Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [106]
It felt good and strange to be writing again, like many many lives ago.
After breakfast I drove my CJ-5 into Haines Junction, a fifteen minute trip down the primitive Borealis Road. On the outskirts of the village I passed through a stand of aspens. They’d shed their leaves a month ago and I wondered if this stretch of forest had then resembled a flake of gold from the air when the saffron leaves were peaked and still hanging from the boughs.
I didn’t need anything from Madley’s Store this week so I parked at the Raven Hotel and started down the empty sidewalk of Kluane Boulevard.
In the summer months the village bustled with tourists. They came for the mountains that swept up out of the forest just five miles west. Ecotourism was the end result of the three inns, five restaurants, two outfitters, art gallery, and numerous First Nations craft stores. But by October, when the days had begun to shorten and fresh snow overspread the high country, the tourists were gone, the inns and most of the restaurants correspondingly closed, and a hundred people, including me, had lost their day jobs for the long winter.
I stopped under the awning of The Lantern. A thin cloudbank had moved in during the last hour, now a vaporous film diluting the flare of the sun. The air smelled like snow and though I hadn’t even seen a forecast I’d have wagered the paycheck I was about to collect that a storm was blowing in from the Pacific.
I entered The Lantern. Julie, the diminutive Aishihik woman who’d opened the restaurant six years ago, was vacuuming the small dining room. This place had the look and feel of the best restaurant in a remote Yukon outpost: the dim lighting, white paper tablecloths, plastic flowers, and opulent wine list—red and white. To work here with a good heart I’d been forced to smother the snob in me.
When Julie saw me standing by the hostess podium she turned off the vacuum cleaner and said, "Your paycheck’s in the back. I’ll get it for you."
She walked through the swinging doors into the kitchen and returned a moment later with my last paycheck of the season.
"What’s going on here tonight?" I asked.
"Lions Club is having a banquet. Could’ve used you, Vince, but since you don’t have a phone it’s a lot easier to call Doug than drive six miles out to your place." She handed me the envelope. "Come see me next spring if you want the job again. You know it’s yours."
"I appreciate that, Julie. I’ll probably see you around this winter."
I went outside and crossed the street. Since it was only 10:30, Bill’s was empty. But the hair and tanning salons (Curl Up & Dye and Tan Your Hide) that sandwiched the diner had customers aplenty.
I stepped into Bill’s and ordered one of his homemade bearclaws and a tall cup of black coffee. Bill was a Floridian who’d moved up to Haines Junction more than twenty-five years ago. I’d heard somewhere that he was a Vietnam vet but he never mentioned the war so I never mentioned it to him. And even though he was an American, he didn’t do the predictable patriotic things most expats did such as flying Old Glory and exploding fireworks on the Fourth of July. In fact the only time I even heard him reference his native country occurred last winter. Something scandalous had happened in Washington and even the locals up here were intrigued. The Champagne man who owned the ATV and snowmobile dealership just down the street had asked Bill what he thought of the state of affairs in his country.
Bill had been wiping down the counter but he stopped and stared at the man sitting on the stool before him. With his wooly white beard and scarred face, Bill bore the likeness of a jaded Santa Claus.
"I didn’t move into heaven to keep tabs on hell,"