Talkeetna Trouble

By George Angus

In this unedited, raw and uncut version of Talkeetna Trouble, follow the (mis) adventures of the folks that call "Hundred Mile" their home. The bad boy Olsen brothers are cooking up a heap of trouble and it's hope to a strong Alaskan woman and a gruff lodge owner to stop those boys.

• Language: English
• Publisher: George Angus
• Release date: Aug 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301608607

George Angus

Owner of Tumblemoose Writing Services.The tag line reads: "Inspiring Writers Every Day"I write and have been published in the following venues:Magazine ArticlesWeb CopyStudent WorkbooksTextbooksAd Copye-booksI have two novels in progress.My style is fun and conversational. My approach is real and laid back.

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Talkeetna Trouble

by George Angus

Published by George Angus at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 George Angus

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Talkeetna Trouble

Chapter 1

The door to the lodge burst open and there stood Jeremy. Wearing his trademark goofy grin as the snow swirled around him, crystalline flakes pushed their way inside guided by the blasting arctic wind.

Close the damned door, ya idgit! Randall Tripp was in the midst of a very long day and Jeremy dancing on his last nerve did nothing to improve upon said day.

Jeremy startled a bit and slammed the heavy birch door shut. Stomping his boots to get the extra snow off, he took a step forward on the snowy, wet floor and promptly fell on his ass.

Randall tromped over, held out his hand and lifted Jeremy to his feet.

You're gonna kill yourself one of these days, you know that? Try and be more careful, will ya?

A few startled patrons looked over, recognized that it was just Jeremy and promptly went back to their drafts and duck-farts.

The Century Lodge was used to such fallacies. The ancient building had been around for nearly 50 years and had seen the little stretch of highway grow and morph into something that the first folks around these parts could not have imagined. Never mind that the lodge had done some morphing on its own. In the late 50's, Century had begun as nothing more than a humble cabin, made from fallen birch and cottonwood. Not much more than a side stop for trappers and other ilk heading towards Denali. It was built for utility, not for looks.

The lodge had changed hands (sometimes officially, sometimes not) a half dozen times, near as anyone can recall. Along the way, rooms were added while others were torn away. Sometimes the construction was modern, sometimes it was neanderthal. When it ended up in the hands of Randall about a decade ago, he brought it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. A new well got drilled, a new septic was buried and in the summer of 2000 Randall applied new chinking and a fresh coat of urethane himself. It wouldn't make the cover of no architect magazine but for a piddly Alaska lodge a Hundred Miles from nowhere it did just fine.

Jeremy trudged over to the little table whose keel was held even by a matchbook under one of the legs. It stopped most of the teetering and Jeremy promptly rested his elbows on the thing, took of his woolen hat and ran his hand through his copious crop of brown hair, making it only slightly less akimbo. The table was closest to the ancient and enormous wood stove that looked like it had been pulled from a steam locomotive, and while the stove wasn't really needed to heat the lodge, Randall liked the smell of the woodsmoke.

Randall pulled up a chair and set a cup of steaming coffee in front of Jeremy.

So, you want to tell me what you're so grinny about? Hanging 250 pounds off of his six foot frame, Randall could be intimidating to a lot of people but Jeremy was too simple or too happy-go-lucky to be swayed in any fashion by the physical size of the gruff lodge owner.

Jeremy leaned over towards Randall and half whispered, I just found out something about the Olsen brothers. Not that he needed to whisper anything. Folks at the Century liked to mind their own for the most part. They were usually more interested about griping to one another about who plugged Patsy Cline into the juke again and would Randall ever update the sorry-ass selection of songs in that God-forsaken, money eating contraption.

Randall slouched back in his chair and did a little eye roll. Jeez-us, please-us. Now what?

The Olsen brothers and the word trouble were oft mentioned in the same breath. Certainly a colorful set of hundred-mile inhabitants and those two boys were just plain no good. Been that way since the third grade, near as anyone can remember.

Darrel and Stew Olsen took over the homestead when their Pa moved to Arizona. Staring down the barrel of another freezing winter one September a few years back, Jason Olsen loaded a few things into the back of his rusting and rambling Dodge truck and headed towards civilization. It was not a departure full of hugs, watery eyes and heartfelt waves from the front porch. The senior Olsen left Hundred Mile with a slam of the door and a billow of bluish smoke trailing his old truck as he careened onto the Parks Highway, causing a double long semi to slam his brakes and give a long pull on his air horn.

If you were looking at the Olsen place and were inclined to ignore the local foliage, you would swear to looking at a hill-billy haven plucked straight from the West Virginia Appalachian foothills. A rickety excuse for a house was additioned on to a white and turquoise single wide trailer and the porch sagged from the weight of tire rims and a sad collection of sundry car parts. Tents, fishing poles, four wheelers and snow machines in various states of repair lined both sides of the long driveway that snaked down from the Parks Highway. Shoot, the only thing missing was an old, droopy eared hound dog. Blue tarps everywhere. Certainly, an aerial view of the property would look like a blue and white checkerboard laid out from inmates at the local looney bin.

I got a friend. Jeremy conspired, He was in town getting some plywood for the roof on his porch over hang. See it was leaking real bad and the water was getting into the...

Criminy, boy. Get on with it!

Oh, okay. Sorry. Anyway, like I was sayin' he was at the Depot getting the wood and he sees Darrel and Stew over in the electrics section. See? They was looking at lights!

Randall stares at Jeremy. Blinks.

Fancy lights. The kind with the bright orange bulbs. What are they called again? Senium? Selium? No, Sodium something or other. And you know what? My friend says those are the kind of lights people who grow pot use!

Well, don't you know that Jeremy raised his voice an octave and a decibel or two when he said the word pot.

And yes, folks in these parts do mind their own, but they also know that the largest cash crop in the Valley ain't potatoes, it's wacky-tabaccy.

Randall whips off his Kenworth cap and smacks Jeremy in a not necessarily playful kind of way. Could you keep it down? Christ, boy. I think a couple of park rangers up at Denali didn't quite hear ya!

Jeremy's face grew sullen but his eyes still danced.

Sorry, Randall. I get worked up sometimes.

Aww, don't let it trouble you none. Besides, who cares what those boys are up to? We all know whatever it is, it ain't no good. Not only that, but they could have been getting those lights for any number of reasons. Have you been by there recently? Shee-oot, at night you can't hardly see your hand in front of your face it's so dark. Maybe they're tired of darn near breaking their leg every time they go outside. And, remember they put up that shop - if you want to call it that – this last summer? Maybe they]re gonna work on fixing some of those derelict rides they got all over the place and they need to light the shop. Heck, Jeremy they could be using those lights for anything.

Jeremy looked thoughtful down at his coffee. He seemed to consider what it was that Randall was driving at.

Finally, he looked up and broke into that boyish grin of his. Yeah, I guess you're probably right. But I sure was pretty happy there, thinking I had something on those two.

Randall understood why something like that would make Jeremy a happy camper. Those rotten Olsen boys made life miserable for Jeremy every chance. They picked on Jeremy in high school, mistaking his good-natured manner as a sign of plain old weakness. Even nearly ten years later, they still ribbed him when they got the chance. They never got really violent with Jeremy, they were more comfortable slinging ignorant words and insults, standing intimidatingly close and maybe a quick game of monkey in the middle when they could snatch something from one of his bags as he left the H&H market.

Don't you worry none, Jeremy. Those two knuckleheads will cook their own goose someday. Mark my words.

If you say so, Randall. Then, Say, has Bett been in?

Randall chuckled inside a little.

No, Jeremy, she's not been around the last day or two. She'll show up soon, I'm sure.

Oh.

Like a tall glass of cool water to a marathon runner, Bett was the best looking thing around for 26 miles in any direction. Why this Goddess with the straw colored hair was hanging around Hundred Mile instead of doing photo shoots for Euro-fashion mags was anyone's guess.

It amused Randall to no end whenever Bett came by the lodge. Wives elbows would land breath-taking blows to any husband with meandering eyes (and they all meandered). If Jeremy was present at his customary bar stool at the end of the bar, the tips of his ears would turn as red and hot as fireballs. What amazed Randall is that she seemed to notice none of it. Not in a I'm so used to it way either. It was more like she had no idea of her beauty or the effect it had on the general populous wherever she was. Of course that made the beauty seem that much more perfect, it made her stand out that much more.

As friendly and earthy as she was, no one had yet figured out her story. Hundred Mile was kind of a funny place. People came and went. They each had their reason for being here, that was true. For some, Hundred Mile was a place to escape from something. For others, it was a place to escape to. There were folks who came expecting to stay a lifetime and barely made it one season. For others, the pit stop they made turned out to be a couple of decades where the years scattered like splinters without realization or regret. Each added their own color to the off-beat community. Those who had lived here all their lives took it all with a grain of salt. It's what made this little stretch of life on the highway its own special place.

Chapter 2

Sconcy stood on the back steps and grumbled at the measly stack of firewood she had so carefully stacked on the south facing side of the house. Back in August it had seemed a like a lot of wood, enough to last at least until spring and maybe even into the next winter. Shoot. Here it was barely a week into December and no way was this paltry little stack going to get her through. She'll be lucky to make it to the first of the year.

The iron belly woodstove did a fine job of heating the narrow three story Talkeetna Special house but it was a hungry beast and readily consumed the armloads of spruce and birch that Sconcy traipsed through the house. This was her first winter at Hundred Mile and she now had to admit to herself that she had NFI how much would she'd have to have on hand. She could have asked one of the locals but that wasn't going to happen any time soon. Backwards, testosterone-laden ignoramuses, the whole lot of them. They all rode around in giant, diesel smoke belching penis replacements. When the bastards weren't racing around in their trucks, they were tearing up the roadsides in their obscenely loud 4 wheelers, scaring the wildlife and leaving giant, mile long dust trails in the summer. Don't even get her started on the wing-dingin' two stroke snow machines.

Nope, Sconcy was able to get along just fine without any help, thank-you-very-much. It was this way of looking at things, this fierce attitude that made her cut and split the three cords of wood last summer. Most August afternoons were spent with a splitting maul and a stump, turning big pieces of wood into little ones. The sweat soaked her trademark blue bandana that she wore over her mousy brown hair that she liked to keep in a pony. Squadrons of mosquitoes were her constant companion and by the end of the summer, she had given up even swatting at them.

It didn't help that this was turning out to be on of the coldest winters on record. Clear, cold days had led to miserably bitter nights for nearly a month now and there was no end in sight. The only good news is that as long as it's that cold, it ain't snowin'.

This day, Carharrts and thermals are in order as she loads the chainsaw and handsaws into her trusty old Ford. Protesting loudly, the truck catches and bellows smoke for a minute while the RPMs ramp up. She'll let it run for nearly a half hour before taking her show on the road.

Sitting at her kitchen table she sips at the mug of strong coffee and stares out the window. She can see the great puffs of exhaust slowly rise from the truck and she's thinking about how life can be a pretty strange damned thing.

Two years ago at this time she was sitting in a kitchen in her suburban Wisconsin home. Husband at work and so pregnant she could pop at any minute. Her only concern back then was what kind of holiday baking she would do that year.

When the first labor pain hit her, she jerked her arm and promptly sent her coffee cup flying across the table. Whoa, is this what it's going to be like? Fear and anticipation colored her thoughts as she dialed Hendricks cell. Surprisingly, he answered on the first ring.

Hendy? It's time.

Silence

Are you there?

Yeah, Sconce. I'm here. Can you get yourself to the hospital? I'll meet you there.

"I can. They're not too close