Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [14]
My body cooled quickly. I enjoyed the sensation of hard work and cold air on my chest and back as we continued upward. We walked in single file. I went first. The rabbit tracks disappeared into the stiff parchment leaves of some small beech trees that had been uncovered by the wind. The land and the walk were conforming to the fantasy I had been concocting at my desk, and already my mind was made up. I would make an offer.
“Do you think he would take thirty for it?” I asked Paul.
“You can always give it a try,” he replied. “The economy’s bad, and he might need the money.”
Two weeks later, we returned to meet the owner, Rick Rhea of South Freeport, Maine. He had bought the lot and the adjoining 120 acres a year earlier and subdivided it into eight parcels, which he was selling one at a time. He had partnered with a logger in nearby Albany Township, who worked with a crew and skidder. The combination of land developer (or subdivider) and logger is common in the north country. They make their money by identifying parcels of land that can be logged for additional profit and sold in parts, the sum of which exceeds the price paid for the entire piece. Rick was about fifty, wiry with a temporary smile that struck me as either cold or vulnerable. I couldn’t tell which right away. His smile seemed as skittish as a small and frightened animal. It would take me some time to get to know him, and I eventually grew to like him. He was direct and without ornament or affectation. I would later learn that he had clashed with the planning board in town—not surprising given my first impression of him—and there was lingering ill will that eventually would affect my plans. Rick had brought his own snowshoes, made of aluminum and plastic, and the three of us walked a wider circle than Paul and I had on our first trip up the hillside. We followed the same trail but then crossed the line of fluorescent flags to a second lot. It was lot No. 7 on the map Rick was carrying, rolled under his arm. The lot was not quite six acres, a little bit bigger than the first, and it held a site for a cabin that was more distant from the road where we’d parked.
The extra distance suited me. I wanted a place to escape to. I wanted to be in the woods. I didn’t even want a driveway. I wanted a long walking path from the road to the cabin. Rick suggested a site for the cabin that was mostly a flat patch of ground with a few spindly firs sprouting through the snow—Charlie Brown Christmas trees. The spot was bounded on one side by a granite outcropping that thrust to shoulder height and on the other by a steep downward slope of spindly hardwoods that fell to the road below.
The trees obscured the road, but I caught a glimpse, beyond, of a flat white expanse that looked like an open field. I asked Rick if it was a farm. No, he said, it was a frozen pond. Little Pond, he called it.
Really, I thought. Little Pond?
Ah, that old seductress—water.
“I can offer you thirty,” I said to Rick, springing the amount on him without a lot of questions. I figured, why not lowball it? He hadn’t mentioned any other offers. Maybe I could save myself two thousand dollars.
I saw he didn’t expect the offer, that he had figured I was a real estate shopper and not a real estate buyer. This was evident in the way he had tossed his snowshoes to the ground at the beginning of our walk—as if to say, More time wasted with some asshole from Massachusetts. The mention of real money changing hands, though, warmed him up. His smile now seemed less distant, more fixed on his face. We made eye contact and he was searching me for bullshit. He said he would have to talk to his partner. This struck me as a variation on the car salesman routine, and I searched him for bullshit. Already we were quietly negotiating.
A week later, in an e-mail exchange, Rick held firm at $32,000. I knew it was a good price despite my lower offer, so I agreed to it. We set a date for the closing. On February 8, 2008, after the stamping