"It's part of your code,” he added, laughing.
He handed Anne the keys, pressing them into her hand. “Good luck."
* * * *
II
One week later, Anne paused on her morning run to admire the beauty of her valley. To the north, beyond Jackson, the snow-covered and jagged Grand Tetons stood out against a deep blue, cloudless sky. To the east and nearer to hand were the foothills of the Wyoming Range, already clear of snow and very green. They'd be covered in wildflowers in a week or two if the weather would only hold. Anne resumed her run, climbing high enough into those hills to gain a panoramic view of the spur valley in which Osprey House stood.
That morning there was a low fog in the valley, so low that the taller trees and rooftops pierced it. Anne heard the cattle calling to one another on a nearby ranch and felt a delicious guilt. Those cows were someone else's responsibility, not hers. Then a pair of trumpeter swans flew past her just above the fog bank, honking to each other as they went, as though arguing about directions.
"The Zollmans,” she thought, “reincarnated."
The swans’ noisy flight took them directly over Millikan House.
"That'll wake you up, Mr. Gitry."
She'd yet to glimpse her fellow caretaker, though she'd spent most of her first week in the valley watching for him. There'd been little else for her to do. No snow had fallen, so she couldn't plow, and the grass wasn't growing yet, so she couldn't mow. She'd started the tractor and the ATV and changed the oil in each. She'd set out family photos and well-worn novels around the little ranch house, giving it something the log mansion lacked. And she'd watched for Gitry.
His failure to appear was intriguing to her, more intriguing even than Wayne Sedam's description of Gitry: a man of mystery. Her practical side told her to be patient, as it often did. Gitry was simply holed up like she was, waiting for the seasons to sort themselves out.
She lost what little warmth the recently risen sun was providing when she descended again into the valley proper. The fog that was holding off that sun reflected and amplified the very regular sound of her footfalls and the complaints of the magpies she disturbed as she followed an overgrown fence row.
It also shrouded Millikan House. Its doctor builders had flaunted their wealth with an overabundance of gables and dormers and chimneys. Seeing it now, almost in silhouette, Anne was reminded of an English manor from one of her favorite books. At least, she was reminded of her mental picture of such a place.
She was about to turn for the last sprint to breakfast when she saw a figure come around one corner of Millikan House. The form was no more distinct than the building, but Anne could tell it was a man of medium height and slight build who was walking with a limp. The elusive Mr. Gitry.
Without breaking stride, Anne raised an arm in greeting. The other turned abruptly and hobbled away.
* * * *
III
The next morning, Anne sat in a small, storefront coffee shop, the Elk Horn Cafe, a block from Jackson's town square. Across from her was the woman Anne considered her real boss, Mattie Koval, owner and head river guide of Snake River Explorers.
"We're starting to get some serious snow melt,” Koval said. “From now until the Fourth of July, the Snake will be running so fast we'll be doing our four-hour float trip in two and a half. If you were on the river right now, you'd hear the rocks on the bottom clacking together like billiard balls. It's the worst time to train you or the best time, depending on how game you are."
"Bring it on,” Anne said.
She'd been trying to guess Koval's age, without success. The weathered skin of the guide's face and neck suggested that she was in her forties. But the long blonde hair, secured in a loose ponytail, and toned body belonged to a much younger woman. Working the long sweeps of a raft loaded down with tourists kept you in shape, Anne decided.
Koval noticed Anne examining her arm. She held it up and flexed the biceps.
"Not much now, after a winter of flipping through catalogs, but nobody wants to arm wrestle me come Labor Day. You won't have any trouble handling a raft, either, not a big girl like you."
Anne unconsciously stooped in her chair, and Koval laughed. “Never be ashamed of being tall,” she said. “You can't be too tall or too rich."
"You can so be too rich,” the waitress busing the table behind Koval said.
"How's that Rachel?” Koval asked. As she did, she winked at Anne, as though to say, “Watch this."
The woman threw her rag down on the table she'd been cleaning and crossed to them. She was olive skinned and as solid as Koval was spare. Anne was sure she wouldn't want to arm wrestle the waitress before or after Labor Day.
"I said you can so be too rich,” Rachel repeated. “It isn't the rich who are ruining this valley. It's the too-damned rich. The people so rich they don't need to rent their houses out when they're not in them. It's bad enough to lose the ranch land, but if we don't pick up tourists in exchange, we're sunk. We need rental properties turning over every week or two, new people buying groceries and T-shirts, eating out, booking raft trips. We don't need big places sitting empty, giving work to one layabout caretaker apiece. Present company excepted,” she added to Anne.
Before Anne could ask how Rachel knew about her other job, Koval said, “I mentioned that you were looking after a house."
"Osprey House,” Anne volunteered.
"Oh,” Rachel said. “So you're out there in the boonies with Chaz Gitry."
She and Koval exchanged significant looks.
"Chaz is our local lothario,” Koval explained. “Snowboard instructor in the winter, mountain guide in the summer, hound dog all year long."
"I've heard he's mysterious,” Anne said.
"Heard that from a man, I'll bet,” Koval said. “There isn't a man around here who can understand Chaz's success with the ladies. Shaggy and homely he may be, but the boy's got something."
"She's talking about the ex-wife,” Rachel said to Koval. “She's what's so mysterious.” Her attitude had softened somewhat at the mention of Gitry. Now it hardened all over again. “She sneaks in to see him about once a month. Chaz got plenty cagey after that started happening."
"It's a good story, though,” Koval said. “Kind of romantic."
Again, Anne leaned unconsciously, this time forward in her seat.
"Nobody even knew Chaz had been married until she started showing up six months back,” Koval said, “wearing dark glasses and a scarf over her hair. She lives in Idaho somewhere. Idaho Falls, maybe, right across the state line. Drives in through the pass at Victor. Wimp Dragoo saw her up there once buying gas."
"Can't get away with anything around here,” Rachel said, her look so pointed that Anne felt she was being warned.
To cover an incipient blush, Anne said, “There's an airport in Idaho Falls. Maybe she flies in from somewhere."
Rachel waved a dismissive hand. “There's a better airport right here in Jackson."
Koval said, “After she'd snuck in three months in a row, Chaz admitted the truth. Seems years back he married his childhood sweetheart, Laura. They were happy for a few years skiing and bumming around. Then Laura decided she wanted more. Chaz wouldn't change, so they parted ways. Laura must have found the success she was after. The one time I saw her, she was all in fur."
"But she couldn't get Chaz out of her system,” Rachel cut in. “So she keeps coming back."
"He must not have gotten over her, either,” Koval countered. “He hasn't been the same old Chaz since she started visiting. No more chasing around after every loose ski bunny. Comes into town less and less."
"Hasn't come at all in the last two weeks,” Rachel said, as though it was a personal affront.
"He's become a recluse,” Anne said, quoting Wayne Sedam again.
The waitress nodded. “I heard that last week he quit his mountain guide job. Left Bill Granger flat just when the season's about to start. Sent him an e-mail about hurting his leg."
"He was limping when I saw him this morning,” Anne said.
"He'd better heal fast, then,” Koval said. “Laura is overdue for a visit. There's been snow up in the passes until this week."
"Here's hoping for an avalanche,” Rachel said and stomped away.
* * * *
IV
That night, Anne settled in with a book in the living room of the little ranch. The book was a dog-eared romance novel, Love's Forbidden Memory. She'd selected it from her cache of similar titles because its plot—lovers separated by fortune and class but unable to forget one another—was similar to the tale she'd been told about Chaz Gitry and his Laura.
All the books Anne had brought with her were a legacy from her mother, who had died when Anne was very young. When Anne had turned sixteen, her father, the honest, practical man who'd raised her, had given her a box of her mother's things. In the bottom of the box, Anne had found a dozen yellowed paperbacks, all romance novels. She'd come to think of the books as a message in a bottle from her dead mother, a glimpse into an alien world of excitement and feeling totally unlike the workaday ranch where she'd grown up.
Anne dozed over the novel's familiar pages and awoke to the sound of an alarm coming from one corner of the small front room. The source was the computer that monitored the security cameras and systems in Osprey House. Anne had used it to spy on the cleaning crew as they'd watched a soap opera in the log home's great room. Now the computer's screen was alternately flashing red and yellow.
Anne clicked on the single message being displayed: heating alert. A second message came up, informing her that the temperature in the main house had dropped to fifty-seven degrees. It should have been seventy-two. Anne knew that because Wayne Sedam had mentioned the setting as yet another example of the Zollmans’ disregard for money.
As Anne struggled to shake off the last of her sleep, the displayed temperature dropped to fifty-six. She checked the outside temperature. Thirty-one.
Without bothering to get her coat off its peg, she grabbed the keys to Osprey House and followed the asphalt path to the back door. She'd entered the house and begun to switch on lights before it occurred to her that the temperature drop might have been caused by a burglar who'd defeated the security system and left a window or door open. She'd also forgotten to put down the book she'd been reading. She placed it on the ornate hallway table, whose carved legs were rearing dragons.
The inside of the furnace room was the warmest place in the house. One of the two duplicate systems was humming away, the one that provided hot water to the showers and the taps. The other made only the odd ticking noise, like a cooling car engine. Anne could see no leaking water and smell no escaping gas. She turned to the system's control panel, feeling like a character in a movie who has to select the right button from dozens to prevent a meltdown or an explosion. A single instruction blinked at her from the panel's LCD screen: stand by. Anne weighed the advice, decided it was worth following, and retreated to the kitchen.
Once there, she debated with herself over whether to call Sedam, hesitating because of the hour, one o'clock, and because she hated to ruin her record of independence. As she debated, she happened to look out the window. A light was burning in the upper story of Millikan House, over the garage, she thought. Chaz Gitry's room, she was willing to bet.
She went back to the ranch house long enough to grab her down jacket and the keys to the ATV. She could have walked the distance easily, but she'd remembered Gitry's hurt leg. And the four-wheeler's barely muffled engine would announce her better than any doorbell.
Nevertheless, she rang the doorbell when she arrived at Millikan House. The porch light snapped on immediately, and Anne stepped back so Gitry could look her over though the front door's peephole. When the door opened a crack, Anne was surprised to see that the room beyond it was dark.
"What do you want?” a man's voice asked.
"Mr. Gitry, I'm the new caretaker at—"
"I've seen you.” The curt response was a restatement of the original question.
"Something's gone wrong with the heat over there,” Anne said. “I'm afraid the pipes might freeze."
"Not that cold tonight,” the other said. “You should make it through to morning. Call the manager then."
"He said I should ask you if I needed help. Said it was part of the caretaker's code."
She'd hoped for a laugh from Gitry but got a grunt instead. And an excuse: “I hurt my leg."
"I know. I'll drive you over and bring you back."
This time Gitry sighed. “Wait a minute."
* * * *
V
Anne was seated on the idling ATV when he came out, pulling on a coat that seemed too big for him. Koval had called him a boy, and Anne wondered now whether a boyish quality was part of Gitry's mysterious appeal.
He climbed on behind Anne, grasping her shoulder with one hand. “Okay."
At the house, Gitry headed for the mechanical room without waiting to be shown the way.
Anne said, “You know the place."
She got her first good look at him then, in the light of the front hall. As Koval had said, he was shaggy, his ginger hair unkempt and his razor stubble approaching a beard. But the river guide had also called Gitry homely, and Anne considered that a slight if not a slur. She thought Gitry's narrow face and sharp features would have been handsome but for his eyes. They were so dark-rimmed they almost looked bruised. And they were haunted. By thoughts of the lost Laura, Anne told herself. The unworthy Laura, who had turned her back on love.
"I should know my way around,” Gitry was saying. “Your predecessor could never figure out the boilers, either. What happened to him?"
"Joined a band,” Anne said.
Gitry grunted again. “I noticed the guitar playing had stopped. Thought the coyotes had complained."
Once inside the mechanical room, he glanced briefly at the control panel of the dormant unit and then began pressing buttons. “Happen to know the date?” he asked over his shoulder.
"It's the last day of May."
"Before midnight it was. Now it's the first day of June. That's why the thing went to standby mode. The genius who set it back in January told it to expect new instructions in June. Guess he didn't know anything about the weather up here. Thought it'd be balmy by now. Serves them right for putting in a system that has more brains than it needs to do a simple job."
By then, the furnace was humming. Gitry showed Anne what he had done, had her repeat the instructions, and led her back into the hallway. There he noticed the paperback she'd left on the Chinese table.
"Love's Forbidden Memory," he read. “All memories of that poison should be forbidden. Yours?"
Anne plucked the book from his hand.
Gitry considered her curiously. “This mausoleum have a coffeepot?"
"There's one in my place,” Anne said. Before Gitry could jump to the wrong conclusion, she added, “We shouldn't use the Zollmans’ stuff."
"Why not? They won't be using it again. And I'm pretty sure that caretaker's code of yours has a clause about grabbing whatever you can. Kitchen this way?"
He went off without waiting for an answer, limping more than ever. Following along, Anne asked, “How did you hurt your leg? Snow-boarding?"
"Chopping wood. Hell of a thing for a caretaker to admit."
"Your mind must have been somewhere else,” Anne almost said, biting it off at the last second. Instead she asked how he knew the Zollmans. “I heard they were only here once."
Gitry had located the coffeemaker. He concentrated for a moment on filling the pot at the island sink. Then he said, “She was only here once. He came out regularly while this place was being built. It was his baby. Presented it to the missus like a proud cat presenting a dead mouse. Went over like a dead mouse too. There's a moral there somewhere."
"Let your wife pick the house?” Anne asked.
"More like, if you've got to make payments on a wife, make damn sur
e your checks don't bounce."
He wasn't really speaking of the Zollmans now, Anne decided. He was speaking of Laura, the woman who had tired of Gitry's hand-to-mouth life.
Anne realized with a start that the caretaker was addressing her. “You awake? I asked where the coffee was. Never mind. I found it."
While it brewed, Gitry limped to the windows that faced the lights he'd left burning. He stared out for a long time without speaking.
Forget her, Anne thought, She's no good. Aloud, she said, “She won't come tonight. It's too late."
Gitry turned on her, his bruised eyes flashing. Then his gaze widened to take in the dark timbers around them, the steaming coffeemaker, the neon-bordered clock that glowed above the sinks.
"It is late,” he said. “Sorry. I haven't talked to anyone in a while. Didn't realize you could miss it so much. I'll drive myself back. You can pick up the ATV in the morning when you finish your run."
* * * *
VI
Anne spent the next morning replacing a fence post on one corner of the Zollman property. It was the corner closest to Millikan House, but that was only a coincidence, as Anne told herself repeatedly. The fence post was certainly rotten or at least showing a tendency that way. The project took hours of what turned out to be her first warm day in Jackson, but Gitry never appeared.
She regretted the soreness in her shoulders later when she reported to the headquarters of Snake River Explorers for a training session. Leaving her cats to mind the ramshackle building, Mattie Koval loaded her entire staff—two experienced guides, two trainee guides, and a grizzled driver—into one of her two white vans and headed north out of Jackson on 191.
The route took them past the National Elk Refuge, a huge expanse of bottom land drained by the Snake's tributaries, where, according to Koval's running commentary, thousands of elk gathered to shelter and feed in the winter. On the other side of the highway was the Jackson airport. Anne watched an airliner on final approach, its wings rocking in the winds off the Tetons, and thought of Rachel, the stout waitress. The connection escaped Anne for a moment. Then she remembered Rachel's curt dismissal of the idea that Gitry's Laura might be flying in from distant parts because she would never have chosen Idaho Falls's airport over Jackson's. Something about that reasoning had bothered Anne at the time and bothered her again now.
AHMM, December 2009 Page 11
