South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [60]
“Paul Garceau has a big truck. High off the ground, I’ve seen it.”
Paul did have a truck as well as the Fairlane. It was big, almost new, and a sore spot with him she thought. She suspected it was a burden he wished he hadn’t Undertaken, one payment too many. He drove it as little as possible, preferring the Fairlane. He told her that the car went into storage once the snow flew, though. “I don’t know if I should ask to borrow his truck. That seems like too much.”
“He’s a nice man. A hard worker. And nice-looking, too. You ask him.” Arbutus’s smile was dimply. “I’ll bet he says okay.”
Madeline frowned, wanting to put out the matchmaking glint in Arbutus’s eye, but in the end she didn’t try. Let her have this harmless, wrong idea. Maybe she was right about the truck anyway.
“My truck? Why?” Paul shoved his glasses Up with the back of his wrist and gave Madeline a perplexed look across the pass-through.
“There’s a place I want to go, way back in the woods. It’s kind of a—quest.”
“Do you think you’d be okay driving it?”
“Definitely, yes. If it’s an automatic transmission. I’m a very careful driver.”
He studied her somberly.
“Don’t worry about it. Bad idea, forget I asked.”
His face was full of misgiving. “Well—when would you want it?”
“I was thinking the Fourth of July.”
“No way. You have to work. It’s going to be crazy.”
“I’d go in the morning, be back in plenty of time.”
“If it was any other day—”
“I hear you. But it’s the best day for me.” She wasn’t going to be swayed on this, she just wasn’t. How often did she ask for anything much from the world at large? Not often, but that was going to change a little bit. She would have her day. Her morning anyway. “I’ll take the Buick, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“God, no, you can’t take that old heap, you’d never make it. Take the truck.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, and Madeline didn’t give him another chance to change his mind.
She pored over the map by candlelight Up in the hotel the next few nights, memorizing the route, trying to envision the terrain. Six miles north of Crosscut she had to turn off to the east onto a dirt path. Arbutus had said it would be marked Firelane Trail on a small, hand-painted sign. The trail would wind around, following Wildcat Creek more or less, and she’d have to be careful—there’d be old logging roads, two-tracks crisscrossing it here and there.
“Just keep in mind you’re following the creek,” Arbutus had told her. “Keep bearing northeast, you’ll be going through a big plain of stumps. Nothing ever grew back much after the first big cut. Too many fires, I guess, and the soil was too thin. Anyway, you ought to see the fire tower about five miles in, the best I can remember. It’s been years. Gladys’s Frank worked on a cut in there once, we took a part for the skidder out to him. Past the fire tower there’s Simmon’s Camp. It’s an old log cabin, someone still Uses it, I think. After that you’re on your own, I’ve never gone beyond there. But you’ll be close by then. Joe and Walter were both born out there as best I know. Maybe the cabin where they lived is still standing.”
“Good luck with your quest,” Paul said as he handed her the keys at the end of her shift on the third. “If you need the four-wheel drive, just punch the button on the dash.”
The last thing Paul did every night was close out the till. If things went well this week, he’d have a few spare thousand and all his bills paid for the month, which would be great. He watched Randi for a moment. She was wearing the summery blue dress again, and was perched on a stool, painting her toenails pink. The tiny brush in her hand was a precision tool, and she was a master craftsman, focused