Riding Fury Home by Chana Wilson

Author:Chana Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2012-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30. Icebox Canyon

KATE AND I WERE ATTACKING the rusted iron bed frame with our paintbrushes. Bright blue paint spattered everywhere—on our clothes, on the parking lot gravel, and on our new puppy, Emma, who kept bringing us a stick to throw. We’d dragged the frame outside our one-room cabin into the parking area that ran along the row of Russian River cabins. Our new home, Pocket Canyon Cabins, was a group of flimsy wooden structures originally intended for summer vacationers from San Francisco. But the resort area’s heyday had waned, and the cabins were now rented year-round to locals.

Even in its prime, the resort must have been a second-rate affair. Six one-room cabins, painted a stomach-wrenching mustard yellow, sat on the gravel lot cleared of all but a few redwoods. We’d spotted the cabins on our exploratory mission, when we’d driven up from the city in the used Datsun station wagon we’d bought.

The landlady, a stout woman in her fifties, had looked us over and asked, “Are you girls students?” When we said yes, we’d be going to SRJC in September, she nodded, brought us into the office, and pushed a rental agreement across the counter. “Okay, then. We don’t allow any trash here. We run a respectable place.” I wondered whether a couple of pot-smoking, radical lesbians fit her definition of trash. But we were getting desperate, so we both smiled politely and signed the papers.

Our new life: just the two of us, feeling lost and adrift, playing house. I worried about how we might be treated, knowing as I did how being “different” in a small town can be met with bigotry. Kate and I agreed to be in the closet unless we got a feel that someone was tolerant. Yet, strangely, we didn’t think we were being obvious, painting the frame of our shared bed out in the middle of the yard for all to see. Later, when we became friendly with Valerie, she said our bed painting had clinched it among the cabin dwellers’ gossip—they all knew we were gay. And according to Valerie, no one seemed to care.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.