Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“Why not?” Josie asked.

“We didn’t ask anyone,” he said.

Josie had already decided they would either sleep in this cottage or sleep in the Chateau while parked in the driveway. She would not drive again tonight, and this property seemed accustomed to guests.

She turned the doorknob to the cottage. It opened. Inside it was clearly new, all of it well built, still reeking of cut wood and lacquer. It was solid, clean, seemingly never used. She walked in.

“Come,” she said to her children. They were standing on the porch, Paul holding Ana back with one hand.

“We tried to ask. They’re not home,” Josie said, then had an inspiration. Paul needed order, and needed to stay on the path of the moral right, and also, happily, he liked tasks and was proud of his handwriting. Josie wrapped it all together.

“The way bed and breakfasts work,” she said, changing her tone to one of almost blasé authority, “is that often you arrive after the proprietors”—she knew Paul would not know the meaning, but the word would heighten her authority—“go to sleep. And sometimes they live nearby but not on the premises. So the standard thing to do”—now she was really blasé, she considered yawning—“is that you write a note and tape it to the front door.”

“This front door?”

“No, the main house. Can you be the one to do it, Paul?”

Of course he would do it. He would write it, and fold it, and tape it to the front door, and would take on the work with seriousness and joy. The only trick would be to get him to do it soon. Given his exactitude and caution, tasks like this usually took him an hour. This had been mentioned at school — good and tidy work, but time management an issue.

So they went to the Chateau, and while Paul sat at the banquette to work on the note — he needed no instruction; he knew the gist and intended to breathe new life into the form — Josie gathered their toiletries and packed a quick bag of clothes and toys. By the time she was ready Paul had finished the note.

“Greetings! We saw your Sign. We are sleeping in your wunderfull Cabin. Thank you!”

It seemed enough, actually, and Josie said so. Paul’s face fell.

“Or you could keep going,” she said, “but we have to get moving.” She suggested that she and Ana set up in the cottage while Paul stayed in the Chateau to finish, and he didn’t even look up.

“I’ll stay with him,” Ana said. She had moved next to Paul and was watching his work intently.

Josie went back to the cottage and opened the door, smelling cleanliness and good taste. The house had been built with great attention to detail and to the overwhelming comfort of its visitors. There was a new refrigerator, new oven, new coffeemaker — in fact, there were a half-dozen appliances throughout the kitchen and not one looked as if it had ever been used. She opened the fridge and found that it was on, and cold, but empty, untouched.

They were undoubtedly the first to stay there.

She returned to the Chateau and found Paul and Ana unmoved, Paul’s tongue protruding meaningfully and his hand working, pressing too hard with his pencil — always too hard. She asked if he was almost done.

Ana shook her head, as if she was his assistant and had been tasked with fending off distractions.

“Almost,” Paul said, without looking up.

“Can I see?” Josie asked.

He said no, but in a few seconds he was finished.

“Greetings!” the note said. “We saw your Sign. We are sleeping in your wunderfull Cabin. Thank you! We knocked and rang your bell but no one answered. Maybe you are sleeping? We will won’t wake you. Please don’t wake us in the morning. We saw a forest fire and we are tired. Thank you,

“Josie, Paul and Ana

“P.S. We will pay you for useing the Cabin.”

—

After Josie pointed out the will/won’t problem, Paul corrected the note and taped it to the front door of the main house. Josie led the kids back to the cottage, and inside they sat in every chair, and Ana quickly made her way up the ladder to the loft, and from above, pretended to fall. “Oh no!” she yelled. “I almost died.”

The bed upstairs was big enough for them all. Ana kicked and squirmed in some expression of her comfort and joy, and Paul folded his pillow. Josie lay with her children, in this house they had more or less broken into. If someone showed up now, it would not look good. If someone arrived in a few hours, after she was asleep herself, it could be very bad. Would they read the letter Paul wrote? Josie had a thought they should have also left a note on the door to the Chateau, referring the reader to the cottage. Paul would have loved that, the sense of treasure-map control and continuity.

But they were doing something acceptable, she told herself. It was within the bounds of appropriate and even legal behavior for the wayward. There was a time, was there not, when it was right and good to go on a journey, and find an unoccupied cabin in the woods, and spend the night there, and then clean it, leaving it as they found it, ready for the next tired traveler? All this should be allowed. She and her children, so comfortable and warm and tired in their loft bed smelling of cedar and pine, should be allowed.

After reading from the cabin’s only magazine, Yachts and Yachting, Josie climbed down, locked the door, turned off the light, climbed back up the ladder, and the three of them huddled under the heavy comforter. Only then did they notice there was a skylight, and through the skylight they could see a sliver of the moon, the slightest of smiles.

Ana was asleep in seconds, but Josie knew without looking in his direction that Paul was awake and taking in the moon.

“I heard you with Ana the other day,” she said. “When you invented that story about the ring of birds around the world.”

She could see the vague shape of Paul’s face as he turned to her. She thought he was smiling but couldn’t be sure. “You’re beautiful with her,” she said, and now she was crying.

She was sure Paul was staring at her. He said nothing, but in the dark she sensed him telling her that he knew her. That he knew everything about her. How weak she was. How flawed. How small and human. He conveyed to her that he loved her this way. That she belonged in the world, was no heaven-sent and infallible being — such a thing would be harder for him and even more so for Ana.

I know you were scared tonight, his eyes said to her.

You were scared, too, she conveyed.

You handled it well. And you brought us here. I understand why.

Then, as if this exchange was finished or was too intense to continue, he turned to fall asleep.

Josie closed her eyes and drifted off, and soon settled into a deep sleep, the comfort a kind she hadn’t felt yet in this burning state.

THE HAZEL MORNING DROPPED through the skylight, featherlight and warm, and they were still alone, still in bed. It was almost ten. Josie sat up and looked through the window to the main house, seeing Paul’s note still there. No one had come. She stretched, feeling like she’d slept in a cloud. It was the most decadent bed she’d ever known. She looked at Paul, who was still far gone and dreaming, under the covers, only his eyes and hair visible. Now Ana was awake, rubbing her eyes. Josie brought her finger to her mouth to ask Ana not to wake Paul, and Ana nodded — an unusual display of restraint. The three of them had gotten away with something here, something innocent, stealing a night of sleep.

Paul’s head turned. “Are we getting up now?”

“No,” Josie said, and closed her eyes, hoping he would, too.

But the sound of Paul’s voice had activated Ana, and Ana was a comet — she could not turn back. She was up, and soon was standing on the bed, then under the covers again, kicking furiously, exultantly. Then she was up again, and sitting on Josie’s stomach, and dropping her heavy head toward Josie’s face, a wrecking ball covered in red fur.