This is a fiction serial that will post every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday.
I hope you will enjoy it!
After checking out the dock on the lake at Camp Hope, Molly walked back into the cabin area and saw a woman on her small porch shaking out rugs. “Good morning!” the woman called.
“Good morning!” Molly said, coming up to her. “Is it OK if I look around the cabin area?”
“Oh, sure. My name is Joy, by the way. What’s yours?”
“Molly.”
“Would you like to come inside and look at the cabin?” Joy asked.
“Oh, yes! That would be fun,” Molly said.
She went up on the porch as Joy went inside and laid the rugs down just inside the door. As Molly stepped in, she saw that they were in a small mud room. There was a wooden bench on one side and a row of hooks on the opposite wall. Shoes, boots, jackets, and hats lined the room.
“I find that keeping these rugs in here cuts down on tracking mud and pine needles into the cabin,” Joy said. “I shake them out every morning and you’d be amazed what-all dirt there is on them.”
Molly laughed and followed Joy into the kitchen. There was a wooden table with bench seats directly in front of them. To their left was a medium-sized kitchen. There were some mugs and a percolator-style coffee pot draining in the dish rack next to the sink.
They stepped through the doorway into the living room. It was a large, square room with wood floors and an area rug in front of a woodstove that was quietly cooking away, warming the place. It was very cozy. Very mountain-cabin-y. They crossed the room to the back where there was another narrow mud room the width of the living room. Another bench with rain boots underneath it and raincoats on hooks along the wall, plus fishing tackle. “It helps to have a mud room back here, too,” Joy said, “for when the boys come in from the lake.”
They went back into the living room and crossed it to the short hallway next to it. Directly in front of them was a small bathroom with just enough room for a big tub, toilet, and sink. A bedroom was on either side of the bathroom, one with a double bed and another with two sets of rustic, wooden bunk beds.
“You take care of four boys, then?” Molly asked.
“Yes, we sure do,” Joy said. “It’s me and my husband, Frank, who live here with the boys.”
“What do the boys call you?”
“They call all the camp parents by their name first, so I’m Joy-Mom and Frank is Frank-Dad.”
“Oh! That’s a really good idea,” Molly said. “And what a fabulous place to live. I’d love to live here.”
“Well, then, why don’t you?” Joy asked.
Molly looked at Joy, wondering what she meant, but Joy was heading back to the living room.
“Oh, my,” Joy said. “Is it that late already? I’ve got to go teach.”
“Oh, you’re a teacher?” Molly asked, following Joy to the mud room next to the kitchen. Joy sat down on the bench and started pulling on boots.
“We all are, in a sense,” Joy said. “We home-school the boys here so we take turns teaching things. I teach history and some of the science classes. We’re studying birds right now and the boys are coloring in bird illustrations and learning the names and facts about different birds. When they’re done, we’ll put the illustrations into a pressboard binder that they can keep.”
Joy had her coat and hat on by that time, so Molly followed her out onto the porch. “Thanks so much, Joy, for showing me your cabin.” Joy gave her a wave and hurried off in the direction of the main cabin. Molly had seen on her way into breakfast that morning that the main cabin had a sign over the door that said: Peace Cabin. Next to the door was another sign that said: Peace to All Who Enter Here.
Molly thought about Camp Hope and Peace Cabin. Just the very names brought a sense of calm to the place. And when you looked around and saw the tall pine trees and the beautiful deep blue lake, heard the wind rustling in the trees and the squirrels chattering, breathed in the cold, fresh air…..wow. She could see how this place could be a balm to heal the hurts that had been inflicted on those boys.
She made her way back down to where Coach and Jake were working on the downed tree. Two boys were on either side of a long saw, each pulling their end back and forth through the trunk of the tree. They had smiles on their faces and were joking about how poorly the other boy sawed. Jake was near the boys, using a handsaw to cut some of the smaller limbs from the tree. Coach was a short distance away, chopping a tree round that had been cut from the trunk. Molly wandered over to see what Coach was doing.
Coach had a splitter maul stuck into the tree round and he was taking powerful over-the-head swings at it with a sledge hammer. Soon the metal pierced deep enough into the round of wood to split it. Then Coach put the maul into a smaller piece from the round and split it, as well. He threw the smaller pieces into a pile several feet away and another boy of about ten picked them up and carried them to where the firewood was neatly stacked against the side of Peace Cabin.
There was nothing there for Molly to do to help so she wandered over to Peace Cabin, stomped the pine needles off her shoes, opened the door, and went inside. Joy was conducting a history lesson with the boys at the tables nearest the door. She smiled at Molly as she came in. Molly walked past those tables to the table in the middle of the room where another group of boys were busy coloring bird illustrations with colored pencils. Molly quietly asked if they would mind if she looked and they were eager to show off their work, although they whispered so they wouldn’t interrupt Joy’s lesson. Molly slowly made her way around the table and saw that some of the boys were very meticulous in their coloring and some were not. But she looked at each one and complimented each boy in either their coloring or their listing of bird traits under the illustration.
At the back of the room nearest the fireplace, the easy chairs and couch were set up and a reading lesson was going on. Molly perched on the edge of the couch and listened in. The poorer readers were encouraged by the teacher to sound out the words they did not know. They were reading Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
After awhile, Molly heard noises coming from the kitchen area so she went back and offered to help with the lunch preparations. She had finally found a place where she could help.
Jake and Molly spent the next few days working around the camp. Jake and Coach got the big tree cut up and stacked, with the help of the boys. Then they moved on to doing some repairs on the camp’s generator, followed by roof repairs on one of the cabins. Molly gave the bus a good clean, then used the camp’s large-capacity washer and dryer to wash their clothes and sheets. The laundry machines were located in a small building near the cabin area. It was just an unheated, rectangular room with the one washer and one dryer but it had several clotheslines strung from front to back across the room. Molly found out after she had used the dryer that they were encouraged to use the clotheslines instead to save on electricity costs.
She asked Jake why they had a generator, if they had electricity at the camp. “Oh, the generator is just for emergencies, for when the electricity goes out. It’s to keep the freezer and refrigerator running and to provide light in Peace Cabin.”
“Oh,” Molly said.
One day, it dawned on Molly that the boys at camp might like to do The Mailbox Club Bible lessons. She asked Coach about it and showed him some of the lessons so he could look them over. He agreed that it would be great for the boys but said both she and Jake would have to go through an extensive background check first.
“Anyone who has anything to do with the boys has to have this done,” he said. “You’ll have to go down the mountain to be fingerprinted at the police station so we can begin the check. And it will cost you some money, too.”
The next day, Jake and Molly drove down and got fingerprinted, then stopped at the grocery store to pick up a long list of grocery items needed at the camp. They arrived back at Camp Hope just after lunch and the boys helped to unload the groceries into Peace Cabin and onto the long counter that was used for serving up meals. Once the boys were back at their studies, Jake and Molly worked with Coach and a woman named Faith to sort out the groceries.
“Your name is Faith and you live at Camp Hope and work in Peace Cabin?” Jake joked with her.
They put away the things that went into the refrigerator and deep freezer first, sorting the newer items to the back and the older items to the front. Then large airtight containers were brought out to put the whole wheat flour, dried beans, lentils, and split-peas into, as well as other staples like brown rice and brown sugar. It took quite awhile to sort out the groceries then Jake and Molly were put to work in the kitchen peeling potatoes for a ginormous pot of potato soup for dinner.
“I’m very happy,” Molly said to Jake, as they sat up on high stools at the kitchen counter peeling potatoes.
“Well, that’s a new one,” Jake said, grinning at her. “It seems like I spend half my life trying to make you happy.”
“Of course you do,” Molly said, depositing a peeled potato into the big bowl of cold water and picking up another, “that’s your job.”
