Samuel H Martin

A piece of my yet to be edited introduction for "Cabin Fever Family"

40 years earlier…

Sunday morning. Seven am. Two weeks before summer break and an unprecedented cousins-only trip to visit grandparents Otto and Maggie. A first of its kind; without parental interference…

Shaun Eldric Nord, then twelve, sat at the narrow wooden breakfast table of his parental home in a mood.
It wasn’t necessarily foul, his thoughts fluttering through his mind with the ease of a primate with a gun. Noticeable to those around him and recognized as a little off, a question flung from his father, “What’s wrong, boy?”, finding his son's forehead about to be cratered by the tension of his thought lines. Shaun’s verbal torrent ranged from agonizing over a gazillion potential things to do in the woods, “Build a fort?...Sleep in it!?...” to declarations, “Fishing for sure!” to intentionally stir the pot, “Fish after midnight, in the boat? Nah, Earp will mess that up. Fishing from shore after midnight? No, too close to the boat…Camp in the woods with a tent?” A subject that led to the ultimate question, “Will grandma even let us outside?...” After being reassured that his grandmother would certainly allow him and his cousins outside, Shaun’s father, Leon, did his usual breakfast time escape into the garage to sip coffee and sneak ci**rs. That left Shaun with only his mother, Janine, to listen to his usual Sunday complaint. ”Ugh. School tomorrow!” Tired from twin four-year-olds who had a rough night, “Get over it. I gotta work tomorrow. It’s never about you kid. The system sucks. School’s the easiest part. Enjoy it while it lasts.” Paradoxically, when Janine was in a mood herself, it was easier for Shaun to assert himself , “Ma, I’m going on a bike ride! I’ve got nobody my age within miles! Not anyone you’d want me to hang out with anyway. Remember?” Janine caved, in her own way. After a longwinded safety speech she made Shaun pledge, “Solemnly swear to keep your adventures in between work hours when school is out, when the tired, pi**ed off, or still intoxicated from the night before, are off the roads. Especially ours! Be home before dark. Deer cross the road, as do coyotes, foxes…”

“I swear. Can I leave at 3:30 am-before the humans leave? I can be at my fishing spot by 4:00 and wait for the sun…”

“Like you’d be up then and no! Nothing good happens between 3 and 4 am unless they’re delivering donuts to the truckstop. Most of the bodies they find-out-here are dumped between 3-n-4 am! In fact, a donut delivery lady found that one back when you were a baby. Still don’t know who he is, apparently.“

“Ma! I’m not…”

“You’ve heard all about the severed foot-in-a-shoe dad pulled up; fishing under the bridge a day or two after a bus accident!”

“A thousand times! Four people died…you're down in the river flirting with dad three days later… you find a necklace, he catches a foot. What’s that got to do with bike riding?”
“My point is, that bridge still sucks, and you’ll have to go over it to get anywhere. Be careful, and stay off the highways! Love you.”
“Love you, too. By the way, I tried to tell that story in school. Not that you sold a dead woman's necklace, but dad catching a foot. I got one-upped by a kid who found a dead guy in his garage. Some homeless guy. Frozen solid.”
“I didn’t sell it, ya punk-ass, and yikes! Was that body found’round here?”
“Chicago.”
“Damn…Too busy, too populated, and sometimes comes too close; no thanks! Well, get outta here if you want to ride. Anyone who is late is either still in a ditch, on their couch, some form of mattress, or in the morgue…”
“Ma! Why so fatal?”
“Life’s fatal. Be careful. Stay close.”

Rebelling against distance restraints on day two, Shaun found himself desiring unfamiliar territory. He knew a town by name only; never recalling a single detail if he passed through previously.
A left turn onto Twenty and the trip would be forty kilometers. A frontier, as far as he could remember…”Never been there…”

Other than a couple lengths on a winding two lane county highway, the scenery was an uneventful combination of fields, farms, patches of trees, until the 35th kilometer where small steel buildings housing manufacturing and machine shops parked in small industrial clusters with full parking lots appeared in the distance. Orwell Acres. The town wasn’t much to see. Gas station bookends, two churches, two pubs, a small grocery store and a couple of small diners. For the sparse eight-hundred inhabitants, a barber shop, dentist office, liquor store, insurance office, and a bank were scattered along the main drag. Behind the town's facade, the residential area. A smattering of worn houses and garages lining a few blocks in adjacent directions from the main road. After passing a small county police hub then a bait-n-tackle-shop, Shaun could see the last frontier of downtown smalltown. A pair of welcoming signs advertising rival beer companies stood, lit up, across the street from another. An endless war pitting Old Sluggo’s against Milwaukee’s Crotch. Gravel parking lots swung around both buildings; fenced off with snow fencing no matter the season.

Shaun heard while wheeling past “Duke’s” and “Stiffy’s” the unmistakable sound of pool tables. The onslaught continued with an earful of wisdom-rock from Stiffy’s, and a Top-40-adult-contemporary-jazz-hip-hop-country-swing number from Duke’s.
Shaun felt unusually annoyed by the mainstream song's sonic assault on his eardrums.“Yuck. Fu***ng posers.”
From a nearby window flowed an unmistakable drunken-donkey-laugh from a sizable brute followed by a shrieking ni****ne stained gargoyle, “Hey!!! I told youse’guys, nuff-wit-dat-s**t-n-here!!”
As he rode further the vocal onslaught took on the egregious mating call of a sea lion in tone.
A bright green sign became his focal point and as it came into focus, it directed Shaun to a park less than a half-a-kilo away. …”I’ll check this place out…”

It's taken over a year, but I'm 2/3 done with book #2... :) Less angsty, same punch. Coming soon.

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