Canyon Secret (7 page)

Her soothing-looking skin had obviously seen past summers on just this lake. The pale yellow material of the skimpy halter-top and dark brown sunspots blended beautifully into a pattern that Mikhail wanted to play ‘connect the dots on’ with his hands. She reached into the boat and exchanged her Keds for single strapped, brown leather sandals. This Pygmalion-like transformation from a lady running a show house to an irresistible temptation left Mikhail backing up and bumping into the log that held the rowboat fast.

Mikhail needed to think fast or he was going to fall into the lake. He avoided looking at her, any part of her, and hurriedly piled the gear wherever there was room. The hell with where she wanted it. She wasn’t playing fair. He headed full bore into unfamiliar territory for him. Hannah sensed his urgency and attempt to hide his feelings of male wantonness. She had intended on a reaction, but this was greater than anticipated. “I’ll row,” he briefly gruffed.

“Great, I’ll have a beer,” she nonchalantly answered. “There’s an anchor of sorts up there by you when you’ve decided on a good spot. It’s just an old coffee can filled with cement, but it’s always done the trick before.” Again she grinned to herself thinking that Mikhail was probably engrossed in her other ‘tricks’.

His thoughts humored him and calmed him at the same time. A beer sounded just like what the doctor ordered and he wanted one. “No thanks. I don’t drink. But you go right ahead and I’ll fish.” He found a semi-sunny spot, gently placed the anchor over the side, and prepared to fish.

Hannah popped the top of the brown beer bottle with a metal opener she kept tied to her belt loop. She opened her tackle box and revealed the contents. Books and magazines filled the tackle box. “This is what I do when I come here on weekends to be alone, all alone. Are you interested in hearing about this or should I shut up and let you bait that hook you’ve been holding for twenty minutes?”

“No, no go ahead,” he encouraged. He was left speechless anyway and as long as she talked, he didn’t have to say a word.

“There’s basically three kinds of reading material here. I have hundreds of old
National Geographi
c magazines that my uncle saved. When I want to travel around the world to all parts beautiful and mysterious, I read them. When I want to improve my mind, challenge my thinking, and expand my circle of thinking, I read the Classics using my library card in Kalispell.
Catcher In The Rye
and
Les Miserables
are a couple of my all-time favorites. I’ve read each of them several times. When I’m horny and just into a good quick read, I choose these trashy novels written by unknowns but a hell of good time regardless.”

He looked at her and back down to the worm in his left hand and the waiting hook in his right. “Well, well okay then. I’ll just fish and let you read.” This was the first time he ever heard a woman use the word horny. He thought how this last hour with her was the first time for a lot of things.

O
n Monday morning, Mikhail and Tomas walked into the quonset hut and waited for the bus to take them up to the dam site. The predicted June rain started during the night. The mood in the hut matched the dreary weather outside. A large group of men sat on benches and read the June 19th Hungry Horse News. Tomas picked up a discarded copy of the local newspaper and started to read the weekly Dam progress page.

To facilitate the rapid clearing of the dense forest area, the clearing contractors used a method which involved using a two inch steel cable dragged by two heavy tractors to snap and uproot brush and small trees on the steep sides of the reservoir. A four and a half ton hollow steel ball, eight feet in diameter, weighed down the cable and supported it at the most effective height. The balls are constructed of one-inch boilerplate with a steel shaft in the center that connects to the heavy cable. The cable is kept about four feet off the ground. Contractors cleared dense forest with trees up to twelve inches in diameter as fast as a man could walk. Two hundred acres were cleared last Tuesday in four hours.

As the reservoir filled with water, contractors constructed a ferry made of four pontoon boats lashed together that hauled men and equipment across the South Fork River. Logging and clearing crews worked seven days per week and ten hours per day and earned as much as $1,000 per month.

Mikhail interrupted Tomas and handed him the bulletin regarding a worker who accidentally died late Sunday afternoon. The man was killed just fifteen minutes before quitting time while working with a logging and clearing crew in the reservoir area. He worked as a signalman and a choker setter. The crew worked in a swampy area near Graves creek on the west side of the reservoir when a tree fell on him crushing his shoulder and breaking his back and leg and several ribs, and puncturing a lung. He died about forty-five minutes later. Mikhail spoke quietly, “We’ll each be giving one days pay for the man’s family. I signed us both up. It’ll come out of your next check. Your brother-in-law will take the money over to the widow.”

“Oh Dad, I can’t imagine what it will be like for that family. I don’t know what we’d do if anything ever—”

“Just pay attention. Watch what you’re doin’ all the time.” The bus honked outside and the men paraded out the door. Their heads were down and no one spoke a word the entire ride up the road to the dam site. Mikhail took a brief glance at Lion Lake as the bus passed by. A brief thought of Hannah entered his mind but quickly disappeared as he thought about the young man killed yesterday in the logging accident. He also thought about Tomas’ comment about what the family would do if anything happened to him. He glanced at Tomas and treasured the closeness of him.

W.R.
Scalf, General Superintendent of Contractors GSM reviewed the final draft of his memorandum for the craft department heads, shift foreman, and walking bosses the June 27, 1952 payroll information for the Hungry Horse Dam Project.

Payrolls reached their 1952 peaks with 1,834 jobs or about 150 more jobs than last year’s peak. Payrolls are now about $2,480,000 a month.

Included in the GSM employment total are 525 laborers, 345 carpenters, 100 steamfitters, 70 mechanics, 68 truck drivers, 60 electricians as well as other crafts and trades. Our employment pattern at Hungry Horse actually calls for a large crew working through the middle of September.

Other items of interest are as follows:

First of all, the federal auditor will be here next Tuesday to begin his month—long audit of the books. Make sure your payroll, time cards, overtime, everything is up to snuff. Our office people only give what you tell them.

Number two; I’ll meet with two FBI agents here on Friday. I don’t know what’s that all about, but I’ll fill you in after I meet with them.

Number three; Hungry Horse will operate before October 20th of this year. President Truman will be here to throw the switch on the first two turbines. We can expect lots of newspaper, magazine, radio, and secret service people starting to show up on site. It will be wild around here in late September.

Scalf signed the memo and took it to his secretary and said, “Mary, please run copies and get them distributed today. Also, send a copy to Al Sutter at the
Hungry Horse News
.” He walked back to his office and put on his rain slicker. Before leaving he stopped by Mary’s office again. “Oh, and Mary, I’m goin’ into Columbia Falls to give my respect to the Dick Curtain family. Dick was the man who died yesterday in the logging accident. I’ll stop and pick up some groceries for them first.”

The next morning David Sednick scanned the memo from Superintendent Scalf. His eyes stopped on the item about the federal auditor coming next week.

The telephone on the wall in the foreman’s shack rang and shook David from his deep concentration on the Superintendent’s September 27th memo. He picked up the phone. “Hey Dave, how about a beer after shift tonight at the Blue Moon? We need to sit down and talk about Scalf’s memo and the auditor’s visit next week.”

David’s stomach turned as he answered, “Ya, ya that’ll work. How about 5:00?”

“Great. We don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”

“No. Everything’s fine. See you then.” He hung up the black wall phone and walked out to the back porch of the shack. From there he stared toward the backside of the partially cloud-clad Columbia Mountain. He took a deep breath as he thought.

The reality of his extra source of income frightened him in the beginning, but after two years of stockpiling thousands of dollars from his commission, the scheme no longer frightened him. Now the fear roared back into his mind. Every two weeks, he deposited two-thousand dollars into savings accounts in various banks around the Flathead Valley. David didn’t know the source of the laundered money, and he didn’t want to know. He followed instructions and collected his commission.

The man on the other end of the telephone recruited David two years ago to become part of his fraudulent scheme. David also received a walking boss job in addition to his commission for processing the checks.

David devised his own scheme for making additional money. He processed five bogus, fictitious workers with employee records, timecards, employee numbers, and non-existent payroll deductions. Each pay period he handled all of the paychecks for his shift. Now the whole thing might surface with the auditor reviewing the payroll records.

Panic stricken, David mulled over his mistake. “I just had to do it, didn’t I. How in the hell will I account for five extra men on the payroll for May and June? I need time to think. He’ll have my ass if he finds out. I just have to find a way to cover the last two months.”

I
t was Tuesday morning and the Care Less Group broke with their Friday morning tradition for breakfast at the Club Café. The fundraiser dance to purchase the resuscitator for the volunteer fire department was only five days away. The four women sat around the corner table cluttered with lists and bags of decorations. Betty Hansen tapped her water glass as she attempted to bring the group back to the tasks at hand. The other three women talked at the same time. No one seemed to be listening to the other one talking. “Ladies. We’ve lots to do. July 2nd is only a few days away. Where are we with everything?”

Hannah picked up her list that contained large checkmarks. “Well, I got the decorations, lined up the music, picked up the beer and whiskey, and I got a crew of kids to help me clean and set up at Rocco’s. I still need to get a couple of door prizes and three bartenders. Other’n that, I’m set.”

In each of their minds, the four ladies separately looked forward to the event with some trepidation and with some excitement. Hannah wondered if Mikhail would attend, and if he did, would he show her any attention. She still wondered how their day on Lion Lake went. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since they parted late Saturday afternoon.

Lila worried about David showing up. She wanted to see him, and at the same time hoped he wouldn’t attend. Her husband was on the road for the weekend, and David was off work Saturday and Sunday. If he was drinking, he might make a scene and their secret might be exposed. Oh, I wish he’d call and let me know what his plans are. That man drives me crazy.

Betty Hansen experienced a terrible argument with her husband before he left for work at the Dam that morning. In her mind, she reviewed their argument. He told her he wasn’t going to any ridiculous dance with a bunch of drunks and worn-out old women. Instead, he was going to Kalispell with a lawyer friend of his to see the movie
Singing in the Rain.
“Sometimes I wish he’d drown in the rain. He’s so boring and self-centered. We do nothing fun together. Maybe I’ll just have more than a few drinks and dance up a storm with some rowdy Dam workers. That would serve Mr. Hansen right,” she said to herself.

She sat and looked at her friends as they reviewed their lists and made final plans for the dance on Saturday night. Mabel Simons smiled and enjoyed the friendship and banter of her three close friends. They accepted her for just who she was. Her Madam job really never mattered to any of them. She cleared her throat before she joined in the exciting planning discussion for their big event. “I talked to Mary Curtain today after her husband’s funeral. I asked her about comin’ with me Saturday night. She said it’s too soon after her husband’s accidental death on Sunday. But I told her I need her to help me with the raffle ticket sales. At any rate, I think we’ll give her whatever money we make over the cost of the resuscitator.”

Hannah wiped the tears from her eyes as she spoke, “You’re a great lady, Mabel. We’re so lucky you live here. Thank you.”

The other ladies echoed Hannah’s sentiment and wrapped up their meeting. They planned to get together Saturday afternoon at 2:00 to decorate and get Rocco’s Super Club ready for the July 2nd fundraiser dance.

E
ach year since the beginning of the Dam construction, the Ironworkers Union sponsored the Ironworkers Ball. The celebration began and ended at the Blue Moon. The wooden building took up a double lot at the intersection of Highway 40 and LaSalle. Traffic from Kalispell and Whitefish intersected at the front door of the Blue Moon. The past winter at the Ironworkers Ball, a fight broke out inside the bar near the front door. A fierce winter storm raged outside but paled in comparison to the intensity of the two men fighting. The heavy wooden door didn’t hold the force of the two men as they exploded through the door and out into the parking lot. Two other men held the door in place and the driving snow out. No one knew who won the fight as the crowd quickly came back inside as the fight and the storm raged on.

The mounted deer, mountain goats, fish, and elk crowded the walls of the Blue Moon and brought the flavor of hunting and fishing in Montana inside the famous watering hole. David Sednick opened the door to the Blue Moon Bar. Four men sat at the bar and quietly talked and drank their tap beers. They made a passing glance at him as he entered. A young man and woman stood off to the left of the bar and played eight ball.