Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (7 page)

It was my turn to clear my throat.  “A-hem . . . thanks for
the radio.”

She nodded, and then leaned forward; resting her hands on top
of my shoulders and planting a light kiss on my cheek.

“You take care of yourself, OK Eric?” she said.

“Don’t worry about me,” I replied. “Have you been practicing
with your Glock lately?” I asked, indicating the 40 caliber model 23 at her hip.

“Not as much as I should,” she said. “What about you, are you
still doing those three gun matches and burning through tons of taxpayer
purchased ammunition every weekend?”

“Yep, and the team I shoot with made it to nationals last
year. We got blown out of the water there, but at least we made it.”

“Very cool,” she said.

Michelle squeezed my hand, shut the back door of the Tahoe
and walked around to the driver’s side. She got in, started it up and drove out
of the parking lot. I watched her tail lights fade through the increasing
drizzle.

*click*

Good morning Mr. Recorder, or should I say good afternoon,
since it’s a little after lunch time and I’m just waking up. It’s April 18
^th
.
I don’t know where Uncle Andy and Max are, probably outside getting into some
type of trouble. Wow, I feel like cement. Did you ever have one of those “hard
sleeps” where it seems like you didn’t move at all during the night and when
you wake up there’s an imprint of your entire body smashed into the mattress? 
That’s what I feel like, but is kind of a good feeling too. Hold on, got to go
see the doctor.

*click*

Ahhh, much better—Dr. Pepper, what a lifesaver. Truth be told,
I usually only have two of them per day, one in the morning and one at
lunchtime. Usually. Sometimes I only have one all day, and to be honest there
are days where I’ve slugged the caffeine and sugar down nonstop, but those are
rare. So let me see, we made it home last night a little before midnight. The
dirt road was slick from all the light rain, but still passable due to all the
upkeep through the years. There was one point that Uncle Andy’s truck slid off
the edge into some brush, probably due to the weight of the fuel barrels, but
he was able to drive himself out without help from a winch. We made it back and
decided to wait until today to move the fuel and propane, no complaints from me—I
was beat. I can hear something running outside, either his tractor or
Terramite, so I better see if I can go help him. Later.

*click*

OK, it’s the same day as this morning, only it’s, umm, later;
if that makes sense. The rain must have let up sometime during the night when I
was out like a light. It’s bright and sunny out today, well it was . . . it’s
almost dark now, but a lot cooler. I’d guess it’s around thirty-eight degrees right
now, which if I really think about it is probably just about right for this
time of year up here. So, what about today?  How about I start with right now? 
I am currently sitting on a cross section of a big aspen tree that we cut up a
few years back. We made a half dozen improvised “campfire chairs” from the
sections, and my butt is occupying one of them. We got a nice fire going at the
edge of the lake by the cabin; it just seemed too nice of a day to not spend
some time enjoying it outside. Max is lying here beside me and Uncle Andy is up
at the cabin getting supper ready. And by that I mean he’s gathering up the
stuff that we’re gonna cook over the fire. Tonight’s specialty: tube steak
buried in homemade sauerkraut and smothered in ketchup. We made blackberry mountain
pies for dessert. I told Uncle Andy that he gets to choose the beverage. He
said he had already narrowed it down to either hot chocolate, cold beer, or
sippin’ whiskey. Quite a spread. After my breakfast of Dr. Pepper and Pop
Tarts, I helped unload the fuel and propane. One of the twenty pound propane
canisters was empty. Uncle Andy was sure he had filled all of them so we marked
that one as a potential bad egg and set it aside. After we were done with that,
Uncle Andy went out to his new shed to, as he put it, “try and sort through all
the crap there to find what I need.” While he was doing that, I unpacked the
new solar panels and started building a replacement frame mount for them. The
ones that came with them were pretty flimsy, and the wind up here could turn
them into kites if they weren’t secured. That took the rest of the afternoon. After
I got done with the mounts, Max and I went for a nice run along the edge of the
dirt road. We did about three and a half miles. Tomorrow we’re supposed to go
in to the marina at lunchtime. We’ll probably leave here about 11:00 AM or so. I
plan on trying to get the other panels installed in the morning. The extra
batteries shouldn’t take too long either. I’ve got to remind myself to start
one of the generators tomorrow and power the well pump so it fills his water
tank in the attic. His water tank is 240 gallons, and that’s a lot of weight to
have in the attic, but we knew that’s where it would be, so it’s actually
sitting on four six by six posts that we framed into a closet below. We
installed a little battery powered “low water level” alarm last year, and it
started chirping when I got a shower today. Uncle Andy’s cabin has always been,
I don’t know, maybe a combination of a source of pride, a place of refuge, and
an escape from reality. When he first bought it, the cabin was basically a twenty
by twenty box made out of rough-sawn logs. It had a full basement built out of
field stones and mortar. The story behind the cabin, at least as Uncle Andy
tells it, was that the guy who built it hand dug the basement sometime in the
1920s. The original cabin burned down in the 1950s. The next guy who bought it
was some rich businessman from Fargo. He hired a contractor to come in and rebuild
the cabin in 1966. That guy—the contractor I mean—apparently because money was
not an issue for his client, had a helicopter fly in a portable sawmill; and
the current walls on the main cabin are built from Bur Oak logs that were
harvested on the property itself. He also put in a septic tank and had a
company come out and drill a water well so you didn’t have to go to the lake
everyday. The way the story is told, because of the time of year or road
conditions—not sure which—he had to pay to have a bulldozer actually pull the
drilling truck all the way from the gravel road back to the cabin. Other
improvements were made at the same time; the floor and walls of the basement
were redone with reinforced concrete pourings, a dock was built out onto the lake,
and a couple of small outbuildings were put up. Only one of the outbuildings is
still standing; Uncle Andy uses it for a fuel storage shed. The dock, or at
least most of it, is still standing. I’m not sure how much I’d trust my full
weight on it though. When I was younger, I’d help Uncle Andy work on the cabin,
and through the years we’ve built two additional “wings” onto the original
cabin. One of the wings has a little refurbished kitchen area complete with a large
pantry and a built in rack that can hold over a cord of firewood; the other
wing is Uncle Andy’s combination bedroom and library/game room. Did I mention
that my uncle’s a computer geek?  Well, he is. He’s probably the only senior
citizen that plays Call of Duty and Star Craft 2 until the wee hours of the
morning on a system he built himself. He’s got a flat screen monitor that’s got
to be at least thirty inches across and a Bose surround sound audio setup. Let
me tell you, when he gets into his games, he really goes for broke. I remember
the last time I was here . . . I was outside painting the trim around the
windows because he told me he wasn’t feeling so hot. After about an hour of
painting, I heard some noise from inside the cabin. Uncle Andy was swearing and
stomping his feet—heck, I thought he was having some kind of fit or seizure, so
I ran inside. What I found still makes me laugh. There he was, sitting in his
“gaming chair” with nothing but his underwear on, headphones wrapped around his
ears and his nose about four inches from the big screen. He was cursing up a
storm into the microphone, apparently chewing out somebody else in the online
game he was playing. He never noticed me standing there so I watched for a few
minutes, and right when his character—the guy he was playing in the game—went
into some dark tunnel or cave, I snuck up behind him and gave him a double five
fingered death grip on his ribs. He shit his pants. Literally. Well, I just
heard him yell so I’m going to run up and gave him a hand carrying our dinner
back to the fire.

*click*

It’s a little after midnight and Uncle Andy just left to go
back to the cabin; I’m not far behind. We spend most of the night feeding the
fire and reminiscing of days gone by. There’s something about staring into the
cherry red center of a campfire. The coals ebb and flow with waves of pulsating
heat and the little runners of flame dance and jump to their own rhythm. It’s
almost hypnotic. We heard a couple of wolves call this evening, and Max barked
back an answer. They were pretty far away though. About 10:30 PM or so, just
after the last mountain pie was eaten, Max alerted to something out in the
darkness. He gave a low growl and raised his hackles, focusing on something to
the north that neither Uncle Andy nor I could see, even with a flashlight. There
are a few bears up here, mostly black, but three grizzlies have been tagged in
the Turtle Mountains in the last five years, and we’re right on the outskirts
of the mountains. In any event nothing burst out of the brush and ate us, and
eventually Max settled down. I think I’ve peed about twenty times already this
evening. Uncle Andy brought down a large kettle that we used to make some hot
tea with lemon, mint and honey—lots of honey. I think I had about forty gallons
of it. Well, I’m getting tired, so off to bed now.

April 19
^th

*click*

We’re on our way to the meeting with Walter. We’re taking two
trucks again, just in case one of us has to come back to the cabin before the
other one. It was below freezing this morning, not much below, just enough to
make me put on a long sleeve Thinsulate layer underneath my ever present
sweatshirt. Max and I did a quick “ridge run,” which is just a made up name by
yours truly for the trail that starts behind the cabin and winds up zigzagging
back and forth through the woods. The total elevation rise along the trail is
maybe 600 feet, and we ended up jogging maybe five or six miles of it. When we
got back Uncle Andy had some hot oatmeal ready for me and him, and a big bowl of
dry dog food soaked in the warm juice that came off a venison roast he was
heating up to take into Walters for lunch. After breakfast, I knew I needed to
get started on the solar panel and battery installation, but something about
the lake was calling to me so I grabbed my rod for a few casts. Three casts
exactly. Let me tell you what, the northern pike are always hungry in the lake.
I caught three of the “water wolves”—one with each cast. No wall mounters in
the lot, but still, going three for three was a great way to start the day. I
released them back into the water and got started on the panels.

*click*

We’re on the gravel road heading to the marina, well, heading
to the road that goes to the marina. It’s kinda strange though, normally we
don’t see anybody on the gravel road. It’s not a private road or anything; it’s
just an access road/firebreak that has very little maintenance from the state
even though they technically own it. There are a couple of little gravel pull
off’s where you’ll occasionally see the car or truck of some fishermen who
doesn’t own a boat, but that’s about it. What makes it strange right now is
that we’ve just passed two RV’s that were pulled off along the edge—not right
next to one another, a few miles apart actually—still strange. If they’re still
parked there when I get back, I’m gonna stop. Max is riding with me again. I
think Uncle Andy was afraid to put Max in the same proximity as a venison roast.
Can’t say as if I blame him. Well, I guess this will be continued when I have
more information.

*click*

We’re still a couple miles out from the marina. We would have
been there by now but the front left tire on Uncle Andy’s truck went flat. It
wasn’t a catastrophic blowout, just a leak . . . he must have hit a sharp rock
or something. We pulled off to the side of the highway and switched it out with
a spare he had, and in the ten minutes or so it took to do that almost a dozen
cars, trucks, and other vehicles passed us, most of them heading west. That
amount of traffic is rare on this road, especially considering the time of day
and the season. Something’s going on. Anyhow, while Uncle Andy was changing the
tire, (hey—I asked him if he wanted me to do it) I was sitting in my truck
playing tug of war with Max and one of his chew toys. Just when we were getting
into it, I heard a call over the radio Michelle had given me.

“
State WCO do you copy
?” It was Michelle.

I was pretty sure that I’m the only North Dakota State Wildlife
Conservation Officer that has a Fish and Wildlife radio.

“
10-4. This is state WCO
,” I replied.

“
Copy, what’s your location?
” she asked.

“
En-route to meeting location, ETA five minutes
.”

“Copy, 10-84, at least thirty,” she
said, indicating she was on her way
there as well, but wouldn’t be there for at least thirty minutes.

“
10-4.
”

Interesting. She didn’t mention the other day that she was
coming back for this impromptu meeting. Either something happened to change her
mind, or maybe it was . . . me. Big smile. Then again, if her assessment of
these radios and their range is accurate, why is it gonna take her at least thirty
minutes to get there?  Part of me wants to radio her back to see if she needs
some kind of assistance; the other part of me says, “leave it alone, she’d only
get pissed thinking that I thought she couldn’t do her job.” She’s got a
temper, but she’s also tough . . . and smart. She would have let me know if she
needed help. I’ll update again after the meeting.

*click*

Oh man, this update is going to take awhile. Shoot, I hardly
even know where to begin. All right, deep breath . . . Here we go. After
changing the tire, we drove the rest of the way to the marina, passing several
more cars and trucks along the way. As we approached, we could see that the
parking lot was almost completely filled and there were cars in a line for the
gas pump that stretched at least seventy-five yards out the road. People were
standing all around the parking lot and it looked like everybody had some type
of trailer loaded down with boxes, bags and whatnot—it kind of reminded me of move-in
day at the college dorms, except that a lot of people were wearing bandannas or
what looked like dust masks around their mouths. The large gravel parking lot
across the road was about half full as well. We pulled around back near the
propane storage tank, parked, and got out.