| |
I had loved Stehekin the minute I had stepped off the ferry three years earlier. The partially hidden rustic houses charmed me with their tangled wildflower gardens and neat rows of planted vegetables. Old cars parked at the landing and in driveways made me feel as if I had weirdly landed in Cuba. As in Cuba, once a car arrived in Stehekin, it rarely left. It was too expensive to ship vehicles out, so residents kept old rattletraps running long past what should have been the end of automobile life.
But most of all, it was the majestic Cascade Mountains that rose from the Stehekin Valley to dizzying heights that captured my heart. That, and the knowledge that over five hundred thousand acres of wilderness National Park lay between the lake and mountaintops.
It was so easy to breathe here. The clean, fresh pine-scented air surprised my lungs, as if they had never experienced oxygen before.
When I’d hired on, Randy Sanders, the owner, had still been running the show. A larger than life, barrel-chested man with a craggy, handsome face and a mane of gray hair, he had interviewed me in late autumn, inviting me into his office, which I now occupied. “People either love it here or can’t wait to get the hell on the boat back to civilization,” he had thundered as I sat, cowed, blood pounding in my ears. “Which will you be?”
I looked him square in his clear, blue eyes. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I’ve been here for a while. What I do know is that now, in this moment in time, there’s no place on earth I’d rather be.”
He looked skeptical, but it was the most honest answer I could give him. The Stehekin Wilderness Ranch had been in his family for two generations, built from nothing in the middle of the forest as off-grid as you could go. He had grown up here, called the place home. He’d gone to school in the one-room schoolhouse that all the Stehekin kids attend through the eighth grade. Then he’s been forced to go downlake to Chelan to graduate high school. And that’s the farthest place from home he’d ever lived. He made it clear that he had been hoping his son West would be taking over the reins of the place, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. Randy was ready to ease into retirement, and I had a great resume, so he hired me and trained me.
I followed him around the Ranch like an adopted puppy, afraid if I lost sight of him, I would be orphaned again. He taught me everything. The restaurant, the rooms, the generator-dependent power grid, the marketing, transportation, the horses, and trail riding. The HR paperwork was already second nature to me, which was the main reason he’d hired me. I had been curious about West’s mom, Randy’s wife, who was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t feel like I could ask such a personal question and nobody, not Randy or West, or any of the staff I met, ever volunteered any information.
***
Luka didn’t show for dinner that night. Probably sleeping off the long trip.
The next morning, he knocked on my office door promptly at nine.
“Come in.” I stood, for some unfathomable reason.
He looked refreshed. Freshly showered and shaved, hair combed, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and boots.
“Good morning,” he said and closed the door behind him.
“Good morning. I hope you caught up on your sleep. Did you get some breakfast?”
“I slept well, thank you,” he said in his Eastern European accent. “And yes, the breakfast was good. Kathy is a good cook.”
“Kathy’s not the cook,” I corrected him and indicated a chair in front of my desk. “She’s the manager. Sam is the cook.”
“Ah. Sam is a good cook, then.” He sat.
“Would you like a cup of coffee? Starbucks Sumatra in the pot.” The promise of morning coffee is what got me out of bed every morning. I held up my own half empty mug.
“No, thanks. I had my fill with breakfast.”
I took a sip. “Where did West take you yesterday on your tour?”
“The recreation building and a children’s playground. The guest cabins. The old trapper cabin full of furs, like bear and cougar and beaver and fox. It was like a museum. We drove down to the landing, to the boathouse where the kayaks are kept. And back up here to the horse stables.”
“What do you think of the place?”
“It’s impressive. So big. So many things for people to do to amuse themselves.” He sounded serious, as if he were taking an exam and searching for the correct answers.
“And what did you like the best?”
He studied me for a few moments, until I felt like I was the one taking an exam, and I struggled to sit still in my chair.
“The beautiful horses,” he said at last. “The Norwegian fjords.”
His answer caught me off guard. I guess I had expected him to say the boathouse, or the lake, which was spectacular, since his sport is kayaking. “I like them, too,” I said quietly. “They’re such gentle, sturdy creatures.” I lost my train of thought, thinking about the horses I loved so much.
“You said I have more paperwork to fill out?”
Embarrassed by my wandering mind, I handed him the form on a clipboard and a pen. “Fill this out and I’ll get you in the system so you can get paid. Also, I need to make a copy of your employment authorization card.”
“My what?”
“Your work permit.”
He fished the permit from his shirt pocket and started filling out the form while I made a copy of the card.
I looked over his completed paperwork. “You worked at Elektrodalm...”
“Elektrodalmacija in Split. The local power utility.”
“We have a number of electrical projects you can start on here.”
He smirked, the first time I’d seen anything except a neutral or pleasant expression.
“What?”
His face returned to the mask of neutrality. “Nothing. I worked on high-voltage transmission in my job. But don’t worry. I can do the small stuff, too.” He handed over his paperwork.
I stood and grabbed my down coat. “There’s a lot of small stuff, like light switches that don’t work, blown circuit breakers, that sort of thing. But most important is generator maintenance. Our sole source of power is a diesel generator, and we depend on it twenty-four seven. Let me show you.”
He followed me out the door. Outside, the cold and crisp morning air, thick with the scent of pine, embraced us. A fine glistening of moisture clung to ferns, grass, fir, and pine trees. We walked through the trees and stopped at a building with siding of worn gray wood, set back and away from the Ranch. It lacked the usual ranch decor of a log cabin. It looked like what it was—a utility storage building—invisible to guests. I pulled a key off my ring and opened the door, then handed the key to him. “This is where we keep tools and supplies. Everything you need. We’re a long way from the hardware store so we keep a lot of stuff up here.”
I switched on the lights, a few bare bulbs hanging from wire strung along the ceiling, and we wandered up and down rows of countertops laden with construction and electrical materials and cabinets with labeled drawers. Shelves were covered with saws, screwdrivers, electrical tape, wrenches, and every practical tool one might need to fix everything from a propane heater to a toilet. Hammers and axes and miscellaneous tools hung from hooks on the walls.
“The key is yours to keep,” I said. “Feel free to take whatever you need to do your work. I’ll show you the first cabin that needs attention, and then the generator building.”
When we left, he locked the door firmly behind us and we headed toward the guest cabins.
“How long did you work for the power utility?” I asked.
“Seven years.”
“Even during the war?” Talking about the war was inevitable, although my ignorance about it would quickly become apparent. I had no idea how he would react, and I peeked sideways to watch him.
A cloud passed over his face, but he answered. “Yes, even during the war.”
“It must have been dreadful,” I said lamely.
He didn’t even glance my way but answered in a tight voice. “Of course. War is horror.”
We spent the next couple of hours looking at projects that needed attention, then visited the generator building, another simple building of weathered gray wood, set even farther back in the woods. After the tour, he seemed anxious to be off on his own.
I didn’t see Luka at lunch, but he showed up for dinner, seeking out Sam to thank him for his food before finding a spot in the corner to eat with quiet concentration.
Kathy raised her eyebrows at me, as if to ask what was wrong with him. I shrugged and took my own dinner to the opposite end of the room.
When I crawled into bed that night, his words stayed with me. War is horror. The anguish I felt over the events in my life didn’t stack up to living through a long, brutal war. What had he seen, what had he done, or what had been done to him? Sleep eluded me for a long, long time.
