Degrees of Separation

by Sue Henry

  “Not much chance of that recently. Where’s my canine buddy? You leave him at home?” Oscar questioned.

  “No, he’s right here, as usual.” Jessie nodded to Tank, who, hearing Oscar’s familiar voice, was waiting with expectant dignity beside her.

  Setting up the beer for a waiting customer, Oscar wiped his hands on the apron he had tied around his considerable middle, reached into a large glass jar, and came around the end of the bar to lean down and give Tank a friendly pat along with a sizable chunk of the homemade moose jerky he kept stashed for his four-legged friends.

  “I’d swear that mutt smiles,” the bar owner told Jessie, who had thanked him and ordered Killian’s Red Lager for herself and Alex, who had turned to speak to an acquaintance at a nearby table. “Bottles or glasses?”

  “Bottles are fine. And run a tab for us, will you, Oscar?” Jessie asked, taking the bottles and turning away at his “Can do.”

  Handing them both to Alex, she crossed to the huge slow cooker on a table against one wall and filled two bowls with chili, topping both with diced onions and shredded cheddar.

  “Thanks, love.” He smiled, pulling two empty chairs up to an empty table. “This may just about make up for the lack of home cooking.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” she told him with a mock scowl. “Today was actually your turn to cook, remember.”

  “So it was. I’ll make up for it tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  For a minute she stood looking around to see who was there, knowing most of the crowd from the racing community, or past visits to this pub, and responding to greetings from several.

  Waiting across the room for his turn at a pool table, Hank Peterson, an old friend, signaled a hello with the cue he held in one hand, beer in the other. “Wanna play when I win?” he called.

  She laughed. “That’s optimistic when you’re playing Bill. When I’m through eating, I’ll bring over quarters on the off chance that you do.”

  “Stay where you are. I’ll put ’em up for you until then.”

  While she savored the chili and lager, half listening to conversations going on around her, Jessie found herself remembering how the original Other Place had looked a couple of years earlier, before it was destroyed by an arsonist.

  It was much the same in most respects, as Oscar had been determined to renew the place that before the fire had grown familiar and comfortable to the residents of Knik Road, many of them sled dog racers or their handling crews and fans. So, with the remaining cement footprint of the original still solid and useable, he had put the insurance payment straight back into a new building—with a few improvements and a lot of unexpected help from many of his patrons.

  “They kept showing up in droves,” she remembered Oscar saying. And they had. Bringing their own tools and enthusiasm, they had worked together to rebuild the Other Place in record time, refusing any kind of remuneration beyond the beer, food, and thanks he had gratefully provided.

  Oscar had originally intended to call the pub that had burned the Double Dozen, for it had stood approximately twelve miles from the main highway that ran from the middle of the nearby town of Wasilla and continued close to another twelve to where he lived, farther out Knik Road. The name, however, had never worked for the simple reason that most of his local customers were already familiar with “Oscar’s”—the bar he had opened years before in town. With the possessiveness of regulars, they had referred to the new pub as Oscar’s other place, ignoring anything to do with double pubs or dozens of miles. So it hadn’t been long before he cheerfully bowed to the inevitable, replaced the sign out front, and made it official. Oscar’s Other Place it had become and remained.

  Year-round, before and after the fire, something was always happening there. Dart and pool tournaments were popular. Three or four tables of bridge players usually collected on Sunday afternoons. A large television set above the bar was tuned to a variety of sports in their seasons, often accompanied by potluck dinners and, always, many friendly wagers. A pig roast became traditional on Super Bowl Sunday. Every summer the Other Place sponsored a softball team that carefully kept its error count just high enough to remain solidly in the B league but too low for the A, where the game was more intense and less fun.

  From the day it opened, located in the center of an area popular with racing aficionados, where there were possibly more sled dogs per square mile than people, Oscar’s Other Place had quickly become a haunt for local mushers, handlers, and their followers. So many of them stopped by to warm up during training runs that during the winter Oscar provided straw for their dogs to curl up on in back of the pub.

  Leaving Alex to finish his second bowl of chili, Jessie took what was left of her lager and made her way across the room and, sliding the promised challenge quarters onto the edge of the pool table to replace Hank’s, stood watching as Bill Monroe came close to finishing the game, but missed on the next-to-last ball—a tricky double-bank shot. His leave allowed Hank to easily sink the last two for the win.

  He swung around with a grin. “Next victim!”

  “Don’t get greedy,” Jessie told him, lifting balls back onto the table and racking them neatly in preparation for the break. “You won’t be so lucky this time.”

  “Don’t count on it. I’m on a roll tonight.”

  “Pride and a fall often roll up together, don’t they?”

  Easy needling was usually part of the play, and knowing she and Hank were pretty well matched in skill, she assumed they would both win about as many games as they lost.

  Four shots after the break, Hank missed one. Leaning over the table to take careful aim, keeping one foot on the floor to be legal, Jessie considered the angles, then carefully hit the cue ball and sent it rolling toward the other end of the table with what she hoped was just enough force to sink the yellow-striped eleven ball, which she wanted to drop into a corner pocket, but not to send the cue ball in after it. Holding the position in which she had taken the shot, totally focused on the result of her action, she watched the ball roll away.

  Then an odd thing happened. Instead of continuing straight, at the speed she expected, the ball began to curve to the right, away from the path it should have maintained, and, arriving at the table’s end, missed the eleven completely.

  “What the…?”

  Standing up, one hand on the rail, one holding her cue, she realized that the floor was vibrating beneath her feet. As she watched the table, within the confines of its rails, all thirteen remaining balls began an erratic waltz over the green felt surface of the five-by-ten-foot table. Several collided with each other. Others bounced off the rails. The yellow eleven, at which Jessie had aimed, fell neatly into the corner pocket all by itself, with no encouragement from the meandering cue ball.

  The rectangular light that illuminated the table was swinging back and forth on the chains that suspended it.

  As the tremor grew stronger, conversation died. There was a gasp or two and empty chairs rattled their legs on the floor. In the startled and alert silence, Jessie could hear a low rumble like a distant train passing. Turning, she saw several people grab for the drinks and food that were dancing on the tables in front of them. A beer bottle crashed to the tiled cement floor and shattered. Across the room Alex lunged to keep the kettle of hot chili from walking off its heater and upending itself down the unsuspecting neck of a man sitting with his back to it.

  Glancing at the bar, she noticed that, though Oscar was busy rescuing loose items along it, the liquor bottles behind him were safe enough, held in place by four-or five-inch retainers that kept them in place. She could, however, faintly hear beer bottles in the cooler clinking against each other musically.

  As an ashtray, holding the smoldering cigarette of a woman who had abandoned her bar stool, began a clattering stroll off the edge of bar, he dived to rescue it and made the catch. “Hey, one fire in this place was enough, thank you.”

  “Good save, Oscar,” someone called as
, swiftly as it had arrived, the minor earthquake lessened and was gone.

  “Well, this wasn’t the first rodeo today,” he said. “There was another, smaller one this afternoon.”

  As everyone settled and began to talk again, Jessie turned back to the pool table.

  “Hell of a shot, Jessie,” Hank told her, looking down with a crooked grin at the ball with the yellow stripe, which was now resting securely in the corner pocket. “The quake gods must really know how and when to throw a pool game in your direction.”

  “Well-l-l,” Jessie said with a grin. “We could either call it a draw, or try to set the balls back up the way they were before the quake and play it again.”

  “Naw.” Hank shook his head and shrugged. “I’m not about to challenge fate. Let’s just say that somebody up there likes you tonight and let it go at that.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALMOST THREE HOURS LATER, ALEX AND JESSIE PULLED INTO THE long drive, Tank once again riding shotgun by the window.

  After fastening Tank’s collar to the tether attached to his box, Jessie followed Alex up the steps and into the house.

  “Want a cup of tea?” he asked, hanging both their coats by the door and joining Jessie in removing the rubber boots they had worn.

  “Sounds good. Maybe a couple of those Double Stuf Oreos to go with it,” she suggested, crossing sock-footed to the stove, where she added a log to the fire, then stood rubbing her hands together in the welcome heat. “It’s stopped raining and the temperature’s dropped a bit. I may be able to run the guys with the four-wheeler tomorrow, if it isn’t too muddy.”

  “As long as you don’t run late. I forgot to tell you that we’re invited to dinner with Cass and Linda tomorrow night,” Alex called from the kitchen, where he had put two mugs of water with tea bags into the microwave.

  “We are?”

  “You bet. Have you forgotten what tomorrow is—or are you trying to ignore it this year?”

  She frowned for a second or two, then said, “Oh! It’s my birthday!”

  “Right!”

  “I had totally spaced it. Where did October go?”

  Coming back with both mugs in one hand, a package of cookies in the other, he gave a mug to Jessie, and they settled, one at each end of the sofa—purposely large enough so there was room for both to stretch out their legs—Oreos within reach of both.

  “October,” Alex answered, “probably went as usual, but you’ve been pretty focused on getting back out with the dogs, after a long, frustrating delay.”

  “Well, I was—until this rain made an appearance. Sure hope it’s about over. We’re all tired of being either cooped up or soaking wet.”

  “How’s old Pete doing, by the way?” he asked with a frown of concern.

  Pete, one of the oldest dogs in Jessie’s yard, was a favorite, though he was no longer allowed in the teams of a dozen or more at a time that she trained for racing. He had sprained a foreleg badly about the same time she had torn a tendon in her knee over a year earlier in a fall down the side of a mountain. They had healed together through the winter, but she knew Pete would never be strong enough again to help pull any of her sleds over the hundreds of miles necessary for training and distance racing.

  “The leg’s okay,” she said slowly, a sad and concerned expression on her face. “The vet says he’s got heart and breathing problems that are only going to get worse. He’s such a sweet old guy that I’d really miss having him around, but I may have to have him put down before spring. Can’t have him struggling just to get by. That’s not fair, however much I hate it.”

  “Would it help to bring him inside to sleep?”

  Jessie shook her head sadly. “He’d just want to go back out with the rest. I’ve been bringing him in with Tank during the day—especially with this rain—and I moved Jeep and put Pete in the box next to Tank. They’re good buds. It’ll be okay, if I watch him close. But every time I take a team out for a training run, it’s all I can do to leave him behind, looking longingly after us with those sad eyes. He doesn’t understand at all—just wants to be back where he thinks he belongs.”

  Alex was not surprised to see tears in Jessie’s eyes, knowing that she loved all her sled dogs, but that Pete was special, for he had been with her as long as any in her kennel and had sired many good pups, some of which were now racing in what he felt was his place. Strong, even-tempered, and ready to do whatever was required of him, it was true that he was not at all happy to be left behind. Besides many shorter races, he had been a member of the teams that made the long, thousand-mile runs in both the longest and most famous races of all, the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, more than once in the former.

  “I’ll help keep an eye on him,” Alex said, setting his half-empty mug on the floor beside the sofa and swinging his legs to stand up. “Hey! You want your present now?”

  “But tomorrow’s the day.”

  “That’s okay. I think you should have it now. Besides, maybe you’ll want to use it—have it—maybe even wear it—tomorrow anyway,” he called back, taking long strides to the bedroom. Jessie heard a drawer open and shut, then he came back with a kid’s grin on his face that was so infectious it made her smile too, as she wiped her eyes. Stopping beside her, he handed her a box that was about a foot square, clumsily wrapped in bright yellow paper, with an excess of Scotch tape, and festooned with multicolored curly ribbons. “There ya go! Open it up, almost-a-birthday-girl!”

  She examined the decorative object in her lap for a long minute, as he sat down again on the opposite end of the sofa, swung his stocking feet up, retrieved his tea, and sat waiting, eyes dancing in anticipation.

  “Wrap this yourself, did you?” she asked.

  “What could possibly have given you that impression?”

  “Well—it’s—ah—very artistic in design,” she teased.

  “Maybe I should advertise—make more and autograph them? Or, on second thought, maybe not. Just bear in mind that I considered the funny papers first, so this is first-class.”

  Under the paper was a box with a lid, which Jessie removed to find—another box with another lid. Three boxes later, each smaller than the last, the tears had vanished and she was giggling as she took the lid off what turned out to be the last—a black velvet–covered jewelry box. Inside was something she immediately expected and found.

  “Oh, Alex! They’re beautiful! You replaced the diamond earring I lost on Niqa Island. But—wait a minute—these two look different from those. Did you get new ones? You didn’t need to do that.”

  “Well—yes, Jess. As it turns out, I did. What I learned in the attempt was that you can’t just pick up a diamond post to match one you already have. They’re matched in pairs for size and quality and color and who knows what else. It was easier to trade in the one you didn’t lose and get a matched pair than it would have been to try to find one or have one made. These are almost exactly the same, but slightly larger and set a little differently—with screw-on backings, so you won’t lose one this time. I hope you don’t mind that I raided your jewelry box for the old one.”

  “Mind? Alex, I love them!” Jessie said, getting up to give him a huge hug and a kiss. “Thank you, dear man. And you’re right. I’ll definitely wear them tomorrow night to dinner. Linda will be green.”

  With a swallow that emptied his tea mug, still holding Jessie, Alex stood up and set her on her feet.

  “I’m for bed. It’s been a long, damp day, with an earthquake thrown in, so I’m ready to hit the hay.” He gave her a sideways leer and twirled one end of his handlebar mustache suggestively. “I recommend that you come, too, and thank me properly.”

  Later, in the dark bedroom at the top of the stairs, Jessie lay with her head on his shoulder, his arm holding her close.

  “You know,” he said drowsily. “My mother has a poem she always said at bedtime on birthdays when I was a kid.”

  “What?” she whispered in his ear, knowing his penchant for poetry and quotations.


  “‘When your birthday is over, and you’ve wound up the clock, and put out the cat, and fastened the lock, may you say with a smile, that’s contented and glad, this has been the best birthday that ever I had.’”

  Jessie giggled.

  “In my case, I think it should probably be changed to put out the dog! But since this isn’t really my birthday, will you promise to say it again tomorrow night?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Half an hour later both were slumbering soundly, lulled by the repetitious rhythm of rain on the roof overhead and drizzling from it to the ground below.

  Familiar with living next to over forty dogs, neither heard the long howl of one that, disturbed from sleep by something moving in the nearby trees, had ventured into the downpour outside its box in the row farthest from the house and nearest the woods that lay to the west. As that wail slowly faded, another dog answered from the far corner of the lot with a similar cry that rose and fell into a series of yips and yowls.

  There was a distant sound of movement in the trees as something crashed hurriedly downhill through the brush. The noise terminated upon reaching Knik Road and was heard no more.

  Both dogs shook themselves free of much of the rainwater that had dampened their coats and disappeared once again into the shelter of their respective boxes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN ALEX WOKE THE NEXT MORNING THE SPACE NEXT TO HIM in Jessie’s big brass bed was empty. Reaching out, he laid a hand on the sheet and found a faint bit of warmth remaining, so she hadn’t been up long. It seemed very light in the room for some reason, despite the closed curtains, and he wondered if he had slept longer than usual. But his side was exactly his favorite morning temperature, so he rolled over, tucked the quilt more comfortably around his shoulders, closed his eyes, and prepared to snooze for just a bit longer.

  Except for Jessie humming an upbeat tune in the kitchen below, it was very quiet, so it had evidently stopped raining. Soon the inviting scent of fresh coffee wafted its way up into the bedroom, challenging his reluctance to rise. Giving up the idea of further sleep, he got out of bed, found a pair of comfortable, well-worn jeans, and put them on, along with a wool shirt over a thermal undershirt, knowing there would undoubtedly be kennel work to be done today, rain or no rain.