Cotton Grass Lodge (3 page)

Joyful anticipation warmed her. This year she’d get her floatplane rating. She grinned. In the perfect world, she’d have worked enough overtime to buy her own plane, too. She’d been saving every penny forever, and her savings account looked great. Then she could start setting her own rates. Excitement and fortitude boiled up in her chest. Now this Duncan character actually owned Cotton Grass, she’d better start being nice to him. It could be a lucrative partnership.
My God, I hope he isn’t a complete idiot. I wonder how long he’ll last?

Hanna moved with methodical concentration tying down Charlie’s plane. A slight movement out of the corner of her eye clamped fear around her lungs.

Bear
shrieked through her mind, and she twisted to face the movement at the back of the plane; at the same time her hand slipped inside her jacket to find the grip of her gun. It was with relief and irritation she saw the man everyone around the lake called
the Shaman.

“Aw, cripes, you scared the shit out of me.” Hanna jerked her hand away from the pistol grip and stomped her foot.

The Shaman seldom said anything. The slightest proximity to him prickled the hair on the back of Hanna’s neck, but this time felt different. She blamed the fear twittering across her shoulders and down her arms to her first thought, an early spring bear.

He continued staring at her from dark eyes. The thing she found most unnerving about him. She was used to eccentric people, but she couldn’t read his eyes. His ragged, cast-off clothing hung at odd angles from his small skeletal frame. The dog at his feet, a Husky mix, concentrated with adoration on the man, waiting only to fulfill his next desire.

The Shaman walked toward her, rooting her to the spot where she stood. She’d seen this happen to other people before, at gatherings around the lake, a house-raising or party. The Shaman’s chosen individual would laugh later and say it hadn’t happened, or it didn’t mean anything. Now, it was Hanna’s turn, and she refused to accept any suggestion she couldn’t turn away. But she didn’t. The stench of unwashed man preceded his approach.

“He’s the one,” the Shaman said and nodded. He turned his guileless face up into the leaden sky and watched an occasional flake fall straight from the heavens toward the lake.

Panic shortened her breath.
No. No. No, you’re a crazy old fool.
Logically she could ignore what he said, logic said she didn’t have to pay for prophesy she didn’t believe in and didn’t ask for regardless of the currency. Hanna clamped her lips into a line of disapproval. If she snubbed him, perhaps he would go away and not ask for payment, but he didn’t go away.

“Peaches,” the Shaman said.

The dogs circled the Shaman happily when he turned away to walk down the shore of the lake. Nameless trotted along for a few feet in pleasant camaraderie with the Shaman and his dog then stopped. He watched for a moment longer and trotted back up the trail toward the lodge.

Hanna watched as well, annoyed. He’d intruded on her safe place just like Duncan had. What kind of prediction was that anyhow?

She finished loading her groceries onto the four-wheeler and used a bungee cord to secure the gas can to the back of the machine. Then she rode the other direction along the shore toward her cabin, her pleasure at being home diluted by changes at the lodge and another unsettling encounter with the Shaman.

Chapter 3

Duncan followed Nell’s instructions for the rest of the afternoon. He hauled wood from the shed into a box on the back porch of the lodge. She directed him to a shed designated for garbage. Three freezers shared the space, one seemed operative, and the other two were empty with the lids held open by sticks. “We’re gonna replace one of those,” Nell said. “It don’t work.”

“Which one?” Duncan asked. He didn’t like the idea of garbage in the same place as the freezers.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

With each new chore, he was all the more astounded at how much needed to be done in addition to the work of simply keeping the place running. “There’s a lot to do around here,” he said.

“I usually hire summer help,” Nell said.

“Is Hanna one of your employees?” Duncan hated to admit how the feisty woman might change his attitude toward the lodge.

“Naw, she’s just a pilot.”

“Just a pilot?” Duncan chuckled. “I only know two or three.”

“Well, they’re a dime a dozen up here.”

Drawing on all his experience in hotel management didn’t keep Duncan from being intimidated. He could see how a whole crew could be busy for the summer. Duncan chewed the inside of his cheek. He was a manager. Where would he get a crew of workmen out here in the middle of Bum-Fuck-Alaska? There was no one except the people at the end of the lake. When they’d met the plane for freight, they didn’t look much like punch-a-time-clock people. In addition, how the hell did anyone get here to spend the night much less work for the summer? Duncan let exasperation overwhelm him for a moment.

The special expectation of having no one to answer to was being tempered now by the reality of Cotton Grass Lodge. Anxiety and apprehension replaced yesterday’s eager anticipation.

As they left the freezer-shed, his wet shoes slipped out from under him in a patch of ice, he flailed his arms, and his bad leg twisted awkwardly.

“Ya gotta watch where ya put your feet,” Nell said, never slowing. Duncan caught his breath and clamped his teeth together.

Nell led him to a boardwalk leading toward the back porch of the lodge. From there she pushed into another poorly lighted shed. The hinges on this door were loose, but they were both attached. “This is the sauna. Light a fire in the stove.” Duncan began to set several split rounds of birch into the big barrel stove.

“No, no. You’ll never get it started.” While Nell told him all the things he had done incorrectly, she took the wood out and put it back into the stove according to her particular technique. She struck a match and held it to a flake of birch bark. The fire caught, smoked, and quickly came to life. “You’ll be glad of this in a little while.”

Duncan doubted her. He wanted a shower, hot, fast, and finished as rapidly as possible.

The last multi-million dollar hotel Duncan opened for Regent Corporation had taken eighteen months. Regent had always been very happy with his achievements. No one there had ever harassed him because he couldn’t start a fire in a rusty barrel stove.

“Pay attention.” Nell closed the door to the sauna and backtracked to another shed. Her voice grated against his daydream. “This is the generator shed. The heart of the lodge you might say.” She shouldered the one-hinged door open, raised her voice over the noise of the generator, and pointed into the shadows at gauges he would have to check every day. One forty watt bulb hung from the middle of the foul smelling room. He stumbled around empty buckets and stepped over a screw driver and two crescent wrenches. He vowed to make the generator shed his first priority.

“Got to be careful.” Nell’s lecture voice never changed from her usual conversation voice. “Up here at the lake, there’s nobody but you and a neighbor that lives fifteen minutes away to put out a fire.” Nell hefted a five-gallon bucket of oil. As she poured she seemed unaware of it overflowing the edge of the funnel to puddle on the plywood floor by her feet.

Nell dropped the bucket back to the floor and twisted the cap back on the long neck of the reservoir she’d poured oil into. She wiped her fingers on the forearm of her jacket. “The generator system is attached to the battery system, which regulates the inverters and converters and water systems. There’s a gravity system for some of the water and a 12-volt for when we don’t have the generators running.”

Duncan needed a long soak in a hot spa tub and a glass of fine, aged, amber bourbon.

“Your eyes just glazed over.” Nell twisted slowly and kneaded her back.

Duncan scraped his fingers through his hair and ended with a hard squeeze to the back of his neck. “No, really, I drifted for a minute, but I want to know this.”

“You have to know it all if you’re gonna take it over. But I know how you feel. Let’s take a break.” She directed him toward the back door of the lodge, and he favored his leg as he followed her up the steps.

The mud room had shelves from floor to ceiling loaded and over-flowing with the flotsam of Cotton Grass Lodge. A cordless drill with no battery, a partial roll of clear, half-inch tubing, a box with canning jars tossed haphazardly in it waiting for any opportunity to crash to the floor. Stacks and stacks of newspapers and magazines and several boxes of paperback books. Two smudged windows, bisected by shelves, let shadowed light into the room. The closet door was held open by shoes tumbling from a pile, spilling from its black recesses.

“Reach back in there on the floor and get a pair of outhouse slippers,” Nell said. “You’ll find something to fit.” Nell kicked off her lace-less boots, and the mud from them joined the litter on the rest of the floor. Her slip-on shoes had been left in the middle of the door into the kitchen.

Duncan found a pair of sheepskin lined slippers rather less disgusting than several others he pulled out of the pile. His grateful feet didn’t mind, they were warm and dry.

“Now you’ll know why I made you set a fire in the sauna. Go spend half an hour out there while I get finished with supper.” Nell pointed to the back door.

“But, it’s too early,” Duncan protested. His watch contradicted the light of the afternoon. “Is it really seven?” From the porch he looked at the sky to confirm, a band of brilliant sunshine slit the gray overcast at the horizon.

“Go.” Nell jammed her finger again toward the door.

Frustrated, Duncan went back outside and used the boardwalk past the outhouse to the sauna. He went into the warm eight-by-eight changing room. He hung his clothes on one of a dozen nails hammered into the rough-cut spruce wall. The towel he pulled from a stack on a high shelf was rough but smelled line-dried and fresh.

He opened the door to the dark, hot room of the sauna itself, fumbled with the string attached to another forty-watt light bulb. Little of the heat and humidity escaped the room. Duncan could hardly breathe when he closed the door.

“God, this is such a waste of time.” Duncan sat cautiously on the hot wooden bench. Nothing to read, no radio, quiet. Dense wood-heat from the barrel stove seeped deeper and deeper into his bones.

Sweat beaded, collected in the cracks of his body and ran in tickling rivulets toward the slatted floor. His muscles twitched at the unaccustomed relaxation. He was surprised when his shoulders sagged. He hadn’t realized he held them so tight.

What a confounding day. Duncan’s attempt to put it into perspective failed.

His mind wandered first to the termination meetings with Regent. He’d trained and managed and organized for them, regularly working twelve and sixteen hour days for years.

His new assistant project manager was accomplished and he might add, gorgeous. The newest San Francisco hotel would soon be at the point in construction for him to take control in just a few weeks. The best project he’d ever taken on and he’d quit.

The agony of John’s funeral soured his stomach again. He didn’t understand why except that John’s suicide shook him to his core.

No one except Carl could know how important the next six months would be. Should he have listened to Carl and given up everything he’d worked for? He began compiling an exaggerated list of Carl’s lies and shortcomings regarding Cotton Grass Lodge.

Heat-induced lethargy came to an end when his head bobbed and he woke up, embarrassed. He used a squeeze bottle of harsh peppermint soap and dipper after dipper full of hot water from a bucket next to the stove to wash and rinse. As he dressed, his watch informed him the sauna had only taken forty-five minutes. Two hours seemed to have disappeared.

Duncan came back into the lodge just as Nell was putting a garage-sale jumble of dishes on the table. None of them matched, but they did appear to be clean.

He’d noticed Hanna taking the garbage out earlier. Fortunately, the compost smell of the kitchen was gone too.

Nell had changed her shirt, and a bright blue-checked tablecloth covered one end of the table. “Feel better?” she asked when he came into the kitchen.

“I’ve never felt this clean or this relaxed in my life.” He wasn’t prone to exaggeration, but his wobble-jointed knees and elbows were only held together by taut, warm skin.

“Good, I told you you’d be glad you started a fire. Now, sit.” Charm may not have been her strong suit, but she had obviously planned for his visit. She brought in a salmon roast from the bar-b-cue on the back porch. There were home-canned vegetables from her garden, and she proudly served a mixed Alaskan berry cobbler.

Duncan ate more than he planned and enjoyed every bite. When he helped Nell clear the table and offered to wash the dishes she laughed. “No. You’re gonna get your fill of kitchen duty before the end of the summer. You go check the stove in the front room.”

She waved him away from the kitchen, and he went into the untidy lodge room.

On the far wall on either side of the dusty stone hearth were several trophy mounts of moose and caribou. Cobwebs swaged each set of antlers. A cozy collection of hard-worn leather club chairs complemented a long couch draped in Hudson’s Bay blankets.

Stairs followed the wall to his left and opened onto a landing running the entire width of the building. A dusty black bear rug replete with bared teeth hung along the stair wall. Under the stairs were bookshelves, with books, native baskets and carved bone and jade native art.

The alcove included a built-in office desk, the only reflection he’d seen of business operations. Ledger books with the year hand written on the spine of each one were lined up above the desk. He pulled the one for the year previous and flipped it open. Immediately he found addition errors and wondered how an accounting firm could possibly have done taxes every year.