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1
Hunter
As I sit at my desk, staring out at the evergreen trees dripping with last night’s rain, my phone rings and when I see it’s the doctor, I know it’s going to be the news I’m dreading.
“The tumor has spread,” she tells me. “We can look into experimental studies, but aside from that, we’ve done all we can.”
I run a hand through my hair and close my eyes. I know what they’re going to ask me next, and I’m dreading it.
“Hunter, your mother’s directive says she doesn’t want extreme measures. She’d like us to make her comfortable, but she gave you medical power of attorney.”
“Do what she wants,” I say, and my voice catches. “Make her comfortable.”
“Okay, but Hunter, you might want to see if you can get down here to see her a bit more often. She’s not going to make it more than a few months, and the medication for pain—she may not be herself for much longer.”
“Will do. Thanks.” I hang up and pace over to the window—the floor-to-ceiling glass pane that looks out over the mountain that’s covered in cascading evergreens. This room is the reason I bought this house—this and the fact that no one in their right mind wants to drive thirty minutes up a narrow dirt road for a visit.
Cocoa gets up from sleeping on her bed by the door, wagging her tail slowly as she sits down next to me. They say dogs can sense their owner’s emotional state, and I can’t help but feel like she’s holding space for me as she stares pensively out at the trees.
Visit more often.
I should.
I know I should.
It’s not that I don’t love my mother. I’m her only son, and she’s been nothing but supportive of me, but it’s so hard to see her hooked up to machines, no longer the person I remember. Her friends from the gardening club come by daily and have filled her hospital room with blooming orchids and forced-bulb tulips while her quilting group has brought mounds of intricate blankets. If there’s one thing my mother’s never been without, it’s people who love her.
“Come on, Cocoa,” I say, and she looks up at me mournfully and gives her golden tail another hesitant wave.
I can’t just stand here and mope. I’ve never been great with my emotions—another reason, besides the drive and the conditions—that I limit visits to my mother to a religious once a week.
Cocoa trails after me as I move to the bedroom to change out of my work clothes. In the years since I left the nine-to-five behind and started my own marketing company, I still like to keep my work separate from the rest of my life. So while I could do all my work at the breakfast table in my boxers, I still put on a collared shirt and slacks, shave, and comb my hair. I consider briefly changing into my gym clothes and working out in the home gym I have set up, but decided against it.
Cocoa whines softly by the door, and I nod to her. “You’re right. Today, we go out. I need to chop some more wood anyway.”
I change into a long-sleeve t-shirt, a pair of tattered jeans, and my work boots, and take Cocoa downstairs. The house is filled with light from the large, unadorned windows even on this overcast day. No one comes up here, so I’ve never felt the need to hang curtains, even in the bedroom. If someone wants to climb a tree to get a look at me sleeping or naked, let it be.
In the entryway, I pass the large photo of my parents on their wedding day, nearly ten years younger than I am now, and my stomach twists. My mother was diagnosed nearly a year ago now, and when she’d told me, we cried together.
“I’ve lived a good life, Hunter. I only wish I’d been able to see you get married and start a family.” The look on her face nearly destroyed me.
I push away the thoughts and open the front door, and Cocoa yips as she races ahead of me and turns quick circles under a cedar tree. I never put her on a leash unless I take her with me into town—she knows where the food is, and besides that, she never wanders out of my sight.
She slips through the trees a little farther though, snuffling through the underbrush and following at a distance as I walk around the dirt path to the pile of logs I’m still chopping for firewood. I grab my gloves and my ax from the woodshed, and then start the work of propping up thick logs on a wide, chipped stump and splitting them cleanly down the middle, and then in halves again.
As I chop, guilt settles in my stomach like spoiled milk. It wasn’t another baby that my mother wanted—she’d given up on that two decades ago, and turned her hopes fully toward my future marriage, which would bring her if not a birth daughter, at least a daughter-in-law. As she’d grown more attached to the idea over the years, the dream took on a bit of mother’s love.
More than anything, my mother doesn’t want me to be alone, a fear I’ve only encouraged by deliberately moving to a place where I can go days—weeks even—without speaking to another soul.
Besides Cocoa, that is. My golden retriever comes bounding out of the woods, drops of rain from the trees flying off her back, with a thick branch clenched between her teeth. I drop my ax and chase after her as she streaks by. She wheels around, crouches low with her front paws, and weaves back and forth, growling playfully all the while.
I tried telling my mother that Cocoa’s the only girl I need—we’ve been together going on seven years now, more than three times longer than I’ve ever been able to hold a relationship—and that’s good enough for me.
I think my resignation to it only makes my mother worry more.
Cocoa barks playfully as I wrestle the branch away from her and send it spinning over into the trees. Her paws crash through leaves and dead pine needles as she scampers to retrieve it.
I look down at my ax. My house is heated entirely with wood in the winter, and storing up enough of it is a yearlong proposition. I could order cords of wood, but I own a good portion of land and like to clear the dead trees. My mother’s accused me on more than one occasion of taking more time and care with things than I do with people, and I’m fairly certain most women I’ve dated would agree.
When the sky grows darker, I put my tools away, stack the wood I’ve chopped in the woodshed and call Cocoa in.
She’s ready to go, already spread out under the eaves of the house, in the only patch of dry ground around. Cocoa’s in good health, but she’s not the pup she used to be, and I’m finding more and more often that she wears out before I do.
“Come on,” I say to her. “Let’s eat.”
Later that night, sitting in my ergonomic office chair with only my desk lamp on, I know I should be working. There were client tasks that were supposed to get done this afternoon. I manage twice the workload I did when I was a marketing manager, and back then people used to tell me
I was doing too much. But instead of working, I reach into the bottom drawer and pull out the tall bottle of whiskey and the tumbler I keep there for emergencies.
