Read Online Man in The Woods by Scott Spencer - Free Book Online

pine, the plaster walls conceal modern wonders of insulation—most particularly a hybrid weave of recycled newspaper, wool, and fiberglass, made by a friend of Paul’s and gotten in exchange for a cherrywood bedside table, a spindly, coltish piece with frail legs and a sunny finish, which took Paul an entire month to build and which Kate came to love so much that she practically cried when it left the house.
    “Every gain comes with a loss,” she’d said to Paul, as they stood in the driveway and watched the precious little table bounce around the gritty, straw-flecked bed of Ken Schmidt’s old truck.
    “Don’t worry,” he’d said, “I can make a hundred tables like that.”
    “But you won’t.”
    Schmidt’s truck was out of view, but they could still hear it. The funnels of dust kicked up by the back tires rolled lazily in the sunlight.
    “I’m glad to get that insulation,” Paul said.
    Kate shook her head, with the passive, rueful sadness of someone who realizes a mistake when it’s too late to correct it. “We should have just paid for it,” she said. “And who the hell even wants insulation?”
    “Katey,” Paul said, “come on.” He put his arm around her, turned her around, walked to the house with her. “Now, if I come out here on a cold winter morning and slip my hands under your shirt, your breasts will be nice and warm.”
    She stopped, carved a faint line in the gravel with the toe of her shoe. “Don’t ever leave me,” she said with abandon, not caring what it sounded like or what he might say in response.
    Next to the stove, Paul has stacked seasoned, stove-sized pieces of wood, and there is a battered old tin bucket, itself a piece of found art, filled with kindling. All Kate needs to do is strike a match and the studio could be warm in ten minutes, but she has, guiltily, turned on the electric space heater instead. The space heater emits a hot flannel smell, its coils crinkle like cellophane, the heat itself corrugates the air around it. Kate has been at her computer, answering e-mails from readers in the order they have arrived. She writes quickly, as if not really writing but talking. Every now and then she comes up with an idea or a phrase that might be used in her real writing and she records it in a notebook next to her computer. Every little bit helps—now that her career is bringing in money, she has put herself on a serious production schedule, with the understanding that good things don’t last forever.
    The door to Kate’s studio opens and there, framed by bare trees and cold, dark, gray air, is her daughter, home from her after-school program. “Hey there,” Kate calls, doing her best to sound thrilled.
    “Hi there,” Ruby answers, in her powerful voice. Her cheeks are red with cold and wind; her pale green eyes sparkle. She shrugs off her lavender backpack and lets it fall to the pine floor.
    “Ho there,” Kate says, making a rah-rah gesture, rocking her fist back and forth. “Will you look what somebody sent me?” She goes through the day’s mail until she finds it, a delicate little crucifix on an even more delicate chain. She dangles the cross before Ruby as if trying to hypnotize her.
    “It’s the most beautiful cross in the world,” Ruby says, managing to sound both fervent and ironic. She clasps her hands together and places them beneath her chin, posing. She is a nine-year-old trying to be funny, and, to Kate, she actually is amusing—there is something sincere in the girl’s love of hyperbole. Lately, with Ruby, everything good is the best, everything at all fetching is the most beautiful in the world.
    “I know. One of my readers sent it to me. It is quite pretty,” Kate says, a little tug of instruction in her carefully modulated voice. “So I guess it only makes sense that I would give it to a very pretty girl.”
    Ruby shakes her head and makes a sweeping gesture, an actress playing to the second balcony. “I’m not pretty,” she says,