Give yourself the opportunity to choose.
She closed the computer before she did something foolish.
Roark didn’t know what had possessed him to go to church with Seb, but the effect of it lingered all week. Everything from the hymns to the fact that Darek had come up and shaken his hand.
The crazy sense of acceptance by the Christiansen family had clung to him, fueled his week. By the time Saturday rolled around, he’d purchased a pair of hiking boots, a rain jacket, Gore-Tex pants, and a compass for his trek into the woods with the Boy Scouts.
It helped that Amelia stopped in twice for her Becky—a medium caramel-vanilla mocha.
He arrived at the lodge just as the sun edged above the horizon, the day crisp, the faintest hint of breath gathering in the air, lacy dew in the ferns growing in the garden along the stoop. He passed John and his crew of fishermen, on their way to some remote northern lake for the season’s fishing opener.
Darek came out of the garage carrying poles, life jackets, and tackle boxes. He loaded them into the resort pickup, then came over to Roark. “The forecast calls for rain, so we provided ponchos along with your gear.” He pointed to a collection of lumpy oversize backpacks.
“What are those?” Roark asked.
“Duluth Packs—especially made for canoeing. The scouts packed them yesterday as part of their merit badges. You should have everything you need for lunch. We added some gorp—a kid favorite—and some of Mom’s hardtack with peanut butter, but there’s a hot lunch. You just have to build a fire, heat up water, and add it to the individual packs. I think Amelia packed ravioli.”
“It’s not beans and toast, but it’ll do.”
Darek raised an eyebrow, not getting his humor. “Okay. So Amelia has the map—you’ll take them up to Hungry Jack and Bearskin, onto Rose Lake, let them explore the waterfall, then back. It’s a nice trip and they’ll be worn out by the time they get back. Their leader is named Mike—nice guy. He’s an Army veteran, but I’m not sure he’ll be a lot of help. Amelia knows what she’s doing; just get everyone back safely.” He held out his hand, and Roark shook it. “Thanks, Roark. We appreciate your help today.”
Darek’s clients arrived, and he pulled away. Amelia came bounding outside, dressed in cargo pants and a fleece, her hair covered with an orange bandanna. “When did you get here?”
She looked so cute, it stole his breath for a moment.
She didn’t seem to notice as she walked to the Duluth Packs, picked one up, and hauled it to a trailer stacked with canoes. She threw it in.
Roark grabbed the second one. “I didn’t realize you were such an Amazon woman.”
She offered a muscle and a smile. “Amelia Christiansen in her natural habitat.”
He laughed, but he hadn’t quite thought about that. As she loaded in paddles and counted life jackets, he realized that she carried herself with a confidence he hadn’t sensed in Prague.
He picked up another stack of paddles, loaded them into the truck. “I’m starting to feel like maybe your brothers were humoring me when they agreed to let me tag along.”
“Oh, you’re going to earn your keep, Mr. St. John, when we start to portage.”
When they did what?
She tossed him a green T-shirt, and he held it up, read the Evergreen Resort logo on the front. “Really?”
“Time to earn your Evergreen merit badge.” She winked just as a crowd of boys dressed in brown shirts, jeans, and jackets arrived, their leader in tow. An older man, carrying extra girth and sporting a white goatee, he reminded Roark of his uncle Donovan, if only for the way he trundled along the path, fearful of breaking a sweat.
He introduced himself to Roark as Mike McGuire. “Ah, a Brit. Served with a crew from England in the Gulf War,” Mike said. “Very good, then,” he said, affecting a dreadful British accent.
Roark forced a smile.
Mike opened the van door for the boys to climb in.
“Mike’s been bringing up Troop 126 for the last fifteen years,” Amelia said as she got into the driver’s seat.
Indeed. Mike regaled the eight boys with stories of previous trips, then started a round of “Ain’t No Bugs on Me,” followed by a thousand choruses of “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends.” By the time they reached Hungry Jack Lake, Roark quietly hoped that Mike and his memories would end up in a different canoe.
However, Amelia sang along, seeming joyous. “‘Be kind to your fur-bearing friends. For a skunk may be somebody’s brother . . .’”
Roark offered a grim smile that only made her sing louder.
“C’mon, Roark—‘be kind to your friends wearing stripes . . .’”
When they arrived at Hungry Jack, he launched himself from the van, unloading the paddles, the life jackets.
“Let the boys take the canoes—it’s part of their merit badge requirements,” Mike said as he untied one of the canoes and helped two twelve-year-olds lift it from the rack. Roark cringed as they nearly dropped it, the aluminum hull scraping against the rock with a squeal as they slid it into the lake.
While he tried to untangle life jackets, Amelia handed out paddles and gave the boys a lesson. Then she dispatched them to their canoes, girded up in their flotation devices, and pushed the first two boats out onto the glorious indigo lake.
Mike, thankfully, climbed into the stern of one of the remaining canoes.
For a wonderful moment, Roark thought he might get to share a canoe with Amelia, but she took the stern of a fourth, leaving him with a skinny boy who looked like he spent most of his time playing video games in the basement, his face pasty white, eyes round with fear as he climbed into the boat. He leaned too far over the edge, and Roark had to grab it before the canoe tipped.
“Ahoy, matey, let’s not go in the drink!”
The kid looked back at him as if he might be a pirate.
“It’s okay. Just take a seat.” Roark pushed off from shore and got in, taking his paddle. Amelia and Mike had already paddled toward the middle of the lake, catching up with the other two canoes.
He dug in, paddling hard, but quickly found that he’d angled away, moving toward the western shore.
“Hey there, Your Highness, how about heading this direction?” Mike’s voice carried across the lake, along with the sound of his laughter.
Roark blew out a breath as the kid at the bow turned to look at him. “Switch sides,” he said quietly.
Right. He knew that. But he put the paddle in on the other side and steered the canoe toward Amelia, correcting as he went.
He finally pulled up alongside her. “Getting my sea legs,” he said.
“No problem.” She bore nothing of criticism in her expression. He didn’t look at Mike.
Amelia pulled out a map. “This is where we’re going.” She indicated their destination on the map and then pointed out the indentation in the shoreline. “Thankfully, this side of the BWCA wasn’t affected by the fires. It’s a pretty paddle; then we’ll portage into Bearskin and finally head into Rose for lunch.”
“Off you go,” he said, his mood lightening.
She led them out, and the crew began to paddle to the portage across the lake. The quiet nudge of the canoe through the water, the bump of the paddle against the frame of the canoe, the call of loons in the still morning—he could find a sort of peace here.
From across the lake, probably from Amelia’s canoe, he picked up a song, this one familiar.
“‘Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise, Thou mine inheritance, now and always . . .’”
The hymn from Sunday’s service. It had found purchase in his heart, dredging up an old memory from his camp days in Russia. If he listened hard, he could still hear his father’s voice as he worked out the chords on his guitar. “Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art.”
Except God hadn’t been first in his father’s heart—not really. If He had, he never would have sold out his calling to grab a job co
-running Grandfather’s vast business.
But like father, like son, because Roark had his chance to serve God, to follow the High King of heaven, and had turned away at a full-out sprint.
He noticed Amelia had reached the portage, followed closely by Mike, then the two other canoes. He tried not to let his dismal skills horrify him as he pulled up last. Mike and Amelia had already hauled their canoes from the water, loading one onto two of the scouts and sending them on their way up the trail.
Mike propped the next canoe on two more scouts and took the third himself.
Which left a Duluth Pack and two canoes to divide between Amelia, Roark, and Skinny.
Roark’s eyes widened as Amelia positioned herself at the middle of the canoe, dragged it up her legs, then, with a hitch of her hips, hoisted it onto her shoulders. She balanced it with one hand, turning. “You okay here?”
He stared at her. “Seriously? You’re going to carry that?”
“Try to keep up.” She took off up the path.
Skinny grabbed the pack and followed her, which left Roark with the canoe. He shoved the paddles against the gunwales, then reached over and, mimicking Amelia’s movements, hauled it onto his shoulders.
He hadn’t expected the weight. Or the unwieldy balance. He turned the canoe to follow her and crashed the bow into a skinny birch. The sound bellowed across the lake and shivered into his bones. He straightened the canoe out, hoping no one heard, and headed up the path.
The portage trail wound through the woods, and he nearly tripped on a slew of roots, bare and winding like snakes across the path.
By the time he reached the output, sweat dripped down his back, his shoulders screaming. But he swung the canoe down and set it gently in the water.
Skinny sat on the Duluth Pack, arms folded. Amelia and the rest of the crew floated offshore, waiting.
“Sorry.”
“My mother can portage faster, dude.”
Roark refrained, barely, from pitching Skinny in as the lad took his position in the bow. Roark pushed them off, and Amelia and the gang started for the next portage while he managed to zigzag his way across the lake. By the time he arrived, only Amelia remained, waiting for him.
“You okay, Roark?” She sat in the sun, her fleece tied around her waist, the sleeves of her Evergreen staff shirt rolled up to her shoulders.
“Right as rain,” he said darkly.
She raised an eyebrow but stood and did her canoe-carrying ballet move. He wanted to load the canoe on Skinny, but the coward grabbed the Duluth Pack and took off at a run.
Nice.
The portage climbed a thousand steps up the side of a mountain—or seemed that way as sweat saturated his shirt, ran in rivulets down his face. But the view from the top could heal him, the lake stretching out before him, flanked by high cliffs. He heard laughter and the sound of rushing water and worked his way down the portage to find the scouts wading in the pool below a waterfall.
The canoes rested against a tree nearby. Amelia sat on a rock, capturing the scouts’ activities with her camera. Rainbows of sunlight arched in the spray of the waterfall.
Roark set his canoe down, crawled onto the rock next to her. “I am woefully out of my element here, love. I’m about as useful as a sieve in a rainstorm.”
She lowered her camera and laughed. “You’re doing fine. We’ll cross the lake, make lunch, and the boys will work on their knots. You can teach them a stevedore knot.”
He glanced at her. “That’s a sailing knot.”
“Or a knot we use for our tarps.” She caught him in her viewfinder. “Smile.”
He tried for something that didn’t look like a grimace.
“Oh, Roark, you look like you’re in pain,” she said, reviewing the shot, her hand over the screen to shade it.
“I’m in agony over my wretched paddling skills.”
She laughed and rounded up the Boy Scouts. “C’mon, guys. Let’s get going.”
They set up camp for lunch an hour later, at a clearing across Rose Lake. Roark managed to stay ahead of his own chagrin by building a fire, then boiling water for lunch.
After a less-than-gourmet meal of freeze-dried ravioli, during which Mike led the boys in a chorus of “On Top of Old Smokey,” Roark and Amelia taught the scouts the figure eight, carrick bend, bowline, bowline on a bight, and stevedore.
He was helping one of the scouts with a running bowline when Skinny came running over. “Something’s wrong with Big Mike!”
Amelia got to him first, Roark close behind. Mike sat with his hands over his chest. His breath came in hitches, his face contorted.
“Big Mike, you okay?” Amelia said.
He shook his head, leaning back. “My chest hurts.”
Roark crouched beside him. “Where does it hurt? Your arm, your neck?”
“Yeah.” His breathing became shallow. “I think I’m going to faint.”
Roark looked at Skinny. “Open the Duluth Pack and get out a couple ponchos.” He took the man’s pulse as Amelia helped retrieve the ponchos.
“Lay one out on the ground; cover him with the other.”
She spread out the first poncho, eased him back. “Is that better?”
Mike shook his head.
“Mike, have you had a history of heart trouble?” Roark asked. He pulled off his fleece jacket and draped it over the man, covering him with the second poncho. Then he gestured to another scout for the Duluth Pack and used it to prop up the man’s legs.
“No. Nothing. I mean, sure, I get a little indigestion every once in a while but . . .”
“Okay.” Roark patted his chest, then turned to Amelia, walking her a short distance away. “The fact that his pain hasn’t gone away has me worried. I’m not ready to say he’s having a heart attack—”
“Oh no! I was thinking that as you were talking to him. What are we going to do?”
He took her by the shoulders, feeling useful for the first time today. “We should get him some help. And as we both know, you’re the better paddler.”
“I can get cell reception at the top of the portage between Rose and Bearskin. I’ll call the Deep Haven EMS.”
“Good.” He wrapped an arm around her neck, pulled her to himself in a fast hug, pressed a kiss to her head. Then he let her go. “Hurry.”
He didn’t watch her paddle away, just mobilized the boys. “Let’s pack up camp and load the canoes.”
“Don’t let me die,” Mike said, his voice a whisper.
“Are you kidding me? Who’s going to teach me the next wretched verse of ‘On Top of Old Smokey’?” Please, God, did You hear him?
Only then did Roark glance up and spot Amelia halfway across the lake, on her knees in the middle of her canoe, paddling like she’d been born in the wild.
He checked Mike’s pulse again. Skinny came over, crying, clearly afraid.
Roark put his arm around him, directed him back to the campfire, where the other scouts sat, shaken.
“Hey, how about a song? Who knows ‘Do Your Ears Hang Low?’”
The next time he looked up, Amelia had reached shore, was scrambling out of her canoe and running up the trail to the top of the portage.
And right then Big Mike gasped, cried out, and fainted.
THE SKIES PARTED and unleashed a rumble of doom as Amelia ran up the trail to the apex of the portage, the highest point between Bearskin and Rose Lakes. She already had her cell phone out, watching the bars. Please.
Lightning, then droplets of rain dribbled down from the sky. She slipped on a root, landed hard on her hands and knees, splitting her lightweight pants. Pain speared through her wrist, but she shook it off as she scrambled to her feet and pushed harder up the portage steps.
Please, God, let Mike live. She’d known the leader—a fixture at Evergreen every summer, leading a fresh group of recruits out for a taste of wilderness—for most of her life. He couldn’t die on her watch.
On Roark’s watch.
Breathing hard
, she reached the top of the portage. The drizzle from the steely-gray clouds grew steady, heavier, becoming drops that slid down her hair, her back. She should have grabbed a poncho.
No, she should have paddled faster. She lifted her phone and found a bar. If she stood right here . . .
“Deep Haven Emergency Services.”
Seth. She took a breath, pushed every thought but Mike from her mind. “Seth, help. We have an emergency.”
“Amelia?”
“I’m on Rose Lake with the Boy Scouts and their leader might be having a heart attack. I need a medevac from the campsite across the lake from the falls.”
“Okay. Breathe. Is he still experiencing chest pains? What’s his pulse rate?”
“I don’t know. I had to paddle to the portage to get a signal.” She stepped out of the pocket, heard his voice cut off, and for a second she thought she’d lost him. “Seth!”
“Amelia, listen. The chopper is out. There was a drowning on Gunflint Lake, and they flew the victim to Duluth. You’ll have to bring him in.”
“I . . . I have a bunch of sixth graders. I can’t—”
“You left them alone?”
“No! Roark is with them.” She heard the quick intake of breath, but she couldn’t help it. “We need help. We can’t carry him out on our own.”
“Okay, Ames, breathe. I’m on my way. Sit tight. I’ll bring a team as fast as I can. But with the storm and the road conditions, it might be two hours.”
“Please hurry, Seth.” She hung up, the rain lashing over her now, soaking her to the bone. Please give Mike two hours, Lord.
She scrambled down the portage, nearly running, praying she didn’t slip as she jumped from root to root. A low-hanging branch slapped her face and she tasted blood on her lip. She fell again, sliding in the mud, but scrambled back up, ignoring the pain in her wrist.
She reached the canoe and pushed it onto the water, too aware of the lightning crackling in the sky as rain pelleted the surface of the lake. An aluminum canoe made for a terrific lightning rod on open water.
She ducked her head and dug in, pushing through the burn between her shoulder blades and in her upper arms and knees, grinding against the bottom of the canoe. Two hours, Lord. Two hours.
The Wonder of You Page 17