It took me nearly three hours to get the old claw tub up on the front porch of the cabin by myself. I decided to take a break.
I sat down, dangling my legs off the front edge of the porch, thinking back on the last year.
It was rainy the day I found the old rundown shack on the edge of Lake Earl. It looked like an old-line shake at one time, but most recently, it was home to an assorted number of birds.
It sat in the middle of a clearing on a slight rise in the land. Around it grew aging redwood trees and slender youthful looking alders. It could not be seen from the paved roadway to the east, and I wondered how long it had sat invisible from the duck blinds set up along Lake Earl to the west.
“Hello to the cabin…” I shouted.
No one answered, so I approached it. I was hoping to find some old hermit living there with a brewing cup of coffee close by.
“Hello to the cabin…” I yelled out one more time.
By now I was standing on the first step to the front porch. Again no one answered my call.
I stepped on the first plank and it growled.
That flushed the first of the birds, which exploded like a shotgun shell out the pane-less windows in all directions. I instinctively jerked my 20-gauge shotgun closer to my body.
“Pigeon and quail,” I thought.
The wind picked up as I opened the door to the cabin and stepped inside. I was happy to have found this little place to stay out of the weather.
Duck hunting for me was double misery. I rarely bagged a bird and I usually got soaked for my trouble.
The room was bare save a two-by-two table built into the wall and a flimsy wooden chair. It also had a pot-bellied stove no bigger than a bale of hay.
On the wall above the table was a calendar. Nineteen-sixty-something was the year. The thumb tack that held it was rusted and left a golden halo on the aged browned page between the six and whatever number had been there.
Further down the wall was a window. It had no glass in it.
I could feel the cold blowing through it.
The window next to the door was also without glass, yet there did not seem to be any glass inside the cabin. Except for these things there was nothing that stood out about this hidden little line shack.
Yet I wondered, “Had it been someone’s home, some prospector lured by the whisper of color, or had it been some sort of stop over for an outdoors man?”
I walked to the back of the cabin and discovered a second room.
In the darkness it was invisible. The floorboards creaked as I passed over them and the darkness grew as I touched the narrow doorway of the sectioned off room.
There were no windows in this room and no way to see what lay beyond the door. I peeked inside brief enough.
FWAP!
Out of the darkness of the second room came an explosion. A heavy thumping sound beat past my head as I tripped backwards to get away from the blur that rushed at me.
I dropped my shotgun as the shadow jumped to life and came straight at me. I caught a floor plank with the heel of my left boot and tumbled backward.
I sprawled on the ground flat on his back.
The shotgun discharged like a loud clap of thunder. The shot sent the gun rocketing towards the front of the cabin and scattering lead pellets into the dark room.
I kept rolling, moving away from the shadow, pulling out my long knife as I tumbled head over heel coming to my feet.
By this time I had covered twenty of the thirty-foot floor of the cabin. I stood there with knife in hand facing the shadow of the doorway. My shot-gun behind me; I stepped back and to my left, never taking my eyes off the opening of the door.
My heart pounded in my chest as I gasped for a breath of air. My muscles were tight and ready to defend if I were attacked again.
But nothing happened. So I bent down and picked up my gun. Once I had it in hand, I sheathed my knife.
“Who, who,” came a voice above him.
I jumped sideways to the right and flattened myself against the wall of the cabin.
As I did, I looked up. What I saw brought a foolish kind of smile to my face.
It was jus’ a barn owl. I laughed out loud at my own fright.
The bird looked down at him and repeated, “Who.”
Then it flew out the open front door. I slid down the wall and squatted on his haunches. For the first time I noticed my knees were shaking as were my hands.
*******
I chuckled, “That was only a few months ago and look at this place now.”
Then I stood up and proceeded to lumber the tub into the cabin.
Later that same evening, I stood looking at my new tub. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to throw it away.
Of course, he couldn’t believe I had risked swamping my rowboat on Lake Earl jus’ to get it to the cabin. If anyone saw me, I didn’t know it. I didn’t want anyone to poke fun at me. If they did, it was best that I did not know.
I was proud of my new tub anyway.
Now I could take a bath like a king. Now I didn’t have to use an old discarded feed tub anymore.
“Yeah,” I thought, “I still got to heat the water on the stove, but look how much I can stretch out in it.”
Turning, I and went back to the stove where I had two pails of water heating.
I had the cabin looking neat.
The table that was built into the wall had a lantern on it. The window next to it had glass in each pane.
A blanket hung on the wall served as a curtain. On the opposite side of the cabin I had fashioned a bed.
It was built into the wall, same as the table. The newer two by fours and plywood shined against the grayness of the older wood.
A green and brown shag carpet that had been tossed in the garbage now covered the floor. It was tacked down on the edges to prevent it from rolling up as it had a natural tendency to do.
The county dump was jus’ across from the cabin. It was only a quarter-mile from the lake’s edge.
Several times a week I would go there and rummage around. I could still hear Dad say, “Another man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.”
I would walk the three miles from the feedlots where I worked, to the county dump. If I found something I’d follow the shoreline around, get my rowboat and paddle back across to the dump. Once there, I would load my find into the boat and take it home.
The hard part was taking the things I found down to the water’s edge. And the hardest was the tub.
At first, I didn’t believe I would be able to get it home. It took me two tries just to get it to the lake from the dump as it was heavy!
The third night I got it into the boat, but not without problems. My first attempt tipped the boat on its side filling it up with water.
The second try caused the boat to scamper away from the shore. I was just about to give up when a small wind drove the boat back to shore.
My third and final attempt was successful. I dragged the boat up on the sandy shoreline. Then I lifted the tub with a loud grunt, struggling not to drop it, setting it down in the boat.
I pushed the boat out into the water with the intention of climbing on board.
However, that was met with defeat. The tiny rowboat was nearly overwhelmed by the massive bulk of a tub.
Its hefty weight showed as just the four-inch border of the boat remained above water. But it remained afloat.
I couldn’t row it across, the shortest line between two points. I would have to walk. So I grabbed the tow rope on the bow of the boat and proceeded to walk along the shore of the lake.
It had been a hard day. First I had worked all day work, and then I struggled with the tub until late evening.
The sun had long since dropped below the horizon and I knew I should be asleep by now. But I also knew I had worked too hard to get the tub home to my little cabin and I was not going to go to bed without using it first.
The water was ready. It was a rolling boil. I lifted the first five-gallon bucket and poured it into the tub, the steam clouding my glasses. I hurried back to the second bucket and jus’ as quickly dumped its heated contents into the waiting tub.
I peeled off my work jeans and shirt and climbed in after the water.
“It wasn’t much water,” I thought.
I would have to find a better way of heating water, and more of it, but for now it was enough.
*******
The weather had turned wicked on the lake that fall. It was El Nino. The wind howled across the lake from the Pacific. It thrashed at the trees that stood in defense of the cabin. It brought with it a cold beating rain.
I dreaded walking to work and back again.
My long thermals, flannel shirt and rain slicker were hardly enough to keep me from getting chilled to the bone. Many times the wind would rip the hat from my head and I’d have to spend half an hour chasing it down or retrieving it from the branches of some tree.
There wasn’t much to do in the feedlots either. They were mostly mud now.
The ranchers in the area had stocked away for the winter months so fewer bales of hay needed to be moved or oats sacked. Even the fishermen and loggers had pulled out. The sea was too choppy, and lands too muddy.
This time of year was always the same it seemed to me; everything slowed down or came to a stop. It was worse this year though, with the weather acting up as it was.
The cabin was in great shape; however, it was chinked against the onslaught of the winter wind that buffeted the North coast. The old pot-bellied stove was proving itself to be trustworthy time and again as it warmed the place up. That was good to, as I was certain my feet were going to fall off a number of times from the cold.
I couldn’t understand why I was so cold. It was not nearly as cold as it had been a year ago at Warren AFB in Cheyenne.
It was so cold that I got frostbite during a military funeral. That day I cried like a baby in front of all the other Airmen as the medics held me down, forcing my feet into a pail of warm water.
Many of the Airmen thought I was going to lose all of my toes. I amazed them by getting up and walking around two days later and back marching with them within a week.
*******
That was the one thing that made the trudging around in the rain and wind worth it to me. I would always be able to return to my cabin and the pot-bellied stove with the banked coals. Within minutes it would be so hot that my Wrangler’s would feel like they were on fire.
Buddy came out to me as I stood ankle-deep in the mud. I was trying to muck out one of the holding pens.
“Let’s knock off early,” Buddy said.
He slapped me on the back. I pushed back my yellow slicker, reaching inside it and pulling out my pocket watch; t was quarter to five, Friday night.
I smiled at Buddy and replied, “Okay.”
That would give me the extra few minutes I needed to get over to Archie’s and pick up the parts I needed for the lawn mower I had found. It didn’t run, but that did not matter to me. I would get it to work, and then he’d make it into a generator, which meant electricity.
I was excited about the possibility of having electrical power in my cabin and the chance to have extra light or maybe a way to heat up water for my tub. I might even have a radio playing in my cabin at night for company.
As things were, I turned the radio on sparingly. Batteries could not be found in the dump and they cost money.
A generator was the answer, and it came in the form of a broken, thrown out lawn mower engine. With a little care and some elbow grease, I was certain that I could get it to work.
Right now though, I needed to get over to Archie’s. He could fix anything and he said he’d help me if he needed it and I was willing to trade it off by painting the inside of Archie’s shop.
“Did you get the valve?” I asked as I stood next to Archie.
Archie had his body part way under a car. The metal casters scratched on the smooth cement as Archie rolled from under the car.
He sat up and said, “Yup, over under the counter,” then he added, “Here, hold this wrench for me.”
I leaned over into the hood of the car and grabbed on to the wrench as Archie rolled back under it. Quickly Archie gave it a twist and then rolled back out and sat up.
“Thanks,” Archie said through his greasy red mustache.
“Thank you,” I responded as I picked up the valve and headed back out into the rain.
*******
The howling wind could torment the tallest of the surrounding redwood trees. It would twist them one direction then, the other. It caused them to groan as the wind swirled and tumbled through them.
The local Indians claimed that the moaning and groaning were the trees spirit. The giant trees protected the Tolowa people from evil. It was the evil that called out to the wind as the wind tried to pry the spirits from the trees.
Occasionally the wind would gather up a spirit when a tree snapped apart. That is why the wind kept returning, it knew it had a chance because the spirit of the tree would sometimes grow old and weak like an old man and need to rest.
A number of times in the last few months, I had come to realize there was something to the Tolowa tales. Sometimes late at night the wind would blow just hard enough to cause a tree to moan.
The noise would give my heart a start because it would sound like a person screaming or shrieking. Some nights the wind would blow gently and the trees would sound like a child crying.
It was strange how my imagination would play tricks on me. I knew the Indian tales were just myths, but still late at night the frightful scream or soft crying would awaken me with a jolt.
*******
I put my head down as I turned in to the wind and rain.
It was only an hour-and-a-half walk home and I was looking forward to it. I wanted to sit in front of the stove and get warm and I wanted to see if the valve would make the engine start.
The wind let up about twenty minutes later and the rain stopped as well. I quickened his pace.
The sky to the west looked lighter. It was not the usual foreboding gray.
The horizon had an orange glow. It was as if the sun had gotten itself caught up on the jagged pentacle of Point Saint George reef and was slowly leaking its color into the line that separated the sky from the water.
Jus’ to the north was a plume of smoke.
“Someone’s started a fire in their chimney, no doubt,” I thought, “It is a good night for a warm fire.”
Again I thought about being in front of the pot-bellied stove. A glow of warm enveloped me as I trudged along the roadway.
In the distance I heard the gentle clanking of a cowbell. I couldn’t see the cow, but the bell was close by.
I wondered, “How many bells have I sold?” adding, “Could that be one of them?”
I chuckled at my thoughts. I knew that I could think of the most peculiar things at the oddest times.
However, my mind went blank as I crossed the cow path for the on hundredth time. What I saw, I couldn’t fully comprehend.
The cow path was well-marked and I used it as a landmark while walking home in the dark. I knew jus’ below the rise where the path crossed was the sheltered wooded area that hid my cabin.
I stood there for a long time.
My hands hung at my side, my mouth partly open, and my eyes unblinking. I was stunned at the sight before me.
My cabin lay in sputtered ruins — burning.
The wind had toppled a giant redwood over and it landed in the middle of the cabin. The pot-bellied stove had fallen over and the embers, banked to keep them from going out, had sparked to life and had set the back half of the cabin ablaze.
It was burned to glowing ashes. All that remained was the long piece of redwood tree that cut a swath of splintered destruction across the ruins of the cabin and the front porch and step themselves.
I walked slowly towards the remnants of the cabin. I was in shock. I climbed up the stairs to the front porch, sat down, dangling my legs off the edge, I thought back over the last year.
Then it began to rain again.