The Drug Mule's Guide to Wealth, Love, and Happiness

By Wynn Walker

When his brother dies in a freak accident Alec’s life goes into a complete tailspin. Upon failing out of college he returns home and ekes out a living as a janitor at a casino. Down in the dumps, all he can think about is how much better things would be if his brother was still alive—instead of vacuuming under slot machines and cleaning bathrooms he would be rafting the Salmon River and hiking the Appalachian Trail with his best friend. Lonely and full of regret, Alec tries to come to terms with his meek and uninteresting existence.
But then an old friend reappears and offers Alec a job doing what he enjoys more than anything else—tramping through the woods with a backpack on his shoulders. And this new job could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. There’s only one catch, it may cost him his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wynn Walker
• Release date: Oct 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301506590

Wynn Walker

Wynn Walker is the author of The Drug Mule's Guide to Wealth, Love, and Happiness. This hiking thriller is his first novel. He is a graduate of Washington State University.Wynn was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and makes his home in the Cascades. Someday he hopes to meet the woman of his dreams while hiking on the PCT or one of Washington's other great trails.

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The Drug Mule’s Guide to Wealth, Love, and Happiness

By Wynn Walker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright August, 2013 by Wynn Walker

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This is a work of fiction, and all characters appearing in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

My life was great when I was a kid. Each new day was better than the last. My parents, brother, and I lived on a quarter section of land in the northeastern corner of Washington, only a short distance from both Idaho and Canada. Over a century ago, my great grandfather owned the entire section, one square mile. Through the years some of the land was sold, but Mom and Dad still ended up with 160 acres. They didn't raise livestock or grow crops on the land like my great grandfather had all those years ago. Instead, my dad went to work at a sawmill and Mom stayed home with my brother and me. We had a small house, beside a creek, that my grandfather built before he died. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

Summer days were the best. Right outside our door, it seemed there was an endless stretch of forest, open field, and mountainside to explore. Hiking paths and bike trails crisscrossed our land and, along with my older brother and dogs, I investigated every bit of territory that made up the old homestead. Every rock, cave, and climbing tree was as familiar to me as the inside of my bedroom. I could just as easily spend an afternoon eating huckleberries at the base of Coyote Hill as I could netting minnows in the stream by the old water wheel.

During the winter we would go sledding and build snow caves. Spring was perfect for jumping in puddles and playing by the creek. Fall was the best time to fly balsawood gliders off the rock ledge on Buck Mountain, down to the open field below. On a perfect and windless day a well-thrown glider could stay in the air for nearly three minutes (we timed it with a stopwatch) and land by the barn where my mom kept her horses when she was a girl. Our only concern when launching gliders down the hill was Bucky or Lucky retrieving them before we could. Our dogs were notorious for breaking a champion glider and rendering it useless with one chomp.

In the evening Mom would blow on a big brass horn three times, signaling it was time to come in for supper. Honk! Honk! Honk! No matter where we were on the 160 acres, we could hear her call. After supper, and usually dessert, Dad would make the long drive to the mill and Chance and I would get ready for bed. If there was an activity we had missed, we made plans to fit it in the next day.

Chance and I were home schooled. The bus didn't come by our house and the nearest public school was over an hour away. Even if we had lived closer to town, I think Mom still would have taught us herself. Dad said she was sharp as a tack, and could do a better job of educating us than some law school dropout who taught just to have summers off.

Dad worked the night shift at the mill and returned at seven in the morning. Mom always had his meal ready on the kitchen table when he walked through the door. While we were still asleep, the smell of pork chops and mashed potatoes or chicken and dumplings or my favorite, cube steak with homemade macaroni and cheese, would drift down the hall into our shared bedroom. Together, Chance and I would run into the kitchen where we'd find full plates, pots, pans, and serving dishes so thoroughly covering the table that the tablecloth could scarcely be seen. We always had dinner for breakfast, even on the days that Dad didn't work.

After the large morning meal, Mom would wash and put away the dishes while Dad, Chance and I went into the living room where Dad would tell us stories about times since past. Heroes, villains, monsters, and seemingly plain and ordinary children like me, who grew up to do great things, all had their place in the tales he narrated with the perfect amount of fervor and suspense. Away from the savory aroma of my mom's kitchen, I would instead smell freshly milled lumber coming from Dad's clothes and skin. I loved that smell, so sweet and simple. To me, the scent of fresh cut fir and pine was as much a part of my father as his black leather boots or his old brown truck with the rusted bumper.

Lying on my back beside a blazing fire and a softly snoring dog, listening to my father describe how an elf walks through the forest without making a sound, I assumed every boy had a life like mine. Gazing through the frosted window above Mom's sewing machine, to watch snowflakes pile up outside, I never once thought about how fortunate I was.

Sometimes, after finishing a story, my father would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. My older brother usually wanted to be a sailor and I wanted to be whatever Chance wanted to be, but if I had said that he would’ve told me to stop copying him and be something else. So most of the time I told Dad I wanted to fly jets and be the first pilot to break the speed of light.

My talented and skillful brother was my idol since before I can remember. I remember having dreams about the two of us, much older and with beards like our dad’s, discovering ancient ruins, fighting bad guys, and having our own secret island deep in the Pacific. Together, Chance and I would explore the world and have adventures all over the seven seas until Mom called us home for dinner.

When Mom entered the living room from the kitchen we knew it was time for Dad to get the rest he deserved. We would habitually ask if he could stay up just a little longer, but she always insisted that he needed his rest after working all night long. On the way to his room, he would tussle our hair with his strong hands and tell us to study hard so we could be anything we wanted to be when we grew up.

Once Dad was out of the living room, we got our textbooks out to study all the subjects that the Washington State Board of Education said we should. I was good at math and Chance was good at everything so if we worked steadily we’d be done before noon. While mom reviewed our work to make sure we hadn't skipped any questions or messed up our multiplication tables, we peered over her shoulder in anticipation. The words we longed to hear were, Be quiet so you don't wake up your father. This meant our work had passed inspection and we were free. The rest of the day belonged to us.

****

The fairy tale ended on a Thursday in the early afternoon when I was twelve. We were swimming in the pond and swinging from the rope that was tied to the big cottonwood tree. The air was muggy and warm and perfect for a day by the water.

Dad had brought some heavy-duty cord home from work the previous weekend and attached it to the lowest branch. Chance and I had great fun pulling the rope back as far as we could and then jumping onto it so we could swing out over the pond. It seemed that all we had done since Dad threw the thick brown rope up and over that branch was swing and splash into the pond.

Whenever it was my turn, I’d simply let go and splash into the water feet first. Chance was different. First, he’d do a 360 degree turn and the next time he’d do a back flip. I couldn't do anything tricky like that so I stopped swinging and watched my older brother from the shoreline. After he did a back flip followed by a perfect dive, I told him I was going to go get Mom so she could watch. Maybe she'd bring the camera.

I ran barefoot back to the house and opened the screen door to the kitchen. Mom was taking a loaf of bread from the oven and she let me have a warm piece with butter drizzled on top. I carefully cut off an extra piece to take to Chance. We then walked back through the open field, to watch him do flips into the reservoir that Grandfather built so many years ago. It took about ten minutes to reach the pond and I remember us talking about the black bear that she’d spotted in our plum tree the day before. It had eaten nearly all of the fruit that she’d planned on using to make jam.

When we got to the pond, Chance was nowhere to be seen.

Oh my god. No!

My mother, with a single braid in her hair and still wearing her favorite blue apron, ran to the water's edge and dove headfirst into the reservoir. She swam out to the middle to reach her son and then continued to the opposite shore, towing Chance’s body behind her. I ran around the murky green water to where they both lay on the silty ground. My brother's face was pale and blue and it was the worst thing I'd ever seen. Pushing on his chest and blowing air between his lips until she was so exhausted she had trouble lifting her arms for another compression, Mom tried to save her son and my best friend, but he wouldn't breathe again. I knelt beside Chance's body with my hand on his forehead, begging him to wake up. I kept pleading with him but he couldn’t hear me. When Mom knew his life had ended she rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes. Tears streamed down my face. I leaned forward and rested my hollow, weak body against my mom. For me, that was the day my childhood ended.

Relatives said Chance should’ve been buried in the rocky soil of the old homestead, just like everyone else who had lived on that property. Personally, I thought his ashes should’ve been scattered over his favorite place, the top of Buck Mountain and the best place we knew of to launch a glider. But for some reason my parents didn’t want either and determined it would be best to have him buried in the local cemetery.

We arrived at the fenced graveyard on a Saturday morning and waited to go in until the service for another boy concluded. His name was Derrick and he was thirteen years old when he was accidentally run over by a boat while swimming in the river. I watched the preacher stand by a mound of dirt and read out of a book while the mom, dad, and sister mourned. When the family came walking out, my mom and dad bowed their heads, so I did the same, but I looked up as the girl passed by. She was wearing a black, ankle-length dress and looking straight at me. Still too overwhelmed and confused for tears, her face was pale and muddled.

Chance and Derrick both died August 20, 2003, and were buried three days later, less than an hour apart and in the same graveyard. I shared a moment with that little girl and, whether she knew it or not, our brief eye contact meant a great deal to me. So much can be said with a look and an expression that words aren’t needed. For that second I felt someone else knew what it was like to be young, alone, and entirely empty inside.

****

I continued home schooling in the fall, but it wasn't the same. Mom seemed like a different person and barely helped me with any of my subjects. I didn't talk much that year and I know it worried her. Dad wasn’t around much.

Still in a state of shock, most of my time was spent alone, wandering the property with Lucky and Bucky. I lived in a cloudy haze, like the nearby mountains that remained veiled in mist and wouldn’t see the light or warmth of the sun all winter long.

The following spring we sold the old homestead and moved to a house on Forest Glen Drive, a few miles outside Priest Rock, a town of 3,000 people. Everyone in the neighborhood lived on their own three-acre tract of land and in a house similar to ours. The entire development wasn't as large as our old property, yet there were forty homes on it. My dad assured me we still lived in the country, but it sure didn't feel like it.

We had a small fenced-in area for Lucky and Bucky and they barked all day long at passing cars and the neighbor's dogs. There was no open land to walk them on so I would attach their leashes and exercise them up and down paved Forest Glen Drive.

The neighborhood was loud and I didn't enjoy living there. I hated being surrounded by houses and people and all I wanted was to move back to the old homestead. My parents told me I should make some friends, but the kids down the street didn't seem very friendly and I ended up spending most of my time in my room by myself.

Dad started a new job once we got settled. The reason we moved, I’d been told, was so he could be closer to his work and wouldn't have to drive so far. His new employment was at an office, selling insurance. I’d never seen him in a suit before and barely recognized him when he came down to the kitchen table in preparation for his first day of work. He’d shaved his beard off the night before. Gone was the scent of evergreen trees on his clothes and absent were the days of dinner for breakfast. Brightly colored cardboard boxes lined the pantry shelves above our new stainless steel refrigerator. We were a cereal family and I hated it.

That September I started public school, entering as a freshman at a high school with close to 400 students. Initially, I tried to make friends and fit in, but the kids I met weren't like me and it didn't take long to decide I didn't want to be anything like