7. Doreen
DOREEN
She assumed he had vanished out of embarrassment, or something, but in fact he was back a minute later with the canvas strap of her tote bag clutched in his teeth. Before Doreen could say anything, he dived again and reappeared after a few moments dragging most of her clothing in a sodden, muddy mass.
“This is very kind of you, but—wait!” This time she managed to get his attention before he dived back in again. It felt strange talking to a beaver, but Doreen went on, “It’s very nice of you to get my clothes and all, but I really need something dry to put on. Do you have anything at your house?”
The beaver paused at the edge of the water, and then abruptly it was Wick again, slick and wet and still completely naked.
“Right,” he said, not quite looking at her. “House. Dry off. Good idea. This way?”
The path along the edge of the pond curved gently around to the cabin. Now that she was getting used to the feeling of the breeze on her bare, damp skin, Doreen found that she wasn’t uncomfortable or even particularly cold in the warm sun. She just had to be careful not to step on anything thorny in her bare feet.
Wick carried her bundle of soaked clothing, holding it in front of him as if to cover ... things.
Doreen was trying not to look at him as hard as he was clearly trying not to look at her, but it was impossible to deny the temptation to sneak a few peeks.
His lumberjack lifestyle, as she might have guessed, had left him absolutely ripped. His shoulders were solid muscle, and when he got a little ahead of her on the pondside path, she noticed muscles rippling all up and down his back, all the way down to?—
Whoa, girl! Eyes upstairs!
It was certainly a distraction that kept her from paying too much attention to the rest of the scenery until they got to Wick’s cabin. He went inside swiftly, and when Doreen followed a bit more cautiously, he was digging clothes out of a wooden chest by the bed. There wasn’t actually a separate bedroom, although there was a half-wall between the bed and the rest of the room that looked like it might provide a small amount of privacy, at least up to her waist.
“Here.” Wick thrust out the clean clothes, which turned out to be a red-and-blue plaid shirt and a pair of jeans, similar to what she had last seen him wearing. “You can change back here. I’ll build up the fire.”
Doreen stepped behind the wooden barricade, which turned out to have shelves built into it, with books and a lamp. It wasn’t really a privacy wall at all; it was a bookcase connected to the wall. She wondered if he had originally meant to build it all the way up to the ceiling, and then decided it was fine as-is since he was, clearly, the only one living here.
While Wick bustled around the cabin, pointedly not looking her way, she put on the clothes he had given her. Men’s clothes did generally fit her, if awkwardly in the chest and hips. These clothes were extremely tight in the expected places, but had the benefit of smelling softly but very pleasantly of Wick. She was still barefoot, but at least she wasn’t busting out everywhere, although she had no replacement for her soaked bra so if the straining buttons gave way, Wick was going to get quite a show.
Doreen had a feeling he wouldn’t mind if she did—and she wouldn’t mind giving it to him.
But she had forcibly kept her eyes averted, so when she stepped out of the bedroom nook, she discovered that Wick had also gotten dressed (too bad, she sighed inwardly) and had hung her wet clothing beside the old-fashioned iron stove. He was pouring water into a metal coffeepot.
“Sit,” he said, pulling one of the two chairs near the stove. “Uh, if you like. There’ll be coffee soon.”
Doreen decided not to stand on ceremony. She took the offered chair, stretched her bare toes to the pleasant warmth from the stove, and looked around.
Although small, the cabin was cozy and solidly built. The furniture—a table, bedframe, two chairs, and some chests and shelves for storage—all looked handmade, with the same heavy, solid construction as the cabin itself. The table was a bit more crude than the rest of it, really just a couple of smoothed-off slabs across log ends, but the furniture got progressively more neatly and skillfully built from there.
“Did you make all of this?” Doreen asked Wick, who was arranging dishes on the table, two plates and two cups.
“Yeah. Started with this.” He patted the top of the table, and Doreen preened inwardly that she had been able to tell. “First thing I made. I guess it shows, but I don’t like throwing things away. And it works.”
“I like it,” Doreen said. “I don’t like delicate, flimsy sticks of furniture. This looks like a table you could sit on.”
Which abruptly made her think of all the other things a person could do on this table, with a willing partner, which it looked like it would be more than sturdy enough to stand up to.
She hoped the pink in her cheeks could be adequately explained by the heat of the stove.
“Do you want something to eat?” Wick asked. He sounded hopeful. “There’s bread and cheese, and a raspberry and blackberry tart. I picked the berries myself.”
Doreen hadn’t realized she was hungry, but a growl from her stomach startled her, making her laugh. “Thank you. I guess hiking works up an appetite, and so does swimming.” As Wick got a loaf of bread out of a wooden breadbox on a shelf, she asked, “Can I help?”
“No worries, I’ve got it. I don’t have guests often.”
He bustled around, getting things out of a mini RV fridge. Doreen moved her chair over to the table. Wick had laid out plates and cups, and even had some late-season goldenrod flowers in a small glass jar on the table.
There was an envelope propped up against the jar. Doreen looked at it curiously. It had once been a cheap, plain white envelope, although now it was smudged and worn at the corners, as if it had been carried around in someone’s pocket. The flap was sealed, and DAD was written on the front in blocky letters that looked like a man’s handwriting.
“Do you want me to take any mail for you when I go back to the lodge?” she asked.
“What?” Wick turned around, saw where she was looking, and she saw him blanch a little. He took two long, fast steps to the table, grabbed the envelope, and put it on a high shelf beside the dishes. It all happened so fast that Doreen was thoroughly taken aback.
“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to snoop.”
“That’s personal.” Looking shaken, Wick turned back to close the door of the fridge, which he had left standing open in his haste.
“I can see that. I’m sorry.” Hoping to change the subject to something more neutral, she asked, “So you have electricity here? Does it come down from the lodge?”
It took him a minute to answer, but he seemed calmer when he did. “No. I generate it from the pond. You were looking at it when you, uh—fell in.”
“Oh, the water wheel?” So that really was what it was, an electricity generation device. “How does it work?”
Wick set a butter dish and a block of crumbly cheese on the table. “It runs a turbine that charges batteries in the house. Just enough for the fridge, some lights, and a few other things, like a DVD player.”
“You really do have all the comforts here,” Doreen said, delighted.
She could all too easily picture herself living in a place like this, she thought as Wick brought the coffee to the table and set out milk and sugar. And then it abruptly occurred to her, with a soul-deep shock—why not? It wasn’t like she had a job in the city to go back to.
She could live somewhere like this. The thought dizzied her. Suddenly her firing felt less like a disaster, and more like opportunity opening up wide in front of her.
“—milk?”
She had tuned out for a minute. “Yes, thank you. Sorry.” As she reached for the spoon lying beside her plate, Doreen abruptly thought of something else that had slipped her mind completely up to this point; the recollection of town reminded her. “I had my phone with me. Did you get it out of the water?”
Wick nodded toward the stove, and then she saw it, lying on a towel on top of the pile of wood in the woodbox.
“It’s pretty wet. I hope it dries out okay. Really sorry about that.”
“I’ll see if the lodge has any rice or desiccant when I get back tonight. It’ll dry out fine, I’m sure.” She was not sure at all, but decided not to worry about it. She could just as easily have dropped the phone into a stream or lake herself while trying to take pictures. It was all part of hiking in the woods. And maybe being out of touch for a while was a good thing, so she could figure out her new life choices without her old life dragging on her like an anchor.
Wick served thick slabs of homemade bread with cheese and butter and a small pot of jam, followed by the tart leaking rich, sugary juices onto its plate. Doreen inhaled it. She had always been a healthy eater, but she felt as if her appetite had increased a hundredfold in the fresh mountain air.
“You know what I just realized?” she asked, spooning jam onto a sliver of bread that she knew she didn’t have room for but planned to eat anyway. “I never actually told you my name. I’m Doreen.”
Wick abruptly grinned, making her realize that he had a stunning smile. She had almost stopped noticing the scarring on his face, although she was curious about it.
“I wasn’t gonna ask if you didn’t want to volunteer. I’m Wick.”
“I know. The people at the lodge told me. Actually, I was looking for ...” She hesitated, once again nervous that she might come off like a stalker. “I knew you lived somewhere near here, and I would have liked to talk to you. I figured if I walked on the trails around here, I might run into you. And the lodge owners said there were some beaver ponds, so I was looking for those too.”
“Well, you found both.” He seemed to be warming to her and lightening up in her company, becoming almost playful. Doreen was discovering that even apart from the literal animal magnetism of his presence, she really liked him.
Thinking of magnets reminded her of his turbine. “How does your electricity generator work? I’d love to see it.”
“You’re interested?” Wick asked, surprised.
“Sure I am. I’m a mechanic. I love stuff like that.”
Wick left their dishes soaking in a small tub of water and took her outside. Doreen hesitated in her bare feet, but Wick, also barefoot, walked swiftly and surely off the cabin’s deck onto the lakeside path, so she followed. The deck, she noticed, had two sets of steps. One set went down to the path from the side. The others went straight down off the front into the water.
It must be convenient to be able to shift and go swimming straight from your front door. What a difference from her little apartment in the city.
She followed him to the dam. The water wheel was steadily running, making rhythmic splashing sounds. Wick showed her the machinery, located in a low wooden shed about three feet high beside the pond, which she had taken for a woodshed or possibly a storage shed for water safety equipment.
“It’s adapted from old car parts,” he explained. “And there’s an electrical line that runs to the house.”
“This is ingenious. You made it all yourself?”
“Everything here,” Wick said. He straightened up and looked back at the cabin, framed against the colorful autumn foliage. “Want to see the lumberyard?”
At this point she would have followed him anywhere. “Yes, please!”
They stopped by the cabin for shoes. Doreen’s were still damp, but as Wick pointed out, walking around in the lumberyard in bare feet was both uncomfortable and unsafe. He provided a pair of soft, dry wool socks for her, and then they went into the backyard.
Doreen had seen it from a distance, but she was unprepared for the scope of it. The ground was covered with curls of fresh sawdust, and there was an actual small sawmill with a roof over it, as well as several long woodsheds holding cut and stacked lumber.
“I do most of my business in the fall, when people need wood for winter,” Wick explained as they walked around. The air smelled wonderful, a crisp cut-wood aroma that Doreen thought some people would pay a lot for in the form of an air freshener—but it wouldn’t be nearly this authentic or nice. She would have loved to have her car and apartment smell this way all the time.
“How do you avoid cutting down too many trees?” she asked. “For the health of the forest, I mean. I assume you don’t clear-cut.”
Wick smiled. “I only cut dead ones. We had an infestation of bark beetles in these forests a decade or two ago, so the woods are full of standing dead pines and spruce.” He sobered. “Actually, that’s something you need to know about these woods. Those trees are dangerous. In the high winds we can get during the fall and winter, they can snap off, either branches or the whole tree. Don’t go walking in the woods during a windstorm. It can kill you.”
“I did see some branches and a tree trunk in the trails when I was hiking earlier,” Doreen said, recalling.
“Probably a recent fall. Mauro keeps the trails pretty well brushed out, but he calls me when there’s a big one down, and I collect the wood. Do you remember where it was?”
Doreen shook her head. “But I’ll let you know if I see it again.”
Mauro smiled, and she was struck all over again by how beautiful his smile was. She had stopped noticing the scars at all.
They walked around the lumberyard, and he showed her the various pieces of equipment. Doreen was fascinated with the sawmill, which had a small gasoline-powered engine and could split impressively enormous logs.
“Most women—” Wick began. Then he shook his head. “No, most people wouldn’t be interested in this.”
“It’s fascinating. I’ve loved machines since I was a kid, just taking things apart to figure out how they worked.” Doreen smiled reminiscently. “My brother ended up as a school guidance counselor, while I was always more interested in spending time in machine shops and tinkering with Dad’s car.”
“Are they badgers too?” Wick asked. Then he winced. “Sorry. That’s personal, you don’t have to say.”
He spoke of it so casually. Doreen had spent so much time hiding her true nature that it was breathtaking to be asked about it, like the first drop at the top of a roller coaster—wonderful, scary, and exciting.
“Mom’s a shifter,” she said. “Yes, she’s a badger, like me and my brother. Dad is human. They’re living in a retirement community in Arizona.”
“How do they like the desert?”
“It’s not really desert, more like mountain foothills, but they love it. Mom says that if she’d known she was going to enjoy it so much, she’d have insisted on moving there years ago.”
“It’s good to find a place where you belong,” Wick said quietly. He looked across the lumberyard to the bright yellow and red trees against a backdrop of dark pines and mountain peaks. The clouds were starting to cover the peaks, growing dark and misty.
A place you belong. Doreen wondered if she’d ever had that in her life. Where she belonged was with an oily rag in one hand and a wrench in the other, but she had yet to find a shop where she could just be herself and do what she was good at, without having to feel like she was proving herself to the guys every ten minutes. She had thought Mike’s Garage was that place, only to be knocked down yet again.
“Clouds are rolling in fast,” Wick remarked, and Doreen realized she’d zoned out a little bit. “I can run you up to the lodge in the wood truck, but we’d better get moving. The road to the lodge is steep, and it’s not safe in a heavy rain. Otherwise you’d have to stay ’til the rain moved on, maybe all night.”
“Oh yes, I should definitely get moving,” Doreen said hastily, to cover how much staying all night, in the cabin with only one bed, didn’t sound like a bad thing. She only realized when she saw Wick’s face fall a little that he might have hoped for a different answer. But the look was gone an instant later.
“I’ll get the old girl ready. You want to pick up your things? Your clothes could use a good tumble in a washing machine, and that’s one thing I don’t have.”
Doreen’s eyes glazed slightly. A good tumble. She wouldn’t mind a good tumble, no washing machines involved. She blinked her way back to reality. “Yes, I’ll do that,” she said to Wick’s back, but he was already headed for the old red truck. She hoped she hadn’t offended him.
She collected her damp clothing from where Wick had draped it beside the stove, and inspected the badger claw rips in the sweater unhappily. It would have to be tossed; she didn’t see any way to fix it.
Looking around the cabin one last time, she thought how comfortable and snug it might feel in a storm.
I’ll have to find out what that’s like, she thought . Someday.
But she heard the rumble of the truck’s engine outside, so evidently today was not that day. Doreen came outside to find that Wick had taken off the wooden panels on the back of the truck that held his firewood loads in place, so it was just a naked flatbed.
“Easier to get up to the lodge like this,” he explained. “They’re all old logging roads around here, narrow with a lot of overhanging trees. Hop in.”
Doreen climbed up on the passenger-side running board. The truck had an old bench seat that went all the way across, and a large shift lever on the floor. Wick climbed in on the driver’s side.
“I love these old trucks,” Doreen said rapturously as he put it in gear. The rumbling engine settled to a low thumping. “They’re practically indestructible.”
“Yeah, I got her from an old miner, and she’d passed through several loggers and farmers on the way to me. All of ’em used her to haul heavy loads around these mountains, and she’s never complained about lugging mine.”
As the truck jolted its way alone the single-lane dirt road beside the pond, Doreen noticed an unevenness in the cadence of the engine. She chewed her lip, wondering whether to say anything.
“What’s wrong?” Wick asked.
He was more in tune with her emotions than anyone she had known before, even her brother. Doreen decided that Wick wasn’t the kind of guy whose ego would be hurt if she pointed out a mechanical thing he hadn’t noticed. And anyway, if she had to downplay her own knowledge of engines around him to avoid hurting his feelings, things weren’t going to go very far for them anyway.
“Your engine,” she said. “It’s missing on a cylinder, not every time, but—see there, it just did it again.”
“Didn’t even notice.” Wick looked at her with an expression that was anything but upset; he looked impressed. Admiring, even. “What would you recommend?”
Doreen tried not to preen too much. He not only didn’t mind, he wanted her advice! “Well, it could just be dirty spark plugs if you haven’t replaced them in a while. I’d take them out and clean them when you get back. If that doesn’t do it, then you might have a bad plug wire. As you say, these old engines can take a fantastic beating, but the electrical components are less durable. You don’t have a whole lot else to go wrong, no fuel injection or sensors.” She hesitated briefly, but in for a dime, in for the rest ... “If you want me to give her a tuneup, I’d be happy to.”
“I’ll pay you,” Wick said promptly.
“What? Gosh, no. It’d be my pleasure. Just getting my hands on that engine would be pleasure enough. Is that the original straight 6 that came with the truck?”
They chatted engines on the drive up to the lodge, which helped distract Doreen from the terrifying plunge into the valley as the truck labored over a road that often seemed like nothing more than two nearly vertical ruts between the trees. In fact, she thought she might have crossed it once or twice on the hiking paths this morning and hadn’t realized it was anything other than an ATV track.
But they made it to the lodge, coming into the big parking area from a different direction than the main road. They emerged behind the outbuildings, near the woodshed. Of course Wick would have a shortcut that brought him straight to where he could offload the wood, Doreen thought. Wick drove past the woodshed to the front of the lodge.
“You can bring back my shirt whenever you want,” Wick said, glancing at her almost shyly.
Doreen became aware—very aware—that she was still wearing his plaid shirt and faded jeans, and was going to have to walk back to her room like that, a sort of wilderness walk of shame. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be anyone around at the moment.
“Actually,” she said, grabbing her courage in both hands, “could I invite you for dinner? Or—breakfast, maybe, if the weather is too bad tonight? In fact, maybe we better count on breakfast,” she added quickly as a raindrop struck the top of the truck, heralding the next round of autumn rains. “I don’t think it should be a problem, but I’ll check with Hester to make sure.”
She noticed his scar now because the color heightened in the other side of his face, while the scar remained pale. “Yeah,” Wick said, and his lopsided smile was gorgeous. “Yeah, I’d like that.”