Page 188 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Marc Erdrich

with four drawers, a closet, a huge skylight, and large double
screen doors opening to the outside deck.

The effect of all the glass and screens made it like living out-
doors, although inside the cottage it was always comfortable.
When the moonlight cast its yellow-gray light into the cottage
at night, the effect was breathtaking.

Eddie had lived in the rented house since his divorce, and
he had grown to love the feeling of solitude it offered him.
There wasn’t another house in sight, and because the distant,
main house was unoccupied for all but a few days a month,
Eddie had become accustomed to prancing about naked.
There was only one feature about the cottage that bothered
Eddie and it wasn’t a fault of the house really. Sitting as it did
on a rise above a steep curve in the road, it sounded as if every
car coming around the bend was destined for his driveway,
when in fact nothing could have been further from the truth.
Actually, in the three months Eddie lived in the cottage, only
once had a vehicle turned into his driveway — and that was
during the first week he lived in the house, when the oil com-
pany came to fill up the fuel tank.
Often, at night, Eddie would lie in bed staring out at the
stars. The only sounds were the steady chirping of crickets,
the rhythmic cheep-cheep of springtime peepers, the occasion-
al scraping of a mouse or squirrel on the patio outside or on
the roof overhead, and the lilting flow of water in the stream.
Occasionally, he would hear the flapping of a bat’s wings as
it lighted on a tree outside his door. Once, one of the critters
squeezed through a tiny hole in the overhang and got into
the house. It flew around the tiny room in a panic. Eddie hid

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