| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
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| Wes Boyd's Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Chapter 26
Duane was glad to see Michelle once again waiting on the bank at Diamond Creek. There was an especially good reason for this: the last of the ten short trips of the season had launched in the early part of the month, so the short breaks and quick turnarounds were done – done not only for the season, but for good. The shorter trips next season were going to be welcome indeed. The break this time wouldn’t be two, or three, or four days, but eleven. The last trip of the season was a hangover from the old three-crew schedule that Canyon Tours had followed for years. Once the last short trip of the season had launched, they fell back to the old system of launching every Monday, and since three trips were already on the river when the Gold Team made it in, they’d have to wait a while before they launched again.
This was very welcome to Duane. All season long he’d been rushing around on the breaks, trying to support Michelle and keep his own sanity in the process. The prospect of the rough season hadn’t really bothered him in the days when she’d been on the river with him, but since they’d been separated most of the time for several months it had been very trying at times. Now there would be time to kick back and enjoy himself, time to work with her to settle a few issues they’d kicked around all summer, time to talk with her about where they were going, and what they were going to be doing.
When they reached Diamond this trip, Michelle’s pregnancy was really starting to show. Duane had been noticing it the last couple breaks, but it took his familiarity with her body to see it. No longer; she was six months or so along, give or take a few days, which meant that in another three he was going to be a father. Now, maybe he could give her the comfort and support he wished he’d been able to give her since she’d had to leave the river.
“Good grief,” Duane said. “I can’t believe that I’m actually going to get to spend a few days with you, and not have to get ready for the next trip before I’ve recovered from the last one. We didn’t even get to do that last fall. We just got off the river, went up to your folk’s place to exchange our stuff, and were on the road for Spearfish Lake the next day.”
“Well, I’m going to have to come back down here Sunday to load up for the Blue Team launch on Monday, but that’s not as big a deal as it once was. Then just one more loading for your next launch, and then I’ll be able to work full time in the gift shop and not have to drive back and forth so much.”
“Yeah, I’d all but forgotten about that,” Duane said. “Your folks been working you pretty hard?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “They lost a lot of their summer help when the kids had to go back to school. Things slow down a lot after Labor Day, but they lost more help than they did business. I’m afraid there are going to be days when I’m just going to have to leave you at home and go to work.”
“Oh, well,” he smiled. “It’ll be nice to watch you head out to work while I sleep in for once. We sure haven’t had much of that this season.”
“You’ll probably go nuts from boredom.”
“Most likely,” he smiled. “By the middle of the week, I’ll probably be over there helping out, washing windows or something. If that happens, I don’t mind. At least I’ll be with you.”
Michelle got it almost right.
It was very dull for Duane to be just sitting around the Rawson house during the day. For months he had looked forward to spending some quality time alone with Michelle, just to reconnect with her after the weeks out on the river. Ever since their wedding two months before, he had been looking forward to this eleven-day break as their first chance to start to put their lives together in the face of the new realities. Now that it had come for him, she was the one working, leaving him back at the house to see if there was anything interesting in the books in the bookcase, or to watch daytime TV.
They got to spend a lot more time together than they had managed the previous weekends he’d been off, but the store was still a twelve-hour-day proposition, seven days a week – and it was shorthanded. In spite of Pat and Rachel cutting them a lot of slack, Michelle still had to spend a lot of time over there. Very quickly the long break that should have been such a respite turned into seemingly endless tedium. Duane made it till Tuesday before he headed over to the shop, went into the back room where they kept the cleaning supplies, and got out the window-washing stuff.
He really wasn’t very clued into the operation of the place, but Pat, Rachel, and Michelle always kept a list of various chores that needed to get done, and there had been no time for them to do everything. These involved things like dusting light fixtures, moving some boxes, and fixing a rotating display that wouldn’t turn. Duane didn’t mind; at least he was more or less spending time with his wife, even if it wasn’t the intimate quality time that he felt they both needed so badly.
The list was longer than a single day’s worth of piddle projects, and he was over there again the next morning trying to make himself useful. Along in the middle of the morning a customer was quizzing Rachel about one of the knives in the MacRae Knife display, and after the third or fourth question, he was called over to help. “Duane here knows a lot more about these than I do,” she explained to the customer. “It’s his father and stepmother who make them.”
“These aren’t made in China, are they?” the man asked suspiciously.
“No, sir,” Duane replied. “They’re made in my father’s shop in Bradford, Michigan. Dad makes an effort to use American materials whenever possible, and he almost always manages to find what he needs. There’s a particular type of steel that he uses for some knives, not this one, that isn’t available from this country, so he has to order it out of India.”
“Well, it’s good to see some real American craftsmanship,” the man replied in a grumpy voice. “It seems like everything is being made in China these days.”
“Not everything,” Duane said. “It’s just that people have a tendency to bottom feed price, so that means that the cheap junk drives out the quality merchandise. These days quality isn’t important anymore, except to people who respect quality. The price tag on this knife is high, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But it reflects a great deal of knowledge, skill, and craftsmanship, not only in the making of it, but in learning of all those skills in the first place. Dad has been developing those processes longer than I’ve been alive, and a knife like this represents them all.”
“It’s very impressive,” the man, said, a little more brightly. He scrutinized the knife again, and then said, “Well, all right. Anything to promote American craftsmanship.”
A few minutes later the man was walking out the door with an $895 knife in a shopping bag. “Not bad for your first sale around here,” Michelle smirked. “Keep that up and I think Dad is going to want you hanging around here more.”
“Hey, I said nothing but the truth.”
“I know you did, but you said it in such a way that it really was good salesmanship,” Rachel pointed out.
Duane was about to make a wisecrack to the effect that the next thing they’d have him doing was selling used cars, but just then the phone rang and Rachel went to answer it. In a moment, she said, “Yes, he’s here.” She put the phone to her shoulder and said, “Duane, it’s Sally Ryder over at the park headquarters. She wants to talk to you.”
“What for?” Duane asked, a little surprised. He couldn’t think of anything anyone at the park headquarters would want to talk to him about, unless maybe the Bitch From Hell many trips back had filed a complaint and it had taken this long to work its way through the system.
“She didn’t say,” Rachel replied, holding out the phone.
“Hi,” he said after taking it. “This is Duane MacRae. Can I help you?”
“Good morning, Mr. MacRae,” the woman on the phone said. “Mr. Horwath told me to track you down. He’d like to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“I suppose I could come right over,” he replied. “It’d take ten or fifteen minutes probably.”
“Good, I’ll let him know. See you in a few minutes.”
Duane hung up the phone and said, “Well, this is where the chickens probably come home to roost.”
“What’s that, Duane?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, a few trips ago we had a really lousy customer whose main joy in life was complaining about everything, and my guess is one of her complaints finally worked its way up to the park headquarters. I might as well go face the music.”
“Maybe that’s not it,” Michelle said hopefully.
“Yeah, I can hope,” Duane said, thinking that with the slacks and a sport shirt he had on that were appropriate for the shop, he ought to look reasonably decent for meeting with the park superintendent. He headed outside and got into the Jeep for the short drive over to the park headquarters. It wasn’t all that far, but he’d rarely used the vehicle in the past year – he was still driving on the same tank of gas he’d bought more than a year ago. It probably was way past time to be thinking about selling it, he thought; it might go a long way toward meeting the upcoming doctor and hospital bills.
He parked the Jeep in a visitor parking space at the park headquarters and went inside. He soon found Mrs. Ryder – who turned out to be the woman who had played the clarinet at the wedding and had commented at the reception about watching Michelle grow up. “Hi, Duane,” she said. “How’s life off the river?”
“Still getting used to it,” he said. “What’s this all about?”
“I’ll let Mr. Horwath explain,” Mrs. Ryder said, and nodded at an open door off to one side. “You can go right in.”
Still curious as to what this was about but pretty sure it was a customer complaint, he walked into the park superintendent’s office. “Mr. Horwath?” he asked quietly.
“Well, good morning, Duane,” the park superintendent smiled. “I was surprised that Sally was able to find you so easily.”
“I’m on an off week, and there’s not a lot to do, so I was helping out at the gift shop.”
“That’s what Pat was saying when we had coffee this morning,” the superintendent said. “You know, I’m still glad that I let Pat talk our little chamber music group into playing at your wedding. That was a powerful experience. Sometimes even we park people get a little too used to this place and tend to ignore the majesty of it. I think that reminded all of us about what this place is about.”
“It was a powerful experience for me, too,” Duane admitted. “You don’t forget something like that easily. So what can I do for you today?”
“Well, it seems that we’ve had a staffing problem just come up, and after I had coffee with your father-in-law this morning it struck me that you might be the solution to it.”
“A staffing problem?” he asked. Apparently this wasn’t about the Bitch from Hell after all!
“Right,” the older man smiled. “I don’t want to go into the background of it, but retirements and transfers have opened up a position that we’re having difficulty filling. To make a long story short, we need a specialist in recreational river use, but with other background that would be useful to us. We thought we had a candidate lined up. He wasn’t a particularly good fit from our viewpoint but had the minimum qualifications. Apparently he didn’t think he was a good fit here either, because yesterday we found out that he wound up taking a position elsewhere.”
“So you’re back to the beginning,” Duane nodded, beginning to wonder if this discussion was really going where it looked to be headed. That was about the last thing he’d been expecting!
“Not quite,” Horwath smiled. “After I had coffee with Pat this morning, I remembered him saying that at one time you’d been looking for a position with the Park Service.”
“It’s been a while,” Duane admitted, realizing that this was indeed a job interview! He kept his cool as he replied, “That was my goal when I went to college, and part of the reason I majored in environmental conservation and minored in criminal justice.”
“I saw that,” Horwath grinned. “After I got over here I had Sally pull your application from some years ago. We really ought to have you update your resumé, since it’s getting a little dated.”
“There’s not really a lot new,” Duane said. “I don’t recall when I filed that one for this park, and I’m even surprised you still had it on file. But it must have been the first year or two that I was working on the river, so I’ve got several more years’ river experience, and have been a trip leader for Canyon Tours for three years now.”
“And have also run the Iditarod race in your off time, not to mention a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail backwards just before starting with Canyon Tours,” Horwath smiled. “All that tells me that you have an experience and an understanding of wilderness issues and living that our former candidate lacked. Your experience as a trip leader on the river here is especially pertinent, since it gives a practical viewpoint in an area where we’ve had several ongoing issues. Now, here’s the problem. In anticipation of our other candidate coming aboard, we had a slot saved for him in the NPS orientation class starting next Monday at the Albright Training Center up the street. It’s a two-month session that covers a number of areas of importance for the National Park Service. It’s not an absolute requirement for the job, but would be valuable to both us and to you. Would you be interested taking the job here at Grand Canyon National Park and getting into that class?”
“This is a full-time position, not seasonal, right?”
“That’s correct,” Horwath nodded. “Full time, full benefits, and with quarters here in the village as well.” He named a pay scale that was considerably more than Duane was making as a Canyon Tours trip leader.
“Mr. Horwath,” Duane said. “I’m about ninety-nine percent ready to say yes, but to be fair I probably ought to run it past my wife. I can probably let you know in a couple hours.”
“That’ll be fine,” the park superintendent said. “And say hello to her from me, would you please?”
The conversation went on for a few more minutes before Duane headed back out to the Jeep, with his knees literally shaking. For years he had nourished the dream of working for the Park Service. However, other things had happened in his life, and for practical purposes he had all but forgotten the dream. Now, out of the wild blue sky of the Grand Canyon, here it was!
He drove back over to the gift store and walked in to see Michelle was working at the cashier’s station. “So,” she said. “Was it anything important?”
“Yeah,” he said, still awed with the turn of events in his life in the last fifteen minutes – almost as huge a turn of events as the words Michelle had told him down at Phantom Ranch back in early June. “Michelle, we have to talk.”
“Mom can watch the register for a few minutes,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s go outside and check out the view.”
They walked across the street to one of the overlooks of the Grand Canyon, which yawned big and vast in front of them. “So,” she said finally, “you’re being awful mysterious. What happened?”
“They want me to be a ranger,” he said flatly. “Mostly working river and backcountry issues.”
“Duane!” she said, both shocked and smiling at the same time. “You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’ll have to spend some time out in the field, both on and off the river, but I should be working over at the headquarters most of the time. The pay is awesome, and it includes quarters here in the village.”
“How did this happen? Was this some more of Dad’s pulling strings?”
“To hear Mr. Horwath say it, no. That doesn’t mean that your father didn’t get him thinking, though.” He went on to explain a little about the position that the superintendent had been talking about. “It sounds like I’m a pretty good fit,” he ended.
“Then I’d say go for it,” she said. “But are you sure you want to give up being a trip leader for Al?”
“There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to do it,” he admitted. “I’ve said for years that the boatmen get the fun and the rangers have to do the dirty work. Well, as far as I’m concerned this summer hasn’t been all that much fun without you. On top of that, you’ve heard me say that while this Canyon Tours job is fine if I don’t have any family responsibilities, I have them now, and they’re going to be increasing in the future. I’ve about decided I’m ready to leave the river after this season is over with, Michelle. I’ve been thinking about it a hell of a lot since we got married. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to leave the river, but if I have to leave, this is the perfect opportunity.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “God, I hated to have to give up the river this summer, and I’d have felt a lot better if you’d been with me, but I knew it couldn’t be that way. Look, you know it was my dream to be a boatman, and I managed that dream for over ten years. Duane, I miss every day I’m not on the river, and miss it a lot. I’m not going to give up the dream, but I realize it could be a long time before I could be a regular boatman again. Maybe never.”
“You run that risk,” he said. “But then you have to think about someone like Karin, who has to be pushing sixty. She’s a part-time boatman who gets out on two or three trips a year, and she enjoys the living hell out of every minute of each of them.”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” she said. “I suppose I could get in one or two trips a year if we can rig baby-sitting around, maybe a little more than that after the kid gets in school. But maybe by then I’ll be so wrapped up in the gift shop that I won’t have the time for it. It’s what happened to Mom, you know. She planned on getting in a couple trips a season after Mike and I were in school, but she just couldn’t get away.”
“Maybe we’re a little more aware of the trap and will be able to plan accordingly,” he said. “But this resolves a lot of what I’ve been worried about all summer. It’s all right with you, then?”
“How could it not be all right?” she smiled. “My husband gets to live his dream, and I get to live with my family here in the village. With Mom and Dad here, this is really the best place for us to be with small children, and I was worried that we were going to have to move to Flag or something. Like Sally said back at the reception, those of us who live here permanently are sort of an extended family. We’d be damn fools if you didn’t take this, Duane.”
“That was my thinking right from the beginning, but I wanted you to sign off on it,” he said.
“My only concern is how you’re going to manage being off the river,” she sighed. “It can be hard. I mean, ask me, I know. But being a ranger here isn’t going to be like managing some convenience store in some hick town, either.”
“My thinking exactly,” he nodded. “But you made it do, and I guess I can make it do, too. Now I guess I’d better get back over to park headquarters and get started rearranging our future. I guess I didn’t tell you, but I’ve got a slot in a training class over at the Albright Center starting on Monday, so things are going to have to move pretty quickly.”
“Monday?” she frowned. “You’re supposed to be out on the river.”
“That was then,” he shrugged. “I guess I’d better get with Al and get that ironed out, too. It’s not like he’s not going to have anyone to send on that trip. In fact, it’d be a good time for Barbie to get her feet wet as a real trip leader.”
“I suppose, but after all Al has done for us, I hate it that you have to drop this on him at the last minute.”
“Can’t be helped. After all, this has pretty well been dropped on me at the last minute, and I know there’s going to be any number of things I have to do to get ready to start that class on Monday.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But still.”
“I guess I’d better get back over to the park headquarters and get going on what has to be done there,” he told her. “If I have some time after that I’ll run down to Flag and square it with Al. I’d rather do it face to face than over the phone.”
“That would probably be best,” she said. “Let him know I’m still planning on coming down Friday to get groceries for the trip.”
“I can do that,” he said. He stood there for a moment, then said, “Yeah, while this is a good deal for us, it’s a little sad, too. That’s a lot of past we’re giving up, but we’re doing it for the sake of our family and our future. Sometimes you have to make the trade. I know I’ll be sitting in a classroom Monday thinking about the trip launching down at Lee’s.”
“I know it’s the right thing to do,” she shook her head. “But well, I guess we’re not kids without responsibilities anymore.”
“Seems like it to me, too. Now, I’d better get going.”
“Just a second,” she said, then drew him to her. There, in the middle of a busy visitor area overlooking the chasm of the Grand Canyon, they had a long, heartfelt kiss. “Good luck, Mr. Ranger,” she smiled as they drew apart. “I can’t wait to see you in that Smoky Bear hat.”
In spite of everything, it was still a little hard to drive back over to the park headquarters. It was, after all, the end of an era in his life, one that he’d enjoyed for the most part. But it was time to put it behind him and move on to other things.
Horwath was busy with something else so Duane had to wait for a few minutes, but he seemed pleased to get the word that Duane was taking him up on the offer. “I’m sure that you’re going to be able to bring a great deal to the position,” he said. “Your experience is going to be valuable to us in a lot of ways. I think this time we’ve got the right person in the right job, which doesn’t always happen.”
“I sure hope so,” Duane told him. “And I hope to be here at the park for a long time.”
They talked for a couple more minutes, just generalities, then Horwath send him out to Sally, who had preliminary things for him to deal with, forms to fill out and the like. There was a list of items he’d have to get together before starting the class work on Monday, and some of them were going to involve some serious shopping. All in all, it took him an hour to get everything cleared away, and there was going to be more work there he’d have to do the next day.
Duane got back in the Jeep and drove over to the Rawson house. It was after noon now, although not much after. He left the papers, grabbed a sandwich, then got back in the Jeep and headed for Flagstaff.
He was not terribly surprised to find Al in his office at Canyon Tours, going over some paper work. “So,” Al said. “Did you take the job?”
“Huh?” Duane said.
“I know about it,” Al grinned. “Grant called me this morning to ask about you and explained what was going on. I gave you the best recommendation I possibly could. In fact, I told him it would be great to have a ranger in that slot who had been a trip leader, because he might actually understand some of the problems everyone faces on the river. By that I mean commercial operators and private boaters alike. It’s not going to be an easy job, Duane. This new management plan and the shorter trip lengths are going to solve a few of the issues, but not all of them, and they will create some new ones.”
“I think you’re right,” Duane said. “I thought about it all the way down here, and while I hate to just dump this in your lap, I think it’s the right thing to do, both for me and for you.”
“That’s pretty much what I think, too,” Al agreed. “Look, Duane. I’ve had a lot of boatmen go through here over the years. Except for me, all of them have gone on to other things, most of them better things, and I can’t blame them for taking the opportunity when it comes along. I didn’t think you’d stay on forever, either. When it comes right down to it, Duane, it’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve even run a full season, too.”
“Yeah, I guess I knew that,” Duane shrugged. “But you can’t be on the river all the time; you have a company to run.”
“That’s the point. The life of a boatman is a great one, Duane, and you know that as well as anyone. But it’s not for everyone, and people change as their lives change around them. I mean, hell. You’ve seen people as river-crazy as Crystal and Michelle move toward giving it up because the time has come for them to do other things, so I figured the time would come for you sooner or later. That’s part of why I was pushing to develop a couple new trip leaders this summer, Duane. We’re going to need them. After Michelle got pregnant, I figured it was at best a fifty-fifty chance that you’d be back next spring, anyway.”
“This time yesterday that was about how I had it figured, too,” Duane admitted. “But I didn’t know what else I was going to be doing. This deal is too good to pass up. It gives me the job I dreamed of for years, in what is the perfect location, as far as I’m concerned. What’s more, I’ve got a wonderful wife and a kid on the way. It would be hard to ask for more.”
“I hope you feel that way in a few years,” Al smiled. “There are more changes to come in your life. I don’t know what they are, and neither do you. But I’ll tell you what I’ve told a lot of people, and that is if everything turns to worms, I can probably find you a seat in a raft.”
“Thanks, Al. I hope it won’t be needed.”
“It probably won’t,” Al said. “I’ve never had very many people take me up on that offer, and they didn’t last long. But the offer stands, Duane. You’re still a Canyon Tours guy, and as far as I’m concerned you’ll always be one.”
