We'll Be Fine -- Flash Fiction

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We’ll Be Fine

“We’ll get everything all set up before the boys get there. We’ll be just fine,” she said.

And we were. For two-hundred and fifty-three miles. Then we stopped for a late lunch on the north side of the lake.

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump,” she said as we pulled away from Red’s on the Lake Café where the elite meet to eat, according to the sign.

Most of the trees still had their leaves, but the fall colors had faded to a uniform brown promising winter. At least there wouldn’t be any chiggers or ticks. And the way the temperature was dropping, the snakes should be denned up.

Then it rained. Freezing rain slashed across the windshield. The defroster and windshield wipers were helpless in the onslaught.

“Can you see?” I asked.

“Not very well, dear.” She slowed to little more than a crawl, which seemed recklessly fast to me.

“Maybe we should turn back,” I suggested.

“It’s closer to go on. We’ll be fine.”

Forty-five minutes of adrenalin induced gut twisting on some God-forsaken country road finally dumped us out in front of the cabin. After that drive, it didn’t look so bad.

“It won’t take us long to get the lights on and the heat.” She pulled up close to the porch. “We don’t need to bring everything in tonight. Just the things that might freeze.”

I’d never gotten so wet and cold as quickly as I did from the car to the door.

She flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. She flicked it several times. Still no light.

“Probably just the breaker, dear.” She rummaged in her purse until she found a flashlight. “Just put that stuff down on the table. It won’t take a jiffy.”

But it wasn’t the breaker. The power was off.

“Probably a tree down on the lines. Or ice.” She opened the cabinet and brought out a kerosene lantern. She waved her flashlight toward the fireplace. “Bring me one of those matches. We’ll get some light in here and start a fire. We’ll be fine.”

The lamplight flickered and sputtered as she opened the back door letting in a gust of arctic air. And again when she reentered with both arms full of firewood. She skillfully laid the wood, strategically placing slivers of fat pine. She applied a match, and it caught. The tension across my shoulders relaxed and I sat on the quilt-padded bench before the fireplace.

Then the fire belched sending clouds of suffocating, eye-burning smoke into the room.

“Just the damper, dear. Silly me. I had it closed. Help me open the windows.”

Cold wind blew through the cabin while the fire danced, merrily mocking us.

“With the power off we’ll have no water, but there’s an outhouse thirty feet or so from the back door. As cold as it is we sure won’t dawdle if nature calls,” she said, laughing.

“At least the bears should be hibernating,” I said, trying to join in her eternal optimism.

“I don’t think Oklahoma bears hibernate, dear.”

No, the way things were going, they probably didn’t.

I made a quick trip to the outhouse and a quicker trip to the car to get a bottle of very nice pinot noir. I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight or a chamber pot, but I had brought wine.

We’d be fine.