Page 6 of Nothing Less than Magic
“What roofing company are you with again?” I ask.
He squints at me, and I can’t tell if it’s from the sun or if he’s confused. Confusion ultimately wins, judging by the way he’s staring at me, perplexed.
“I’ve been doing work around your cabin for the last three years.” He raises his arms in the air. When I don’t say anything, he presses, “A few months back, I installed the new front door.”
I shift my eyes to the cabin’s entrance. One of the reasons I fell in love with the house is the wide front porch. That first year after we bought the place, Austin and I searched high and low for the perfect Adirondack chairs so we could sit out front when the sun’s glare off the lake was too blinding. We wound up buying recycled plastic ones at Costco, of all places, because Austin said they would last longer. To this day, I hate them.
Sure enough, there’s a new red Craftsman door where the old oppressive oak one was.
The man folds his arms across his chest as he watches me take in the door, and I let out a sigh.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” I tell him. “I was in an accident a few days ago, and I’m apparently not myself.” I leave out the part that I was run down by a cable car, because I suspect this guy is starting to think I’m a nutjob, and most people don’t realize just how dangerous those streetcars can be. All anyone associates with them is that they’re iconic San Francisco. Or it reminds them of the annoying Rice-A-Roni jingle or the Tony Bennett song about little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars. When in fact, dozens of people are maimed, even killed, by streetcars a year, if you believe the statistics.
“Sorry to hear that.” He gives me a wary glance, then switches his gaze to the roof. “You still want me to do the work?”
“Yes,” I say, though I was hoping for peace and quiet and anticipate that the roof work will cause a good amount of racket. “You’re . . .” I wait for him to say his name, because for the life of me, I can’t remember it, only that his face is starting to register.
He gives me a hard look like he doesn’t believe me and finally says, “Knox.” Just Knox, no last name.
I don’t know why, but I have the sudden urge to say, “Knox, Knox, who’s there?” but don’t. We’re already getting off to a shaky start.
He unfastens the ladder from the utility rack and lifts it up like it weighs nothing, then carries it to the back of the cabin. I consider whether to return to my hammock, but Knox is right. This time of year, the mosquitoes off the lake will eat me alive.
Since there’s little chance of me getting much rest with the noise from the roof, I decide to go to town and stock up on supplies. Knox is strapping on his tool belt when I find him.
“I’m taking off for a while; you don’t need to get in the house, do you?”
“Doubtful. But just in case, is the key still under the flowerpot?”
I wonder if Austin leaves it there, because I don’t remember ever leaving a spare key anywhere. I don’t even remember us having a flowerpot.
“Uh, let’s take a look,” I say, then wait for him to lead the way to this alleged flowerpot.
Sure enough, it’s on the front porch, next to the new door, and there is a shiny copper key underneath it. Knox slides the empty pot back over the key and bobs his head at me as if to say,we’re all good.
“Okay, then.” I shove my hands in my pockets and make a mental note to plant something in the pot. Orange mums or marigolds, maybe. “See you when I get back.”
I’m halfway to my car when I realize I need a jacket. It’s like fifty degrees out, and my cheeks feel chapped from the cold. I run inside the house and grab a fleece, then on second thought, a hat and scarf. October in the mountains is usually milder, somewhere in the sixties or even seventies. Here in Northern California, summer doesn’t start until August and lingers well into mid-November. Not this year, though.
Knox is on the roof. I can hear him banging around up there, confirming that my decision to get out of Dodge was the right one. On my way out, I notice the leaves have turned shades of bright yellow, red, and orange. And the sheer beauty of the trees and the mountains in full fall regalia catches in my throat.
When we bought the lake cabin, it was summer. The house needed work and still does. But it’s about as close to perfection as it comes. It’s nestled in the trees, and it took us forever to find it, especially because our budget was modest, at least by California standards. For months, we toured every house near a body of water, because we’d decided that a lake or a river view was imperative to improving our mental health. It was only our second year of marriage, and our lives had become so immersed in our respective jobs that we didn’t know how to relax anymore. We’d convinced ourselves that if we bought a vacation home, we’d use it to slow down, go kayaking and swimming until our skin turned brown in the hot summer sun, or just read a book by the water. The kind of things normal couples do on their days off.
We were well-intentioned at first, packing up our busy city lives on the days we were here, sleeping in and lazing around the lake. But it didn’t last long. Austin always had a legal motion that needed researching or a needy client who monopolized his time on the phone. I had an entire company to run or a book to write, or a lecture to prepare. Eventually, when we managed to make it up here, the cabin became an extension of our offices.
When it came time to divide everything up in the divorce, we told ourselves the cabin was too good of an investment to sell. But honestly, we knew we’d never find another place like it and decided to share custody, each using the little house in the Sierra foothills on alternate weekends and holidays.
And secretly, I thought we’d work our way back to each other, and the cabin would stand as a symbol of our enduring love.
These are the things I’m thinking about as I take the meandering two-lane highway to town, gazing out at the breathtaking trees and their vibrant autumn colors. I’m still trying to decide whether I ever took the time to just look and take in all that there was to see. The sad truth of the matter is I can’t remember, and I don’t know if it’s because I hit my head when I got run down by the cable car or if the answer is simply no. No, I never took the time to really look, because I was too busy being Chelsea Knight, the brilliant marriage therapist who was too stupid to realize her own marriage was in trouble.
Ghost has a population of 14,000 people, not tiny by any stretch but hardly a sprawling metropolis.
The story goes that the town got its name during California’s Gold Rush and from the bloody massacre of the Ramsey family.
James Marshall and John Sutter had just discovered gold in a streambed on the American River in Coloma. Word spread, and prospectors flocked to California from all over the world to seek their fortunes.
Such was the case of Charles Ramsey. Charles, his wife Jane, and their four-year-old son William came from Oregon, down the Siskiyou Trail on a covered wagon to try their luck in the goldfields. But after a year, defeated and exhausted, they were ready to go home. That’s when they got an offer to join a dozen other families from the Pacific Northwest to branch out down the mountain in Bear Creek, where the land was still rough, fertile, and virgin territory. According to prospector legend, the fields near the creek were bursting with gold. But only if you had the grit and fortitude to stake your claim without catching cholera, getting robbed, or killed first.
