We
all know someone will find Jenkins's cabin. Someday. Oh, it's
up there in those
hills somewhere. We all know that.
It's
become a friendly object of conjecture and speculation. No one
living has seen
it, as far as we know. Jenkins himself died quietly when he
was on one of his
infrequent trips to town for supplies. Funny guy, that
Jenkins.
He
worked in the city for years, mostly as a night watchman in a
factory that made
diapers. Didn't really enjoy people much, and told us many
times how nice it
was to just be in the huge factory when it was quiet. Then one
day he decided
to move to the mountains and make pretty things out of
leather. Once in a while
he'd have his coffee at the counter at the Mule Barn, but
often as not, he'd
camp out on the edge of town for the two or three days it took
him to sell his
crafts and buy supplies. He'd smile and wave from his
campsite, then he'd be
gone one morning. We wouldn't see him again for months.
Now
and then someone would ask him where his cabin was, and he'd
just point toward
the mountains and say, "Up there." How far up there? "A
ways." What was his cabin like? "Not too big."
And
so we came to regard the little cabin as an intriguing
mystery, an object of
local legend. After he died, several of the fellows tried to
backtrack him to
find the place, but Jenkins evidently didn't take the same
trail each time, as
though he wanted his quiet times protected from even a
friendly visit from one
of us. During his lifetime, we respected his wishes. In this
country, a man has
a perfect right to be a little strange. And, truth be known,
we hold a certain
admiration for those of us who hear different instructions.
But there is
something in the human spirit, also, that begs to have its
mysteries solved. So
now, several times each year, one or two of us will use the
mystery of the lost
cabin as an excuse to poke our noses into the nuances and
seclusions of these
hills. We play off our curiosity against our wishes to respect
a man's privacy,
even when he's gone.
We
have yet to discover Jenkins's lost cabin. Maybe we never
will. Maybe that
wouldn't be such a bad thing, either.
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