There was the broken Iditarod sled from Vic Hornbeck’s failed race bid in the late 1970s piled high with dropped elk antlers. An Elks Lodge hat from Poughkeepsie, New York still hung over one handle of the sled. The vintage motorcycle of the guy who had come through on his way to solo climb up Denali from the north along Muldrow Glacier and descend to the south by Cassin Ridge was still there, buried under eleven years of detritus. Whether he made the crossing and didn’t come back or died on the mountain, no one ever knew.
“Man asked me to hold it for him a bit,” Carl would offer in his deep laconic style when asked by some local teen who lusted after the wheels. “Don’t see no need to hustle it out from under him. ‘Sides, the baby girl he left in Carol Swenson’s belly whilst he was here is ten now. Mayhaps she’ll want it at sixteen.”
There was an old wooden lobster pot—that Macy had never understood because the Gulf of Alaska to the south wasn’t all that much closer than the Beaufort Sea to the north and the pot looked like it was from Maine—with a garden gnome-sized bare-breasted hula dancer standing inside it; her ceramic paint worn to a patina by too many Alaskan winters spent topless and out of doors. A hundred other objects were scattered about including worn-out gold panning equipment, a couple of plastic river kayaks with “For Rent” signs that might have once been green and sky blue before the sun leached out all color—though she’d never seen them move. And propped in the corner was the wooden propeller from Macy’s first plane that she’d snapped when her wheel had caught in an early hole in the permafrost up near Nenana. That was before she’d switched to helicopters. She’d spent a week there before someone could fly in a replacement.
“Looks the same to me.”
Brett eyed her strangely as he held open the door.
And just like that she knew she’d blown what little hope this date had right out of the water. Brett had been trying to make conversation and she’d done her true-false test. It wasn’t like she was anal, it was more like everyone simply treated her as if she was.
Inside was dark, warm, and just as cluttered. A century or more of oddbits had been tacked to the walls: old photos, snowshoes strung with elk hide, a rusted circular blade several feet across from the old sawmill that had closed back in the sixties, and endless other bits and pieces that Carl and his predecessors had gathered. He claimed direct lineage back to French Pete Deville, through Hilma. It wasn’t hard to believe; Carl looked like he’d been born behind the bar. Looked like he might die there too.
The fiction section of the town library lined one long wall of French Pete’s. Most of the non-fiction was down at the general store except for religion, movies, and anything to do with mechanics. They were down in the movie house-church’s lobby, the mechanical guides because the pharmacy-gas station was next door.
Though Carl didn’t have any kin, Natalie, the ten-year-old daughter of Carol Swenson and the mountain climber with the left-behind motorcycle, was sitting up on a high barstool playing chess against Carl. It was a place she could be found most days when there wasn’t school and Carol was busy over at the general store and post office. She was such a fixture that over the last few years everyone had pretty much come to expect Natty to take over French Pete’s someday.
Macy scanned the tables hoping that no one would recognize her, fat chance in a community the size of Larch Creek.
And then she spotted the big table back in the corner beneath the moose-antler chandelier. It was packed.
Oh crap! She’d forgotten it was Sunday.
Too late to run for cover, she guided Brett in the other direction to a table in the corner. She managed to sit with her back to her father’s expression of mock horror. That she could deal with.
But it would have been easier if Mom hadn’t offered a smile and a wink.
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More information at: www.mlbuchman.com
Copyright 2015 Matthew Lieber Buchman
Published by Buchman Bookworks
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This book, or parts thereof,
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Cover images:
Granite Mountain - Fire Lookout
© laffertyryan | Flickr (cc)
Backpacking on St. Joe’s
© Jason Priem | Flickr (cc)
Other works by M.L. Buchman
Dead Chef (thriller)
Swap Out!
One Chef!
Two Chef!
The Night Stalkers (romantic suspense)
The Night Is Mine
I Own the Dawn
Daniel’s Christmas
Wait Until Dark
Frank’s Independence Day
Peter’s Christmas
Take Over at Midnight
Light Up the Night
Bring On the Dusk
Target of the Heart
Firehawks (romantic suspense)
Pure Heat
Wildfire at Dawn
Full Blaze
Wildfire at Larch Creek
Angelo’s Hearth (romance)
Where Dreams are Born
Where Dreams Reside
Maria’s Christmas Table
Where Dreams Unfold
Where Dreams Are Written
Dieties Anonymous (fantasy)
Cookbook from Hell: Reheated
Saviors 101
Other SF/F Titles
Nara
Monk’s Maze
Fire at Gray Wolf Lookout (Firehawks Book 8) Page 5
