3.2 – A Cabin in the Woods

By February of 1975, the kids hardly saw Marge around the house anymore.  She was either working, partying with her friends, or looking for a place they could afford, and the children literally had to fend for themselves.  Julie’s boyfriend, the aforementioned Dick, drove them all to the store in his hot rod 1969 Camaro to get groceries, and Marty thought that was totally awesome.  Dick was very mature-looking for a 16-year-old gigolo, and he already had a curly mustache.  The old ladies in the parking lot frowned at the loud engine as they pulled up, and mothers moved their children back to the curb.  The long-haired kids pushed a cart and consulted a list, as if they were old pros at shopping.  In the checkout line, the cashier stared at the four children who were buying so much food without an adult.  “Are you folks a family?” she asked nosily, pretending she couldn’t see well.

 

“Yeah,” Marty replied sarcastically.  “Mom and Dad here started breeding real early.”  Dick grinned and Julie blushed, while Susie snapped her gum impatiently.  The cashier blushed and dropped the carton of eggs, and had to call for someone to bring more.  She waited awkwardly while the children all smiled vapidly at her like they belonged to a cult.  Julie stuck out her stomach, and rubbed it as if she was pregnant.  They paid with a jar full of coins and some crumpled bills that Jimbo had given them, and Marty said over his shoulder, “Tell your boss we won’t be shopping here anymore.”  Dick put his arm around Julie, and they strutted proudly out to his car to make a triumphant exit.  It wouldn’t start.  The battery was dead.  He and Marty got out and pushed, while Julie popped the clutch and it roared to life with a bang, startling an old woman and her poodle.

 

For spoiled, upper-class suburban brats, the White kids were quite self-sufficient.  They did their own laundry (when there was nothing clean to wear), cooked their own meals (most of which were edible), and got to and from school without adult assistance.  Marty deduced that the changes were noticeable to others when his school guidance counselor called him into his office to ask if everything was okay.  He was still getting excellent grades, and his behavior at school was exemplary, so there wasn’t much to talk about.  Marty told him things were just dandy, but he had a cold so he forgot to brush his hair, and their washing machine was on the fritz.  The counselor wound up laughing at his jokes about dirty laundry.

 

One night, after all three kids had gone to bed – once again before their mom came home – they all woke up suddenly at the same time.  Julie, Marty, and Susie met in the hallway outside their bedroom doors, asking each other what had happened.  Why did they awaken simultaneously?  Did Mom come home?  Oddly, it was 2:15 am, and her birthday was February 15.  Weird.  Julie went down the hall to check, and the master bedroom was empty.  Marty searched downstairs, but her VW bus wasn’t in the driveway, so they went back to their bedrooms until morning when Julie called a few friends where Marge was known to stay over.  She picked up the phone to dial, and Jimbo was on the line.  She picked it up before it even rang!  He brusquely informed them that Marge had been in a car accident!  She was alive, but in the hospital.  Apparently, at the exact time when they all woke up, she had smashed the VW bus head on into a light pole in downtown San Rafael.  The synchronicity of the events was not lost on the kids, and they felt even closer as a family.  Knowing that the driver sits very close to the windshield in a VW bus, Marty was seriously concerned.  Jimbo came and crammed them all in the cab of his ancient 1948 Dodge pickup, which rattled as if it was held together with duct tape and baling wire.  All the way to the hospital, they kept asking him questions he couldn’t answer.

 

When they walked into the lobby, it was far too clean and well lit.  Marty felt dirty and out of place, meekly following the giant redheaded hippie in overalls, who strode down the gleaming hospital halls with a purpose.  When they found their mom, her entire face was covered with bandages.  Jimbo held her hand while the pretty nurse crinkled her eyes sympathetically at the kids, and explained they had removed a lot of glass from her skin.  Susie started sniffling.  There were tubes sticking into her arms, and running under her bandages.  She had a few cracked ribs from the steering wheel, but no more serious injuries were apparent.  She’d been alone in the car, and nobody else got hurt.  Of course she was mottled with bruises from the impact, and was suffering from a lot of pain, but her sense of remorse for nearly dying and leaving her kids alone was overwhelming.  She wept silently under the bandages, and managed to squeak out, “I’m sorry,” before the nurse shooed them out of the room, saying she needed her rest.

 

The next day Jimbo and Jack moved in to take care of Marty and Susie, while Julie went to stay at “a friend’s house” until Marge got released from the hospital.  They were so worried that it seemed like a month, but was only four days.  When she got home she could hardly walk, and had to be carried up the stairs by the burly brothers.  Her face was puffy, but there remained just one bandage on her forehead, with lots of small red cuts showing all over.  All three kids stayed home from school the first day to take care of her because the men had to work.

 

That morning, they were surprised and somewhat relieved to see Priscilla show up.  She clucked and bustled about like a domestic angel of efficiency, entreating them all to take a bath.  Then she collected their dirty clothes, cleaned up the kitchen, and rustled up some nutritious broth for Marge.  The chill-dren were so grateful for her reassuring, competent presence in their lives, they ate whatever she put before them and were on their best behavior.  Soon their mom was well enough to fend for herself, and they bid farewell to the odd nanny with genuine affection.

 

Marge couldn’t work at the pet store in her condition, and the mortgage was due, so the family was in dire straits until Jimbo discovered a place in foreclosure out in West Marin, and told her if she moved fast she could get it cheap.  He described it as a “cabin in the woods” as everyone piled into his pickup.  Marty had to ride in the back with Julie, while their mom and Susie squeezed in the cab.  She was still moving very gingerly, but was determined to see this place with her own eyes, of course.  Jimbo navigated the long and twisted back roads through Lucas Valley to Nicasio, with the old truck clattering constantly as if it would fall apart.  It was a bright spring day, and the scenery was gorgeous to the eye with the hills all green, but it was cold in the back.  On they drove, through a redwood grove and over the ridge to the San Geronimo Valley, where the air was damp and chilly, and the road was still wet.

 

Still they didn’t stop, lumbering and backfiring through a little hamlet called Forest Knolls, and on past the Lagunitas store.  Marty saw all of these landmarks receding away from him, and couldn’t tell where they were going.  Then it got dark and chilly again as they entered a narrow redwood canyon.  The deep brown trunks stood straight as columns and crowded the edges of the twisty road.  Jimbo slowed down abruptly and entered a bumpy dirt opening next to a creek.  Julie and Marty bounced and clanged around in the bed of the truck with Jimbo’s tools, and craned their necks to see where they were going.  The heavily rutted road skirted the edge of a cliff, rambled up over a knoll, and descended to a flat, muddy parking area on a wide dirt road that was completely surrounded by tall trees. 

 

“We’re here,” Jimbo said unnecessarily as he got out of the truck.  They looked for a dry spot to disembark, but the truck was parked in a mud flat of large puddles.  Jimbo grabbed a nearby plank to use like a gangway so everyone could clamber over to the rocks.  “There’s a full acre of land.”

 

“You mean, mud,” Julie corrected him with reflexive sarcasm, but Marty could see she was just as impressed by the scenery as he was.  Susie was smiling in mute rapture, like a simple village girl who had been brought to visit the fairy kingdom.

 

“Oh, what a cute house,” Marge said, pointing down to the creek.

 

When Marty first laid eyes on the extremely rustic and shady “cabin in the woods,” it impressed him as something from the dark side of a Disney movie.  His family had always lived in tract homes with cement sidewalks and driveways, and this cottage was literally part of the forest.  A rocky path led down to where it stood, elevated on a flat spot next to the creek.  There had once been a brick stairway, but most of it was broken apart and gone.  Unusually tall trees surrounded the little bungalow, making it look tiny in comparison to the stately home they would be leaving.  The creek they’d been following flowed right past the house, and the main road could be seen through the trees and past another house on the other side.  The rustic cabin was covered with rows of cedar shakes and painted barn red with wide, white trim around the windows.  Redwood duff covered the roof like rust-colored snow, so only a few patches of green composite shingles could be seen.  One side had a large, corroded oil drum attached to it; built on a rotting frame that was in danger of falling over any second.  The other side had a crooked moss-covered chimney.  The structure itself was raised about three feet above the forest floor on a thick concrete foundation.  An ancient, rickety set of stairs led up to a battered front door.  There were supposed to be five steps, but the middle one was missing, and moss grew in the cracks of the wood.  Was this going to be our new home? Marty wondered.  He expected the wicked witch from Snow White to open the door and beckon with a crooked finger.

 

In contrast to the funky cabin, the “front yard” was actually very attractive, laid out like a movie set with a little path lined by ferns leading to a circular grove of redwoods and a fire ring.  A dilapidated old picnic table still stood there, accented with lichen and moss.  The creek flowed by in a meandering route, dodging between hulking old redwood stumps and skinny new trees.  The shade was deep and intense, and the ground spongy and wet as if it had recently rained.

 

Jimbo had the key, but the door was unlocked.  It could be opened in two halves, and Marge called it a “Dutch door.”  Inside, it was freezing cold, with an old hardwood floor and a skylight in the main room.  There were lots of windows – even a large bay window with a built-in bench looking out on the front yard.  The antique panes of glass were hand-blown, and distorted the view as if one was peering out the portholes of a submarine.  A crumbling, blackened fireplace composed of lumpy, uneven bricks dominated the far corner.  Susie opened a door in the corner and exclaimed, “Oh, goody – this is my room!”  It was less than half the size of her room at home, but had two large picture windows looking out on the trees.  Marty had to quickly claim his own turf, so he grabbed the glass knob on another antique door.  This place was old!  “The lady said it was built in 1906,” Jimbo offered, checking the cracks in the fireplace.

 

“The year of the earthquake,” Marty said unnecessarily as he opened the door.  Everyone who lived near San Francisco knew about the Great Quake and Fire.  This cabin had probably been built from local materials (redwood – duh), in the summer after the disaster, when the entire region was rebuilding, and Marin County provided much of the lumber.  “This is my room,” Marty announced immediately.  He’d found a larger bedroom with three windows; two of them facing the creek.  There was a wall halfway across, as if it had once been two rooms.  There were two closets with hinged doors, and a large, ancient stainless steel electric heater grinning from the wall.  Some old boxes were stacked in a corner from the people who were moving out.

 

Julie walked in and said excitedly, “There’s a place for Manuka out back!”  That was her horse.  “Hey, where’s my bedroom?”  There was only one more, in the kitchen area.  It was a small, dark cave that reeked of cat piss.  “Eeeww, gross.  I’ll sleep out with my horse.”  Everyone marveled at the large grate in the middle of the kitchen floor, next to a hall that led to a back door that wouldn’t open.  Marty could tell the floor level was about 4 feet above a rocky creek – just 10 feet away from the house.  It seemed as though there should have been a deck outside, but it was missing.  Did it wash away in that little stream?

 

“Far out, look at the bathtub, it’s so cute!”  Susie was thrilled to be the first one to discover something, in a separate room where the others couldn’t see.

 

‘Far out?’ Marty thought to himself.  Was his little sister becoming a hippie, too?  They crammed into the tiny 2-room water closet, and found her gesturing like Carol Merrill at an antique claw-footed tub.  In the corner was a stained old toilet with only half a lid on the tank.  The outer room was actually smaller than a closet, but that’s where the sink was.  He was having a hard time understanding why there were so many doors in such a small house.

 

The same creek could be seen through the bathroom window, so he and Susie hustled outside to explore the back yard.  The property stretched out farther than they could see – a narrow band of flat embankment next to the creek.  There were none of the plank fences one typically sees on suburban lots, with all the charm of cheap frames on magazine pictures.  The landscape was almost natural except for the house.  They wandered through the cliquish groves of redwoods to a clearing carpeted by burnt sienna redwood needles that softened their footsteps.  More sculpted copper columns thrust upward into the dense canopy of branches that vaulted 20 feet above them, so the overhead effect was like being in a large, outdoor cathedral with a green ceiling.  “This must be the corral,” Marty thought to himself when he found a few tangled fence wires.  Susie was standing in the middle of another perfect circle of trees, staring straight up.  He ran past her to throw some rocks in the creek.  They played like puppies for a few minutes, chasing each other through the trees and laughing, and then they heard Marge calling.  They scampered back to tell her how much they loved the place.