The Week in March Nobody Wanted

The numbers

I had written it all out in pencil, the way Dad taught me to keep a fishing log.

“Property tax last year,” I said. “Forty-one hundred and change. A third each is thirteen sixty-seven.”

They both nodded. They knew that part.

“Bobby paid me fourteen hundred for my week. I paid my half of this year’s taxes with it, and the thirty-three dollars left over is in the coffee can on top of the fridge, where Mom always kept the cabin money. You can go look.”

Steve got up and looked. He came back with the coffee can and set it on the table between us, and nobody said anything about it.

“Now here’s what Bobby is offering,” I said. “Every winter week we don’t use. Mark, you’ve never come up in January. Steve, you come up for one weekend in February to fish walleye before the season closes. That’s it. From New Year’s to the middle of March there are ten weeks. Take out Steve’s weekend and my week, and that leaves eight.”

I pointed at the line.

“Eight weeks at fourteen hundred is eleven thousand two hundred dollars.”

Mark sat back in his chair.

“Now take out what it costs,” I said. “The extra propane, because we’d be running the furnace at sixty-eight instead of fifty. Kelly, you pay the cabin bills. You know what the propane bill was last winter.”

“Nine hundred and something,” Kelly said quietly.

“So say another fifteen hundred on top of that. Bobby covers the driveway plowing while he’s here. We’d want somebody to clean between groups. Linda Pederson’s granddaughter cleans cabins in Bigfork for a hundred dollars a turnover. That’s eight hundred.”

I wrote it out as I said it.

“Eleven thousand two hundred, minus about twenty-three hundred. That leaves almost nine thousand dollars a year.”

“Taxes are forty-one hundred,” Steve said slowly.

“Taxes are forty-one hundred,” I said. “Bobby’s winters would pay the taxes on this cabin, all of them, for all three of us, every year. And there would still be close to five thousand left over.”

Mark was staring at the notebook.

“The roof,” he said.

“The roof,” I said. “You told me at Dad’s funeral it had maybe three winters left. You said it would be nine or ten thousand to redo it. Two winters of Bobby, and the roof is paid for. Nobody writes a check.”

I took a breath.

“I don’t want the money,” I said. “I never wanted it. I want it to go into one account for the cabin, with all three of our names on it. Taxes, roof, the dock, whatever comes up. Not mine. Ours.”

It was so quiet I could hear the wood stove ticking.

Steve rubbed his face with both hands.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” he said.