When the first real cold of winter arrives, Braf feels suddenly awakened and at the same time caught off guard. The former is welcome, the latter worse than anything.

As though the icy drafts coming in through the flimsy walls of the cabin actually sweep under his skin and touch nerves, his attention shifts inward. He looks around the open first floor of the two-story cabin self-consciously, as though there is someone staring at him. When he sees that there’s no one, he settles back and lets himself think about how long he’s been in one place. He takes in a deep breath. Almost three months.

‘Too long’.

He knows there could be forces moving in on him. Forces, and people, very capable of taking away his freedom, again.

‘Okay’, Braf whispers, responding to the sensation, and his thoughts. ‘Got it.’

He sits up and starts ripping and cutting leaves of tobacco American Indians offered him as a good luck gesture when he told them his story and they agreed to include him among the contraband they smuggled into Canada—mostly American cigarettes the got tax-free on their reservations.

Like Braf, the Indians dried, cured, cut and rolled their own cigarettes from fresh tobacco leaves. Sitting by himself in the cold, empty house of a friend, the brief reminisce about one of the peculiarities of growing up in the American South makes Braf feel lonely, and sleepy. He sees that there are still red-hot embers burning at the bottom of the steel oil drum he converted into a wood-burning heater by burning off its residue, raising it onto bricks, and cutting hinged airtight doors into it large enough to feed large chunks of wood. The large container, however, still burned wood so fast that one could not sleep a full six or eight hours without either waking to feed it, or freezing.

Braf sneers. His friend worked full-time night in a modern house monitoring people with no incomes so she could pay rent on a place that lacked basics. The furnace in her basement ran so badly that it filled the cabin with a constant rumbling noise and eye and throat irritating fumes.

Braf adjusts his weight onto a flat portion of another of his makeshift contributions to the house: a couch constructed from tree stumps and ax-cut, knife-trimmed wood.

He closes his eyes and checks out how he feels. Notices that he’s become a bit soft around the middle, and weighty on his right side. Opens his eyes and stares straight ahead. The bit of rest and comfort he’s received from being here the last few months has been good for him in some ways. He’s feeling less jumpy and introspective, more relaxed and extroverted. But he can’t let those feelings seduce him into thinking he is secure, or safe.

He puts an end of a hand-rolled tobacco cigarette between his lips and stretches. The tattoos he made himself in prison ripple across his chest and biceps, reminding him that unless he can find a way to be on the offensive against the forces after him, which does not seem very likely, than he better keep moving, and stay alert.

Braf figures he has three options: he can keeping running away, he can just give in and let them take him, or he can find a way to act against them.

There’s only one thing Braf knows for certain—he will never again let them take him away from his freedom, even if it means costing him his life.

He pops off the couch using just the muscles in his legs and grabs hold of one of the largest cuts of firewood, more than a quarter of a stump, and chucks it into the opening in the drum. It hits bottom with a loud thud and then crackles and hisses amongst the burning sticks and embers. The drum pops like it’s about to explode and then sends out a wave of heat that pushes Braf back toward the couch. The burning stump will give him time to think, and perhaps nap. He has a paying job early in the morning, repairing horse paddocks for a breeder named Monsieur Lebeaux.