun dun—the remains of his partner could still be found in the trunk of the car.
Unsurprisingly, the Legend of Barry White had given Rex and Logan nightmares for the rest of the summer, and Rex wasn’t going to make this same mistake by passing on the story to Bobby, so he simply said, “There used to be a road—more of a dirt path—through the forest. The driver of this car crashed into a tree and left it right here. Over the years the woods grew up around the car and the road disappeared.”
“Can we open the trunk?” Bobby asked.
Rex frowned. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Maybe there’s gold inside?”
“Oh, well—no. We don’t need to do that. The metal’s all sharp and rusted. If it cuts you, you could get tetanus—”
Something loud and large crashed through the undergrowth perhaps fifty feet away. Rex whipped the flashlight left and right in alarm, throwing yellow ribbons through the night.
“Daddy?” Bobby said, worried.
Rex barely heard him.
A deer? A bear? A cougar?
Jesus Christ, where did it go?
“Daddy!”
“It’s okay, bud,” he said in a harsh whisper. “It was just a deer. But we should probably start back now.”
Holding Bobby tightly against his chest, Rex heeded his own advice, resisting the urge to run.
CHAPTER 5
Tabitha had set the Oscar Meyer wieners and buns out on two paper plates on the kitchen counter, and she was dicing onions and tomatoes when Rex and Bobby returned.
Bobby burst past the afghan into the room, saying, “We saw a deer!” When he found only Tabitha in the kitchen, he clamped his mouth shut.
“Ellie’s having a Time-Out right now,” Tabitha said.
“Can I come down?” Ellie called from the attic.
“Are you going to be polite?”
