The End of The Road (4 page)

“I like her a lot, too. I didn’t suggest it, but maybe that’s what he’s sort of getting around to. It came up so suddenly that they’re both adjusting to the idea of a big change. They’ve been living together for the last four years. He said she’s pretty excited by the idea of expanding her business. I think he’s afraid she might say no if it meant she would have to give that up. He’s going to fly up tomorrow for the weekend, so I’ll know more by the time he goes back.”

“Well, keep us posted,” Linda requested.

“I will,” I promised as we sat down to eat.

It was close to midnight when I got home. We had enjoyed apple pie for dessert, cleared the table to play three rounds of Farkel and two of chicken foot with the dominoes, and fin ished both bottles of wine. Altogether it had been a most satisfactory evening, as usual, with much laughter and conversation.

In the second half of my sixties, I am the oldest, with both Becky and Linda significantly younger, but the age difference has never mattered to any of us. Both of them are nurses—Becky at the Homer hospital and Linda at Alaska Regional in Anchorage. I always feel particularly safe with them around, just in case I should have a sudden heart attack or stroke, especially as Becky works nights in the emergency room and knows her stuff. Linda claims that when we’re together I’m much more likely to die laughing than as a result of any serious medical condition.

Stretch knows the familiar sound of my car pulling into the driveway and was at the door to meet me with wags and wiggles, as if I had been gone a week and not just a few hours.

“You’re a good and patient bitser, you are,” I told him, dropping my coat over the back of a dining room chair, my purse on the seat of it, and leaning to give him the attention he was expecting. “You need to go out, I suppose.”

He did. And, given the temperature, he made quick work of it.

I opened my eyes to the dark at just after seven the next morning. That time of year this far north the sun doesn’t come up over the Kenai Mountains until around eight thirty, so there wasn’t a hint of light outside. By Christmas it wouldn’t rise until approximately nine o’clock and would set at three in the afternoon. Having been in the Southwest for the previous two winters, I found myself noticing and readjusting to the seasonal darkness I had accepted as normal all my life. It was an odd feeling—almost learning to be at home again.

After a quick wake-up shower, I ate a leisurely breakfast as I enjoyed watching the light grow over the mountains to the south through the sliding glass doors that lead onto the deck, which would soon be covered with snow. Then I washed up the few dishes before assembling the ingredients for the stew I intended to simmer slowly through the day.

Before putting it together, I called the Driftwood Inn and asked for John Walker, having made up my mind about asking him for supper that evening.

“Just a minute,” the woman who answered told me. “He’s right here having coffee. I’ll put him on.”

“Yes?” he said a few seconds later, sounding a bit hesitant and oddly cautious.

“Good morning, John. This is Maxie,” I told him. “The woman you met on the spit yesterday.”

“Oh, yes—my savior from the storm. Hello, Maxie.”

“I’m having a few friends for supper tonight and wondered if you’d like to join us,” I told him.

“I must assume you don’t mean that literally,” he said with a chuckle. “That they are to be served supper, not served up for it.”

This bit of humor assured me that he would fit right in with the group I intended to invite.

“Well . . . ,” I teased back. “Not being a cannibalistic sort, I hadn’t considered the latter, but have beef for the stew I’m about to make.”

“With that assurance, I’d be pleased to come, and thank you for the invitation.”

“Good. My son, Joe, is fly ing in from Seattle about noon for the weekend. I’ll send him to pick you up about five thirty, if that works for you.”

“It does, but I can take a taxi if you’ll give me the address.”

“Not necessary. Joe’ll be glad to come.”

“I’ll look forward to meeting him,” John said. “And thanks again, Maxie.”

Joyce Berman was also happy to accept my invitation and to hear that Joe was arriving from Seattle. She was originally from Helena, Montana, and had met her husband, Marty, when they both attended the University of Montana in Missoula. He had been a grade school and high school classmate of Joe’s. They had been fast friends then and still were, so I knew Joe would be pleased to have them at my table.

I reached my friend Harriet Christianson at the library and was pleased to add her name to my list before making the last phone call, to retired fireman Lew Joiner.

Lew was a respected local character who had always been an avid fis herman and now spent the summers ferrying halibut hunters on his small charter boat. He was a cheerful soul and loved books about the sea almost as much as he loved fishing, so I thought he and John would probably get along fine.

My list of guests complete, I went to make the stew, after which I buttered and wrapped the French bread in foil so it was ready to warm in the oven later. With the stew simmering gently on the stove, I took Stretch for a quick walk up the road and back, then settled comfortably in my big chair near the fir eplace to, as John had suggested the afternoon before,
read the rest of the morning away
—or, at least, until it was time to head for the airport to meet Joe’s flight from Anchorage.

Leaving the edges brightly gilded, the sun was already slipping behind a bank of clouds on the western horizon when Grant Aviation’s compact Cessna Caravan arrived on time at five minutes after one that afternoon. Son Joe got off with six other passengers and came striding into the airport waiting room with one small carry-on bag, already looking for me.

He crossed the room with an eager grin and gave an enthusiastic hug to his mother.

“Hey, Mom, I’m home,” he said in my ear.

“So you are. And right on time, too,” I told him as he released me.

“Trust Grant Aviation—they’re seldom late,” he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the ticket counter and lifting his free hand in a wave to the ticket agent, a girl he had known and dated in high school.

There are times that, with a turn of the head or a tone of voice, Joe reminds me so much of his late father that it makes me catch my breath and takes me back all those years to the time when I fell in love with and married Joe senior. What lovely and precious gifts our children give us when, all unknowing, just by being themselves, they remind us of times and people that have mattered most in our lives.

By shortly after six the gathering was completed when Lew Joiner arrived last, handing me a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag as he came in the door.

“Here’s one for your wine cellar,” he said. “And here,” he continued, pulling two fat paperbacks from a pocket of the coat he had hung on one of the hooks by the door, “are a couple I hope you haven’t read yet.”

“I’ve not,” I told him, examining the titles:
Rise to Rebellion
and
The Glorious Cause
by Jeff Shaara—both labeled as novels of the American Revolution. “But the author’s name is familiar.”

“His father, Michael Shaara, wrote a Civil War book I know you’ve read.”

“Oh, yes.
The Killer Angels
.”

“That’s the one. Jeff’s written these two like fiction and you won’t be able to put them down,” Lew told me. “They’re the whole war from the viewpoints of key figures like Washington, Adams, Frank lin, Revere, Cornwallis, Lafayette—you get the idea.”

“Sounds good. I’ll read them right away. Just finished the book I was on and was in need of another. Thanks, Lew.”

We had moved to the counter that separates my kitchen from the dining area, where I laid the books down and handed him a glass of Merlot.

“Yes, thank you, Maxie,” he said. “Now, where’s that son of yours?”

I was not surprised that Lew had brought me books, for we have shared a love of reading for years and often trade books back and forth, knowing each other’s preferences well. It’s an addiction we share with many others, for there are a lot of readers in Homer. When winter sets in seriously, probably close to half the town is reading on any given evening, if they aren’t watching television.

I stood for a minute, looking around the large room that contains both living and dining areas—fireplace and comfortable seating at one end, table and chairs at the other. There is little I enjoy more than having friends and family gather for a meal at the house that was built by my first husband, Joe senior. Except for John Walker, everyone in this particular group had been guests of mine many times in the past and took pleasure in one another’s company.

Lew had gone directly across the room to where Joe stood talking to John, and, introductions made, the three of them turned to examining the books that filled the shelves that rose on either side of the fireplace, in which a cheerful fire glowed.

Marty and Joyce were seated on the plump sofa that faced the fir e, talking with Harriet, who occupied an easy chair at right angles to them. She had been a friend of Marty’s mother, now deceased. Always a sort of adopted aunt to him, I knew she would be catching up on the welfare of his two small children and his job with the Sea Life Center in town.

Stretch, I noticed, was in his element, curled up on the middle cushion of the sofa, his chin on Joyce’s lap to make it easy for her to give him pats and rub his favorite spots—ears and under the chin.

He switched to Marty when Joyce, noticing me looking in their direction, stood up and came across the room to join me.

“What can I do to help get food on the table, Maxie?” she asked. “If you’re ready to ring the dinner bell, that is.”

She was not kidding about the bell. Above the counter between the kitchen and dining area is a ship’s bell that I hung up back in the day when I grew weary of calling my always scattered family to dinner. It still gets regular use, even to summon Stretch, who has learned it often means food and is no dummy when it comes to mealtimes.