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The cabin was situated with an old couch facing a small fireplace and I spent my second morning trying to get a fire started with napkins and a lighter I’d found in the kitchen, praying that the chimney worked and I wasn’t going to burn the entire building down around me. I ignored the intrusive thought that if I burned the place down it would constitute an emergency and I’d be able to call my parents to pick me up. Instead, I focused on the fact that if I got the fire started during the day I wouldn’t have to try and figure it out in the dark. The heat itwould put out was just an extra bonus, I was initially just hoping for a little light.
The kitchen was stocked with large, blue, hard plastic barrels of water, random cans of vegetables and soup, and more dehydrated food than I’d ever seen in one place. There was a propane camp stove inside one of the cupboards that I was afraid to use in case I accidentally blew myself up, but after a few days of eating room temperature cans of soup I figured it out. It made things a little easier.
I spent the first two weeks waiting for my parents to change their minds and come get me. They couldn’t really leave me out there for an extended period of time since they knew I was pregnant and eventually I’d have to see a doctor, so I treated the situation like an extended camping trip. I assumed that it wouldn’t take long for them to cool down and realize that my pregnancy wasn’t the end of the world.
But as time went on and I had no company or contact with anyone, my perspective began to shift. Help wasn’t coming. My parents weren’t going to come to their senses.
One day I realized that I was going through the large stack of firewood against the house faster than I’d thought possible, so I started painstakingly splitting the rounds that were scattered around the yard. At home, we’d used a gas-powered splitter to process wood, but all of us had been taught to use an axe anyway. It was back breaking work and slow going because I had to stop so often. Eventually, though, the muscles in my arms and back began to firm up and it didn’t seem so difficult anymore, even though it still took forever to accomplish.
I began bathing at night, washing myself using a small bucket of water, dish soap, and one of the few towels I’d found in a cupboard. I was hyper aware of the supplies I had available and how quickly I went through them, so I only actually warmed the water with the propane stove once a week, using the leftoverwater to wash my hair and clothes at the same time. I emptied the bins that held all the non-perishable food and set them out to collect rainwater just in case I ran out of the barrels of water inside.
There’s a difference in how you survive when you’re waiting for rescue and when you realize that rescue isn’t coming. You begin to figure things out. You push the worry to the back of your mind to take out in the quiet of the dark and mull over before shoving it away again so you can focus on living.
Instead of leaving the old sleeping bag I’d found on the couch all the time, I started rolling it back up every morning when I got up. I structured my days around meals, carefully picking out what I’d eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After breakfast, I worked on the wood outside until lunch, knowing that I’d need much more than I had if I was going to be stranded there all winter. I prayed that someone would pick me up before then, but considering the fact that a month had passed without any contact, I assumed the worst.
I’d sit down for lunch midday, usually reading while I ate for some kind of company. The books I’d brought with me were old favorites, the characters both familiar and comforting. After lunch, I’d count my supplies, obsessively going over how much food and water I had and how long I could go before I ran out. In the afternoon, I explored outside.
There wasn’t much to see around the cabin, just a bunch of trees, but it still felt nice to get a little fresh air and hear the birds calling to each other. It felt like I was at the edge of the world, making a little place for myself. Some days it wasn’t so bad and I daydreamed about the child growing beneath my heart, feeling more connected to it. On other days it was a struggle not to start screaming for help or walking toward town even though I knew no one would hear me and the chance of even seeing a car was slim.
I thought about Otto Hawthorne. The memory of him coming to see me a few days after the disaster out in the woods played over and over in my mind.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, glancing toward the cash register where my dad was helping someone check out.
“You took off the other night,” he said quietly.
“I had to get home,” I replied shortly, not looking at him as I arranged bags of potting soil.
“Listen, is there somewhere we could talk?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I’m guessin’ that was your first time,” he said, so softly I almost didn’t hear him.
My stomach lurched. “You’re going to get me in trouble.” I glanced at the front of the store again. “Please, just go.”
“Can you meet me after work?”
I couldn’t see my dad at the front of the store anymore and my heart started thumping in a familiar staccato. Any moment he’d show up beside us and I’d be in more trouble than I’d ever been in my entire life.
“Fine,” I said, looking around Otto to make sure no one was listening.
“How about the high school parking lot?” he asked, leaning down a little so I’d meet his eyes.
“Okay.”
I hadn’t gone to meet him. For weeks afterward I’d been on edge, waiting for him to show up at the garden center looking for me, but he hadn’t come again. It wasn’t until later that I regretted the fact that I’d blown him off. By the time I’d realized I was pregnant, I hadn’t had any idea how to get ahold of him and the fact that he’d pretended like he didn’t know Becka seemed trivial and unimportant.
I daydreamed about the look in his eyes when I’d let my hair down, the sweet way he’d brushed it away from my face when we were in the car, the way he’d teased me, and the sight of his muscular chest above me. Sometimes, if I thought about him for too long, I’d find myself staring at the phone in the cabin, wishing that I had his phone number. Then I’d recall that messing with Otto Hawthorne was the reason I was in that cabin in the first place and I’d snap out of the fantasy. No matter how much I wished Otto Hawthorne would ride in on his white horse and save me, it wasn’t going to happen. I was on my own.
I was stir crazy and cabin fever took on a whole new meaning. Sometimes I talked out loud just to hear my own voice. The isolation was excruciating. Some days it was only the fear that my dad would see that I’d used the phone he’d left for emergencies and get to the cabin before the police that kept me from calling 911. I had zero doubt that he was monitoring the account.
Where would I go, anyway? My parents wouldn’t let me live with them. I had no friends beyond Becka and my uncle would never let me stay with them if it went against my dad’s wishes. Even throwing myself on the mercy of the other members of our church wouldn’t work. They’d never come between a man and his family, and my dad had made his position very clear.
I always closed myself back inside the cabin by the time my stomach started growling for dinner. The thought of getting caught outside in the dark terrified me. After slowly eating dinner, drawing it out for as long as I could, I’d wash up and unroll my sleeping bag again, climbing inside to stare at the fire until I fell asleep.
The days and nights were monotonous, but they weren’t terrible beyond using the filthy outhouse. I was thankful that someone had been thoughtful enough to leave toilet paper but the feeling of being suspended over a hole filled with excrementnever got any easier to endure. It was so bad that I’d picked a spot between two cedar trees and during the day, I started popping a squat outside. It wasn’t as if anyone would see me.
I talked to the baby. It was stupid and I thought it probably couldn’t hear me, but it made me feel less alone. As I went around, carrying wood into the cabin or counting the cans of soup I had left, I kept a running commentary going. I told him or her what the weather was like, how many days of food we had left, how many rounds of wood I’d split, how callused my hands were from the axe handle, how badly I missed hot showers. I described Becka and how much I missed her. Wondered aloud how my brother and sister were doing with me gone. I even told him or her about Otto, describing what he looked like and how sweet he’d been. I didn’t know much about him beyond the fact that he’d both made me feel safe and completely out of control at the same time.
