was the old dumbbell shape, basic black and amazingly heavy), heard a good strong dial tone, and called Lucy’s cell. “I’m here,” he said. “No problems.”
“Oh, good. How’s the road? How’s the cabin?”
They talked for awhile, then he talked to Stacey, who had just come in from school and demanded the phone. Lucy came back and reminded him to change the answering machine message because it was giving her the creeps.
“All I can promise is to try. This gadget was probably state-of-the-art in the seventies, but that was half a century ago.”
“Do your best. Have you seen any wildlife?”
He thought of Moose Mom, her head lowered as she decided whether or not to charge and trample him to death.
“A few crows, that’s about it. Hey, Luce, I want to haul my crap in before the sun goes down. I’ll call later.”
“Around seven-thirty would be good. You can talk to Brandon, he’ll be back by then. He’s eating dinner at Randy’s house.”
“Roger that.”
“Anything else to report?” There might have been worry in her voice, or that might only have been his imagination.
“Nope. All quiet on the Western Front. Love you, hon.”
“Love you, too.”
He placed the funny old-fashioned receiver back in its cradle and spoke to the empty cabin. “Oh wait, one other thing, honeybunch. Old Bill blew his head off right out front.”
And shocked himself by laughing.
9
By the time he had his luggage and supplies in, it was past six o’clock and he was hungry. He tried the kitchen faucet, and after a few chugs and thumps in the pipes, began to get splurts of cloudy water that eventually ran cold, clear, and steady. He filled a pot, turned on the Hotpoint (the low hum of the big burner brought back memories of other meals here), and waited for the water to boil so he could add spaghetti. There was sauce, too. Lucy had thrown a bottle of Ragu into one of his boxes of supplies. He would have forgotten.
He considered heating up a can of peas, and decided not to. He was at camp and would eat camp style. No alcohol, though; he had brought none with him and hadn’t bought any at the Big 90. If the work went well, as he expected, he might reward himself with a rack of Bud the next time he went down to the store. He might even find some salad stuff, although he had an idea that when it came to stocking vegetables, Roy DeWitt kept plenty of popcorn and hotdog relish on hand, and called it good. Maybe the odd bottle of sauerkraut for those with exotic tastes.
While he waited for the water to boil and the sauce to simmer, Drew turned on the TV, expecting nothing but snow. What he got instead was a bluescreen and a message that read DIRECTV CONNECTING. Drew had his doubts about that but left the TV alone to do its thing. Assuming it was doing anything.
He was rooting through one of the lower cabinets when Lester Holt’s voice blared into the cabin, startling him so badly that he gave a yell and dropped the colander he’d just found. When he turned around, he saw NBC’s nightly newscast, clear as a bell. Lester was reporting on the latest Trump farrago, and as he turned the story over to Chuck Todd for the dirty details, Drew grabbed the remote and killed the set. It was nice to know it worked, but he had no intention of junking up his mind with Trump, terrorism, or taxes.
He cooked a whole box of spaghetti and ate most of it. In his mind, Lucy waved a tut-tutting finger and mentioned—again—his growing middle-aged spread. Drew reminded her he had skipped lunch. He washed his few dishes, thinking about Moose Mom and suicide. Was there a place for either of them in Bitter River? Moose Mom, probably not. Suicide, maybe.
He supposed Franzen had had a point about the time before writing a novel actually began. It was a good time, because everything you saw and heard was possible grist for the mill. Everything was malleable. The mind could build a city, remodel it, then raze it, all while you were taking a shower or shaving or having a piss. Once you began, however, that changed. Every scene you wrote, every word you wrote, limited your options a little more. Eventually you were like a cow trotting down a narrow chute with no exit, trotting toward the—
“No, no, it’s not like that at