Jack and Robin were going through our supplies, when I heard Robin start giggling almost hysterically. “Of course. It had to happen, on a day like this.”
“What?” Dan asked, as he stoked his fire into a bright blaze.
“Do you remember what we had packed in our saddlebag?”
“A bunch of stuff,” he answered.
“No. We decided to put the clothing in there, since we could stuff it full so much easier. ALL the clothing.” She laughed, nervously.
“What about Alex’s bag?” Sheri asked.
“Just a lot of booze, wrapped in what was once paper bags and two soaked beach towels.”
Dan headed out to try to find a little more dry wood at the bottom of the woodpile. “Some fucking vacation,” I heard him mutter. Poor guy was having a bad day. First the emergency at work, then the expensive bag, then the rain, and now his cabin.
In the carport, he took off his towel, and went behind the hut naked as a jaybird. He showed back up with several pieces of wood, and made a couple more trips, making a dry stack of wood under the cover of the carport.
I noticed what he was up to since I was constantly going in and out, being tasked with taking out the dirty linens, three full garbage bags, and the broken glass from the window. Sheri came out to hang up the wet towels from our bag; she was treated to an eye full as Dan finished his last trip. He looked like a drowned rat.
“Sorry, but I wasn’t about to get the only semi-dry thing I have any wetter.” He explained to my wife, while he turned his back to her, dried off, and got re-wrapped.
Sheri laughed, making light of the whole situation, taking it better than I could have hoped. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve got a feeling, that we’ll all be seeing a lot more of each other than we expected to by the end of this weekend.”
Truer words were never uttered.
With the garbage out, most of the place cleaned up, the bathroom, kitchen, floor, and any surfaces we could reached wiped down, and the furniture set right, you could hardly tell it was the same place we’d arrived at just a couple of hours earlier. It was almost a miracle what six people could do in less than three hours. The place was decently lit and smelled of Clorox and Pinesol, which was a whole lot better than it had started out. The front door opened onto a covered porch, which faced the water about 50 yards away downhill. We had the door open, with the screen door closed, helping air out the place. The windows were all still shuttered, except for the two in the front facing the porch. You didn’t have to get soaked to open those, and we could even open the windows themselves, with the screens in place.
The storm outside was not letting up, and there was no doubt we were going to be spending the night in this place. I finally gave it a good look over, seeing what we had, instead of what was wrong.
The cabin was basically quartered. Entering from the side door, the kitchen area was on the left. It had a propane stove, an icebox, and a simple sink and some counter space. It also had a table with 6 chairs. The front door divided the front of the house into two, the kitchen, and sitting area. The sitting area had two couches and a table that bracketed the huge fireplace. The back of the cabin had two queen sized beds, some dressers, and the small but efficient bathroom.