The Return

I stumbled into Hollow Rock more by surrender than by decision. After my second deployment and a spectacular collapse of both marriage and mind, I had nowhere left to fall.

Hollow Rock wasn’t on any map—it was just a name passed around by vets who spoke in hushed tones about “the place that saves you when nothing else can.”

It sat somewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills. A cluster of cabins tucked between sunburnt pines and the slow curve of a dry creek bed, this was a place you’d go if someone told you to get lost—except in this case, it was to get found. To find yourself. This was a community of veterans living together to support each other, isolated from modern distractions. There was no cell service. No internet. No agenda. Just quiet, chores, and the long work of remembering how to breathe. Veterans knew about it only by word of mouth. I was lucky enough to be one of them when a friend of a friend mentioned it as a secluded haven. It called to me.

I arrived late one afternoon in June. The man who met me at the central lodge was named Jimmy—wiry, eyes like desert flint. He took one look at me and said, “Cabin Nine’s yours. Unless Henry steals you first.”

“Henry?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” He simply smiled.

Cabin Nine turned out to be serviceable but bare, with a thin mattress on a cot and a stovepipe heater. I dropped my pack and was still unzipping my sleeping bag when I heard footsteps outside.

A knock. Then a voice, warm and measured: “You the new guy?”

I opened the door to find a man about 55, maybe older, with a face carved from years of sun and something softer in the eyes. He wore an old Army field jacket, faded but neat.

“Name’s Henry,” he said. “You look like you could use real coffee.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just turned and started walking. I followed.

His cabin, Number Four, was unlike any I’d seen here. Clean white curtains at the windows. A rose bush beside the door. Wind chimes tinkling softly above a porch swing. Inside, it felt less like a military retreat center and more like a home: framed photos on the walls, a braided rug, a kitchen with spice jars labeled in careful, and apparently feminine, script.

He poured me coffee and gestured toward the table. “You hungry? I’ve got leftover chili.”

I accepted.

“Just me this week,” he said as we ate. “But Martha’ll be back soon. You’ll like her. She’s got a way of making people feel human again.”

“Your wife?” I asked.

He nodded, then pointed to a photo near the window: a woman in Army fatigues, laughing, one hand on her hip and the other holding a pair of sunglasses. She was striking—confident, clear-eyed, the sort of face that stays with you.

“She’s up north visiting her sister,” Henry explained. “Should be back Friday. That’s her birthday.”

Something about his voice made it easy to believe her presence still lingered in the room. And the feel of a feminine touch was everywhere.

Over the next few days, I settled in. I took on kitchen duty and split wood. The men were mostly older than me, from wars that had textbooks instead of hashtags. We didn’t talk about the past much, and that suited me fine.

But I kept returning to Henry’s cabin.

He was a good listener, and he made strong, rich coffee. He told stories—funny ones, full of old military slang and half-truths—and always managed to draw out laughter I didn’t know I still had. And he spoke often of Martha. Her jokes. Her garden. The way she used to sing along to Linda Ronstadt when she cooked.

“She makes Friday pie,” he told me Monday night. “That’s what she calls it. Strawberry-rhubarb. You’ll see.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“You staying for the weekend?”

I hadn’t planned on it. I was supposed to rotate out, spend time in the woods alone. But something about the gentle, waiting rhythm of Henry’s life made me hesitate.

“I think I will,” I said.

He beamed.

Over the next days—Friday and Martha’s return were just short days away now—folks from the other cabins dropped by Number Four. Many left gifts for Martha.

“Can’t believe another year’s gone by,” Mitch from Cabin Seven said. “And Martha looks younger with each one.”

Dan from Cabin Six dropped off an original vinyl copy of Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album. “Can’t wait to hear Martha sing along to ‘You’re No Good,’” he told Henry.

More came by with more gifts. Martha was clearly as cherished to the rest of the community as she was to Henry. I found myself eager to meet this angel of Hollow Rock.

Friday arrived, golden and slow. Henry cleaned the cabin like he was preparing for royalty. He laid out a fresh dress on the bed—blue, floral. He arranged flowers on the table. He set out two wine glasses and turned on a dusty old stereo that played soft tunes from another decade.

The others began to gather just before sunset.

“Special night,” Jimmy said with a wink. He brought a bottle of wine.

Eli came too, stoop-shouldered, with a harmonica in his back pocket. Then Lisa and Raul, a couple who lived down the path and brought bread still warm from the oven.

“Can’t wait to see her again, Henry,” Dan said.

“Did you make that special stew she likes?” Raul asked. Henry nodded enthusiastically.

“I’ll bet she dances tonight,” Lisa added.

“Sure she will,” Henry said. He looked at his watch. “She should be here any minute now. She just texted from Ridgeway.”

Wait, I thought. How could that be? There was no cell reception; nobody even had cell phones in Hollow Rock. But no one else reacted. I did not voice my confusion.

The wine flowed. The candles flickered. Someone put on some Lovin’ Spoonful songs, and Henry closed his eyes and hummed along. The evening wore on like a favorite sweater—comforting, a little frayed, but warm all the same.

I could see concern growing on Henry’s face as a clock on the wall showed just minutes before midnight.

“Where is she?” he worried. “She should be here by now.”

“Don’t you fret, Henry,” Dan said. “She’ll get here.”

“Heck, yeah, Henry,” Jimmy added. “Like you said, she texted from Ridgeway; she’s almost here.”

I saw Raul come out of the kitchen with two shot glasses, each with a dark liquid in it. I reached for one.

“Stop,” Raul snapped quietly. “Not that one.” My confusion grew as I slowly reached for the other drink. Raul stepped into the main room and handed the remaining glass to Henry.

“Drink up, pal,” Raul said. Henry smiled and quickly downed it. He sank into a rocking chair, and peace seemed to roll over his face.

One by one the others started to leave just as the clock showed midnight.

“Wait,” I said to Dan, the last one out the door. “I don’t know Martha. Won’t she be surprised to find a stranger here?”

“Oh. Right.” He shut the door and walked back toward the kitchen. “Come with me,” he said.

There was a small corkboard hanging on the wall. On the counter below it, I noticed a cell phone—an older model, screen dark. Dan picked it up and pressed the power button. “Dead,” Dan says. “Has been for a long time. Henry keeps it here.”

He reached up to the corkboard, and from behind it he pulled out a yellowing envelope. It had no address, just Henry’s name written in a sloping cursive.

Inside was a funeral program. It read:

“Captain Martha G. Winters

“1976–2011

“Killed in Action, Kabul Province”

My chest tightened. I reread the name, the date. The photograph on the program matched the one on the table of the pretty, smiling woman.

The program fell from my hand. Dan read the astonishment in my face.

“Does he not know she’s gone?” I asked in a barely audible voice.

Dan nodded slowly. “He does. Most of the time. I was with him when he got the news. I still remember his eyes shaking in his head in disbelief, refusing to grasp the information. He collapsed. The grief did something to him. Over time, the memory… changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Three-hundred-and-sixty days of the year, Henry’s fine. Knows she’s gone, handles it as best he can. But once a year, as her birthday approaches, his mind slips, loses the bookmark in her story, and skips back several chapters. Suddenly she’s alive again, coming home in a few days on her birthday. He spends those days before her birthday preparing. It’s the only time he really smiles.”

He looked at the rocking chair where Henry was quietly sleeping. “During those days,” he said, “we don’t correct him. We let him hold his dream, take part in it. We all loved Martha, too. We just help him hang on. Then close to midnight, before he panics and has an episode, we give him something strong to put him to sleep. Come morning, he won’t remember any of these past few days, and he’ll be fine for another 360 days.”

I reflected for a few minutes. “I’ll head back to my cabin, then,” I said.

“He’ll be all right come morning,” Dan replied. “He’ll remember about Martha. God, she was a beauty!”

That was three years ago.

Henry still lives in Cabin Four. Still tends the rose bush. Still plays Linda Ronstadt songs when the last special June day approaches. I visited him last summer, brought strawberry-rhubarb pie from town. He asked me if I’d met Martha yet. I said not yet, but I was looking forward to it.

He beamed.

So I stayed.

—Inspired by Mark Twain’s short story “The Californian’s Tale.”