Today's Reading
Elvis spun his head and cocked his triangular ears at Mercy. He barked, his single signal bark, and loped down the trail, mud flying. So much for never leaving her side. She tramped after him.
The dog was headed in the direction of Homer Grant's place. The old hermit was a squatter who lived with his loyal bloodhound in a cabin he'd built himself deep in the forest. She and Elvis had stumbled across the small log home a couple of months ago, and now they visited on a regular basis.
Homer liked to play Scrabble. For money. Mercy considered her vocabulary one of her prime intellectual assets, but she'd lost nearly a hundred bucks to the guy so far. He may have looked like a hobo in his threadbare tweeds and unkempt beard, but he spoke the King's English with a literary flourish that would put an Oxford classicist to shame.
It was a measure of her increasing boredom and restlessness that playing Scrabble with a hermit had become one of the highlights of her week. She longed to get her real life back, even as she knew that what she thought of as her real life would change forever the minute the baby was born. The uncertainty of what lay ahead unnerved her, and she caught herself brooding over what the future might bring, and what kind of mother she would be. For someone who prided herself on living in the moment, this was as infuriating as it was humbling.
Being in the forest was usually enough to ground her in the present, but lately the serenity and solace Mercy found among the trees was hard-won. Her hikes with Elvis in the woods and her Scrabble games with Homer were saving her sanity, but just barely. So she hiked on, her faithful Malinois stuck at her hip, his nose nudging her growing belly.
Until this moment.
She'd lost sight of the shepherd, who never bothered with sticking to the trail when he was hot in pursuit. Just what he was chasing here was unclear to her. She quickened her pace, but she could toddle only so fast, and she didn't dare risk a fall, especially so late in her pregnancy. The forest floor was littered with debris, and the so-called trails in this part of the woods were overgrown at best and practically nonexistent at worst. She picked her way across the clutter of mud and rocks and downed branches as carefully as she could.
She reached the rising creek that swirled past the hermit's homestead and stepped onto the footbridge he'd roughly fashioned out of deadwood. Thankful for her thick-soled boots, she navigated the wet, rickety logs that led over the rushing water, fed by spring melt. She spotted Elvis's tracks along the bridge and was relieved that she was doddering in the right direction.
On the other side of the cascading stream, Mercy could spot the red tin roof of Homer's cabin beyond the silver maples and black willows that lined the banks. She stepped through the trees on the trail that led to the cabin, her poncho catching on the sheepberry bushes. She untangled the woolen plaid with a gloved hand, her eyes on the roof.
The smoke that invariably curled up from the black metal chimney was missing. It was cold and damp, and she could think of no reason for Homer to turn off the woodstove. He was very keen to keep the stove burning; he meticulously kept the stove packed with firewood he'd split and stacked neatly under the overhang of his front porch.
The trail dead-ended in a good-sized clearing that Homer called home. She passed the outhouse, tucked in a small glade about 150 feet from the cabin. Another thirty yards closer was the metal outbuilding where he stored his ATV, snow machine, and other large tools and machinery.
A smaller toolshed stood within a stone's throw from the cabin, next to the well with the hand pump that provided his water. Solar panels on the sunny side of the red tin roof provided electricity for lights and electronics, although the old man also used lanterns. No cell signal so deep in the woods, but he'd built his own cell tower on a ridge about half an hour's hike away. A couple of times a week, he went up there to check his messages and make calls.
The stump in front of the cabin where he split his wood was littered with hewn and unhewn logs, but there was no splitting maul in sight. All very unlike the fastidious hermit, who despite his bedraggled beard lived by the adage "A place for everything and everything in its place."
And the massive front door was wide open.
"Homer!" Mercy called. Usually by now he'd be clomping toward her in his heavy work boots, Argos leading the way, the bloodhound having alerted him to the presence of guests.
No Homer. No Argos. No Elvis.
Mercy whistled, and the Malinois came bounding out of the house. He slid to a stop a couple of feet from her and barked, twisting his head in the direction of the cabin, then lowering his nose to her hand and nudging it with his muzzle.
"Okay, okay, I'm going in," she told him, and he raced ahead again. As she approached the cabin, the shepherd waited for her on the porch. She trudged up the wooden stairs, her fingers clasping the log railing for support. She poked her head through the front entrance and yelled again. No answer, so she allowed Elvis, prancing with agitation, to escort her inside. "Homer!"
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