A Cold Night's Sleep

He’d taught himself to work left handed after the accident, and his sketches of herons, ospreys, and hawks filled one wall of the cabin. He worked in pencil and chalk, and used the fused pinky and ring fingers of his right hand to shade, the sound of his scarred flesh loud against the paper. It was as close to relaxed as Sandy Richter ever got. When the huge boom shook the little A-frame, it rattled the glasses on the shelves. Sandy grabbed his binoculars and headed for the observation balcony. Even in a blasting Florida thunderstorm, a lightning strike could start a fire, and any fire beyond a controlled burn wasn’t something he wanted to face. In the gray of the mid-afternoon, Sandy saw lashing rain, the oak trees swaying in the wind, clumps of Spanish moss ripped down from their branch