I love You, Carole
I Love You, Carole
Looking around her ramshackle cabin, Carole was disappointed to find that she had nothing left to burn. Having ran out of firewood several days earlier, she had been sustaining the dimming glow in her fireplace with books, articles of clothing, and anything else she could find that was flammable.
For the first time in the 43 years that she had called her cabin in the rural Montana wilderness home, Carole was forced to face the distinct possibility that she might not survive the winter. Normally she would come out on the other side of winter with a stockpile of wood that would have been enough to sustain her for at least another couple of months if it would have come to it, but not this winter.
She had thrown out her back during the summer while chopping up a fallen pine tree. It hadn’t been the same ever since. Lacking the physical ability to gather up anymore firewood, she had no other choice than to enter what had turned out to be one of the most brutal winters she had ever seen with less than half her normal wood supply. Rationing had gotten her through the past two and a half months, but spring was still a long way off.
She slowly hobbled over to the fireplace and gazed into what remained of the fire with a woeful glint in her eyes. She had come to the end of the line and she knew it. All she could do was hope that the blizzard outside might subside before the temperature inside the cabin started to dip even more so than it already had. If it did, she could then make the 50-mile trek to her nearest neighbor. But considering Carole’s advanced age, 83, the possibility that she would be able to make such a long trip on foot and through several feet of snow seemed highly unlikely.
Exhausted from worrying over what she would do next, Carole fell in and out of consciousness in front of the mesmerizing glow of the fire.
***
Carole slowly came to. The chattering of her own teeth had caused her to wake. She was immediately met by an excruciating pain coming from her lower back. The unforgiving surface of the floor hadn’t been kind to her. As she pulled herself up, she released a pained gasp when she found that all that remained of the fire were a few flickering embers.
“No,” she mumbled to herself while propping herself up on the hearth. Now, all that she had to keep herself warm with were the clothes that she had on her back.
A few tears dripped out of the sides of her eyes. They stung slightly as they rolled down her ice-cold cheeks.
While frantically looking around, she prayed that she might have missed something the day before that she could burn. But all that was left were things that were essentially inflammable. Pots. Pans. Utensils. A lamp. And gardening tools. Her eyes zeroed in on the hoe. She grabbed it and started beating at the wooden planks that comprised the floor. Although removing part of the floor would let in the cold air, at least she would be able to keep the fire burning, Carole told herself. But after several swings, she released a pained howl as she doubled over with pain. The strenuous swings of the hoe had caused the muscles in her back to tighten. With clenched teeth, she slowly lowered herself onto the floor.
She closed her eyes and tried to calm her thoughts, but it was no use. Her mind was racing at breakneck speed. She knew that if she didn’t do something fast, she would end up freezing to death. Although she had thought about her own death many times throughout the years, freezing to death was by far the least desirable way to go in her eyes.
Once the immediate pain in her back started to subside, she stood up and walked over to the window. She peered outside and was met by the rising sun. The blizzard from the night before had been reduced to nothing more than a pathetic flurry. The idea of making a break for it and hiking over to her neighbor’s house popped into her mind. Traveling over 50 miles on foot and in her condition was a ridiculous thought, she told herself, but she questioned what other choice she had. Dying stuck out in a snow drift while trying to save herself was preferable to wasting away in her frigid cabin like a prisoner.
With her mind made up, she packed a satchel full of canned fruit and vegetables from the past summer’s harvest and bid her cabin ado for what she knew might in fact be the very last time. As she opened the front door, her weathered old face was greeted by the startlingly cold air that was blowing around outside.
***
Having walked relentlessly for several hours, Carole was satisfied with the progress she had made thus far. It was lunchtime and her stomach was begging for nourishment, so she decided to take a short break. As she took off her glove to pop open a can of pickled cucumbers, she was surprised by just how much the cold air stung her exposed hand. Her face had been the only part of her body that had been exposed to the elements up until that point. It had long since gone numb.
Much to her chagrin, the lid of the can was far more difficult to remove than she had expected. Cold and stiff from arthritis, her fingers didn’t seem to want to work the way that she wanted them to. After giving the lid a rather hard tug, the can slid right out of her hand and ended up landing several feet from her buried deep in the snow.
As she bent down to pick up the can, Carole felt a sharp pain coming from her ankle. She released a pained scream that was so loud that it caused the birds that were nesting in a nearby pine tree to flee the scene. Any attempt to move or bend her ankle was futile. It didn’t take long for a river of red to change the color of the driven white snow around her foot.
Upon clearing the snow, Carole’s assumption about what had happened to her was proven right. She had managed to haplessly stumble into a bear trap. The trap’s cold metal spikes had gone through one side of her scrawny ankle and out the other, bearing down on her with great force. She tried her best to force the trap open, but it was no use. She was too weak.
The only option she had was to lay down in the snow and contemplate the life that she had made for herself out in the rugged Montana wilderness. She thought back to when she first decided to seek refuge there when she turned 40 and decided that she couldn’t continue to pretend to be someone that she wasn’t.
Born Carl Dalton Wigmore, she had longed to be Carole Denise Wigmore from a young age. But as she grew older, she tried as best she could to be the epitome of what it meant to be a red-blooded American man. She married her college sweetheart, Mary Ann, and had two children, Sam and Maureen. She even took a job as the head football coach at her alma mater. But none of that was enough to distract her from the fact that she knew deep down that she was a woman.
Determined to be who she always knew that she was, she packed her bags, quit her job, said goodbye to her family, and bought a small cabin in the middle of nowhere. She knew that in order to be Carole she would have to remove herself from society and the limitations that it placed on those who were like her.
Lying curled up in the snow, bleeding and suffering from hypothermia, Carole told herself that it was time for her to let go. She had managed to be who she had always wanted to be, albeit all alone, for more than half her life.
“I love you, Carole,” she whispered to herself as her eyes slowly closed and her body finally stopped shivering.
Aila Alvina Boyd is a Virginia-based writer, educator, and award-winning journalist. She holds a graduate terminal degree in writing from Lindenwood University.
Photo Credit: Shalene Cruz, Editor-in-Chief at Stentorian Bitch