The Mine (Northwest Passage Book 1)

by John A. Heldt

  Grace felt her stomach drop. She stared blankly for several seconds before putting her fork on the table. She looked at the waiter. He offered only a non-committal smirk, as if to suggest that Paul's proposal was probably better than the catch of the day.

  She consulted the curious masses. A plump, middle-aged man holding a martini and a cigarette grinned and shook his head. His plump, middle-aged wife scowled at him and gently nodded at Grace. A thinner, younger woman held up both thumbs.

  "Do it, honey."

  Blood rushed to Grace's cheeks as she turned to face Paul.

  "There's no hurry, sweetheart," he said. "I know this is kind of sudden. But I had to tell you where I stood before I shipped out. I don't want to lose you."

  Grace took the box from Paul and removed the ring inside. It was no dime-store trinket. The half-carat diamond solitaire practically lit up the room. She shuddered to think what it had cost but figured it had probably cleaned out his savings. She looked again at the smarmy waiter, who remained on the fence, and the fat lady, who crossed fingers on both hands. Nearly a dozen others smiled and waited. Grace looked at her sailor.

  "You're right. This is sudden," she said, taking a deep breath. "But that's OK."

  Grace held the white gold ring between a thumb and a finger and examined it for several seconds before lifting her head. Nearby conversations ceased.

  "You're a good man, Paul. I know this means a lot."

  She put the ring where she thought it belonged, snapped the box shut, and pushed the package away. The fat lady fainted and the thin woman gasped.

  "I love you too. My answer is yes."

  CHAPTER 17

  Mr. Smith went to Washington, but his whistle-stop tour hit the skids in Spokane. Several bulls, or railroad police, cleared out the boxcars when the train rolled to a stop. They arrested those too slow to sprint across the sprawling Great Northern rail yards to the relative safety of the rough-and-tumble Hillyard neighborhood.

  Joel spent the last day of May learning the ins and outs of hobo life. Scruffy, who went by the name Hobart Katzenberger, taught him how to get a meal in a restaurant by offering to work for food and then waiting for guilt-laden patrons to pick up the tab.

  Charlie, the five-foot-two leprechaun, directed him to a nearby machinist shop that was easy to enter through unlocked windows on evenings and weekends. Once in, the homeless and jobless had access to well-equipped rest rooms and a large washbasin. Never one to squander resources, Joel made use of both.

  "Don't you guys ever stay in one place?" he asked.

  "I do when I can," Scruffy said. He spoke with the gravelly voice of a longtime smoker. "But work's hard to find. You know that."

  Though Charlie and Scruffy had marveled at Joel's shirt, they had not asked many questions. They no doubt figured he had stolen it or traded for it or found it in the garbage. One did not care about coordinated ensembles when riding the rails. The veterans treated Joel Smith like any young buck looking for employment or adventure. Joel, however, asked many questions of his new friends. He asked how they made it through a day, where they were from, and how they had come to be transients.

  Scruffy, forty going on eighty, said he had once cut logs in Wisconsin. When his mill closed, he headed for the still profitable forests of the Pacific Northwest. He had bounced from one timber town to another for more than five years.

  Charles Prescott had a sorrier tale. He lost a Chicago factory job and his wife on the same day in 1938, his thirtieth birthday. Delores Prescott had found happiness in the arms of his sister. Charlie hopped a train when the bills piled up.

  As the day wore on, however, Joel became less interested in sob stories than how he could board a westbound train in Spokane without running into railroad security. He found out at ten the next morning, when Charlie guided him to a grassy field north of the rail yards. Scattered islands of tall bushes masked their approach. Not that it mattered. The bulls rarely ventured beyond the yards and this day was no exception.

  They stood at a popular departure point only thirty minutes before they saw a long freight train, moving at glacial speed, pull out of its berth a half-mile away. When the locomotive approached the open field, Charlie handed Joel a badly worn business card bearing the name of a Seattle company.

  "It's a big warehouse in Montlake, near the bridge. Ask for Brutus. He sometimes hires nobodies to move boxes around. It's not much, but it might keep you out of trouble for a while." Charlie laughed. "Good luck."

  "You're not coming?"

  The small man shook his head.

  "Not this time." Charlie let his eyes drift toward town. He could hear church bells in the distance. "I've got a bead on something better here and I'm going to play it out."

  "Thanks for your help. Here's something for your trouble." Joel handed him his last valid quarter, plus the two from the eighties. "Just be careful where you spend them."

  He walked to within ten yards of the tracks and pondered his second joyride. With several open boxcars, the still slow-moving choo-choo was a target-rich environment. Joel chose a car toward the end and started walking with the train. As he picked up the pace, he glanced back at his companion. Charlie held a coin in each of his widely separated hands and smiled, as if to ask, "What are these?"

  Joel laughed, waved, and turned his attention to the train, which had increased its speed. He ran beside a boxcar, studied its ladder, and let it drift away. He kept a steady pace as the target vehicle approached. New and graffiti-free, it appeared unoccupied.

  When the car pulled even, Joel calibrated his steps. He moved toward the ladder, eyed the middle rungs, and let himself go. He landed squarely, firmly, and painlessly. As the train steamed through an intersection with a rural road, a well-dressed couple in a convertible honked and waved. Joel tipped his hat.

  He pulled himself up several rungs and stared at the landscape ahead. Pine trees, small houses, and narrow roads broke up gentle fields of yellow grass. He visualized the stark, arid landscapes of eastern Washington, the majestic Cascades, and home. This was not how Joel had planned to spend Memorial Day weekend – in any year. But it definitely beat cramming for finals.

  CHAPTER 18

  Joel's joyride ended just after sunrise on Monday, when the Glacial Express rolled into the rail yard south of King Street Station. Because of a mudslide-caused delay near Wenatchee, the train did not cross the mountains until after dark. He spent most of the night shivering between two wooden crates.

  When the train finally came to a stop, Joel wasted no time getting out. He had spent the better part of a day rattling around in an unoccupied boxcar and simply wanted to put his feet on solid ground. No bulls awaited him. No one awaited him. Why would they? He was a vagrant from another time and, to be honest, another place.

  The city looked a lot like Seattle but very little like his hometown. No Columbia Center soared over a bevy of new skyscrapers, no partially completed football stadium abutted the train station, and no Space Needle loomed in the distance. The Century 21 World's Fair was twenty-one years away. Joel eyed the forty-two-story Smith Tower to the north. Completed in 1914, it was again the tallest building in the West.

  Tired, sore, and hungry, Joel wanted to rent a cheap room, like the one in Helena, and sleep for a week. But he realized that that was not an option for a scraggly young man with little more than two useless dollars and a Ken Griffey trading card to his name. He needed a job, or at least an honest bookie. He tried to remember when Belmont held its Stakes. He wanted to bet on Whirlaway. But even that required cash.

  So he wandered down to Pike Place Market, in hopes of finding a way to get it. Farmers, fishermen, and merchants peddled their wares on the waterfront, as they had done for decades and would do for decades more. But when Joel learned that none had work to offer, he kept on walking. Seeing and smelling fresh seafood and produce was more than he could bear on an empty stomach.

  From the market, he cut east and south to Madison Street and walked four mi
les toward his old neighborhood in Madison Park. He talked to several merchants along the way but got the same story. No jobs. Even businessmen with Help Wanted signs in their windows told him to come back in a week. Some said he did not have the right skills. Joel suspected he did not have the right shirt and shave.

  He loved the irony. He had four years of college, technical knowledge from far into the future, and fluency in French and Spanish. But on June 2, 1941, Joel Smith, wearing a cowboy hat, a Candy in Chains sweatshirt, and a four-day beard, couldn't get a job sweeping floors in a city of four hundred thousand.

  For the most part, Joel took the rejections in stride. He knew he couldn't solve all of his problems in twenty-four hours and knew that the day was still young. He thought of the business card in his wallet and his potential date with Brutus. Joel smiled.

  Brutus. What parents would do that?

  Joel's plight improved at noon when he walked into a grocery store on Capitol Hill. The place didn't have jobs, but it did have food, including a few boxes of fruits and vegetables that a teenage boy in a stained apron carried to a garbage bin in back.

  "Are you really going to throw that out?" Joel asked.

  "I sure am."

  "Why?"

  "Because they're old and starting to get mushy," the boy said. "They won't sell."

  "Do you mind if I help myself?"

  "Take all you want. The bananas are still pretty good."

  Joel did not wait for a review of the apples, grapes, and plums. He tore into the boxes and ate until he could eat no more. He knew he would pay for eating raw fruit, and nothing but raw fruit, on an empty tank, but he did not care. He needed sustenance and he needed it now.

  When he finished his feast, Joel resumed his journey. He noted the rails in the road and sighed. He had hoped to hop a trolley that ran the length of East Madison Street but learned that he had arrived too late. The city had terminated the service in 1940.

  Two hours later Joel made his way to a house on Thirty-Eighth Avenue, a home twice named among Madison Park's finest by a Seattle historical society. With shuttered, multi-paned windows, two chimneys, gables, three dormers, and a front door framed by two columns and an arch, the redbrick mansion was a tribute to colonial Georgian style.

  Joel pondered ringing the bell just to see who answered. He knew his parents had purchased the place in 1980 from a family that had resided there for three generations, but he knew nothing about them or how they had managed the property.

  He knew he would not find a redwood deck and heated swimming pool in back or a Lexus in the detached garage, but he was pleasantly surprised to see a vegetable garden on the treeless south side of the house. He had spent some quality time there as a young child, harvesting his mother's crops whenever hunger called.

  A few blocks away Joel found his alma mater, a four-story brownstone edifice that towered above neighboring homes. He had attended Westlake High for four years and made the most of every minute, lettering in football and baseball, serving as class president, and dating three-quarters of the varsity cheer squad as a junior. He had also started the school's first history club.

  Joel had loved history since watching President Reagan commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the D-day invasion. Only six at the time, he stood mesmerized before the television. When Reagan spoke, he spoke to him. When he honored the ancient heroes assembled in Normandy, he honored Grandpa Smith, who had stormed Utah Beach with the Fourth Infantry Division. Patrick Smith died the next year.

  His reverence for the past, and his grandparents' generation in particular, extended to entertainment. He loved movies like Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Grapes of Wrath; syndicated sitcoms like Happy Days and Leave it to Beaver; recordings by Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and Buddy Holly; and even broadcasts of old-time radio shows featuring Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Jack Benny. His mother had once told him he had been born fifty years past his time. When he heard Big Band music blaring out an open window of a nearby house, he laughed.

  Thanks, Mom.

  Joel had wanted to major in history at the university, but his father would have none of it. To Commander Francis H. Smith, U.S. Navy (Retired), college was a place to learn a vocation, not expand your mind. Unless Joel planned to take a history degree to law school, he would have to find another discipline or fund his education. So he majored in his second love – rocks – and minored in his first.

  The salutatorian of the Class of 1996 gazed at his school from across the street as a bell rang. Dozens of boys in slacks and button-down shirts and girls in knee-length skirts, ankle socks, and saddle shoes began spilling out the doors. Many wore smiles.

  Joel put a hand to his chin. He tried to remember the names on an oak-and-brass plaque by the main office, names of graduates killed in various American conflicts. Life was about to change in a big way for the Class of 1941. He wished them the best. As he left the intersection of Memory Lane and Thirty-Eighth Avenue, Joel thought about the decisions he had made and the decisions still to come. Neither gave him comfort.

  * * * * *

  By the time Joel reached Pennington Storage and Distribution, he was spent. He had walked eight miles on one meal and not slept in thirty-six hours. Bags the size of quarters dogged his weary eyes. To say he looked like hell was to slight hell. But he had come to see Brutus, not a beauty queen.

  Joel caught the beefy, fortyish owner at five after five, just as he locked his office and headed toward his car. He introduced himself and said he knew Charles Prescott.

  "I remember him," the big man said. "Short little prick. But a hard worker."

  "He said you sometimes hired nobodies to move boxes around. His exact words."

  "Sounds like something he would say." Brutus laughed. "I'd like to help you, but I can't. Business is down and I don't expect it to pick up for a few more weeks."

  Joel frowned and glanced at the late afternoon sky. He would soon have bigger problems than riding out a business cycle. He thanked Brutus and started to walk away.

  "Say, kid, where are you staying tonight?"

  "No place special. I just got into town."

  "I thought so." Brutus scribbled an address on the back of a business card and handed it to Joel. "Here. Give this place a call. It's a mission run by one of the churches in the U-District. They'll put you up tonight and give you a meal in the morning. If you still need a job next month, come back. I might have something by then."

  "Thanks again."

  The two shook hands and Joel started to walk away.

  "By the way, I like your shirt. Probably best not to ask what it means."

  Joel laughed.

  "You're right. Best not. Take care."

  Joel noted the address and did a beeline for the Montlake Bridge. He counted his blessings. If nothing else, he would sleep in a bed that wasn't rolling on rails.

  CHAPTER 19

  The troops assembled at six. Armed with lipstick, cash, and pin-curl permanents, the Twenty-First Birthday Brigade of Kappa Delta Alpha set out to shake things up on a Monday night. Or at least order a few decadent desserts to go with legal cocktails.

  Ginny Gillette, the officer in charge, had asked a dozen coeds to meet at Harlan's Hideaway, located just outside the dry zone on University Way Northeast, or what locals called the Ave. Thanks to a series of legislative acts, the sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited within a mile of campus. But the restriction was merely an annoyance for most students, including Grace Vandenberg's closest friends. All twelve answered the call.

  This particular powwow, however, had less to do with the consumption of Demon Rum and other spirits than with pushing a beloved but reclusive sorority sister out of her comfort zone and getting away from books and typewriters one last time before dead week, the usually quiet and intense lead-up to finals week, took its toll.

  "I feel a little guilty," Ginny said to Grace, as she turned away from a menu. "If I had known Paul was going to pop a rock on your finger, I wo
uld have called this off – or at least rescheduled. You really should be with him tonight."

  "Don't be silly. How often do any of us get together like this?"

  "At least once a week," Linda McEwan said.

  Several girls giggled. Grace turned red.

  "I guess I have spent too much time at the library."

  "And with that handsome man of yours," Katie said.

  Katherine Kobayashi, the outlier of the group, worked beside Grace three days a week in the rare books section of the university library. The second generation Japanese American had not joined Kappa Delta Alpha. Nisei did not join traditional sororities. But Katie had been welcomed with open arms into Grace's tight circle of friends.

  With the exception of two tables near the front door, where noisy young men in zoot suits swapped naughty stories, the juniors and seniors had the dark, pub-like establishment to themselves. Most students hit the books the week before finals, not restaurants and bars, so Harlan's, a popular haunt, was unusually quiet.

  "So when's the date?" Linda asked, turning to the guest of honor at her side. "Big brother didn't provide details."

  "We haven't set one," Grace said. "Paul wants me to finish school first. I imagine it will be next summer, when he gets his leave."

  She smiled at Linda and grabbed her hand.

  "Just think. We're going to be sisters-in-law."

  "I'm looking forward to that."

  Linda lifted her Sidecar and clinked Grace's wine glass. She had ordered two of the brandy concoctions and pondered a third. But she did not like to drink alone. Only Ginny, Grace, Phyllis, Betty, and Rose had requested something stronger than iced tea. Four others had asked for lemon water. Lemon water!

  "I'm so happy for you," Katie said.

  "I am too. We all are," Ginny added. The queen bee looked down the long table, moved around an index finger, as if counting the number of adult beverages, and frowned. She tapped her fork on a full martini. "What's this? This is supposed to be a party. The first round is on me!"