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A quote: “Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.” ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
I’ll start with a story …
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The worst thing was to follow the roads. Had to go cross country.
Digging through the attic I found the box labeled “Boy Scout” … Compass, pocketknife … all the flotsam of jamboree summers …
“Can we go now?”
Stress crackled my wife’s voice. No blame. My own heart was in my throat. All these years, why hadn’t I been prepared? Had paid attention to the signs …
No use locking the door. Our backpacks were full but would they last? Granddad’s bolthole. We’d soon know if my old skills were intact.
We heard it, distant but not enough.
Run.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: The Brownie started at me as I looked inside the stump. “If I was going to hurt you, I’d have done it already. Come out.”
He stared at me curiously. “How did you know?”
“The house over there has not been tended for years but it’s clean on the inside. I knew what to look for. Tell you what; I am moving in and you can stay to clean if you’d like.”
“What do you offer?”
“A loaf of bread every week and a bottle of whiskey every month.”
And that’s how my inn got a reputation for being spotless.
It was beautiful country, if different from the Central Indiana prairie where Lily had grown up. Already she was coming to love the ridges and hollows of the limestone country of Southern Indiana.
She still remembered those terrifying days after the accident, when she had no idea what the future might hold for her, for her husband Roy, or their children. Yes, he’d brought the plane down after the student pilot had frozen and refused to eject, but it had been at a cost. And while she knew the new technologies could work wonders with burn patients, especially after his role in the famous Airlift of Life, after the horror of the Great Outrage, she had to be sure of one thing.
He will fly again, the medical people had reassured her. She’d clung to that promise, when she didn’t dare ask her more personal fears lest she look selfish.
And they’d been as good as their word. Roy was going back to his civilian job with FedEx. And the settlement money — she refuse to call it hush money, although she was certain the student’s homeland knew they were pushing through someone unqualified just because of who his family was — had paid for this beautiful chunk of land within driving distance of the huge FedEx hub in Indianapolis. Land where they could raise their children, where they could hunt and even establish a game preserve as a side hustle.
And where they could discover wonders, like this stone hearth, all that remained of a long-gone pioneer cabin. It made Lily remember being in grade school when the Bicentennial celebrations made everything pioneer exciting, including old-fashioned clothes and open-hearth cooking.
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