Anthony Newman: American Survivor

While a very outgoing and friendly person, Cobie rarely had time to date working two jobs and raising her twelve-year-old daughter. Every dime she earned went to make sure that Cloe had as good a life as possible even though Cobie had to sacrifice her social life and remain single. They had moved several times as Cobie found better jobs and could afford to move to towns with better schools for Cloe. They were living their dream in Ashland, Oregon when the bottom fell out due to the eviction from their apartment, which had been their home for the past three years.

While Cobie waited on the Sheriff, her mind drifted back to her heated discussion with the property manager and specifically to the handsome, though overweight, young man. Cobie had trouble keeping focused on the jerk who was evicting her and her daughter because there was just something special about the man. She wished she had gotten his name. He disappeared into the Archery department before Cobie could fake bumping into him. Her face was hot and flushed as she thought about the man. Even though she had avoided dating for years, this man was like a moth to a flame to her. She couldn’t resist following him in the store and watching him until a customer needed her and she lost track of him.

The Sheriff and his men that would be tossing her out of the apartment showed up at 3:00 sharp. Cobie had already loaded the back seat of her Jeep with their clothes, camping gear, and bags of food from the kitchen. She made sure her guns and ammo were hidden under the clothes in the back seat. She had borrowed a small trailer from her boss at the store and had the men load the rest of her possessions on the trailer. Cobie had arranged for her daughter to stay with a friend overnight while she sorted out where they would live until she could find a place.

She had looked for two months to no avail because she couldn’t afford any apartments or houses in Ashland. She tried renting a single room from several good-hearted people, but they wouldn’t let Cloe’s dog stay at their home. Cobie had promised her 12-year-old daughter that she wouldn’t move again until Cloe graduated high school. Cobie and Cloe had been moving around since the divorce, and since Cobie had no skills, she couldn’t find decent paying jobs. That meant they couldn’t afford a suitable place to live. Ashland was a high-cost city, but Cloe loved the school, and all her friends went to school in Ashland.

Cobie sat in her Jeep for a minute to collect herself. She wiped away the tears and steeled herself to the fact that they might have to move to a poor section of Medford when she saw the camping gear. A brainstorm hit her, and she backed out of the driveway heading to the mountains. The camping gear reminded her of a conversation she overheard between her boss and one of the customers. The customer complained that he hated leaving his cabin unattended most of the winter and that he wouldn’t use it again until late spring. Her boss mentioned that most of the cabins around Ashland were left unattended for months and that they were rarely broken into so he shouldn’t worry.

That’s when Cobie decided to squat at someone’s cabin until they could find a place of their own. They wouldn’t damage anything, and if caught she would plead for forgiveness and move to another cabin. She parked the trailer behind the store and headed out to find a cabin.

Cobie wanted to remain close to her job and Cloe’s school, so she found several old maps of the mountains around Ashland at the library. She made notes about trails and cabins in the area to shorten her search. Cobie drove up Dead Indian Road and turned off to the right after a few miles to search for several cabins that were on top of a ridge about three fourths up the side of the mountain.

The temperature dropped as she drove up the mountainside. The Jeep was warm on the inside, and she wasn’t prepared for the temperature drop or the snow on the ground. The air was brisk and smelled of Pine; each breath made her question her brainstorm. It was damned cold up here in the mountains , she thought.

The first cabin’s door was broken and only hanging by one hinge. All of the windows were broken, and beer bottles and cans were strewn around the outside of the cabin. Cobie drove deeper into the woods heading west and found two burned out cabins before the road ended. She looked at her copy of one of the maps and saw there should be two cabins below her location. One back in the direction she had come and another directly below her present position. The maps were old, but with luck, the cabin would still be there and usable.

Cobie put her hooded jacket on, stuck her .380 Ruger in her Santis pocket holster, and headed down the steep terrain to find the cabin. The brush was thick, and Cobie struggled to make her way down the hill without falling. The combination of the dense undergrowth and snow made the going treacherous; she slipped several times until she fell and rolled down the hill, hit something, and lay there with the wind knocked out of her aching body.

“Crap, that hurts,” Cobie murmured as she rubbed her butt and checked herself for broken bones and other injuries.

She lay there flat on her butt for a minute with her eyes closed thinking how stupid this whole thing was when she opened her eyes and saw the wall of the cabin above her.

“Darn, it’s a building. I’m in luck. It’s the cabin I was looking for.”

The cabin was covered with vines and had small trees and bushes growing up next to it making it virtually invisible from a distance. No one would come to this place and evict her. It looked as if no one had been here for many years. Cobie cautiously walked around the cabin and noted all of the windows were secured with shutters, and both of the cabin doors were intact and closed. She tried the front door, and the knob wouldn’t turn. She walked around to the rear of the cabin and couldn’t budge that doorknob either, so she tried moving one of the shutters that covered a window facing out over the back deck. She pulled on the shutter, and it fell apart in her hands and fell to the deck.

The window wouldn't move at first, but soon it rose a bit after Cobie pulled upward with all of her strength. The window was open, and she removed a flashlight from her coat pocket and looked inside the cabin. She stared into the kitchen and looked over the kitchen sink. There was no danger in sight, so she climbed into the room and stepped down to the floor from the counter. The kitchen was dusty and had a lot of cobwebs but otherwise was in great shape.

The dank, musty smell hit her, and she said,” Holy crap that stinks like a burial vault.”

The kitchen was right out of the late 1800’s complete with an old cast iron cooking stove and one of those steel cupboards covered in white enamel with a red pinstripe. There was an old-fashioned hand pump by the side of the sink and an old wooden icebox in the corner. The kitchen table was solid oak with four ladder back chairs with cane bottoms.

Cobie explored the rest of the small cabin and found it had two bedrooms, a small family room, bathroom, and the kitchen. The larger bedroom had an old iron bed with a feather mattress, and both were covered in dust. The dresser was oak and had a large mirror. The mirror tilted so the lady of the house could sit in front of it and put her makeup on by the light of two small kerosene lamps. Cobie laughed when she thought about a woman sitting in front of this charming dresser putting makeup on in such a crappy cabin.

It was less than 900 square feet but would be perfect for their needs. Cobie made notes on what she needed to clean the cabin and then headed back to her Jeep to go fetch her trailer. She would work all night on the cabin to make it clean enough to bring Cloe to their new home. The only negative was she saw a few footprints in the dust but couldn’t tell if they were new or years old.