Chapter Text
The young man adjusted his pack. By day three in the snowy Canadian wilderness he’d gotten used to the weight, but it was still a struggle on this hill. Through the trees he heard whistling, interspersed with loud thwacks. He proceeded up the abandoned logging road, cautiously, until he came to a clearing.
“Wade!” he shouted in relief.
Wade looked up from the block that held the wedge of firewood he was currently working on. He leaned on his axe, shirtless. At his back was a tiny log cabin, smoke billowing from the chimney.
Wade squinted. “Who the hell are you?”
Wade Winston Wilson had always been a lumberjack.
Or at least, as far back as he could remember.
His father was a lumberjack, his grandfather was a lumberjack, his great-grandmother was a lumberjack, etc, etc, etc.
(The only thing his piece-of-shit dad ever cut was bad checks, and the only thing he ever bothered to chop down was Wade’s self-esteem.)
No.
That wasn’t right.
Wade had a great childhood. All sunshine and snow days and American apple pie. Canadian maple syrup. Whatever.
Wade was born in Montreal, except his French was shit so it must have been Regina. Except that was just the set-up for a crude joke, so it must have been Saskatoon.
Or maybe Vancouver? He remembered a tiny Chinese lady lecturing him in the market, and sweet rice cakes and oranges on New Years. But maybe he remembered Vanessa being there too, so maybe that wasn’t when he was a kid.
His head hurt when he thought about it too hard, and chopping wood was more straightforward anyway. It was September and already snowing and he had a lot of work to do to build up a big enough wood pile for the winter. Everyone knew how important that was.
He wondered who had taught him that. Must have been his dear auntie, when she taught him everything he needed to know about being a lumberjack.
Because he had always been a lumberjack.
Right?
Wade kept a diary. He wrote in it every day.
It was more fiction than non-fiction, but it kept him amused. His day-to-day was pretty boring, but he would write scraps of things he pretended to remember. Like little stories to himself.
One time we visited the big city, my mom and me. It was for one of her cancer treatments before she died. She bought me ice cream after. My dad wasn’t there. It was a good day.
And:
Last month I woke up in a warehouse with Spider-Man. You can ONLY IMAGINE what we must have gotten up to! Wink! But I didn’t want to make him navigate that awkward morning-after, so I did the gentlemanly thing and ditched.
And:
Vanessa used to sharpie her name on my arm before she left for the club or the bar or wherever she was hustling that night. There was a big poster of her face, and she had written “I love you Wade Wilson” right on it so I would always remember. There were photos of the two of us all over the apartment, and sticky notes. So many sticky notes.
Wade’s brow crinkled. He didn’t remember writing that entry. He couldn’t quite picture the poster with Vanessa’s face, just an echo of dark curls and sultry eyes. She sounded like something out of the cheap romance novel he was halfway through, which meant he’d probably made her up.
Why would a lumberjack have an apartment in the city, anyway?
BULLSHIT, he scrawled on one of the many pads of sticky notes he had found in a drawer, and he stuck it on the fridge. There was a man’s ring in the drawer too, thick titanium. He carefully hid it under a sticky pad.
There was a phone on top of the fridge. The screen was cracked to bits. There was no charger. Wade hoped his many friends and acquaintances wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t texting them back.
Wade woke up slowly, head throbbing, extremities screaming in the early spring snow. He groaned as he struggled to his feet. There was a path up the canyon, and he made his slow way up and through the woods until his feet brought him to a clearing. A stump and an axe littered the ground in front of a small cabin.
“I bet a lumberjack lives here,” Wade said. “I always wanted to be a lumberjack! I bet he won’t mind if I hang out until he gets back.”
He opened the door and headed to the messy bed. Maybe the lumberjack would come back while he was sleeping and wake him up with a kiss, just like in the princess in the pea. The prince in Wade’s mind had brown eyes and brown hair, and was a little too short to be a prince.
“That’s okay,” Wade mumbled. “I’m a little tall to be a princess, so maybe it works out.”
And then he was asleep.
When he woke up, he started a fire and found his diary.
Dear Diary: Today I’m gonna go check out that big canyon near the cabin. I don’t know why I’ve never bothered to explore it before, it looks neat! Wish me luck!
DON’T FORGET YOUR FUCKING KEYS, read a sticky note by the door.
Wade spent all day looking for his fucking keys. Finally, as night fell, he realized the fucking door didn’t have a fucking lock.
He left the sticky note up as a reminder of how silly he had been.
The next day, Wade tore the cabin apart looking for his fucking book. The problem was that he couldn’t remember which one he’d been reading. All of it — the plot, the characters, the setting — were just out of reach of his brain. Slippery. Tantalizing.
He couldn’t remember anything about the book except that he was about to get to the good part.
No, not the steamy, bodice-ripping sex.
The happily ever after.
Yes, Wade loved shitty romance novels, and yes, Wade would give a bloody nose to anyone who gave him shit about that fact. He hadn’t had good role models, okay? Being raised in the system would fuck anyone up.
Whoever had this cabin before him had loved romance novels, too. The bookshelf was full of them.
(Hadn’t this always been his cabin? Whatever, didn’t matter.)
Finally he gave up and settled for a different book. It was on the table by the chair by the fire, so it was probably the one he was going to read next, anyway. It was good, really good, and the twists and turns kept him reading until dawn.
Hey Mom!
Figured I should call you, but I broke my phone so I’m writing instead. I’m doing great here in the great outdoors. It reminds me of visiting grandpa when I was a kid. Hope Dorothy and Sophia are well!
Shit.
I just realized there’s no postal service here.
And all my addresses are on my broken phone.
(Sorry for the swear.)
Well in case I ever do send this, all the love from your favorite kid,
Wade
I wonder how much of this moonshine I can chug before I puke through my nose? read the latest entry in Wade’s diary.
Wade was pretty sure it was his diary, anyway. It had his name on it. There were twenty-three entries in it, in handwriting that looked like his. He tried to read them all, but his head was killing him.
I don’t remember any moonshine, he wrote, but I think I cleaned up some vomit. And by “cleaned up” I mean I think I let a raccoon in and let him go to town. I’m naming him Johnny Trash.
He looked around the room. There was no raccoon.
Sadly, Johnny has left for Memphis in search of his big break. He played me his hit single “Folsom Dumpster Blues” before he left, and I really think he has a chance.
He sat down in the chair by the fire, and set the diary down on top of a well-loved romance novel. The Squire and the Spider. Juicy.
He flipped the novel open to a page with the corner creased, near the end. Aw, the wedding scene. Bless. Wade had never read this book and so had no idea what was going on, but he did love a good wedding. They always made him cry.
A drop landed on the page, and he realized he was already crying.
CRYBABY, he scrawled on a sticky note. After some thought, he wrote MOONSHINE BAD!! on another one.
The bed felt extra empty that night, which was weird because Wade had been sleeping alone as long as he could remember.
Wade was happy being a lumberjack. It was a simple life, sure. But he had his cozy cabin, and a shelf full of books that he hadn’t read yet. He had snow days every day. He had his diary and his sticky notes to keep him company.
Sometimes he wondered if he should want more, but he couldn’t think of anything to want.
It had been like this for as long as he could remember.