Scarlet Letters by Eleanor Sullivan

Author:Eleanor Sullivan [Sullivan, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carroll & Graf
Published: 1991-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

It was like being newlyweds all over again, to nest in the snug cabin. I busied myself inside while Chris sought out fallen trees, sawed and split their trunks and branches, stacked firewood up the side of the cabin. “When snow comes, the wood beside the house will insulate it, help keep it warm. If I chop enough, we could last out the winter.”

“What about food?”

“Oh, we probably won’t stay. But if we should, there’s always the store down the highway. If the car can’t get out, I can snowshoe to the main road and catch a ride. The highway is kept clear.”

Frost began to show around the window edges and one morning Chris said the clouds meant snow and he had better drive to the store for supplies. “Want to come along?” he asked.

I can’t remember why I said no. Perhaps I feared we’d soon leave the cabin to avoid a snowbound winter and I wanted to hoard every minute of being in it. And Chris was so efficient, he didn’t need my help with the shopping. Whatever the reason, I decided to stay and felt quite exhilarated by the prospect of a cozy day puttering about, perhaps exploring spots around the cabin I hadn’t yet seen.

“I should be back by mid-afternoon or so. Are you sure you’ll be all right? I haven’t seen any wild animals around, but if a bear should show up run for the house and lock the door. It’s too bad you don’t know how to use the rifle.”

“What rifle?”

“The one in the trunk of the car. In these mountains you never know when one might come in handy. Maybe I should give you a quick run-through, show you how to use it. If you did shoot something, we could hang it in the cache—you’d be a real pioneer lady.”

I gave a feminine shudder and told him to keep his old rifle, I’d never shoot an animal.

The cache, actually, had been a problem for me when on the morning after our arrival Chris had pointed it out and explained its purpose: It was a small shedlike structure to one side of the cabin, built on top of four tall poles. Once Chris had spent an entire year here and had shot a deer for meat. He’d hung the carcass in the cache, where it stayed frozen through the winter, the tall poles keeping hungry animals from reaching it. My reaction was, the poor deer, the poor hungry animals—never mind the hungry man, there was a store down the road.

As he waved and drove away down the narrow, rutted road I thought how miraculously fortunate I was to have him appear out of nowhere and fall in love with me. Of course his first wife wouldn’t have wanted to let him go—especially once her affairs were no longer so enticing and she was older. What kind of persuasion had he used to get her to finally release him? Money, he’d said—a great deal of money.

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