Savor It

Chapter 12. Fisher

She’s recovered more swiftly from that kiss than I did from that bite of berry scone this morning.

Maybe I don’t like this library, either. What the hell is so interesting here that she was this easily diverted? And dammit, how did she get to me this quickly? How did I go from wanting to avoid the obnoxiously quaint, grating kitschiness of this place to following its veritable spokeswoman around like a wayward dog?

She walks me over a ways and around a hidden corner where we come to a recessed section lined on both sides with more shelves, with floor-to-ceiling iron windows at the back. Above them is a leaded-glass arch depicting a canoe filled with colorful flowers that looks like it’s about to float off into the sea beyond. The light filtering through it shines a collection of jewel-toned hues across the ceiling, and my eyes catch on a square there with a rope pulley dangling from it.

“What’s that?” I say.

“Patience,” she chides with a saucy expression. “We’ll get to that part of the tour another day.”

I clamp my teeth together and give her a flat look, still too revved-up to play back.

“You’ll have noticed the recurring theme of canoes around Spunes by now, I’m sure?” she primly asks.

I grunt a confirmation.

“Well, do you also recall when I mentioned that this place was built on failures?”

“Am I going to be tested on this later?”

“Ooh, good question! Only if you want to be!” I scowl in confusion as she presses on. “History states that a well-to-do couple named Edmund and Ida Lee-Hughes settled here with their families in 1870, with the intention of creating a logging town. The origins of their fortune are a mystery that has inspired many an urban legend, but what is certain is that even though the gold rush ended in 1855, they thought there was more wealth to be amassed in timber.”

I step closer to her. “Sage, I barely got my GED, not for lack of intelligence but mostly because lectures make me want to start lighting things on fire.”

“Fisher, I’ll be happy to listen to your origin story later, but right now, we’re discussing canoes.”

I growl in annoyance and let my head fall back dramatically.

“I promise I’ll make it quick,” she says.

And because my pride is still a little wounded, I decide to do an experiment. “What if I don’t like it quick, Sage?” I ask, rapt on her reaction. “What if I prefer to savor things. Want it good and slow and drawn out?”

Pupils dilate, a tiny wisp of a gasp. A red flush across her cheeks. There. She’s not so unaffected after all. She swallows. Blinks. Then firmly tucks her expression away. “The Lee-Hugheses came in too late to the game, though,” she continues.

“Oh my god,” I complain. “You’re worse than your cat.”

“So now they found themselves broke, with almost no prospective business, because they didn’t account for their harbor conditions not being adequate enough for appropriate transport ships. And—the important part—they found themselves with a shit ton of felled trees.”

“I’m riveted.”

“They’d brought all sorts of family and friends here with them, too. People who’d started various businesses of their own under the impression that there would be a big, prosperous mill centering this local economy and drawing more people to the area.”

I’m doing my best to resist it, but just like earlier when she started talking about the mazes and paths people draw on the beach, she starts pulling me under her spell.

“They needed to figure out a way to recoup some money, and fast. They looked at what they did have and came up with a scheme.”

“Let me guess. It involved canoes.”

“Precisely. Look at you! Star student!” she exclaims, and I find myself eagerly thinking I could be an excellent and enthusiastic teacher if she’d let me, too. “The entire family made up these phony brochures that they dispersed up and down the Columbia River, not only advertising this place as some idyllic haven but tempting people to come try their luck in a canoe race. The prizes would be ten different plots of land.”

She grins, pleased with herself when she notices my attention. I lift a brow in encouragement.

“They had to figure out how to just barely turn a profit on each canoe, small enough that people would buy in, and established that as an entrance fee. Obviously, this figure still sounded like a bargain when the chances seemed decent enough to end up with land. And even though the Lee-Hugheses were chunking off their property, they had way more than they could use to begin with, anyway. Not only that, but of course they made sure the plots they were giving away were the worst, most hostile little corners that they had. Everyone else in town agreed to the scam since they knew that more people—the contestants and the attendees, plus all their families—would mean more business for them.” She pulls out a dusty book and flips to a page full of grainy black-and-white photos of angry-looking people in canoes.

“So it worked, then?” I ask.

“It did. But of course there’s more to the story over the years. Greed, danger, love…” She looks sideways up at me over the book. “I’ll save the details for another time, but can I tell you one secret?” She chews her lip like she might be truly nervous. I nod.

“The way our whole festival plays out nowadays is different, of course. The prizes, the events themselves have all changed over time. No one has a canoe provided for them, and no one gets any land, but in the end, it’s still the same. We do it for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve yet to have anyone other than locals win. Ever. Even back when it all started and the prize was some seemingly garbage land—those people always found a way to make that lot work in the end, and they never left. Now we draw in outsiders for our businesses to profit from, charge them a large enough entrance fee to account for the prize money, and one of us, or rather, a pair of us, always wins that, too.”

I can’t smother a grin. “I don’t know if that sounds all that sheisty, Sage. Most tourist traps have the same idea.”

“Maybe not,” she says with an innocent shrug. “But in theory, anyone can win. There are buy-in contests for points that determine a team’s starting order for the race, and those have double-blind judges, and the trivia is technically all public record.” She delicately returns a book to its rightful place on the shelf before she casts a cute grin my way again. “I just think it’s interesting, that’s all,” she says.

I think it’s interesting that the last twenty-four hours found me laid out in a field, mingling in a random nowhere shop, and listening to history in a library, and yet, have also proven to be the most interesting day I’ve had in a long while.