Smith's Monthly #12

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  From the pictures he had seen, some log buildings could still be seen down through the crystal clear lake water, and the logs from the broken buildings had jammed the area where the stream had finally gone over the mudslide.

  Brice had talked to a lot of people who had seen the place and all of them were awed by it. He had also heard rumors that on clear nights you could still hear the pianos playing from the old saloons. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he knew enough history of the place to almost believe that.

  Finally, today he was going down to see that town. Except for not looking forward to the drive down the narrow road across the cliff face to get down into the valley, the adventure ahead had him excited. Since he had always heard about this place, but it was so remote, he had just never made the time to come here.

  And his parents could never afford a room in this lodge. They could barely afford the time off to pitch tents on the shoreline of McCall Lake for a week.

  And during all his years of college, he had no chance, time or money to get up here. But now, his bosses, Bonnie and Duster Kendal had wanted him to see this lodge and the lost town under the lake. He sure hadn’t turned them down when they offered. He had no idea how they got rooms here in the peak of the tourist season, but somehow they had managed.

  Bonnie and Duster were two of the greatest mathematicians working today. Both had graduated, as he had, with doctors’ degrees in higher theoretical mathematics. He had come out of Harvard, they both had gone through Stanford.

  But they didn’t teach and do research as he had been headed to do until they had hired him. They worked theory, on their own dime, writing papers and letting their discoveries out for all to have and work from.

  And some of their work was so far out on the edges of modern mathematical theory, even he had a hard time grasping it. Which kept him very challenged.

  And he loved a mathematical challenge. Far more, he was sure, than he would have loved teaching.

  Not only were Bonnie and Duster two of the great mathematical minds on the planet, they were two of the nicest and most beautiful people Brice had ever met. Bonnie looked to be about thirty and was tall, with long brown hair she always kept pulled back. When she walked into a room, heads turned.

  Duster was tall, even taller than Brice’s six-foot. Duster had short brown hair and piercing dark eyes. He seemed to always be wearing expensive long-sleeve shirts tucked into Levis and cowboy boots. He also often wore a long oilcloth duster and cowboy hat that made him look like he had stepped out of a western pulp novel.

  Once in a while Bonnie even called him Marshal. Brice had never asked why.

  Bonnie and Duster both seemed far, far, far older than their early thirties age. Around them, Brice often felt like a child, even though he was only five years behind them.

  But they were fantastic bosses. And they liked to laugh more than anything, which he appreciated more than he wanted to admit.

  They had hired him, moved him back to his home town of Boise, given him more money than he could ever imagine making doing research for some university, set him up in a large office overlooking the Boise River, and said he had an unlimited budget to hire assistants when the job required it.

  Brice had no idea where they got their money and he didn’t ask, but they sure never worried about it. That seemed below them.

  After he had gotten set up in the office, they gave him the most challenging work he could have ever imagined. His job for the last year had been working in the theory and the mathematics of alternate timelines.

  He had finally been starting to grasp some of the concepts Bonnie and Duster were working at just in the last two months, and both of them seemed very happy with that.

  Now clearly, he was helping them move forward in their research and they seemed overjoyed. And they had no problem letting him take credit where and when he wanted to.

  He actually never cared for credit, so on that score he was like them.

  This was a dream job and he kept hoping it wouldn’t end soon.

  He sat back, sipped his Diet Coke, and stared out over the beautiful mountains he loved so much. After Bonnie and Duster finished their breakfast, the three of them would pile into Duster’s big Cadillac SUV and head down to see the lost town of Roosevelt, Idaho.

  Something Brice had wanted to do since he was a kid.

  So right now the excitement of the coming day was making him feel like a kid again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  July 7th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  WINIFRED DIXIE SMITH held on tight and stared out the window of the back seat of the big Cadillac SUV as Duster Kendal expertly worked it down the steep road along the cliff face and into the Monumental Valley.

  A thousand feet below her, she could see the tops of the tall pine trees and the start of Monumental Creek. One slight miss, or if something happened to the road, the fall would wipe out three of the great minds in mathematics in one tragic accident.

  Normally, she wasn’t afraid of heights at all. But with the edge of the road and the thousand foot drop seemingly only inches from her, she now wished she had sat on the passenger side of the back seat so all she could see would be the side of the cliff face and the wonderful view ahead of the steep-walled valley.

  Dixie never used her real first name and was often called a “pixie” by friends because she stood barely five-four. She had bright red long hair and large, round, brown eyes. To make the pixie resemblance even stronger, her skin was light, with a lot of freckles. She had slathered on more sunscreen today than she ever had before, and at this high altitude, she was going to be lucky to escape only with a slight burn.

  The pixie look had served her well in school, especially in some of her graduate level mathematics classes. It caused people to underestimate her and she often left someone who did that flatfooted. Now, this high in the air, for the first time she wished she was an actual pixie because if she remembered right, they had wings and could fly, just in case Duster missed a turn.

  She was fairly certain the big Cadillac SUV couldn’t fly.

  She had been excited about seeing the submerged town of Roosevelt, Idaho, since she had heard about it for the first time last year after moving from Phoenix to Boise. But she had also heard about how bad this road was going in.

  All of that had been accurate and not exaggerated in the slightest. There was no real good way to actually describe how remote this was and how truly frightening this road was.

  The road seemed to be no wider than the car and at times she swore Duster almost scraped dirt on the inside hill. The road was dirt and had some pretty nasty bumps in it that made Dixie very glad she was strapped down tight and holding on for dear life.

  Bonnie Kendal sat in the front passenger seat, not seeming to be concerned in the slightest about the road. And her husband, Duster, was an expert driver, clearly, and was only using one hand on the wheel to take the SUV down the cliff road. If Dixie had been driving, she would have inched along with both hands glued to the steering wheel and sweat rolling down her face.

  On second thought, there was no amount of money that could have made her drive this road period. A person had to know her limits and driving this road was one of those limits.

  “How was your stay last night in the lodge?” Bonnie asked, turning slightly to talk with Dixie as if they were just driving a freeway.

  Thank heavens the question hadn’t been a mathematical one, because Dixie had no doubt her brain would not have been able to deal with that while worrying about falling a thousand feet.

  “It was wonderful,” Dixie said. “Thank you again for showing me that fantastic place.”

  And it had been something out of a dream. The Monumental Summit Lodge had no comparison she had ever seen. The entire place was made out of logs and the ceilings in the main room towered overhead. The stone fireplace, even in the summer, had a fire going, and the furniture was straight out of the 1890s and stunning. When she had walked in the h
uge front door of the place, she had felt she had been transported back in time to 1890.

  Even the plates and cups in the dining room were period china.

  And considering the mathematical theory she had been working on with Bonnie and Duster over the last year, she found that almost funny. They had been working on the mathematics of time travel and alternate time lines. And they had been making progress.

  Bonnie and Duster had hired her right out of Princeton, after she finished her doctorate. She had been living in Phoenix with her parents until she landed a research and teaching job at a major university. But since Bonnie and Duster were known as two of the great minds of mathematics, and had offered her an obscene amount of money to go to Boise to work for them, she had accepted.

  And hadn’t regretted a moment of it so far.

  Of course, if this Cadillac slipped off this road and fell a thousand feet down the cliff, she was sure she would regret the decision for a few seconds.

  “You like the featherbed?” Bonnie asked, smiling.

  “I got lost in it and the wonderful quilt,” Dixie said, smiling. “Never slept so well in my life. That lodge is amazing. Who built it?”

  Bonnie smiled. “Now that’s a long story that we’ll tell you over lunch.”

  Duster just laughed.

  Dixie had no idea what was so funny about the construction of the lodge, but clearly they both were close to it since they had been able to get two rooms in the lodge at the height of the tourist season up here.

  Bonnie turned back around to watch ahead and Dixie forced herself to look out at the mountains and the fantastic view and not look down.

  Fifteen minutes later Duster bounced the big Cadillac over a bridge and across the valley floor. And for the first time in thirty minutes, Dixie actually allowed herself to take a full breath.

  She had never been one for carnival rides and being scared. She was more a hiking and camping girl. And about as high as she ever wanted to be was on the back of a good horse.

  “Is there another road out of here?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Duster said. “Nothing but hiking trails out of here. This is primitive area. The only reason this road is here at all is because of a patented mining claim that allowed the road to be grandfathered in when they changed this to a primitive area.”

  “It’s not as bad going back up,” Bonnie said, not turning around. “Besides, we have dinner and room reservations back in the lodge tonight and we can’t miss that.”

  Dixie only nodded to herself and put the drive back up that cliff out of her mind. She would enjoy this beautiful valley on this fantastic summer day and take the road when it came.

  CHAPTER THREE

  July 7th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE REALLY ENJOYED the ride along the smooth dirt road on the valley floor. Even though the valley was very narrow in places between the towering slopes of trees and rocks, it still seemed a magical place as the big Cadillac wound through the tall pine trees.

  At one point, Duster had taken the Cadillac around a corner and straight ahead was a ruin of a huge mill tucked against one side of the valley. It was nothing more now than a massive pile of tan and weathered boards, twisted and fallen. Brice was shocked at how large it had been as the road passed the ruins within ten feet.

  “That mill never got started,” Duster said. “They built the building, but the actual stamp mill never got brought in before the mine ran dry, so they chopped all that wood and never used any of it.

  Duster pointed to long piles of logs cut about four feet long and neatly stacked about head high winding through the trees in all directions. The top layers were nothing more than decayed wood, and some of the piles had huge trees growing out of the middle of them.

  Brice had to admit that the piles of cut wood, now tanned and deteriorating with age, looked very, very creepy.

  “So all these trees have come up since?” Brice asked. “This valley had no trees from the looks of how much lumber was cut.”

  “Darned few,” Duster said. “Over a hundred years of growth will make for some tall trees, even in these harsh conditions. No one needed to cut any of them down after the town went under and the mines played out.”

  Brice nodded and just sat back and watched the scenery. They passed the remains of a few more old log cabins and he could see more ruins tucked against the far side of the valley.

  Then suddenly the valley opened up to about two football fields wide and Duster pulled the Cadillac off into a parking area with four other SUVs, all empty. Clearly the occupants were exploring the area somewhere.

  The road went directly across the valley, over a low bridge, and then up a side valley.

  “The lake and remains of the town are down the valley about a mile’s hike from here,” Duster said. “No road in there.”

  He stopped the car in the shade and turned it off and all three of them got out into the warm morning air.

  Again the smell of hot pine trees hit Brice. The only sound was water running over rocks in the stream. Otherwise the valley was in complete silence.

  The ridges towered over them. He couldn’t imagine being trapped in this valley for an entire winter.

  “How many people lived in this valley when the town of Roosevelt was in its prime?” Brice asked.

  “At one point,” Bonnie said, “over ten thousand people were living and working in this valley. Less than a few hundred ever stayed over for the winters, though.”

  Brice couldn’t imagine ten thousand people in this small, steep-walled valley. It must have been damned noisy at times.

  Bonnie and Duster both took out lawn chairs from the back of the SUV and a small table and started to set them up in the shade.

  “You’re not going to the lake?” Brice asked as he watched them.

  “We’ve seen it,” Duster said, his voice kind of low, which Brice had come to know after a year meant that Duster was upset about something.

  Bonnie took Brice by the arm and walked him toward the trail leading along the left side of the canyon, handing him a cold bottle of water as they walked.

  “Take a look at the town,” she said, “go across the logjam and on down the trail about a quarter mile to the cemetery. Then come back and we’ll have lunch. We have some things to talk about.”

  Brice looked into the intense eyes of Bonnie and then nodded. “How long?”

  “If you take your time and enjoy it, about two hours. We’re fine here. Don’t rush.”

  He nodded.

  With that Bonnie turned back to Duster.

  Brice watched her for a few steps. His two bosses were sometimes very strange people. But he liked and trusted them and he wouldn’t trade his job for anything.

  He turned and headed down the wide trail toward the lake that had buried a town over a hundred years before. The excitement of finally seeing it had his stomach twisting.

  This valley was the real past, not the theoretical mathematical past. And sometimes he just needed to get away from the numbers and see the actual reality.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  July 7th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  DIXIE KNELT BESIDE the metal plaque attached to a stone near the old Roosevelt Cemetery. The tall trees around her kept the area completely in shade, and below her about fifty paces, Monumental Creek tumbled over rocks, the only sound in the valley.

  Bonnie stood about twenty paces back up the trail toward the lake. Duster hadn’t wanted to come with them, saying he had seen it before. Bonnie didn’t want Dixie going alone, so she had walked with her.

  And Bonnie’s answers to Dixie’s questions about the valley and the old town were stunning in the detail. Dixie could tell that this valley was really something special, and when she stood on the side of that crystal blue lake and looked down through the water at the remains of a few buildings still there, she felt a great sense of loss.

  She wasn’t sure why.

  “How many people die
d in the landslide and flood?” Dixie had asked after looking down into the water for a time.

  “None,” Bonnie said. “Numbers of people died in this valley before the town went under the water, but it took five or six days to back the water up over the town and the valley clear back up to where we are parked.”

  “That far?” Dixie had asked, stunned.

  Bonnie had nodded. “Monumental Creek is bringing down sand and mud and slowly filling the lake. In another hundred years this will be nothing more than a meadow.”

  Then Bonnie had led her across the logjam of the remains of old homes that blocked the stream at one end and up a wide trail about a quarter mile to the cemetery.

  The metal plaque said simply,

  In Memory of the Thunder Mountain Dead

  of Whom Thirteen are Known

  to Rest in this Cemetery.

  There were ten names there and three unknowns. The plaque had been put there in 1949 and clearly someone still maintained the small cemetery since a large rope showed the outline of the cemetery and a few graves had headstones still. Most graves were just depressions in the dirt.

  One name was a Smith, with W.D. initials. She would have to do some research on that person when she got back to see if it was a distant relative of hers. That would be interesting to find out. She did have some Smith relatives in the Idaho area in the past. Her mom down in Phoenix kept that kind of information. It would be fun to find out.

  Dixie stood and again she felt the immense sadness of the area sort of settle over her like a blanket. She was never a sad person. She always figured life was too exciting to be sad and too much fun. So this felt very strange to her.

  She want back down the trail to Bonnie who was watching her.

  “Ready to head back for some lunch?”

  Dixie only nodded and then with one more look back at the small, roped cemetery and metal plaque on the stone, she turned and followed Bonnie up the trail.