The Boarded Window

The CampfireThe openingFree

In 1830, only a few miles outside what is now the big city of Cincinnati, there was nothing but forest. Deep, dark, unbroken forest, full of wolves and bears and panthers. A few settlers lived out there in log cabins they built by hand, and some of them gave up and moved on, and some of them stayed.

One of the ones who stayed was a man named Murlock.

He lived alone in a little cabin with one door and one window. And the window was boarded up. Nobody knew why. Nobody had ever seen it open. Murlock was an old, gray man, and he never talked much, and he lived in that cabin until he died.

My grandfather, who told this story, knew him as a boy. And after Murlock died, my grandfather went into that cabin, on a dare, and saw the window from the inside.

And later, a man who had known Murlock when he was young told him the story.

When Murlock came to the forest, he was young and strong, and he had a wife. They built the cabin together. They cleared the land together. They were very happy, and very much in love, and very alone.

Then she got sick. A fever. There was no doctor anywhere near. He nursed her for days. And one evening, she died.

He was alone in the cabin with her body. Hours from anyone.

He did what people did then. He washed her. He combed her hair. He dressed her in her best clothes and laid her out on the table in the middle of the room, ready for burial. He did it all very carefully, because he couldn't quite believe she was gone.

And then he sat down beside her, in the dark, to watch over her through the night.

He meant to stay awake. He was so tired. He put his head down on the table, beside her body.

And he fell asleep.