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“None of that stuff’s going nowhere. His family never came out here in the six years Daniel lived here. They ain’t coming now.” An elderly man, so wizened he looked like a slightly more alive version of his hickory walking stick, finally chimed in. “He bought that cabin from me, and he did a damn good job fixing it up. But it’s not like it has a lock or a key. If someone wants to send his story to a New York magazine, they can walk right in and do it.”
“No locks? Is that normal around here?”
“It’s the frontier out here,” said Tattoo Guy, as if that explained it. Then he added, “there’s worse things to worry about than burglars. If someone rips you off, where are they gonna go?”
She supposed that made sense, but at least Lila’s hardware store had come with a solid deadbolt. Even in “the frontier,” stores wanted to protect their inventory.
“Does anyone know where to find his story? Did he have a computer?”
Toni screwed up her face. “I think he had a laptop. Sometimes he brought it with him in the plow truck in case he had some down time.”
“He wrote stuff down on legal pads, too,” added Kathy. “I ordered them special for him.”
“Great.” Molly smiled wryly. “New York editors love getting handwritten submissions.” No one responded to that; maybe they knew—and cared—so little about New York editors that they didn’t catch her sarcasm.
“Cabin’s about three miles out of town on that old logging road,” the trapper told her. “Turn east at a big old cottonwood grove, cross a creek—probably flooding right now, so bring your boots—then hike another half a mile. Can’t miss it.”
20
She chose a day when Lila was working an extra-long shift and wouldn’t insist on coming with her. Lila hadn’t kept up with her running after high school, so a six-mile round trip would be a stretch for her. Anyway, she’d been a sprinter, not a distance runner. An inconsistent one who drove their coaches crazy, but fast when she focused.
Sometimes Molly thought that distance running required a certain kind of masochism. The endorphins were incredible, but so was the struggle to get to the endorphin part of the experience. But one beautiful thing about it was the sense of freedom and self-sufficiency. That had been the draw for her in high school. Run run run, pound pound pound, until she was far away from Indiana.
My feet can take me anywhere I want, she used to think as she logged lap after lap around the high school track. Now she thought the same thing as she climbed the old logging route into the hills. This time of year, most vehicles would have a hard time making it up here. During “breakup,” when the snow melted and the saturated ground turned to mud, Daniel probably parked his truck somewhere on the way to town and hiked the rest of the way to his cabin. The mud was so thick in places, it was like quicksand.
At times, she had to leave the road altogether and run alongside it in the woods instead. It was muddy there too, but there was enough moss and forest debris to provide a firmer surface for her poor HOKA Rockets.
The forest was bursting with new life. Everywhere she looked, ferns were unfurling their curly tendrils, cottonwood trees were covering themselves in tender green buds, and birds were darting from branch to branch. She’d never thought of the woods as a “busy” place, but that was simply because she hadn’t been looking. Or listening. Now that she was, she became aware of the rustling of tiny creatures looking for food, the chattering of squirrels warning of her presence, and plenty of other sounds she couldn’t identify.
Hopefully none of those sounds were caused by a bear. The bears, black and brown, were just waking up from hibernation with empty bellies and a need to fatten up quickly in the short summer season. Lila had given her a can of bear spray before her first long run, and trained her how to use it.
“They aren’t looking for trouble, luckily. They just want food, and to protect their adorable baby bear cubs. The spray won’t hurt them, it just stings their eyes.”
“Okay, but does it sting their eyes and enrage them, or sting and make them run home to their den?”
“I’m not sure, because I’ve never used it.”
“Reassuring.”
“It’s just a last resort. If you make some noise, they’ll avoid you.”
Molly carried the can in her fanny pack, along with some water, her phone and ID. If a bear carded her, she’d be in good shape. Likewise if he wanted to take a selfie with her. As for the canister, she just prayed she wouldn’t have to use it on the fly.
As she ran, thoughts flowed through her mind in random free-association patterns. The quiet here did something profound to her. Her life in New York was never without noise, and she was always busy there, dashing from one thing to another. Here, time felt different. She could breathe, she could ponder, she could just be.
She was in her happy runner’s groove when she reached the cottonwood grove. Groove, meet grove. God, she loved running and how it made her thoughts run like honey, so fluid, so flexible. No wonder she had most of her best strokes of genius about litigation strategy when she was on a run.
This time, her thoughts strayed to Daniel’s magazine story. Just as Lila had said about his book, no one really knew what his story was about. Maybe it was the same project. “Nature,” Toni had declared.
“That’s a big topic.”
She made a face. “Local nature?”
The rest of the group had chimed in with their best guesses about his subject matter.
“Nah, it was something historical. I think it was about that guy who went nuts and shot up the mail plane back in the seventies.”
“I thought it was about that rich kid who tried to live in a treehouse for a whole winter. His family had to hire a helicopter to forcibly rescue him.”
