The pail clanged against Bojan’s thigh. Behind him, his glazed log home loomed wide and immense, its roof peaks vaulted toward the sky, a pre-fab package shipped up from the States. To the side stood a large pine tree with broad limbs that Sonny had climbed as a child while his father smoked his pipe below, and later where Sonny had hung deer, elk, and moose carcasses after hunting trips with his wife, Norma. “The Pines Bed and Breakfast” sign was now nailed to its bark. Bojan’s veranda sheltered cords of neatly stacked tamarack dropped off by someone Sonny didn’t know. Sonny hadn’t seen a guest yet, but suspected they’d show up in droves to escape the noise and pace of the city, relentlessly clawing away at their lives. They’d trample Sonny’s property, snap pictures of the big pine or the gentle curve in the river, Bull Head Mountain in the background. They’d clutch their guidebooks and ask him about the upside-down mountain and then take pictures of his hand-chopped firewood, cords of it stacked in a convoluted system of woodsheds and lean-tos.
