The Tent People

By Marilyn Storie

Sandi Pearson has done everything to prime herself for success in the Canadian bush. It’s a rough-and-tough man’s world, but she’s armed with a forestry degree, the right equipment, and a great camp cook. She's well on her way to earning enough as a tree planting contractor to afford her dream vacation in Mexico at last.

While the work is grueling, the feisty redhead knows her crew is a good one. And hot-tempered Sandi is not about to let a good-looking jokester like Bruce Connelly get in her way, either. She’s lost out to him in the past, but that isn't happening this time. Sandi has no intention of letting Bruce bamboozle her out of the summer’s most lucrative contract. This time, it's Sandi who will come out on top.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CreateSpace
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781500528027

Book preview

Chapter One

––––––––

After first admiring the off-season emptiness of the white sand beach, the glamorous redhead settled herself against the gay stripes of a canvas lounger. The steady tropical breeze caressed her sun-warmed skin. The rollicking roar of the surf murmured in her ears. Her left heel drew little smiles in the gritty sand. It seemed especially humid today. She lazily wondered if she should reach for the icy drink at her side or simply open her mouth to gulp in some air.

Your dryer’s done.

Sandi Pearson reluctantly opened her eyes and sat up. Youch, she said aloud. After resting against the unyielding wood of the bench, her neck muscles had bunched up like a herd of frightened cattle. She massaged the freckled flesh, glumly aware that the warm breeze had dwindled to a backwash of hot air from the dryers. The surf was the relentless churning of the Laundromat washers. The grit underfoot was only the drying clay she had brought in on her own steel-toed boots.

She wasn’t in Mexico—she was boot-deep in northeast British Columbia and the spring planting season. Her holiday in Mazatlán was still more than two grueling months away.

She glanced over at the battered row of dryers. The narrow room hummed with frantic activity since everyone wanted to get back to their planting sites as quickly as possible. Breathing as shallowly as she could—the place stank of bug dope and perspiration—Sandi bent forward to squint past a pair of sunburned shoulders. Her green eyes suddenly blazed. Hey—what do you think you’re doing?

A blond tree planter was opening a dryer—her dryer. Sandi was aghast at his nerve. With tempers short from unbroken weeks of physical labor, it wasn’t uncommon for scuffles to break out between different crews sharing a Laundromat. The season was short, and every minute meant money. That every machine in the crowded room was in use made no difference: the stranger was breaking an unspoken rule since Sandi had been careful to mark her territory by leaving change in the coin slot. Oblivious to that, the stranger was now unloading her still damp clothes.

Sandi was well-versed in the ways of men. With three older brothers around to torment her, she hadn’t so much grown up as fought her way through them to adult status. What the tree planter was doing, she knew, was tantamount to a declaration of war.

Preparing to do battle, Sandi flung her corkscrew curls over one shoulder. She squeezed past a knot of exhausted-looked teenagers arguing in French and clumped to the dryer. Tearing a pair of sodden blue jeans out of the strange tree planter’s hands, she thrust them back into the machine. She closed its door and slammed the slot home. Bristling, she turned to face him.

The dryer thief glanced in her direction. Straight down.  His lips quirked in a grin. They were done, he said.

Yeah, right. She gave his mud-caked running shoes a withering look. A greenhorn, she thought. Who else would wear running shoes into the bush? The look on his face infuriated her. She knew what he was thinking.

A petite five foot three inches in height—when she pulled herself as angrily erect as she was now—Sandi knew that she looked less than formidable. Men—and even some women—tried to patronize her if they didn’t know her. If I was ever afflicted with amnesia, she thought bitterly, I’d assume my name was Dear after one day.

Along with her diminutive stature, she was further handicapped by a heart-shaped face—uncomfortably close to that of a silent film star. Being cursed with freckles didn’t help, either. Instead of looking twenty-three years old, Sandi looked like she was closing in on eighteen.

What people expect isn’t always what they get, she thought grimly. Remember third grade when Davy Crompton punched you in the stomach and you bit him in the leg? She opened her mouth, prepared to blast this latest challenger into orbit. The tinny throb of music suddenly surged behind her and she grinned at the thieving planter instead. Charles Genie Attuafah was there. Even without the music, she would have known it was him: the light from the Laundromat window had been eclipsed by his form.

Genie’s gold hoop earring glinted dangerously against his ebony skin. Like many first-year planters, he had celebrated his new employment by shaving his head. His hair would return as an inconspicuous crew cut by summer’s end, but for now he possessed a menacing air.

The tree planter’s eyes widened as he appraised the very large, very black man standing behind the flame-haired woman. Okay, he mumbled. He backed away as if he had spotted a black bear cub with the mother nowhere in sight.

Genie was an exchange student from Somalia. Despite her urgent need for another planter—four weeks into the spring season, her fastest planter had slipped from a moss-slick alpine trail to twist his knee and two novice planters had quit—Sandi had hesitated before hiring him. It was late in the season and she didn’t want to hire a beginner, even if he did have a first-aid ticket. Besides, to Sandi’s wondering eyes, Genie was the size of a SWAT team on his own; in her experience, the best planters were lean and mean.

Her doubts evaporated once the soft-spoken student had finished his first week. Large he might be, but Genie had proven himself agile. He was now averaging over a thousand trees a day. As an unexpected bonus, he not only had his first-aid ticket, he was also a medical student. Sandi suspected he had aced the course she had had so much trouble with herself.

He gave her a silent smile now before returning to the table where he was folding his own clothes into flawless rectangles. Replacing his headphones, he began humming tunelessly as he worked. Genie was the only planter she had ever seen whose clothes were never wrinkled. Sandi was not without envy. Most planters—including me—just stuffed them back into their knapsacks.

Why don’t you go do whatever you have to do? I’ll finish off your laundry for you. Just leave me the truck so I can go pick up the grocery order.

Sandi looked gratefully at Alfred Stupich. Alfred, if you weren’t already married, I’d grab you myself. Sure you don’t mind? She quickly put some change into his hand before he could answer. He gave her a crooked smile.

The gangly foreman was already as thin as the water-starved inhabitants of a desert planet. It was only June, but the spring weather had been unseasonably hot until today. Alfred looked skeletal next to Genie, but Sandi knew experience counted for just as much as physical stamina: he could plant just as many trees as the big black man.

Alfred’s freshly laundered baseball cap was stuffed in a rear pocket of his sagging jeans. The sun-bleached hair atop his square head extended only one inch above his ears since he rarely took the cap off. When he did take it off, his exposed head resembled a fresh hay bale resting on top of an older one left from the prior year’s crop. People called him Scarecrow, but not to his face. Unlike planters, foremen were not expected to put up with unflattering nicknames.

I’ll see you back at the motel. It shouldn’t take me long.

There’s no reason to rush today. We’ll—

There is for me, she interrupted. "I’m dying to take a real bath."

—be back in time to plant in the afternoon tomorrow if we can get out of McBride by eleven. That is, if the bidding doesn’t take too long. Alfred’s lantern-jawed face twisted into a squarish frown; his face put Sandi in mind of the rectangular shape of a tree-planting shovel. "Not that I’m looking forward to going back to that ground."

No one on the crew had any enthusiasm left for the mountainous terrain they were currently planting. A theological student from Washington State had dubbed it Hell’s Half-Acre. His name had outlasted the student who had quit in disgust. Not surprisingly, the site preparation had been nil. There was little anyone could do with terrain like that except survey it. It was difficult to keep planting lines straight on the steep slope. Boulder-sized stumps, upended by a loader and left to rot, also had to be wrestled out of the way.

Worst of all was the abundant devil’s club. Blue jeans and work pants were no match for the yellow thorns of the Frankenstein-sized weed. No matter how hard you tried to avoid disturbing devil’s club, it always got you. Not only its stems, but the underside of its outstretched leaves were armed. One enterprising planter had tried a pair of motorcycle pants, but the thorns had promptly knifed him through the leather. Everyone but the cook sported sickly-looking eruptions where embedded thorns had festered on their arms and legs.

We’ve almost got it licked, Sandi said. We’re into the easier part and there’s only another week at most. Then we can call the checker in. Her green eyes suddenly glowed with avarice. We’ll be planting for Spencer Woodlands then and the ground will be so flat we’ll think we’re seeding a lawn.

We haven’t got that contract yet.

We will. There’s nobody out there to compete with us this season. It won’t be like last year.

Well, don’t count your trees before they’re planted, Alfred said. Bruce is planting just west of our site, you know.

You’ll see, Sandi said, her face reddening. Bruce won’t be putting anything past me this year.

She hurried out the door, briefly pleased to see that the dryer thief was regarding her with new respect as he talked to a planter from another crew. The planter must have told him who she was.

Stupid greenhorn, she thought smugly. How could anyone be dumb enough to try and push a contractor around?

She took a shortcut through the convenience store attached to the Laundromat, suppressing the urge to buy another ice cream bar. She had already devoured four. Once she got outside, Sandi inhaled with relief. Every tree planter in the Robson Valley seemed to have chosen the same day to dash into the tiny village of McBride to wash a load of clothes and pick up some groceries.

The Robson Valley was between the Rocky and Cariboo mountain ranges. Short of closing your eyes, Sandi thought, it was hard to avoid a million-dollar view from almost any spot. The Fraser River ran along the valley floor between the two mountain ranges, picking up speed from numerous tributaries. The mountains guarding the village were still topped with snow, but she knew their highest peaks would be bare by mid-summer. For now, their white crowns stood out starkly against the darkly forested slopes. They were the opposite of Alfred’s hair, she thought, and smiled.

The chill wind whipped the tendrils of her red hair about her face. She hurriedly buttoned her flannel shirt to the neck. According to forest district maps, the area was situated at an almost modest elevation of 2,407 feet. It got much colder when you got deeper into the Rockies. But Sandi knew from experience that the temperature in the valley could shift either way in a matter of minutes. There was nothing predictable about the local weather.

Except for the wind, she amended with a shiver. She turned up the collar of her shirt. Once a wind commandeered the valley, you could usually count on it blowing steadily for days.

She looked up critically, judging the cloud-dotted sky and glancing over at the rugged outline of the forested mountains. Now dappled by afternoon shadows, the mountains never looked the same from one hour to the next. Why would anyone want to work inside when they could be out here?

A whimper from the company truck caught her attention. Sandi’s gaze dropped. The four-by-four truck was encrusted with enough grey clay to furnish a mold of the truck if someone could only figure out how to take it off in one piece. She could see the outline of a monstrous shape behind the dust-clogged windows. Steeling herself, she opened the driver’s door and was immediately swallowed up by a frantic mass of black fur.

Sorry, Bear. It won’t be much longer. Penitently, she reached in and rolled the window down to the bottom so Bear could at least put her massive head outside.

Bear tried unsuccessfully to squeeze through the window. The silly dog hasn’t been able