Door County, Before You Die

by Mary Bowers

  “Yeah, we’re not gonna do that.”

  He finally noticed my eyes glazing over and shook himself. “Still, I’m not going to pester Arnie about his own particular troll legend. I just like the atmosphere of Trollhaven, and I was due a quiet vacation. I’m not going to be doing any serious research while I’m here. Just enjoying autumn in Door County. Nothing much on my mind. Just having a rest.”

  I had been nodding as he counted over his points, and I began to think he was going to go on forever, analyzing why he was here. Also, the “having a rest” part bothered me for some reason. He seemed awfully nervous, and “having a rest” was something you said about people who had just had nervous breakdowns. He was certainly wound up enough in his theories to have gone off the deep end at some point.

  So I wasn’t immediately taken with Logan, but Henry and Nettie seemed to have so much to discuss, all quiet and chummy, that I found myself talking to Logan almost exclusively. He seemed more and more nervous, unable to stop himself from babbling, and I began to wish I could get away from him.

  We had a couple of rounds of drinks and two appetizers, but nobody seemed in a hurry to order dinner. I wasn’t either, really, but having to keep up my end of the conversation with Logan was making me a little desperate. It must have shown, because at one point he looked me in the eyes, pulled up a surprisingly charming smile and said, “Boy, I’m talking way too much, aren’t I? What I really want to know is, what about you? I’m sorry. I always feel a little awkward when I meet somebody like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “You know – somebody fresh, somebody interesting.” He waved a hand around aimlessly and added, “Somebody I’d like to get to know better.”

  That could have been the point where I announced I needed to go find the ladies room and not come back, but somehow, it wasn’t. He was so sincere, so willing to please, so much like a shaggy old dog, and his eyes were so honest. It’s not that I decided to take pity on him. Pitying desperate guys is always a bad idea. Trust me, I know. But there was something there, I realized, something with heart. Henry had said Logan was interesting. I began to wonder if that might actually be true.

  Maybe it was the glass of wine followed by the two Manhattans on an empty stomach, but I began to realize that this guy wasn’t so bad, and maybe I’d been a little hasty in my judgment. Besides trying to keep track of my aunt, I’d let it show that I was bored with the information that you were more likely to find fairies in Ireland than Scandinavia (that came shortly after the stuff about Thor). I’d made a little crack about not being on the look-out for fairies much, and now I regretted it. I’m not a cruel woman.

  Still, I decided to make something perfectly clear. Shrugging negligently, I said, “It’s not like we’re on a date or anything. Why be nervous? We just happen to both be on vacation in a great place and we’re having a little quiet conversation.”

  He smiled, and I realized how tan he was. Comfortably weather-beaten.

  “Do you do a lot of your research out-of-doors?” I asked.

  “Well, I have to. And I like to be outdoors. I’m something of a long-distance hiker, which comes in useful when I’m moving around remote villages and hillside farmsteads. I like to just strap on a backpack and go.”

  “Well, there’s lots of places to hike around here,” I said, as if it were an inspiration. “Peninsula State Park is just over yonder there.”

  I realized that my syntax and gestures were getting a little messy, and I caught Nettie’s eye and told her we’d better order some food now.

  “I should think so,” she said primly, giving me that look.

  I gave her a challenging stare. “You’ve had just as much to drink as I have, duckie.”

  For some reason, that made everybody laugh very loudly. Especially me.

  I gave Logan another look-over and decided that his ashy-blue eyes were a very intriguing color, kind of like a stormy sky, and that I liked the way his light brown hair resisted being tamed. With every move, it got a little freer, and framed his face more attractively. Well – not attractively – maybe roguishly. Or something.

  “I definitely should eat,” I commented.

  “I think I should too,” Logan said. “You’re getting better-looking, too.”

  I didn’t think I had said anything out loud about his looks, but Nettie told me later that I had.

  He was letting his eyes rest on me in a friendly way, and I was conscious that he liked what he saw.

  Well, why not? My sleek, shoulder-length, chestnut hair always stays in place, but strands of my side bangs had crept across my right eye. I gave a head toss that cleared them away and let him get a load of the dark-chocolate eyes, with their fringe of lashes so thick and black I didn’t need mascara. Take that, available guy who happened to sit next to me that evening. My eyes were telling him that he was a lucky guy – talking way too much, in fact. That triumphant feeling always leads on to problems, and I still had enough sense left to get proactive about ordering some real food before I made a complete fool of myself.

  Sometime during the evening – I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we were all agreeable to it – Logan got invited along as our fourth at the fish boil. Something began to tickle at the back part of my brain, where the cells that try to control my love life exist, but I decided to ignore it. Logan wasn’t going to be a problem. We weren’t on a date, right? And we had chaperones. We were all just having a good time on vacation. After a few days I was never going to see this guy or his fairies or his elves ever again.

  Everything between me and Logan was bumping along on a cozy track until we got back to Trollhaven later and I got a load of Matthew in his biking spandex.

  * * * * *

  We walked back to Trollhaven in the dark, making a straggly double file down the narrow sidewalk, kicking dead leaves, talking merrily and pointing out stores we’d like to browse through when they opened the next day.

  As we reached the intersection of Main Street and Egg Harbor Road, a man on a mountain bike came slaloming around the corner and headed the same way we were going. There was a sleek precision about his sweep around the corner. It was the kind of maneuver that I hated in bicyclists when I was driving, that thing that said he owned the road and was entitled to go first. He zipped ahead of us and disappeared into the gloom, but we caught up with him at Trollhaven as he was dismounting.

  He did it in a spare, practiced movement and put the bike against a tree behind the parking lot. Then he made an audible sigh, removed his bike helmet and shook out thick blond hair that was as shaggy as Logan’s, but way better somehow. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes. I was hoping for green.

  Noticing us, he asked, “Do you know where I go to check in here? I’ve got a reservation for Cabin 3, wherever that is.”

  “It’s right next to ours,” I said. “We’re in Cabin 2. Yours is right there. Come on, I’ll show you where you check in. Did you bike all the way here?”

  He nodded, including Nettie, Henry and Logan in a friendly look.

  “From where?” I asked.

  “Green Bay.”

  “Wow. All in one day?”

  He shrugged. “I can do a lot more than that in a day. Over there, you say?” he said, looking at Cabin 3. “I’ll drop my bags on the steps as we go by. My name is Matthew, by the way.”

  We gave him our names and a few friendly words of welcome, and he unstrapped his saddlebags from his bike. They were expensive-looking, sturdy and chunky, made to hang down on both sides of his back wheel over the pannier, and he had on a flattish backpack, everything matching and new. His whole world in three smallish bags – everything he needed and nothing he didn’t need. I admire people like that.

  I don’t know if I expected we’d escort him as a group, but in fact, the others lagged behind and I found them ranged around Cabin 2’s front porch when I got back from delivering Matthew to the front desk.

  “He seems nice,” I said as I joined Logan
on the loveseat.

  “Energetic young fellow,” Logan said, not at all begrudgingly.

  “When you see him in the light, he’s not that young. About my age, I think. Thirty-something.” I didn’t bother to mention that his eyes had been blue, and weren’t disappointing at all, even if they weren’t green.

  “Did you invite him back for some wine?” Logan asked.

  “Oh, should I have?” I regretted it more than I wanted to admit, though I’d had enough wine for one day, myself.

  It irked me a little how quickly Henry and Nettie spoke up, saying he would be busy unpacking and settling in, no doubt. Maybe tomorrow. As long as we were going to be neighbors, we were sure to be seeing a lot of him.

  A few minutes later we saw Arnie walking Matthew back to Cabin 3 and we waved to them both. If the idea of having Matthew sit with us a while hadn’t been so firmly vetoed, I would have invited him over then, but as it was, I restrained myself. It wasn’t easy. I love my aunt, and I was glad she had Henry, but Logan was starting to feel more like an older brother.

  Matthew was definitely not my brother.

  In the soul of every woman who has recently dumped a guy, there lurks the hope that another one just as good or better is going to happen by immediately, so that if the fantasy scenario comes true and, for instance, Robert the Rat, appeared suddenly, begging my forgiveness, I would be standing there with another guy who was hotter, batting my innocent eyelashes. Matthew was not only hotter, he totally outclassed Robert in both the looks and the physical fitness departments.

  Besides, it had been a long time since I’d had a little fun in my life. What harm could it do?

  Chapter 6 – The Crackpot Cometh

  The next morning, when Nettie and I went down our front porch and walked along the path to the main house for breakfast, I was disappointed to see that Matthew’s bike was gone. I could just see inside his screened-in porch and the bike wasn’t there, and it wasn’t up against the tree anymore, either. It had looked valuable; maybe he brought it in and locked it up. Maybe he slept with it. These cycling guys love their bikes.

  Breakfast was on the front porch of the main house. The screens hadn’t yet been replaced by windowpanes, and the morning was chilly, but there were electric heaters going on the porch.

  It wasn’t going to get far into the 40s that day. Warmer tomorrow; that’s what my weather app promised, but the cold air was alright with me. I come alive in the cold. It made me think about my knitting needles, in a storage facility back in Schaumburg, waiting until I found my next apartment. I’d guessed it would be in Schaumburg, but who knew? My life was on hold, and most of my stuff was in that storage locker. The thought depressed, when I let myself think about it. But I couldn’t do anything about it right then, so what I needed to do was forget about all that and have fun.

  I remembered a really nice little yarn shop in Ephraim that I’d visited years before, when I’d been in the area with my parents. It was just up the road from Fish Creek, in a strip mall that was just an odd collection of old cabins. Maybe we’d take a drive up there today. If I found some yummy yarn that I wanted to work with, I’d have to buy a pair of knitting needles in a size I already had (I had them all), but I’d probably go ahead and do it anyway. When you have half your life locked up in storage, you have to make compromises and keep on going.

  I had to forcefully stop these musings or they were going to get me down. We were on vacation. Today, we’d go to the yarn shop for a look around, and if I needed tools I already had, I’d buy them. Done.

  We hadn’t had a chance to plan for this trip, really. We’d taken off so suddenly we hadn’t even had time to talk about what we’d do once we got to Trollhaven. So we’d just do what we wanted, when we wanted, and take it one day at a time. The thought made me feel a little better.

  We entered the warm wraparound porch area and opened our jackets. There was one small table in the corner to the left of the door, and Logan was sitting at it. The rest of the tables ran across the porch to the right of the door as you entered, and went on around the corner of the house.

  Evaline greeted us and said, “The weather has been so nice, we haven’t put the windows up yet, but I think we’d better get busy about it. I love the fresh air, and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves outside, but we’ve finally made the turn into fall now. With the heaters on, you’ll be comfortable enough out here this morning, though.”

  She started to introduce us to Logan, but we told her we’d already met him. He was just finishing his breakfast so we didn’t invite him to join us, but we had a nice, meaningless exchange. And she already knew, of course, that we knew Henry, so she left off the introductions and went back inside the house to the kitchen.

  Henry was waiting at a table for four along the frontside of the porch, and with him was an elegant, silvery-blond lady I hadn’t seen before.

  When we went to his table, Henry stood up and introduced us.

  “This is Gail Havilland,” he said. “My friends, Nettie Tucker and Paige Dowd.”

  From behind, I had thought Gail to be much younger, but when she turned around, she was about Nettie’s age, maybe a bit older. But she was one of those women whose natural grace is inborn, and who never seem to lose it. She had striking brown eyes which she knew how to play up, with not too much make-up, not too little. It thought how unusual that was in a lady her age. Lots of women in their sixties had either given up on eye makeup altogether or were still doing them the same way they had in their thirties. Either way, it dated them. Gail had it right, and it gave her more than a touch of class.

  Nettie sat down next to Henry, and I took the seat next to Gail.

  Evaline asked what we wanted for breakfast and we each told her. Then Gail suddenly asked her, “Where is your father this morning? I haven’t seen him around.”

  “He told a friend of his he’d go over there today and help him get ready for the Fall Festival in Egg Harbor next week. As if there isn’t enough work to do around here, with the porch windows to put up and all. I’ll have to ask my nephew Justin to do it, but first I’ve got some clean-up work for him down by the bay. I think some teenagers had a party down there,” she added dryly. “They’re always doing it on a dare, since that’s where the trolls are supposed to be. The legend has it they can only come out of their burrow at night. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. It’s a shame none of you are staying long enough to go to the Fall Festival – it’s a really fun time.”

  “I’m surprised Arnie leaves you alone to run the place on a Saturday,” Gail said.

  Evaline pulled herself up and told Gail, “I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. Since I was a little girl.” Gail was immediately contrite – I don’t think she’d meant it to come out the way it sounded – but it seemed like it was a sore spot with Evaline, and she went on, almost in a rant. “I can run this place with my eyes closed, and besides, I have help in the kitchen, and Justin’s a hard worker.”

  “I’m sure you do beautifully,” Gail said, pretty much gushing, trying to cover her gaffe. “I just missed Arnie, that’s all. We had such a nice talk yesterday when I arrived.”

  Evaline nodded, not much mollified, then she hustled off to get our meals and we sat together companionably. In passing the entrance, I had picked up a Trollhaven brochure, hoping it had the old legend of the troll, and when we were past the preliminaries, I opened it and gave it a look.

  “Huh,” I said after a minute or so. “No legend.”

  “What do you mean?” Nettie said.

  “I thought you said they always included the troll story in their brochures.”

  “They always did,” she said hesitantly. She took the brochure from me and looked it over. “You’re right, it’s not here.”

  Evaline was pouring the coffee by then, and Nettie asked her, “What happened to the legend of the trolls?”

  Evaline became uneasy. “Oh, that. We dropped it. It used to be part of the charm of the
place, but nobody believes that stuff nowadays.”

  “I would have thought,” Nettie began, but she was overtopped by a brassy feminine voice from around the porch corner, and I looked up to see a frumpy, middle-aged woman coming at us.

  “I must speak to the owner about that legend,” she announced. “It is important. Where is he?”

  Evaline seemed nonplussed. “He’s off helping a friend today. You can speak to him about it if you like, but I must warn you, he’s grown tired of people making fun of it.”

  “I will not make fun of it,” she said, gathering up a little outrage. “I will treat it with the respect it deserves. It is history, nothing less. I intend to document it for my new treatise on the transference of Nordic folktales to America via the settlers of the nineteenth century.”

  I blinked and looked around at my breakfast companions. They seemed to be treating the interruption as a side conversation between other people, and weren’t listening.

  “You’ll love the french toast,” Henry told Nettie quietly.

  “I don’t think my father would like that, Professor Howell,” Evaline said to the frumpy lady.

  “I should think he’d be honored!” She approached our table and stood at the side of it, all but demanding our attention. “Good morning. I see you are fellow guests. I am sure we will all enjoy the crisp weather and the colors of fall, won’t we. Perfect weather. Perfect.”

  We limply agreed.

  “I am Gerda.”

  After introducing ourselves, I asked, “Did I hear Evaline call you professor?”

  She simpered with false modesty. “I’m taking a sabbatical to do a personal research project on earth elementals in the new country.”

  “Which country is that, Professor Howell?” Aunt Nettie asked.

  “America, of course. Just call me Gerda, please.”

  We all smiled and nodded. “And what are you a professor of?” I asked.

  “Nordic Cultural History and Mythological Traditions.”

  I processed that, which took some ten or fifteen seconds. “Oh!” I said finally, turning around to where Logan was still sitting. “Then you have something in common with this man.”