Chapter One

As he waited for the operator to connect his call, he wondered if he should have even bothered to make the effort. It had been a while since he had called, or asked for anything and he hoped that the time had lessened the rift between them. He wasn’t looking for anything other than a place to stay; surely the old man couldn’t deny him that. It wasn’t like he was going to be in the same house, or even the same state. He gazed out at the small town he was standing in, a town so small that the phone he was using was still in a booth. He hadn’t seen a real phone booth since he was a kid; actually since the last time he had been in this town. Like that time before, all of his worldly possessions were in a duffle bag at his feet. The phone buzzed in his ear as the connection rang on the other end. The phone was picked up and for the first time in a year or more he heard his father’s voice.
“I have a collect call from Justin, will you accept the charges?” The operator asked. Justin crossed his fingers that his father would accept the charges on the collect call. For a moment there was only silence. The empty line seemed to stretch the distance even more than it currently was.
“I accept,” came the gruff response. The operator told them to go ahead.
There was another moment of silence as both men tried to decide where to start the conversation. Justin finally did so. “Hello, Dad.”
“Justin.” The return was flat and even through the line, Justin could feel the coolness. “What can I do for you?”
Justin couldn’t help but laugh. To the point, straight to the point, thought Justin. “I need a favor.”
“I don’t have any money,” said his father quickly.
“I don’t need any money,” assured Justin. He did need the cash, but the effort of asking for any was more than he wanted to expend. He was almost hurt that the old man had even denied him the chance to ask, if he hadn’t been going to. Regardless, Justin knew that even if his father had a million dollars in spare change, Justin was going to get none of it. His chance at getting much out of the man was limited.
“Than to what do I owe the pleasure of this call? Did you call to give me more grief, or perhaps say you were sorry for all those things that happened?”
Justin sighed, but not loud enough for his father to hear. “Would it help if I said those things?”
“Would you mean them?” demanded his father.
“Probably not, Dad,” admitted Justin. Those words would be just that, empty phrases between to combatants that had spent most of a life time falling out of a friendship that had never been much of a family connection.
His father did sigh over the distance. “All I wanted was for you to accept--.”
“Dad, not right now, okay? We’re just not going to agree and I don’t want to talk about it. Listen this was a mistake, I’m going to go--.”
“What did you call for?”
Justin paused with the receiver inches away from his ear. He put it back up to his head and fought for a second with his own pride. “The cabin, Dad, can I stay in the cabin for a bit, until I get back on my feet?”
“That old hunting cabin?”
“Yeah, the old hunting cabin,” agreed Justin.
“No one’s been up there in a couple of years--,” provided his father. Not saying yes, but not out and out denying him the opportunity either. “Are you running from someone?”
“No, I just need to get on my feet.”
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
“I’m not in trouble, Dad, okay? Can I stay there or not, this is your dime you’re using up.”
The thought of money ticking away made the old man give a grunt over the line. “I suppose so. If I don’t you’ll just break into the place anyway and I’ll have to explain to the sheriff why I won’t press charges.”
“I wouldn’t break in, Dad; that was uncalled for.”
“Didn’t stop you from kicking in my door—“
“Jesus, I was seventeen—“
“And on drugs.”
“I was high, Dad, I had lost my key. You weren’t home.”
“The alarm company, the police…” the age old argument petered out. “I’ll call the reality company and tell them to give you a key.”
“Reality company?”
“I haven’t seen the sense in keeping the place if no one is going to use it. It doesn’t even have a proper bathroom or plumbing, so it’s been hard to sell. The property is on the wrong side of the mountain for builders… I’ll call. When are you going to get there?”
“Today. Later I guess. When are you going to call?”
“When we hang up. The key will be at Topp Homes Reality. Can you remember that?”
Justin looked up from the phone and down the street to where the red and white Topp Homes Reality sign hung over the sidewalk. He gave a small smile. “Yeah, I can remember that. Dad, is the truck still up there?”
“It’s all still up there.” There was a moment of silence that was at the same time comforting and accusing. Everything was still there because his father had not seen a need to come back and get it. Not in the years since his wife’s death, not since he and Justin had had their falling out, not since the new wife didn’t like the rural setting and the wood stove. “Well, I’ll call. I’ll tell them to expect you. Do you have any kind of ID? They might want that.”
“I do, Dad.”
“Than I’ll call.” There was a moment more of almost companionable quiet and just as suddenly, the call was disconnected.
Justin softly hung up his own end and with a small shake of his head, stepped out of the booth into the warm air. The small town was still small, still mostly quiet with the mountains to keep a careful watch over the thousand souls that lived there. Not much had changed in the years since his last visit; there was still the one stop light, the main drag was broken and dotted with patching which never lasted the summer. He spied the diner and decided that he should get something to eat before he picked up the key. How he was going to get to the cabin was still in question. In addition to getting there, Justin knew he was going to have to get food as well. He wondered if the local grocery was still in operation of if everyone drove the half hour to the nearest Kroger.
He knew that he must have looked like an anomaly to the local people, dressed as he was in old jeans and boots, a faded t-shirt and carrying the military style duffle bag. The style that the boots were, they might assume that he was one of the former military of the present war who was bumming across the nation. His beard was two days too long, and his hair looked as forgotten. He had thumbed his way to the small town for no reason other than he knew he could have at least spent the night before having to decide on a plan B.
As he walked, carrying his duffle, Justin took inventory of the money in his pocket. He had about three hundred dollars left. That would quickly be spent and Justin pondered the job situation here on the mountain. The logging companies were gone; most of the hardwood had been harvested years ago, the mining company had a “who you know’ hiring policy. He wondered if the mill needed any labor help or if he was also going to have to make the half hour trek to the next town for work. A battery for the truck, a couple gallons of gas; that was going to clear him of at least fifty of his dollars. Food for a couple of weeks, even eating on the cheap, that would be another hundred or so. Kerosene for the lamps, a propane tank for the stove, soap, cleaning supplies, essentials that he wasn’t even thinking about at the moment, all those things to just set up house keeping in the cabin were going to take him down to nearly zero dollars in a hurry. He wondered just what his father had meant when he said that it was “all still up there” and what that meant to his planning. With out going to the cabin first, he would not know.
Justin ducked into the diner and saw that the same old men, who had been younger once, younger but still old men to Justin, were in the diner talking what they talked and sipping coffee. They looked at Justin as he slid onto a stool with his duffle at his feet. The waitress, a pretty woman about Justin’s own age, came up to him from behind the counter. She was dressed in jeans and a green tee shirt. Her dark hair was held back in a pony tail and her green eyes were framed by dark rimmed glasses. She smiled at him as she slid the laminated menu in front of him.
“Hello, can I get you something to drink?”
The question made Justin realize that he was very thirsty. “Yeah, your biggest glass of water with lemon and a coke.”
“Sure, I’ll be right back.”
Justin glanced around and saw that the old men had returned to their conversation, largely ignoring him as he glanced at the menu, easily deciding on the patty melt and fries.
He placed the menu on the counter in front of him and looked around at the diner again. It wasn’t very different from the last time he had been to the small town; there might have been a new coat of paint on the walls, but for the most part the seats were the same red plastic, a few years more worn, but basically the same. He had remember that the place had been a breakfast joint in those days, with most of the towns residence stopping on the way to the lumber mill or the mine, either on the way to first shift jobs or coming from the third shift diggings. Justin and his father and friends had stopped in on the way to the cabin many times, trips when they had gone hunting or times when they were escaping for no reason other than to get away. Than he had been young, still impressionable and the little town had seem idyllic in its ruralness and attitude. The last time he had really been to the town with his father was at the age of sixteen; he had come up grudgingly, knowing that his father was trying to make some kind of effort to be a friend and a father after having been absent in his life for the last two or three years. Justin remembered the discomfort of the ride into town the silent meal in this same eatery, and the strained ride up to the cabin. They had stayed one night before leaving. His father had drank himself through a six pack of beer and Justin had smoked two joints that night, all efforts at conversation stilted and failing on both parts. They left the next morning without another meal served.
Justin had been to the cabin a couple times since, with friends on his graduation night from high school, with a “hippy” girlfriend and again with a couple of friends to party. He had not been to the retreat for a few years and wondered just how it looked now after the passage of time had taken its toll.
The arrival of his drinks broke his reverie. He smiled as the water was placed in front of him.
“You ready to order?”
Justin gave her his choice and she nodded, turning to the window to place the ticket on the wheel. Justin had worked at a couple of greasy spoons in his day and knew that if the cook was worth his salt, he would already have been listening to the diners and known what they were going to order as slow as they were. The waitress picked up the coffee pot and made her rounds of the old men, talking with them briefly before returning to Justin, who had drained more than half his water glass. She nodded to the glass.
“Need a refill?”
“Please.”
Topping the glass, she set it in front of Justin. “You passing through?”
Shaking his head, Justin sipped at the water. “I’m going to be staying up on the mountain; my folks have a cabin up there.”
“Oh.” She began to turn away.
“Oh?” repeated Justin, trying to get her to stay a moment longer. “What does ‘oh’ mean?”
“Nothing, really—“
“Yeah it does,” pushed Justin. “It means something like; oh, a rich kid slumming—right?”
She debated on weather or not to answer since her tip could depend on it. With a sigh that Justin barely heard, she finally shrugged. “I guess.”
“No, no rich kid here,” assured Justin. “This cabin’s been in the family since I was a kid, but it’s nothing to shake a stick at. Just a little two room hunting cabin with an outhouse. I think my father said that it was on the wrong side of the mountain to sell.”
As if the assurance meant something to her, she smiled. “You’ve got a place on Black Thorn than?”
Nodding, Justin gave her the road. “Our lane is off there and about four hundred feet too long for the power to run to it. My dad never wanted to put up the pole or stretch the wire to meet the power company half way.”
“Yeah, and now he can’t sell because of the heavy metal in the water--.”
“Heavy metal?” queried Justin. That was a bad thing since all the water came from either the creek or the 500 gallon water barrel they had lugged up there to catch rain water. If the creek water was contaminated, his options for drinking and cleaning were halved to bottled water and sponge baths.
“Depends on the well,” she told him. “They say the creek is still good.”
The cook called for order up. She turned and grabbed up his plate and returned with it in hand. Justin liked the way she moved and the frank way she spoke. “So if I get my water from the creek I should be good?”
“Just how rustic is this place?”
“I told you it was two rooms and an outhouse,” he reminded her.
She stared at him for a second. “Are you talking about the McClellan place?”
“The one and only.”
“Wow, I didn’t think that was still standing.”
“I hope it is, I’m planning on sleeping there tonight.”
She looked past him and out at the street beyond the diner. “What did you drive?”
Justin picked up a fry. “I walked and hitch hiked.”
“How are you going to get up there?”
“Same way.”
“Good luck with that,” she told him. “That road is pretty much a dirt path now since the mine shut down and the lumber mill moved on.”
Justin shrugged as he picked up his patty melt. The onions were hanging off the grilled bread in long ropes and the grease was already running on his hand. It was going to be a good sandwich. “I’ve got the rest of the day to get there. Is the grocery still open?”
“Just.”
He thanked her and bit into the sandwich, tasting the thousand island dressing they used as it mixed pleasantly with the onion, fried beef patty and cheese. She moved to take one of the old men’s money, leaving Justin to his meal.