Her Alaskan Hero

by Rebecca Thomas

  But then, she’d changed her ticket and flew to Alaska. She never thought she’d do that, and look at her now.

  Harold interrupted her thoughts. “What do you think of Zak?”

  “Um, he’s very nice. He’s made me feel right at home,” she said.

  “I’ll bet he has. We don’t get visitors like you to Gold Creek very often.”

  Like you? She wasn’t sure what that meant or how to take the older man’s words, but she hoped he meant them in a good way.

  He opened the front door of the café for her. It reminded her of a ’50s-style malt and burger shop. Checkered black and white linoleum covered the floor. Booths with red vinyl seats lined one wall. Four tables were open in the middle. The smell of greasy hamburgers wafted across the room.

  And elderly woman wearing glasses walked up to them. “What kind of lies are you telling this young woman, Harold?” she chided.

  “I ain’t lying, just telling the truth. Have you already met Sabrina?” Harold asked.

  The woman shook her head and readjusted the wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. “No, but nice to meet you, Sabrina. I heard there was a woman staying up at the lodge.” She moved toward her adjacent seat in the booth, then to the man sitting across from her. “This is Vince Merritt. Vince, Sabrina. I’m Betsy. Did you say your last name already?”

  “Oh, hello Vince.” Sabrina extended her hand and purposefully didn’t disclose her last name. Even though she was in rural Alaska, she’d rather people not associate her with her father for as long as possible. “Nice to meet you.”

  Harold spoke up. “Sabrina likes to play cards and board games, so I told her she’d come to the right place.”

  “Well, you sure have,” Betsy said. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  Sabrina slid in beside Betsy and across from Vince. Amazing how these people welcomed her into their fold so quickly.

  “Vince was telling me his plans for the mushing season. He’s got some new pups that are looking pretty promising.” Betsy beamed.

  Vince was probably in his early to mid-30s and had a hardened look about him. Sabrina guessed he’d spent many years away from civilization on purpose. His brown eyes held intelligence, even though he didn’t attempt any kind of friendly smile.

  “You’re a dog musher? How exciting. I wonder if your place is where Zak found Shadow the other night?” Sabrina asked.

  He frowned and glanced at Betsy. “I don’t know. Was he nosing around my place?”

  “That’s probably is where he found Shadow,” Betsy exclaimed. “I never thought to look there. He probably wanted to play with your pups. Silly of me not to think of that myself.”

  “Do you run in the Iditarod?” Sabrina asked. “That’s the only dog mushing race I’m familiar with.”

  “Yes,” he said and chugged on his coffee.

  Betsy leaned forward. “He’s finished in the top ten the last two years. We’re very proud of him.”

  “I finished in the top ten last year; the year before, I finished eleventh,” Vince said dryly.

  “So what do you do with your dogs this time of year when there’s no snow?” Sabrina asked eagerly. She’d never met a real dog musher before and was curious why the tattoo on his forearm was of a ship with an anchor laced around it, instead of something to do with dog mushing.

  “We train, just like any other time of year.”

  Silence fell at the table. Harold came back with a coffee pot and two mugs.

  Betsy spoke, as if Vince wasn’t capable of it himself. “I think she means how do you train?” Betsy gave Vince a look Sabrina couldn’t name, but it reminded her of her mother. “He runs his dogs behind four-wheelers until we get enough snow.”

  “That’s amazing. I never would have thought of that,” Sabrina said.

  Vince drank another swallow of coffee and glanced at her from over the rim. With as much time as Sabrina had spent at political fundraisers, she’d learned the art of schmoozing, and finding something in common with another person wasn’t that difficult. The best way to get on someone’s good side was to compliment them. “I bet you must be really dedicated to compete in the Iditarod and finish so well.”

  Vince only grunted.

  “So…” Betsy said. “What do you think of Zak?”

  She hoped her face didn’t turn red. “He’s…he’s wonderful. The lodge is magnificent. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. How long have all of you lived here in Gold Creek?”

  “We’ve all lived here longer than the Forresters,” Harold said as he sipped his coffee. “Was a quiet little place, till they showed up, building their fancy lodge.”

  “This place seems pretty quiet to me,” Sabrina said.

  Vince eyed her with skepticism. “Well, it was a whole lot quieter before.”

  Betsy spoke up saying, “You all had better not be complaining. Since the lodge was built and more visitors come in, the mercantile and this café, as well as the other businesses, have seen double the revenue. Same for my bed and breakfast.”

  “That doesn’t work for me. I don’t need visitors to keep me in business.” Vince set down his mug and eyed Sabrina. “You look awfully familiar. Are you some famous movie star or something?”

  Sabrina laughed, hoping it sounded genuine. “No, of course not. Nothing famous about me.” She took a swallow of her very bad-tasting coffee. “Do you like to play Scrabble?”

  Vince grunted and set his mug down. He slid out of the booth. “No. I need to get back to the dogs.”

  Sabrina noticed he walked slowly, with a slight limp to his gait.

  “Vince, is your back hurting you?” Betsy asked.

  “It’s been hurting for a while. Ever since I pulled it hauling wood,” he answered.

  Sabrina couldn’t stay quiet. “I could show you a few exercises that might help.”

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  “I’m not a doctor, but I teach people the proper way to exercise,” she said. It had slipped out of her mouth before she had thought about what she was going to say.

  “It will get better. Just needs a little time to heal.”

  “You’re probably right, but if not, let me know. I might be able to help you.”

  Vince grunted and kept walking toward the door.

  Sabrina slid out of the booth and ran toward the café’s front door. “Vince, would you mind if I visit your puppies while I’m here?”

  He slowly turned and frowned. “You aren’t some reporter, are you?”

  Was he really so suspicious of her motives? Or did she look familiar to him? Either way, her cover might be blown. “No, I promise I’m not a reporter. I’m just someone who loves puppies. May I visit them?”

  He stood, contemplation etched across his forehead.

  Betsy intervened. “I’ll bring her over right after we finish a Scrabble game. Those puppies need other folks to interact with besides you. They need socialization.”

  Vince pushed open the door. “All right,” he conceded. “You can come over to see the puppies, but only for a minute. I’ve got training to do.”

  Puppies. She hadn’t seen puppies in so long. If Vince recognized her, he didn’t seem the type to alert the press. She slid back in the booth and whispered to Betsy, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. They are the cutest things. I’d like to see them again, too. Although they aren’t quite so little anymore,” Betsy said.

  Harold broke open the Scrabble board. Should she warn them about her Scrabble expertise? Nah. No matter what your ability in Scrabble, you had to have luck in pulling good letters.

  They invited the café owner, Lenny, to play with them. A four-person game usually went pretty fast. They moved tables around so each person had a side.

  The Forrester Lodge and whether the residents of Gold Creek were happy about it being built had piqued Sabrina’s curiosity. “How long has the lodge been here in Gold Creek?”

  “I think it’s been about five years, right Betsy
?” Lenny said.

  “Yes, I think so. Zak was fresh out of college with a big dream,” the older woman replied.

  “He told me that he and his brothers placed all the rocks on the fireplace by hand,” Sabrina said. She drew her letters and placed them on her tray.

  “Yes, they did,” Betsy said. “They are hard workers, those Forrester boys. They took out a big loan and paid it all back.”

  “Really? How would any of you know if they paid back a business loan?” Sabrina asked.

  Harold piped up. “When that youngest boy, Dane, signed with The Fury, he got some big bonus and insisted the debt be paid off. All four brothers own an equal share in the lodge.”

  “It’s fascinating that you all know so much about them.” Sabrina wondered how they could know something so personal about their business dealings.

  “We make it our business to know about the people in our town.” Lenny said. “What brings you to Gold Creek, Sabrina?”

  She’d prefer they get on to other topics besides why she came to Gold Creek. The idea that these people knew so much about the Forresters kind of creeped her out. Would they research her next? “Well, as I was telling Harold earlier, a friend of mine recommended the Forrester Lodge, and the rest is history,” she said.

  “We normally don’t have single females travel to Gold Creek,” Lenny said. He narrowed his eyes at her.

  She responded with a big smile and a goal of steering the conversation back to the lodge and away from her. “So I might be your first then? I promise I have no ulterior motives except to relax and see more of this beautiful country.”

  “As long as you aren’t some reporter, like Vince said,” Lenny insisted.

  “I assure you, I’m about as far away from a reporter as you can get.”

  Lenny nodded, still not looking convinced.

  Determined to move the conversation in another direction, Sabrina asked, “It’s amazing that four young brothers took on a project as big as building a lodge. Isn’t it?”

  Lenny gave a half-nod and pinched his lips together, as though deciding whether she was trustworthy or not. “They had some piddly start-up money from their father’s life insurance policy, is the way I understand it. It was a huge risk building something that big way out here with no road access. And don’t even get me started on how much it costs to fly in lumber and building supplies. I should know. I had this café built, after all. Eventually they had to get a bank loan. The start-up money they had wasn’t enough. It was no small loan either—that’s for darn sure.”

  Sabrina spelled ‘pardon’ with her tiles. “So it’s safe to say the Forresters are willing to take risks.”

  “Oh, I’d say that’s a safe bet,” Lenny replied.

  Harold added, “Yep, I’d take that bet.”

  “I was the one who tried to run them out of town,” Betsy said.

  Harold and Lenny laughed. They added ‘neck’ and ‘pita’ to each end of ‘pardon.’

  “Really? Why?” Sabrina asked.

  “Well, I figured they’d take all my business away, but the truth is, because of the lodge, more people come to Gold Creek, so I’m booked most of the time.” Betsy added ‘ing’ to ‘neck.’

  The corded muscles of Zak’s neck came immediately to mind. “How did you try to run them out of town?”

  “When they were building, I stole their tools and spilled their paint, among various other things. I won’t confess to everything that’s gone wrong while they were building, but I sure didn’t make it easy for them.” Betsy said.

  Sabrina couldn’t believe Betsy admitted to her escapades. In L.A., she’d be arrested. “And you talk about it now, so openly?”

  “I don’t know if they’ve completely forgiven me, but I hope so,” Betsy said. To her credit, she did look a little bit remorseful.

  “Harold, why don’t you seem happy about the lodge being here?” Sabrina asked.

  “I don’t like all the riff-raff around town. They don’t understand how dangerous it can be. For example, these bozos climbing mountains without the proper gear. Most folks aren’t prepared for the realities of this environment. Most of them are troublemakers, I’m sure,” he grumbled.

  “I could be a troublemaker.” Sabrina laughed, but inside she was thinking how Zak had said some of these same words to her when she’d arrived, only in a nicer way.

  “I suppose you could, too.” Harold smiled through his shaggy beard. “Most lower forty-eighters got no business being up here. They need to go back to where they came from. Let’s be honest, you’ll go back.”

  Sabrina rubbed the back of her neck, then flipped her hair over her shoulder. These people had a way of getting straight to the point. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ll go back.”

  “Yep, that’s the way it goes around here. Not many stay.” Lenny nodded and sipped his coffee with a nostalgic look in his eyes. “I guess that’s what I originally thought about the Forresters. I didn’t think they’d stay, but they aren’t going anywhere. They’re family now.”

  Sabrina won the Scrabble game pretty handily, except when Lenny spelled ‘quilt’ on a double. He came within striking range, but Sabrina pulled out the victory. She thought about Lenny’s family comment. This place called Gold Creek was a family, and she wondered if someone like her could ever have a place in it. The fierce protectiveness they each showed one another despite their differences was quite endearing and Sabrina felt a sense of longing she didn’t understand.

  Betsy pushed back her chair and stretched her arms up over her head. “Zak will be back soon to pick you up, so we better get to Vince’s place,” she said. “That was a fun game.”

  “So, I’m curious,” Sabrina said. “Is there a gym or a workout place here?”

  Lenny and Harold let out a whoop of laughter.

  “Nope,” Betsy replied with a shrug. “Sherry Walker, she works at the post office, she owns a treadmill. That’s the closest thing we have to a gym.”

  “The way you were stretching out just now, I thought maybe you’ve done yoga before,” Sabrina asked.

  “Nope. Never done yoga.”

  “Well, I bet you’re a natural.”

  Betsy lifted one shoulder and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Sabrina followed Betsy out of the café. “Where does Vince live?”

  “He’s a couple miles out of town,” Betsy replied. “We’ll take my four-wheeler out there.”

  Sabrina noticed she hadn’t seen a single car since arriving in Gold Creek. “Does anyone own a car?”

  “Oh sure, some of us own trucks, but no cars,” Harold said.

  “Do you drive them more in the winter?”

  “Nope. We mostly drive our snowmachines around town, but yeah, if it’s real cold, then we drive our trucks,” Lenny answered. “Otherwise it’s mainly four-wheelers in the summer and snowmachines in the winter.”

  “That makes sense,” Sabrina said. This place was almost like another planet compared to L.A. Different in every way, even in ways she had never thought of before. Sabrina straddled Betsy’s four-wheeler, taking the seat behind her and noting the rifle she had strapped to the side. She really was living an adventure in a different land. “Um, have you ever had to use that rifle?”

  “Yes,” Betsy answered matter-of-factly and revved up the motor. “Hang on.”

  They arrived at what Betsy called the dog yard. Over a hundred dogs were tied up to their own individual posts with their own doghouses beside them. Each pup barked and jumped up on top of their individual house, ran around in circles, and repeated the process again.

  “This is quite an operation,” Sabrina yelled over the sound of all the dogs barking. “How many dogs does one musher need?”

  Vince ambled out of his log cabin with two dogs running alongside him. “Quiet!” he hollered.

  Within seconds all the dogs stopped yapping. Sabrina looked from the dog yard to Vince. “That was amazing. They all listen to you,” she said.

  “They are t
rained. Follow me and I’ll take you to the puppy pen,” Vince said.

  The puppy pen was packed with seven balls of fluff, all running, jumping, and playing. Each one had distinctive markings, from nearly white to almost solid black. A couple had blue eyes. Three had what looked like masks placed on their white faces. Sabrina cooed at them, and said, “They are the cutest things.”

  “Cute they may be, but they’re bred to pull and to work,” Vince said.

  “Do all of them get put on your team?”

  “No, some of them don’t make the cut or are better sprinting dogs. I run long distances, so I need those kinds of dogs,” Vince said.

  “What do you do with the sprinters?”

  “If they look promising, I sell them to sprinting kennels.”

  “How can you tell, and what if they don’t want to pull?” she asked.

  “There are a few who won’t make it as a sled dog. Those dogs go to pet homes,” Vince explained.

  “How do you decide?” Sabrina asked.

  “I’ve been at this a long time, going on ten years, so I get a good sense of most dogs at a young age whether they have the heart it takes to be a mushing dog.”

  “But they all have hearts.” Sabrina placed her hands on top of the fence. “Some are just more cut out to race than others, right?” she asked, then added, “Can we go inside?”

  Vince opened the chain link fence gate. “Go on in.”

  Sabrina and Betsy kneeled down. All the puppies jumped around them.

  Slimy pink tongues plastered her cheeks. Sabrina didn’t know if she’d ever laughed so hard.

  Vince stood on the outside of the fence with his forearms propped up. “They love visitors.”

  One of the puppies kept jumping up and down, fighting to get past her brothers and sisters to reach Sabrina’s lap. Intent on her mission, the puppy placed her paws on Sabrina’s chest and expertly licked her chin. “Well, aren’t you the pretty one,” Sabrina said. “Look Betsy—she has one blue eye and one brown.”