The Nowhere Man's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The door swung inward and the Nowhere Man stepped onto a wooden floor painted with the same swirls that climbed the outside walls. He shut the door behind him and stood in the quiet. A round window threw a coin of light onto the boards. He waited for the feeling he had chased for eleven days. It did not come all at once. He set his bag down slowly, ready to pick it up again if the room told him to leave. He walked a slow circle inside. There was a narrow bed, a stove, a table with two chairs. Someone had lived here once. He could tell by the ring of soot around the stove door and a chipped mug left on the shelf. He touched the mug. It was dry and cold. On the wall beside the table, tacked at one corner, hung a sheet of yellowed paper. He stepped closer. The heading read EVICTION NOTICE. The body of the letter had faded to nonsense, half the words bleached out by years of sun through the round window. No name at the bottom. No date he could read. Whoever had lived here had been told to go, and had gone, a long time ago. He took the paper down. He held it and waited for the cabin to feel less like his. Instead the opposite happened. The last tenant was not coming back. The notice in his hand was proof. He folded the paper twice and set it on the table. Then he opened the door and stepped outside to look at the ground he might be standing on for a while. Behind the cabin, closer than he had noticed at dusk, stood a tree he had missed. Its trunk twisted in painted colors. Its leaves were patterned like cloth. A dreamcatcher hung from one low branch, turning in the small wind. He walked to it and put his hand on the bark. The tree was warm. He stood there until his breathing slowed to match the turning of the feathers. He went back inside and closed the door without hurrying. He lit the stove with kindling from the box beside it. He filled the chipped mug from his canteen and set it on the table next to the folded notice. He sat down in one of the two chairs. The other chair stayed empty, and he found he did not mind it being empty, and he found he did not mind if someone later came and filled it. The cabin was his tonight. He would sleep in the narrow bed. In the morning he would step outside and come back, and that would be the test he had wanted all along.