Sharing Spaces

by Nadia Nichols

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. He reached the bottom of the ramp and stopped, glancing up at her. Senna paused a few steps above him, arrested by the intensity of his gaze. “Maybe it was his idea of immortality.” He shrugged. “Hell, I didn’t say he was perfect.”

  “Why didn’t he have these dreams for my brothers?”

  Another shrug. “He told me they were city boys and you were the one who was wild at heart. Come on, shake a leg. You said you were hungry.”

  But Senna remained where she was, simmering with latent anger and frustration toward a grandfather she couldn’t please and a business partner she didn’t want. She gestured back at the lodge. “You’ll never get this place ready to go in two weeks time.”

  “Wanna bet?” Jack stared up at her, his expression borderline arrogant. She heard Charlie’s footsteps right behind her and Jack’s glance shifted over her shoulder. The boy was burdened with fly rods and life jackets. “Charlie, hand that gear to the wedding planner and help me drag the skiff out,” he said.

  The skiff was an old sixteen-foot Lund, dented aluminum, stashed out of sight behind the propane shed. While Senna watched, the two of them slid the craft into the water and secured it to the dock. The motor was stored inside the shed, a much newer-looking four-stroke Honda. “This is a good fishing boat for this river. Shallow draw, broad enough beam to stand up to the rugged riffs, rapids, and wind. She’ll hold four people easily and six in a pinch, throttled down and riding gentle. You sure you want to come along?” Jack asked as he stood in the stern and bolted the motor onto the rear of the skiff.

  “I’m not the type that waits at the gate,” Senna said, aware that her cheeks were still burning.

  Jack’s cocky grin didn’t make her feel better. “Charlie, help her in.”

  “I don’t need help,” Senna said, handing the fly rods to Charlie, tossing the life jackets aboard and scrambling unassisted into the skiff.

  “Guess not,” Jack said, eyeing her appraisingly.

  Minutes later they were moving upriver. Senna sat in the bow, wind in her face. Charlie was silent behind her, scanning the shorelines for any sign of his missing dog. Jack sat in the stern, navigating up through a series of shallow rapids and into a span of calm water out of sight of the lodge. “Good fishing hole over on this shore,” he said, making a slow gentle curve toward a smooth ledge that dropped into the water on the far shore. “Don’t need to go very far this time of year. I’ll just drop anchor and catch us some lunch.”

  Jack hadn’t been exaggerating. Before Senna even had time to properly study the surrounding riverbanks for flora and fauna, he’d landed four good-sized trout and they were heading back to the lodge. “Don’t really need much but a frying pan to turn these beauties into a damn fine meal,” he said over the purr of the small out-board motor, “but we always kept a few luxuries at the guides’ cabin for times like this.”

  The luxuries he spoke of turned out to be stashed in an old army-surplus ammunition box that was tucked beneath a bunk. Corn meal, salt, an unopened can of coffee, a plastic jug of corn oil were all quickly retrieved. Charlie kindled a fire on the riverbank as Jack squatted on the gravel bar and cleaned the fish. Soon the smell of frying trout and boiling coffee flavored the cool clean air. While Jack tended the cook fire, Senna heard the boy whistle several times down along the river’s edge.

  “What if Ula doesn’t come back?” she asked.

  “She will, eventually. Trouble is, those crackies don’t know when to give up the hunt. If she was chasing a diver duck, she could be miles down river by now, still swimming after it.” He used the blade of his knife to shift the fish in the pan as he spoke. “If she’s not back by the time we leave, she’ll be one lonely dog for a while.”

  Senna watched Charlie pace along the shore. “We can’t just leave her way out here.”

  “She’ll be fine. Charlie’ll leave something behind that has his smell on it, his hat or his jacket, and she’ll be lying right beside it when we come back, whether that’s tomorrow or a month from tomorrow. This isn’t the first time she’s run off.”

  “But he’s so upset….”

  “He should’ve tied her up when he had the chance. There are some plates and forks in that ammo box,” he said, glancing at her across the cook fire. “Don’t forget the coffee cups.”

  Senna went to get them from the cabin and held each plate while he dished up the meal. Jack called to Charlie and gave him a plate. They ate silently, listening to the river rushing past while staring into the dwindling flames of the little fire or scanning the shoreline for the missing crackie. Senna forgot all about the fact that she didn’t like fish. The flesh of the trout was firm, pink and delicious and she devoured every bite. While she and Jack finished off the pot of coffee, Charlie returned to the riverbank and searched for his dog. The sound of his whistles made Senna feel terrible.

  “It’s only an hour back to the lake house,” she said.

  Jack rose to his feet and slatted the dregs of his coffee into the dying embers of the fire. “Your point being…?”

  “You could fly back and feed the sled dogs while Charlie and I wait here.”

  “For the crackie to show up? You could be waiting one hell of a long time.”

  “On the other hand, she could return five minutes after we leave.” Senna collected the plates and cups. “We can’t just leave Ula behind,” she repeated. “It wouldn’t be humane.”

  Jack grinned. “It wouldn’t be humane if I crashed on the way back and you and Charlie starved to death.”

  “We have a river full of fish, a frying pan, an excellent hunting dog, and a few luxuries stashed in an old army ammo box. We’d be fine. But please don’t crash my grandfather’s half of the plane.”

  “Your half, now,” he corrected, “and don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of it.” He studied her for a moment. “You sure you want me to leave you here?”

  Senna glanced at her watch. “Those huskies need to be fed pretty soon, don’t they? You’d better get going. I’ll clean up here and then help Charlie look for his crackie. Don’t worry, we’ll stay right on the river.” When he hesitated again she added, “And if by chance you should pass a store, we could really use some bacon and eggs—just in case she doesn’t come back tonight.”

  SENNA HADN’T EVEN FINISHED washing the dishes at the river’s edge when the crackie returned. She heard Charlie’s shout and glanced up, gladdened by the sight of the little black dog picking her way along the opposite riverbank, something large, floppy and dark dangling from her jaws. Ula didn’t hesitate when she spotted Charlie, but leapt immediately into the water and swam diagonally across the strong current. By sheer perseverance she managed to gain the shallows before being carried out of sight around the river bend and then trotted up the gravel shoreline to where Charlie waited. Senna found herself smiling at the heartfelt reunion between the two.

  “Maybe you’d better tie her up,” she said as boy and dog approached.

  “She won’t run off again today. She got what she was after,” he said, proudly holding up a black duck by its legs.

  Senna was amazed that the small dog had caught and killed such a big duck. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to clean it,” she admitted.

  “I do,” Charlie said. “Can I give the crackie the last fish?”

  “She’s earned it, I guess, and if Jack doesn’t come back tonight, we’ll eat Ula’s duck for supper.”

  Waiting for Jack to return gave Senna time to explore the lodge again at her own leisurely pace. She poked into all the boxes and crates in the living room, examining the contents, trying to decide where she would hang each of the prints, which room would get which set of furniture, and how the couches and easy chairs would be arranged in front of the fireplace. The urge to see the lodge as it would look when the buyers came to view it was too strong to ignore. Before she knew it she was carrying boxes into the kitchen, unpacking pots and pans, cooking utensils and silverware, plates and bowls, cup
s and wineglasses. With Charlie’s help, she carried the bed frames into each of the six guest rooms. The tools she needed were all at hand, stashed in a box Charlie carried up from the guides’ cabin. By the time the sun was nearing the horizon, they’d finished assembling the bed frames and were dragging twelve double box springs and mattresses down the hallway.

  By 9:00 p.m. Senna was exhausted. She was also worried. Jack should have been back before now. He’d been gone for almost four hours. She walked out onto the porch, sat on the top step, and gazed out across the river, the rapids gleaming white in the gathering dusk. It was the sound of the river that masked the plane’s engine. She heard Ula bark, just one short yap, and followed the little dog’s intense stare. Over the black spruce she spotted the flashing red tail light as the plane approached, banked around, and dropped closer to the river. The plane disappeared from sight before landing, but soon she heard the sound of it taxiing toward the bend in the river.

  Charlie and Ula went down to the dock to meet Jack, but Senna remained where she was, infused with a combination of weariness and relief that conspired to cement her limbs to the porch. She watched Jack jump out of the plane and reach back in to retrieve a big cardboard box, which he handed to Charlie. He grabbed a second box out of the plane and followed Charlie and the dog back up the steep ramp. “I brought bacon and eggs and a few other luxuries,” he said when he was close enough to be heard. “Just in case.”

  “We also have a nice fat duck,” Senna said.

  “Charlie told me.” Jack climbed the porch steps and set the box down. “Damn crackie. She makes me mad when she runs off like that, but she knows her stuff. We’d never starve with her around, we’d just get arrested for killing black ducks out of season.” He rummaged around in the box and pulled out a bottle of wine, sitting down beside her on the step. “Charlie also told me you’ve been busy.”

  Senna drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, wishing he’d sit a little bit farther away. He was definitely invading her space. “Well, I couldn’t see just sitting around and waiting for both you and the dog. There’s a lot to do around here to get this place in shape, so I made a start.”

  “Think we’ll be ready in time for the first guests?” he asked, taking his jackknife out of his pocket, unfolding the corkscrew, and applying it to the top of the wine bottle.

  Senna watched him with a flicker of apprehension. The idea of a relaxing glass of wine was wonderful after such a long and demanding day, and she didn’t have the strength to spar with him about the business partnership. Nonetheless, she couldn’t let him believe he’d won her over to his way of thinking so easily. “We’ll be ready in time for the first prospective buyers to be flown in,” she said.

  Jack levered the cork out of the bottle. “I picked out an Australian Shiraz. It’ll go well with the crackie’s duck. I’ll get a couple of glasses, if I can find them. They’re in one of the boxes in the living room….”

  “No, they’re not. They’re in the kitchen. I unpacked a few things while you were gone.”

  He returned momentarily and sat back down on the step beside her. Too close again, but his nearness wasn’t really all that unpleasant. She was beginning to get used to it. “You unpacked a lot more than a few things. The kitchen looks like it’s ready to tackle a major wedding reception. Just how good of a cook are you?”

  “Probably not nearly as accomplished as your Goody.”

  He grinned, poured a glass of wine and handed it to her. “Goody’s a fine cook, I guess, but she cooks the kind of stuff your grandfather liked. Codfish pie, squid stew, boiled bangbelly. He thought the guests would like that authentic Newfoundlander fare.” He shook his head, pouring a second glass for himself. “I dunno. Give me steak and potatoes any day. Cheers.”

  Senna reluctantly touched her wineglass to his. “Is it safe for you fly after drinking a glass of wine?”

  Jack took a sip. “Nope. Strictly forbidden. We’ll have to spend the night.”

  “What about the sled dogs?”

  “All taken care of. The next-door neighbor’s going to feed them until we get back.”

  “Your nearest neighbor lives miles away.”

  “Not really. There’s an Inuit family, relatives of Charlie’s, in fact. They live less than a quarter mile up the lake, beyond the house.”

  “No road?”

  “That’s what the lake’s for. Try the wine.”

  Senna raised her glass for a taste. “Very nice. So enlighten me. What’s boiled bangbelly?”

  “Pretty lady,” Jack said, holding his glass of wine up to the colors of the sunset in a salute to the beautiful wilderness, “even if I knew, I’m not sure I’d tell you.”

  SENNA COOKED SUPPER in the lodge’s kitchen. According to Jack, it was the first trial run of the commercial stove, the generator, the water pump, the water heater, the refrigerator and the lights. Everything worked just fine. She roasted Ula’s duck beneath a cape of bacon, baked six big russet potatoes, then broiled a thick steak because the duck wasn’t really big enough to feed three people, let alone a growing boy and a man as hardworking as Jack. The groceries Jack had brought were enough to last for a week, and so Senna, knowing they were only going to be there overnight, prepared a feast.

  Jack set up a table on the porch, lit by two candles procured from a packing crate and between the three of them they devoured everything. Ula got only the smallest taste of her forbidden duck, snuck to her beneath the table by Charlie, and had to settle for a bowl of kibble to sate her own hunger. Senna drank a second glass of wine and was still sipping it while Jack cleared the table and voluntarily did the dishes, a gesture Senna suspected was meant to soften her up as a prelude to his trying to convince her to remain his business partner indefinitely. She heard the generator switch off when he was done, and then his footsteps coming back out onto the porch.

  “Charlie and I’ll sack out in the guides’ cabin tonight,” he said, dropping back into his chair and pulling his wineglass close. “He’s already headed down there with the crackie, both of them draggin’ their heels, they’re so tired. I brought a sleeping bag along for you. It’s clean and warm. You can pick whichever guest room you like the best and try out one of those new mattresses.”

  Senna took another sip of wine. “That sounds wonderful. It’s not every day a woman gets an entire fishing lodge all to herself.”

  “It’s not every woman who’d want one,” he said. He leaned his elbows on the table. “Just listen to that.”

  Senna listened. “What?”

  “The complete and total absence of a single manmade sound.”

  “Wild.”

  “Wild,” he echoed with obvious satisfaction.

  “This has to be about as far as it gets from living on an aircraft carrier with thousands of other people,” Senna commented. “Did you fly, like my father?”

  “Yes.”

  Senna shook her head. “I have to admit, I never understood his love of flying. In fact, I resented it. I hated the planes he flew, the angry, shrieking noise they made, the way the ground shook when they flew at low levels. Those planes were the reason he was always gone…and the reason he died.” She lifted her glass for another sip. “I asked him once why he did it, and he said it was because it was a great responsibility to protect his country’s freedom. He certainly took that responsibility more seriously than he did being a husband and a father.” Jack made no response to her bitter statement, and the silence between them was amplified by the sound of the river rushing past. “So, what made you want to fly, John Hanson?”

  Jack kicked back in his chair, cradled his wineglass on his stomach, and looked out across the river, gleaming in the mysterious arctic twilight. He drew a deep breath and blew it out in a philosophical whoosh.

  “Sex,” he said. “I knew from watching that movie, Top Gun, that all the most beautiful young women went wild over aviators wearing leather jackets and dark mirrored sunglasses, and since I was equally wild about bea
utiful young women, I decided to learn how to fly. I took lessons in junior high and got my private pilot’s license when I was sixteen. Got pretty good grades in school, too. A Wyoming senator I met at the state science fair sponsored my application to M.I.T., and I was accepted. It was my ticket off the farm and into the air.”

  Senna watched him as he spoke. Jack had a handsome profile, strong and masculine, and the way his head was tilted back against the chair’s headrest as he gazed back through the years allowed her to admire it openly. “Somehow I doubt you needed a leather jacket and dark mirrored glasses to get all the sex you wanted,” she commented. “I think there might have been a little more to it than that.”

  He tipped his head just enough to briefly catch her eye. “Kinda,” he admitted. “I grew up on a Wyoming farm, the firstborn son of a dry-land farmer. I watched the rainless clouds taunt the burning sky, and watched my parents grow prematurely old, struggling to make a living off the land. I couldn’t wait to escape all those endless hours sitting on the seat of the big tractor, going up and down the rows of wheat, up and down the rows of corn, dawn ’til dusk, day after day, all summer long, ever since I’d been old enough to handle the controls, while the hawks soared and stooped over the freshly mown fields hunting for mice. They were free. I was a slave to the earth.

  “I guess you could say it was the hawks that lured me away from that damn place, but it was a kind of miracle, getting that envelope in the mail and reading the words I’d never thought to read: ‘Congratulations, you have been accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Aeronautical Engineering…’ That was the most exciting moment of my life. I kept the letter hidden in my pocket for a week before telling my parents.

  “They’d been counting on me taking over the farm. They never understood my fascination with flight. They disapproved when I spent all of my summer money on flying lessons with Joe Robey, the local crop duster. They’d thought it was frivolous, irresponsible.