2. Hugo
Hugo
Iwatch her car until it disappears around the bend and then I go back to work.
That is the whole of it, that is the beginning and end of Elsie Bell as far as I am concerned. She needed to get through and I got her through. She has a cabin and a functioning road, so she can manage the rest of it herself.
"Soft shoulder's still moving," Darnell calls from the far side of the culvert. He’s crouched at the edge with a stick, probing the ground the way I showed him two winters ago, he’s got good instinct and he doesn’t need me to tell him that.
"Shore it with the gravel before we pack up," I say. "I don't want anything shifting overnight."
He nods.
The snow is coming in faster than I'd like, it’s not heavy, not yet, but it’s the persistent fine stuff that gets into everything and makes roads deceptive.
I check the shoulder again myself, walking the worst of it twice, pressing my boot into the soft spots.
It will hold; probably. I make a note on the tablet to get someone back up here first thing in the morning with a proper load of aggregate.
"Who was the woman?" Corey questions, he’s not the worst on the crew but he’s the one most likely to push something he should leave alone. I look at him and he reads the look correctly. "Never mind," he says, and goes back to the compactor.
Good.
She was tired, that’s what I noticed more than anything else. Not just travelling tired, but something underneath that, something deep in her bones. Although she tried to hide it behind the Google Maps joke which had me almost smiling and for some reason that bothers me.
I don’t almost smile at strangers in road closures. I give them safety instructions and send them on their way. That’s how it works.
She is not my problem, she has a cabin and presumably a key to it, and if she is cold, she’ll figure out the wood burner the way everyone figures out the wood burner, which is by nearly smoking herself out and then asking Doris at the hardware store what she did wrong.
"Let's get packed up," I say. "I want the cones repositioned before dark."
The Road and Ridge office is small but it’s compact and has everything we need, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t look messy as hell, because it does. There are messages on my desk, but then again, there are always messages on my desk.
Three from Lila Moreno about the state grant documentation.
One from Red Holloway at the Union Hall, probably about the crew hours that Darnell still has not logged.
And a handwritten note from Hank Mullins stuck to the bridge file that says photos still not labelled, Hugo, this is a disaster, which is not helpful in the slightest.
I pour coffee into my mug and look at the state of the office.
I know what is in every pile, I know which folder is urgent and which one can wait until Thursday, I know that the bridge photos are on the third tablet from the left and that the retaining wall receipts are in the manila envelope that got coffee on it in October, and that the crew hours from September's emergency repairs are logged on a spreadsheet that only I know how to navigate.
It’s manageable, but it’s not a grant-ready filing system, and I am aware of that.
The inspection is in three weeks; the state team is coming to review our documentation for the infrastructure funding application.
Storm damage from last spring's runoff took out two culvert systems, cracked the south bridge deck, collapsed a section of retaining wall on the Ridge Road, and punched holes in the drainage along the upper access route.
We fixed all of it. My crew fixed all of it, in bad weather, under budget, and ahead of schedule in most cases.
The paperwork doesn’t reflect that, no, the paperwork is lacking severely, but that’s what happens when you have one foreman, seven crew members, an office manager who left in August, and a grant deadline that keeps moving.
Lila has told me three times that documentation is how the state decides if we are worth the investment. I know she’s right and I hate that she’s right.
She comes into the office at half past eight the next morning while I’m on the phone with the contractor about the south bridge deck, which needs a second inspection before we can close out the repair log. I hold up a hand without looking at who came in.
"Week after next," I say into the phone. "Friday if the weather holds, and I need the load ratings from the original assessment, not just the post-repair sign-off."
The contractor grumbles about scheduling.
"It is not a request," I say. "Friday."
I hang up and look at the door, Lila is standing there, and next to her, in a dark green sweater, dark jeans, and boots that are better than the ones she had on yesterday, with her hair in a messy knot and a notebook under one arm and a coffee cup in the other hand, is Elsie Bell.
Of course it is.
Elsie looks at me and I look back at her. There’s a beat of silence before it’s cut through by Lila.
"Mr. Rhodes," Lila says, using the urgent tone of hers. "This is Elsie Bell. She's available through the end of next month, she has relevant admin experience, and given the grant timeline, we all agreed she should start this week."
"I didn't agree," I say.
Lila raises a brow at me. "The mayor agreed."
I glare at the woman in front of me. "The mayor doesn't work in this office."
Elsie is looking around the room while we talk about her, taking everything in.
Her eyes move over the maps on the wall, the folders on the desk, the stack of labeled and unlabeled photos on the filing cabinet, and the corkboard that started as a job schedule and is now something closer to abstract art.
I look at Lila. "We talked about this," I say.
"You said you'd handle it," Lila says. "You've said that three times, Hugo. The inspection is in three weeks. The south bridge documentation alone is missing six supporting forms. We don’t have time for this to keep being your problem alone."
"She has no background in infrastructure," I say. I don't know if she has but I'm guessing she doesn't.
"She doesn't need one," Lila says. "She needs to organize files, label photos, cross-reference repair logs, and help you submit documentation that looks like it was put together by professionals rather than left in a truck overnight." She pauses. "No offense."
"Some taken," I say, still glaring at her.
Lila smiles sweetly at me before turning and leaves. That’s Lila’s MO. She’ll do something and before you can build a proper argument against it, she’ll leave without another word and I’m yet to decide if I respect it or find it infuriating. Probably both at this point.
I look at Elsie, who’s watching me carefully. "I'm told you need help," she says.
"I'm told the same thing," I reply.
"And you clearly love the idea."
"Thrilled."
She looks at the office again. I watch her take it in properly this time. "What's the grant for?" she asks when her gaze returns to me.
"Roads, bridges, drainage and storm repairs."
She nods, as though she’s understanding everything. "And the inspection is in three weeks?"
"Twenty-two days."
She writes something in the notebook. "Okay. What's most urgent?"
"All of it."
"Hugo." She says my name in a patient way, like she’s dealing with a small child. "What is the single most important thing the state team is going to want to see when they walk in here?"
I look at her for a moment and run a hand over my head. "The bridge documentation," I say. "The south bridge deck had storm damage and we repaired it, but the repair logs are incomplete, and the photos are on two different tablets and none of them are labelled by date or site."
"Okay," she says. "Where are the tablets?"
I point to them and she puts her coffee down, picks up both tablets, and starts scrolling. Her brow furrows immediately. "How many photos are we talking?"
"A couple hundred."
She continues to scroll through them. "And they're all just in the camera roll?"
"Some of them."
She looks up. "Where are the others?"
"There is a folder; somewhere."
"On the tablet?."
"Possibly."
"Hugo." This time her voice holds a little annoyance.
"I know," I say.
She’s quiet for a second, but then she sits down at the desk, which is my desk, the only desk, and opens the notebook again. "Is there a master list of all the sites?" she asks. "Roads, bridges, culverts, all of it? Something that shows what work was done and when?"
"There's a spreadsheet."
She looks at me, her eyes wide and filled with hope. "On your computer?"
"Yes."
"Can I access it?"
I move around the desk, lean past her to pull up the file. She smells like summer, floral and fresh. "That one," I say, pointing at the screen.
She looks at the spreadsheet, and I try not to wince. I know the spreadsheet isn’t good. It made sense when I built it, but what I use and what other people use are completely different.
"Okay," she says, after a pause that is slightly too long. "I can work with this."
"You can?"
"I've organized worse." She flips open the notebook. "I need you to walk me through the priority sites. Which bridges, which culverts, which repairs need to be fully documented for the inspection."
"That'll take a while."
"I have time." She picks up her coffee. "Unless you'd rather the state team sorts through it themselves."
I pull the closest chair out and sit. "South bridge first," I say. "Then the upper ridge culvert."
She writes it down, her hand moving fast, but the handwriting is neat. She continues to ask questions, not questions that slow us down, but questions that get to the point. When we get to the retaining wall on Ridge Road, she asks if I have the original structural report.
"Somewhere," I say.
I watch as she tries to hide her smile. "Is that different from definitely yes?"
"It's in the filing cabinet."
She shakes her head. "Which drawer?"
"Third one down, behind the survey maps."
She gets up, goes to the filing cabinet, opens the third drawer. Finds the survey maps and finds the report behind them, slightly crumpled and with a coffee ring on the corner.
She holds it up without saying anything, I say nothing, so she sits down again.
"I need ground rules," I say.
She looks at me. "Of course you do."
"You stay in the office unless I clear it. Job sites are active and I don't have time to supervise."
"I wasn't planning to operate a forklift."
"You don't go onto the road closures without telling me first."
She raises a perfectly sculpted brow, but nods. "Fine."
"You don't move active files without telling me what you did with them."
"Also fine."
"And you don't drive the upper mountain roads in bad weather. If the forecast turns, you stay in town."
She is quiet for a moment, the furrow in her brow is deeper than before. "Is that a work rule or a personal one?" she asks.
"Both."
She studies me for a second. I don’t know what she is looking for, but whatever it is, she doesn’t say whether she found it or not.
"Do you come with subtitles," she says, "or is grunting the main management style?"
I bite back a smile. "You'll learn."
"I run a business," she says. "It just happens to involve fictional people making better choices than I do. I know how to manage files, deadlines, and organized chaos. I'm not going to cost you the grant."
I look at her for a moment; she returns the gaze without blinking.
"The south bridge folder is the red one," I say as I get to my feet. "Cross-reference everything in it against the spreadsheet column marked SB-1 and tell me what's missing."
"And if a lot is missing?"
"Then we get started on fixing it."
She nods once, then opens the red folder and starts reading.
I go to get more coffee. When I come back she has the folder, both tablets, the spreadsheet on screen, and her notebook open to a fresh page that already has three columns drawn on it.
She’s muttering to herself very quietly; something about categories and whether date or site should be the primary sort.
I stand in the doorway for a moment and just watch her, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and it falls forward again immediately.
She doesn’t fit here, she’s soft where this office is hard, she’s warm where the job is cold, and she has a look about her like someone who is carrying something heavy and has decided the best way to manage it is to stay busy.
I know that feeling all too well. I go back to my desk and sit, but Elsie doesn’t look up.
She is temporary, I tell myself while she pulls a sticky note pile from somewhere in her bag and starts flagging the folder tabs.
Temporary, short-term, here for three weeks and then gone back to wherever she came from.
The problem is I have spent twenty years fixing things that other people considered temporary.
Roads wash out, bridges crack, and culverts collapse.
I go out in the dark and cold to fix them anyway, because someone has to, and because walking away from a problem has never once been something I know how to do.
Elsie looks up and finds me watching her.
"The SB-1 column," she says. "Three entries don't have corresponding photos. Are they on the tablets or somewhere else?"
"Third tablet," I say, pointing to the one that’s sitting on my desk. "There's a folder called August, it should be in there."
She reaches for it and I go back to my work.
She’s temporary.
I just need to remember that for the next twenty-two days.