The cabin was his only refuge. It was his island. He had first lived in a motel that had an office and six rooms to let, each with a step. He could get into the tiny bathroom only if he backed out, always careful to keep from skinning his fingers on the door jamb. He lived out of his seabag, he didn’t unpack. The car was parked outside the front window. Across the street in a dirt parking lot was a restaurant/gift shop but two front steps had kept him out.

A mile down the road, past some farms and a saw mill, there was a general store with steps. There were steps into the post office and steps into the white church that sat on a little grassy rise where the road forked. The exceptions were a big abandoned mill by a river and Everett White’s auto repair garage, a single-story, cinder-block building painted white with green trim. That was town, along the roadside. The old mill and Everett’s garage were between the road and a fast river that hurried through the narrow forested valley.

The morning after arriving Mitchell had stopped at the garage to ask if someone would check the Ford’s brake fluid. Everett came out of a bay as Mitchell was opening the car door. A big man with a sunburned face, round and fierce, Everett pushed the brim of his green cap up with his middle finger. His tee-shirt and jeans were patched with dirt and grease. He told Mitchell to wait. Everett had seen the licence plate. Mitchell was an out-of-stater, a flat-lander, basically an intruder.

Mitchell said, "Thanks," and got out of the car into his wheelchair, his ordinary routine that drew the sidelong attention of the men gathered with Everett in the garage. Mitchell pushed between the front of an old Buick and the back of a red pick-up truck and crossed the street. He jumped his wheelchair onto the sidewalk in front of the general store, an enormous yellow L-shaped building angled around a yard with a swing-set. A tricycle lay on its side and there was a blue plastic wading pool in the shade of two big maples. Mitchell’s call from the bottom of the stairs brought the proprietor into the light of the threshold.

"Help ya?" The man slipped his hands into his pants pockets and pushed out his chin, raising his head slightly to gaze down through steel-rimmed glasses. He was short with fleshy pink skin, big-chested, big arms, big jowls and close-cropped grey hair. In spite of the summer heat he wore an undershirt beneath his blue and white-checkered cotton shirt. A wrapped cigar stood in the pocket.

"I’d like to buy some beer and groceries," Mitchell said and wondered if the man lived in all of this. He did, with his wife, a beautiful buxom woman with short brown hair. She wore glasses of a similar but more feminine style, she barely smiled and never said hello. The play things in the yard were for their child. Mitchell would never see the inside of their store, or their house, the buildings was inaccessible and he was never invited.

He gave the man a twenty-dollar bill with a list he had written. Then he waited on the walk. The man with the Buick left Everett’s garage and drove off and the road was silent and empty again. Mitchell waited in the heat until the proprietor reappeared with groceries packed in a cardboard box. He carried it down the steps.

"Just set it on my legs," Mitchell said.

The proprietor stood without lowering the box. "Where to?"

It took Mitchell a moment. Since his paralysis he hadn’t asked a favor of anyone. He hadn’t expect to, but then he remembered: ‘Never refuse anything offered. Never say no.’ Salesmanship, seventh grade. "I’m parked in front of the garage across the street," he said and backed off the curb.

"Waitin’ on Everett?"