“Sorry about that,” the man said, still turned away from Nora. Even at that distance, she could see his neck and ears were slightly reddened. He was blushing. At least she wasn’t the only one who was embarrassed.
“Not your fault,” Nora said, trying to hide the irritation in her voice. “I’m decent now.”
He slowly turned around, and Nora got the distinct impression he didn’t quite believe her. When he saw she was, in fact, fully clothed, his face relaxed and the pink hue gradually faded from his cheeks.
“I… I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said. “It’s just that Jake mentioned you were here and he asked me to stop by and check in on you.” Willie regretted the last sentence the second it came out of his mouth. He wasn’t supposed to mention that fact, but he was a little flustered after seeing Nora half naked, he hadn’t known what else to say. So much for discretion.
So, Jake thinks I need to be looked after, Nora thought, slightly annoyed. Here she was, trying to be an independent woman, but Jake went and asked her neighbor to check up on her. Were all men control freaks? Did they all think women needed to be taken care of, looked after, and told what to do? Jake clearly thought Nora needed help and, as a result, a strange man had found her half naked. Nora didn’t feel comfortable about that at all. She had no idea who this guy was or what he was capable of. But she did know she had no way to defend herself if he turned out to be a lunatic and no way to call for help, either.
The man still stood a good distance away from Nora. Other than turning around to face her, he hadn’t made a single move.
“I brought you some homemade jerky. Thought you might like it,” he said uncertainly, trying to fill in the silence. He held up two clear plastic bags. “This bag’s black-tailed deer and this one’s brown bear. Oh, I’m Willie, by the way.”
Willie. Lily had mentioned her closest neighbor was named Willie and there was a walking path connecting her property to his. Nora nervously smiled at him. If he was her neighbor, she would need to get over her fears. As she’d been told more than once now, neighbors were an important part of surviving out there. She’d have to be friendly with her neighbors, even if they did look a little scary.
“Willie,” she said as welcoming as she could given the circumstances. “It’s nice to meet you. I understand we’re neighbors?”
He smiled back then, and began walking toward her. Nora saw he walked with a noticeable limp, but it didn’t seem to slow him down much.
“I really am sorry ’bout sneakin’ up on you like that,” Willie said when he reached the clothesline. He stood a few feet away from her and smiled at her through his unkempt beard. He stood no taller than Nora’s five and a half foot frame. His gray eyes emitted a sense of serenity and Nora wondered how she could have ever doubted this man’s intentions.
Willie held the two bags of jerky out to Nora with friendly smile.
“Thank you,” she said graciously, taking the bags of jerky and wondering what to do next. The proper thing, Nora decided, would be to invite him in. She remembered the gift of Scotch that Lily had given her, along with Lily’s comment that it would come in handy when Willie came calling. “Would you like to come inside?”
“No, no,” Willie said shaking his head. “I have work to do. Just wanted to make sure you was okay out here.”
“Are you sure?” Nora asked, strangely reluctant to see him go. Just a moment before she had questioned his motives, and now she was hesitant to be left alone. “I have a nice bottle of Scotch…”
“Maybe next time,” he said, turning to leave.
“Next time,” Nora repeated, wondering when that might be.
Nora watched him make his way down the trail until he disappeared, then she turned and walked up to the cabin, wishing Willie would have accepted her offer to come inside. This whole being alone thing sucked.
Inside, Nora’s loneliness was even more difficult to deal with. She tried to ignore the feeling of isolation by keeping herself busy. This wasn’t her home, and yet it was, at least for the time being. But it still felt like someone else’s cabin. If she was going to stay there for any length of time, she needed to make it feel like her own. The old, worn out couch was depressing to look at and the soot-covered wall behind the wood stove filled the whole place with a stagnant, thick odor. What she really needed was to make the place more livable. She remembered how Jake had swept through the cabin the day before, tossing out Pete’s old smelly blankets. “Pete stench,” she said aloud, recalling Jake’s words. He had looked so pleased with himself as he’d thrown the nasty old blanket over the clothesline and dusted his hands off on his blue jeans. Even though she hadn’t wanted him to take charge the way he had, it was actually kind of cute. Why was she thinking about him again? The last thing Nora needed was a man, especially one like Jake. Nora had gotten the distinct impression Jake liked to take charge, to be in control, to step in and save the day. Well, she didn’t need a knight in shining armor. She could get by on her own just fine. She definitely hadn’t liked how domineering he’d been out on the water, telling her she wasn’t fit to drive down a road. But, she had to admit he was great to look at. The image of him in the boat, with his hand over the edge snaking his fingers over the surface of the water, popped into her head. He had looked so perfectly content out there on the water, so incredibly gorgeous. Ugh, she needed to get Jake off her mind.
Work always helped Nora clear her mind, and she definitely had plenty of work to do. She picked up one of the boxes and tore the packing tape off the top. In the first box, Nora had packed more practical things like her favorite coffee mug, a French press to make her precious coffee, and a small electric hand-held coffee bean grinder. Nora took everything out of the box and sat the things on the table. The coffee grinder, she stuck her tongue out at and tossed it carelessly aside. She would have to settle for pre-ground coffee from now on. She picked up the second box and began unpacking those things next. That box held more clothes, along with her iPod and a handful of DVDs. There was also a scrapbook, a few framed photographs, and a pair of decorative candles she had never lit because they were merely for looks. Now, they would get some use, Nora thought as she set them out on the table. The final box held mostly shoes. All kinds of them. Absolutely none of them were very practical.
The duffel bag, Nora dragged up the ladder and into the loft. Her suitcases still sat at the foot of the bed where Jake had left them. Nora eyed up the dresser next to the bed. It was small. Only three drawers. She pulled open the top drawer. It held Pete’s socks and underwear. Nora didn’t have to look hard to see the holes in the old garments. They looked like they should have been tossed out about 100 wears ago. Nora pulled the drawer out all the way, carried it to the edge of the loft, and dumped it out onto the floor below. She replaced the top drawer in the dresser and opened the next. More clothes. Shirts mostly. She pulled them out and tossed them over the loft railing, too.
The bottom drawer held a few pairs of pants. When Nora reached in to grab the pants, she found something else in there, too. Hidden under the pants was a long, flat wooden box. Nora pulled it out and sat down on the bed. The clasp was rusty, but it opened easily enough. She reached into the box and pulled out Pete’s journal. Flipping through the pages, it looked pretty mundane. More like a record of how many fish he’d caught and how much wood he’d chopped, keeping track of how much he’d need for the following winter. Nora made a mental note to read through it later. The long lists of supplies, along with Pete’s notes on when they ran out, would be helpful. She put the journal back in the box and resumed her work.
With the dresser cleaned out, Nora took her time unpacking her clothes and neatly placing them in the dresser, organizing them almost the same way Pete had kept his clothes, though her clothes weren’t nearly as practical as Pete’s had been. Tight skirts and low-cut blouses were useless here, unless Nora wanted to attract a lumberjack or a lonely backwoodsman… or the yeti she had joked about with Lily. She had a feeling she wo
uldn’t need the fancy clothes and make-up to do that, though. All she had to do was be female. Oh, well, Nora thought. These clothes will have to do for now. But the next time she went into town, she would have to stop by The General Store and hope they carried women’s clothing.
Her work in the loft was done. Nora’s clothes were unpacked. The bed was made. Her quilt was spread out over the twin mattress. It looked as homey as it was going to look in her new bedroom.
Picking up the wooden box and the three pairs of jeans Pete had left in the bottom drawer, Nora carefully climbed back down the ladder. She tossed the jeans on the pile of clothes littering the floor and sat the wooden box down on the table. She still had a lot of work to do, so she sat down on the floor and sorted through the clothes, tossing the unusable items into a throw-away pile to burn. The jeans she folded and packed into one of her now empty boxes. She did the same with the shirts, determined to save them and use them for something. At the very least, the shirts could be used for rags.
After Nora sorted through Pete’s old clothes, she pulled everything Pete had left in the cabin off the shelves. She arranged the canned goods according to the type of food and expiration date, but also found quite a few cans with the paper torn off and absolutely no indication of what the cans held. Those, she stacked off to the side, thinking someday she might feel adventurous and open up the cans to see what was inside.
On the bottom shelf, she found two large jugs of distilled vinegar next to a metal bucket. Nora went outside to the hand pump and filled the bucket part way with water. She came back inside and added some vinegar, making a cleaning solution to get rid of the musty smell in the cabin. Then she set to work scrubbing down the walls, ceiling and floor of the cabin. Every surface and every fixture got a good scrubbing.
By the time the sun disappeared behind the mountains, Nora had everything unpacked and in its place. The work didn’t quell her loneliness, but at least the cabin felt more livable.
That evening, instead of sleeping on the couch as she had done the first two nights, Nora slept in the small bed up in the loft. As it turned out, the bed was actually rather comfortable, but in the morning, the sun awoke her much earlier than she would have liked. That’s when she noticed the cold. Even through the covers, Nora felt the chill of the early morning and she knew the fire had gone out.
Wrapping the blanket around her, Nora hopped out of bed and climbed down the ladder. The wood stove still held a few hot coals, so Nora shoved a couple small pieces of wood in and hoped they would catch fire quickly. When that happened, it took no time at all for the entire cabin to warm up and Nora shed the blanket, as well as the sweater she’d worn to bed over her pajamas. She still couldn’t get used to how fast the cabin could go from freezing temperatures to a sauna. It was so warm she had to open the window a crack and let some cool air in to balance the temperature.
Still in her pajamas, Nora slipped on her shoes and ran out into the cold to pump some water into a pitcher and then ran back inside. She put a pot of water on the wood stove to make coffee, along with a big kettle of water she would use to wash up with once it got warm. It was a good thing Lily sent some ground coffee with all those other supplies, or else Nora would have been trying to grind up her whole coffee beans on the rocks outside.
When the coffee was ready, Nora sat down at the table with a large mug, looking out the window at the water. Once, she saw a ripple on the surface of the water that caught her attention. She couldn’t really tell what it was, but she imagined it was a whale. She hadn’t seen one of those yet and she liked the idea that there might be a giant whale swimming in the inlet a few dozen yards from her home, that just under the surface there was something beautiful waiting to be discovered. If only it would break through and reveal itself to the world.
That’s kind of how Nora felt, like she’d been hiding her true self from everyone. That’s what she’d done with Conner. While he paraded her around like a prize, she played the part of the ideal girlfriend. She willingly let him control every aspect of her life, hid pieces of herself to make him happy. But not anymore. Now, she was on her own and she was so close to breaking through the barrier, to becoming her own person, to letting people see her for who she really was.
There’s too much time to think out here.
Never in her life had Nora been so introspective. No matter how much she tried to enjoy the peace and quiet, she couldn’t get past the overwhelming sense of loneliness she felt, and it wasn’t only because she didn’t have any close neighbors. She’d never gone an entire day without seeing another human being before. But this feeling of isolation had begun before Nora ever reached Alaska. Honestly, it may have been inside of her all along, even when she was with Conner, even when she’d been happy with him. She’d tried to cover it up with pretty clothes and to distract herself with a full social schedule, but inside she had always felt like she didn’t belong, like no one really understood her, like she was alone in the world. And now, she truly was alone.
She needed something to distract herself from her thoughts. The paperback romance novel Lily had given her still sat on the table. There wasn’t much else for Nora to do, so she curled up on the couch and settled in for a long reading session.
Around noon, Nora opened a can of tuna and ate some lunch.
After that, she went through the envelope the attorney had left for her. It was a bunch of paperwork showing the property was now hers. There were a couple things she needed to sign and return. She read through everything thoroughly and happily learned that since the property was not located within the borough, she would not have to worry about paying property taxes, which meant her money would stretch a lot further. Everything else looked pretty straightforward, so she signed the papers and stuffed them in the return envelope the attorney had provided. That took about a half-hour and left her wondering, once again, what to do with herself.
When the fire started to die down in the afternoon she carried a couple armloads of wood from the woodpile to the house. The woodpile was still substantial, and every bit of wood burned meant Nora would have less wood for the winter, but she didn’t care about that right now. She was still settling in to her new home. There would be plenty of time later to restock the woodpile.
She spent the evening flipping through Pete’s journal. Nora was surprised to find it wasn’t just lists of supplies. There were actual journal entries where Pete had shared his thoughts and feelings, little bits of himself preserved on paper. As she read his entries, the uncle she never knew became a little more real to her. His journal spoke of dreams he’d once had, a lost love from long ago, and a child he wished he could have known.
Two days into Nora’s solitude, Willie stopped by again, probably to make sure she was still alive. Nora was certain that was the only reason for his visit.
“If you still have that Scotch, I thought I’d take you up on it,” he said when Nora answered the door.
Nora smiled and invited him inside. After two days completely alone, it was nice to see another person.
He held in one hand a canister of smoked salmon he’d caught and smoked himself. In the other hand, he held a pair of used rubber boots. “I brought some stuff to trade for it, fair and square.”
They were brown and ugly, with small spikes on the sole for traction, and they looked exactly like the pair Willie was wearing. A month earlier she never would have considered wearing them, not even for practical purposes. Heck, even a week earlier she probably would have turned them down. But Nora knew better now and she accepted them graciously. They would keep her feet dry getting in and out of the boat, and that was a good thing, even if they were hideous to look at and might be uncomfortable to wear.
“Willie, have you been reading my mind?” she asked, grinning at the boots. They were exactly what she needed. She reached onto a shelf and pulled down the still unopened bottle of Scotch, offering it to him in exchange for the boots.
“Oh, no,” he said, chuckling as he sat down a
t the table. “These old boots ain’t worth that much. I was thinkin’ I’d just have a small glass for now.”
“Okay, then,” she said, grabbing a glass off the shelf and sitting it in front of the old man. She had a feeling she was getting the better end of the deal, but she didn’t push the issue.
Willie poured a small amount of Scotch into the glass, Nora sat down at the table across from him, and he launched into a story about the first time he met Pete. By the time the story was told, the glass of Scotch was empty. Nora offered him a second glass, but he politely refused. Not the kind to wear out his welcome, Willie stood up, said goodbye, and left.
His visit was short but Nora was glad for the company, as fleeting as it was. She now understood why Lily had given her the Scotch, as well. In the bush, it was almost as valuable as currency, maybe even more so.
Chapter 6
“I figured you’d be here,” Willie said as he approached the log home tucked back in the woods. Jake was perched on the log bench next to Willie’s front door. He’d been waiting there for a half-hour. “You know, I’ve seen more of you in the past week than I usually do in a month.”
Jake ignored Willie’s comment.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Why you askin’ me?”
“Well, you’ve been checking in on her every day, which means you’re the only one who knows how she’s really doing out there.”
“You almost sound a little jealous, you know that?” Willie said. “She’s been in that cabin for, what, five or six days now? And you’ve been out here almost every day this week askin’ about her. That’s not like you at all, especially this time of year when you’re usually out on the water. If you’re so concerned about her, you ought to go out and see for yourself, sometime.”
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