Chapter 2
“Great,” Spence belatedly answered his father’s question about how this last trip had gone.
“Come on back to the office,” Uncle Will said.
Spence wondered if a lecture was in the offing. Maybe Hetty had complained about Ms. Merchant. He discarded that thought immediately. She wouldn’t do that. She might call him out to his face, as she just had, but she wouldn’t complain behind his back. It just wasn’t her way.
He stepped through the door into the RTA manager’s office, which these two men had once shared but was now staked out and claimed by Will’s son, Parker, who was currently out on a short morning trip himself.
Parker kept his hand in on the guide side, not just the business side.
Spence didn’t envy his cousin. As good as he himself was with numbers, the manager’s job seemed daunting.
Probably because there was a lot of reading involved, which he could do—thanks to Hetty—but didn’t like much.
Not that he didn’t like books and stories, he did, but audio was his method of choice for consuming them.
Which reminded him he wanted to finish the book he’d started a couple of days ago. And then—
“—would you suggest?”
Damn, he’d tuned out. He glanced at Uncle Will but then focused on his father, who had spoken.
He’d put on a little weight since he’d semiretired, although it seemed to Spence he wasn’t relaxing, not when he was regularly trekking out for his day-long fishing trips.
There was only a touch of gray hair at his temples and his blue eyes—the ones Spence had inherited—were as bright and lively as ever.
If it wasn’t for the frequent hints that he would like to be a grandfather sometime soon, he’d be the perfect father figure.
He is the perfect father figure. You’re the one who’s out of step.
“Sorry, Dad. I was thinking how much I’d hate doing any other job, so if you’re going to fire me, I don’t want to hear it.”
His father snorted audibly, but Will laughed outright.
Spence smiled at his uncle, just slightly more salt-and-peppered than his father but with the same blue eyes.
Also semiretired yet seemingly unable to slow down, he worked as hard at promoting Aunt Sasha’s pottery business as he had when he’d helped run RTA full-time.
“Like we’d fire the most in-demand guide in the state of Alaska,” Uncle Will said, still chuckling.
Spence shifted his feet, gave his uncle a crooked grin. “Not quite. Maybe in Shelby.”
“Ha. I’ve read the reviews, son,” Dad said. “You’re going to top that statewide list before you’re through.”
“So,” Uncle Will said, “now that we’ve cleared that up, back to the question.”
“Uh…which was?” Spence asked.
“Your father and I are in need of a good spot for a nice, long day of fishing, now that we’ve survived the Fourth of July rush.”
Spence blinked. The holiday rush wasn’t over for him, by a long shot, but he was more puzzled by the question.
“You’re asking me?”
They both had lived here longer than he’d been alive. Not by much, true, but still…they knew the local environs as well as anyone, and better than most.
“We know all the usual spots,” his uncle said. “But we want someplace we’ve never been.”
“For a nice, long, uninterrupted day,” Dad said pointedly.
“And productive, fishwise,” put in Uncle Will.
“And scenic.” Dad again.
“And private.”
“And a ways out there—”
“I get it, I get it,” Spence said, laughing now. “You want a day where nobody will find you or bother you or ask you to talk or expect anything trickier than reeling in a ton of fish.”
Both men grinned at him. “Exactly.”
“I knew you’d get it,” Dad added. “It’ll be our last chance before things start getting really hectic for the rest of the summer. So you know a spot that meets all that criteria?”
Spence grinned back. “Most of Alaska?” he suggested.
“Yeah, yeah,” Uncle Will said. “But specifically? We know the closer-in spots, but they’ve gotten a bit more populated than we’d like for this. Hence we ask Mr. No Place Too Far.”
Spence couldn’t deny he felt a bit flattered that these two men, of all people, were asking him where to go.
“You want to hike in or fly?”
“Weather looks good for the next week, so I can fly us in, in the company helicopter,” Dad said.
“It’s clear on the RTA schedule for that long, nobody signed up for the more inaccessible locations.
And the first ones who do, Hetty can fly in aboard the plane, now that the ice is pretty well broken up on the lakes. ”
Spence grimaced, but only inwardly. He had a couple of backcountry trips booked, and he’d hoped to use the chopper for at least one of them. But his father and uncle so rarely asked for anything for themselves, he wasn’t about to put a damper on this.
“So, can I safely presume you don’t want to just jump over to Robe Lake?” he asked teasingly, referring to the closest to town and therefore most popular lake.
“Along with every summer tourist arriving in the next month? No, thanks,” Dad said.
“Figured,” Spence said with a crooked smile to tell his father he’d only been joking.
He walked over to the big map on the back wall of the office.
He studied it for a moment, eliminating the most popular places and the places he knew they had already been, although he doubted he knew them all.
Alaska was simply too big to know everything.
Shelby alone was close to eight national parks and wildlife preserves, plus had about twenty tidewater glaciers that ended at Prince William Sound, the highest concentration in the world.
Someone had once said Alaska was forged by fire but ruled by ice, and Spence thought that was a good description.
It was huge, vast, magnificent, forbidding, and often deadly.
Visit But Don’t Stay was Spence’s motto when it came to their clients, who had no idea of just how dangerous this place he loved could be.
This place with fifty active volcanoes, two of which usually blew up every year.
This place bigger than the next three largest states combined, yet with only five thousand miles of paved road, a thousand less then New York City alone.
No, it took a certain kind of spirit and heart to call this wild place home.
Finally, he reached up and tapped a spot on the map.
“How about Tazlina Lake? If you can dodge all the rafters who want to tackle the river, there are a couple of good fishing spots. Especially at the north end. Weather can still be iffy up there this early in the season, so you’d have to pay attention to that, but I’d bet there’d be nobody else to bother you. ”
“Sounds good to me,” Uncle Will said.
Spence opened his mouth to warn them that they’d be heading into higher country, and that while there might not be many two-legged visitors, some of the four-legged inhabitants could get interesting. He shut it again, knowing they both knew that perfectly well and would appropriately prepare.
“Good call,” Dad said, his smile telling Spence he’d known exactly what he’d been about to say. “We may have sort of retired, but we haven’t forgotten a thing about living in Alaska.”
“I pity the bear or moose that tries to take you two on,” Spence said and all three of them laughed. “So, when’s this expedition taking place?”
“Assuming no shift in the weather pattern, we’ll be off in the morning.”
“Enjoy,” Spence said. Then, a little warily, he asked, “Do I need to check in on Mom and Aunt Sasha while you’re gone?”
“I believe they’re planning to enjoy this as much as Dad and Uncle Ryan.” The words came from behind them as his cousin Parker entered the room.
Spence laughed at that. Parker was probably right. The two women were very close. They had no shortage of things to talk about in that way women did, which seemed never-ending to him.
Parker shoved back his longish, shaggy, dark brown hair. He’d skipped the morning shave again, and Spence knew his always clean-shaven uncle had finally resigned himself to the fact that the stubble was likely going to be a permanent feature.
“You’re back early,” Spence said.
“It was an easy trip, and my people were quick to settle in at the fishing camp. I’ll go back and get them in three days.”
Although they specialized in the more remote trips, RTA didn’t turn their nose up at more local jaunts if requested. The customer was the one spending the money, after all.
“Nice milk run,” Spence said with a grin.
“Yeah, yeah,” Parker growled it out in mock irritation. “But I’ll take that over your next one.”
Spence rolled his eyes. His next scheduled trip was to a remote lakeside fishing spot most easily accessible by floatplane.
Which meant more time with Hetty, although that wasn’t why he rolled his eyes.
He did that because it was a honeymoon trip.
He’d made a few of those before and they’d always been a little too…
gooey for his taste. All that lovey-dovey stuff seemed a bit over the top to him.
Dealing with it in the closed-in space of the plane cockpit with Hetty was something he didn’t want to think about.
“Hetty’s pretty excited about getting back into the air again,” Parker said.
“Yeah,” Spence said noncommittally. Going for a quick subject change, he asked his cousin, “You have all the supplies lined up?”
They were going to restock the permanent campsite they had set up at the lake, which had gotten a lot of use last year.
He’d already checked the big, sturdy, wood-framed tent they used for that location, one that fit neatly onto the permanent foundation they’d built so it was a bit more solid than one that just sat on the ground. The still chilly ground.
“It’s all ready and waiting in the storage building,” Parker said, nodding toward the outbuilding that sat about fifty yards from the main office building they were in now.
“Good. I want to get it loaded on my truck, so I can get it aboard the plane early.”
Parker grinned at him. “You just don’t want to hang around the newlyweds any longer than you have to.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Spence muttered, not looking at his cousin.
Later, as he headed out to the storage building to gauge how many trips it would take him to get everything to the dock where the floatplane would tie up, he thought about how true Parker’s jab was. He really wasn’t looking forward to that aspect of this trip.
And you are not going to waste time analyzing why.
Order to himself given, he pulled open the big sliding door and made himself focus on the task at hand.
Parker hadn’t lied, it was all here, neatly stacked.
The restock supplies, plus the state-required equipment for any flight, food for each person for a week, signaling devices, fishing tackle, an ax/saw combo, fire starter, mosquito nets—the old jokes about bush planes being taken down by a squadron of mosquitos seemed a lot more believable when you spent some time fighting off the huge Alaskan variety—and personal locator beacons.
True, he’d have to figure out what order to put it in the plane’s cargo space, and track the weight for load capacity purposes, but he was used to that. Numbers were no problem for him.
He picked up the clipboard that sat atop the stack of boxes and crates and saw the individual weights already listed next to each item, in his cousin Lakin’s careful hand.
He silently thanked her. That would make up for any extra time he had to spend making sure he was reading the item description right.
And not for the first time, he was thankful for this place, this work, and most of all, this family of his.