The Deader the Better (6 page)

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

She turned right onto heading west toward the edge of the world.
The long way back to Seattle meant circling the Olympic Peninsula,
driving all the way down to Aberdeen, cutting across to Olympia and
then driving the freeway for the last sixty miles home. Maybe eight
hours of driving instead of an hour on the road and twenty minutes on
the ferry. An odd choice for a woman who detests driving in general
and freeway driving in particular. Like she explained to me years
ago, you see enough folks who’ve extruded themselves through the
windshield, you develop a terrific urge to walk.

Mercifully, she didn’t make me figure it out. “I thought if we
got to Stevens Falls early enough…maybe we could stop and visit
J.D. and Claudia.”

While pretending to check my watch, I searched my memory banks.
J.D. and Claudia? J.D. and Claudia? I was pretty sure they weren’t
related to me. Yeah, definitely, her family, not mine. An image of a
couple flashed on my inner screen, and I had it. Claudia O’Connor,
Rebecca’s goddaughter. Yeah. Daughter of the late Muriel O’Connor,
Rebecca’s long-ago med school friend from the East Coast. The one
who was always going to come and visit but never quite made it. Since
Muriel’s death last year, Rebecca had been making a concerted
effort to keep in touch with Claudia. Trading cards and calls. I felt
better. At least now I had an explanation why the good Dr. Duvall
would want to spend her off weekend traipsing about the wilderness. I
hate it when she’s more than three steps ahead of me.

In my mind’s eye I could see a blurry image of Claudia. A pretty
blond girl with long hair parted down the middle. Oversized brown
sweater, long skirt and combat boots. And the wiry little guy who
stood beside her. Very neat and preppy. All angles, cheekbones and
wire-rim glasses.

“The fisherman,” I said.

She nodded and smiled. I was awarded style points for remembering.

“You liked J.D.,” she said.

She was right. I had liked the guy. The one time I’d met him—a
Thanksgiving dinner, as I recalled, a couple of years ago—he’d
seemed several cuts above most of the thirtysomethings I meet. I
remember we were standing on somebody’s back porch. Screaming kids
had driven me outside. After the football game but before the dinner.
It was raining like hell, and nobody had cleaned the gutters. A solid
wall of water ran off the porch roof. Like standing behind a
waterfall. He’d stuck out his hand. J.D. Springer. He’d handed me
a business card. Neat little picture of a guy with a fish on the
line, standing at the bow of a drift boat. Underneath J. D. SPRINGER,
FISHING GUIDE.

As with most people who love what they do, he was more than
willing to tell his story. Originally from the eastern part of the
state. Tri-Cities area. Dad a high school English teacher. Mom the
town librarian. Grew up fishing the Columbia and the Snake with his
dad. Rainbow trout, cutthroat, salmon, sturgeon. All two quarters at
Washington State taught him was that, architecture be damned, what he
really wanted to do with his life was to fish. Used his savings to
buy a used sled boat, got himself some business cards printed and
went into the fishing guide business. I recalled what he said to me.

He said, “I figured, what the heck, I’m nineteen years old. If
a nineteen-year-old can’t take a chance, can’t follow his bliss,
who can? Got plenty of time to be Dilbert later.” I remember how
he’d laughed at the idea of life in a cubicle. Within a couple of
years he’s the most popular guide in the area. Booked months in
advance. Making a good living. Meets Claudia at an Outdoor Show in
the Kingdome. Love at first sight. She moves over to Richland to be
near him just about the time he applies to the state of Montana for a
guide license on the Yellowstone River. The state, of course, informs
him that they have a waiting list of six-thousand-someodd souls who
want the same thing and that his only chance would be to pay his
five-hundred-dollar fee for the right to take part in the annual
lottery. Seems one guide license per year is awarded to the lucky so
and so whose name is drawn from the barrel. Proceeds go to fish
habitat management. A good deal all around. He sends his dough. First
year, damned if he doesn’t win. “God protects fools and drunks,”
he’d told me with a twinkle. He and Claudia get married. Move to
Montana. Takes him a full year to learn the river. After that, same
deal. Booked one hundred percent of the time. Two years in advance.
Making more money following his dream than he ever imagined possible.
Five years of guiding European royalty, pro athletes, Hollywood stars
and, for a week in ’, former president George Bush. And…Two kids
change everything. J.D.’s mom and dad want to be able to see their
grandkids more often. Start a low-key propaganda campaign. No way
he’s moving back to eastern Washington, so they compromise. Agree
on western Washington. Parents retire and move to this side of the
Cascades. Somewhere up by Marysville. J.D. and Claudia and the kids
move back from Montana.

That’s when I met him. That rainy Thanksgiving Day right after
they’d moved back to Washington. When I asked him how he felt about
giving up fishing heaven to come back and be nearer the family, he
took off his glasses and began to polish the lenses with a tissue.
“Never thought I’d hear myself say this,” he mused, “but a
man can only catch so many fish and use so much money, and you
know…there’s some things in life just more important than
fishing.” Said he was shopping for a piece of property over on the
Olympic Peninsula. Something on one of the rivers where he could set
up a destination fishing lodge. With more than a little envy, I’d
wished him luck.

I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Felt like fine sand
under my eyelids. I checked the door to make sure it was locked and
then leaned my head against the window. Closed my eyes and dreamed of
the way the line stops and then the first tug and then pictures of
enormous silver fish, tail-walking across broken water.

I woke up when she shut the engine off. By the time I’d blinked
myself into focus, Rebecca was out of the car, standing in front of
an orange-and-white-striped barrier. I got out, stretched, allowed
myself a yawn and wandered her way.

“Problem?” I inquired.

“It says the bridge is closed for repairs until further notice.”

“So?”

She turned to face me. “We’re at the end of the road. My
directions to Claudia and J.D.’s place say to go over this bridge.”

She was right. We were indeed at the proverbial end of the road.
You either turned left over the bridge or you turned around.

“How far back was the last town?”

“Five or six miles.”

“Guess we’ll have to go back and ask.”

When she headed for the car, I got my first good look at the
barrier. Not the usual sawhorse barrier made ominous by bright orange
signs. No, no…this was a welded steel security gate, custom made to
lock directly to the bridge abutments. Both sides. Top and bottom.
Big stainless steel chains. They really didn’t want anybody using
that bridge. I didn’t get much of a chance to think about it. The
notice said the bridge had been declared unsafe by City Inspector
Emmett Polster. Behind me the Explorer started. I hustled over, got
in and fastened my seatbelt.

The road back to town was newly paved, still smelling of oil, with
only an intermittent series of yellow dots to mark the center. The
bullet-riddled sign at the west end of town claimed a population of
sixty-seven hundred souls. Stevens Falls used to be a lot bigger
place. Twenty years ago, the better part of thirty thousand people
had lived at this end of the valley. There’d been half a dozen
lumber mills, a couple of plywood plants and enough work in the woods
to keep everybody busy. Nowadays it was standardissue Northwest
rural. A mill town without a mill. A forest community without a
forest. Five blocks on either side of the highway. Ten blocks long.
Most of the inhabitants living off in the hills somewhere. One of
everything except taverns. Those numbered three.

Trying like hell to draw tourists. Old West motif. The businesses
along the main drag were connected by raised wooden walkways. Cute
little hitching posts and horse-watering troughs used for parking
barriers. Hanging baskets of flowers were evenly spaced along both
sides of the main drag. Red-and-white-striped ice-cream parlor.
Antiques. Espresso. Collectibles. Step right up. The surrounding
hills were painted with the browns, the reds and yellows of fall.
Pretty this time of year, if you didn’t know any better. Nothing
but scrub oak, big-leaf maple and madrone. The money trees—the
cedar and spruce, the Douglas fir, the pine—they were long gone. In
the Pacific Northwest it’s customary to leave fifty yards of tall
trees immediately adjacent to all highways. That way the tourists
were treated to the illusion of the unspoiled forest and the timber
barons could then feel free to clear-cut every saleable stick of
timber for the next fifty miles. Or until the next highway, of
course. Whichever came first. Around here, they hadn’t even
bothered with the fifty-yard tourist barriers. They’d cut down
everything that would bring a dime. I pointed to a Texaco station at
the far end of town. “Pull in there. I’ll ask.”

Urban renewal hadn’t gotten this far. Behind the counter a
skinny guy in filthy gray overalls. Bad teeth and the narrow eyes of
a weasel. He was wiping the grease from his hands with a rough red
rag. On the radio Buck Owens was caterwauling about the streets of
Bakersfield. “Hi,” I said. A patch on his chest said
Linc
.

He nodded slightly, looking me over as if he were thinking of
cannibalizing me for spare parts. “What can I do for ya?”

he asked.

I told him about our problem with the closed bridge.

“Ain’t nothin’ over there anyhow,” was his response.

“Looking for a guy named J.D. Springer,” I said. He looked me
over for a long moment and then turned his back and began fiddling
with some carburetor parts on the counter. “Told ya, ain’t
nothin’ over there,” he said. Ten years ago, I’d have jumped
the counter and taught ferret face some manners. Sure it would have
involved bail. Probably have to come all the way back for court, but
goddammit I’d have felt better. Today, I jammed my hands in my
pocket and went back outside feeling old and ineffective. I walked
around to the driver’s window.

Rebecca lowered the window and raised her eyebrows.

“So?”

“I think I may be losing my boyish charm,” I said.

“So…what else is new?”

“So, I’m going to need to ask across the street. Stay here.”

I trotted out my best Arnie impression. “I’ll be back,” I
intoned. I tried a different tack on the lady in the Laundromat. Not
looking for a soul. Just tourists who wanted to get off the beaten
path. She pointed with a three-inch purple fingernail. Another bridge
eight miles back. Just turn right and you could drive right back to
the closed bridge. Longer, bumpier, but eventually you’d get there.

Eventually, we did. Forty minutes later, we rolled to a stop at
the head of a paved driveway. Above the idling engine, I could hear
the rush of water somewhere below. Twenty-fouroh-seven, it read.
Three Rivers Lodge. Nice hand-crafted sign. A posted NO TRESPASSING
sign every fifty feet along the fence.

Rebecca consulted the paper she’d been holding in her lap.

“This is it,” she said, turning left down the narrow road. A
half a mile later we rolled out of the tunnel of trees onto an open
five-acre plateau. Two cars. A battered Chevy Blazer and a shiny new
Subaru wagon. To the left, eight new guest cabins were spaced along
the top of the bank. Directly in front of us an asphalt ramp ran down
to the river. To the right, a moss-encrusted log cabin. The cabin
windows were filled with construction-paper ghosts and bats. On the
small concrete porch, a thirty-pound pumpkin had been expertly carved
into a fierce jack-o’-lantern.

First Claudia and then J.D. stepped out onto the porch. J.D.
looked just like I remembered him, like he’d been chiseled out and
left rough. Claudia had gained about twenty pounds and traded the
long skirt and the combat boots for a bright yellow Nike jogging suit
and a pair of sneakers. Two little blond heads poked out from around
and between Claudia’s legs. The minute Claudia saw Rebecca’s
face, the high-pitched noises began.

Claudia and Rebecca hugged and mewed and hugged and squealed and
then hugged some more. Tears and tissues. J.D. and I shook hands and
traded weather reports. The kids were introduced to their aunt
Rebecca and uncle Leo. The boy’s name was Adam. He’d turned two
last week, and was quite proud of being nearly potty-trained. The
girl was Alicia. Gonna be four on the day before Christmas. Mama’s
Christmas angel.

The place was small. Two bedrooms. No more than twelve hundred
square feet. J.D. explained how when they were up and running, the
family was going to live over in Sequim and how they were going to
gut this place and turn it into a kitchen and dining room for the
resort. Iced tea for Rebecca. A cold Moosehead for me.

We did what people do in those moments. We took turns trying to
encapsulate a couple of years’ worth of living into a hundred words
or less. Sawing off the peaks and valleys so as to seem neither
boastful nor weak, ending up with fictional renderings of our
respective lives that hardly seemed worth the telling.

The children wormed their way between Claudia and the couch back.
She leaned forward. “You’ll have to stay for dinner,” she said.

I inwardly groaned; Rebecca came to the rescue. “Oh Claudia,
we’d love to but…” She looked my way for confirmation. I did my
best. “But we’re going to have to be leaving here pretty soon,”
she continued. She explained how we were trying to make it down to
Ocean Shores before it got too late.