The End of The Road (12 page)

“Rain!” she said with a sigh. “More rain! When are we going to get some snow? We had a good amount for a few days last month, but it went away as fast as it came and I only got half a dozen runs in with the mutts and sled. They’re getting fat and lazy, and so is their owner at this rate.”

I had to smile, for she is anything but fat or lazy, and slim as a girl. She seems almost always in motion, doing something, even if it is just walking back and forth to once again check the sky for any hint of snow-bearing clouds, as she had just done.

She smiled back and sat down to take a sip of her coffee.

“What would you like to do today?” she asked me. “You said you were shopping in Anchorage, so you’re probably shopped out by now. Is there anything else you’d like to do while you’re here? I should take a run into town to pick up a pile of food I ordered for the mutts and a couple of new harnesses for my leaders. Anywhere you’d like to go?”

“I wouldn’t mind stopping at the bookstore in Wasilla,” I told her. “You know Annabel’s under the clock tower. There’s a book I’d like to find for son Joe for Christmas, but it’s out of print. Neither Title Wave nor C and M Books in Anchorage had a copy and it wasn’t to be found in Homer. Annabel’s might have it. Could you drop me there while you run your errands?”

She gave me an amused smile with her answer.

“Sure. Break my heart! Make me come into a bookstore to find you. We may both be in serious trouble with books to be had. Good thing Alex’s working today. He’s a bigger addict for them than I am.”

We both glanced across the room at the two tall bookcases under the stairway, which were packed full of so many books that several piles had been stacked up on the floor in front of them.

“Looks familiar to me,” I told her. “You’ve seen mine. There’s not much difference.”

We took Jessie’s truck, as she could load it with the bags of the dog food she needed and my rented car was too small. But we left our two dogs at home, knowing the cab would be overly crowded with four of us in it, and its bed was filled with the large box used to transport her teams of dogs wherever they were needed, each in its own compartment. Tank and Stretch would be left behind and relied on to behave themselves inside the house while we were gone for a couple of hours, well trained as they were.

In less than half an hour I was waving Jessie out of the parking lot in front of Meta Rose Square, a neat building with a few shops, the tall clock tower high above, and, my goal of the moment, Annabel’s.

Besides several customers, both Carol and Richard Kinney, the owners, were there and greeted me warmly when I went in. Though I seldom have a chance to talk with them and browse their shelves of new and used books, it is always a treat when I do, for they are book people to the core and instant friends of book lovers.

Wonder of wonders, they
did
have a copy of the book I wanted for Joe, a book of photos of Homer back when it was just beginning to be a town, which pleased me, as I was about to give up looking. I also found a couple of Ellis Peters mysteries I didn’t have in my collection and a wonderful old book of selected verse by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a favorite poet of mine since college days.

The best part of an hour later, I was about to tackle the history shelves in search of something Lew didn’t already have in his historical collection in Homer when Jessie came breezing in, greeted the Kinneys, and grinned at the pile of books I had waiting for me at the front desk.

“I had a hunch I was leaving you too long,” she said. “Not fair. You got a head start. Did you find the one you were looking for?”

Assuring her I had, I was headed for books on the Revolutionary War when the cover of a paperback book displayed face-out on a shelf I was passing caught my eye:

I opened it to the table of contents and found that most of the chapters listed gave the names of the men who had created the various liquors, including a fair number of whiskeys with names I had written down from the bottles on the shelves of my local liquor store. Chapter eleven was Johnnie Walker.

That was enough for me to take it to go through later and give up searching for another day, with two books I didn’t think Lew had on his shelves and might enjoy adding.

Jessie came back to the front desk and I smiled to see that she had wasted no time in creating a pile of her own, which had grown almost as tall as mine in the few minutes she had taken to shelf-read.

“If we have something you’re looking for and can’t fin d, we’ll be glad to mail it to you in Homer,” Carol said to me. “Just give us a call.”

“I’ll remember that,” I told her as I paid for the books, tucked their card between the pages of one of them, and thanked them for their assistance.

As we headed for the building’s exit we passed a cooking shop that had intrigued me the last time I was there. I slowed and turned my head to look and Jessie laughed.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, clutching my elbow and towing me toward the outer doors. “Keep saying to yourself, ‘I have to
fly
home.’ ”

But I pulled away and went back to take another look from outside the shop’s door, for as we passed I had caught a glimpse of not the terrific assortment of anything related to cooking or eating, but a fig ure that I thought I recognized—the woman who had been on the plane I had taken from Homer to Anchorage and in the lobby of the hotel when I passed with Stretch on my way to do some shopping two days earlier.

“What is it?” Jessie asked at my shoulder. “Something you really want to take a look at? I’m sure they do mail orders, too.”

I shook my head and turned back toward the door to the outside again.

“No,” I told her. “Just someone I thought I recognized, but I guess I was mistaken.”

I thought about it as Jessie drove us home and somehow it made me uneasy. Was the woman somehow following me? If so, why? But it seemed unlikely that she could have been in all three of the towns I had either left or visited on this trip by accident—didn’t it? Who was this woman who kept showing up in my escape from home? If she wanted something, had something to say to me, why couldn’t she be direct and ask?

“That’s a worried sort of frown,” Jessie commented as she turned the truck off the highway into her driveway and drove up to park near the house. “You okay?”

Quickly, I relaxed the frown, which I hadn’t been conscious that I was exhibiting, and gave her a smile instead. “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Want help unloading your dog food?”

“Not necessary. It’s fine for the moment in the dog boxes in back. When Alex comes home he’ll help get it in the shed before we head for Oscar’s. Those bags are pretty heavy, and you’re supposed to be company anyway, not kennel help. Let’s go in and see how the mutts are doing.”

“The mutts” had heard us drive in and met us at the door with tails wagging, as eager to greet us as if we had been gone a week instead of a couple of hours. They make such an odd pair in size that it always amuses me to watch them together, and this was no exception. I forgot my consideration of the woman I thought I might have seen and turned to helping make sandwiches for lunch, which we ate at the table while we looked over the books we had brought back.

The better part of an hour later I was examining the one I had found for Joe when Jessie suddenly shoved back her chair and stood up to face the window.

“Snow!”
she crowed. “It’s
snowing
!”

I turned to see that, sure enough, fat white flakes were falling like a lace curtain through the air and into the yard and had already thinly coated the roofs of the dog boxes in the yard with half an inch or so.

“Oh, I do hope it doesn’t all melt off this time,” she said.

 

 

 

It didn’t, but went on coming down quite steadily for the rest of the afternoon. There were three or four inches outside by the time Alex arrived.

“Well, you got your wish finally,” he said, greeting me as he swept Jessie into a hug. “About time, too. I was beginning to think you’d soon be impossible to live with, but I checked and the weatherman is predicting snow for the next twenty-four hours at least and temperatures cold enough so it won’t melt off immediately this time.”

“I know. I checked, too,” she told him gleefully, stomping on boots and reaching for her coat. “Don’t take off your parka. I’ve got a load of dog food that needs to go in the shed and can use some help.”

I watched from the window as they went out together. Jessie skipped ahead and scooped up enough snow for a snowball, which she hurled at Alex. He instantly retaliated and the battle continued for a few minutes until he grabbed up a handful and washed her face with it.

What a great couple they made, I thought as I watched and laughed at their antics. In a few trips to the storage shed, they had unloaded the sacks of dog food, then fed and watered the dogs in the yard, and were coming back inside, shaking off the snow before entering.

“She gets like this every fall, waiting for snow. I think she’d be happy to have it year-round if the weather would cooperate,” Alex told me with a grin. “Now—everyone ready to head over to Oscar’s? How’re you at dart tossing, Maxie?”

“Rusty, but willing,” I told him.

So we were soon on our way in his larger truck with its crew cab, taking Stretch and Tank along, knowing they were always welcome at the Other Place.

TWELVE

WE HAD A FINE EVENING AT OSCAR’S OTHER PLACE.

From behind the bar he greeted our two dogs and us warmly, as he set up our bottles of Killian’s lager.

“Good to see you again, Maxie,” he told me. “Has it snowed in Homer yet?”

“Once, but it was gone when I left a couple of days ago. There’ll be more soon, according to the predictions.”

He waved us toward the chili, which was set on a table across the room in a large kettle with a hot plate under it and bowls and spoons handy.

“Help yourselves. Good thing you came early. It’ll be gone in another hour. Word gets out, you know?”

The place was full of local people, mostly those with kennels of sled dogs, all delighted with the snowy weather, but we found a table somehow and enjoyed the chili between greeting friends and fellow mushers of Jessie’s. As soon as we had finished, Alex removed the bowls and replenished our Killian’s, and Jessie went to meet a challenge at the pool table. Alex and I waited for a dartboard and he trounced me badly two out of three, but somehow I managed to beat him once—though I think either he allowed it with intent or I got extremely lucky.

We drove home pleasantly satisfied with the evening and went shortly to bed. Sometimes just hanging out with friends is one of life’s best pleasures, and this had been one.

Sometime in the middle of the night I woke in the dark, slipped out of bed, and went to the window, where I could see that snow was, as Alex had predicted, still falling, even more heavily than it had earlier.