Sharing Spaces (8 page)

Senna took the cup he extended toward her. “My father used to say that,” she said, remembering a long-ago time.

“Maybe that's where I picked up the expression.” He tossed another stick of firewood into the woodstove.

Senna drew a sharp breath. “My father's been dead for five years. He was killed in a plane crash. There's no way you could have known him.”

“Your father was my commanding officer.”

Senna felt another jolt of surprise. “You were in the Navy?”

“That's how I met your grandfather. The three of us went on a fishing trip together.”

“To Labrador,” Senna guessed, her thoughts all awhirl with this sudden overload of information.

“When I was in college, a friend of mine told me about this place,” Jack explained. “Said it was the best fishing ever. So, being as I liked to fish, it seemed natural for us to plan a trip. We ended up spending the entire summer working at a fly-in lodge near the mouth of the Eagle River. I started out washing dishes and progressed to being a chore boy, then a maintenance man. Came back the next summer to work at the same lodge, and did some guiding. Anyhow, when I found out your father liked to fly-fish, I told him about Labrador. He asked me to plan a trip for him and his father, so I did. Then he asked me to come along, so I did. The rest is history.”

Senna paced to the kitchen window and stared out at the lake, which was hidden beneath a blanket of fog. Wraiths of smoke lifted from the surface and caught fire in the sun's first rays. She felt a sudden, aching sense of loss. “You knew them both better than I did,” she said. “My father and my grandfather belonged to the military. We only knew them as men in uniform who were always gone.” She drew a painful breath. “
Strangers
in uniforms.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way. The military can be a demanding lifestyle….”

“Tell me about it,” Senna said, spinning around, her stomach churning with bitter resentment. “Tell my mother about the demands of raising three kids while
her husband was flying fighters off a boat cruising an ocean halfway around the world. Tell me about all the lonely nights spent wondering and worrying. Tell me about how my mother coped when her own parents died, and my father couldn't make it to either funeral because the fleet was on some kind of high alert.”

Jack's expression was solemn. “I'm sorry.”

“Me, too.” Senna glared at him, then turned away as the heat of her anger swept up into her cheeks. “Military men should never marry.”

“I couldn't agree with you more.”

At that moment Charlie came into the kitchen, blinking sleep from his eyes. The small, black fox-like dog skirted about his heels. She was a pretty thing. Fine-boned, almost dainty, with a sharp, intelligent expression. Both were looking, no doubt, for something to eat. But to Senna's surprise, Charlie made a beeline for the kitchen table and picked up the book she had laid there earlier. The boy read the title aloud, then looked at Jack. It was hard to read his expression.

“For me?”

Jack nodded. “For you to read
later.
Right now we're flying out to show Senna the lodge. I'll go prep the plane, and then we're out of here. Leave Ula in the shed. Put some water and kibble down for her. We'll be gone for half the day, at least.”

Charlie nodded, reluctantly put the book on the table and turned toward the door. The little black dog followed.

“Can't Ula come with us?” Senna said. “She won't take up much space in the plane.”

Charlie paused, hand on the door knob, and glanced back hopefully. “No,” Jack said. “Go on, now, and meet
us at the plane.” After the boy had gone, Jack dampered down the woodstove and moved to the door. “Don't look so huffy,” he said to Senna before heading out to ready the plane. “If that crackie ran off after some wild beast while we're at the lodge, we might have to spend the rest of the summer searching for her. She's safer here.”

Senna's stomach growled loud enough to perk up Chilkat's ears. “Maybe so,” she admitted, “but I was kind of hoping she could hunt us up some breakfast.”

“What's the matter, don't you like brook trout?” Jack said.

“I don't like fish, period.”

 

T
HE FLIGHT TO
W
OLF
R
IVER
L
ODGE
took longer than Senna thought it would. She hadn't seen a map until she climbed into the plane and looked over Jack's air charts. He traced out their route with his forefinger while Senna strapped herself into the copilot's seat and Charlie settled into the seat directly behind her.

“The Wolf's about a hundred miles north-northeast of us. She empties into White Bear Bay and she's about the best salmon river in Labrador. Everyone thinks that distinction belongs to the Eagle River, and that's fine by me. Let 'em stay down there and crowd the shores. Our lodge is the only human habitation on the Wolf. There's a little settlement at White Bear Bay—four houses, all fishermen. The mail boat stops there once a week.” Jack glanced into the back. “You all buckled up, Charlie?”

Jack ran through his preflight checklist and then started the engines. Senna knew nothing of airplanes, but the motor sounded strong and smooth and the propeller spun, and if the man piloting the plane had served
under her father, then he was no doubt a competent enough aviator. They were taxiing away from the dock and just starting to pick up speed when suddenly Jack throttled the plane down with a heated curse. “Dammitall, Charlie,” he yelled over the rumble of the engine. “I thought I told you to lock that dog of yours in the shed!”

Senna followed his line of sight and spied a V-shaped ripple of movement in the water just off shore and to the right of the dock. Hard to see, but that movement was the little black dog, swimming swiftly toward the plane.

“I did,” Charlie said, staring out his window.

Jack idled the plane and shook his head in disgust, watching the dog's approach. “Well, what are you waiting for? Open the door and drag her in here.”

The boy scrambled to unbuckle his seat belt. By the time he got the side door open, Ula had nearly reached the plane. Charlie climbed out onto the pontoon, lifted her out of the water by her collar and deposited her in the cabin, where she shook off a great shower of spray that drenched the interior along with the pilot. Senna couldn't help but laugh in spite of Jack's dark expression. She was glad the crackie was aboard and reunited with Charlie.

Five minutes later they were airborne, heading for the Wolf River and the lodge her grandfather had dreamt into life. Senna watched the landscape unroll beneath the plane. Landscape? More like a waterscape. Endless streams, rivers, ponds, lakes. Water everywhere. In fact, from the air, what little land there was seemed to be dividing one body of water from another. No habitations anywhere. No roads. Just endless and untracked wilderness. Senna found herself entranced by the beauty of it,
and searched the open spaces and eskers for signs of wolves.

She cast a covert glance at Jack, wondering at his solitary ways. He seemed like a good enough person, and there was no denying his physical attributes, yet he remained curiously unattached. He'd made reference to a woman who would let him sleep at her house, so no doubt he had alliances with the opposite sex, but his life for the most part seemed almost monastic. Was fishing enough of an addiction that a man could forsake all the comforts of life and not even miss them?

Another half hour droned by. No conversation was possible over the throaty roar of the engine. Every once in a while Jack would point down at something and shout to make himself heard, but though she stared where he pointed and struggled to make sense of his words, she failed to see or hear anything. Finally the plane began to descend. She peered anxiously downward, trying to keep from anticipating something so grand that she'd only be disappointed. A broad dark river twisted through the black spruce, bigger than any of the others they'd flown over. The plane banked around, dropping more swiftly. Still she saw nothing. Was the lodge so small it couldn't be seen from the air?

Her hands clenched together in her lap and she realized she was tense with anticipation as Jack side-slipped the plane, dropped altitude quickly, lined up on a long straight section of river, and touched down so smoothly she barely felt the transition. Rather than stop the plane and cut the motor, he taxied it up the river heading for the bend.

Rounding the corner the river widened out, and on the left-hand shore Senna spied a long dock with a ramp
ascending to a porch-like structure above. Above and beyond, perched on the very edge of a promontory overlooking the river, was the lodge, much larger than she had dared to hope. It was V-shaped, each wing at least sixty feet long and paralleling the river. The front of the lodge was the somewhat rounded point of the V, and was floor-to-ceiling glass. The lodge was constructed of honey-colored cedar logs that hadn't yet begun to age and silver. The roof was metal, dark green, and evidently hard to see from the air. A massive stone chimney reared up dead center of the V and a covered porch ran along each wing facing the river, with yet another ramp descending to the lower porch above the dock. There were several matching log outbuildings, one right at the water's edge that she assumed was a boat house, two up behind the lodge itself, and another off the far side.

Jack taxied the plane up to the dock and Charlie jumped out, dog at heel, to tether it to the big posts. The engine cut out and the prop feathered to a stop. Senna sat for a moment, taken aback by the unexpected grandeur of the log structure and the way it so gracefully blended into the landscape. “It's much bigger than I imagined it would be,” she said, staring out the plane's bug-spattered windscreen. “And much better-looking.”

“The admiral designed it,” Jack said. “He picked the place out, too. He spotted this knoll from the air, signaled for me to put down, and said, ‘There she'll set, right up there on that point of land with a river view outside every window. We'll call her the Wolf River Lodge.'

“Situated on that high point of land with the river on three sides, there's a steady breeze that keeps the bugs away 24/7,” Jack said. “Priceless, that spot. There isn't
another like it along the whole stretch of river. You can sit on that great long porch without wearing any insect repellent at all and never be bothered by Labrador's legendary mosquitoes.”

Senna shook her head, trying to comprehend the magnitude of the project. “How on earth did you get everything out here?”

“Freighter brought it up the coast to White Bear Bay, which is about twenty-five miles due east of here. The locals rigged up a pretty ingenious barge with a shallow draw to haul the bulk of it up the river. When the river froze up, we flew the rest of the stuff in, or dragged it by snow machine. We did whatever we had to do to get the building supplies in here.”

“How long did it take to build once all the supplies were in?”

“Forever, it seemed like. We hired some men from Goose Bay. Good workers. Great carpenters. And an old Scandinavian log joiner from St. John's supervised the raising of the lodge. Fifty years in the business, a real artisan. Spent time with some of the best log-cabin builders in the world, teaching them the finer points.” Jack shook his head, his eyes faraway. “We worked like slaves, all of us did. Looking at the whole of it all at once, building the damn thing seemed like an impossible task, but the admiral never got discouraged. Somehow he knew just how to get the job done, step by steady step.”

“All those years of military discipline, no doubt,” Senna remarked, unbuckling her safety harness.

“No doubt,” Jack amiably agreed, his thoughts returning to the present. He grinned at her as he unbuckled his own harness. “C'mon. I think you'll like the lodge even better close up.”

 

A
S
J
ACK STARTED UP THE RAMP
toward the lodge he heard Senna's light footsteps following close behind. “Where's Charlie?” she asked.

“Dunno, but this is the first time we've been back here since the admiral died. I think maybe he just needs a little time to adjust.” He glanced back at Senna. “The admiral was the closest thing to real family Charlie had. The two of them were pretty close.”

Her forehead furrowed in a frown. “That just seems so unbelievable. The admiral was so aloof with us. With
me.
So distant. So judgmental and so damn unyielding. Nothing I said or did was good enough for him. The fact that Charlie liked him…
loved
him, even, just seems so…so incredible.”

Jack stopped in his tracks and turned just in time to grab Senna before she rammed into him, striding up the ramp with her head down, absorbed in her memories. He caught her by her upper arms and brought her to an abrupt halt. Her head snapped up.

“We all change,” he said, his voice harder than he wanted it to be, but Charlie was up in the lodge searching for something he'd lost and would never find again and the boy's pain keened on Jack and made him angry with this granddaughter who didn't seem to understand much about anything. “All of us, every day. We adapt to our environment. We change because we have to, in order to survive. Sometimes that means we have to hide the very best parts of ourselves. Your grandfather was a man who held a position of great importance. Great power. He had to make decisions every single day that could have nothing to do with his emotions, his true feelings. He had to make decisions that sometimes caused other people to die.”

“I know that,” Senna said, her chin lifting slightly but her voice subdued. Her eyes were riveted to his, irises wide, and he could feel the trembling tension of her body.

“He kept the soft side of himself hidden because he had to in order to survive in the world he lived in. You show a weakness in that world, any weakness at all, and you're doomed, and everyone else who depends on you is doomed.” Jack felt himself falling into the dark windows of turbulent emotions that stared back up at him. “Don't hold that against him,” he said. “He loved you, he just didn't know how to show it after all those years of having to be tough. He didn't know how to love anything anymore. It took that homeless boy to bring your grandfather back to life. It took Charlie to reconnect him to his gentler side, to the part of him that could be emotional, that could care about people, that could love again.”