Gil Evachevski looked around the breakfast table at Rick’s Café as he came in. Carrie had told him something he wasn’t very happy about, and he was looking mostly for Bud Ellsberg, or a few other specific people, but none of them were there yet.

He selected a chair and sat down. Sharon came over with a cup of coffee. “What would you like for breakfast today, Gil?” she asked.

“What’s on special?”

“Grits,” she smiled.

“Hey, Gil,” Sam LeBlanc yelled from across the table. “What goes with grits?”

“I don’t know,” Evachevski replied.

“Pepto-Bismol.”

Several of the guys around the table smiled. LeBlanc had pulled this joke before, and they’d waited for the punch line.

“Just give me my usual, Sharon,” Gil said.

Down the table, Harold Hekkinan, the football coach, had been interrupted in the middle of a deer story. “I don’t know why,” the coach said, “but this guy the next ridge over from my deer camp decided somehow that he had to be the first one again to get a shot off the morning of deer opener. Every year, dark as the inside of a cow before dawn, while I’m trying to get out to my deer stand, you could hear him touch off a shot. It’s usually pretty quiet along about that time, and you could hear it for miles, and everybody’s thinking, now just who the hell could have eyes big enough to see anything to shoot at when it’s this dark?”

Several people around the table laughed again, and Hekkinan went on: “After doing this a few years, the guy starts to think that maybe one shot isn’t enough. That was the year he opened up with a string of firecrackers. Sounded like a machine gun going off. The year after that, he touches off a great big cannon cracker, the kind that go up a few hundred feet and explode like the Fourth of July.”

“Hard to top that,” someone said.

“Top it he did. The next year, along about a couple hours before dawn, there’s this hell of a big blast, shook the whole woods like we’d been nuked. Scared the hell out of every deer for miles. Well, that afternoon, I figured I had to see what the hell happened, so I drove over to the guy’s hunting camp. I got there, and he’d been spending the day cleaning up broken glass around the camp, fixing the walls and stuff. He couldn’t hear a thing. I could hear his ears ringing when I pulled into his driveway, and his driveway’s two miles long. Seems he touched off about ten sticks of dynamite, and at least he thought he overdid it a bit that time.”

“What did he do the next year?” LeBlanc asked. “A tactical nuke?”

“Don’t know,” Hekkinan admitted. “That was the year we went to the state playoffs, so I missed opening day. Guess maybe he learned his lesson, though.”

That gave George Webb a story to tell, about cleaning out a ditch on his farm when he was a kid, and that set the dynamite stories to going. It was amazing how many otherwise normal men around the breakfast table at Rick’s had stories about blowing things up. Gil just sat there, taking things in. He’d blown up more than everyone else, and he had his share of stories to tell, but most of them weren’t the kind to tell around the breakfast table at Rick’s; most of the ones he had told over the years had only been heard by other Berets.

But LeBlanc wouldn’t let him get away. “You must have blown up something when you were in the army, Gil.”

Gil thought that, if he had to tell a story, it might as well be an innocuous one. “I really missed deer hunting when I was in the army,” he said, not mentioning that he hadn’t been hunting at all since he got back from Vietnam. “We used to talk about it a lot. Bunch of us were sitting around back in the hills up above An Loc one day, and we decided it would be sporting to hunt deer with a four-deuce mortar. You know, set the guy with the tube back a couple of miles, and call in the fire with a radio.”

“That’s sporting?” LeBlanc said.

“Well, yeah,” Evachevski said. “You got to figure that you’re not going to be able to call in fire on a deer unless you’re real close to see it, so the guy on the tube has about as much chance of dropping the round on you as he does on the deer. Kind of evens the chances up, so to speak.”

“Well, yeah, I guess it would,” Webb said. “Did you know that the Chinese didn’t invent fireworks to make colorful displays?”

LeBlanc asked, “What did they make them for?”

“Obvious,” the newspaper editor replied. “Blowing up rural mailboxes.”

Gil was relieved to see Ellsberg come in and sit down next to him. As he waited to talk to Bud a little confidentially, he got even luckier in that Ryan Clark, Brent Clark’s boy, came in and sat down beside Ellsberg. He was another that Evachevski wanted to talk to. Gil signaled to Hekkinan to join the rump discussion.

“Carrie told me last night that Steve Augsberg is back.”

“How’s he taking it?” Hekkinan asked.

“Not real good,” Evachevski said. “Carrie said he almost punched out that young reporter George has working for him.”

Clark nodded, and added. “Not good. I had the scanner on last night, and I heard the cops picked him up. D and D. Took him home, though, not to jail.”

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 13, 1975

POLICE NEWS

Arrests

Walberg, James J., Camden, Aug. 6, DUIL.

Augsberg, Steven, Spearfish Lake, Aug. 7, Disorderly Conduct

Berryman, Timothy, Blair, Aug. 9, DUIL, DWLS.

Gil took Carrie to Germany on a honeymoon that lasted for three years. Right from the start, both they and everyone who knew them said that it was a perfect marriage. They were always happy with each other, in perfect tune with each other. They were always supportive and understanding with each other; They never had an argument. Carrie’s first words to Gil in the Spearfish Lake Bar and Grill that evening in the summer of 1961 was the sharpest she ever spoke to him.

What they did have, in quick succession, was two kids, Jennifer and Garth, both born in Germany. Carrie had picked up a basic knowledge of German at her mother’s knee, and Gil had a talent for languages; he had learned the language on a previous tour.

Even for a sergeant with his time in grade, housing on base in Germany was in short supply, so they rented a house on the German economy that was nicer than what they would have had on base anyway. In those days, the exchange rate made living off base a bargain, and they quickly made German friends. They were able to have the best of both worlds, on and off base, and their social life wasn’t restricted to Americans.

This made it simpler to do a few things that would have raised some eyebrows among the people on base, like visiting some of the nudist resorts on the north German coast and in the south of France. Gil was surprised at how quickly he found he liked the life style that he had picked up from his younger wife, who had, of course, grown up with it.

What was in a very practical sense a three-year honeymoon came to an end in the summer of 1964. The war in Vietnam was reaching a fever pitch, and Gil, a Green Beret intelligence sergeant, had been lucky to avoid getting sent there earlier. This time it couldn’t be put off.

They had a long leave and plenty of time to move the young family back to Spearfish Lake. Carrie’s father and mother invited her and the young children to move in with them, but Carrie could sense that it was a halfhearted invitation. Her father was then nearly sixty, though he didn’t seem that old, and her younger brothers and sisters already made the house seem full enough. Two young children would stir it up even more. Besides, she was reluctant to dilute the atmosphere of her own family that she and Gil had developed.

The colonel was able to work out a simple solution: The West Turtle Lake Club had grown over the years to where having a watchman around in the winter to keep an eye on the place was now a good idea. The watchman was usually a retiree who didn’t mind the isolation, but the last one had taken ill. Carrie took the job, and she and Gil moved into one of the rental cabins at the club.

Taking Gil to the airport in Camden was almost unbearable for Carrie. They had enjoyed three great and very memorable years together, and as he got on the plane, Carrie knew that there was a good chance that she’d never see him again. As she drove back to the West Turtle Lake Club, she was so lonely that she thought she would die.

The next twelve months were terrible.

It wasn’t bad at first. For the first month or so, there were still summer visitors at the club, and she could enjoy renewing friendships with people she’d grown up with; she could leave her children with friends and go play golf, or go swimming, or help out in Commons at the community center, to keep herself occupied.

But it was all too soon before the days grew cooler, and the water got too cold to swim, and there was less and less time when it was warm enough to be unclothed. The geese were already heading south, their honking as they passed overhead or stopped at the lake heralded the oncoming winter. With Labor Day, Commons shut down for the season, and the last visitors soon departed. Except for the rare weekend visitor in the next month, and a group who came up to the club for deer hunting in November, the West Turtle Lake Club would see no visitors and no nudism until the following year. Carrie, stuck with two small children in the little rental cabin, was lonelier than ever.

It was a long winter. Snow was on the ground before the deer hunters came, and it stayed all winter. The cabin wasn’t built for living in during the winter; it had no insulation, and it took the oil stove, a wood stove, and the fireplace to keep it warm enough to bear, even wearing woolens. It would have been impossible for her to cut enough wood to keep warm, so her father arranged for Brent Clark to have one of his trucks bring out an occasional load of firewood and wood scraps from the plywood mill to burn. Feeding the fires was a never-ending job.

Her father saw to it that the road was kept plowed out, so she could get to town, and he, or her mother, or sometimes Frank, or one of her friends from town visited most every day. Often, she ached to call someone up on the phone, but there were still no phones at the West Turtle Lake Club.

The nights were the worst, when the wind howled through the cracks in the summer cabin, making her feel more alone than ever, never getting used to missing the warm feeling of Gil beside her in their bed as she tried to go to sleep.

She wrote to Gil every day, trying to keep a positive viewpoint, telling him that she missed him terribly and was counting the days until he would return, but she was never able to cover up how miserable she really was without him.

Sometimes, though, it could take days to get the letters mailed, as howling snowstorms blasted the woods and the empty resort, and it would be a while before the driveway, or even the county road out front would be plowed out enough for the mail to go through.

Sitting alone in that cabin that winter, she began to realize the pain that her stepmother must have felt when the train pulled out with “D” Battery, nearly a quarter of a century before, and could hardly blame Donna for her reaction, except that Carrie loved Gil too much to hurt him like that. She was able to look back and see how much the loneliness had hurt Donna and how much Donna’s reaction had hurt her father those many years before, and she resolved to tough it out until Gil got back.

Carrie had happened to mention to Frank one day that she’d been thinking about Donna, and how it must have been for her, not even able to count the days until her man’s return, and Frank must have mentioned it to his mother, for one day, in the deepest part of the winter, Donna Clark made her only recorded visit to the West Turtle Lake Club.

It was a miserable day, and Carrie was feeling even lonelier than ever, when she saw a strange car pull up outside: Donna, bringing a pail of cookies and some new toys for the children and tea and sympathy for Carrie. The two women sat and talked for hours, about one thing and another, nothing very serious, but both of them learning that, while they might never be friends, they didn’t have to be enemies. When Donna left in the gathering darkness that afternoon, each of the women had a little more respect for the other.

With agonizing slowness, day followed day, and each of the days was a little longer with the return of the sun to the snow-filled forest. Many days went without a letter from Gil, even though Carrie checked the mailbox every day that she could get to it; then, all of a sudden, three or four or more would come, all at once. Gil never said too much about what he was doing, although Carrie could read between the lines and see that what he was doing was hot and miserable and dangerous, and perhaps it was best that she didn’t know more about what was happening there, so she wouldn’t have even more to worry about.

Even the return of the geese in the spring, the melting of the snow in the woods, and the breakup of the ice in the lake didn’t make the days go any more quickly or lessen Carrie’s worry about her husband. There finally came a warm spring day when Carrie was able to take her clothes off for a few minutes in a spot sheltered from the cool breeze, and lie in the sun in hopes that it would warm the cold inside her.

With spring, there came to be a few more people around. A crew from the Clark Construction Company arrived to build a new cottage, and she often took the children over to watch the men working, or to take them hot coffee. On nice weekends, visitors started showing up at the club again, and there were people to talk to, and Carrie began to think that there might be a chance that she might see Gil again.

One day in July, the camp was in full swing with its summer activities, when Frank drove out from town on one of his rare summertime visits, bringing a message for Carrie: “Get some clothes on, and I’ll take you to Camden.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Gil just called,” her half-brother said, “from San Francisco.”

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, July 22, 1965

GREEN BERET COMES HOME FROM VIETNAM

Sergeant First Class Gilbert Evachevski of Spearfish Lake arrived home last week following a tour of duty in Vietnam.

Sergeant Evachevski, a 1951 graduate of Spearfish Lake High School and a Korean War veteran, spent most of his time in Vietnam with the Seventh Special Forces Group, winning three medals for bravery in combat.

The Sergeant will be spending the next month getting acquainted with his wife, the former Carrie Matson, also of Spearfish Lake, and his two children, Jennifer, 3, and Garth, 2.

Sergeant Evachevski’s next duty station will be Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

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