by Jim Craig
It took me a few minutes to gather the stuff from the woods and open up the plane. I put the sat phone with its dead battery in my pack, closed up the plane again and joined Charlie where he was waiting for me where the road entered the forest.
“Well, what the hell, eh?" he said cheerfully when I reached him. "No point sitting out here in the fog starving to death. You'll like Greta's cooking. Then maybe the fog’ll lift and we can blast out of here.”
He turned and started walking to the lodge. I had to hustle to match his long strides. I settled into the pace and tried to make sense of all the new information hitting me.
"Who's Greta?"
"She's my wife. We've been running the lodge all summer, but the season's shot in the ass now. Haven't had any guests for a while and we're packing up."
"I think I talked to her last night. I walked up here to find the troopers. I knocked but she wouldn't open up. Was that somebody else?"
He laughed. “No, that was probably Greta. She gets a little freaky sometimes. And the whole thing with Hank really set her off."
"It's just the two of you?"
"Yeah, now it is. The other fishing guides left a while ago. Well's there's us and the kid, that's all."
I was starting to get winded trying to keep up with him, so I quit asking questions and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
I glanced behind me as we left the airstrip area for a last look at the plane. I didn't want to leave it, but my stomach was winning the argument. Should I stay or should I go? I looked down the runway toward the water, but the fog layer still hung there like the end of time. Then the trees engulfed us and shadows closed in like octopus ink.
Charlie walked steadily down the road staring off into the distance. He didn’t seem like a problem. Except he was so large. Like a yeti in a hoodie. But he seemed like a nice guy. Harmless probably. And I tend to like anybody that brings me coffee.
Was I doing the right thing? I guessed there wasn’t any point staying with the plane. I couldn’t fly over to Chenega to meet the troopers. Might as well go to the lodge and wait there. My stomach rumbled reminding me how good some hot food would taste.
What would Phil want me to do? He wouldn't want me to try to fly, no question about that. But he'd probably be so mad that I left Seward without talking to him first that he wouldn't be able to think about what I should do in the present situation. Like when you're trying to fix a flat tire and someone keeps asking you why you picked that particular time to take a drive. I blocked out any further thoughts about him.
What would Willie do? I smirked to myself. That crazy loon would probably fly. He was the only person I could think of that would try it. And then he'd say straight faced that it wasn't so bad. Even though he'd just broken every rule in the book. But he'd lecture me forever if I ever took such a chance.
Charlie was marching along in silence, lurching down the road with an awkward gait. People that live in the bush get used to not talking much, but Charlie ran a lodge, so I didn't think he would be getting bushy like that. I wanted information and my curiosity pushed me to interrupt his reserve.
“So, Charlie, how long you been living here?”
He didn’t answer right away. Like he was mulling over how to respond or how much to reveal. Then he glanced sideways and down at me, pushed his glasses up his nose and cleared his throat.
“Well, I was pretty much raised out here. The old man started the place. William Westridge. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”
I thought about it. “Sounds familiar, but can’t say as I have.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just as well," he said. "He was real famous out here for a while with his little empire. But those days are pretty much done now, I guess.”
“You guys own the whole island?”
“Yep, Dad had a lot of money from the family business, and back in the fifties he bought this island and built the lodge. We operated every summer for more than forty years. When you see inside the lodge, you’ll see. It's high end, man. At least it used to be. Luxury in Alaska. Lots of folks paid big bucks to come up here.”
“Were you born here?”
“Not exactly. We operated in the summers up here and went back to upper state New York for the winters. I was born back there and spent most of my younger years bouncing back and forth. You from Seward?”
“Yeah, I’m out at the airport there.”
“Okay, I know where that is. We’re actually closer to Cordova. That’s where we resupply. And we keep a vehicle in Whittier for trips into Anchorage once in a while.”
“What about the airstrip? You a pilot?”
“Nope, that was Dad’s thing. And my older brother too. There were the pilots of the family.”
I was surprised to hear that. “It’s a nice strip. I didn’t see any other planes on it though. You have a float plane?”
“No. That’s all history now.” He kicked at the muddy gravel surface with one boot heel.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“They packed it into a mountain side about three years ago.”
“Oh, sorry. That happen around here?”
“Yeah, I guess they were trying to get to Anchorage through a narrow pass in bad weather.”
A distant memory rattled inside. “I may have heard something about that a while back.”
“They were good pilots, but I think they were trying to get through Portage Pass relying on a GPS. Probably in zero visibility in the clouds. Tony, that’s my brother, he had waypoints programmed in for the critical spots in the pass. They’d done it several times, once with me in the back seat. Scared the crap out of me. In the clouds, knowing you’re surrounded by rocks and cliffs and depending on a little black box and a prayer.”
I felt a chill run down my spine at the image. I’d been tempted by that risk more than once, but had never given in.
“It was either that or a williwaw got ‘em.”
“Really? What time of year was that?”
“Same as now. September. But they didn’t have to be out there in the first place. I’ll never know what was so important about making that trip when they knew the weather was bad.”
We walked on in silence. So many Alaskan airplane crashes are never explained. Dead pilots don’t answer questions.
The slap-slap-crunch of our feet on the wet gravel echoed softly then faded into the wall of dark green shadows on all sides. I shuddered again thinking about williwaws. Like tiny tornadoes of turbulence they hide in high mountain valleys and then suddenly roar down to the ocean destroying everything in their paths. Small airplanes are helpless in their clutches. Willie was always warning me about them.
The road curved and then worked its way over a hill before dropping close to the water for its final stretch to the lodge. I realized it was the place where Daniels and I had been ambushed. I looked up and saw the likely place in some rocks where the shooter had probably been. Rain had erased any sign of our struggles the night before. I thought about telling Charlie about it and asking where he'd been during all the gunfire, but something inside told me to wait.
A large sign came into view that I hadn’t seen the night before in the dark.
“Welcome to Westridge Lodge, Taroka Island, Prince William Sound, Alaska. Founded by William Westridge, 1953.” A smaller strip of wood had been nailed across it diagonally that said Closed.
“When did you shut the place down, Charlie?”
“The crash pretty much ended it for us. Mom couldn’t bring herself to come back to Alaska after that, so it was left up to my sister and me. And she wasn’t interested. Never has been.”
“That’s too bad. I’ve brought people out here a few times. Everybody always said how nice it was. And great fishing.”
“Yeah, I spent a lot of years on those boats hauling in halibut and salmon. These waters are full of fish. It was a good life while it lasted.”
I glanced down at his hands. They were working man’s hands, roug
h, gnarled and scarred from years of pulling line and gutting fish. Tough hands that were used to handling knives, gaffes and rope. My respect for the guy was growing. Obviously a hard worker, I couldn’t hold it against him that he was born into money.
“A family operation in wilderness Alaska. I guess there’s worse ways to grow up, eh?”
“I guess,” he shrugged and spit to the side of the road.
The opening to the circular drive in front of the lodge came into view ahead. Another sign I’d missed the night before appeared beside us nailed to a tree on the side of the narrow rutted road.
Speed Limit 80 MPH, it read.
“Funny,” I said gesturing toward it with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a snort. “I found that along a highway in Wyoming. They didn’t need it as bad as we did.”
It started to rain. We broke into a trot for the last hundred yards to the lodge, water splashing from the puddles with every step. I was breathing hard and cursing to myself as I felt my feet growing steadily wetter and colder.
The skies opened up, and it began to pour without mercy. By the time we reached the porch, I was drenched. Looking around and shaking the rain off my coat, I noticed the same dreary group of buildings from the night before. But a lot more details were visible in the dim daylight. A huge moose rack hung above the entrance to the barn, and a slight trail of smoke rose from the chimney. The smell of wood smoke hung in the air.
Our footgear thumped heavily on the wooden deck and Charlie headed for the scraping post. He kicked at the band of metal a few times, then he pulled off his rubber boots and left them by the door. I did the same with my shoes, and slapped my soggy baseball cap against one leg to shake off the rain. The ragged bullet hole jerked me back to memories of the night before, and I glanced around feeling my guard rising again.
Down at the end of the front deck I spotted a large sculpture of a grizzly bear. It too must have been concealed by shadows the night before. It was a chain saw carving, the kind you see offered along the highway outside of Seward. Crappy stuff generally, but tourists will buy anything.
Charlie pushed open the front door, and we padded our way into the lobby entrance. His feet were quiet in thick boot socks, but mine made sloppy wet sounds as I walked and left damp rings in my path. It was a large room, and even the dim daylight revealed the huge space within, reeking of splendor from years gone by. A smooth wood floor flowed into the distance across the great room to where rear windows looked out over the bay. Persian carpets covered most of the wood, and a thick brown bear hide with its head attached lay on the floor at my feet. To the left an enormous stuffed polar bear stood over ten feet high. It had a massive square head with an open mouth and jagged yellow teeth. Its beady eyes stared at me seeming to track my movements as I moved past it. I felt my knees tremble slightly.
Log walls rose to a steep slanted ceiling where a heavy black chained chandelier hung into the middle of the room. Behind that the wide staircase climbed to the second level. I could see rich red carpet covering the stairs and held in place by thin brass bars at the back of every step.
“Wait here a minute, will ya?” Charlie whispered and he walked carefully up the stairs like he was on eggshells. “I’ll see if Greta’s up.”
I moved into the center of the lobby and looked around. On the left side of the room halfway up the log wall two huge oil paintings hung side by side in identical heavy gold frames. You had to tilt your head back to stare up at them. There were of the same man. One in a business suit with a New York City background, the other in hunting clothes kneeling beside a dead moose.
Had to be the founder. He had a founder look about him. In the New York pose he held a pipe and a commanding chairman of the board kind of expression. The practiced look of power you see in corporate annual reports. In the Alaska pose he held the moose by its rack with the same commanding expression. The moose’s expression was mostly shot-in-the-ass dead.
He was a tall man with a high forehead and close clipped hair on a large head. Bushy eyebrows and penetrating eyes spread wide above a solid jaw. You could have photo shopped the same face between both portraits. His look said, “Money, I’ve got it. I own all of this and you should feel privileged to stand here on my land.”
I could see the family resemblance. Charlie had inherited the broad shoulders and large hands, but not the conviction, the look of the strong self made man, confident and competent. Beneath the two portraits and lower there was a large old style mirror with cracks along the edges and black flakes in the corners. I watched myself staring back and forth between the founder and his alter ego. The New York version and the Alaska version. And me in the middle.
The William Westridge on the left wore an expensive Italian suit in dark pinstripe, and William Westridge, the great white hunter, wore a massive goose down parka with a fur lined hood folded back. In contrast my soaked blue fleece jacket hung on me like a discarded wash cloth that I’d just used to clean a bathroom. I remembered finding it on sale at the Goodwill. An old stain of red hydraulic fluid graced my right forearm. Not to mention the recent mud stains from a Taroka road side ditch.
William’s gleaming forehead shone like a bright beacon of success. I looked into the mirror and noticed that I was holding my dripping cap in my hand, and my thin brown hair was matted and sticking out in all directions. My ratty dark beard looked unkempt and was adorned with a small white feather from my sleeping bag. Alaskan William wore expensive leather hunting boots with bright blue leggings laced to the knee. I had on wet black socks. The front end of the left sock was folded back under my foot, and the right sock had a hole where my little toe poked through.
I shook my head and started to grin. I looked up at the portraits and whispered, “Pleased to meet ya, Mister Westbridge. You mind if I scratch my butt?” I could sense my mother cringing. She always said I needed more respect. A proper sense of protocol, she used to say.
I walked toward the great room and left his worship behind. Tall wooden shelves full of books covered one wall. Dozens of leather bound volumes of the classic works were lined up in reverent display. Victor Hugo, Louisa May Alcott, Machiavelli, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Voltaire, Dostoevsky and even Theodore Dreiser and Jack London. I ran one finger along the spines of some of the larger texts and found a heavy layer of dust on the shelf that held them.
My grin widened as I thought about my life. I had books too. An image flashed in my head of the small cabinet next to my overhead bunk in the camper back at Seward. As I recalled, there was a worn out copy of Stephen King from the used book exchange. Beneath that was a rumpled Playboy magazine and a stack of Victoria Secret catalogs. No dust, I might add.
Charlie came back down the stairway then and not seeing me called out.
“Hey, Johnny. You still here?”
I walked toward his voice. It sounded odd echoing through the big empty room. I found him in the kitchen.
“Oh, there you are,” he said. “Greta will be down soon. In the meantime, why don’t we get your clothes dried out? Follow me.”
He led the way down a stairwell to another room below the main floor. We walked through a game room with an expensive looking pool table and a long bar at the far end. Ten stools with red leather seat cushions and a gleaming brass rail stood in silent attendance. There was even a shining spittoon on the floor in the corner. There was also a chess set with tall metal pieces mutely staring at each other across an inlaid teak and mahogany checkerboard battle field.
“Nice place you got here, Charlie.”
“Thanks, I know it still looks pretty good, but there’s a lot of problems now. Wood rot, cracks in the foundation, plumbing, you name it. Sometimes I just want to toss a match to it.”
Another great room with a lower ceiling greeted us next. Easy chairs and sofas were scattered throughout and more informal rugs in dark colors. Games and a ping pong table were set up in front of large ground level windows. Looking out I cou
ld see the back deck that I'd walked on the night before.
“Come on through here, Johnny. There’s a dryer if you want to toss in your clothes, and there’s a hot tub room right through there. You might want to take a soak while your stuff dries and we get some breakfast together. You hungry?”
“Oh yeah, you could say that. I really appreciate this. I can tell you’re used to taking care of guests.”
Charlie smiled. “You just make yourself at home and I’ll come get you when it’s time to eat.”
I pulled off my green pack, and took out the sat phone and looked for an outlet to plug in the charging cord. I noticed Charlie had stopped to watch me. He was staring intently at the phone.
"Hey, Charlie, is it okay if I plug this in?"
The question seemed to freeze him. He looked at his feet for just a second. I tried to read his body language but came up empty.
He recovered quickly. “Here, I'll take that upstairs and get it going. The outlets down here are messed up."
"And is there any way we can get hold of the troopers to check on their progress?”
"Aw, I’m sure they’re in Chenega by now. Hank ain't that smart. They're probably working him over real good," he snickered. "Anyhow, take it easy for a while."
I handed him the phone and glanced out the window. The same low fog hung just outside, as dense as ever. “I need to get in touch with my boss. He doesn’t even know I’m out here.”
Charlie's eyebrows shot up behind the black frames in surprise. He looked at me and then seemed to tear his gaze away to re-examine his shoes. I could see the gears grinding, but he said nothing. He examined his fingernails for a moment and chewed on a cuticle.
“Okay then,” he finally broke his silence. “I’ll come get you.”
He closed the door behind him and left me alone in the laundry room. Suddenly the wet clothes on me felt like a hundred pounds of cold clammy quicksand. The large industrial dryer beckoned. For a guy accustomed to coin fed laundromats, free service was a luxury not to be ignored.
There was a white terrycloth robe hanging on the wall nearby, so I emptied all my pockets and stripped off my clothes. I pulled on the robe and tossed everything through the large round door in the dryer and punched the start button. Even my wet tennis shoes. I checked my cell phone but there wasn't any service signal showing and moisture lined the inside of the screen. I wondered if it even worked anymore. I left my wet cap beside my glasses and the pile of change, keys and my phone on the counter.
I thought about going upstairs to make the call, but I was shivering in the robe. A quick dip in the hot tub and a hot shower sounded better than a tongue lashing. Phil could wait.
I opened the door that Charlie had pointed out and found myself in a dark lounge. Just enough outdoor light came through the French doors at the far end to reveal a thick shag carpeted floor with wooden benches around the walls and a covered hot tub recessed into the middle of the floor. I could smell the warm chemical fragrance of treated hot water. There was another bar against the far wall with an eight foot mirror stretching its length.
I was amazed to find the hot tub all set up and ready to go. Like it was used regularly. It didn’t take long to fold back the leather and foam padded cover, drop the robe on a bench and step into the steaming water. It was hot and inviting. Slipping down over the steps, I let myself sink into the sizzling liquid a few inches at a time, until I finally felt my body settle onto a contoured fiberglass bench.
Resting my head back against the rounded lip of the tub in the dark room, I felt the cares of the world sliding away and dissipating like the swirls of steam lifting off the surface of the water in front of my eyes.
I spotted the switch for the pump and after a few rumbles and gurgles from machinery under the floor, the jets began to disgorge a strong current of bubbles. The water pump settled into a steady roar blasting me with therapeutic magic. The heat took over, and everything that had been tight became loose. Everything that had been cold, wrinkled and flaccid became warm, supple and limber. Bubbles went everywhere and tickled me in places that hadn’t been tickled in a long time. I closed my eyes and let the sensations take me.
I must have drifted off. The pulsating water pump covered all sound, so I didn’t hear anyone enter the room. And I didn’t notice the small lamp being turned on or the person moving past me carrying a tray. It may have been the smell of coffee and scrambled eggs that brought me back to the world.
My eyes opened halfway, and at first I thought I was looking at an angel with her back to me standing in front of the windows. She raised her arms and ran her fingers through her hair in a quiet ritual of self grooming. She was petite with short cropped blond hair and wore a sheer white nightgown halfway to her knees. As she stood in profile looking out to the ocean, there was enough backlighting to leave little to my imagination. I wanted my glasses, but they were in the other room. The delicate blurred vision of soft lace and silk moved her arms in slow motion as she arched her back and swayed like a glossy mist. I blinked my eyes and wondered if I was dreaming.
Just then the timer on the pump clicked off. The flow of water gurgled and stopped. The angel turned and looked at me.
“You’re awake,” she said. Her voice was low and husky soft, like folds of velvet sliding over warm flesh.