Question
The Cabin on Rook Road
Fiction: Realistic Fiction
A rustic log cabin off a dirt road, with a vegetable garden behind a wire fence
Illustration by Achieve3000
The cabin where I grew up was far enough away that no one would find us. That was what my mother told me. Her soft voice wavered with the thrill of it, as if she were announcing a game we would be playing. That was my first memory. Then we lived in the cabin on Rook Road, and we never left.
The cabin had two stories. Both were made of wood. The outside of the cabin was also made of wood, but that wood was darker and gave you splinters when you rubbed up against it. The inside was smooth, the color of sand. Dust seemed to dance and sparkle over every surface. There were stairs, but they were tricky ladder stairs. You had to put one foot in front of the other and climb very carefully, like you were marching in a wedding.
Up there was where my mother and I slept. Up there, in the loft, was just a mattress and some blankets of all different colors. A diamond-shaped window looked out to the back of the cabin. There was a yard caged in by a wire fence, and that was ours. Beyond that, there was nothing but green grass for miles and miles. None of it seemed to belong to anyone, except for the small square of land that belonged to us. That's how I knew my mother was telling the truth: No one would find us.
My mother built a garden behind the old cabin. She guided my sticky toddler's hand into holes in the dirt to help me unclench green bean seeds from my fist. I did this forcefully and messily, as if I were performing magic. She grew ripe cherry tomatoes, which we rinsed with the garden hose and ate with our hands. She pulled red grapes off the vine that climbed the small, wooden fence and put them in a bucket for me. I ate them while I watched her work, her fingers kneading the earth like tiny plows.
One night I tiptoed to look out the bedroom window, afraid of what would happen to the plants without us around to protect them. I had just turned seven. I remembered them being too small, those seeds, as I buried them. They were so alone in their small graves, so easily plucked from the ground by the sharp, probing beak of a blackbird—the villain my imagination created. I woke my mother, and she took me across the wooden floorboards barefoot, out through the heavy cabin door. Then we slept with our bodies in the dirt.
*
"Thomas," my mother called from the garden. We always left the back door open in those days.
I was in the cabin, reading about my father. He lived inside a leather book that always had a thin layer of dust on the cover, even if it had been merely hours since I last picked it up. My mother's slanted handwriting whisked me through their story: who he was (James), his job (a great detective), how they met (she was a witness to a case he was investigating), what they did together (had adventures, brought bad guys to justice, and gave birth to me), and how he died (shot).
My father had never seen the cabin on Rook Road. I had never seen him. I knew him only through the thick, leather-bound volume where my mother preserved him. I read it repeatedly, until it was no longer a story but an almost-memory. I didn't ask her if I looked like him. Nor why there were no pictures of my father. When I talked about him, about things that weren't in the book, she closed the back door and stopped going to the garden for days. I was afraid for the plants, so before long, I stopped asking.
*
When it rained, it rained inside the cabin. Every time, my mother would say, "Looks like the roof sprung a leak!" until the phrase took on a sort of sing-song quality. She placed buckets on top of towels on the floor. When we ran out of buckets, she used the crystal bowls from the cabinet. Drops of rain tinkered and chimed against the clear glass, making soft music as they splashed into the bowl.
I liked to pretend we lived underwater, like scuba divers or merpeople. The ocean was bleeding through, and our mission was to stop it. I was ten and my mother was much older, but she still played the game. When the roof started spurting water from some new place, I would say, "Grab the bowls, Captain!" I didn't know what exactly a Captain did, but I saw it in a book and liked the name.
After, we would drink vegetable broth while we listened to the fire crackle and the hiss of the drizzle against the walls. She would look at the buckets on the floor, and then she would say quietly to no one in particular, "Maybe it's time we call somebody about this." I didn't know what "some-body" was going to do, or who she meant by "some-body." The only bodies inside the cabin for as long as I could remember were mine and my mother's.
Question 1
1 / 8
The reader can tell from this story that __________.
Thomas understands why his mother keeps information from him
Thomas's mother is trying to escape from the past and keep her son hidden
Thomas breaks rules because he likes to upset his mother
Thomas's mother has led a carefree life and wants her son to enjoy the same
Fiction: Realistic Fiction
A rustic log cabin off a dirt road, with a vegetable garden behind a wire fence
Illustration by Achieve3000
The cabin where I grew up was far enough away that no one would find us. That was what my mother told me. Her soft voice wavered with the thrill of it, as if she were announcing a game we would be playing. That was my first memory. Then we lived in the cabin on Rook Road, and we never left.
The cabin had two stories. Both were made of wood. The outside of the cabin was also made of wood, but that wood was darker and gave you splinters when you rubbed up against it. The inside was smooth, the color of sand. Dust seemed to dance and sparkle over every surface. There were stairs, but they were tricky ladder stairs. You had to put one foot in front of the other and climb very carefully, like you were marching in a wedding.
Up there was where my mother and I slept. Up there, in the loft, was just a mattress and some blankets of all different colors. A diamond-shaped window looked out to the back of the cabin. There was a yard caged in by a wire fence, and that was ours. Beyond that, there was nothing but green grass for miles and miles. None of it seemed to belong to anyone, except for the small square of land that belonged to us. That's how I knew my mother was telling the truth: No one would find us.
My mother built a garden behind the old cabin. She guided my sticky toddler's hand into holes in the dirt to help me unclench green bean seeds from my fist. I did this forcefully and messily, as if I were performing magic. She grew ripe cherry tomatoes, which we rinsed with the garden hose and ate with our hands. She pulled red grapes off the vine that climbed the small, wooden fence and put them in a bucket for me. I ate them while I watched her work, her fingers kneading the earth like tiny plows.
One night I tiptoed to look out the bedroom window, afraid of what would happen to the plants without us around to protect them. I had just turned seven. I remembered them being too small, those seeds, as I buried them. They were so alone in their small graves, so easily plucked from the ground by the sharp, probing beak of a blackbird—the villain my imagination created. I woke my mother, and she took me across the wooden floorboards barefoot, out through the heavy cabin door. Then we slept with our bodies in the dirt.
*
"Thomas," my mother called from the garden. We always left the back door open in those days.
I was in the cabin, reading about my father. He lived inside a leather book that always had a thin layer of dust on the cover, even if it had been merely hours since I last picked it up. My mother's slanted handwriting whisked me through their story: who he was (James), his job (a great detective), how they met (she was a witness to a case he was investigating), what they did together (had adventures, brought bad guys to justice, and gave birth to me), and how he died (shot).
My father had never seen the cabin on Rook Road. I had never seen him. I knew him only through the thick, leather-bound volume where my mother preserved him. I read it repeatedly, until it was no longer a story but an almost-memory. I didn't ask her if I looked like him. Nor why there were no pictures of my father. When I talked about him, about things that weren't in the book, she closed the back door and stopped going to the garden for days. I was afraid for the plants, so before long, I stopped asking.
*
When it rained, it rained inside the cabin. Every time, my mother would say, "Looks like the roof sprung a leak!" until the phrase took on a sort of sing-song quality. She placed buckets on top of towels on the floor. When we ran out of buckets, she used the crystal bowls from the cabinet. Drops of rain tinkered and chimed against the clear glass, making soft music as they splashed into the bowl.
I liked to pretend we lived underwater, like scuba divers or merpeople. The ocean was bleeding through, and our mission was to stop it. I was ten and my mother was much older, but she still played the game. When the roof started spurting water from some new place, I would say, "Grab the bowls, Captain!" I didn't know what exactly a Captain did, but I saw it in a book and liked the name.
After, we would drink vegetable broth while we listened to the fire crackle and the hiss of the drizzle against the walls. She would look at the buckets on the floor, and then she would say quietly to no one in particular, "Maybe it's time we call somebody about this." I didn't know what "some-body" was going to do, or who she meant by "some-body." The only bodies inside the cabin for as long as I could remember were mine and my mother's.
Question 1
1 / 8
The reader can tell from this story that __________.
Thomas understands why his mother keeps information from him
Thomas's mother is trying to escape from the past and keep her son hidden
Thomas breaks rules because he likes to upset his mother
Thomas's mother has led a carefree life and wants her son to enjoy the same
Answers
Answered by
GPT-4o mini
The reader can tell from this story that **Thomas's mother is trying to escape from the past and keep her son hidden**. This is evident in how she speaks about their secluded cabin and her reluctance to discuss Thomas's father, indicating a desire to protect him and perhaps avoid confronting painful memories.