Here is an excerpt from my in-process National Novel Writing Month book, tentatively titled Tap Dancing at the County Fair. I edited out the typos but the rest of it is a fairly raw draft, though my Inner Editor was itching to make a few minor changes…
EXCERPT:
“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” Reed looked at the small duffel bag Libby carried out of the house.
“That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. That’s all I’m bringing.” Libby decided not to tell Reed the whole truth: everything she owned was in that duffel bag.
“What do you plan on sleeping in?”
“You said there was a cabin there.”
Reed sighed. Great, she was going to be high maintenance – going to need a cabin, probably electricity, hair dryer and hot and cold running water. This whole idea was a train wreck if he ever saw one coming.
“There is, but it’s mostly for supplies, equipment.”
“So you’re telling me you sleep outside and let your equipment sleep indoors? I don’t believe you. That’s nuts. I don’t believe you’re quite that stupid.”
He wasn’t, and he was beginning to think that Libby could see through him and his lame excuses to get her not to come with him. It had been a lousy idea and he was sorry he’d said yes in the first place. He had his nice little camp cot and down sleeping bag and the cabin was quite cozy and warm.
“Look at me, Reed.” Geez, it was all he could do not to look at her most of the time. Her eyes, her hair, her –
“I got a big black plastic trash bag, a space blanket and two Bic lighters in this bag. That’s enough until I can build myself a lean-to. I’ve been spending what little money I’ve been able to scrounge up to eat, not to buy yuppie camping gear.” She kicked his waterproof REI bags a couple of times.
“I know how to take care of myself – maybe better than you do. Now, are we going or what? Don’t you want to get there before dark?”
Libby slung her duffel into the back of his Jeep and climbed into the passenger seat.
This, Reed thought, could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Or else they’d kill each other before too long; he wasn’t sure which it would be. But he was pretty sure it would be an interesting ride, either way.
**
He pulled off the interstate and headed down a secondary road. They were behind an overloaded logging truck with stacked pine trees, barely stripped of their branches, swaying and hitting the road when the worn shock absorbers hit a rough spot in the road. There were many rough spots; logging trucks wore away the asphalt as quickly as it was repaired.
Reed drummed the steering wheel impatiently, wanting to pass the truck. Finally a long stretch of straight road stretched before them and he stepped on the gas.
There was a large box turtle lumbering across the road. Reed slammed on the brakes and fell back behind the logging truck again. Damn!
Libby had been dozing off and was startled awake by Reed’s slamming on the brakes.
“What happened?”
“Damn turtle in the road when I was going to pass. I didn’t want to hit it.”
“You know, there are folks who aim for animals on the road just for the thrill of the kill.”
“What kind of loser would do a thing like that? Poor turtle’s just trying to live its life.”
“You have no idea, Reed. You have no idea.”
They rode in silence for a while, the clear blue of the sky broken occasionally by a pair of hawks, circling, watching for movement in the ground beneath them.
They pulled onto an unmarked dirt road surrounded on one side by barbed wire and on the other side, the remnants of corn stalks and a few scattered cobs. Crows flew through the fields and all around them. There was a line of trees ahead; Libby figured that that would be the lake. The road wound down hill toward the trees.
Reed stopped in the clearing next to a small cabin. There was a clearing in front of the cabin that led down to the lake and a dilapidated dock with a canoe upended and tied on to the dock.
There was a covered deck at the front of the cabin, facing the lake. The main feature of the cabin itself was the fireplace, made out of stones that had, long ago, been carried from the lake in front of them. Libby checked out the entire place; it didn’t take her long. There was a tiny kitchenette, with a pipe coming directly from the lake. A two-burner Coleman stove. At least half the room was taken up with equipment: notebooks, beakers, a small cage. Boxes. A computer monitor.
A thin wall of knotty pine separated the main room from a small bedroom. There was a chemical toilet in a small alcove off the main room.
This, Libby thought, is just about perfect. She looked out the front window, saw the lake in the distance. She felt like she’d come home.
She looked around. There was a shag rug in front of the windows and it looked soft enough to make a decent enough mattress until she could build her lean-to and fill her trash bag with pine needles. Tonight it was getting dark and too late to try to do much of anything besides, she hoped, eat something and fall asleep. It had been a long day.
Reed and she unloaded the Jeep. Mostly it was tins of dried food, peanut butter, vacuum packs of tofu, canned beans, a bag of apples. The tiny kitchenette had labeled shelves and it was pretty easy to figure out where everything belonged. She was starving and hoped that Reed was hungry too.
“So, what’s for dinner?” She grinned at him. “Do we call out for Chinese?”
He laughed. “Dealer’s choice. What do you feel like fixing?”
Libby looked through the containers, the shelves, did a quick assessment. Reed had done a good job of pulling together non-perishable things that would actually be nutritious, quick, and tasty. She was impressed.
She looked over at Reed’s tall lean figure, standing near the window and looking out. Okay, she was really impressed.
She boiled some water on the Coleman and threw some rice into it. When the rice was almost done, they opened a can of beans and a can of tomatoes and mixed them in as well. There were some dried chilis in a mason jar and they threw some of them in as well. Tomorrow, Libby thought, maybe she’d be able to find some wild morels.
They sat out on the little deck with their steaming bowls and ate in silence, listening to the bull frogs and their nightly serenade. An occasional firefly flitted through the air in front of them.
“What do you think?” Reed threw out a seemingly innocuous question.
Libby decided that for now, at least, she’d keep part of what she was thinking to herself. “It’s pretty incredible. Listen to those frogs. I love the way they puff out when they sing, you know? They’ve always been one of my favorites to listen to at night.”
“So you’ve done a lot of camping?”
Libby nodded. Well, running away and hiding in the woods for weeks at a time – that would count as camping, wouldn’t it? Again she decided to say a little bit less than the whole truth. It wasn’t really lying.
“Not camping like with expensive tents and that whole bit. More like just living in the woods.” She decided she might as well give him a glimpse of the real Libby. Why not? What did she have to lose if he didn’t like it? She gulped, hard, at that prospect.
In the distance, they heard a howl, just one. “Sounds lonely, don’t you think? I wonder how many wolves there are here in these woods.”
“That’s one of the things we’re going to be tracking, I hope,” Reed said. “There’s some evidence that the wolf population is finally coming back in this part of the state, after years of hunting them down and out. We know where a couple of dens are and I hope to spend some time getting comfortable enough with them and them with us that we can watch them. I’ve been able to track some in the winter by air, but it will be good to match that with real on the ground research.”
Libby didn’t know so much about this research business. But she knew enough that one howl, and one howl only, sounded like trouble to her.
Reed walked out of the bedroom with a camp cot and air mattress. “I keep a spare around for guests,” he said, and set the cot down in front of the window.
Libby looked at him. “And you get a lot of guests, I assume?”
“You’re the first one. Enjoy.” He tossed her a sleeping bag. “Sleep well.”
As a matter of fact, Libby did sleep well. She was asleep almost before her head hit the little camp pillow Reed gave her.
She woke up to the smell of fresh coffee.
“You have a choice: Bath,” he pointed to the lake, “or shower. There’s a shower head outside, by the side of the cabin. Both have the same temperature options: cold, or really freaking cold, depending on your sensitivity to that sort of thing.”
Libby laughed. “I think I’ll try the bath this morning. I haven’t had a swim in a good long time.” She grabbed the towel and Dr. Bronner’s soap she’d packed in her little duffel and headed to the shoreline.
The water looked cold and bracing. Libby hesitated, then dove into the lake. What a great way to start a day, she thought.
From the cabin window, Reed watched Libby drop her towel, stand naked for an instant, and then dive in the lake. What a great way to start a day, he thought.