“It means we have neighbors,” Jace said.
Danielle slapped the back of her bare neck, and when she removed her hand, there were five bloody smears on her palm. He’d forgotten to warn her about Alaska mosquitos.
Then Danielle turned her attention to his “chalet.” Jace looked at it too and saw his house for what it really was: a tiny, century-old, unpainted shack half hidden by weeds. He had tried to prepare her for rustic accommodations, but as she followed him through the warped doorway, he wondered if he had prepared her enough.
She wandered through the tilting rooms in silence and then turned to him with a look of hope in her pretty French eyes and said, “You are joking me, yes?”
Jace dropped their baggage on the living room floor. He wanted to fetch the rest of her stuff from the pickup before some bandit walked off with it, but the aroma of grilled meat coming from his new neighbors reminded him how hungry he was. So he led Danielle to the kitchen area to show her how to light the propane camping stove that served as his range. Of all the rooms, he had spent the most time and effort fixing up the kitchen area, installing shelves and a wash basin, a dish rack, and floral print curtains. He had debated with himself whether his attention to the kitchen was in any way sexist, but she was the one who had told him how much she enjoyed gourmet cooking. He surveyed his stock of canned goods and asked her if she liked beef stew and green beans. He laid the can opener on the countertop and pulled a skillet from a hook.
“I gotta go get the rest of your stuff,” he said and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in about forty-five minutes.”
An hour and a half later, when he returned, Danielle was standing in the same spot, and dinner was still in the cans. “I look,” she said, “and I cannot find the toilet room.”
“Ah, the toilet room,” he replied. He’d forgotten to tell her about the outhouse.
SG3 1.0
THEY SLEPT TOGETHER chastely, both of them too tired and stressed out to attempt lovemaking (though Jace was briefly up for it as he spooned against her silk-clad French hotness). He had stapled cardboard over the bedroom window to block out the midnight sunshine, and the neighbors graciously kept their noise level down.
Jace slept soundly and awoke in the cool hush of early morning to find Danielle still beside him. Her pretty face seemed completely relaxed. Her pretty breasts pressed against the sheer fabric of her chemise. Intermingling fragrances of unbathed bodies seeped from under the covers.
But Jace resisted the tug of his desire and slipped out of bed. Poor baby, she needed her rest. He eased the door shut behind him and tip-toed to the kitchen area to make a hearty breakfast of flapjacks, maple (flavored, high fructose corn) syrup, cantaloupe, and French Roast (instant) coffee. The Prophecy camp outside the kitchen window was stirring. One of the boys was heating water over the fire pit while older girls prepared to feed their little army.
Danielle was awake when he carried the breakfast tray (a scrap of plywood) to the bed (a queen size mattress on the floor). She was listening to the increasing commotion next door but seemed refreshed, and she smiled warmly when he entered. They discussed the day ahead while they ate. It was a work day for Jace. He supposed she’d appreciate a day to herself to settle in and unwind. If she wanted to stretch her legs, there were plenty of things to see in the little tourist town. He drew her a map and highlighted points of interest. There was the saloon, now part of the hotel, the mining-era museum, gift shops, and the St. Elias Mountain Center. The Mountain Center was a popular destination for culturally and ecologically sensitive young people and, if he wasn’t mistaken, its annual nature writing seminar was underway. Perhaps she’d like to go over there and write a poem?
Jace donned his ranger uniform, collected his gear, and kissed Danielle good-bye. He fetched his dirt bike from behind the shed, but before starting it, he decided to pay his new neighbors a friendly visit to talk about the brush pile in his drive. He found the old patriarch seated at a picnic table serenely sipping coffee as his noisy brood swirled around him. The children stopped in their tracks to stare at Jace. Jace politely introduced himself and wished Prophecy and his family a pleasant day. Prophecy nodded in response.
“Say, I wonder,” Jace went on, “could you tell your sons to kindly move that brush pile off my driveway?” As he waited for a reply, Jace uncrossed his arms so as not to appear hostile or overly aggressive.
After glancing at the brush pile, sipping his coffee, and glancing again at the brush pile, Poppy Prophecy raised unblinking grey eyes to Jace and said, “Hain’t on your property.”
Jace practically fell over in surprise. “What do you mean it hain’t on my property? Of course it’s on my property.” And he pointed to the large rock next to the driveway that marked the corner of his lot.
Prophecy only shook his head and pointed to a second rock. “Orion tol’ me that rock yonder is the corner. He says your driveway encroaches on his lot and he wants you to move it.”
“Move my driveway?” Jace said, stunned by the absurdity of the idea. “That’s crazy. My drive is certainly not encroaching. That’s the legal corner, and that —” he said, pointing to a tree at the rear of the lot — “is the . . . is the . . .” The tree was gone, cut down with the rest. Anger flared in him. “You fuckin’ cut down my tree!”
In an instant, the three older boys were surrounding him. The eldest, the one who had bedeviled the motorcoach driver, was tall and dark. The middle one was heavyset and gentle looking. And the fiery youngest one was wearing a patch over his right eye. If Ben Cartwright of the Ponderosa and his sons had evil twins, these Prophecys could be them. Jace waved his arm at his corner rock and loudly asserted his ownership. Then he said, “I have to go now, but you’d better rectify the situation before I return.” He stalked back to his bike and started it. Rectify, he thought. Did I just use a ten-dollar word with that old hillbilly?
Jace spent the day inspecting a beaver dam that threatened to undo a couple of summers’ worth of salmon stream restoration work near Round Lake. He was well out of cell phone range and unable to call Beehymer. When he returned to the ranger station at Caldecott, he learned that Beehymer had left town that morning, and no one knew when he’d return. After work, Jace wanted to check on Danielle to see how she was doing, but he couldn’t stop stewing over that big pile of brush next to his drive, and he rode out Stubborn Mountain Trail to Dell Bunyan’s place. Pastor Bunyan was a resident of long tenure and one of the most level-headed locals Jace had met (though Bunyan believed in miracles and preached from the pulpit that President Obama was a crypto-Muslim). Bunyan welcomed him inside and listened sympathetically to his story. When Jace was finished, Bunyan told him that, with the recorder’s office fire, everyone in McHardy was pretty much in the same boat.
“Wait. What?” Jace said. “Fire?”
“Chitina used to have the recorder’s office for this district, but it burned to the ground in 1961, and all property records of the original town were lost. Add to that the sloppy way they laid out McHardy in 1910, and no one’s really sure where all the boundaries are. Or, for that matter, who the legal owners are. When the copper mine closed in 1938, people just kinda pulled up stakes and left everything behind. Do you have a warranty or a quit claim deed to that lot?”
“I’m not sure. What’s the difference?”
“I’ll bet it’s a quit claim deed. That means Beehymer’s selling you his interest in the property, if he has any, but he’s not guaranteeing anything. Some other person might show up and claim he’s the owner.”
“Huh?”
“The town’s been trying for decades to scrape up the money to have the entire townsite re-platted, but Orion’s against it, so nothing’s happened yet. But don’t be too concerned. Odds are no one else has a better legal claim to your lot than you do, wherever your lot actually is.”
No wonder Beehymer hadn’t been able to find another buyer.
As they talked, Bunyan’s eyes seemed to mist up, and he had t
o blow his nose. “In the end,” Bunyan concluded, “we must fall back on the Bible’s admonition to love our neighbors in order to keep the peace in McHardy. And frankly, you have nothing to worry about. Mr. Prophecy is a Christian man; he’ll do the right thing. And just consider his position for a moment. With all those mouths to feed and no roof over their heads, he’s in a pickle. Cut him a little slack, ranger, and God will reward you for your patience.” He wiped a tear from his eye.
When Jace arrived home, he found his drive now completely blocked with brush. If it even was his drive, or his lot, or his house. As he detoured his bike around the brush to the shed, something inside him snapped. Leaping off his bike, he started at one end of the pile and began flinging the brush back into Prophecy’s yard. He worked up a sweat in no time, and the three evil Cartwright twins came over. They didn’t speak or interfere but only watched with smug expressions on their dopey faces. Before long, Danielle came out of the house to watch too. To Jace’s surprise she was still wearing her skimpy bathrobe from the morning, and to his delight the boys were scandalized enough to avoid looking at her. When she came off the porch to speak to him, they left.
“Hi, honey,” he said, tossing a young aspen across the line. “How was your day?”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice. She didn’t seem okay. Her hair was a mess, and it looked as though she’d been crying.
“Did you see the town?”
“Non.”
“Check out the Mountain Center?”
“Non.”
“The museum?”
“Non.”
It occurred to Jace that she’d spent the entire day in bed. “Go inside and get dressed, and I’ll take you for a ride, okay?”
She shrugged her delicate shoulders and shuffled back inside.
Jace took her to the Caldecott Glacier Lodge in the mill town to sample the finest dining in a thousand square miles (2,590 sq. km). Then he took her to a lookout above the town where a breeze kept the mosquitos away. He pointed out two bald eagles riding updrafts next to Eureka Ridge. Bald eagles, of course, did not resonate in the European’s imagination, and Jace explained to her their significance to Americans and the threat of their extinction in the last century due to poaching and DDT use. He told her the names of the mountain peaks and glaciers surrounding them. He talked about the geology, wildlife (but not bears!) and human history of the area. He explained the purpose of the fourteen-story ore concentration mill beneath them that the park service was restoring. Jace was a backcountry ranger, not an interpretive one, but he had soaked up enough local lore to impress a visitor. Danielle’s spirits lifted a bit, and by the time they returned home she was smiling again. The brush Jace had flung across the property line had not been re-stacked on his drive, and so he was smiling too.
That evening, after sharing a bottle of wine, Jace heated up many gallons of water so that they could each bathe in the galvanized basin he used for a tub. One thing led to another, and soon they were in bed making love. It started out tender and exploratory but gradually grew louder and more frenzied. Loud and frenzied enough, Jace hoped, to reach the Prophecy camp. And, in fact, as he brayed the arrival of his climax, a couple of fiddles next door struck up a bluegrass tune. Afterward, as they lay in each other’s arms, they listened to the music and agreed that those people were quite fine folk musicians.
THE NEXT DAY Jace took Danielle back to Caldecott where he set her up with a computer in the ranger office while he worked, and she spent the day catching up with her friends on Facebook and skyping with her son in Toulouse. After work, Jace took her to the lodge again for dinner, and things were looking so promising that he broached the idea of camping that night on the glacier. She agreed to go along though she didn’t seem too enthused by the idea. After dinner he borrowed camping and hiking gear from the backcountry storeroom. They hiked up to Bough Glacier where it collided and merged with the Caldecott Glacier. Although it was after midnight, the sky was as bright as noon. They crossed a little open ice with crampons on their boots and skirted a gaping crevasse, pausing to peer down its cyan-blue throat. He chose a campsite on top of gravel-encrusted ice and pitched the tent. He had packed in a few pieces of firewood, and in no time at all he had a cheery little campfire going. They sat side by side on a ground pad next to the fire and draped a sleeping bag over their shoulders. The honeyed fragrance of wildflowers drifted over the ice. The natural world in all its primordial glory stretched out below them. There were no buildings or roads in sight. No power lines, airplanes, or radio towers. No sign of humanity whatsoever. It was just them and the unsullied Earth.
It was the perfect occasion for a joint, so Jace pulled one out of his pocket and offered it to Danielle. He lit it for her, and she took two tiny sips before passing it back to him. A couple of minutes later, she scrambled to her feet and went into the tent.
Yes! Sex on a glacier.
But when he joined her in the tent, she was wrapped up and trembling in a fetal position.
“What’s wrong?” he said, alarmed. She told him what was wrong in rapid-fire French, of which he understood not a word. So he covered her with her sleeping bag and lay next to her. In a little while she switched to English.
“It is too much.”
“What’s too much?”
She waved her hand at the world beyond the tent flap. “Too much crazy people. Too much mountains! Too much . . . outside.”
It was the dope. She was a little freaked.
“Well, then, it’s a good thing we have a tent,” he said, “so we can stay inside.” He took off his boots and helped her with hers. He placed the boots outside the tent and zipped up the flap, shutting out all that overwhelming space. She removed her trousers and slid into her bag and zipped it up to her chin. He undressed and got into his own bag next to hers. The midnight sun, shining through the thin tent fabric, turned everything orange.
“Don’t worry, Danielle. We’re perfectly safe here.”
“Merci,” she said.
“De nada.”
He gazed at the back of her head for a long time. A breeze rose to gently buffet the side of the tent. They were both too wide-awake to sleep. Eventually, she unzipped her bag and said, “You like to come here?”
She didn’t need to ask twice. Sex on a glacier! Sex on a glacier! He unzipped his bag and draped it over the both of them. He helped her off with her shirt and bra. Gaa, he loved her breasts. Firm little handfuls. Her nipples swelled when he teased them, and her breath deepened. She seemed to especially like stroking his cock, and he was out of his undies before she was out of hers. The dope intensified every touch. He had a log between his legs, and she was scooting her hips beneath him to receive it when there was a sound like a rifle shot. It was distant but sharp.
She froze. “What was that?”
“Nothing. Just the ice buckling.”
“A crevasse opens?”
“No, no. The glacier moves about a half meter a day, so it grinds and bends, and cracks all the time. Nothing to worry about.”
Easier said than done. He entered her at last, but she no longer seemed to be interested. He tried to rekindle the mood, but she said, “Just hurry.”
He was at the point of no return anyway, so he came, but it was a fizzle and a disappointment, and she immediately slipped him out of her. She retrieved her clothes and began to dress.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Take me away from this place.”
“Right now?”
SG4 1.0
IT WAS NEARLY 3:00 a.m. by the time they returned to the house on Lucky Strike Lane. He thought they could still salvage the warm feelings of the day, but she said she wanted to sleep alone, so he slept on the couch in the living room. Not three hours later he was awakened by the sound of digging outside the house. He went to the kitchen window but couldn’t find the source. He peeked into the bedroom and saw that the noise had awakened Danielle as well. It sounded louder in the bedroom, in fact. He pulle
d cardboard from the window, and right outside was the eldest Prophecy boy digging a pit. Jace’s anger flared, and he tried opening the window. But the sash was glued shut with a century’s worth of dried paint. So Jace threw on some pants and boots and stormed out and around the side of the house.
“What the fuck you think you’re doing?” he demanded of the man.
In a flawless imitation of his father, the man looked at the pit under his feet and then at the shovel in his hand and then at the pit again before looking at Jace and saying, “Why, I’m digging a hole.”
“I can see you’re digging a hole, you ape.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
Jace trembled with fury. “Get off my land this instant! You’re trespassing.”
“You’re the one doing the trespassing, son. Like Poppy tole you yesterday, the property line goes right through here. This is our land. We need a latrine, and Poppy says this is a good spot for it.”
“I don’t give a fuck what Poppy says.” Jace tried to snatch the shovel out of the evil Cartwright twin’s hand but he tossed it to evil twin Hoss, who had materialized at his side. Evil twin Little Joe was there too. Jace didn’t waste his breath on them but marched to his shed and retrieved his own shovel. He backfilled the pit while they watched. They laughed and went back to their camp.
DANIELLE DIDN’T LEAVE the house for the next three days, not even to visit the outhouse. Jace couldn’t entice her outdoors at all, not to go to dinner or take a walk or visit the mill town. He put together a honey bucket arrangement with a plastic pail and old toilet seat in her bedroom, and he dutifully emptied it each morning and evening. He spent as much time with her as he could manage. He left her his iPad, and she whiled away her days on it. She allowed him to sleep with her, but she was in no mood for sex, and he didn’t push it.
Meanwhile, Jace deployed shark repellent against the neighbors by frequently urinating next to the side of his house. He kept his back to the camp, and he wasn’t visible from either the bedroom or kitchen window, so it wasn’t as if he was exposing himself. He just spread his legs, unzipped, and let it splash, and that seemed to be enough. The Prophecys rearranged their tarps and tents to create a wall of privacy between him and themselves. Score one for Ranger Rick.
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