The Mine (Northwest Passage Book 1)

by John A. Heldt

  He was tempted to delve more into his father's wrangler past. He could picture Frank Smith working on a ranch. He could picture him enjoying it. But Joel was far more interested in digging into the life of someone he had not seen in five years. Despite his conclusions about the mine and his real or imagined journey to 1941, he had thought a lot about his grandmother in the past few days and had many new questions about her. Ginny's apparent distaste for cowboys only fueled the fire.

  "Mom, did Grandma leave any personal things behind when she died?"

  "Like what?"

  "You know, the usual stuff – pictures, letters, scrapbooks, things like that."

  "She did. I haven't gone through all of it. But I know there's a large box in the attic full of keepsakes from her college days, including dozens of photographs."

  Joel swallowed hard, lowered a drumstick to his plate, and stared blankly into the kitchen. He suddenly had a lot more to chew on.

  "Do you mind if I see it?"

  "Of course not. But don't you have to study for your finals?"

  "I do. But I can get to that tomorrow."

  Joel took a breath, pushed his plate away, and faced his mother.

  "I'd really like to see that box."

  * * * * *

  Twenty minutes later Cindy Smith carried a sturdy cardboard container into the shrine of a bedroom that was her son's home away from home. Joel sat on his waterbed, surrounded by trophies, books, a vast array of consumer electronics, and posters of rock bands, sports stars, and supermodels.

  "This is all I could find, but I think it's everything."

  "Thanks, Mom."

  "Let me know if you need anything else."

  "I will."

  When his mother left the room, Joel opened the box and found most of what he had expected to find. Ginny Gillette had saved a lot from her college career, including letters, photographs, programs, pressed flowers, newspaper articles, and what looked like the stripes of an Army lieutenant.

  Joel started with a score of letters and cards that had been bundled and plopped on top of the heap. He read several dull notes from Ginny's parents from 1939 and 1940 and more informative correspondence from 1941, including a tersely worded message that mentioned a man named Tom. Victoria Gillette did not seem particularly enthused about her daughter's new interest and counseled "patience."

  When the wellspring of letters ran dry, Joel moved on to the articles. He handled the brittle, yellowing clips, loosely arranged in a manila folder, with the care of a surgeon. He found one story about poverty on campus and another on the fight against polio. Two more pieces examined the lives of Japanese students at the university. Near the end of the second story, Ginny quoted a senior named Katherine Kobayashi – the colorful, humorous, and opinionated president of something called the Hasu Club.

  Joel pushed the box away as his stomach knotted and a sinking feeling he thought he had left in a dusty mine near Helena, Montana, came rushing back. Could he do this? Could he finish the box? He looked out his bedroom window to the well-heeled street beyond and decided he could.

  The photographs provided no reprieve. He picked up one and saw Ginny with a sorority sister that looked like a date from his make-believe past. Joel wondered whether the girl with the engaging smile, freckles, and long hair had a first name that started with "L" or another letter of the alphabet.

  Another picture showed his grandmother with a young man who had heretofore existed only in his mind. He appeared a bit shorter than Joel and a few pounds heavier but was an otherwise nice-looking guy with a baby face, strong jaw, and short hair that was parted to the side. Several more photos followed, including one of Ginny with the man at the ocean. Written on the back of that snapshot was the name Tom Carter.

  But the worst was yet to come. As Joel dug through the dozens of prints, he came upon several of Virginia Gillette with a sunny blonde. He did not know whether her eyes were crystal blue or whether she was the daughter of missionaries or liked movies or holding hands, but he did know one thing: He had seen her before.

  He delved deeper and found a composite photo of the Kappa Delta Alpha sorority from 1940-41. In the middle of the third row was the picture of the same blonde, a young woman named Grace Vandenberg. Additional photographs brought more of the same: "Grace in dorm room," "Grace and Linda at Lake Union," "Grace at rush dinner," and "Grace and Paul at spring dance."

  Joel stared at two posters on the far wall. Cindy Crawford looked better than ever. So did Naomi Campbell. But his mind was not on models of the 1990s but rather on a figment of his imagination from the 1940s that he had left on a cold, wet doorstep.

  He moved quickly to the smoking gun. At the bottom of a stack of photographs stuffed in an envelope was a snapshot that brought his world to a crashing halt: "Grace and Joel at Seaside." The college-age man in the picture had wavy dark-brown hair, chiseled features, and a boyish grin that Joel had often seen in a mirror.

  Joel closed his eyes and leaned back on the bed's headboard as he tried to put down a fresh round of nausea. He spread his arms across the covers for balance as his mother knocked gently on the door and slowly pushed it open.

  "I'm sorry to bother you, honey, but I just heated up some apple crisp and wanted to know if you'd like some. Your father and I are going to watch a movie."

  Cindy Smith opened the door wider and took a closer look at her son. His face was white and his eyes were closed.

  "Are you all right?"

  Joel took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and turned to face his mother.

  "No. I'm not all right. I feel sick to my stomach."

  "Can I get you anything?"

  "I think I can manage, for now. But I want you to stay."

  "OK."

  Cindy stepped into the room and walked to the waterbed. She sat on the hardwood frame, leaned toward her son, and put a hand on his clammy forehead. She saw several photographs of Virginia Gillette scattered on top of the covers.

  "Did you learn anything interesting about Grandma?"

  Joel pondered the question and did not know whether to laugh or cry. He thought of the things he could tell his mother, the things he could tell a lot of people, if only he could retain his sanity.

  "I did. She had quite a life."

  "Yes, she did."

  "Did she ever say much about her college days?"

  "No. That was one thing she rarely talked about, at least to me. I think it had a lot to do with Tom Carter, her fiancé. I told you about him once. He died in the war."

  "Yeah, I remember. But did she ever mention her friends or the things she did?"

  "No. I asked her about them too. I asked her a lot of questions about college when I was a high school senior, but she would talk only about academics and the newspaper. She never discussed her sorority or her social life."

  "Did you ever wonder why?"

  "Of course. She was my mother. But there was no point in pestering her. I figured that she had probably had a bad experience and did not want to talk about it. Who knows? But whatever the reason, I suspect it went beyond Tom Carter."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because she was tight-lipped about everyone, even her girlfriends. Years ago, when you were just a baby, I saw a photo, like some of these here, at her house. She was sitting next to two girls her age. I'm sure it was from college. But when I asked her about the picture, she ripped it from my hands and said it was none of my business."

  "She really said that?"

  "She really said that."

  Cindy picked up a few of the prints and looked them over until she saw one that caught her attention. Undated and unmarked, it showed Katie, Ginny, and Grace sitting on lawn chairs on a deck behind a house that still stood on Klickitat Avenue.

  "This is the one. I remember the lawn chairs."

  She handed it to Joel.

  "Do you know who the other girls are?" he asked.

  "I'm almost certain the one on the left is Katherine Saito. I met her at the fu
neral. She was an old friend of Grandma's, a very nice woman. I haven't seen her since, but she sends us a Christmas card every year. She lives in Portland."

  Joel held the photo in front of him with both hands and ran his right index finger over each of the three smiling subjects. He let the digit linger over the blonde at right and then tossed the picture in the box.

  "I miss her," he said.

  "I do too."

  Cindy again put a hand to Joel's forehead, fluffed his pillow, and then slid off the edge of the bed. When she got to the door, she looked back at her son, the last to leave the nest, and asked if he wanted lemon-lime soda for his stomach.

  "No. I'm good. I'm feeling better now. Thanks."

  "OK. If you change your mind about the apple crisp, let me know."

  Joel watched his mother give a reassuring smile as she closed the door. When he heard her reach the end of the hallway and start down a flight of creaky stairs, he pushed the photos and letters off his bed and did something he had not done in five years. He wept.

  CHAPTER 66

  The stone had changed little since last he had seen it. The elements had marred its polished finish and dirt had collected in a few of its recessed letters, but the marble monument was as impressive as ever. A tiny American flag, stuck in the ground nearby, flapped in the gentle breeze. Put there by volunteers on Memorial Day, it was a reminder that Joseph Jorgenson had served proudly in the United States Marines. But on the sunny spring day before he graduated from college, Joel Francis Smith focused on the other half of the marker, the one dedicated to Joe's wife, Cindy's mother, and a woman who had done two tours of duty in the life of a mixed-up man.

  As Joel stood before the final resting place of Virginia Gillette Jorgenson, high on a hilltop in a leafy cemetery in Madison Park, he asked a question that had to be asked: Had she known? Had this intelligent, resourceful woman put the pieces together? Had she figured out that her beloved grandson was the same young man who had abandoned her friend in 1941? Could she have set aside skepticism about time travel or reincarnation long enough to admit that the two Joel Smiths of her life were one and the same?

  She had been seventy-five when she died of lung cancer but had kept her wits to the end. Surely she had noticed that the seventeen-year-old boy at her deathbed bore a striking resemblance to her one-time friend. It is also possible that Grace had removed all doubt by showing her his letter or revealing its contents. In that event, Ginny would have known the truth from the start. Whatever the case, she had kept her thoughts to herself. She had died a stranger even to her husband and three children.

  Joel pulled a clean rag from the back pocket of his jeans and gently wiped the engraved portion of the three-foot-high gravestone. He thought about his mother's words at dinner the week before. Ginny Jorgenson clearly had no use for ranchers and cowboys, and Joel just as clearly understood why. He had let her down. He had let all of them down. He tried to convince himself he had bolted for the noblest of reasons – reasons that were not difficult to find. Who would not want to see his family again? What honorable person could interfere with the lives of people he was never supposed to meet?

  Yet Joel knew that his decision to run was rooted in a whole lot more. He had not wanted to serve in World War II and possibly leave behind a widow and a fatherless child, just as he had wanted to return to the comforts of a familiar, modern age. He wondered how many lives he had altered, particularly for the worse. Staring again at the stone, he conceded that he had altered at least one. Whether he had changed more was an open question. After taking his last final exam the previous day, Joel had driven to the downtown public library and tried to learn more about his long-lost friends.

  Some answers had come quickly and easily. Army Lieutenant Thomas Carter had indeed died in the sands of Tunisia but not before saving eight soldiers in his platoon from certain slaughter. The furniture salesman and playboy who had frequently and openly questioned his own courage had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, posthumously, for uncommon valor in the Battle of Kasserine Pass.

  Paul McEwan had survived Pearl Harbor but not the war. He had died in early 1945 at a hospital in the Philippines after contracting malaria. From Paul's obituary and other records, Joel had learned that Linda McEwan Rogers had married a naval officer and settled in Bremerton. She had taught for forty years in the public schools there, retiring with great fanfare in 1982. According to a local newspaper article, she had twice been named the school district's educator of the year. She was presumably still alive.

  So was Katherine Kobayashi Saito. Joel did not need to spend an afternoon in a library to learn her whereabouts. He had the Christmas card she had sent his parents six months earlier. She lived in Portland, Oregon, with husband, Walter. She had four children, sixteen grandchildren, and a great-grandchild on the way. Even before reading the card, Joel had decided to contact her soon. If there was one person in his former circle of friends still willing and able to receive him, it would be the woman to whom he had left twenty-five hundred dollars.

  There would be no contacting Edith Green Tomlinson. She had died a childless widow in 1960. Joel had found her lengthy obituary in the Sun, but it left him with more questions than answers. Edith had been preceded in death by her husband, her parents, and a twin sister, and survived by a brother-in-law and "legions of fans in the Seattle arts community," but apparently by no one else. Grace had not been listed among the deceased or the survivors.

  And so the mystery continued. Joel had found no evidence that Grace had graduated from Westlake High School or the university or had even attended a sorority reunion. She had not been listed in any directories or vital records indexes or made the newspaper, as far as he could tell, in any way, shape, or form.

  He had recognized up front the limits of searching for a person who probably carried a married name and who may have even left the country. Grace herself had said she had been happier living overseas. He would not at all have been surprised to see her name on a roster of Peace Corps volunteers. But on June 9, 2000, her name could not be found in any public records. She existed only in photographs and memories.

  Joel finished wiping the gravestone and straightened Joe Jorgenson's flag. It was the least he could do for a grandfather who had taught him to fish and appreciate the virtues of patience, humility, and tolerance.

  He took one last look at Ginny's name and asked her for forgiveness. He knew it was probably an empty gesture. If there was an afterlife, Ginny was badgering reporters at the Heaven Gazette and not hanging around a slab of marble. But he asked anyway. If nothing else, Joel needed to hear himself say the words. He needed to run through this hoop and others to achieve the one thing that still eluded him. Closure.

  CHAPTER 67

  She looked better than a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend had the right to look. Fresh from her summer job as a lifeguard at Green Lake, Stanford Law-bound Jana Lamoreaux walked into the Mad Dog wearing a white tight-fitting blouse, a denim skirt, and sandals that accented legs that belonged on a billboard.

  Joel had long appreciated her year-round features, like her long brown hair, amber eyes, and olive skin that would always play well with a jury. But for some reason, he thought they looked even better the day after they had graduated from college.

  "Sorry I'm late," Jana said.

  She slid into the unoccupied half of a secluded booth, grabbed the pitcher of India Pale Ale Joel had ordered minutes earlier, and poured a perfect pint. He marveled at the ease at which she handled suds. Jana could pour a gallon of beer into a teacup and not spill a drop or leave a head thicker than a quarter of an inch. Like Ginny Gillette, the former beauty queen was a girl who could play with the boys, on their turf, and not leave an ounce of her femininity on the sidelines.

  Joel had picked the Mad Dog as the venue to discuss their future because it was comfortable, convenient, and symbolically important. This was, after all, where they had started.

  They had met in the same booth in the sprin
g of 1998 as sophomores with fake driver's licenses, obnoxious friends, and a desire to put recent, painful breakups behind them. Joel hadn't needed any coaxing to better acquaint himself with the vivacious history major. Jana was as beautiful then as she was now and shared a number of his interests, from football and fishing to the Gilded Age and the Enlightenment. Staring blankly at a poster on the wall, he drifted to better times and better places before she reeled him back to the here and now.

  "How did your interview go this morning?" she asked.

  "It went well, kick-ass well. But I won't get the job."

  "Why?"

  "They want someone with more experience."

  "You're kidding. What do they call a summer internship?"

  "A step in the right direction."

  Joel loved the irony that had followed him through the entire interview process, which had run nearly three hours. In fact, he had thought of little else all day. Granted, he did not have experience in the oil industry. He did not have much experience in any geology-related industry. But he did have knowledge that could turn the entire field on its head. He thought of the serious fun he could have had educating his interviewers about fluorescent rock chambers that sent young men hurtling to the age of Rosie the Riveter. But that would have required risking phone calls to men in white coats. He had had enough excitement for one month.

  He sipped his beer and surveyed the establishment. The Mad Dog was as old as the Canary in Helena and just as popular. But it had gone in a much different direction over the years. Whereas the Montana diner had embraced the past, the campus watering hole had charged into the future. Instead of Depression-era jukeboxes, brass cash registers, and celebrity photos, it boasted modern lighting, data ports, fifteen televisions, and sushi. Only its name and its exterior had not changed. Tom Carter would not have recognized the place.

  "Do you have anything else lined up?" Jana asked.

  "I have one more interview in two weeks, with a natural gas outfit. But I'm not in a hurry. I figure I've got another month before the commander sends me to a recruiter."