Page 88 of For a Goode Time Call…
There was an outhouse about thirty feet from the house, and once a year I hauled up lime to maintain it. There was no indoor plumbing, although there was a well pump inside the house, and another near the outhouse. No electricity.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, and it took “roughing it” to a new level.
But it was paradise, for me.
I came up here to recharge, to get in touch out my wild creative bents—as a tattoo artist, I tended to fall into predictable patterns and subjects and styles, and rarely had time to pursue styles and mediums. Coming up here was a chance to flex those other muscles.
I kept all sorts of art supplies up here, and every time I came I would bring up new stuff: oil paints, pastels, charcoal, a manual camera and hundreds of rolls of film—I could block off the already dirty windows and use the cabin as a darkroom. Years back, I’d gone to the effort of hauling up a full darkroom kit, including an enlarger. I had an easel, rolls of canvas that I stretched and framed myself.
I would spend days on end just geeking out in whatever medium caught my fancy. I had bins full of photos, both framed and not, old rolls of film kept in airtight storage. Stacks and stacks and stacks of paintings—pastels and charcoals—some framed, some just the canvas.
When I got up here I did have a tendency to go full artist and just zone into my project, forgetting to eat or sleep for forty-eight or seventy-two hours at a time.
But this time?
This was different.
The entire first four days I was here, I’d stared at my phone and wondered why I’d brought it. It didn’t work out here; I had no charger and no way to charge it when it did die. Why had I felt such an odd pull to bring my phone with me?
It had baffled me the whole way up here.
I had no one to call—Juneau knew I was up here, and she knew the only way to get me in case of an emergency was to just come out here. She was the only person—outside of my immediate family who, never came here—who even knew where the cabin was, or how to get here.
My client list had been postponed indefinitely. My voicemail and website had been updated to indicate my leave of absence. I had plenty of money saved for supplies, and could live off the land indefinitely anyway.
Cassie was back in Ketchikan, and I was just operating under the assumption that either I’d get tired of being up here and go back home eventually, and would figure it out with her then, or she’d come find me.
So…why did I bring my damn phone?
Finally, a week in, I picked it up, turned it on, and…
What?
I had no photos, couldn’t access the Internet.
I tapped the photos icon. I’d brought it to a family get-together last year, so I had a few photos of baby cousins and my parents and shit, but that was it.
But wait.
The “Photos” tab at the bottom just showed the family reunion shots and an album file. Then under albums, I scrolled down. Down, down. To the bottom.
And there, at the very bottom, was a little line— “hidden.”
That was not there last time I looked, and I hadn’t put it there.
So, I tapped it.
Fuck me running.
When did Cassie do this?
Dozens of photos. A hundred, maybe.
All of her.
Ho-ly. Shit.
An array of thumbnails. Cassie clothed was the first one. I tapped on it to enlarge, and just stared. This made me miss her even more.
