Free A Boy in the Woods by Nate Gubin

H arold had locked himself away in a remote wilderness cabin to write a book. He had tried his entire life to write this book but he kept starting and stopping, creating and deleting. Now, at the center of a 1,400 acre forest, he had all his notes in neat stacks on a large table facing a picture window. He had a laptop and enough supplies to sustain him for three months before he’d have to drive the two and a half hours to the nearest grocery store.
    Getting laid off with a year of severance was a lucky break for him. Of course he didn’t see it that way at first. Losing a job he had faithfully served at for seventeen years scared him numb. With two, maybe three, years off from work he was going to fulfill his dream of writing a great American memoir. Distractions were hundreds of miles away from the two bedroom one bath cabin settled low into a valley of thick pines. The sun hardly ever pierced the swaying canopy and the forest floor stayed cool and moist. Harold was glad for the dark, he wanted to sit and write in the shadows.
    The cabin rental was a deal. He had paid $800 a month back in the city for a townhouse style apartment just off the interstate. This knotty pine cave was just $250 and that included heat. The electricity was extra but he kept its use to a minimum, never paying more than $14 a month, less than $7 in the summer.
    He did his best to live a monastic life. Up early he brewed a pot of coffee and ate toast with peanut butter. The chest freezer in the garage had dozens of loaves hard as bricks. The peanut butter came in half gallon tubs which he kept stacked three high in the cupboard. Lunch was canned soup with some more toast. Dinner was a frozen pizza. At last count he had more than sixty pizzas filed away in the freezer. His daily budget for food was $4.33. His life as a reclusive writer should have cost him less than $500 a month. With his 401k cashed out and the ninety-nine weeks of unemployment, he could afford to live like this for years. Just sitting, staring out the window, writing. But there was the whiskey.
    He had always drank. Most nights back in the city he’d have a bourbon on the rocks, maybe two, before he made himself dinner. The plan was always to write after eating, but his work days wore him down and a few more cocktails in front of the TV was so much more relaxing than facing the book.
    He didn’t spend too much time budgeting for how much Jim Beam he’d need in the woods. He bought the 1.75 bottles by the case when he was in town. He was pretty sure a bottle would last more than a week. Six to a case and ten percent off, three cases would be more then enough until his next trip to town.
    He sat staring out the window at the endless rows of pines. His mind was wandering and between 8am and 10am he had only written sixty-three words. It just wasn’t coming easy. He was tired, his head was foggy. Maybe another cup of coffee would get him going, he thought, but he was in the kitchen and decided a little drink would help just as much. He rinsed out his glass from the night before and poured himself an inch of bourbon. His spirit lifted as he returned to the writing table.
    He was happiest alone. The nearest neighbor lived more than forty miles to the south. An old widow he met once when he was taking his garbage to the dump. She sold eggs from her chickens, a buck a dozen. Harold didn’t buy any. He didn’t have any butter or salt and he didn’t want to interrupt his routine with cooking and cleaning. The toast was served on a paper towel, the soup was microwaved in a bowl that he quickly rinsed after lunch. The pizza was eaten off it’s cardboard disk that was then burned in the fireplace with the days crumpled paper towels.
    He opened a file on his laptop titled Chapter 7. He tilted the glass back and let the brown sweetness slip in. He typed.
    We spent the afternoon at my aunt Judy’s house. She had a nice house with a pool but it was late autumn and the leaves had blanketed