Chapter 3
Gray
The log split and fell to the forest floor. Sweat dripped from my brow and landed on the chopping block. I watched it soak into the grain of the raw wood before placing another log and lifting the axe over my head.
Repeat.
Snow was melting from the trees, with the temps in the mid-thirties. Sunlight filtered through the wet limbs. At night, it would all freeze into another crispy layer. Mud and ice swirled across the ground.
Repeat.
Usually, I like predictability. Predictability meant everything was going as it should, but I was restless.
Having left New York for the last time, never to return, I’d escaped to my cabin in the woods north of Toronto, Canada.
Tucked away on a forgotten road bordering Algonquin Forest, it was the perfect place to disappear.
I’d purchased the property with cash, using what remained after my ousting from the mafia and family as a teen.
It hadn’t been my choice to leave that world, but it was a violent part of my life that I pushed deep down, unwilling to revisit.
Here, things were better, almost perfect—if only I had Betty—but that was another part of my life I had to push away. I had to forget.
While my friend Ethan tried to place me in witness protection, I’d been young, cocky, and spiteful. I refused it. I was smarter than that, anyway. My street smarts, inside connections, and tech skills kept me one step ahead, and here I was, still alive a decade later.
The mafia assumed me dead for a good while in my younger years, which is when I started building this place.
It took about five years to get the structure, greenhouse, shed, and fencing up to keep the wildlife out—though the wildlife bit wasn’t an exact science.
Something always found a way inside, no matter how hard I tried.
The pine martens were among some of the worst offenders; always so irritatingly curious and smart to boot.
Luckily for them, they were adorable, or I’d have a lot of clothing made of pine marten fur by now.
The axe thudded to the ground when I dropped it, gassed from the effort.
Hands on hips as my breath billowed out in front of me, I looked out across the glittering landscape that rolled down from the cabin to a roaring river.
It was fat with ice-cold rapids and snowmelt this time of year, often flooding the banks for several weeks before tapering off to its usual meandering flow.
Rapids cutting into and eroding the bank, the river created a large collection pool where the fish liked to rest before continuing either up or downriver.
It was a perfect situation for me, making it easy to use it for swimming, fishing, and washing clothes.
The only downside was that the bears liked it too, often frequenting my pond to catch fish and laze during a heatwave.
Luckily, the bears and I had reached a sort of peaceful understanding.
I’d grown up with a lot of them, almost like giant, tick-filled feral pets.
We’d learned to respect each other. They knew I could kill them just as easily as they could kill me, so we coexisted companionably and rarely experienced issues.
Tallulah, a fat black bear, was in the pool now, looking for a snack while still half asleep and hibernation-groggy. Some years she had cubs in tow, but she was getting older and seemed to enjoy her solitude this year, at least so far. Good for her.
She pounced, bursting with forward energy, her head diving below the surface of the water. Pulling her maw out of the rapids, I watched her chomp the head off a trout, bending to catch its belly against a neighboring rock with her wet paw. Yahtzee.
This time of year offered nothing but damp, rugged survival, even when the sun was shining, as it was today.
Below the canopy of evergreens, water dripped like rain from the seemingly endless chunks of ice still lodged in the branches.
The forest floor was spongy and saturated; mud packed on my work boots, perfuming the air with the smell of earth and pine.
I surveyed the wood I’d chopped, then looked back at the cabin and the covered side porch where I stored it.
I gathered half the pieces in my arms, trying to shake off the excess wet mud from my boots before wading through the muck to the porch.
After banging my soles on the step a few times, I carried the fresh firewood to the far end of the stack so it could dry.
Repeat.
Once the woodpile was finished, I settled into the handmade rocking chair on the porch. A tree trunk slice served as a makeshift table beside me, holding a half-empty, ice-cold can of beer. I glared at the second rocking chair, sitting empty as always, reminding me of my utter solitude.
I’m not sure why I always made two of everything, for the sake of balance? Wishful dreaming? Who knows? I took a few swallows of the beer, needing the alcohol to both clear and fog my head.
My finances were dwindling, and even though I lived largely off the land, thanks to my greenhouse, the river, and the game I hunted, I needed money for my independence.
Paying off the mafia was the best solution I’d come up with so far.
If I could settle my debts and make my uncle Matteo happy, maybe they’d finally let me go.
I could make a plea deal, some kind of promise to stay out of their business if they stayed out of mine.
Maybe I could be the one that gets away.
My debt to them had increased lately, and I’d done a smash-up job of it, too.
The stolen Rembrandt really pissed my uncle off.
I’d poked at them for five years now, and caused a fair bit of disruption without wondering how that might affect me.
I had a simple life, and nothing to lose when I started this game.
But that had changed as of late.
My actions were keeping me from the one person I wanted more than life itself.
I deserved retribution for what the mafia had done to my family, sure—they even respected my need to retaliate—but I’d gone a touch too far.
After careful tabulating, I likely owed them tens of millions in damages at this point.
That… I simply did not have.
My gut grumbled with hunger, and I sat up.
I’d built my wrap-around porch with open eaves and breezeways so I could easily move between the buildings without having to brave snow, mud, or otherwise.
Rounding the deck toward the back, I took an offshoot that led to the greenhouse.
Once there, I picked a few greens from one of the aquaponic towers and dug for a few potatoes in the potato bin.
Bringing those back to the house, I left my shoes by the back door and stepped inside.
There were still embers glowing in the cast-iron wood-burning fireplace and stove.
I set the greens and potatoes down on the modest butcher block kitchen counter that extended into the space in an L-shape.
After washing my hands, I scrubbed the potatoes next in the sink I’d plumbed in from a rain collection tank outside.
The water was near-freezing, but flowing again for the first week since fall.
During certain months, I had to draw water from the river or melt snow within a pot to clean produce when the tank became frozen.
It was on my list to add a solar warming feature to the tank, but I hadn’t been to town for the supplies yet.
I rinsed the greens next, setting everything to the side.
In the fridge, I pulled out the leftover elk steak from last night and set it down next to a cutting board.
On the counter rested yesterday’s bread.
I’d baked it myself and stored it under a glass dome to keep the pine martens from sneaking in and stealing it.
It didn’t always work, but I’d recently plugged a few of the wayward entry points in the cabin’s wall structure and had gone a few weeks pine marten free.
I plucked the loaf out, setting it on the cutting board and sawing off a few slices.
In a cast iron pan, I tossed in a spoonful of elk tallow I kept in a jar nearby, salt, pepper, garlic, and roughly chopped the potatoes before adding those as well.
Taking it to the stove, I set the pan on top before opening the fireplace door and tossing another log on the embers.
The tallow melted, and soon the potatoes were sizzling.
I added some dried thyme from the clippings hanging under the few upper cabinets in the kitchen.
I pinched and placed the thick pieces of bread next to the pan on the stovetop to toast. Pulling the elk steak apart into rough strips, I tossed it with the salad I’d thrown together with the greens, some olive oil and vinegar.
I brushed the toasted bread off the cooktop and onto a plate, adding the elk and greens on top and turning the potatoes in the pan.
Once the potatoes had browned, I added them to my plate in a messy heap.
There was no point in making it look fancy.
Plucking up my hearty supper, I moved and sat in one of the two armchairs in the modest living space toward the front.
The main cabin was square but sizable, save for the small room where I’d installed a composting toilet and sink that the rain collection tank also fed.
I didn’t have a bath or shower, instead using the river to dunk in, or I’d drag water back to warm on the stove and sponge off.
The 800 square foot space was simple to maintain, heat, and live in.
I required little and liked it that way.
The primary room featured a bed toward the rear, a central, large, wood-burning stove, and a lengthy black chimney tube rising from the center.
The ceiling, shaped like an A, aided in the snow’s descent beyond the deck.
In the deepest part of winter, the snowbanks could sometimes sock me in, my breezeways becoming tunnels.
While intense, it made for an extra layer of insulation.