Sheltered-Chapter One

The little boy was watching her.

Startled, Shannon White froze. She had no idea how long her young visitor had been crouched in the shadows of the large boulders that separated her sunny meadow from the dark woods beyond, but she sensed that he’d been there quite awhile. If he hadn’t shifted position to keep her in sight as she moved across the field, she doubted whether his presence would ever have registered in her side-line vision. Now that it had, however, the tense lines of his body warned her that he was poised to run at the slightest hint of detection.

Instead of making eye contact she resumed gathering wildflowers, salvaging as many of the profuse July blooms as her large basket would hold before the angry clouds sweeping across the valley below battered her mountain retreat with a flattening torrent of rain and wind. So far, she’d gone about her task with the same singular focus and intensity she brought to her writing, which also helped explain why the solemn-eyed, brown-haired little boy hadn’t caught her attention before. Now, she was acutely conscious of his examination.

As she bent, reached and clipped, savoring the vivid colors of the perfect blossoms, he continued to stare. That didn’t surprise her. She was used to people gawking. She was also used to people keeping their distance. Her appearance made adults uncomfortable and, on a couple of occasions, had even frightened small children.

This little boy however, seemed more cautious than scared. As if he wanted to communicate with her. Yet something was holding him back. And for once she didn’t think it was the disfiguring scars that covered most of the right side of her face.

But then what did she know. After years of self imposed isolation on this little green spot in the woods of Oregon, her people skills were rusty, at best. Still, she knew all about loneliness. And she could feel it emanating from the little boy in an almost physical way that tugged at her heart.

With slow, focused steps, she eased closer to him. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the grimy, over sized T-shirt that hung from his thin frame. His rumpled hair didn’t look as if it had seen a comb in weeks. And a large smudge of dirt on his face masked the sprinkling of freckles that spilled across the bridge of his nose and onto his cheeks. He was about six, maybe seven, she estimated. Odd that she had never noticed him before. The adjacent property, which abutted a large parcel of BLM land, had never shown any signs of habitation. Unless, of course, you counted the occasional black-tailed deer that wandered onto her property to see if she had replaced any of her deer-resistant plants with something more suited to their tastes, or the raccoons that came to forage in her trash bin. But Effie, at the tiny grocery store a few miles down the road, had mentioned once that an old hermit lived there. If so, he’d earned that label, because Shannon had never seen any evidence of his existence. So who was the little boy? Could he be lost? Hungry? Injured? Did he need help?
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Her nurturing instincts kicked in, and she set the basket on the ground, then slid her clippers into the back pocket of her jeans. After dropping to one knee, she adjusted the brim of her hat to better shade her face, then turned toward the boy.

His eyes, blue as the summer sky, widened in alarm when they met hers. For a second he froze, much like the deer she often startled on her twilight walks to the woods. Then he half rose from his crouched stance, prepared to run. When Shannon remained motionless, however, he held his position and stared back at her.

“Hello there. My name is Shannon. What’s yours?”

Sometimes the husky quality of her once-soprano voice still surprised her – especially after she hadn’t used it for a few days. It occurred to her as she spoke that she hadn’t had any contact with another human being since her once-a-month shopping trip into Fern Ridge to stock up on essentials, and that had been …how long ago now? Five days maybe?

Instead of responding, the boy stood and, with one more fearful glance in her direction, took off at a run into the deep woods behind him, where shadows of the pines and cedars quickly swallowed him up.

Sighing, Shannon reached for her basket and rose. It seemed the skittish little boy didn’t need her after all. Perhaps he’d just been shocked—and curious--- about her appearance. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d drawn that kind of unwelcome attention.

Nor, unfortunately, would it be the last.

*****


The lashing rain slammed against the windshield of Keith Bradley’s older model compact car with enough force to render the wipers almost useless despite their noble efforts to keep up. And the wind pounding the jagged tree line just a few feet below and above the narrow, dark road did nothing to ease the tension in his shoulders. With each mile that passed, he was sorrier that he hadn’t thought ahead and realized how difficult it would be to find a place to stay over the Fourth of July weekend. Except the pending holiday hadn’t even registered in his consciousness. For the past year, the days and weeks had blended together in one long, gray blur. Weary now after months on the road, he’d hoped the Oregon forests would offer him a quiet, out-of-the-way spot in which to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

Well, Fern Ridge Mountain might be about as far away from Ohio as he could get in the contiguous---more or less---forty eight states, but this remote speck of land was more populous than he’d expected. When he’d seen the congestion in tiny Fern Ridge Village as he had driven into town, he’d been tempted to turn around and go back to the freeway. Except this was the last bit of the daylight hours and the roads were windy and confusing in the daylight let alone in the darkness. Meaning he was stuck here overnight.

And now he was driving the back roads on what could very well turn out to be a wild goose chase. Still, it was his best hope of finding a place to sleep tonight. He wasn’t about to try and set up his tent in this torrential downpour. And every single inn and bed-and-breakfast he’d passed had displayed No Vacancy signs. Considering the pricey tabs and the sad state of his finances, he supposed that was a blessing in disguise.
In any case, a chatty checker at the grocery store in Fern Ridge, where he’d stopped to buy a deli sandwich, had picked up on his predicament in no time. She’d suggested that a “widowed lady” she knew might be willing to give him the use of a small cottage on her property for one night.

“I live down her way, and I try to chat with her a bit when she comes in here every few weeks,” the woman explained. “She doesn’t rent the cottage out as a rule, and mostly keeps to herself. But I expect she might give you shelter from this storm that’s brewing. She’s always taking in stray critters.” The woman had laughed and planted her hands on her ample hips. “She’s got an account here, so we have her number. Shall I give her a call?”

A widow lady who took in strays. She was probably one off those eccentric old women who had forty cats on the property and kept her newspapers from ten years ago piled up in a spare room. Keith mused. But what choice did he have? “Sure why not?” he’d responded.
“Hey, Beth, cover for me a minute, will you? I need to call out to the White place.”

A perky young woman with long blond hair, wearing a cropped shirt that skimmed the waistband of her low-cut jeans, came up behind the woman. “Sure thing.” She gave Keith a smile that could be just friendly…or inviting. He didn’t trust himself to make that judgment anymore. But he figured it must be the former. After all, he hadn’t shaved in several days, his own jeans were threadbare and faded, and his black leather jacket was scuffed and worn. He didn’t see how any woman could find him attractive. Then again, considering the current Hollywood heartthrobs, maybe the dangerous, bad-boy image was a turn on.
~~~~