“Now we’re cooking with gas,” he said.

The lantern had a way of removing the chill from the fire incident. He gazed at the immense slate fireplace, marveling at the way light revealed cuts and scrapes in the rocks in high definition.

Listen to the stillness, he thought.

Nothing made a sound but his own breathing and the quiet lantern hiss. Dorothy, we aren’t in the suburbs anymore.

He let his mind go blank and closed his eyes, leaning back in the bone-hard chair. Aspen leaves caressed the roof. A thin whistle of wind from the south found weaknesses in the logs. The door on the outhouse creaked. The orchard grass sighed as the wind brushed it like the mane of a horse.

Back home something was always making noise: cars, lights, people stomping around. This was where he wanted to be.

Matt got up from the chair and walked over to the southern window. He brushed away the ratty burlap curtain and pinned it to a nail above the pane. He peered into the night, catching part of his reflection. Above his head loomed the dead oak with its reaching branches—a frightening sight to a first-time visitor. In the dark it resembled a huge creature lurching towards the shack, hands held high in a fit of insanity or rage or both. He saw it only as the fossilized, dead oak that the woodpeckers loved. Once, long ago, it had provided shade for the farmhouse.

His attention turned to the table and the paper sack that held his late dinner. He reached inside and picked out Deluxe Kraft mac and cheese. Below that was a can of white chicken breast. He opened the wobbly drawer and took the ancient-looking can opener. It cracked the metal lid like an octopus beak to a crab’s shell.

Slock!

He pulled one of the pans off the wall and poured a jug of water into it—fresh from the Black. The water contained little chunks of sediment that sloshed around. Next he attached a green propane canister to the dual burner camp stove and screwed it onto the protruding valve. This old camp stove was a Kearns family heirloom. It’d been in the family for decades and now showed rust patches. A little dancing bear sticker decorated the lid—the product of a tour with the Grateful Dead in the nineties. His father had loaned it to a friend who’d quit his job for a summer. The friend then used the stove to cook vegan hot dogs and sold them in the parking lot extravaganzas the Dead followers were known for.

Matt lifted the smashed metal fastener and pried the lid open. The lid creaked like a rusty coffin. But instead of Dracula or a mummy, a place to cook tasty treats was revealed.