I looked down and saw that the sheets had been tucked around me—not tying me down but keeping me warm. My skin was clammy. I struggled to sit, and the old man kept his distance, probably having learned his lesson after struggling with me earlier.
“You asked me not to call the police, so I brought you back here to heal. The fever broke last night, I think.”
“How long?”
He looked up, a little uncertain. “Oh, maybe three days. Sorry, not entirely sure. Time passes a little different when you’re used to being alone.”
Yeah, I could sympathize with that.
I finally glanced around the cabin, taking in the small bookcase with pulp thriller novels, the open shelf with blackened pots and pans, the small, ancient-looking television.
And only one bed.
He caught my line of thought. “I slept on a roll in the corner.”
I’d put him out of his bed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you worry. It was just like camping again. But now that you’re awake, maybe you want to reconsider calling the police. Or at least let me take you to a hospital. They can check you out better than I can.”
I shook my head. “No cops.”
My heart had gone from twisted to torn right in half when I’d run from Hunter. But however much I might rage against him on the inside, I didn’t want him behind bars.
Unfortunately, waking up didn’t mean I was fully healed. Though I had no broken bones that we could tell, there were enough bruises that my body wanted to rest all day long. The man’s name turned out to be Jeremiah, and he was generous with his space, his food, and his stories.
True to his word, he never laid a finger on me. In fact, he was exceedingly careful of my personal space in such cramped quarters. He knew what had happened to me from how he’d found me. He told me the first day I woke up that “those boys” wouldn’t bother me again, and I couldn’t summon enough compassion to ask if they had lived or died.
Instead Jeremiah shared with me stories of a young man in the Wyoming wilderness, tales of hunting bear and running from geese that I wasn’t sure whether to believe but I enjoyed all the same.
Three days after I’d arrived, I was sitting at his kitchen table eating scrambled eggs and hotcakes for breakfast. He began telling me a story of how he and his friends had gone up to “the falls” for a buddy’s bachelor party. There was something about smuggling a stripper over the Canadian border, but I had to interrupt.
“Niagara Falls?”
“One in the same, darlin’. You ever been?”
“No, but I want to.”
“Oh, it’ll blow you away. Right beautiful it is. ’Course nothing’s as beautiful as what Candy had to show us—”
“How far away is it?”
He scratched his forehead. “About five hours or thereabouts.”
My spirits sank. That was a long way away for someone with no transportation. Or money. I toyed with my eggs, but I could feel Jeremiah’s curious gaze on me.
“You know,” he said. “There was a time I had dreams about those falls, even if I knew they wouldn’t come to nothing.”
“Really?”
I figured he was just saying that to make me feel better. How many other people hung their hopes on a waterfall? But I appreciated the gesture.
“Well, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a hermit. But even us hermits, we have people we look up to. Something to work toward. And ain’t no hermit better than the Niagara Falls hermit.”
I made a face. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Nuh-uh. He was a real guy back in the eighteen hundreds. Francis something-or-other. He lived on an island right in the falls. He’d climb over some wooden planks and sit on the end like he was on a dock somewhere. People would scream, thinking he was going to fall.”
Despite myself, I was intrigued. This hadn’t been in my book.
“Did he fall?”
“Nope. Lived there happy as you please for years. Then one day he was gone into a shallow portion to take a bath like he always did. Went under and never came back up. Just goes to show.”
“Uh. What does it go to show?”
“Goes to show people think what they want to think. The man was highly-educated, well-traveled. Been to all these countries. Famous for his music. But he goes to live in the falls and everyone assumed he was crazy.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Nah, he just knew a good thing when he found it. The falls is beautiful, so why should he leave?”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that man. The hermit. He knew a good thing when he found it. Was that Hunter, living isolated in his truck? Or was I trying to romanticize something so it would sit easier with me? It didn’t really matter. In the end, Hunter did what he did. And like Jeremiah said, people would think what they wanted to think.
In two more days I was strong enough to go outside. I took short walks but kept close to the cabin. I’d need to leave here soon, and that meant I needed money.
I asked Jeremiah about it when he came to stand on the porch to smoke his pipe.