Chapter 4. The Cabin
I still didn't actually want to think about what I needed to think about, so I decided to sneak up on it from a different direction and think about the cabin.
Uncle Will's dad died just before Cammie was born, so Shep and I (and Cammie) never knew him. He was a hunter and a fisherman, and Uncle Will is too, although not as much as his dad, whose name, by the way, was Wallace Shepherd.
Right after he got married, Wallace bought himself a big piece of wooded property that includes a lake, called Little Fellowes Lake. On the southwest shore of the lake was a kind of hunting and fishing lodge, a two-room log cabin. Wallace's wife, Dorothy, didn't much like the cabin, which was very primitive—the kitchen was a stove you built a fire in, the bedroom was outfitted with bunk beds, the toilet was a two-holer out back, and the bathtub was Little Fellowes Lake.
The lake is spring-fed, so Wallace diverted the water from the nearest spring and built a real bathroom and a septic tank and put a sink in the kitchen. He installed electricity and gas. He rebuilt and built on, and by the time Uncle Will inherited the property there wasn't much left of the original cabin except for the fireplace. And Uncle Will has done even more to it since then.
It's now a long rectangle, the long sides facing the lake in front and the woods in back. There's a screened porch at one end and a double carport at the other end. From the carport you come into the kitchen end of a big long room. The fireplace is at the other end, with the door to the porch next to it. There are French doors onto a deck facing the lake.
On the woods side are two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Above the bedrooms is a loft, also with a bathroom, where the kids—Cammie and Shep and I, and any friends we bring with us—usually sleep, on pallets on the floor, girls at one end and boys at the other.
From the deck the ground slopes gently down to the lake. It isn't really a lawn, but there's sort of scrubby grass. Uncle Will has that area mowed a couple of times a month in the summer and brush-hogged once a year to keep it clear. There are three or four big old trees between the house and the lake, one with a swing and one with a big picnic table under it.
To the left of the house right on the shore is a boathouse with a little Sunfish and a motorboat and a couple of kayaks.
There's a long wooden dock out into the lake, and a big raft about forty yards out. Little Fellowes Lake is actually pretty big, over a mile wide and a good three miles long. It's big enough to sail on, and if there's someone on the opposite shore, you can hardly see them and you certainly can't tell whether it's a man or a woman. It's connected by a short channel, which leads out of it diagonally opposite the house, to Big Fellowes Lake.
When Shep and I were really young, somebody referred to us once as "the little fellows," so we both thought for a long time that the lake was ours. Actually it and the big lake were named for one George Fellowes, from whom Wallace bought Little Fellowes Lake and the land around it. Big Fellowes Lake was sold off in parcels, and there are six or seven cabins and cottages around it. Every once in a while somebody sails up the channel into our lake, even though it's posted, but basically it's completely private.
The people who really like the cabin the best are Uncle Will and my mom and Shep and I. My dad likes it okay, and Aunt Jean sort of tolerates it. Cammie liked it when she was little but then went through a stage when she thought it was totally uncool. Now she's starting to like it again—I think because she's realized it's a nice place to bring a boyfriend when nobody else is up there.
It's about a ninety-minute drive to get to it. You drive for almost an hour on 471, then turn off onto a smaller road, then turn off that onto a gravel road posted Private that runs alongside the Schaub place—in fact, the gravel road forks after about a mile, and one fork is the Schaubs' driveway and one is our road.
To get to Big Fellowes Lake, you keep on farther on 471, and there's a pretty good road off it that goes around the lake to all the cabins. Between that turnoff and ours, there's a little strip mall with a gas station and a Seven-Eleven and a barbershop, which is the closest place to buy anything. Going up the first time in the spring is a big production because of having to take all the basic stuff, cooking and cleaning supplies and paper towels and toilet paper and charcoal for the barbecue and so on, and every time anyone goes up, meals are planned ahead and most of the shopping is done at home. And there's a lean-to out back, originally for the mower and the lawn furniture, that also contains a big freezer, which my mom stocks in the spring and clears out in the fall—she likes to have something to fall back on if there are unexpected guests.
Mom does most of the cooking up there. She likes it, and Aunt Jean doesn't—she says because the kitchen is "primitive," although it isn't really. Dad and Uncle Will barbecue, and Mom does the rest. We kids have to do the cleanup, everybody makes their own bed, and Aunt Jean does most of the sweeping and stuff, because she's the one who gets irritated if she thinks the house is dirty. She also makes us help clean the bathrooms, which isn't so bad as they're all very small and streamlined—only shower stalls, no tubs. There's also an outdoor shower next to the carport, which Aunt Jean won't use.
There's no air conditioning, but it's usually cooler at the lake, and there are big ceiling fans everywhere, including on the porch. The windows are small, but there are skylights in the roof so it isn't too dark inside, except when it's rainy. But then it's sort of cozy with the lights on. We keep a lot of board games up there for rainy weather, and all of us are big readers except for Uncle Will and Shep. They usually tinker with the boats and the mower and stuff while the rest of us are immersed in our books.
The period in question, leading up to the accident, started the first weekend after school let out for Shep and me, and Cammie got home from college. Friday morning my mom did a whole lot of shopping, then she and Aunt Jean and Shep and I drove to the lake in Aunt Jean's big Volvo station wagon with the back full of groceries and duffel bags. After work, Dad and Uncle Will came out in Uncle Will's antique MG Midget. Cammie decided not to join us—she had girlfriends to see and shopping to do.
Cammie has a car of her own for college, a Honda Civic, that she occasionally allows me to use when she's home. Shep and I have both had our licenses for just over a year, but neither of us has a car yet—I think our folks got together over that so as to treat us equally.
Shep and I both had summer jobs waiting for us, but we had a week off before we had to start work, so we'd decided to stay at the lake and lie around and chill after the grownups went home on Sunday. First Mom had planned to drive up in the Cherokee and let us have that to drive home in, but Shep managed to persuade his dad that that would be a grave inconvenience to Aunt Mona, doing without her car all week, and we should have the Midget instead. I was amazed when Uncle Will said yes, we could drive the Midget—even though I think we're both careful drivers and 471 isn't that busy.
We had waffles and sausage for breakfast that Sunday. For a late Sunday lunch Mom served a big salad—chunks of grilled salmon, cannellini, bean sprouts, snow peas, and red onion, with a dressing that had rice wine vinegar and a little hot pepper in it—and homemade ciabatta. Just before they left, at about four, she called me into the kitchen area.
"I've left you some stuff, Mitch," she said, opening the fridge and holding up a bunch of Ziploc bags, one after the other. "Steaks, marinating in that barbecue sauce you like. Hamburgers. The buns"—homemade, of course—"are in the freezer. Lemon and rosemary chicken"—that was Shep's favorite. "And salmon packets." That was salmon steaks and cut-up vegetables, all seasoned, wrapped in foil and ready for the grill. "You can just barbecue all of it.
"There are also hotdogs. Hotdog buns are also in the freezer, and a couple of pizzas. There's enough mesclun left for a salad—dressing in the blue bottle. There are tomatoes and onions, of course, and an eggplant and some little zucchinis and a couple of bell peppers to grill if you want to. There's plenty of bread, in the breadbox and the freezer. Eggs, bacon, milk, Coke, beer, wine.
Um, cheese and lunchmeat. Oh, and the rest of the beef-and-vegetable soup."
I was grinning at her. "Looks like we probably won't starve, Mom."
"Anything you don't eat, just leave—Dad and I'll be back up here next weekend. Come home when you get tired of living without TV. Don't forget to bring the laundry when you come." She put her arms around me, and I hugged her and kissed her head.
"Love you," she whispered, then called "Coming!" to the others, who were already in the car, and raced out, stopping on the way to give Shep a big hug.
"We're all set, buddy," I said to him. "Enough great food for an army—we won't have to do any shopping even if we stay up here all week."