16. Abel
Abel
Pat Heneghan’s Sawmills lies on the opposite side of the valley to us, and about the same distance away from Coyote Creek Falls as we are. That means it’s about an hour and fifteen or maybe an hour and twenty door-to-door, with the town as a natural midpoint in the journey.
Essentially, you could say we are neighbors-as-the-crow-flies, since there’s nothing but fresh air between him and us. The only difference is the name of the mountain. Ours is called Steep Top, his is Coyote Mountain, and the waterfall that the town is named from is just yards from his mill.
Indeed, in years gone past, his sawmill had been operated by water power.
Of course, he hadn’t been the owner back then.
It would have been his grandpa. But the sawmill had continued where others had long since gone out of business.
Somehow, he’d persuaded the local service provider to get electricity up as far as the mill.
You can see the pylons from our place, rising up the hillside, when the weather’s clear, the trees cut back to either side of them in a vast swathe up the mountain slope, and cut back once a year by a huge saw mounted beneath a chopper. It’s quite a thing to watch.
Of course, the presence of electricity has also meant that his side of the valley has become a fair amount more populated than ours.
Smallholdings dot both sides of the road as you head upwards towards his mill, their homesteads sometimes standing proudly by the roadside, and at other times nestled deep within the gloom of the surrounding forest, hidden somewhere off the road along one track or another.
Maybe it’s better that way. But honestly, having no neighbors to speak of for several miles in all directions suits me just fine.
I’ve never been overly sociable. Never really known what to say to strangers, and, if I’m totally honest, I’ve never really understood why I should want to speak to them in the first place.
Pat’s alright though. In fact, I like him. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t ask a thousand questions, or expect you to laugh heartily at anecdotes that have either been at best, grossly embellished, or more often, completely fabricated.
He’s a big guy, too. Maybe not quite my size, but then few are.
My father used to say we had Danish blood in us, and our ancestors had been Vikings, striking fear into the hearts of much of northern and central Europe, a thousand years ago.
Maybe it’s true. I dunno. With a name like Patrick Heneghan, Pat obviously comes from Irish stock.
Whatever his heritage, he’s built, which is a good thing in a sawmill, where there’s no shortage of timber to move around and control safely as it’s cut, dried, stacked and shipped.
If I wasn’t a mechanic—which I love—I think I might choose to be a sawmill operator.
Aside from anything else, I love the smell of fresh-cut wood.
Cedar, oak, cherry, pine—they all have their individual and distinctive scents.
As well as the smell, I love the look of a freshly-cut board.
So smooth, so satisfying to the touch. Maple, especially, can be nothing short of breathtaking if it’s cut at the right angle to the grain.
Pat keeps the best timber aside to sell to furniture makers and guitar manufacturers.
He says they’ll pay a fortune for the right board, and I believe him.
Pat was actually one of the first people we met and got to know when we bought the place, three years ago. That’s because he was the guy we were recommended to by the vendor when we were asking for a good place to buy the timber we’d need to build the house and the workshop.
He did more than just supply timber. He looked at our plans and made several good suggestions for improvements, helping us increase the quality and reduce our expenditure at the same time.
He introduced us to the best tradesmen that the area had to offer, including plumbers, plasterers, and electricians.
On top of that, and perhaps just as important as anything else, he was always encouraging us, always making us feel good about the progress we were making, but at the same time, never stepping across the line, never blowing smoke up our asses.
Could we have managed without him? Sure. But it would have been far harder, taken us far longer, and cost us a great deal more. By my reckoning, we owe him a great deal.
One small way I can repay his kindness is right now. Choosing to use Pat for our timber needs for the raised beds in our new vegetable garden was a no-brainer.
Besides, it gets me out of the house, for once.
The timber I settle on for the raised beds is cedar. Being for use with vegetables that will be for human consumption, the timbers have to be untreated, and cedar has natural rot resistance built-in. It’s also relatively easy to work with compared with most hardwoods. Finally, it smells fantastic.
Sandro and I had decided on three, eight-foot by four-foot beds.
It’s no good making raised beds too big, because if you do that, you can never reach the center of them, which of course is no good.
Better to make several smaller ones. I’d called ahead and put in my order, asking for the timber to be dimensioned into two-inch by twelve-inch, rough-sawn planks.
The timbers are all neatly stacked, ready for me when I arrive.
Six eight-foot lengths, six four-foot lengths, all carefully strapped together on a pallet, and waiting to be lowered onto the bed of Regan’s F-150 using Pat’s front loader.
The loading work done, I pay Pat in cash, and we sit on his porch and drink a beer, watching the swallows wheel and dart around us, catching insects on the wing.
“Been into town lately?” he asks me after a few minutes.
“Nope,” I reply. “Not for a month or so. Got my hair cut the last time.”
He looks me up and down in a slightly over-dramatic way.
“’Bout time you went back I reckon,” he smiles, and I grin back, sharing the joke, but saying nothing. There’s obviously something on his mind. He’ll get to it in his own time.
“I was in town myself, last Thursday. Needed a few essentials. Dropped into Theo’s to see who was there, and got talking to his son, Randy.”
I nod, giving him space to carry on with his story.
“Well, he asked after the three of you. Wanted to know when I’d seen you last.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He said someone had come in, maybe three or four days earlier. A stranger. Some Italian-looking guy, dressed quite sharply for around here. Didn’t see what car he was driving or nothing like that.”
“U-hu.”
“Apparently he asked if Randy knew a guy called Grant Naylor, or had heard about an attractive brunette who might be new to the area.”
“He said that?”
“Yep, leastways. That’s what Randy told me.”
“What did Randy tell him?”
“Nothing at all. Says he told him he’d never heard of the guy, and there weren’t no attractive brunettes in town, not so far as he knew.”
“Good.”
“Just thought you boys oughta know.”
“You were right.”
“Trouble?”
I pause, thinking. The sun goes behind a cloud, momentarily blocking out the light and causing my skin to tingle in the sudden coolness.
“Yeah, maybe. But nothing we can’t handle.”
Driving back from Pat’s sawmill, I try to decide what I should do about what Pat’s told me.
I don’t want to cause unnecessary alarm. On the other hand though, I can hardly let it go entirely. Forewarned is forearmed. I know I’d want to know, if it was me.
It takes me the whole drive home to think things through, and even then, I only really make my mind up because I’m turning into our track and I need to make a decision.
I’ll just tell Grant, for now. Then between us, we can decide who else to tell, and what to tell them.
But when I park up and get out of the truck, another surprise awaits me. The place is empty. Silent.
Where is everyone?
Presumably Regan and Sandro are still out on their rescue job. Perhaps they’ve been delayed. Any number of complications might have occurred. Okay, that makes sense. But that still leaves Grant and Maria. Where the hell are they?
That’s when I hear a noise. I stand still, silently straining my ears. It seems to be coming from Grant’s bedroom. I creep down the hall, until the sounds are unmistakable, and what’s worse, they’re getting louder, more frantic.
Shit!
This is not what I wanted to arrive in the middle of.
Not at all.
I back away in the direction I’ve come from, then turn and make a run for it, before I’m noticed. Back to the workshop. Back to the safety of my engines and tools.
It was bad enough realizing she was going with Regan. Now she’s at it with Grant too.
What does it all mean?
And where do I fit into all this?