The next morning, the muffled light disturbed Marty from his sleep as it crept into his room like a cat. Or was it Krishna, who was now sleeping on the small of his back? He poked his nose outside the sleeping bag. Yikes! It was godawful cold for an April morning! He could see his breath!! The radio last night said it would be a warm day, but it felt like winter. He snuggled deeper inside to wait for the weather to improve. After a while he had to go pee, and considered hopping to the toilet inside his sleeping bag, in the manner of a sack race. Instead, he threw on two sweaters and a jacket as if he was going skiing, and stumbled out of his room to greet their first day in their new home.
The main room was a mess, with boxes, sleeping bags, and people strewn about. Marty shivered… the entire house was chilled and clammy, as if he was exploring a shipwreck in the Arctic. His hair felt damp and his ears were already numb. The kitchen table was covered in more boxes and junk, and he wished the “barefoot burner” was already working. There’s no way I’m going barefoot in this house anytime soon, he thought. Geez, my teeth are chattering! Did I sleep until November? Marty prayed the toilet didn’t have any icicles on it. He tried not to imagine what winters would be like in such a dark, humid canyon. He thought of hot beaches and dry deserts – anything to keep from trembling – while he hooked up the camping stove to make some pancakes. Actually, he was hoping his mom would wake up and cook them, if only he could make enough noise setting up the stove for her to suspect he wasn’t doing it properly.
As if on cue, Marge entered stage left and cussed like a fisherwoman about the weather, which politely translated to: “My goodness, isn’t it such an unusually low temperature this morning?” The ancient skylights – more like windows built into the roof at an angle – were barely letting in a vague brightness, although it was already 9 am. There were five skylights in the house, which were more efficient at losing heat than capturing light. The one in the main room was a rectangular, plastic dome that was obviously not part of the original architecture.
Susie shuffled in from her bedroom wrapped entirely in a blanket, rubbing her eyes and looking like a heap of laundry with legs. She rotated in a circle, searching for something familiar. “Where’s the stove? Where’s the refrigerator?”
“We had to leave those to get the best price on the old house.” Marge informed her with regret. She was always a terrible negotiator. “We’ll get new ones, though. Don’t you worry, my little burrito,” she cooed in conciliatory tones as she ruffled her youngest daughter’s hair, “I’m going to make you some yummy pancakes on the camp stove.”
The blanket tortilla containing Marty’s little sister dragged itself into the hallway leading to the back door. There was also a skylight window in that narrow space, but it was too small to be a kitchen, and too big to be a pantry. “We could keep all our food in here,” the blanket said.
“Actually, I think a stove might fit in there,” offered Jack, who had ventured out of his sleeping bag, no doubt encouraged by the prospect of hotcakes. “And there’s plumbing in the wall if we can find a narrow sink.” Marty was suddenly very grateful for all that the mountain man and his younger brother, Jimbo, had done to make the move possible. Even though the White family had no choice but to live in a shack equipped with no modern comforts and needing a ton of work, they made it a lot easier for them. Marty was sad that Jack was going to be leaving soon, to start his dream job in Yosemite: clearing trails for the summer.
He joined Susie the burrito in the kitchen annex, and tried again to open the back door. It was still stuck, but the view was like a postcard. The clear creek ran briskly past the house, right beneath their feet, and was about 10 or 15 feet wide. Tall, burnt sienna tree trunks stood at attention on the opposite bank, and the road could be seen just behind the green foliage. The picturesque scene was marred by a dilapidated house that appeared to be slowly sliding into the other side of the creek. It was in even worse condition than theirs. Propped up on spindly stilts that thrust into in the creek, it hung on like an old fishing boat that had run aground years ago. Marty could see a light on, which meant they had neighbors! He wondered if they were pirates, or drug dealers way out here in the boonies. If they have any kids our age, he mused, we could use a rope swing or hanging bridge to visit them!
After breakfast and coffee, he decided to try the new plumbing. His butt hit a hard surface cold as ice, and he leapt straight up as soon as he sat down, like he was on a pogo stick! The need was great, however, so he had to endure it at all costs… there was no way he was going to take a dump outside. The toilet seat was so cold, Marty had the distressing feeling that his skin had gotten stuck to it. After a while he wasn’t quite certain if he should move, in case he might lose something. Once that harrowing experience came out all right in the end, he ran the shower to warm up the room. Hard-looking water gushed and spurted like a hydrant, but never got hot. He stuck his head out the bathroom door and announced, “Hey, there’s no hot water!” Marge tried the little sink and swore. “Do you think Jimbo could fix it?” he asked hopefully.
“Not today,” his mom said ruefully, thinking about her own shower. “I’m gonna start boiling some water.”
What followed was the fastest, coldest shower of Marty’s life. The water came out of the shower head in unpredictable spurts like frozen bayonets, hitting the tender parts of his body that had not yet gotten used to the icy chill. As he jerked and twisted in a chilly game of dodging the fountain, goose bumps were forming on top of his goose flesh. He dropped the shampoo bottle and cursed, because he’d have to turn his backside to the glacial geyser in order to retrieve it. The water felt like sharp icicles being pounded into his skin with a mallet. When his teeth started chattering, he stopped in mid-rinse and leapt out of the claw-footed tub with the agility of a seal pulling out of the Arctic Ocean onto an ice floe. He left a lot of shampoo in his hair and smelled like soap all day. Next time, he vowed to wait for the hot water!
After washing up Marty felt a surge of energy as the chill finally wore off. He wasn’t lazy and always had to be doing something, so he helped arrange the junk in the main room a little better. His sisters pitched in, and they moved things to their approximate new locations, improving their living conditions for the short term. They had the whole weekend to unpack and establish themselves as permanent residents. I can’t believe this place is actually ours, Marty thought with a boyish thrill of adventure. It was so much cooler to be living in a bucolic, craftsman-built country cabin than a sheetrock and plywood suburban box. The walls and ceilings were made of grooved redwood paneling painted white, and the floors were old oak and fir. In the kitchen, some idiot had painted the floorboards blue, and it had worn off in the places people walk the most. There was a built-in cabinet in the kitchen annex, and another one next to his mom’s room.
After eating their fill of hotcakes that tasted as good as if they were camping (because they were), Marty and Susie took Heidi outside to explore their beautiful new property. The front yard was very flat, with a tight little grove of redwoods right next to the fireplace. Straight ahead about 20 paces, the path through the ferns led down to another charming grove, where a fire ring and picnic table reminded them that this had been a real campground at the turn of the century. The creek was more visible here, and surrounded on both banks by trees and gentle undergrowth. Two other tight, circular groves shot up nearby like bunched columns, evoking the palpable presence of an elvish council ring, or a gateway to another world. Susie found the lead water faucet next to a campfire ring, which confirmed it had once been a campsite.
Following the creek upstream, they squeezed between thick trunks and clambered over a small rocky knoll to another section of the property. This was also flat, with more ferns and no path. The sun was slanting in amber shafts through the olive green redwood needles, and silhouetting the dark umber trunks. Marty exulted as if hiking in a beautiful park, but they were still on their property! He could see another cabin in the distance, and what appeared to be their neighbor’s fence about 100 yards away. In between was an enchanted glade, glistening green and gold in a pristine creekside flat. Dainty underbrush caught the sunlight where it could, with outstretched leaves that seemed to be suspended in the air. To their right lay the creek as they faced approximately east. The dirt road “railroad bed” continued the length of the property on their left, and straight down towards the neighbor’s house in a way that connected the properties. On their way down to the shoreline they found another faucet next to a council grove of trees. The creek ran fast in this spot, and there was no way to cross it without wading. Looking upstream, Marty could see the neighbor’s bridge, underneath which was a small dam and a 3-foot waterfall.
The two kids scrambled up the steep bank to the road, followed by old Heidi, who took her time. They immediately discovered their neighbors had two Great Danes – or rather, the dogs discovered the strangers and started barking. Two enormous black hounds roared and loped towards Marty and Susie like lions, so they hid behind a very dark clump of trees in the corner of their property. There was a crack in one of the larger redwood trees that looked like a good hiding place. Some things were moving inside there, and the hair stood up on Marty’s head, and he yelled, “Ba-a-a-ts!!” Susie screamed, Heidi yelped, and they all exploded out of that crack in a burst of people, dogs, and flying rodents.
They ran like Olympic sprinters back to the open driveway, chattering excitedly. Jimbo said they owned about an acre of land, but Marty had no concept of how big that was, having experienced only the manicured parcels of housing tracts. Heidi shook nervously, and pulled on her leash to get away from the menacing hellhounds still barking loudly from their side of the gate. Happy to be on level ground, she briskly led them back to the cabin and the muddy clearing, and past the scattered cars, trucks, piano, and other bulky junk that hadn’t been carried down yet. The old railroad bed continued, overgrown with bushes until it became more of a trail. They followed this down until they came upon another house, too suddenly. Pale faces in the windows peered out at them, so they waved sheepishly and turned back.