Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

The kids were not intrigued. Josie often had no clue what would interest them; there had been a seafaring museum somewhere last year that Ana had gone mad for. And Paul was at least politely engaged in anything. But this mining operation held no appeal. One of the signs indicated there was a river somewhere nearby, but Josie couldn’t see it or hear it. They followed the path to its end, to a pair of buildings where the silver had been processed, then just beyond it, off the path and amid a small pocket of dense foliage, she saw a newer, tidier structure.

“Wait here,” she told the kids, and they sighed elaborately. They were standing in the low sun, and Josie winced while looking at their red and sweating faces. “Just need to look at this house here,” she said.

She climbed over the low, period-appropriate fence, rough-hewn and grey, and walked along a winding red-dirt path until she reached the cottage. It was a pretty little thing, a log cabin, newly lacquered and with a cherry tint to it. She peered in the windows. It was finished nicely inside, with a fireplace, two rocking chairs, a futon, a small and plain but tidy kitchen. And it was empty. There was no indication anyone had been there for weeks, and whoever lived there last had cleaned it well before leaving. It was probably the caretaker’s house. The ranger’s residence. And the shutdown had apparently sent the ranger home, to some other home. Josie returned to her children. Her idea was now complete.

“Why don’t you guys go back to the Chateau for a second?” she said. “Get something to drink. I want to look around some more.”

Paul and Ana did not seem enthusiastic about moving anywhere, but when Josie presented them the key to the Chateau, they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to unlock the door themselves. They would not get drinks or rest, she knew. They would play at locking and unlocking the door until she returned.

When they had run down the path and were out of sight, Josie went back to the cabin. She tried the front door and found it locked. She went to the back and it was shut, too. She had figured this, so then did what she’d planned to do, which was to walk back and forth along the back and side, looking for the smallest window.

The smallest window was in the kitchen, a grid of six panes. Josie took an elephant leaf from a nearby plant, wrapped it around her fist, and punched the glass.

It did not break. Her hand ached with the heat of a hundred suns. She dropped to one knee, cradling her fingers, cursing herself. In a few minutes she had recovered, and searched for a rock. She found a sharp one of about five pounds, and rapped it forcefully against the glass. Again the window did not break. She backed up, threw the rock underhand at the glass and missed, striking the side of the house. Finally she picked the rock up, held it overhead, and rammed it into the window. Now the glass gave way.

She waited, listening for any reaction from her children or anyone who might secretly be dwelling inside the cottage. Hearing nothing, she threw the rock away and went back to find her children.

They were playing with the key and the Chateau lock. Ana had cajoled Paul into being inside the RV while she was outside, trying to make the key fit.

“Knock knock,” Ana said.

“You have the key,” Paul said from within. “Why are you knocking?”

When Ana noticed Josie behind her, she looked momentarily crazy with alarm and guilt.

“Come with me,” Josie said, and Ana relaxed. “I have something interesting to show you.”

A very good thing about her children at this age: Whenever she said she would show them something interesting, they invariably believed her. They always thought she would actually show them something interesting. They dutifully followed her back up the sunlit trail to its end. This time she let them climb the fence, too, and she led them to the back of the cabin.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Broken window,” Paul said.

“What do you think we should do?” she asked.

The two children stared at her.

“What would happen if this was left open, this window, in a forest like this?” she asked.

“Animals,” Ana said.

“They’d get inside,” Paul added.

Josie had a plan but wanted her children to believe it was theirs.

“Right,” Josie said. “So what should we do?”

“We should tape it shut or something,” Paul said.

“But how?” Josie said. In that moment she observed herself critically, using the Socratic method on her kids in the hopes that they would suggest that Ana crawl through the broken window.

“One of us could crawl through and find a key,” Paul said.

They were wonderful people, her children. Then she thought: Exactly how many misdemeanors would her family commit in this unassuming state?

“Or just open the door from the inside,” Josie suggested with a noncommittal shrug.

Paul and Ana took the bait and set out on the path, seeming very serious about the task before them. After arriving at the broken window and allowing Paul and Ana to inspect it with the authority of glass-repair contractors, Josie relocated the cottage’s welcome mat to the window sill and draped it over the broken window’s lower ledge. Then she suggested, with all the moral seriousness of the naming of a saint, that Ana was the only human alive that could successfully make it through such a small gap, crawl down to the table below, then to the floor, then to the front door, to open it for her mother and brother.

Ana blinked hard. She couldn’t believe it. The old restless soul in her seemed to know exactly what Josie was up to, but the actual five-year-old sharing Ana’s corporeal form was alive to the adventure of it all and chose to ignore the voice within her that knew better.

Josie lifted her, Paul’s hands ready below, and Ana’s stomach shifted back and forth, like a beached shark, across the welcome mat, then, in an electrifying bit of improvisation, Ana did a front somersault — slow motion, never airborne — to get to the kitchen table below the window. Ana stood on the table for a moment, pretending to be assessing but actually just preening, knowing she was being watched and admired. Then, without fanfare, she jumped to the floor and ran to the front door as if she’d lived in that cottage all her life. By the time Josie and Paul arrived at the door, Ana had opened it and was tapping an imaginary watch on her tiny wrist.

Then she relaxed and smiled, like a host who had chosen to forgive tardy guests in the interest of preserving the mood. “Welcome!” she said.

Josie explained to them that they would need to tape the window shut from the inside — only from the inside would it work or hold through the rains and winds. So they went into the cottage, smelling its raw woods, the faint scents of mildew and detergent — of attempted order — and they looked for duct tape and cardboard. Soon they had found both and had repaired the window, or at least made it impenetrable to insects and small mammals.

But Josie’s intention was not only to fix the window, but to stay here, at least until she’d decided on a next step. The location could scarcely be better. She rifled through the drawers in the kitchen until she found a key, tried it in the front door. It worked. She had a key to the cabin. “I think we should stay here tonight,” she said casually, “just to make sure the place is safe and our window repair holds.”

Paul and Ana agreed. Or just shrugged. They didn’t care. There was no longer any logical pattern to their lives.

“Hold on a sec,” she said. Leaving the kids in the cabin, Josie jogged down to the Chateau and pondered exactly what to do with the vehicle. She couldn’t leave it at the gate.