Cabin Fever I

Written many moons ago.

The old man came down from the mountains every spring to buy flour and whiskey and whatever other supplies he needed. The storekeeper's daughter once told me that he'd come into town and stop first at the store, smelling of the forest and sweat and urine, and place an order for so much whiskey that they'd make a special order just for that. Then he'd stay in town until it came, two weeks or four or however long. He wouldn't go back to the mountains without it. The spring he didn't come back it was joked in the taverns that it was the whiskey that finally killed him. Neither the storekeeper's daughter nor I laughed though, because only we knew how much whiskey it was, and that it was probably true.