One modern feature of my circa
1950’s weekend rental cabin was its wooden deck and walkway. By contrast, age
had softened the building’s edges: atmospheric humidity had mossed its interior
shell. The interior’s surfaces—floors, walls, ceilings—were all highly varnished
plywood, the poor man’s paneling. I began to feel I was sheltered in a humbly
furnished shipping crate before I got a glimpse of the view from the rear
picture window. The river was a living mural, visible between leggy,
foliage-rich trees. It flowed lazily beneath a wafting layer of foggy mist
that, frankly, was the top reason I had chosen this locale for a cabin getaway.
I always felt rather like I was in a fairy tale (one of the stories
without
trolls), when I was able to spend any time in this serenely inspirational area—a
tailor-made writer’s retreat.
I unpacked the few basics I couldn’t leave home without—clothes,
computer and cookies—and then left my rental shipping crate to explore the deck
that extended out over the water. As I stood inches above the frigid, trout-rich
water, a reflexive, subterranean breath of utter relaxation expelled the dregs
of stress that clung to me. Already captured by the river’s siren song, I sat
in one of the sun-tortured plastic chairs on the deck. I saw a trout jump out
of the water, making a little arc in the air. It was as if he said, “Welcome!
Enjoy!” and I smiled, charmed. I mentally launched into the words I would use
if I were writing this scene, since I had actually come here to flex my flabby
writer’s muscles. But I was determined to also squeeze in a little R&R. Write
a little, play a little. A girl’s gotta have fun.
So I took frequent breaks outside,
enjoying the postcard view and its accompanying ambience. There, the river;
there, a large white bird gliding gracefully; there, a nut falling from a tree
for what seemed like a week to finally reach the sloping ground; there, the
filigree pattern of the sun shining through rippling leaves; there, a man’s
voice from behind me…HUH?
“Howdy! How’re y’all?” he asked, as if we were standing in line at the
market.
Startled, I turned to see a smiling man, holding a can of Mountain Dew
in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He must have had an eye condition, as
the left eye drifted while the right one was trained on me. I wondered if he
could view the river to the southeast and me, to the west, simultaneously. He
gave off no menacing vibes, but then he
had taken the liberty of
inviting himself to cross a privacy fence between cabins.
He asked me where “we” were from, and I hastily edited my natural reply
of speaking as an individual, here alone. For all he knew, I had a hefty,
reclusive, weight-lifting hubby inside the cabin, gobbling raw meat and watching
that
Smackdown show on TV, ready to storm out and re-arrange this
intruder’s anatomy if I merely whimpered. So I replaced each “I” with “we” and
let him draw his own conclusions.
My impudent visitor commented that
he and his group had planned an outing for the day, and then he would return to
his home about eighty miles away. I relaxed a bit when he said it was nice
talking to me and turned to go; it appeared that he was lodged in the cabin next
door and had merely made an awkward attempt at being neighborly. My
mischief-alert meter eased, returned to zero.
I went inside to my computer and,
after a couple of hours, I heard a loud motor outside. From the front window I
saw overly-friendly-neighbor-dude exiting in his candy-apple red pickup truck,
each tire bigger than an entire VW Beetle. His vanity license plate read:
ROWDY. At this point, I was caught between two reactions. My
visceral sense was of inadvertently landing in a real-life sequel to the movie
Deliverance. But, from my head I heard, “Forsooth—you’re at a story
farm. Harvest!” (I really hate it when my very own brain utters pompous things
like
forsooth. Apparently my muse for this project was intoning
William Shakespeare, or Frasier Crane.)
I submissively began a rough draft, and later went outdoors for another
break. From near Howdy Rowdy’s cabin came the sound of large barking
dogs—judging by their bass tones, no French Poodles or Pomeranians, they. I
hoped they were chained or otherwise confined, because I saw no humans and heard
no one call out to shush the persistently vocal canines.
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With my quasi-protagonists off
property, being tourists, my keyboard lay dormant. Should I forge ahead
(top of page)
or wait until another serendipitous
real-life event played itself out, self-propelling the story onward? I’d had no
clue in advance that my writing retreat weekend would be augmented by real-time
events, complete with unique characters no less. So, shouldn’t I take advantage
of that gift? I decided to
work on other incomplete projects until this one demanded my
return. No doubt, Willy or Frasier would nag me back to this particular Word
document at some point.
Later, as I sat in my room-with-a-view, enjoying an
officially-sanctioned chick food lunch of fruit and yogurt, I heard Rowdy’s
dogs, affectionately dubbed Brutus and Killer, barking frantically. They had
raised the volume and intensity enough to renew my interest and I went out to
scan the area for a cause.
Ah! Up the river came a gaggle of geese floating/paddling in an
unstructured line. Honking loudly, they were the likely cause of the uproar
from Brutus and Killer, now agitated enough to be straining at their chains, if
my hearing was accurate. Thankfully, they soon gave up their boisterous but
ineffective struggle, and I stood out over the river watching the birds, while
picturing their webbed feet encased in square, cartoon ice cubes as they tried
to exit the cold, cold water.
A few hours later, I was relaxing with
a glass of white wine that was surprisingly but pleasantly acidic (
Yo,
Frasier, give it a rest). I put on an Eagles CD, closed my eyes and
welcomed a peaceful, easy feeling. I was moved to accompany the band on air
drums, and gave myself over to music-borne nostalgia. Then I wandered down to
the river deck again to soak up as much of Nature’s peace as I could hold. While
I stood quietly, leaning on the deck’s rail, I watched a beaver as it
dog-paddled (beaver-paddled?) to cross the river. I don’t know if beavers have
genetically poor eyesight, but this unfortunate creature repeatedly ricocheted
off trees and logs as though blind or lost.
By late afternoon, with no further plot development from next door, I
took myself into town for an Oriental buffet feast of spicy Kung Pao shrimp and
General Tso’s chicken.
That evening, I soaked in a candle-lit
spa tub, filled with girly-scented bath salts, then put myself to bed, hoping to
rise early enough to compose a story ending.
As things turned out, Mr. Sandman visited with a doozy of a finale.
On this night, after a day spent
judging every occurrence by its fictional potential, I dreamed: I pack my car
and try to leave for home on Sunday morning, but Rowdy’s monster truck is
blocking my way. He stands outside my car door with his arms folded defiantly
and sings (badly) a mishmash of Eagle song lyrics:
“You can check out any
time you like, but you can never leave. I’m brutally handsome and you’re
terminally pretty—let’s go live life in the fast lane.” He smiles
maniacally and leers at me with his westward eye, and over at Killer and Brutus
with the other. This is apparently their cue to commence playing dueling air
banjos while making rumbly musical sounds with Scooby Doo-esque vocals:
ROO
ROO ROO, roo roo… I hear geese honking and steal a look back at the river
to see a beaver attempting to swim around a goose, but he keeps blindly plowing
into it, causing the goose to be all feathers and flapping and fussing. Next,
up pops a trout singing,
Don’t Worry, Be Happy, as he arcs gracefully
out of the water again and again, sometimes the
“Happy” sounding a big
gurgle-y as he hits the water prematurely. Finally, a genuine Brothers Grimm
troll steps out from beneath the river deck and ambles toward me. All other
action stops as he calmly, wisely, tells me from behind ZZ Top whiskers that
this is all merely a “conceptual consequence” of the spicy Oriental food. I was
to take two antacids and call him in the morning.
The End. Fade Out. Wake up. Whew! Methinks I stumbled upon the
gastronomic inspirational secret of writers Stephen King and J. K. Rowling.
JJ
About the Author
Debbie Holland has had her fiction published in
Still Crazy Literary
Magazine and an essay published in its January 2010 issue. She’s been
writing novels, stories, articles and essays for about ten years and can’t
imagine a life without writing. She loves to laugh and hopes her literary
efforts bring forth a giggle, guffaw, snort, or at least a smile.